Debt Rattle August 26 2022

 

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    Pablo Picasso Dora Maar 1937   • EU Should Brace For ‘Winter Of Great Suffering’ – Spanish Minister (RT) • Europe Branded ‘Third World’ Economy (
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 26 2022]

    #114297
    Dora
    Participant

    Taibbi

    How is this not a huge story?

    #114298
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    @Dora – because the FBI has told the rest of the media that it isn’t?

    #114299
    Red
    Participant
    #114300
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Pablo Picasso Dora Maar 1937

    Picasso draws her often; I wonder; the way he paints her; does it represent her many complexities?????
    I so do not understand Picasso and his various styles…which is why I say I do not like him………..

    #114301
    Dr. D
    Participant

    How not a huge story? Chad at Facebook says it’s not. I support multi-national billionaires with my very life’s blood, so there you have it.

    “August on Verge of Being Tropical-Storm-Free for only Third Time in 60 Years”

    But they said AGW would cause ever-increasing storms. How come reports only on heat, but not snow in Saudi. Drought, but not lakes filling in East Africa? This is one of those stories. When the next hurricane comes, they will blame CO2, but only after not reporting this story, and in fact several years like it. That’s fundamentally dishonest. As in, I am a lying liar, the epitome of Not-Science, cherry-picking data for my hypothesis, lacking all conscience.

    Does the Babylon Bee have a similar “Alex Jones was Right” jar? Same concept.

    Yes, ZeroHedge could be banned every day for all kinds of things. But this? “You quoted the Encyclopedia Britannica, v1991. We all know that is untrue and hateful and have a permanent ban.” But SMH, what to do, so common it doesn’t bear mentioning. They are exposed, exposed as loveless, hateful nags and scolds more boring and loveless than the most fundamentalist church lady you ever saw. Worse than Cromwell closing the pubs and outlawing theatre. Boring. Hateful. Loveless. Trolls.

    And what up and coming young kid wants to sign on to that?

    European countries supporting Ukraine against Russia should brace for a full suspension of natural gas supplies by Moscow during the upcoming winter,”

    Uh. Whut, whut and whut? Buddy, YOU shut off the gas. YOU. Russia is SELLING gas. YOU are refusing gas. And this will change in a few months for why? In fact, WHY did you refuse the gas they’re selling you by the multi-mega pipeline right now???

    Translation: “I’m hungry but I refuse to buy food. This has caused me to expect that Tesco is no longer selling food, and will close all stores this winter.”

    Tesco and all other intelligent life on earth: “???????????”

    Spain continues “Oh! My poor wee bairns! They are a dyin’! Help me pappy! Helps me!!!”

    Ukraine billboard is even more idiotic in person. “They need it more”? They need more universal slavic genocide, demanded by England and paid for by British citizens? What “More” are they getting? Not gas. And there are 1,000 fewer Ukrainians to burn it every week. It’ s just bizarre non-sequitur after orange and anemone. All of these things are not like the other.

    “Europe Branded ‘Third World’ Economy (RT)”

    If Europe keeps this up, we’re going to have to invent a “Fourth World” category. I expect the usual denials, wrangling, lying, mitigating, course-maintaining, but I didn’t expect Germany to refuse to ship a turbine so they can’t blame Russia, and to outright refuse to stockpile gas in storage for months for no earthly reason at all. Needless to say, and I say it again: THIS WILL KILL THEM.

    But okay. Apparently they need this corner to be locked in to overthrow the Pale Horse and to turn on NordStream II this winter, which is waiting for them. Only the Anglos are in the way.

    UK Gov’t Warned of “Civil Unrest” over People Unable to Pay Energy Bills (SN)”

    Why don’t they just “print money”? This isn’t even approached. In any article. Like other human-saving activities, this is impossible, a non-starter. $40B for Ukraine to be systematically annihilated down to the last girl-child, but zero to offset heating bills in Manchester.

    The reason “money” won’t work is if you yourself REFUSE TO BUY IT. (and inflation) “Ceci d’argent n’est pas une pipe” Money is not a pipeline.

    They need civil unrest to identify who will protest and kill them. Then there will be enough gas. In the showers.

    “Governments should focus on reducing energy demand wherever possible.”

    I guess, but governments could do the mostest by shutting themselves down and outlawing themselves. That’s Le plus maximum.

    “…The biggest consumers of electricity will be electric cars with a short range and a high price..”

    Again, they are shutting down the grid, the charging stations, and look to shut them down a lot, lot more. And that’s when there ISN’T a forest fire or an ice storm.

    “The city said it held an EU-wide tender in June and July, but failed to attract any bids from potential suppliers.”

    Ya think? They HAVE a supplier. A cheap, reliable supplier. But you decided you don’t like food, heat, and water for why?

    ““Unfortunately, the situation here is such that we have an absolute deficit in our own [military] stocks,” the Green Party politician said.”

    This didn’t happen yesterday. Crying that RussiaRussiaRussia was going to invade them, they’ve avoided arming for decades, billions and trillion dollars short over the years, have nearly no army, and make the ‘Yanks pay for it while they get free health care and gloat. This worked so well it culminated in 2019 of having NO ARMY AT ALL. None. Unless you call 40 guys showing up at a broken down mess hall with 2 unworking tanks “an army.” Would you like to address 40 years of lying and mismanagement, Mr. Speaker?

    “So Ukraine can defend itself” while Germany can’t. This makes Benton’s theory of appallingly racist Khazars make sense, because: it’s real, it’s happening, and I don’t have a better theory.

    Zelensky now insists that defeating Russia on the battlefield and retaking all the land is the only possible option for his country.”

    Um. Yeah. I read it but I still can’t believe I’m reading it. Lira says Ukraine is still declaring they will fly the Ukie flag over the Kremlin next year.

    many on the left have turned their ire on the Constitution itself as the root of all evil”

    Have turned? This is like a 100 year march. Since the Progressives joined the KKK and got Wilson in the White House. It is inevitable though. They are the party of no limits, no rules. Regardless of WHAT rule, ANY rule that exists, any custom, any process, chafes and binds. They require NO RULZ. Why I don’t quite know. The Constitution, even as broken, ignored, and watered down as it is, still – in theory – is a RULE, and A RULE THAT IS A LIMIT ON GOVERNMENT.

    As Socialists, they require the government to be all-powerful and all-controlling. Running, doing, deciding, forcing all things. …And of course they are at the TOP of this, being the run-ers, the control-ers, sitting in high, white offices, telling the stupid Deplorables what to do, how to turn every nut and screw, but mostly saying “Go off and die.

    THERE CAN BE NO LIMITS ON GOVERNMENT. THERE CAN BE NO LIMITS. THERE CAN BE NO LIMITS TO ME. I AM ALL. MY EGO IS THE UNIVERSE. Which fits their general New-Age religion: I AM GOD. Man is God. Practically Prefect in Every Way.

    Yay Freedom of Speech! Keep talking. We’ll refer back to all these things later, just like we did when all you same people wrote tomes on the Magic and Majesty of Eugenics and how to enact it on the world particularly the poor, the Irish, and the Blacks. (Margaret Sanger) Harvard. Yale. Time Magazine. Hitler, Stalin, Man of the Year. And there’s no Holodomor in Ukraine! Some things never change.

    Ed Dowd: https://gettr.com/user/EdwardDowd Why banned? He asks scientific questions. Science doesn’t ask questions or present data anymore. How gauche.

    But speaking of, VACCINES ARE NOW BAD. DONALD TRUMP MADE YOU TAKE THEM.

    Yes, no joke. Okay, YouTube just changed all their bannables in anticipation of “The Narrative”™. Not only can you say masks don’t work, you can say “Masks are bad” and even “Masks cause cancer.” On the vaccine front, rules are quickly changing that vaccines might have effects, might not work to stop Covid (duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh as Fauci, Biden, etc get Covid 4x on camera) and Pfizer miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight have side effects.

    Next day: boom! It’s DONALD TRUMP’S VACCINE. Warp-speed. Untested. Fauci already said last week he never forced anyone to take it, never recommended lockdowns.

    So We Were Always At War With Eurasia. I Support the Latest Thing. What’s “The Lastest Thing”? “Vaccines don’t work, are killing everyone, and it’s Donald Trump’s fault.” You watch, about 12 weeks from now Democrats will never have promoted vaccines, they always knew they were fishy. They never wanted lockdowns and masks don’t work.

    The irritating part is, like Estasia, IT WILL WORK PERFECTLY. No one will notice a thing, pile on, agree totally, and I’ll be banned as a crank for pointing out the #Opposite. Or the #Opposite-#Opposite? Or in Fauci’s case, the #Opposite-#Opposite-#Opposite-#Opposite-#Opposite-#Opposite? Opposite of opposite of opposite? All things are true at once. No limitz, no rulez. All things AND their #Opposite at the same time. “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

    But here we are. Coming right up. So…this isn’t set up anywhere? Decided by anyone? No coordination as we see with Twitter and Fauci? YouTube is just psychic because they know this is coming but never talked to anyone, and these high-level rule changes 12 weeks ahead of time are all a vast labyrinth of coincidences. Yup. “I Support the Latest Thing.”

    “urged its would-be sellers to surrender it to the FBI,”

    Why the FBI? She’s just a citizen, it’s just a lost umbrella. And they DID try to surrender it: that was the whole story. They contacted her and her lawyer and tried to return it. No response. So what were they SUPPOSED to do?

    Dore does Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiaK3IUKnjw For all you antipodeans.

    Australia – with a 99% vax rate – STILL cuts the pay of teachers who won’t get vaxxed. But DO want those teachers to show up for work. For lesser pay. Because Covid is dangerous. But not so dangerous they can’t work with your kids. For lesser pay. Although at 99% there must be only 12 teachers involved.

    This is not a joke. This is real and the Australians are the joke.

    #114302
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    #114303

    If folks are going to rumble in the street
    It might be ’cause at home they have no heat.
    So governments will now politely “ask”:
    You definitely mustn’t wear a mask!

    #114304
    The Black
    Participant

    It’s the US Invitational now, not the US Open. It’s been rendered meaningless as a “tournament”, selling eyeballs to Moderna when not busy fluffing for BLM.

    I wanted to comment on Zuckerberg providing cover for the Federal BI, but I haven’t listened to the interview yet. When was the last time Z commented publicly on anything? Was it the congressional hearing? 2017?

    #114305
    zerosum
    Participant

    Colorblindness
    means you see colors differently than most people.
    At TAE, we see colors. We see more than black and white

    1. “Energy Prices will stay high throughout the winter and governments should work with the worst-case scenario assumption that they will not go away even after that,”

    2. Prime Minister Boris Johnson continues to insist that Brits should maintain their support for ‘the current thing’ – by prolonging the war in Ukraine. “We also know that if we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood,” said Johnson. “And that’s why we know we must stay the course. Because if Putin were to succeed, then no country on Russia’s perimeter would be safe, and… (that) would be a green light for every autocrat in the world that borders could be changed by force,” he added.

    3. The fallout of the sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine has turned Europe into “the third world of the Western world economies,” a senior contributor to Forbes magazine has claimed.

    4. Actually, this is now a multi-polar world. The only way humans will survive the catastrophes of a possible nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, resource depletion, and over population is if good government and peace are restored.

    5. Moscow declared the demilitarization and ‘denazification’ of Ukraine as the goals of its military operation in the country.

    6. Lalaland”…. any scenario for the conflict that would predict a victory for Kiev was “crystal-clear lies and demagoguery.”

    7. • Russia and India No Longer Need US Dollar – BRICS President (RT) BRICS an international socio-economic and political forum incorporating five member nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

    8. The FBI was behind the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

    9. • Trump Campaign Turned Down Ashley Biden Diary (JTN)
    Didn’t she leave it in a hotel room? Doesn’t that make it “found” instead of “stolen”?

    10. There are 10 million less Ukrainians in Ukraine for the gov. to take care/gov./supply services/pay wages/tax

    11. My way or the highway. Rules are quickly changing, cherry-picking data/opinions/facts/right/wrong/

    #114306
    zerosum
    Participant

    Answer
    If wind and solar can replace 3% of energy use, then, to obtain 100% of energy use by wind and solar, the answer is simple, …. restrict the energy used to 3% of the population.

    #114307
    zerosum
    Participant

    Question:
    I wonder if the money the US is constantly giving to Ukraine and the latest commitment to continue funding it, is about blackmail and extortion from the Ukrainians (who have a lot of dirt on American politicians) and not about all this BS about “democracy” and “freedom”?
    Reply

    #114308
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Willem, yesterday:
    But why should any private provider price its goods/services at a price lower than the government has indicated it is willing to pay?
    There is one industry I can think of that does something like: auto glass replacement places. They compete by finding ways to cut their margins and offer spiffs to customers, like gift cards and cash. I also see dental offices that advertise “no copay” dental exams and cleanings.

    #114309
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @Red I apologize for butting in, since your question was directed to @Bill7, but I have first hand info from spending the better part of 15 years building a homestead by hand in remote mountains back in the 80’s. The shaving horse diagram in the link, if built to those precise specs, will hold small light pieces for work and leave both of the worker’s hands free BUT (and this is a big BUT) the device in the diagram is way way too thin and lightweight to provide the massive clamping and vibration reduction force that you’re really looking for in a shaving horse that’s worth the time and effort to build. The ones that really get the job done tend to be many times thicker and heavier than the cute and precise one in the picture. Lot’s of books and YouTubes on the topic. I recommend starting with the earliest volumes of the Foxfire book series wherein a bunch of High School kids in the deep South interviewed old timer hill people in Appalachia back in 1970’s Georgia, USA. In fact, I recommend those early Foxfire books to anyone and everyone just for general edification. It’s a good time to brush up on that kind of stuff!

    #114311
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    (*sigh* system thinks this is a duplicate, but original disappeared into the nether)

    EU winter of great suffering
    Of course, we are all familiar with the fairy tale of sleeping beauty. It isn’t usually seen as a moralist story, but a couple decades back I realized that it contained a moralist element. The princess is “cursed.” (Analogous to a severe allergy or illness where something common needs to be avoided.). The adults all know this, and so the people of the kingdom/village/castle all agree to forego spindles. Spindles are used to spin thread, which is then woven into cloth — which means they all don’t get new cloth…for about 16 years until the princess encounters one anyhow, falling asleep till wakened by the prince.
    The fairy tale explains a situation whereby a group of people all generously decide to voluntarily forego a resource for the benefit of one (or a few.). Many tellings of this story talk about how this was done “out of love for the princess” — not by governmental decree, or emphasize that although the king decreed it, the people agreed and voluntarily complied.
    The WEFfers have missed parts of the moral of this story — the voluntary compliance part, the part where those complying each had a personal relationship with the person on whose behalf they were sacrificing, and that what was being sacrificed (new cloth) was more of a luxury than an absolute necessity: they could mend their clothes instead of replacing with new. When compliance is not voluntary, when the person doing the sacrifice lacks a personal relationship with who is being “saved,” when the sacrifice ends up threatening the life of the person doing the sacrifice…it can’t work for long.

    #114312
    Antidote
    Participant
    #114313
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    August on Verge of Being Tropical-Storm-Free for only Third Time in 60 Years
    Ah—so THAT is where Arizona has been getting its wettest monsoon season in more than 2 decades. 😀
    My watermelons are growing fat. I love it.

    #114314
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Dr. D
    As Socialists, they require the government to be all-powerful and all-controlling.
    Sounds to me more like “totalitarianism” than “socialism.”
    Lots of governments and political parties use the word “socialism, -ist,” in their naming conventions. Sometimes it is used because of a real commitment to historical principles that go back about 200 years. Sometimes it is used because the word is positively associated for many around the globe and the government or party is hoping that positive view will rub off onto the government or party.

    “Socialism” is generally recognized as policies that promote general social well-being, such as subsidized preschool, various flavors of public medicine, public pensions, etc. Totalitarianism, on the other hand, involves consolidating control over a society into a small-ish coterie, often arranged in a jumbled system of competing layers that vie for recognition from the top individual (or small group.). Totalitarianism uses fear and propaganda to get the masses to fall into line and cede power. As power is consolidated into the top in totalitarianism, it will intensify its terror on its own people.

    The word “socialism” does not adequately convey what is going on — it has too many meanings for different people, and has been used broadly for a couple of centuries. “Totalitarianism” has existed, by contrast, as a word only for about a century and has a much more specific definition and universal understanding. “Socialism” has been turned into “a hiss and a byword” because it potentially threatens the economic and political power of certain wealthy segments of the population. “Totalitarianism” has to do with governance, not with the underlying economic structure, and is not related to a class-based understanding of society.

    #114315
    willem
    Participant

    @phoenixvoice: I guess businesses like the auto glass places are in that general vein. Any business whose customers are not spending their own money (things paid for by government, insurance, etc.) tends to charge whatever the business knows the government/insurer has said they will pay.

    #114316
    willem
    Participant

    https://www.rt.com/news/561506-eu-winter-suffering-gas/

    https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/belgian-pm-warns-next-5-10-winters-will-be-difficult-energy-crisis-worsens

    https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/weary-europeans-must-bear-consequences-ukraine-war-putin-will-eventually-blink-eus-borrell

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/end-abundance-macron-warns-major-tipping-point-and-great-upheaval-difficult-winter

    I guess a large segment of the public still hasn’t figured it out yet. All of the above mouthpieces going public almost on the same day with essentially the same message, and they still don’t realize they are being manipulated?

    It is clear that much of what is going on around us is being staged in the furtherance of a specific agenda. In the case of the operation in Ukraine, it is being used (was started?) to provide air cover for raising energy and food prices to intolerable levels while telling the public (especially Europeans but also North Americans) that it must be done to ‘save Ukrainian democracy’. We are now hearing them talk about more than just energy.

    Chapter 2 of ‘Two weeks to Flatten the Curve,’ anyone?

    #114317
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    @ Willem
    I think that it is valuable not to hate on government just because it is government, and rather to analyze structure and behavior.

    For example, in the industry of charity, of helping “the poor,” figuring out who is really needy and who is bluffing for a free lunch can be a prohibitively costly experience. The SNAP/TANF and Medicaid systems have standardized, periodic, relatively invasive procedure backed up by law and the potential for criminal proceedings for intentional fraud to determine need. Once a household is eligible for SNAP/TANF and or Medicaid many related government and NGO/charitable benefits hinge on that determination. These include (but are not limited to): Lifeline (“Obamaphone,”) free school lunch, sliding scale dental fees at county dental clinics, individual hospital programs to help the poor coping with medical bills not covered by Medicaid/Medicare, “Connect2Compete” (discounts through NGO for high speed internet for households on SNAP with at least one school age child — currently I get 100 Mb download for $10/month,) discount program where many non-profit museums/zoos offer discounted entry for limited number on specific days for individuals with SNAP card, utility discounts, and likely many more that I am unaware of.

    My views of SNAP/Medicaid are love/hate and all in between. However, the short-hand method of using SNAP/Medicaid eligibility as eligibility for other programs is an interesting feature of the current system, with its own set of pros/cons.

    #114318
    John Day
    Participant

    Hey Picasso; why do I see Dora Maar’s finger up her nose in that painting. I know it’s not.
    What did you do to my mind subliminally?

    #114319
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    I thought Spain has non-Russian supplies of gas and was talking about sending some to France, so why are they punishing their populace? Just to show solidarity?

    #114320

    What struck me about the Rogan/Zuck clip is 1/ that he did it in the first place. What’s to win? But even more 2/ how confidently he explains these highly controversial practices. Like he knows he has nothing to fear. Rogan could have pushed much harder too.

    #114321
    willem
    Participant

    @phoenixvoice: I was not really hitting on government there, but on the corporations and for-profits. I’m just saying that they are not going to leave money on the table. I suppose government could “help” a little by fine-tuning the benefits, but it gets quickly complicated, and also you can’t just have an easy one-size-fits all unless the size is big enough to fit the largest need you’re likely to encounter.

    We occasionally deal with street-corner types that have a sign out or are otherwise asking for a handout. For awhile I used to try to figure out whether they were truly in need, or were just lazy, and in some cases I can still figure this out. But I’ve learned that most of the time, it can be less than obvious. For example: A shelter gives a homeless guy a new jacket and pants because his old clothes are falling off his body; now he doesn’t look “needy” any more and people pass him by. So I’ve come to the view that one must accept the fact that help will occasionally fall into the hands of the less-than-needy, and consider that as the “friction” in the dispensing of help.

    #114322
    Noirette
    Participant

    aspnaz posted some thread back..

    Back in the 1960s real scientists, real geologists, real geochemists, real ecologists etc. began warning politicians …

    Yes. Ex. I watched a short TV MSM interview of the top permanent man at the Swiss let’s call it Ministry of Energy, aged maybe 48, not a pol, but a functionary, and the TV announcer asked him some stupid questions, like, what will Putin decide next? (argh.) The topic was the electricity shortages to come.

    All this guy could do was point out that elec. is not a primary energy, that the elec., market is very complicated (he had some words about the history of that >> the elec. market is in fact one of the prime reasons CH never joined the EU, but since, of course, the industry has morphed into mysterious co-deal-corp stuff, with a complicated web of contracts and transmissions (1).. that is me, he didn’t say this outright but hinted at it..)

    He simply stated that the prob. in CH this winter would be imports from neighbors (Germany, France, Austria) might not be forthcoming. He stressed that electricity has been wasted massively in CH so one might welcome ‘tightening up’..

    In short, he knew what he was talking about, avoided the traps set him, and did the best he could in the short time alloted. But has zero influence, power..

    1. An ex. is Iberdrola, a Spanish elec. Co. who has a tad less than 10K customers in France. They have written to their customers advising them to cancel their contracts before October, when they would be automatically renewed. Because Ib’s prices are set to be x2, x3 or more than before.

    ….Of course they don’t advise this from the goodness of their hearts, they want to get rid of customers who can’t, won’t, pay.

    Iber. advises their customers to adhere elsewhere — as France has put a price cap on ‘elec’ but that can only apply to F owned cos ..

    See also, two French Cos, CDiscount Energie and Leclerc Energie, reportedly are not accepting new clients!

    Being careful here, some of the Cos. mentioned above ‘might be’ pure middle-men operations, they buy on ‘the market’ and ‘sell’ on .. of course without any contact with any ‘real’ commodity / infrastructure / etc., the op is purely financial.

    They are quitting the market now… because profits bit the dust..

    https://www.iberdrola.com/home

    https://energie.cdiscount.com/professionnels/ — touts it sells 100% green energy!

    https://www.energies.leclerc – in F

    #114323
    Bill7
    Participant

    ‘New Normal Germany’s Geisterfahrer Geist’, by CJ Hopkins:

    “..These “emergency measures” are purportedly designed to protect the German people from a “health threat” that (a) does not exist; (b) the vast majority of other countries in Europe and the rest of the world have finally admitted does not exist; (c) never existed in the first place; and (d) not even the most fanatical Covidian Cultists can still pretend to present a plausible argument for the existence of without sounding like severely cognitively-impaired persons.

    For example, Karl Lauterbach (who is still for some reason the official Minister of Health of Germany, despite the fact that he has been lying to the public and fomenting hatred of “the Unvaccinated” like the reanimated corpse of Joseph Goebbels on a daily basis for over two years) explained why Germany is pushing ahead with its plan to coercively “vaccinate” the entire population, over and over. According to Lauterbach, the “vaccines” cause “multiply-vaccinated” persons to develop symptoms of the illness their multiple “vaccinations” were designed to keep them from being infected with more quickly than “the Unvaccinated,” so they stay home, and thus help to “limit the pandemic,” whereas “the Unvaccinated,” being “asymptomatic,” go around heedlessly infecting “the Vaccinated,” which they wouldn’t be doing if they had been “multiply-vaccinated,” as they would be home suffering the flu-like symptoms they were assured the “vaccines” would protect them from suffering but which actually caused them to suffer more quickly.. ”

    New Normal Germany’s Geisterfahrer Geist

    I’ll say the same thing I said thirty months ago: show me- don’t tell me of- the “pandemic”. Where is it? Where’s the excess mortality?

    How do others live with this level of cognitive dissonance? Nature is about the only thing that works for me, since
    most people drank the Kool-Aid, and are not amenable to reason.

    #114324
    zerosum
    Participant

    Where is it? Where’s the excess mortality?

    Chose, black or white.
    1. Everything that was done worked.
    There are still seniors, overweight, fragile, diabetic, people still walking around.
    2. Nothing that was done worked
    There are still seniors, overweight, fragile, diabetic, people still walking around.

    #114325
    WES
    Participant

    Problem:

    The only reason Canadian energy and food prices are rising is because of Trudeau’s war on Canadian energy and farmers.

    Russian sanctions have nothing to do with this. This is a “Made in Canada” problem created by Trudeau’s insane belief in the WEF’s green madness.

    Solution:

    Save on high energy and food costs by taking an extended vacation south this winter, to a sane country not practicing the WEF’s insane green madness. That is also where you will find the Davos crowd hanging out every winter.

    #114326
    Bill7
    Participant

    Red, thanks for the link to the shaving
    horse, and yes, something like that is what I need. My cobbled-up solutions
    are not working super-well at the moment. 😉

    #114327
    Bill7
    Participant

    Speaking of the weather- when I go to the NWS for my local weather, it redirects me to- without fail- stories of hellish
    weather somewhere far, far from where I live.

    #theconditioningNeverstops- and from so many angles.

    #114328
    Bill7
    Participant

    DBS, thanks for the additional info on shaving horses and such, and I sure agree
    that mass is good for stuff like this. I do have Scott Landis’s fine ‘The Workbench Book’, and need to dig it out for ideas, too.

    #114329
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    @ Bill 7 and D Benton Smith. I agree with DBS on the Foxfire books which are probably very affordable at online used booksellers. Anecdote, I had a very fortunate experience years and years ago to help build a timber framed replica of an icehouse (rough carpentry at best). The old timers showed up, surveyed the tools assembled and said power saws are okay, metal saw horses are not, leave your routers at home, bring chisels and read up on board and batten (‘there is only one place for one nail’) . We got it up the next weekend. 30′ long, 15′ wide, 12′ high. We cut ice every other year now since we’re swilling Chardonnay now days as opposed to sucking down beer.

    #114330
    aspnaz
    Participant

    However, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health insisted that regulations were made in consultation with professional scientific opinion.

    Professional sicentic opinion? Does this not just raise a red flag in everybody’s brains? They are talking about the same science that created Covid as the deformed child of coronavirus then completely fucked up the vaccine against Covid. The same science that is now completely fucking up their beloved transition to green energy? Science has not been seen for a long time, these are science whores.

    #114331
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The New York Times column called for citizens to view the Constitution as the real enemy and to push to “radically alter the basic rules of the game.”

    If you can’t win on merit, change the rules. Isn’t this how all corrupt corporates and politicians think? Isn’t this “to save America we must destroy America because we have a better idea” comcept the root of all loony left and authoritarian political movements? Isn’t this the green energy movement? The one thing that applies in all cases is that the “better idea” is actually much, much worse and, in some cases like green energy, just does not exist in more detail than bar talk. Any “new ideas” provided by the billionaires behind NYT, WaPo etc will be sure to be worse than what we have at the moment, but you notice that they do not go into the detail of what would replace the old ideas, instead they imply that they, as the only true geniuses on the planet, will sort it out when the time comes …. their solution is a mix of loony left, authoritarianism, woke, Greta, nanny (as in nurse nasty) state etc all sponsored by Bezos, Soros, Gates, Murdoch, Rothschilds etc.

    #114332
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    “Rogan could have pushed much harder too.”

    #114333
    John Day
    Participant

    I turned my comments yesterday into a blog essay, “Marx A Lot”
    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/marx-a-lot

    I’ve been reading some Marx, ​but ​not Das Kapital,. ​just ​the short and engaging ​”​Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy​”​
    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
    and the (evidence that Marx had to work as a hack for a living sometimes) ​”​Communist Manifesto​”​
    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

    ​ ​It was kind of fun reading this “easy Marx” stuff. ​ Marx and Engels got hired by the new German Communist Party to write the party platform, which had a lot of points they needed to work into it.
    This was a paid job.​
    Most of the goals of the Communist Manifesto ​(1848) ​were realized long ago, largely by the ​industrial capitalist ​model of Henry Ford​. Things as mundane as women-voting and kids going to school​​ were highly controversial in 1848.

    ​ Ten Revolutionary Measures advocated in The Communist Manifesto:
    1) Abolition of private land holdings (nobility, untaxed land)​. Application of land rents to public purposes. These have been accomplished by land taxation (rents). There is not private untaxed land in most countries (exceptions & special cases).
    2) Progressive income tax. (“Income” redefined if one is rich enough, though.)
    3) Abolition of inheritance rights. This was written in England at the end of the era of landed gentry. The dangers of concentration of productive property, land or factories, have been well understood. Inheritance taxes have been worked out by societies, but always need ongoing work.
    4) Confiscation of the property of rebels and emigrants. We have seen how well it works to confiscate the property of political dissidents, but it always happened in history, anyway, including in the US, when loyalists to the crown lost everything after the revolution. Taking the property of “emigrants” should be looked at. Globalists hold property anywhere, and have no loyalty to their country of residence. Is this a good idea? Globalism?
    5) Centralization of credit in the hands of the state by means of a National Bank, an exclusive monopoly. Ellen Brown says the same thing, and gives the Bank of North Dakota as an excellent working example. Why pay taxes twice?
    6) Centralization of means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. These were natural-monopolies at first. They are not now, but electrical generation is, and other utilities, and public roads are. Natural monopolies should not be privately held, because it’s an invitation to price gouging. It bleeds society.
    7) State ownership of factories and farms. We saw how that worked out. “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”. Bad products and lies until it collapsed. There needs to be individual initiative and responsibility for failures and successes at every level.
    8) Equal liability of all to labor. Everybody has to work. This is an ongoing societal negotiation worldwide. It will change as the means available to any society changes.
    ​9) Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, abolition of distinctions between town and country, by more equitable distribution of people across the land. The mechanization of farming, and specialization of all economic tasks did it’s own thing. People can now do intellectual work remotely, and people can drive anywhere with gasoline. The massive explosion in human population was not foreseen by Marx & Engels.
    10) Free Education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor. Combination of education with industrial production (trade schools).
    *) Status of women as “not mere instruments of production”; women and children as people-not-property, were decried at the time, but are long understood as obvious now. Marx did discuss that further mechanization in any field made the work increasingly suitable to women (and children) not just to men.

    ​ ​The ​social injustice decried by​ “The Communists” was that workers got nothing and died when they didn’t have work. ​There was a new two-tiered system of owners and exploited laborers.​
    That got fixed, by ​Henry ​Ford, then the​ Global-Financial-Capitalists broke it again.​. ​
    Marx died in 1888. In his later years he saw capitalism adapting to society, saw the potential for evolutionary accommodation and seems to have doubted the need for a proletarian revolution.
    The simplistic fix of the state holding the factories for the workers after a proletarian revolution got tried out later. We now know the problems it had, like power corrupting.
    A lot has happened with capital-control-systems, like stock-markets, since 1848.​ Workers holding a significant fraction of the stock in the company that employs them could prevent the gutting of companies by “activist shareholders”.

    “Capitalism” was already careening around the globe seeking an advantage in 1850. The most salient feature of capitalism is that it is always seeking the new, unexploited advantage, to make competitors obsolete. It can only be “stable” in monopoly, which is a condition of sickness for the economy, because the monopoly extracts from the political-economy, rather than supporting it. Healthy Capitalism of the mid 19th century was an aggressively hunting and devouring beast, and the most productive economic engine ever, powered by steam.

    ​ ​The other ​brief introduction by Marx ​is​ better​ philosophically​, and should be read first. He postulates that the means of production determine the thoughts and opinions and philosophy of societies, and that “problems” are not even “seen” in history until their “solution” is already possible, or nearly possible. The “Bourgeois” Marx speaks of are industrialists, who concentrated “Capital”, the means of production, as factory complexes.
    It’s funny to see that with the distribution of “ownership of the means of production” through stock-holdings, his existential problem of the wage-workers is solvable, and that solution is already old hat 401k. Granted, it’s just a sip… The government owning the factories was the only simplistic solution those guys could come up with. We saw how it worked out. Totalitarianism-in-flavors.

    ​ ​We are still faced with all of the practical problems of the transition of an age-of-productive-means. We still exist in the Bourgeois-Age, according to Marx, and we might call it “Industrial Society” instead. Marx didn’t adequately comprehend the coal-as-means-of-production thing so much as we do now. It’s ok. He comprehended a lot. He was basically a historian and philosopher who didn’t go far in law, and got backed-into Political Economy. He did note the necessity of his feeding himself impinging heavily on his study and writing. He complained of the prostituting of people by bourgeois economy.

    ​ Analysis of political-economy is not ​primarily ​about words, ​though political speech can be.​ Marx was really good with words. He cheated ​repeatedly in the Communist Manifesto, ​opening with broadly agreeable philosophic and social arguments, then skillfully inserting unsupported statements at the end of paragraphs​. He knew he was doing it, because he was a smart guy​. His dad was a lawyer, Marx himself studied law, and it was lawyerly use of language​ to bend facts towards a desired conclusion​.

    ​ ​We can lay blame, but ​at this moment in history ​we need to figure out ​how to modify our current industrial economy with the least damage to all of us​.​or we ​won’t have done anything of much ​practical ​use.
    ​Whatever name we call our revised industrial economy, it needs to harness the means of production, like farming, manufacturing, transportation, energy and communication, to the support of a healthy human society.
    We can see that the amount of debt that exists can’t be paid, or even serviced. The debt-money printed since 2008 has mainly been to service debts. There are derivatives that we can’t see, which multiply the problem we can see.
    The BRICS countries are now trading outside the $US regime. As this alternative trade regime broadens, it will be an invitation to default on $US debts when the system gets up to speed. When the $US global financial regime collapses, there will be plans like central-bank-digital-currency which we will need to avoid. Cash can be devalued by inflation, but a CBDC “wallet” can go “POOF!” if you say “ivermectin-treats-COVID”, or “Russia is winning”.

    To my analysis, government banking, like postal-banking, eliminates unearned income by the financial class, a form of “rent”, and puts it in the public account, paying less total rent, and getting public services. Ellen Brown lays out the Public Bank Solution here: https://ellenbrown.com/books/the-public-bank-solution/

    Human society is an ecosystem. It was fed by the sun, and could support more people under farming than under hunter-gatherer constructs. The big power increase to western civilization came with industrialization, particularly the use of steam power, and with globalization of trade and markets through shipping and railroads. Chemistry discovered how to make chemical fertilizers, and fossil fuels powered mechanical tractors, harvesters nd transport, as well as refrigeration. Suddenly, the world could support ten times the human population. It looks like half the oil has been pumped. Exponential economic growth appears (to me) to have peaked and is starting to “de-grow”, as they say.
    Marx saw the destruction of complex social orders by industry, and concluded that the workers needed to take over the factories, because they were starving and were denied meaningful lives. He already saw the start of this improving before he died. It was a transient phenomenon. it was much better by the time I was born. Industrial economy became a complex human ecosystem.
    Industrial society will now need to re-form as a new complex ecosystem as available oil and industrial output decline.
    Exponential real-growth is an exhausted paradigm. Currently, there are a lot of “compliance” jobs, but we did fine without them 50 years ago, and many countries still do.

    We have to find useful applications of our talents to meet our personal and family needs, and to support a healthy human society. This will be dynamic, with a lot of downs before we reach a bottom where new systems are possible. We have to do this, make things work. It won’t be done for us, because the vested-interests just see getting rid of most of us as the near-term fix to keep their economic system working for them.

    I cleared out and tidied up 5 vegetable beds in Austin yesterday and today, and planted 3 of them for fall/winter. I got some sunburn. It was more work than it seemed like it would be. I never learn.

    #114334
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    #114335
    aspnaz
    Participant

    phoenixvoice said

    The SNAP/TANF and Medicaid systems have standardized, periodic, relatively invasive procedure backed up by law and the potential for criminal proceedings for intentional fraud to determine need.

    The only reason people need government assistance with medical care is because the government has deliberately made medical care a “protected” profession, one in which the government controlled medical practitioners have to belong to the government controlled medical union in order to be able to practice. In this way medicine is controlled from the center, as we have seen with Covid. This is even more extreme in Europe where the union also negotiates salaries on behalf of the doctors, the result being extremely expensive healthcare.

    In China this theft mechanism does not exist, medical doctors are licensed but GPs charge their own prices, hospital doctors negotiate their own wages and they all have to compete with Chinese medicine which is licensed separately. As a result they make an average living but they are no richer than the average professional worker and the GOs are definitely not as rich as other self-employed business men. What they do have is status in the community and that is worth a lot in the Chinese world.

    Where the Chinese still lose out is the cost of drugs: the US system of ripping off patients for drugs is often seen in China, simply because no alternative is available, but that excess money is going to the west, the Chinese system is otherwise very competitive.

    #114336
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Noirette said

    aspnaz posted some thread back..

    Back in the 1960s real scientists, real geologists, real geochemists, real ecologists etc. began warning politicians …

    A case of misattribution: Those are not my words, maybe you are thinking of someone else?

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