Debt Rattle August 31 2022
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I saw that the subject of the deflated one came up in yesterday’s discussion. One thing that I thought seriously militated against deflationista being some kind of Deep State pysop, was their apparent driving need to be the biggest self-defeating neurotic nuisance they could possibly be. That seemed very human to me, and not at all conducive to a government psyop.
The IAEA nuclear-inspection team was spotted in Kiev yesterday.
https://tass.com/politics/1499841@Mr Roboto: It seemed to me that “deflationista” was not aligning with broad government interests, of any government, but was a one-trick-pony for COVID-vaccines and against repurposed antivirals.
I saw a story a few days ago that the WHO funded something like 120,000 jobs like that, fighting disinformation. I can’t find that story right now, but it looks like part of “The Mercury Project” or a parallel endeavor. https://www.globalresearch.ca/rockefeller-foundation-wants-behavioral-scientists-come-up-more-convincing-covid-vaxx-narratives/5791795
My impression prior to that story coming up was that “he” appeared to work for Pfizer.
Recall that there are usually at least 10 AI chatbots per huan minder, so things keep looking different. The human responses seemed to come from different personalities at different times, if you may recall.I like Charles Hugh Smith’s designation of non-food being passed off as food: ‘fud’
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug22/cannibalizing8-22.html
‘The system–whatever you choose to call it–is busy cannibalizing itself to the point of collapse. Neoliberal State Capitalism is a pretty accurate description of every major global player’s system because all seek to benefit from the expansion of markets (Neoliberal Capitalism) and financial instruments (Finance Capitalism), and control these markets and instruments to benefit the few in power at the expense of everyone else (state Capitalism).
Turning transparent, open markets into controlled, exploitable “markets” is the ultimate cannibalization of equally-open-to-all market capitalism which is the foundation of the productive distribution of opportunity.
Turning small-scale, localized finance into centralized / globalized hyper-financialization cannibalizes finance to benefit the few with unlimited access to credit, leverage and monopoly. First you borrow vast sums at low rates of interest that are inaccessible to mere mortals, take a corporation private, indebt the company and use the funds to accumulate mountains of derivatives that leverage the debt 10-fold or even 100-fold, then take the corporation public again, goose the stock and then cash out all the leveraged gains.
The newly public company has been stripmined of core assets and burdened by debt. The financiers cannibalized the corporation to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else with a stake in the business and the future viability of the enterprise.
This cannibalization is not restricted to the financial realm. True virtue–honesty, trustworthiness, the willingness to accept self-sacrifice for the greater good–has been reduced to ashes behind a glossy, fraudulent facade of virtue-signaling, a facade that masks the cannibalization of the system to benefit the self-congratulatory, hypocritical few at the expense of the many.
Health has also been cannibalized to maximize the private gains of the few at the expense of the many. If we define food as natural products high in nutritional content then very little of what’s being presented as “food” actually qualifies as food because its nutritional content is somewhere between abysmally low and non-existent.
Highly processed products are simulacra of food that hijack our hardwired pleasure responses to heavy concentrations of salt, sweets, fat and spice and crunchy/chewy mouthfeel. The nutritional content of these products is so low and the fat-salt-sugar content so high that they are severely damaging to health on multiple levels.
The unwary consumer who stuffs themselves with these simulacra of food (shall we call it “fud”?) feels full even as their body and brain are starved for real nutritional content and real-food fiber.
Everywhere we look, we find a massive cannibalization effort behind every phony facade, a cannibalization that hollows out the functionality and adaptability of core systems to benefit the few at the expense of the many.’
10YT 3.17% Market meltdown coming fast.
House prices falling faster.
Pandemonium. Or mayhem. Choose your word.
At the end of page-1 of comments are good, thoughtful expositions by Willem and AFKTT.
Willem wonders how to get the human numbers down to carrying-capacity when everybody opts-in, not out. That is certainly one of the core issues and I do not have the answer, per se, except to say that I think this is a “Selection Event” beginning, and looks like it will last hundreds of years.
In general, more versatile and adaptable members of a population are favored in selection events, especially those that persist and change over a long period of time, as will the decline of fossil-fuels and all the life support they enable.
AFKTT is being-that-change to the best of his ability, after having studied thee problem long and hard, and tried a couple of other scenarios first. Taranaki area, which he just left, is nice. We bike (loaded/unsupported) toured the circumference of the South Island of New Zealand in January-February 2006, and I interviewed for a job, which I was offered, but could not accept when I saw the total picture.
My wife and I had planned to travel the world for a year with the kids, before we had any kids, and we raised them to do it. We sold the house and cars and spent the money doing it for 9 months. GWB was doing the GWOT then, and my kids were teenagers. I was very worried and rightfully protective of them.
The journey itself seems to have been the destination. We solved problems, adapted, biked, backpacked and got malaria (me) and appendicitis (elder son), and lots of other things, which we dealt with. they left as young teenagers and returned as young adults, having “home-schooled” for 9 months. they slid back into school after spring break and nothing bad happened.
All that I really have to show, after moving to Hawaii as the safe-place 6 years later, is some vegetable gardens in Texas and a house I am finishing-out. No job since I got fired for principle. All 4 “kids” are employed in their fields (MD, engineer, engineer, mathematician). They solve problems.
I don’t think most of the current bunch of owners will be around in a couple of hundred years, nor will I.
I have some lovely memories of NZ in the 80s, one being a little place with a tucked-in tiny bay called Russell. If I’m remembering correctly, one had to take a brief ferry ride to get out there, and it was just perfect there except
for one thing.. (oh, and the sand flies). I swam out to a boat anchored in the little bay, though, and the guy
on the H-28 was.. from Oxnard, just down the road from me. Too funny!I never made it to the South Island, because I met the LOML in Auckland, where were both staying ath the
Georgia Hostel (cool spot); she on her last night there, before heading home to Sweden. I followed her there six months later..AFKTT said: “The unwary consumer who stuffs themselves with these simulacra of food (shall we call it “fud”?) feels full even as their body and brain are starved for real nutritional content and real-food fiber.
Everywhere we look, we find a massive cannibalization effort behind every phony facade, a cannibalization that hollows out the functionality and adaptability of core systems to benefit the few at the expense of the many.”I call that stuff “industrial food-like products, and I think people do not feel full after eating what my grandmother called “empty calories”, so they keep eating and drink sodas with them.
Latest bit from Alistair Crooke:
America’s Wars Take on a Divisive Edge
Before Putin relinquishes the pressure on EU nations, he is still likely to insist that American influence from Western Europe is withdrawn.[…]
… Putin will only stop when the Europeans have experienced enough pain to chart a different strategic course – and to break with the U.S. and NATO.
… please forgive me if above was posted by someone earlier
F.S.
All signs from our rulling classes and our ecosystems seem to be pointing toward a future where there are far fewer people. That’s the extent of my predictions. 😉
@John Day: Two things I found odd about that commenter, whoever it actually was: 1) They felt the need to relate to us their whole backstory during their initial appearance. I have never seen anybody here feel the need to do such a thing. 2) The way they seamlessly switched gears from “concerned commenter” to “braying, hectoring troll” and their apparent monomania after that when they didn’t get the reception here for which they apparently hoped. (After that gear-switch, I actually found their personality pretty consistent and wondered how it affected their relationship with their colleagues at their job, assuming that my supposition is correct and that was a real person who just so happened to have a huge chip on their shoulder about “anti-vaxxers”.)
The Catamites control the school boards too.
Degenerates rule the Empire of Lies
Secretly Recorded In Texas School: This Is What Leftist Teachers Already Indoctrinating
In Texas, a pro-pedophile English teacher instructs students to “not judge people for wanting to have sex with a 5-year-old” and tells high school students to call them “persons who are attracted to minors” instead of pedophiles
Dr D said
Execute? A harmless, homeless guy like me? A helpless, ignorant ward of the state? Why no: I’ll get a medal for being the kind of citizen they like best! Completely unproductive, completely drawing on the wealth of the state. ‘Cause golly brother, times are hard, ya know? That beach ain’t gonna surf itself!
Not homeless, but otherwise I am on this track, unemployed and on the beach every day, my biggest concerns are home-brew supplies and windsurfing equipment. That is when home, I am on a six month holiday in Taiwan at the moment.
As for insects, I was in the mountains glamping here in Taiwan last week and there were tons of insects, loads of butterfllies (trees full of butterflies), beetles (one we saw was 2 inches with big claws at the front and decided to drop out of a tree and onto my wife’s lap), moths (4 inch wingspan that look like big dead leaves in the morning), mosquitos (the big but very slow type that the Buddists catch and release outside) and of course cicadas, making the place very noisy.
On our home island in Hong Kong we get the frogs every night, the cicadas, the birds in the morning and mosquitos. The snakes love the frogs and our big fat geckos take care of most indoor insect food. The frogs are worst in the rainy season when there are so many of them that at night you have to walk with a flashlight to avoid stepping on them or the snakes. Just the frogs must be eating a fair load of insects.
No wonder those beds are endangered , they can’t fly and they play in the middle of the road!
Looks like the media has gone on vacation and just left the system on replay.Afewknowthetruth said:
Now we have a huge population of zombies, within which lives a tiny minority who are really alive.
Indeed, technology has given us choices, the most popular of which is to be lazy. Unfortunately the people who would rather stay at home and play video games with their remote friends are missing out on the real world. One advantage is that those of us who like nature don’t have to put up with them clogging our beaches or hiking trails.
You can see why the US and UK want to divide and reconquer Myanmar. Recolonisation.
I suspected a lot many years ago, and now it is all explained. The western narratives are all completely fake.
Well, no surprise there!
Afewknowthetruth said
What a fine thing that turned out to be! because if there had been 16 of each, China’s current food and pollution and social predicaments would be far worse.
The Chinese still kidnap women from overseas, Vietnam was popular as they have lighter skin, and traffic them to China as wives. This is/was a huge industry which is socially acceptable – everybody knows that the man is married to a bought bride – but the Chinese prefer not to talk about. The one-child policy did a lot of damage both inside and outside of China even though I am sure the intentions were good.
I think that more Tech (as presently constituted) give us the appearance of having more choices, while actually narrowing the possible options. Rather like a V-shaped cattle chute, that the cattle are not aware of until it’s much too late.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told ministers on Tuesday, warning of a “tough” winter ahead.
The people of Greece can see that things are not bad enough for the PM to start telling the truth, he is still lying by blaming the western sanctions on Putin, maybe this is why people think the energy crisis is not going to be so bad.
New opinion
Trump declassified documents and took copies of files for himself and originals went to archives.Flying fox young bats ride clinging to their mother’s breast with their mouth, even though some young are two-thirds the weight of their mothers & quite capable of flying on their own.
Which explains the look on the mother’s face: impending doom.
When a newborn first opens it’s eyes it is immediately accosted by the most insistent and important question it will ever encounter. The question is so basic and fundamental that there are no suitable words to describe it. We’ll have to settle for an inadequate explanation of it being pure interrogatory, experienced as the imperative desire to know, and expressed in the word “what?” .
What is this place? What is that stuff going on all around me? What makes it happen? What am I?
Eventually they get it more or less sorted out, with many wrong turns and sometimes-but-not-always-help from their friends, who are often as ignorant as newborns themselves (or even more so, for those unfortunates who have lost all touch with reality.)
What sets me apart from most others, and assures my status as weirdo, is that I never stopped asking that primordial question, and also never stopped questioning the answers (question all answers because answers are quite often not quite true, and one must settle that “True/False” thing one way or the other before moving on. Danger Danger, Will Robinson!
The inability to make that distinction (between good/bad or truth/lie, righteous/evil, etc.) is what makes computers, bureaucracies and Mass Formations (BELIEF systems) so dangerous and predictably fatal. It’s because such constructed devices have no resident awareness with which to determine what is truly good (truth) or truly bad (falsity). So, when these artificial aids produce a REALLY bad answer (for example: intentional grand scale mass killing) there is no awareness within that artificial aid to know that deliberately destroying the world to “save the world” is truly horrible and is a really REALLY bad idea. The handwriting is on the wall, alright, but there is no one home to turn the lights on and read it.
Most people haven’t the foggiest notion,of how the world around them actually works. It’s too complicated or unpleasant or overwhelmingly vast to deal with so they just farm out the job to experts, specialists, authorities and rulers. Most people trust their systems. Trusting systems is a really bad idea when totally ignorant of what the system is actually doing (or even that there is a system there!) Systems are machines (in one way or another) and machines don’t think, know, understand, appreciate or like anything. At all.
A lot of people are going to have to change their minds (about what is really and truly going on all around them) before all that stuff degenerates into bullets, vaccines, energy blackouts, scarcity, starvation, or exposure to a raging pandemic of terminal bullshititis. To accomplish that gargantuan task, unfortunately, these good people are pretty much stuck with depending upon the very same civilization that is trying to eliminate them by all means possible. That can be difficult because that civilization is purposefully DESIGNED and built by both written law and deep culture, to preserve itself by making people unable to change it.
When viewed from that perspective the world becomes far more simple and far more complex, at the same time, in a single stroke. More simple because all of the behaviors can be rather easily understood and beneficially managed (beneficial in the sense of being truly beneficial to everyone) by application of a small handful of essential fundamental truths, of which adherence to truth is one of the most important, and loving others as oneself is another. You could include “strive for and attain greater awareness” as well, and a few others like free speech, personal sovereignty, avoidance of hate and so on.
The list is short, and you may have noticed that the items on the list are interrelated. So interrelated in fact that they are feedback loops. Increasing or decreasing any of them make the remaining ones go up or down in corresponding fashion.
They are also a fair to middling description of the human soul, but that’s a discussion better reserved for some other day. The point to be made on this day is that these vitally necessary qualities are qualities possessed only by living creatures. Qualities which no device or system or machine of any kind could possibly possess because THINGS are just things, no matter how cleverly put together.
Nevertheless we humans keep trying to farm out the heavy lifting. We keep trying to build tools, devices, policies, laws, bureaucracies, governments, and even AI computer systems to do those hard tasks for us . . . . . . which of course they cannot do. No material device and no rules-based-government will ever be able to know if its calculated conclusions are good or if they are bad. Decisions about good and bad, noble or wicked, sensible or lunatic, cannot be relegated to machines. It is literally and emphatically impossible. Insisting upon doing so is 100% fatal. No exceptions.
The principles are beyond simple. The are First Principles axiomatic. But the way they play out in the real world is complicated beyond meaningful description.
The complexity gets boosted through the stratosphere by the fact that we’re not alone. 8 billion other humans are also intrinsically involved in applying (or violating) those simple principles all day every day. . . . interactively with each other . . . . and every single one of them has a different position and trajectory in that regard, which effects the position and trajectory of others.
That might not be truly infinite in its magnitude, mathematically speaking, but it’s close enough for all practical purposes.
This afternoon we lost power to the island cottage. A short time later we got hit with a brief thunderstorm with heavy rains and high winds. I am guessing the storm knocked out power somewhere to the west of us before the storm hit us. The winds flipped over our 35 foot catwalk to the floating dock and knocked down a number of trees. I have now righted the catwalk using nylon straps and a chain hoist.
We are on Elon Musk’s Starlink internet. It went down with the lost of power but I have rigged up an inverter to the lawn tractor’s battery to restore internet. The inverters fan is coming on fairly frequently so Elon Musk seems to use a fair amount of power. So how long this battery lasts we will find out soon enough!
Well the first battery didn’t last 15 minutes before the inverter beeped in agony before shutting down due to low battery voltage of 11.6 vdc! So now a second battery is giving it’s best effort.
@mr. Roboto: I remember the “deflationista” life-story about the mom-with-cancer or something, but that was already fairly well into the “deflationista” saga, and was at least the second human-voice from “deflationista”. that was the attempt to use sympathy and guilt.
I even remember (sort of) the original Deflationista from around 2009, who was a decent TAE commenter.@WES:China might shoot-down Starlink…
Good luck, Amigo!I was reading that China is going to put a solar station in orbit and then beam the power back to earth. Boy that will really upset the global warming folks as this will add more energy to the earth than we normally get!
However this idea isn’t new. NASA thought about it too a while ago. If you think about it, this idea is crazy as hell! We can not even breakeven on solar panels back here on earth, never mind use a shit load of fossil fuel to send a solar panel into orbit! A real bat crazy idea! And in China of all places!
Well, I guess this was entirely predictable. The Covidian Cult is blaming the growing vaccine body-count on some supposed mysterious form of Long Covid. :-/
Actress Charlbi Dean, 32, has died of a "sudden disease".
This is happening a lot lately. Mysterious rapid diseases are killing people on the spot.
I think we have to start talking seriously about this.
— Xabier Ostale (@xabitron1) August 30, 2022
D Benton Smith
Moving beyond the superficial ‘mass murder is evil’ narrative we can see that when you have a massive population overshoot of the order of 7 billion, and an inadequate food supply and a planet in meltdown, it makes perfect sense to get rid of as many people as possible now because that will reduce the amount of suffering in the future.
I am not advocating mass murder, but I can see the ‘madness in the method’, and ‘method in the madness’ of the scumbags at the top of the power pyramid.
And what better way to kill off the masses than to mislead them into accepting lethal jabs as a component of health protection? Misleading them into attacking their potential saviours is also a useful strategy is you are a deceitful scumbag.
John Day
Somewhere in the threat you mentioned higher sensitivity of skin to sunlight.
having gown up in England, where the sun doesn’t shine a lot, I did not get the high doses of UV that people who grew up in NZ and Oz got. And one of the first purchases upon arrival in NZ was a pair of sun glasses because the sun was so bright compared to what i had been used to.
Being aware of the very high energy of UV photons, I have always covered up and worn large hats etc. But I too have high sensitivity to sun, partly because one’s skin gets thinner as one ages.
It was possible to tackle ODS -ozone depleting substances because they were not a fundamental component of the global industrial economy, and could, to some extent, be replaced or phased out.
Fossil fuels, on the other hand can never be phased out because they are a fundamental component of the global industrial economy, and are what support everything else. .
t naturally follows that we will only ever be subjected to bullshit and lies and fake ‘solutions’ from the power thatb be when it comes to energy, resources, and the environment.
By the way, on the first day of spring it is 22oC in the shade (a south-facing wall that gets no sun at this time of the year).
aspnaz
The most magnificent butterflies I have ever seen were in the butterfly house of the Taipei zoological gardens, but I saw many almost as stunning specimens when climbing the hillsides out of the cities.
If I had to live in Taiwan again, I think I would choose Haulien.
Interestingly, that was where to monument to those who died in the Japanese invasion of 1895 is.
They came for the timber, of course, and built a narrow-gauge railway halfway up the mountain from Chaiyi.
Many years ago I saw a magnificent film about the last stand of the truly native people of the highlands (Haga). They had literally been enslaved by the Japanese to destroy the timberlands of their homeland.
After the Japanese failed to quell rebellion with light arms they brought in aircraft and machine guns.
Also, kind of interesting, is the very plausible hypothesis that the Maori of NZ originated in Taiwan -formerly Formosa -beautiful island.
Since the Americans and their proxies took over in the late 1940s it has been well and truly FUBARed, and there’s not a lot of anything left. But a moiling and toiling mass of consumers has been created. 🙁
Dr. John Day – That link gives me a 403 FORBIDDEN message…
———————————I’m not surprised. I have the same problem with ISP supplying service to my home. Today, however, I was in Banff, Alberta, and I used unsecured, public access – Parks Canada provided service – and, well, the address worked! So I read the story and posted it from there. But now, back at home, … same message as yours comes up. Strange times, …
Best,
F.S.
WES
Techno-fantasists get paid a lot of money to write drivel. It’s all about keeping the ignorant masses believing the system has answers to the many burgeoning predicaments, when in fact there are none.
From memory, the Bush-era propaganda machine told the ignorant masses that they would be driving hydrogen cars by 2015 and that the first manned US mission to Mars would be launched in 2015.
Europeans were told to buy diesel vehicles that would run on ever-increasing volumes of biofuels, and that pigs would grow wings and learn fly…
Jonathan Swift knew it was all bullshit when he wrote ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ [in 1723 from memory].
Since then the bullshit machine has become a lot more sophisticated. But it still churns out the same kind of bullshit.
I recall being in correspondence with an American who, in 2005, was convinced the US would attack Iran ‘within three weeks’ because an aircraft carrier group was headed for the Straits of Hormuz.
I told him at the time I thought it was all about keeping the American people believing they still had a world-class military establishment.
@ Dr. John Day – well, I tried to get Alistair Crooke article on my phone, … and it, sort of worked. I managed to copy most of the text. Here it is:
It is August – Ukrainian Independence Day, and the anniversary, too, of Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Kabul. Washington is only too aware that these painful images (Afghans clinging to the undercarriage of Hercules planes) are about to be replayed, in the lead-up to the November elections.
Because events in Ukraine are unfolding badly for Washington – as the slow, calibrated steamroller of Russian artillery fire shreds the Ukrainian army. Ukraine has been notably unable to reinforce besieged positions, or to counterattack and to hold re-conquered territory. Ukraine has used HIMARS, artillery and drones to hit some Russian ammunition depots, but these, so far, are isolated incidents, and are more media ‘plays’, than constituting any shift in the strategic balance of the war.
So, let’s change the ‘narrative’: Over the last week, the Washington Post has been busy curating a new narrative. In gist, the shift is quite simple: U.S. intelligence, in the past, may have got things disastrously wrong, but they ‘nailed’ it this time. They warned of Putin’s plan to invade. They had it down to the Russian militaries’ detailed plans.
First Shift: Team Biden warned Zelensky multiple times, but the man stubbornly refused to listen. As a result, when the invasion blindsided Zelensky, the Ukrainians as a whole were hopelessly unprepared. Message: ‘It’s Zelensky to blame’.
Let’s not go into the egregious omission in this narrative of eight years of NATO preparation for a mega attack on Donbas that was bound to draw a Russian riposte. No need for a crystal ball to figure out ‘that’. Russian military structures had been sitting some 70 kms from the Ukrainian border for months.
Shift Two: Ukraine’s army is ‘turning the corner’, thanks to western weapons. Really? Message: No repeat of the Kabul debacle; of a collapse in Kiev can be tolerated until after the Midterms. Hence, repeat after me: ‘Ukraine is turning the corner’; hold fast, stay the course.
Shift Three (from a Financial Times editorial): Russia’s economy has proved more resilient than expected, but economic sanctions ‘were never likely to collapse its economy’. Actually, U.S. officials, U.S. and UK intelligence predicted precisely that a Russian financial and institutional collapse, following sanctions, would trigger economic and political turmoil in Moscow of such magnitude that Putin’s grip might be levered off his hold on power, and that a Moscow riven by political and financial crisis would be unable effectively to pursue a war in Donbas – thus Kiev would prevail.
This was ‘the line’ which persuaded the European political class to bet all on sanctions. French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, declared “an-all out economic and financial war” against Russia, so as to trigger its collapse.
Shift Four (the FT again): The Europeans did not prepare sufficiently for the consequent energy price rises. They must therefore persevere more in shrinking Russia’s revenue, ‘tweaking further’ the coming oil embargo. Message: The EU must have misunderstood. Sanctions were ‘never likely’ to crash the Russian economy. They too did not prepare people for long term energy price rises; their fault.
Whilst this change of narrative might be understandable from the perspective of the U.S. interest, it comes as a ‘cold shower’ for Europe.
Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, writes in the FT:
In Europe, governments want to alleviate the dire pressures on households’ … [whilst letting] fear about the coming winter, drive down demand. Fiscally, this means state funding to reduce rising energy bills … What is not available anywhere, is a quick means for increasing the physical supply of energy [emphasis added].
This crisis is not an inadvertent consequence of the pandemic or Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. It has much deeper roots in two structural problems. First, unpalatable as this reality is for climate and ecological reasons, world economic growth still requires fossil fuel production. Without more investment and exploration, there is unlikely to be sufficient supply in the medium term to meet likely demand. The present gas crisis has its origins in the Chinese-driven surge in gas consumption during 2021. Demand grew so rapidly that it was only available for European and Asian purchase at very high prices.
Meanwhile, respite from rising oil prices this year has only materialised when the economic data from China is unpropitious. In the International Energy Agency’s judgment, it is quite possible that global oil production will be inadequate to meet demand as soon as next year. For much of the 2010s, the world economy got by on the shale oil boom … But American shale cannot expand at the same rate again: Overall U.S. output is still more than 1mn barrels per day below what it was in 2019. Even in the Permian, daily production per well is declining. More offshore drilling, of the kind opened up in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska by the Inflation Reduction Act, will require higher prices, or investors willing to pour in capital regardless of the prospects for profit. The best geological prospects for a game changer akin to what happened in the 2010s lie with the huge Bazhenov shale oil formation in Siberia. But western sanctions mean that the prospect of western oil majors helping Russia technologically is a geopolitical dead end. Second, little can be done that would immediately accelerate the transition from fossil fuels … Running electricity grids on solar and wind base loads will require technological breakthroughs on storage. It is impossible to plan with any confidence what progress will have materialised in 10 years – let alone next year.
The geo-strategic message from this is as plain as a Pikestaff: It is a blunt warning that EU interests do not comport with those of a U.S. determined to get through the next months until the Midterms – with toughened sanctions imposed on Russia by Europe (the ‘tech sanctions ultimately will take their toll on the Russian economy’) – and with Europe too, continuing to ‘stand fast’ with its military and financial support for Kiev.
As Professor Thomson crisply remarks, “a grasp of geopolitical realities is also essential … Western governments must either invite economic misery on a scale that would test the fabric of democratic politics in any country – or face the fact that energy supply constrains the means by which Ukraine can be defended”. In other words, it’s either save the European political class’ skin through reverting to cheap Russian gas, or stay aligned with Washington and subject your electorates to misery – and its leaders to a political reckoning that is unfolding already.
This puts Russia in a position to play its ‘big cards’: So, just as the U.S. played its military backed, dollar-dominance to the full in the years following the implosion of the Soviet Union, to corral much of the world into its rules-based sphere:, today Russia and China are offering the Global South, Africa and Asia a release from these western ‘Rules’. They are encouraging the ‘Rest-of-World’ now to assert its autonomy and independence via the BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Community.
Russia, in partnership with China, is building widespread political relationships across Asia, Africa and the global South , based on its dominant role as supplier of fossil-fuel and much of the world’s food and raw materials. To further increase Russia’s influence over energy sources upon which the Western belligerents depend, Russia is stitching together a gas ‘OPEC’ with Iran and Qatar, and has also made welcoming overtures to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to join together in taking greater control of all key energy commodities.
Further, these big producers are joining with big energy consumers to wrest precious metal and commodity markets out of the hands of London and America – with a view to ending western manipulation of commodity prices, through derivative paper markets.
The argument advanced by Russian officials to other states is both hugely appealing and simple: The West has turned its back on fossil fuels and is planning to phase them out entirely – in a decade or so. The message is that you do not have to join with this masochistic ‘sacrifice politics’. You can have oil and natural gas – and at a discount to what Europe has to pay, helping the competitive advantage of your industries.
The “Golden Billion” have enjoyed the benefits of modernity, and now they want you to forego it all, and to expose your electorates to the extreme hardship of a radical Green Agenda. Arguably however, the non-aligned world requires at least the basics of modernity. The full rigours of western Green ideology however, cannot simply be mandated for the rest of the word – against its wishes.
This compelling argument represents the pathway for Russia and China to switch much of the globe to their camp.
Some states, too – whilst sympathetic to the need to attend to climate change – will see lurking within the ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) régime the clear makings of a new western financialised colonialism – with finance and credit rationed to only those in full conformity with the western-managed Green Project. In short, they suspect a new boondogle, enriching mainly western financial interests.
Russia is saying simply, ‘It needn’t be like this’. Yes, the climate must be a consideration, but fossil fuels are experiencing an acute lack of investment, partly for Green ideological reasons, rather than that such resources are running out, per se. And, unpalatable though it be for some, the fact is that world economic growth still requires fossil fuel production. Without more investment and exploration, there is unlikely to be sufficient supply in the medium term to meet likely demand. What is not available anywhere, is a quick means for increasing the supply of alternative physical energy.
Where are we now? Russia has a big offensive underway in Ukraine. And Europe may hope it can just slink away from the its Ukraine imbroglio almost unnoticed, without appearing openly to break with Biden, as Kiev incrementally implodes. You see it already. How much headline Ukraine news in Europe? How much network news? ‘Europe can just stay quiet, and back away from the débacle’, it is suggested.
But here is the rub: Before Putin relinquishes the pressure on EU nations, he is still likely to insist that American influence from Western Europe is withdrawn, or at the least that Europe begins to act fully autonomously in its own interest.
There is little doubt this was on Putin’s mind when he launched the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. He must have anticipated NATO’s reaction in imposing its Russia sanctions – from which the latter (very unexpectedly for the West), has profited greatly. It is the EU which has been badly crushed, with a squeeze that Putin can intensify at will.
The drama is still playing out. Putin needs to keep up some pressure on Ukraine to keep the squeeze going. He likely, is not ready to compromise. Winter in the EU will be tougher still, with energy and food shortages likely to lead to social turmoil. Putin will only stop when the Europeans have experienced enough pain to chart a different strategic course – and to break with the U.S. and NATO.
Also by this author
Alastair CROOKE
Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.Descent Into Madness
A Birth of Tragedy
The Masque of Pandora
Our ‘Rhythmically Dancing’ Physical Real Economy
llusions of Superiority. What’s Next?
F.S.
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