Carbon waste life form
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V. Arnold said above:
“Apparently Yulia Skripal is no longer in critical condition;”..
I was thinking about his the other day, This is what i was wondering would happen: If the Skripals are alive and not ill, but incarcerated, hiding or under sedation, then the Uk would have the most flexibility about if and when to make them disappear or not, maybe depending on whether they co operate with the false flag, and also depending upon the latest narrative they want to support.
What would the Russians do?
I expect the Russians know approximately what is going on behind the scenes.
If the Skripals, as Russian citizens, are at risk of disappearance or harm, the Russians have probably made it VERY clear via a back channel that they are not to be harmed , hence reducing UK options, and allowing the news of Yulia Skripal’s recovery into the news, as they can no longer kill or hide her with impunity.
The public story is ridiculous, as was the story of Russian government poisoning of Mr. Litvinenko with very traceable polonium a few years ago. No country wishing to be taken seriously internationally would do that either. So, an obvious false flag.
First time I’ve commented here in a long while:
I’m the the UK. These past few years I have had to concentrate really hard to have a grip on finance, geopolitics and globalisation. My current understanding of the situation let me to vote for Brexit, chiefly in order to try to sever one on the controlling links of the EU from the US which affect NATO and therefore the hegemonic wars such as in Ukraine, Syria. As someone who originates from the left / green, my current stance on BREXIT would have been almost unthinkable to me ten years ago. most of my friends and family share a similar political background and I can’t even mention that Le Pen seems less dangerous to me as a nationalist than Macron does as a globalist.
If I discuss Brexit with my peers then they fly into a rage out of proportion to the implications of leaving a political union (which is all it is, after all). These same people happily talk about local democracy and the problems of globalism without noticing the irony.
The problem with me and my peers isn’t that we have different basic political ideals, it’s that we are conditioned differently, receiving our news and ideas from different sources. Differently brainwashed if you like. That’s really quite solvable in time. The rage in my friends comes from cognitive dissonance, I think. I don’t have too much of that left now, having already had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about the world.
Non Brexiters will point to market correction (or crash) and currency and house price drops as a terrible consequence of the non binding Referendum and how it would be worse if it was really carried out. Well, I keep my mouth shut in person, but like most TAE-ers, I think that price discovery and bubble bursting is overdue and if it is crystallised by Brexit, then it is just a trigger. The most unpalatable thing I think is that a crash now in an increasingly unstable financial world situation would be better than one later when even more resources will have been used by the free-revving over-leveraged fractional reserve banking system. The fall will be from higher if the crash is postponed. Now why don’t my friends think like me?
Great article!
I have stopped talking to my various peers about BREXIT.
I voted out for many many reasons, the biggest being geopolitical influence over EU policy through UK.
That appears to be making the world a dangerous place. It would be enough if that were my only reason, but try explaining that to someone, the responses have been hostile and disbelieving,-
such is the MSM grip on people’s understanding of the world.
Next reasons on my list are (approx in order)
2. reducing the scale of democracy to increase regional granularity if policy and increase representation ratio.
It seems clear to me that democracy is scale dependent and perhaps is best taken down to the most local level practical for each area of policy (obv. defence and transport infrastructure need to be national (and nationalised))
3. countering the anti-democratic EU which does clearly not respond to the needs of its constituent nations
4. stopping the wealth pump which has so trashed the southern nations
5. stopping the integration of multinational goals with EU policy (that’s fascism).
6. countering all the UK politicians which all appear to be war supporting globalist (except Corbyn, who is being undermined by everyone)
7. The EU has failed the working class in the UK and they know it, they know it better than London middle class who believe they understand the working class position better than the working class do.
8. EU is about to collapse, it’s debt and financial strain are unsustainable and it has 2 years tops
9. If you don’t exit now, the exit door will be blocked and you are stuck in the buildingI hope Corbyn can hold on because the rest of the contenders for power appear to be globalist dromes who are either selfish by nature or unable to appreciate the dangers,moral ,physical and pecuniary of remaining in the EU
I have sympathy for those non-working class people who are grieving about leaving the EU, I can see how their horizons might be limited by BREXIT, but imagine my despondency when my valid, link supported argument about stopping world war, preventing democratic failure modes, countering austerity and sticking up for the have nots are just dismissed out of hand.
Those teeth-gnashing, grieving, wish-they-could-democratic-overriding remainers are wrecking my world much more than I am wrecking theirs! Their self-righteousness is heavy and impenetrable.Grrrrr. Just turn your MSM off and your brain on, people!!
Hi Raleigh
The famous deal Putin made with all his thieving oligarchs left over from the Yeltsin capitulation was that as long as they become loyal to Russia, then they could keep their loot. Those that continued to irritate politically like Berezovsky, Abramovitch? and Khodorkovsky had to leave or face prison for their actual crimes. I think that Putin will do the same for Erdogan and any other Turkish elites who side with him. He will let them off for their crimes because it suits his greater purpose. He did so with Savchenko also. Since he has form for this arrangement, this is perhaps why Erdogan can strike a deal. the alternative is bad for him anyway. Putin will let God judge Erdogan ultimately. He has faith I think.
Here is a huge geopoltical change which occurred less than 24 hrs after Brexit. I think the US influence in the EU is weakening:
I have tried over the past two weeks to convince my UK friends to vote out. I have been talking about US influence over foreign policy of EU countries and the corruption within the EU. Juncker quotes always help with that. I mentioned about giving away control over UK law to the EU and totally nullifying the ability to vote out your representative. I mentioned TTIP and also how the central countries suck the wealth frmo the periphery (see Greece, Spain, Ireland) Finally pointed out that the EU is close to collapse. I got no traction at all, just arguments about how the EU protects the UK from the worst excesses of the Tories and how horrible and xenophobic the BREXIT voters are. My friends have drunk deeply of the ‘aid
Dear Roel,
There is no better thing you and Nicole could have done for your mother than to be there next to her when she needed you the most.
Hugs.
Greenpa.
That’s really interesting. I guess evolutionary pressure varies so much over time and location that it becomes a bigger factor in genetic diversity than exactly how long ago an offshoot population separated.
Greenpa
I always assumed that Africa’s human genetic diversity was because humans had been there longest and had had time to mutate and diverge whereas the colonisers of the rest of the world from Africa hundreds of thousands of years later would not had as much time to mutate. i.e. Africa is the original source of all humans and still has all the earliest diversity
I agree with debtserf.
There’s nothing to see here either. I don’t know why Ilargi gets all out of shape over China. Markets move like this all the time. Nothing to see here. European indices are surprisingly resilient… yes
I really like Nicole’s approach to the issues in Greece. She reduces the terms of her argument to describing the really basic dynamics which would play out somewhere else if it wasn’t for Greece now. It’s all about the emergent properties of empire, the movement of resources from a politically weaker periphery to the centres. It’s an inevitable outcome of an unstable system based on the initial conditions of the empire model.
I want to know what system (or initial conditions) would be more robust in terms of preserving dignity for as many people as possible. My tentative guess would be that easy “free” trade would have to be reduced in order to prevent the collection of wealth by centres, and democracy would have to be changed in it’s granularity so that the representatives can be made accountable to the electorate. I think that means small sovereign states. Finally, we’d have to live on renewable resources. Of course, we’ll get to this macro state one way or another, because of resource contsraints and environmental degradation, but will anyone be left? I hope so. Can we explain this all to the free market adherents? I don’t think they understand thermodynamics, or do they not care about anyone including their children?
Today Tsipras says he was made a deal to avoid bank collapse, that it was revenge on the part of the TROIKA and that he doesn’t believe in it, but he will try to implement it anyway because it is the only way to stay in the EURO
What is he doing? Is he sabotaging the deal? Does he want the Greek parliament to fail to pass it but not take personal responsibility for the post-Grexit TROIKA fury?
(This last question is my best guess)https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33530201
I bet all those voting Greek MPs are getting rabid phone calls from all parties threatening everything under the sun.
If Tsipras had folded in the comfort zone of the TROIKA, would we see Schäuble and the others at such odds with each other?Iit seems to me that they have been pushed by the Greeks past the point of cohesion. If it was an easy negotiation for them then the TROIKA members could probably have held their noses and kept their differences private, that is unless they were always hopelessly fractured and it has only just become apparent.
I’m with you on this Ilargi,
The recent comments on many websites about then being obvious double agents for the elite because of their personal backgrounds may be written by shills or those who are invested in their idea of hopelessness and cannot connect to anything else.
I don’t see Tsipras or YV as double agents or capitulators, As far as I can see, SYRIZA’s actions have a logical consistency and have caused far too much dislocation and damage to the TROIKA and the EU to be any kind of double agents. If Tsipras and his team do capitulate (rather than bait and trap and divide the TROIKA members) it will IMO be under extreme duress, the like of which the TROIKA have been trying to apply and have so far been unsuccessful. They are the real deal.
@Dr Diablo
This is one of the 1000 things that is going on:
“EU Parliament backs TTIP resolution”
https://rt.com/news/272563-eu-parliament-ttip-trade/🙁
maybe Yanis Varoufakis is needed elsewhere as Dr. Diablo says. Anyway, the sheer class of the man is evident. He’s quit while he is ahead so as to hand over to others because dealing with the ninnies at the EU and ECB will be more fruitful without him now that they have egg on their faces. He’s a team player, a star player who will pass the ball.
I’m a bit surprised the markets weren’t more temperamental this morning.
Yes I was thinking that too. Numbers of tourists are going down now, I expect they are worried about being trapped with no money, there being unrest, or having to witness acute misery and fear. I think most tourists are just tourists and want to tour and view and not participate. Ethical tourism in practice is thin on the ground. It’s totally a good idea and worth encouraging though!
On top of encouraging tourism: if TAE ers and other friends send some dollars Ilargi’s way for the Athens fund, then I am sure it’ll get injected into the economy in a way that is efficient at relieving misery.
Oh yes, OXI tomorrow please, everyone who can vote there! Illegitimi non carborundum
Hold on (hold on), hold on (hold on)
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
Hold on (hold on), hold on (hold on)
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold onThe Greeks are brave, for all of us and not for the first time. May they also be steady!
@greenpa, V.arnold
I think it’s a very good idea to apply behaviourism to politicians and not try to work out their internal working or those of their unknown backers.
I often suggest that people to do this too. Watch the policy makers as you would a professional entertaining magician. i.e. watch the hands (what they quietly do), and ignore what the face is saying. I guess you miss out on all the lying cues like touching the nose etc. but as you point out, they are not important, what they do is more important than what they believe. Yes, Tsipras still looks OK to meHi
Yes, Ilargi. I think Tsipras’ deal offer which the MSM call “capitulation” may be Sun Tzu deception. He has kept it just out of reach so far, I’m sure he could have gone to an acceptable deal for the Troika if he really wanted to fold. Maybe it doesn’t matter to SYRIZA what they look like to the Greek public as long as the public understands to vote “OXI”. Who knows what the TROIKA really want at this stage!
I kinda hope that’s what’s happening. Too many players and too many moves to know for sure.@Patricia
in my opinion, if Greece capitulates now, it’ll get a real good kicking from the troika for it’s rebellion in order that no other countries like Portugal try to copy them. They won’t get good terms for rejoining the fold IMO, maybe initially, but not in the end. An example will be made of Greece. The troika are bullies and not strategic rewarders or long game types. in Geopolitical terms, The Americans may also want to punish Greece for any fraternizing with Russians over rescue plans which could affect gas pipeline routes or Asia-Europe silk road plans for the future. EU and America both have a different interest in Greece and may not have the same goals.@John Day
Thanks for the medical clarification. I had attributed heart beat variability to weakened feedback control of the heart which possibly led on to physiological stress rather than heart stress leading to reduced variability. I guess I got it backwards.
It is hard to see what’s cause and what’s effect sometimes if you don’t know a system well enough. That problem maybe catches out the unwary economist, or the dogmatic one.
Was is Mark Twain who said something like : “it isn’t what you don’t know that’ll get you, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so” ?Hi Nicole. Great to see you here again!
With regard to your observation that less variability in the market could be a sign of lack of corrective feedback (because of complacency) and therefore destabilising, there is a biological example of this which might have the same mechanism: The human heart exhibits variation in heart beat frequency. When that variation stops, the person is at risk of a heart attack. I wonder if the heart goes out of safe parameters because of the a lack of corrective feedback?
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/536280_6
I know it’s a daft comparison, but I’m trying to exercise my systems thinking
It’s great that you are spending so much time on your analysis of the Greek negotiations. There had to be a point where the looting of nations through sociallised debt met some serious resistance. I think Greece is the bellwether and the fallout will indicate the failure mode of the various imperial money lenders.
I have read in lots of other places commenters insisting that Tsipras is a double agent, a Wolf in sheep’s clothing, dragging out the austerity. I see no reason to believe this and I think it is a meme spread from the EU in order to undermine his support. IMO SYRIZA have done an amazing job so far with their negotiations, something like crossing a river by jumping between crocodile backs.
I read a commenter on ZH who said the the EU was trying to force Greece into Grexit in order to get Russia to pay Greece’s debts for it and get the EU of the hook. That seems utterly ridiculous, having a paid for Russian ally in the EU would be against American interests and I’m sure they will try to scupper that using their influence in Europe. I think if Greece turns east, the EU will have lost it’s game of brinkmanship, and a truly well deserved loss it will be…
In my opinion Tsipras and Varoufakis are two of the most important people in the world right now. There is some coverage in the MSM about the possible GREXIT but it doesn’t really expose the implications for the already debt supersaturated EU and therefore all the other economies.
The European neo-cons, those who run the big banks and the ECB and the IMF could not help themselves (like in the scorpion and the frog fable) in pushing the Greeks to the limit in their drive to extract as much wealth as possible. It may be that this insatiable destructive greed will be the thing that pushes the European project off it’s knife edge.
I think the neo-cons have painted themselves into a corner and have to be seen to punish the Greeks to prevent anyone else form exiting the Euro. This Euro project was doomed from the point it a. made life unbearable for any of the peripheral countries and b. build a financial system so fragile it would collapse when the first country left. Hubris and fate. Scorpion and frog.
Now it may be that a deal can be made to avoid default for now, it may also be that they can somehow strongarm Syriza or somehow remove them from power, but the writing is on the wall for the Euro, the sensible thing to do would be an orderly planned Euro breakup and the admission that taking financial autonomy from countries is a mistake.
And to think I used to be a Euro-phile
V. Arnold
Thank you very much for that link. That explains why Varoufakis stopped talking about the “Troika” and started taking about the “institutions” He recognised that he was up against the banks and finance ministers. The change in his terminology was confusing me. I get it now.
Yes, we are in 1984. I used to go to the bbc news first to find out what was happening in the world. I see now that their selection and interpretation of facts obscures their real meaning and importance. I find this to be representative of the MSM in general. Did the reporting change or did I?
Growth of the kind needed to service the highly leveraged debt we now have is no longer possible due to resource contraints.
The financial institutions have created supersaturated levels of risk and false accounting in order to pretend growth is happening. This has accelerated an international catabolism where the strongest economies have to destroy and feed on smaller economies just to give them enough resource to pretend for another day. This would explain the frantic geopolitics happening at the moment. It’s all to maintain the economies in their precarious dream state.
I think this system is so fragile and out of equilibrium that it will not be able to withstand Greece’s challenge to the european looting of their country.
There will be price discovery in 2015, hold onto your hats!
Thanks Euan
I also think that instantaneous pricing would not be difficult to implement and would be amenable to a gradual roll-out. Customers would probably need a networked meter which could have privacy issues, in theory.
Variable pricing might reduce or negate the need for feed in tariffs, and would at least allow renewables to be selected on an equal footing. FIT tariffs have always looked to be a fudge to me, I’d rather see the externalities of FFs, nuclear or hydro factored in instead as appropriate.
I reckon the reason that variable pricing is not introduced is political. We feel entitled to cheap energy on tap at our convenience.
@Ilargi’s disgruntled reader
I must admit that I am a wind energy supporter in principle and wish that Euan were wrong about the problems with dispatchability and pricing in Scotland at the 2020 mix level. I feel that he is right though, which is why I support demand side management.Hi Euan
Isn’t this a case for time priced electricity and strong demand management for the consumer? I think if I was a business or a householder, I could be persuaded to avoid peak usage times or at least reduce usage if the price were comparatively very high. This might be an actual practical use for a mobile app, you could use them to switch your appliances on or off based on current price.
I think 24 hour constant priced electricity is a historical luxury we have got used to. A maket for local distributed storage could be created as well if price differences were there.
I am not really a market solutions person, but why make the energy providers to all the hard work of supply management?
Having such low oil prices not only squashes non-opec oil and shale oil, but also all efforts to transition away from fossil fuels including conservation and renewables. It just locks us right back into the 20th century until the oil depletion reduces the excess capacity OPEC has. We lose another few years and another few billion barrels and the EROEI will be lower next time.
Hi Ilargi
I am so pleased you tackle this taboo subject. Growth is the alpha issue. There’s just no point in talking about anything political if you don’t address the end of growth.The level of denial and avoidance I meet when discussing the sustainbility of growth is staggering. Those people who do engage talk about endless resource substitution or growth of value without increased resource use. These people understand diminishing returns, they just can’t handle it, it makes society’s narrative a lie. Progress as currently defined not attainable.
The exponential nature of the infection gives me a worried feeling in my stomach, but I didn’t really connect properly until I saw a documentary on the BBC and saw the doctors crying. I haven’t yet, but I intend to send some money to MSF or similarly involved organisation. From a human misery point of view, it’s awful now and it’ll get worse for sure.
I can’t see a way to prevent spread through Africe from West to East without severely restricting travel, especially over national borders. There will be so many people trying to get away from zones of high infection and some of those will be carrying Ebola.
Since we can’t say for certain that the virus is not airborne under some conditions, it’s isn’t at all sensible to keep flying ordinary passenger aircraft to countries wtih endemic Ebola. It may be that grounding flights might only delay infections to other parts of the world by a few months or years, but it buys time to get our healthcare systems ready and develop treatments.
I followed Dr John Day’s comment link to Dmitri Orlov’s Ebola collapse page yesterday. I agree with Orlov that countries in the rest of the world could not cope with a deluge of cases of Ebola, it would bring about a collapse of their health systems because the exponential growth of cases, leading to further systems failure.
It is hubris to say that non African health systems and procedures will cope with high flux of cases any better than the West African nations have, ‘Western’ health systems for example are brittle because of interdependence with other parts of the economy, tight finance and overspecialisation. They would cope marvellously with 50 isolated cases, but not with 1000.
Pandemic Ebola could very well bring wholesale collapse of society in affected areas, this depends on the rate of infection I think.We really cannot afford be complacent, and for the sake of those in other parts of Africa as well, there need to be travel restrictions. If there are travel restrictions, there may be great damage to airlines and local economies, but it’ll be worse the longer it is left.
Z Don’t beat yourself up, If you’d voted “Yes”, the result would be “No”! You had a very legitimate reason, Salmond.
Assuming the vote was fair, I think the “Yes” campaign was lost because of the huge uncertainty about the currency which was instigated by Westminster who had no reason to make it easy and refused to solidify policy on this issue on purpose, as well as leaning on all and sundry within big business to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.At least the punishment for the Scots from Westminster for returning a narrow “No” will be less than that for a “Yes”. There would have been punishment, independant Scotland would have had to fail for the good of the EU!
@John Day
The Ebola numbers as of the 6th Sep have come in and they are terrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_epidemic_in_West_Africa – scroll to bottom for table. The infections seem to be following an exponential curve and it doesn’t look to me if there’s any way of stopping from moving across Africa now. It is amazing that the requisite international effort was not made a couple of months ago. Maybe the Ebola virus virulence will drop by mutation to increase the transmission coefficient, but the transmission coefficient of the virus is already high and that will reduce the selection pressure for lower virulence mutants. (I have limited understandig of epidemiology)I think the US does a lot of war modelling and has a good idea how the Ukraine meddling was going to go. I think they wanted to surround Russia and control the pipelines and privatise Ukraine’s industry and natural resources and were giong to do this with a soft coup and plausible deniability
Unfortunately (for them and the Ukrainians in general) They underestimated the craziness of the politicians they had funded as well and were not prepared for a civil war, esp one which made them look stupid so far. MH17 has not reflected well on them either.The sanctions and the talk coming out of the US (and maybe what will come out of NATO) will be bluster and innuendo to confuse the populus and prevent the leaders in the West being removed and prosecuted.
I hope! That’s the least bad thing.
What would be worse would be the US and NATO not cutting their losses in Ukraine and trying something silly(er)
