The COVID-19 story keeps developing. At first, everyone listened to epidemiologists telling us that a great deal of social distancing, and even the closing down of economies, would be helpful. After trying these things, we ended up with a huge number of people out of work and protests everywhere. We discovered the models that were provided were not very predictive. We are also finding that a V-shaped recovery is not possible.
Now, we need to figure out what actions to take next. How vigorously should we be fighting COVID-19? The story is more complex than most people understand. These are some of the issues I see:
[1] The share of COVID-19 cases that can be expected to end in death seems to be much lower than most people expect.
Most people assume that the ratios of deaths to cases by age group, computed using reported cases, such as those included in the Johns Hopkins Database, give a good indication of the chance of death a person faces if a person catches COVID-19. In fact, the cases reported to this database are far from representative of all cases; they tend to be the more severe cases. Cases with no symptoms, or only very slight symptoms, tend to be missed. The result is that ratios calculated directly from this database make people think their risk of death is far higher than it really is.
The US Center for Disease Control has published Planning Scenarios, based on information available on April 29, 2020.* Using this information, the CDC’s best estimate of the number of future deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms is as follows:
Ages 0 – 49 0.5 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
Ages 50-64 2.0 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
Ages 65+ 13.0 deaths per 1000 cases with symptoms
The CDC’s best estimate is that 35% of cases have no symptoms at all. Thus, if we were to include these cases without symptoms in the chart above, the chart would become:
Ages 0-49 0.5 deaths per 1,538 cases (including those without symptoms), or 0.3 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
Ages 50-64 1.3 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
Ages 65+ 8.5 deaths per 1000 cases with or without symptoms
A recent study of blood samples from 23 different parts of the world came to a similarly low estimate of the number of deaths per 1000 COVID-19 infections. It reported that among people who are less than 70 years old, the number of deaths per 1000 ranged from 0.0 to 2.3 per 1000, with a median of 0.4 deaths per 1000.
The same paper remarks,
COVID-19 seems to affect predominantly the frail, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized – as shown by high rates of infectious burden in nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, meat processing plants, and the strong racial/ethnic inequalities against minorities in terms of the cumulative death risk.
[2] There seem to be things we can do ourselves to reduce our personal chance of serious illness or death.
General good health is protective against getting a bad case of COVID-19. Thus, anything that we can do in terms of a good diet and exercise is likely helpful. Staying inside for weeks on end in the hope of preventing exposure to COVID-19 is probably not helpful.
Continued exposure to huge amounts of disinfectants and hand sanitizers is likely not to be helpful either. Our bodies depend on healthy microbiomes, and products such as these adversely affect our microbiomes. They kill good and bad bacteria alike and may leave harmful residues. It is easy to scale back our personal use of these products.
There are recent indications that vitamin D is likely to be protective in reducing both the incidence of COVID-19 and the disease’s severity. Web MD reports:
Several groups of researchers from different countries have found that the sickest patients often have the lowest levels of vitamin D, and that countries with higher death rates had larger numbers of people with vitamin D deficiency than countries with lower death rates.
Experts say healthy blood levels of vitamin D may give people with COVID-19 a survival advantage by helping them avoid cytokine storm, when the immune system overreacts and attacks your body’s own cells and tissues.
While we don’t know for certain that vitamin D is helpful, there is certainly enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that it would likely be worthwhile to raise vitamin D levels to the amount recommended by the National Institute of Health (30 nmol/L or higher). People with dark skin living in areas away from the equator might especially be helped by this strategy, since dark skin reduces vitamin D production.
Masks seem to be helpful in preventing the spread of infection. A person’s own immune system can handle some level of germs. If two people meeting together both wear masks, the combination of masks can perhaps reduce the level of germs to within the amount the immune system can handle. Our immune systems are built to handle a barrage of small attacks by viruses and bacteria. Continued “practice” with relatively low combinations of good and bad bacteria (as occur with masks) will tend to build up our bodies’ natural defenses.
We see dentists and dental hygienists wearing face shields. These shields are readily available over the internet and can be worn with a mask or by themselves. We don’t yet know precisely how much protection they provide, but early models suggest that they can be helpful in two directions: (a) preventing the wearer’s droplets from harming others and (b) reducing the droplet exposure from others. Thus, they may be a worthwhile way to reduce exposure to the virus causing COVID-19, even when others are not wearing masks.
[3] The medical community’s ability to treat COVID-19 cases keeps improving.
There seem to be many small changes that are improving treatment of COVID-19. If patients are having trouble getting enough oxygen, having them lie on their stomachs seems to increase their blood oxygen levels. The cost of this change is pretty much zero, but it keeps people out of the ICU longer.
Originally, planners thought that ventilators would be needed for patients with COVID-19, since ventilators are often used on pneumonia patients. Experience has shown, however, that oxygen plus something like a CPAP machine often works better and is less expensive.**
The simple change of not sending recuperating patients to nursing home-type facilities for the last stages of care has proven helpful, as well. Many of these patients can still infect others, leading to infections in long-term care facilities. Tests to tell whether patients are truly over the disease do not seem to be very accurate.
Last week, it was announced that treatment with an inexpensive common steroid could reduce deaths of people on ventilators by one-third. It could also reduce deaths of those requiring only oxygen treatment by 20%. Using this treatment should significantly reduce deaths, at little cost.
We can expect improvements in treatments to continue as doctors experiment with existing treatments, and as drug companies work on new solutions. Looking at cumulative historical mortality rates tends to overlook the huge learning curve that is taking place, allowing mortality rates to be lower.
[4] More doubts are being raised about quickly finding a vaccine that prevents COVID-19.
The public would like to think that a vaccine solution is right around the corner. Vaccine promoters such as Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates would like to encourage this belief. Unfortunately, there are quite a few obstacles to getting a vaccine that actually works for any length of time:
(a) Antibodies for coronaviruses tend not to stay around for very long. A recent study suggests that even as soon as eight weeks, a significant share of COVID-19 patients (40% of those without symptoms; 12.9% of those with symptoms) had lost all immunity. A vaccine will likely face this same challenge.
(b) Vaccines may not work against mutations. Beijing is now fighting a new version of COVID-19 that seems to have been imported from Europe in food. Early indications are that people who caught the original Wuhan version of the COVID-19 virus will not be immune to the mutated version imported from Europe.
Vaccines that are currently under development use the Wuhan version of the virus. The catch is that the version of COVID-19 now circulating in the United States, Europe and perhaps elsewhere is mostly not the Wuhan type.
(c) There is a real concern that a vaccine against one version of COVID-19 will make a person’s response to a mutation of COVID-19 worse, rather than better. It has been known for many years that Dengue Fever has this characteristic; it is one of the reasons that there is no vaccine for Dengue Fever. The earlier SARS virus (which is closely related to the COVID-19 virus) has this same issue. Preliminary analysis suggests that the virus causing COVID-19 seems to have this characteristic, as well.
In sum, getting a vaccine that actually works against COVID-19 is likely to be a huge challenge. Instead of expecting a silver bullet in the form of a COVID-19 vaccine, we probably need to be looking for a lot of silver bee-bees that will hold down the impact of the illness. Hopefully, COVID-19 will someday disappear on its own, but we have no assurance of this outcome.
[5] The basic underlying issue that the world economy faces is overshoot, caused by too high a population relative to underlying resources.
When an economy is in overshoot, the big danger is collapse. The characteristics of overshoot leading to collapse include the following:
- Very great wage disparity; too many people are very poor
- Declining health, often due to poor nutrition, making people vulnerable to epidemics
- Increasing use of debt, to make up for inadequate wages and profits
- Falling commodity prices because too few people can afford these commodities and goods made from these commodities
- Gluts of commodities, causing farmers to plow under crops and oil to be put into storage
Thus, pandemics are very much to be expected when an economy is in overshoot.
One example of collapse is that following the Black Death (1348-1350) epidemic in Europe. The collapse killed 60% of Europe’s population and dropped Britain’s population from close to 5 million to about 2 million.
Figure 1. Britain’s population, 1200 to 1700. Chart by Bloomberg using Federal Reserve of St. Louis data.
We might say that there was a U-shaped population recovery, which took about 300 years.
A later example that almost led to collapse was the period between 1914 and 1945. This was a period of shrinking international trade, indicating that something was truly wrong. On Figure 2 below, the WSJ calls its measure of international trade the “Trade Openness Index.” The period 1914-1945 is highlighted as being somewhat like today.
Figure 2. The Trade Openness Index is an index based on the average of world imports and exports, divided by world GDP. Chart by Wall Street Journal.
Many of the issues in the 1914-1945 timeframe were coal related. World War I took place when coal depletion became a problem in Britain. The issue at that time was wages that were too low for coal miners because the price of coal would not rise very high. Higher coal prices were needed to offset the impact of depletion, but high coal prices were not affordable by citizens.
The Pandemic of 1918-1919 killed far more people than either World War I or COVID-19.
World War II came about at the time coal depletion became a problem in Germany.
Figure 3. Figure by author describing peak coal timing compared to World War I and World War II.
The problem of inadequate energy resources finally ended when World War II ramped up demand through more debt and through more women entering the labor force for the first time. In response, the US began pumping oil out of the ground at a faster rate. Instead of depending on coal alone, the world began depending on a combination of oil and coal as energy resources. The ratio of population to energy resources was suddenly brought back into balance again, and collapse was averted!
[6] We are now in another period of overshoot of population relative to resources. The critical resource this time is oil. The alternatives we have aren’t suited to fulfilling our most basic need: the growing and transportation of food. They act as add-ons that are lost if oil is lost.
If we look back at Figure 2 above, it shows that since 2008, the world has again fallen into a period of shrinking imports and exports, which is a sign of “not enough energy resources to go around.” We are also experiencing many of the other characteristics of an overshoot economy that I mentioned in Section 5 above.
Figure 4 shows world energy consumption by type of energy through 2019, using recently published data by BP. The “Other” combination in Figure 4 includes nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar, and other smaller categories such as geothermal energy, wood pellets, and sawdust burned for fuel.
Figure 4. World energy consumption by fuel, based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Oil has been rising at a steady pace; coal consumption has been close to level since about 2012. Natural gas and “Other” seem to be rising a little faster in the most recent few years.
If we divide by world population, the trend in world energy consumption per capita by type is as follows:
Figure 5. World Per Capita Energy Consumption based on BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy
Many people would like to think that the various energy sources are substitutable, but this is not really the case, as we approach limits of a finite world.
One catch is that there are very few stand-alone energy resources. Most energy resources only work within a framework provided by other energy sources. Wood that is picked up from the forest floor can work as a stand-alone energy source. Wind can almost be used as a stand-alone energy source, if it is used to power a simple sail boat or a wooden windmill. Water can almost be used as a stand-alone energy source, if it can be made to turn a wooden water wheel.
Coal, when its use was ramped up, enabled the production of both concrete and steel. It allowed modern hydroelectric dams to be built. It allowed steam engines to operate. It truly could be used as a stand-alone energy source. The main obstacle to the extraction of coal was keeping the cost of extraction low enough, so that, even with transportation, buyers could afford to purchase the coal.
Oil, similarly, can be a stand-alone energy solution because it is very flexible, dense, and easily transported. Or it can be paired with other types of less-expensive energy, to make it go further. We can see our dependence on oil by how level energy consumption per capita is in Figure 5 since the early 1980s. Growth in population seems to depend upon the amount of oil available.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, the economy is a self-organizing system. If there isn’t enough of the energy products upon which the economy primarily depends, the system tends to change in very strange ways. Countries become more quarrelsome. People decide to have fewer children or they become more susceptible to pandemics, bringing population more in line with energy resources.
The problem with natural gas and with the electricity products that I have lumped together as “Other” is that they are not really stand-alone products. They cannot grow food or build roads. They cannot power international jets. They cannot build wind turbines or solar panels. They cannot put natural gas pipelines in place. They can only exist in a complex environment which includes oil and perhaps coal (or other cheaper energy products).
We are kidding ourselves if we think we can transition to modern fuels that are low in carbon emissions. Without high prices, oil and coal that are in the ground will tend to stay in the ground permanently. This is the serious obstacle that we are up against. Without oil and coal, natural gas and electricity products will quickly become unusable.
[7] A major problem with COVID-19 related shutdowns is the fact that they lead to very low commodity prices, including oil prices.
Figure 6. Inflation-adjusted monthly average oil prices through May 2020. Amounts are Brent Spot Oil Prices, as published by the EIA. Inflation adjustment is made using the CPI-Urban Index.
Oil is the primary type of energy used in growing and transporting food. It is used in many essential processes, including in the production of electricity. If its production is to continue, its price must be both high enough for oil producers and low enough for consumers.
The problem that we have been encountering since 2008 (the start of the latest cutback in trade in Figure 2) is that oil prices have been falling too low for producers. Now, in 2020, oil production is beginning to fall. This is happening because producing companies cannot afford to extract oil at current prices; governments of oil exporting countries cannot collect enough taxes at current prices. They hope that by reducing oil supply, prices will rise again.
If extraordinarily low oil prices persist, a calamity similar to the one that “Peak Oilers” have worried about will certainly occur: Oil supply will begin dropping. In fact, the drop will likely be much more rapid than most Peak Oilers have imagined, because the drop will be caused by low prices, rather than the high prices that they imagined would occur.
Amounts which are today shown as “proven reserves” can be expected to disappear because they will not be economic to extract. Governments of oil exporting countries seem likely to be overthrown because tax revenue from oil is their major source of revenue for programs such as food subsidies and jobs programs. When this disappears, governments of oil exporters are forced to cut back, lowering the standard of living of their citizens.
[8] What our strategy should be from now on is not entirely clear.
Of course, one path is straight into collapse, as happened after the Black Death of 1348-1352 (Figure 1). In fact, the carrying capacity of Britain might still be about 2 million. Its current population is about 68 million, so this would represent a population reduction of about 97%.
Other countries would experience substantial population reductions as well. The population decline would reflect many causes of death besides direct deaths from COVID-19; they would reflect the impacts of collapsing governments, inadequate food supply, polluted water supplies, and untreated diseases of many kinds.
If a large share of the population stays hidden in their homes trying to avoid COVID, it seems to me that we are most certainly heading straight into collapse. Supply lines for many kinds of goods and services will be broken. Oil prices and food prices will stay very low. Farmers will plow under crops, trying to raise prices. Gluts of oil will continue to be a problem.
If we try to transition to renewables, this leads directly to collapse as well, as far as I can see. They are not robust enough to stand on their own. Prices of oil and other commodities will fall too low and gluts will occur. Renewables will only last as long as (a) the overall systems can be kept in good repair and (b) governments can support continued subsidies.
The only approach that seems to keep the system going a little longer would seem to be to try to muddle along, despite COVID-19. Open up economies, even if the number of COVID-19 cases is higher and keeps rising. Tell people about the approaches they can use to limit their exposure to the virus, and how they can make their immune systems stronger. Get people started raising their vitamin D levels, so that they perhaps have a better chance of fighting the disease if they get COVID-19.
With this approach, we keep as many people working for as long as possible. Life will go on as close to normal, for as long as it can. We can perhaps put off collapse for a bit longer. We don’t have a lot of options open to us, but this one seems to be the best of a lot of poor options.
Notes:
*The CDC estimates are estimates of future deaths per 1000 cases. Thus, they probably reflect the learning curve that has already taken place. It is unlikely that they reflect the benefit of the new steroid treatment mentioned in Section 3, because this finding occurred after April 29.
**I have been told that disease spread can be a problem when using CPAP machines, however. Using ventilators at very low pressure settings seems also to be a solution.
“As infection rates start rising in some European countries, the potential for civil unrest and political aftershocks is growing as patience wears thin, say analysts…
“Even before the pandemic, Europe was in the grip of rising political anger, and mainstream parties were rocked by populist stirrings that have been reshaping the continent’s politics. But the pandemic is making many on the continent angrier still, fueling protests, further polarizing politics and exposing long-simmering political and social tensions.”
https://www.voanews.com/europe/analysts-potential-civil-unrest-rising-europe
“The pandemic has effectively pulled away the first rung of the jobs ladder for many young Europeans… Youth unemployment has long plagued Europe, lingering for years following the 2008/09 global financial crisis and hitting southern countries such as Spain and Greece especially hard.
“Yet early signs show things are about to get worse.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-unemployment-youth/coronavirus-class-of-2020-europes-lost-generation-idUKKBN24A0LN
“The outlook for Spain’s economy is looking grim, particularly its leading tourism sector. By the end of the year, economists predict that unemployment rates in Spain will rise from 14% to a whopping 23%.”
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/spains-tourism-sector-faces-grim-future-amid-covid-19-pandemic/
“European governments that frantically assembled plans to help their economies weather the coronavirus lockdowns are starting to focus on a cliff edge: how to prevent cascading bankruptcies that could derail the rebound.
“The next big idea gaining traction among officials and economists is potentially taking stakes in small and medium-sized businesses…”
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/economy/europes-next-big-rescue-idea-public-stakes-in-small-firms
“Brooks Brothers, the 200-year-old company that dressed nearly every U.S. president, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, the latest major clothing seller to be toppled by the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://japantoday.com/category/business/famed-clothier-brooks-brothers-files-for-bankruptcy
Even worse situation may develop if people believe that they are suffering due to what some tell them was a ‘hoax’.
If that becomes a general belief it will be very problematic for governments. As most people don’t know anyone who has died or even caught it, that may occur.
A great deal can be borne if it seems worthwhile and purposeful, and they can see a hopeful end point.
Rolling regional and city lock-downs, if they become frequent and widespread, will destroy any hope rather quickly, I should have thought.
The pandemic only hid earlier problems. The problems are now a lot worse.
“Uncertainties surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, the trade war and volatility in oil prices are governing business decisions being made in 2020. Shipyard demand will likely encounter a further blow given the vast disruptions to economic growth and trade globally…”
https://seanews.co.uk/features/quarterly-forecast-for-cargo-vessels-summer-2020/
“The ratings agency Moody’s has downgraded its forecast for the deep-sea shipping industry this year, and it now expects that earnings will contract by as much as 18 percent compared with 2019.”
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/moody-s-downgrades-its-outlook-for-shipping
“According to data from UK-based marine industry tracker Clarkson Research Services on Tuesday, global shipbuilding orders in the January-June period totaled 5.75 million compensated gross tons or 269 ships – which is 42 percent of the levels in the same period last year. The tally is the lowest since the researcher began compiling related data in 1996…”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/korean-shipyards-under-common-order-drought-amid-the-worst-slump-in-four-years/
Wow! That is quite a drop. 42% of the prior level is a 58% drop. Businesses in the ship-building industry have a huge problem.
More information on “The Great Reset”
http://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/03/sp060320-remarks-to-world-economic-forum-the-great-reset&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwicz9OPpr_qAhVPrZ4KHQgSBWIQFjAJegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw0FuY_R3JRt4IxiYpzQjgXj
Thanks! This is a speech to the World Economic Forum by Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, IMF. She talks about green growth that is somehow smarter growth and fairer growth. What a bunch of nonsense!
Yes, nonsense.
Just more the fashionable new cliches, from just another politician – we can expect things to fall apart with this kind of tripe as the background noise, which in the end no one will believe anymore.
Oil Veterans are now going the Geothermal route:
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Geothermal-Energy/Big-Oil-Should-Focus-On-The-Worlds-Cleanest-Energy-Source.html
Sometimes geothermal works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Being close to the heat source (hot volcano) makes it better, but the volcano can erupt, taking the investment off line. This happened on the Big Island of Hawaii not long ago, wiping out a number of homes near the volcano, as well.
There is a big upfront investment, and a question whether the heat supplied will decline too much before the investment pays back.
A fairly sympathetic turn of mind, but how would they change if they read OFW? For one thing, would they still believe that centralized, networked global society–with better design–could work?
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/magazine-friday-cover-redesigning-the-world-coronavirus/
“For one thing, would they still believe that centralized, networked global society–with better design–could work?”
that’s a good question. The sum of the article is more or less the “better design” of many human activities.
the answer is that most of this better design, though entirely possible, would require more energy and money directed towards those activities, which has little hope in a world of decreasing net (surplus) energy.
otherwise, it’s a quite pathettic article.
is that the best that Polittico has to offer?
a layme collection of weak ideas about redesigning the world?
sheeeeesh.
the system could work as we have an infinite amount of money available and the ability to limit population thanks to technological advancements which would then require lower inputs of energy.Imagine how much less energy would be required for a world population of 6 billion . So in theory it could work
unfortunately every species is driven to ‘strive’ within the confines of its environment.
but humankind has convinced its collective self that no limits exist, because we are made in the image of gods, with godly powers, and not subject to any laws of physics
this is why the american nation, having found itself with greater powers than any other, is absolutely certain of this, and has elected leaders of church and state to tell them this is a fact, and all known science is a fraud and hoax.
so they will rush headlong into the abyss of disease and climate change, certain that a god will save them taking the rest of the world with them. (We all aspire to the current lifestyle of the USA, one way or another)
some of us may survive, or we may not
I agree, “humankind has convinced its collective self that no limits exist, because we are made in the image of gods, with godly powers, and not subject to any laws of physics.”
The “science” that is today quoted is equally nonsensical, however, because it models the same lack of limits. We can extract all of the coal from under the North Sea and burn it. This is what will lead to the modeled climate change. It also assumes no need for energy; we can live on small amounts of intermittent wind and solar.
Beware Gail. When you start agreeing with Norman, you are on a very slippery slope.
Humankind doesn’t have a collective self. By employing sleight of hand, Norman is trying to rope us all into a single denomination and get us singing from the same hymnbook.
A lot of people, some through stupidity and many more through intellectual laziness, allow themselves to be mesmerized into going along with ideas and beliefs that they are insidiously indoctrinated into accepting by society’s controllers. This doesn’t amount to a collective self, but nearly to a mass of individual selves who are immersed in the same drama.
Most people are living permanently in Plato’s cave. which In its modern version is a plush multiplex cinema and they are watching the movies and most of the time, mistaking the on-screen action for reality.
The viewers eventually begin a ‘game’ of guessing which scene is going to play out appear next on the screen.
If one of the viewers were to correctly guess, the others would praise him as clever and say that he was a genius or an uncommonly wise man.
If one on the viewers gets up from their seat to go to the WC and get a chock-ice, but when they get to the foyer they walk out of the door and experience the world outside the movie theater, he is initially shocked at the world he discovers and does not believe it can be real.
As he becomes used to his new surroundings, he realizes that his former cinematized view of reality was wrong.
He begins to understand his new world, and sees that the Sun is the source of life and goes on an intellectual journey where he discovers beauty and meaning, the significance of the number forty-two, etc.
He see’s that his former life in the cinema and the guessing game they play there is just a useless game of trivial pursuit..
Later, the viewer returns to the cinema to inform the other viewers of his findings.
They do not believe him and threaten to kill him if he persists in trying to set them free.
Frustrated by this impass and by the futility of trying to reason with normies, he retires to his library in a tower located in a corner of his country estate and spends his time reading, composing essays and discussing philosophy with his pigs and cows.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/St_Michel_de_Montaigne_Tour01.jpg/1200px-St_Michel_de_Montaigne_Tour01.jpg
so, Tim.
Does the bacterial multiplication in the petri dish stop short of the edge of the dish and collectively decide:
Enough is enough?
Does the locust descend upon the field, and become sated at half the crop?
Does the hunter, given the power of the repeating rifle for the first time, entrain to where the buffalo cover the prairies, refrain from shooting everything that moves?
Given the promise of unlimited loot, does not humankind (formed of ‘decent’ individuals) form itself into columns of murderous millions and sweep across other lands under the collective banners and slogans that reveal only mass hysteria?
Have we not forced the oil driller and the miner to cover the lands with their rigs and shafts, and acceed to our demands that they use the fossiled sunlight they extract to breed humankind into unsustainable numbers beyond the voice of reason?
The fisherman, given the power of the factory ship as a replacement for the cast net or line, does not sweep the seas clean until other sea-species starve ?
Do we, with the collective unreason of our species, not demand (by our individual actions) from the environment that sustains us, more than that nourishing environment can provide?
Do the undernourished billions of the Third world, (including those who hide in the unspoken corners of the first), not collectively desire the warm homes and full bellies that you and I might take for granted?
Given the means, would those starving billions not invade and behave as the locusts do in their lands, and (justifiably) strip our supermarkets bare in a matter of hours?
Or perhaps they will strip the shelves of only what they need, just as (collective) hysteria made us do in March and April this year?
Would you violently defend your lifestyle against those collective clouds of human locusts?
Will we, the wise brethren of OFW, willingly surrender the trappings of civilised living in the name of global sanctuary and slip our vote into the ballot box of he who stands on the podium and offers us only a return to the living of the 17th century?
Will we even elect to reduce ourselves to a median that would distribute an even proportion of global wealth to all?
Or will collective insanity overwhelm us all, and force us to vote for the lunatic who says all will be well for us and those who follow.?
—————
Answers on the back of a postage stamp will suffice.
“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
Michel de Montaigne
Norman, thanks for your response!
I don’t see any irreconcilable inconsistencies between the views you and I have expounded above.
Since Professor Bartlett lectured so persuasively on the idea, it has become fashionable to stress the similarities between people and yoghurt bacteria. But I think their differences are more significant.
Unusually among lifeforms in general, and even among the mammals, humans have the collective power to just say “no!” to excessive breeding. Population control has been tried and successfully achieved time and again in cultures throughout the world and throughout the ages.
We are in our present predicament because cultures that favored expansion rather than maintaining a balance have tended to proliferate, and this has been especially the case since the advent of ff-turbocharged industrialization.
Even the current ongoing population explosion in Africa is mainly the result of a whole bunch of interventions from outside, mostly from the industrialized West, that have freed Africans from some of the burdens that were previously restraining their population. We can all name a list of things from antibiotics to insecticides to back hoes and dump trucks that have helped enable this liberation.
However, one of the biggest factors has been the idea that the traditional limits no longer need to apply. As a result, both in Africa and all over the world, more and more people have come to believe that they can push the limits without having to suffer the consequences of their actions.
But in a finite world, this game has to come to an end sometime. Chickens will eventually come home to roost. The piper must be paid. We reap what we sow. And people who make their beds have to lie in them. The party’s over…
https://youtu.be/AmzfPzSsbDc
The fundamental error – apart from complexity and energy aspects -is that the the current system, which is found to be so faulty, did not arise from conscious and deliberate design.
It is not susceptible to such concerted, logical reform, even if it were physically and socially possible.
Moreover, as experience shows, even when a structure has been designed, it may not be reformable.
This sort of theorising is just a way of dancing around the reality of Collapse without facing it squarely.
It assumes it is just necessary to have the right technologies and a will to act, when there has never been a unified, planetary, human will, and never will or can be.
The laws of physics, however, do apply to the whole planet. That is the real Design. Most unfortunately for our fantasies…….
I’m slowly getting an idea of why good people kill themselves. Sitting here waiting for the end as opposed to working for a survivable way when there (apparently) is no such way. There’s no choice there.
Don’t despair, Artleads! The value of living has never depended on other people being either sensible, or truthful.
It certainly IS depressing, but no reason for suicide.
Just keep on plugging away to do whatever good you can in your little bit.
++++++++
A lot of very intelligent, clever and smart people could and probably do hear about Gail’s ideas and dismiss them out of hand without taking the trouble to absorb or test them.
An earnest desire to understand things deeply and grasp their essence is not one of the defining characteristics of our species or of our current age of superficiality.
https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-hastiness-and-superficiality-are-the-psychic-diseases-of-the-20th-century-and-more-than-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-27-75-93.jpg
I am afraid you are right. A world of television and 30 second clips has kept people from thinking too hard. In a world with television or music always on, it is hard to think much at all.
https://www.lacortenews.com/n/racist-elk-rioters-destroy-historic-120-year-old-fountain-in-portland
Rioters in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday vandalized and set fire to a 120-year-old Elk statue in downtown Portland as they clashed with police in a continuation of the more than month-long anti-racism protests.
The story: Protesters ripped the wooden window boards from the nearby Multnomah County Justice Center to stoke the fire underneath the historic statue.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Can anything be fixed in a society that is entirely mentally ill and where the media rewards the attention seeking behavior of the most feeble-minded and spiritually damaged, people who appear to suffer from Oppositional Defiant Disorder? We feed parasites, welcome invaders, denounce truthtellers, celebrate people who hate us, and destroy anything that is beautiful. And the media protects it and spreads it this disease.
Meanwhile, the always sober and reasonable Stefan Molyneux, whose every word is measured and every thought considered – deplatformed last week from Youtube – has this week been banned from Twitter.
They want us dead and they want Western society destroyed. There can no longer be any doubt about this. But what do they intended to replace it with?
It’s tough out there. High water everywhere.
Stefan also lost his Pay Pal account last November.
But fortunately, he has been migrating to alternative platforms such as Bitchute and Gab for some time now, so he will survive.
And the more Big Tech Tightens its grip, the more politically incorrect commentators and their audiences will slip through their fingers and find a new home on the Internet’s censorship-free frontier
https://news.gab.com/2020/07/08/then-they-came-for-stefan-molyneux/
Can anything be fixed….?
No, I don’t think it can. We can neither maintain nor repair our current civilization, so we are going to have to ditch it and purchase a new one from Amazon or Alibaba.
Collapse is a spiritual malaise as well as an economic, social and political one. I used to think we were repeating Weimar Germany as farce, but these days it looks more and more like we are acting out scenes from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.
This statue toppling, for instance, has something in common with what the Iconoclasts did in Byzantium in the eighth and ninth centuries. Yes, that is considered to have been a religious movement, but of course it was political too. The current attitude to historical statures and the symbols, near veneration by one part of the population and Pavlovian loathing and revulsion on the other, has strong religious underpinnings. Many of us consider the entire assault on conservative conventional culture to be a form of sacrilege, while others are treating refusal to genuflect to the latest leftist-imposed social norms to be a form of heresy.
I’d like to read Robert’s opinion on this issue.
The first iconoclastic period: 730-787
Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (reigned 717–741) banned the use of icons of Jesus, Mary, and the saints and commanded the destruction of these images in 730. The Iconoclastic Controversy was fueled by the refusal of many Christian residents outside the Byzantine Empire, including many Christians living in the Islamic Caliphate, to accept the emperor’s theological arguments. St. John of Damascus was one of the most prominent of these. Ironically, Christians living under Muslim rule at this time had more freedom to write in defense of icons than did those living in the Byzantine Empire. St. John of Damascus’s teaching centered around his clarification and distinction of the terms worship and veneration, teaching that we worship God, depicted in the icon, and simply venerate the icon itself as an image of the Prototype. In his defense of icons he wrote, “I do not worship creation over the creator.”
Leo was able to promulgate his policy because of his personal popularity and military success—he was credited with saving Constantinople from an Arab siege in 717–718 and then sustaining the empire through annual warfare.
Leo III’s son, Constantine V (reigned 741–775), was once challenged by a general who used iconophilic (“icon-favoring”) propaganda, but his military success against this threat cemented his own position.
The first iconoclastic period came to an end when Leo IV (Constantine V’s son) died and his widow, Empress Irene, came into power. An iconophile, she initiated the Second Council of Nicea in 787, at which the veneration of icons was affirmed, although the worship of icons was expressly forbidden. Among the reasons were the doctrine of the Incarnation: because God the Son (Jesus Christ) took on flesh, having a physical appearance, it is now possible to use physical matter to depict God the Son and to depict the saints. Icon veneration lasted through the reign of Empress Irene’s successor, Nicephorus I (reigned 802-811), and the two brief reigns after his.
The second iconoclastic period: 813-843
Emperor Leo V (reigned 813–820) instituted a second period of iconoclasm in 813, which seems to have been less rigorously enforced, since there were fewer martyrdoms and public destructions of icons. Leo was succeeded by Michael II, who was succeeded by his son, Theophilus. Theophilus died, leaving his wife, Theodora the Iconodule, regent for his minor heir, Michael III. Like Irene 50 years before her, Theodora mobilized the iconodules and proclaimed the restoration of icons in 843. Since that time the first Sunday of Lent is celebrated as the feast of the “Triumph of Orthodoxy.”
I wish they’d just knock it in the head!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_wcu6i2kVCPM/S9Q_Shooj5I/AAAAAAAAASs/NBnTNd9hrZM/s1600/headless+gks.jpg
I was thinking of the desecration of the herms (Hermes statues) in ancient Athens, allegedly by Alcibiades and his associates.
The allegation was almost certainly false. Alcibiades offered to stand trial, but his enemies preferred to let him leave for Syracuse, and then tried him in absentia. Rather like what the House Democrats tried to do with Trump. Of course, Alcibiades was no angel; Plato’s portrayal of him in The Symposium is probably accurate. He also managed the expedition to Syracuse so badly it ended in a total defeat for the Athenians.
Alcibiades is one of my favorite historical characters. On one hand, he was surely one of the greatest rascals in history but on the other he really epitomizes the idea of the free man who would take a back seat to no one and accepted no authority. And what a survivor!
He was the total opposite of the modern, squirming man that is now sometimes called the “Bug man”.
There was also the Beeldenstorm in the 16th century, when Protestant mobs were “protesting” by knocking the heads off any church statue they could get their sledgehammers on.
They were the worst vandals in Europe since the Vandals!
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/PJW4HN/beeldenstorm-PJW4HN.jpg
I tell my wife how far ahead of me bloggers are on OFW!
Or maybe Gibbon, but re-written as farce?
For you, Tim, my thoughts without euphemism or self censorship:
Let me begin a discussion of iconoclasm with a small piece of history. A song from the English Revolution celebrates the destruction of the old order and its replacement by the new. Here are two stanzas:
We’ll break the windows which the whore
Of Babylon hath painted,
And when the popish saints are down
Then Barrow shall be sainted;
There’s neither cross nor crucifix
Shall stand for men to see,
Rome’s trash and trumpery shall go down,
And hey, then, up go we.
We’ll put down Universities,
Where learning is profest,
Because they practise and maintain
The language of the Beast;
We’ll drive the doctors out of doors,
And all that learned be;
We’ll cry all arts and learning down,
And hey, then, up go we.
Indeed, when the Puritans captured Oxford, they destroyed as many religious statues as they could find. The smashed the statue of the Blessed Virgin at her church in the High Street, and beheaded the angels over the porch. The Virgin was replaced; the angels are still as the iconoclasts left them, headless.
The last line of each stanza is as shown, and I believe it touches the heart of the matter. The mainspring of iconoclasm is envy and hatred: envy of anything and anyone better tha oneself, and hatred of anything that reminds one of this difference.
The iconoclasm in Byzantium started by Leo III and continued by his successors was officially a restoration of the Mosaic law, in particular the prohimition against graven images (Exodus xx:4), but far more likely it was part of a revolt by the poorer (and largely non Greek) citizens against the rich (and Greek) citizens of Constantinople. As has happened quite often in history, the Emperor supported the mob against the elite, since the latter were a threat to his own power. It also helped that the movement devalued (and degrade) the social status of monks and women.
It should therefore come as no surprise that both episodes of iconoclasm (730 to 787 and 814 to 832) were brought to an end by women: the Empress Irene and the Empress Theodora. The veneration of icons was made official by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which decision has never been overturned.
And I believe what we are seeing today is another manifestation of the same spiritual sickness. Many people in the US, the poor and (especially) the black, perceive that others are succeeding where they have failed, and rather than seek causes and remedies within themselves, they attribute the whole matter to the evil of others. In particular, the dysfunction of the black community, the broken families, illegitimate and feral children, black on black crime, refusal to speak proper english, are all the result of “systematic racism”, rather than the result of a deliberate refusal to become civilised.
The other main demographic is white, young, overprivileged students, who are beginning to realise that their expensive university education has taught them nothing of value in the real world, and rather than going to night school to learn a trade (as my father did, part time, for ten years), decided to destroy the visible examples of excellence they could not emulate.
Another well attested phenomenon is also present in the current discontent: as English law put it, “disgraceful words and speeches against eminent persons”, or as the Romans had it, “Scandalum magnatum”. Hence the ongoing and repulsive libel of anyone whose life and work are celebrated by our established society, and the determined attempt to erase our history by those who find themselves on the wrong side of history.
How will it end? That I suspect is in Clio’s hands, not ours. But we can at least try our best to hold the line, and to celebrate the memory of those who made us what we are. We owe them no less.
Interesting thoughts! Pull others (and their stature representations) down, so we can be elevated.
Thanks Robert. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me. That was a very informative and enlightening comment.
…. trash and trumpery shall go down,
And hey, then, up go we….
This sounds like the Democratic Party’s election strategy to a tee. If we define trumpery as anything the Don does and says and the way he says it.
“Scandalum magnatum”
This is a brand new phrase for me. Lamentably, my education in the classics was badly neglected. The slander or defamation of great men. Well, that’s pretty much ubiquitous these days in politics, and one doesn’t even need to be particularly great in order to be buried under a heap of it.
Excellent, Robert. Thank you.
Contrary to medieval iconoclasts, it seems contemporary ones would like to change places with the illustrious citizens on the pedestals. Feeling so full of themselves, and so full of reason and Truth, the neo-iconoclasts think they should be the ones at the top of the pedestals. It’is as if they are saying “Let us erect statues of ourselves instead!” After all, if we created a culture where each person feels worthy of at least fifteen minutes of “immortal fame”, why shouldn’t everyone have their own statue?
But i think all this sudden leftitst noises and events are a thing conducted by higher powers. The Antifa and BLM pawns are just a bunch of useful idiots being manipulated to smash every social value in sight. And of course the aim of those who are leading them from backstage is the same as always: to divide and rule, to put groups of hoi polloi fighting among themselves.
From “The Fake Revolution,” by Miles Mathis:
“So you should ask yourself if this whole BLM storyline makes any sense. Why would blacks choose this time of all times to riot in the streets? Were racial tensions especially high last year or in the early part of this year? No. They were remarkably low. Does a pandemic lockdown seem like a good time for the Black movement to come alive? No. Just the reverse. So the timing of this should look very suspicious to you. Just when the governors most needed a diversion, the Black movement was there to provide it. That’s very convenient, don’t you think? Also convenient are the BLM leaders’ top talking points. Why would the Black movement lead with defunding police departments? Does that make any sense? No, none of this makes any sense, either from the position of blacks or whites. Why would they lead with tearing down statues? Statues!? Do you really think statues would be a top priority for blacks? If I were black and was pushing for change, about the last thing I would be worried about is statues. If you can’t figure it out, I will tell you. This is all a script written by superwealthy whites, and it is written to push certain buttons in the white majority. It is all about creating fear and division, and they know what scares you and maddens you. They need easy visuals, and a Columbus statue with red paint thrown on it is perfect for that. George Washington and Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt taking a big tumble into a vat of acid is perfect for that. Same goes for defunding the police. No real blacks want that, since they rely on police protection as much as you do, or more. But they need people to be afraid we are devolving into chaos, since nothing gets the blood pumping more than that. Nothing will get your mind off the trillions they just stole from the treasury and the shredding of the Constitution during the lockdown like the fear of race wars with no police. But I assure you none of that is going to happen. It is all a bluff. The chance of police being defunded is. . . absolute zero. If anything, they will use this to increase funding of police and military. You will be so scared by this near miss you will demand more police and more military. Just watch and see. Nor will they outlaw guns of any kind. They always say they will, but they never do. Why? Because this isn’t about taking your guns. It is about selling you more.”
http://mileswmathis.com/blm2.pdf
One could argue that the story of the death of George Floyd was a catalyst for increasing BLM activity, and that Mathis is missing this element in his analysis, but then a guest writer on his website addresses that story here:
“http://mileswmathis.com/floyd.pdf
I would add that the Democrats are also looking to mobilize the black vote during an election year.
Yes, getting more blacks to vote would be helpful for democrats. This would be a reason to speak kindly of Black Lives Matters activities.
This diagram shows everything we need to know about the “independence” of the american left. BLM, antifa, International Amnesty and the like are all of them organizations co-opted by the moneyed classes. That’s why they never touch “certain issues”.
http://fav.me/dcuwa9a
This is all true, but at the same time I can understand people questioning whether certain people should in fact be up on a pedestal. I personally think that the statue of Bomber Harris in London is a disgrace. His ststed policy – far exceded – was to destroy 40% of German civilian housing stock. Consider that. In the German winter that is mass death by exposure. In the summer it is cholera and typhus. The man was a soulless monster. And if a lot of Germans lived in London, one would understand that they would wish to see his statue removed.
But London does not have Germans. Instead, it has a different kind of invader – the invited (by the oligarchs) kind, which Britain has had a few times in its history.
But this has been one of the (100% foreseeable) costs of mass immigration and multiculturalism. In Australia, should they really clebrate ANZAC day, with its roots in a war on Turkey? After all, there are plenty of children of the Ottoman diaspora now living in Australia. Or should we celebrate 19th C labor-unionists who campaigned to keep the Chinese and Pacific Islanders out of Australia and established the White Australia policy? The country is now absolutely full of Chinese real estate flippers and South Pacific footballers. What kinds of figures could the agree should be mounted for veneration on a plinth. What do they have in common to revere?
But of course, I knew as a young man fifty years ago that this was going to cause trouble but the media pushed it with incredible vigor. [To the Australian readers here I ask, remember “They’re a Queer Mob” by Nino Collotta, or the colorful Al Grasby, Whitlam’s hgh-profile Immigration Minister? What do you think of those cultural products now? Agitprop much?] So the people who put it into operation surely also knew and this modern chaos is just part of their design.
All very true, except that it attributes too much to human intention, agency and foresight.
That something like the violent multi-culti mess e now endure in the West was foreseeable 50 years ago does not prove in any way that the consequences were planned in very detail by ‘them’.
There is far too much half-paranoid reasoning like this on both Left and Right these days , and it only obscures more nuanced and accurate perceptions.
Of oourse,as with the paranoid man, it might well be that They do indeed have a plan for you…. 🙂
Have you ever tried to move a heavy and roughly shaped stone across a field from one place to another by turning it over and over? The stone is too heavy to lift, and it won’t roll or move in a straight line, but it may be possible to get it to move across a zig-zag course to eventually get it from A to B.
I think this is analogous to what the elites are trying to do with their social engineering and their fake news. They can’t plan all events or assure that events work out the way they want, but they do have a destination in mind for their big stones, and they try to manipulate their courses as best they can, so that over the decades, their plans achieve progress of a sort.
Most of the figures on the pedestals were far from being models of moral virtues. In fact many of them were murderous ruthless bastards (like Afonso de Albuquerque, for example, which in Portugal has his name on many streets, and a lot of statues). But one thing they were not for sure, they were not mediocre people as the cheeky neo-iconoclasts who want to knock them off the pedestals.
So the famous dead people may not be likable figures, but it’s childish and futile to judge our ancestorss, since it is to them that we partly owe what we are and what we have. The neo-iconoclasts don’t like imperialism, but i bet they appreciate very much the tasty fruits of imperialism. Brainless hypocrytes and puppets, it’s what they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvNnK-wAWac
From 24:26 in this video, Tucker Carlson reports on convicted terrorist, Susan Rosenberg, who is Vice-Chair of an organization called “Thousand Currents” which is part of the apparatus which controls BLM funding in the USA.
In 1985 Rosenberg was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 58 years life in prison but her sentence was commuted after just 16 years by President Clinton on his last day in office.
From Wikipedia we learn that “From the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, Rosenberg was active in the far-left revolutionary terrorist May 19th Communist Organization, which engaged in bombings of buildings and provided support to the Black Liberation Army.[1] After living as a fugitive for two years, she was arrested in 1984 while in possession of explosives and firearms.
She had also been sought as an accomplice in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur and was suspected but never charged in the 1981 Brink’s robbery that led to the death of a guard and two Nyack police officers (Officer Brown and Officer O’Grady)…She now sits on the board of Black Lives Matter” (sic).
………………………………………………………………
Of course there are lots of these people in Democrat and left politics. They keep telling us they are going to destroy us – and they get all the funding they need from “philanthropies” like Kellogg and Packard – but no one will take them at their corporate-funded word.
These people want the white middle class dead. Literally. It is Pol Pot-ism via the universities and Silicon Valley. They have done well so far with opiates (500,000 dead in the last ten years), porn (creating insanity and distrust between men and women and destroying family life), monopolizing the public platforms and closing down dissent, forcing the population into hiding their faces and avoiding social situations, and now they are criminalizing self defense. If you report crime, stalking or intimidation, you are a “Karen” and will be prosecuted.
Well, well well. It didn’t take YouTube very long to take this video down.
You don’t take flak like that unless you are over the target.
Lol yeah the guy who doesn’t view humanity as a single species is measured and considered, gimme a break. Poor racist guy, I hope he survives :'(
You mean Molyneux? I’m sure he’ll do fine. He’s got lots of mates. I wouldn’t worry about him at all.
It’s people like you I worry about—enablers of totalitarianism who are destined to one day be on the receiving end of it. Because when the mob or the goons come for you, to deprive you of your livelihood and possibly your liberty or you life, there isn’t going to be anyone to give you a break. Nobody’s going to stick up on your behalf. And probably not a soul in the world will miss your parting or give your fall from grace a second thought.
But you’ve got your excuse and your justification. You are a practitioner of rightthink who is gloating about the treatment being meted out to a practitioner of wrongthink. So that’s you happy 🙂
Oh, you are a “races don’t exist” person?
I have also heard that sexes don’t exist. Apparently there are 672 different “genders”.
Do you also not have left and right feet? Because, after all, such a distinction would be “footist”. So either shoe can go on either foot, right?
Some of these points of view must be very uncomfortable to maintain in the real wworld.
At a recent Chinese communist party meeting, party members have been told to start preparing for global crisis, focusing on six strategic issues, including a forecast 30% drop in global food production. Starts at about 5m 15s.
Floods Destroy Ming Dynasty Bridge; CCP Officials Told to Prepare for Global Crisis | Crossroads
Where the video shows a driver fighting with a passenger then driving off the bridge is really old footage. I recall seeing that about 10 years ago.
yes he says that in the report a little later that it was similar to it to the current event of which there was no video.
It is concerning that this is what China is telling its own high-level party members.
There are a whole list of issues that it sees going forward:
Deterioration of US-China relations
China economic downturn related to falling demand and breaking supply lines
Currency wars and decoupling of Chinese currency and US$
Pandemic that goes on and on
Global food crisis, with 30% reduction in food
The other way of seeing this is that the Chinese govt has decided to be realistic with the relevant people, so they know what is coming and can prepare for it as best they can. Lack of food in the near future will not come as a surprise to the senior party members. Of course, they might not not plan for that very well. Most Western governments in the meantime still seem to be focused on Covid-19 and the idea that somehow / sometime we will return to ‘normal’.
But it is beginning to look like China is headed for catastrophe in the near term, what with the floods, etc. affecting local food production, amongst other things, so much.
The Chinese government is facing the fall of the dynasty. As the saying goes, let us look this problem squarely in the face, ignore it, and move on. The Ming emperors were of the same opinion. Until 1644.
“The French government said it was geared for a possible surge in coronavirus cases in the coming months but ruled out another nationwide lockdown.
“My aim is to prepare France for a possible second wave while preserving our daily life, our economic and social life,” new prime minister Jean Castex said in an interview on RTL television.
“But we’re not going to impose a lockdown like the one we did last March, because we’ve learned… that the economic and human consequences from a total lockdown are disastrous,” he said.”
[Lol – better late than never]
https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/1546066.html
not only better late than never, but this story is one more in a growing series of stories that show us that TPTB are trying to figure this out as they go, and are trying to do anything and everything to keep bAU moving along.
and so far, though big economic trouble is ahead, “they” have indeed succeeded in keeping IC from collapsing.
Agreed, the greatest mistake now would be to relax vigilance and preparation. This is just Stage 1…..
Agreed.
while the end of bAU is unlikely in the coming months, the economic consequences of the massive spike in unemployment will be appearing in increasing severity.
now is the calm before the storm.
Xabier, vigilance against what? Preparation for what? I see a lot of political, medical, and media panic, but no effective plans to do something other than panic. And no trust in Nature and her inexorable ways. As the psalmist said, “Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem, frustra vigilat qui custodit eam.”
Perhaps we can’t really prepare for it, except by expecting shorter life expectancies. The world changes in ways that we don’t necessarily like.
Robert, my Latin isn’t very good, i.e. not existent. Would be handy if you could add an English translation after Latin / anything not in English.
Minority, my apologies. In times of stress, I do have a tendency to fall back on the Vulgate, and I apologise for ay annoyance. “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain”. (Psalm cxxvii:1)
The OFW paraphrase could be: “Except everyone has enough, together with a cohesive culture,…”
Try Google.
i would suggest to stock up now as more lockdowns are coming and definitely mandatory mask wearing for everyone if the virus is airborne grocery shops will be shut so too will be all transport modes this looks like it’s the end of BAU.
This is worrying.
Hint:
New cases, yesterday:
Germany: 298
Denmark: 10
Norway: 11
Sweden: 57
United States: 55,442
Anyone see a trend?
US is opening up with infections. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
None of us is a winner at this point. The world economy looks like it is collapsing. We have to try different things and see if any of them works, to keep our part of the economy from collapsing.
We have a medical system that cannot deal with a pandemic (actually it is rated 37 in the world).
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-health-care-rated-37th-worldwide/
It’s a just in time model, demanded by the economics.
At twice the cost of any others, it has failed.
With the current anti science political leadership, the results are obvious.
The medical system clearly has huge problems. They are to a significant extent related to the US’s overly processed food problem and its lack of exercise for most citizens. The medical system doesn’t give a very strong signal to people that they personally need to take care of their health, by their food and exercise. Of course, this message is hardest to follow for the poorest people, because they have a hard time finding and buying adequate fresh food and finding time for exercise.
Then the medical system uses a lot of overly aggressive treatment approaches that will make money for physicians. The approach uses lots and lots of specialists and sub-specialists, and a huge amount of imaging. The imaging leads to a whole lot of findings of something that is supposedly a problem, but really isn’t. The result is a system that is way too expensive for patients and doesn’t really work. Doctors in one specialty don’t see all of the connections with other specialties. Also, the system created is way too expensive. Poor people, especially cannot afford to pay for the system, even with insurance, because the insurance costs way too much relative to income.
We have a slothful, glutinous citizenship that can not deal with any pandemic.
So it goes, weak things break.
US citizens would be better off emulating squirrels. Durable and adaptable!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sweden-become-worlds-cautionary-tale-121752098.html
hint: Sweden
“More than three months later, the coronavirus is blamed for 5,420 deaths in Sweden, according to the World Health Organization. That might not sound especially horrendous compared with the more than 129,000 Americans who have died. But Sweden is a country of only 10 million people. Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40% more deaths than the United States…”
In the last week or two Gail put up charts that showed the UK was way ahead of Sweden re Covid-19 death rates. And yet the media keep focusing on Sweden? If you compared just Sweden and the UK, the conclusion would be locking down increases the death rate.
Usually the articles that demonise Sweden don’t discuss the economic effects of lockdown.
Anyone see a trend?
The more the US COVID death count departs from the infection count, the shriller the panic-meisters become?
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/cases%20vs%20deaths%202.jpg?itok=qYoCQ7_3
Let’s hope.
We are approaching 3 times the casualty rate of the Vietnam War for the US currently (a bit less).
That took 4 months. Vietnam? 5 years.
Hint:
This is just the start
Duncan, what makes you think this is just the start?
Also Duncan, the Vietnam War killed well over a million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians and also precipitated the mid-1970s Cambodian genocide and is still killing people today, both among the Vietnamese people as well as among US military veterans. That conflict was truly a gift to the undertaking industry that keeps on giving.
Limiting the Vietnam War death count to just US military casualties is a bit disingenuous to say the least.
Whereas the Covid death count includes people who died from all kinds of maladies who just happened to test positive for the antibodies to that strain or to other strains or coronavirus, or who exhibited symptoms consistent with COVID-19—as is the case with many people who died from TB, and even some people who from neglect in nursing homes or got run over by a bus.
Hint:
There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.
It is amazing to me how panicked many people are. They came inside and stayed inside. They have no desire to go out now, because they are afraid. They are still hiding, except for a few trips out for medical reasons. Every article they read about some rare side effect sends them further into hiding mode.
I’m curious how you guage that there are a lot of panicked people who are staying inside. Here in San Francisco, CA, people seem to be going about their business, somewhat, just wearing masks. People are out in parks, walking in the neighborhoods, riding bikes, driving, picking up food, eating at sidewalk restaurants. I see them with my own eyes in the 6-10 mile round trips I make daily via bicycle.
I think that there is a difference between older (65+) and younger people. Older people, especially those with a strong Democratic leaning, are convinced that all that they have to do is wait inside until a vaccine is available. If they have a lot of health issues themselves, they see this as a good reason to stay inside, order groceries online, and wait until the problem goes away.
Younger people are more willing to venture out, especially the Republican leaning ones. The Democrat leaning ones are more cautious.
I know a woman who is about 55 or 60 (a Democrat). She is very concerned about going back to in-class high school teaching this fall. She is afraid that even if the school system tries to mandate masks, students won’t really wear them. She is concerned about getting COVID-19. She is also concerned about getting together with other adults after she starts teaching, for fear she will be a carrier and give COVID-19 to others who are perhaps more vulnerable to a bad outcome than she is.
I heard on BBC radio 4 this morning that a large mall somewhere in England that opened 4 weeks ago (malls are not open yet in Scotland, or maybe they open today?), the number of visits from customers is currently down 60%. Pubs in Scotland opened last Saturday, but only if they have a beer garden (not many). They don’t look very busy to me. Some will be, not others. One that was open on Saturday was shut on Tuesday. Not sure why.
Meanwhile, all the supermarkets are busy, which could give the impression things are back to normal. They are for supermarkets.
Good point, D Idaho, and yesterday at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ the US had 61,848 new daily cases. That number keeps ratcheting up not long after Dr. Fauci said it was going higher and could go as high as 100,000 cases a day. Rand Paul said Dr. Fauci was being too negative but the ‘actual reality’ is his warning was correct.
The trouble is masks and social distancing has been politicized with many people demanding their right not to wear a mask in public or social distance, but this makes it extremely easy for the virus to spread.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-rally-tulsa-spike-coronavirus-cases/
‘Tulsa health official says Trump rally “likely contributed” to spike in coronavirus cases’
I would say to those claiming masks do nothing, that the middle ages was centuries ago and its time to get up to speed in the 21st century. No one expects uneducated people to understand something that requires an electron microscope to see, but I suggest they leave science to the scientists and take the recommendations of doctors (who have studied science).
“The trouble is masks and social distancing has been politicized…”
(let’s set aside for now the other politicized factor where mass lefftist protests had so many who didn’t wear masks.)
the other trouble is that immmature young adults have found out the FACT that their chance of death is very low, and they mostly have resumed their usual socializing.
this explains the large increase in cases combined with the plateau of deaths.
look at the top two graphs in the worldometers link.
mid April daily cases about 80,000 and daily deaths about 8,000.
and now daily cases about 200,000 and daily deaths about 5,000.
daily deaths are down from the April peak.
on a side note, world population continues to increase by about 200,000 per day.
5,000 COVID deaths per day is peanuts.
Hey, not so fast! COVID Deaths Matter!
Lockdown-related deaths is another matter altogether, of course.
Bogus Lockdowns Matter
Bleak Lives Muzzled?
https://res.cloudinary.com/dywkbcfp5/image/upload/w_1260/c_fill,g_auto,f_auto/v1594120193/mgwjryavluxu61w7p5bz.jpg
Telling statistics. Then, deaths were 10% of cases, and the panic media spent all day talking about deaths. Today, deaths are 2.5% of cases, and the media have duly stopped talking about deaths, and spend their whole time talking about cases. Clearly, the goal is not truth, but politically convenient disinformation. The fact that the precipitous fall in the death rate is unequivocally good news is a fact that must be concealed at all costs, because it only confirms the view of the skeptics that this entire panic was based on lies and opportunism.
I respectfully suggest that the excessive deference to authority that you are suggesting is a wonderful way of getting into all sorts of trouble.
But since you’ve suggested doing precisely that, let’s see what one of the world’s most eminent doctors said back in March.
Wearing masks and gloves as a precaution against coronavirus is ineffective, unnecessary for the vast majority of people, and may even spread infections faster, experts said Tuesday.
While near-total lockdowns have been imposed in Italy, Spain and now France, the World Health Organization’s advice has remained unchanged since the start of the global outbreak: wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and keep your distance.
The WHO says it is advisable to wear a protective mask in public if you suspect you are infected or someone you are caring for is, in which case the advice is to stay home whenever possible.
“There are limits to how a mask can protect you from being infected and we’ve said the most important thing everyone can do is wash your hands, keep your hands away from your face, observe very precise hygiene,” said WHO’s emergencies director Mike Ryan”.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-masks-gloves-dont-coronavirus-experts.html
* Michael Joseph Ryan is an Irish former trauma surgeon and epidemiologist specialising in infectious disease and public health. He is executive director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme, leading the team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday released guidelines on the use of masks as controversy swirls in some countries due to political leaders’ remarks over their use.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a thrice-weekly video press conference that he wanted to talk about who should wear masks, what materials they should be made of and when they should be worn.
In June The WHO updated their guidance on masks:
“I wish to be very clear that the guidance we are publishing today is an update of what we have been saying for months: That masks should only ever be used as part of a comprehensive strategy in the fight against COVID-19,” said Tedros.
“In the light of evolving evidence, WHO advises that governments should encourage the general public to wear masks where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult, such as on public transport, in shops or other confined or crowded environments,” he said.
Based on new academic research, Tedros said the WHO advised people to wear masks consisting of at least three layers of different materials, as outlined in the guidelines, if wearing fabric variants.
He cautioned, however, that “masks on their own will not protect humanity from COVID-19 and the WHO continues to recommend that people who are sick with symptoms of the virus should remain at home and should consult their health care provider.”
The WHO was asked about any guidance for political leaders in the US, where it was noted some key leaders at the White House did have masks on at a press conference Friday.
President Donald Trump has also publicly expressed his distaste for wearing masks in front of journalists.
“This guidance is given as guidance to our member states and it must be interpreted and adapted by national authorities accordingly,” said WHO’s executive director of health emergencies, Dr. Mike Ryan.
“We have no specific advice for any specific grouping at the country level other than certain occupational hazards or other areas like health care, where we believe there’s a significant excess risk and then in that situation, we advise very specifically, the type of mass to be used.”
So, to sum up, the world’s ultimate experts have no specific guidance for anyone at the country level apart from certain occupational hazards such as health care. Got it?
“world’s ultimate experts”? Tim, you have an excellent command of bitter irony. Thank you.
WHO:
“the wide use of masks by healthy people … is not supported by current evidence and carries uncertainties and critical risks…. There is no current evidence to make a recommendation for or against their use.” https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of-masks-in-the-community-during-home-care-and-in-healthcare-settings-in-the-context-of-the-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)-outbreak
CDC:
“Currently we are not finding any data that can quantify risk reduction from the use of masks”, a CDC spokesperson told Reuters.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-coronavirus-mask-efficacy/partly-false-claim-wear-a-face-mask-covid-19-risk-reduced-by-up-to-98-5-idUSKCN2252T6
British Medical Journal 9 Apr 20:
“Face masks make breathing more difficult. For people with COPD, face masks are in fact intolerable to wear as they worsen their breathlessness.[5] Moreover, a fraction of carbon dioxide previously exhaled is inhaled at each respiratory cycle.”
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1435/rr-40
Seems suspicious….perhaps false positives are a bigger problem. On the CDC FAQ I found these nuggets “A positive test result shows you might have antibodies from an infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. However, there is a chance a positive result means that you have antibodies from an infection with a virus from the same family of viruses (called coronaviruses), such as the one that causes the common cold.”
also “Regardless of whether you test positive or negative, the results do not confirm whether or not you are able to spread the virus that causes COVID-19. ” So basically useless then…testing is not specific or definitive….carry on folks.
This madness needs to end now…..deaths are trending downwards and there should be a post-peak declaration from the so-called authorities who are losing more and more credibiliy as each day goes by.
” WHO acknowledges evidence that virus may be airborne
The World Health Organization has responded to an open letter from more than 200 scientists calling for recognition that COVID-19 may be airborne.
Speaking at a media briefing on 7 July, Professor Benedetta Allegranzi, WHO Technical Lead, said: “We acknowledge there is emerging evidence in this field, as in all other fields regarding the COVID-19 virus.
Therefore, the high priests want all Church of Science parishioners to wear masks as part of their COVID-19 mass ritual.
https://www.stolenhistory.org/attachments/1594209258103-jpeg.49097/
That is a great quote: “Imagine, if you will, a virus so dangerous you have to be tested to even know that you had it.”
https://preview.redd.it/yzj2wifo4v751.jpg
How ironic, that in order to save ourselves, we are once again bending over backwards to kill off the rest of life on the blue planet.
Coronavirus: ‘The masks you throw away could end up killing a whale’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-53287940/coronavirus-the-masks-you-throw-away-could-end-up-killing-a-whale
Walking around the streets of Aberdeen, which I do most nights for exercise, face masks and plastic gloves are now two of the most common items of litter on the streets. I pick up most other plastic rubbish I see, but usually not gloves or masks since I don’t wear gloves myself.
Take-out food generates a huge amount of litter in the United States. Food a person cooks themselves, or eats within a restaurant, are much less of a problem.
Same here, takeaway food and drinks containers. So many plastic bottles/cups. And now, gloves and masks.
Of course I’ve already taken a very modest position on the monetary system, I do take the position that we should just end the Fed. — Ron Paul
https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
A bunch of mostly well-known and well-to-do anti-Trumpers have signed a letter lamenting the lack of tolerance and the growing signs of totalitarianism on their own side. But of course, goes without saying, it’s all Trump’s fault. This lot are absolutely pathetic! Dr. Frankenstein’s monster is turning on its master. The revolution is devouring its own children. At times like this, we need to make sure we have plenty of popcorn in stock.
“In these desperate times, I feel the two actions that are essential are to take courage and to pray.”
—Ira Katz
Read this one and the articles linked to for a dose of realism.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/ira-katz/the-end-of-modernity/
The author says “I feel like I am participating in a kind of giant Milgram experiment where the population of the world (at least the developed world) is being socialized into unthinking, fear inspired obedience.”
Absolutely. Very good article. Especially to the point is the unthinking trust in government of people who – in IQ terms – are intelligent.
There is something going on in such minds – the minds of the prosperous goodthinkers who work in these systems – that I do not understand. Is it self-interest? Is it just an act? Don’t they care? They must see what is happening, surely. Do they think that they are invulnerable? Do they believe that if they cooperate with the revolution, then the revolution will not eat them?
But revolutions always eat plenty of their own. Always.
Marx confessed to Engels that he dreamed of being a part of a world revolution that ‘would in turn swallow me up and destroy me’. Pretty perverted stuff! Maybe it added drama to a dull life.
As for what is happening now I really can’t say.
No doubt they cannot imagine that they too could one day be victimised for one tweet or unacceptable word, and they are of course people who have never experienced persecutioof any kind of hardship at all.
My sister re-tweeted a call for the ‘extermination of the whole white race’ with full approval, even though she was calling for her own murder. Although I suppose a breeding programme would get rid of us?
It’s like religious insanity, hating yourself for some primal ‘sin’. But without giving up all your worldly wealth or whipping yourself every day – so comfortable and easy.
One thing we can be sure of is that economic collapse, poverty and bad diets will reduce brain function and send people half-crazy.
Please tell your dear sister from me that the only truly white people are the albinos, who are among the world’s most persecuted minorities, while “the whole white race” is merely a meaningless social construct. It covers people exhibiting a very wide variety of skin tones and includes everyone from the Jews to the Irish these days!
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/11/19/obituaries/14Ignatiev2/14Ignatiev2-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg
Those Irish, they’ve sure got rhythm! Enough to make whitey very envious.
Hey, you have an ignorant-SJW-feminazi-black-culture-obsessed-white-man-patriarchy-loathing sister too? Well whattya know… that makes two of us 😀
So difficult to deal with such disparity of values within a family unit. I’m constantly saddened by the fact that my dear sister seems to be more concerned with the plight of special interest groups, her gender, and “social justice” than the well-being of her male family members (I swear that my father and I would have to be dragged off to a gulag to die before she’d realize the consequences of the ideals she champions, and even then I’m not sure she’d get it).
Thus my hope that collapse comes quickly, lest all this madness is allowed to be dragged out for so long that it starts to violently divide families en masse…
Cheers,
-GBV
Indeed, the whole radical Left loony litany, in a demonstration near you! I sympathise deeply.
I stand condemned as the fascist patriarchal elder brother – by default simply because ‘If you are not one of us, you are against us.’
The irony is, of course,that in an earlier age I would have counted as rather Left-wing: welfare state supporting (for decent people); pro-Union (intelligent ones that is), anti-plutocrat, etc.
She used to be well-read, very bookish, but now her reading habits are confined to the latest rabid tract or pseudo-‘herstory,’ in a self-indoctrinating bubble. There is a whole lava flow of this rubbish for young people to drink up and go mad on.
GBV, yesterday’s email update from my granddaughter reported that she had just finished Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, and was considering making her own regency style dress. There are only three gifts you can give your family that will endure: love, nurture, and education.
I would pay good money to watch a Regency-costumed version of the Peloponnesian War. A love story is just what Thucydides needs to bring the story to life.
The left mindset is completely rotted by guilt feelings and sheer stupidity, and a grotesque hypocrisy on top of that. I am sure that most people who shout “BLM” don’s t have any black friend and would suffer a disgust if their children wanted to marry a person of color.
Likewise my leftist friends who advise for the rescuing of all that Mediterranean “refugees” only do it because they don’t feel their nice jobs are endangered by these refugees. It’s easy to defend “correct” ideas when you pay nothing for them, when who wiil do the paying will be the others, the unskilled workers. Dumb hypocrytes.
“Ceux qui lancent les révolutions sont toujours les cocus de l’histoire”, said Daniel Cocu-Bendit.
“Ceux qui lancent les révolutions sont toujours les cocus de l’histoire”
What have cuckoos got to do with it?
Cocu in french means “cuckold”.
cocu, cocue
adjectif et nom
(de coucou, la femelle de cet oiseau ayant une réputation d’infidélité)
Qui est dupé, trompé : Dans toute cette histoire, tu as été le cocu
So the phrase means: Those who make the revolution will always be betrayed (ie, made cuckold) by it (and by History)
“Two years in college. Why do you ask?” said Alan Alda in “Canadian Bacon.”
The Herd Instinct is successful in part because a lone individual gets 100% of the predator’s attention. In a herd of 10, each individual has a 90% chance of not being the predator’s focus. Herds, flocks, schools, tribes, etc. are a successful form.
As populations increase, Alpha individuals emerge. We see the “pecking order” in chickens. Daisey was the Alpha of my goat herd. She led and the herd followed. The other goats fought among themselves but none ever challenged Daisey.
Tribes have Chiefs. With the development of agriculture, we got Kings and Emperors, etc.
Whereas the ability to observe one’s environment and respond successfully is the key to survival, with the rise of Chiefs and Kings there developed a second necessary observation and that was to see the desires of the Alpha.
It may be obvious that the Sun rises in the east, but if the King says it rises in the west and that you are either “with him or against him”, the truth must be adjusted. There had always been the “empirical truth” but now we also have a “political truth”.
When the King states his truth and it does not conform to your empirical observation, you can challenge the King or you can agree to what ever he says. If challenging the King is not a viable option then you must convince the King that you are “with him”, regardless of the empirical truth that you have observed.
This requires that you be able to act like something that you are not. Dramatic acting ability is held in the highest esteem in our culture.
Another response that developed to avoid conflict between the empirical truth and the political truth is to not make the empirical observation in the first place. There was selection for eliminating the empirical observation ability so as not to challenge the political truth. We don’t need to see the empirical truth. We only need to see what the King wants the truth to be.
Political truth has overcome empirical truth. We are in the correction.
Form Follows Function.
Yes, we are in the era of political truth. Intermittent electricity is supposedly equivalent to dispatchable electricity, at least in the eyes of liberal politicians. We don’t need to worry about the long transmission lines that intermittent electricity needs, or the fires that these lines cause. Economies never collapse; instead prices can be expected to rise to encourage more production and more substitution.
If we just lock down the economy for a bit, COVID-19 will go away and never come back. The economy will bounce right back again afterword.
I have the impression from Jared Diamond, as well as others, that some primitive groups can be terrorised by their shamans.
He refers to one who was a murderer, but the tribesmen wouldn’t touch him because of his powers.
So, we have another ‘truth’: holiness, or contact with the spirit world and presumed ability to harm people thus.
Which in a way brings us round to Wokesterism, and their increasing power to curse individuals, intimidate them and destroy their lives.
Now, where’s my spear,and does my feather look good in my hair today?
“Shamans” have many possible counterparts in our society. We may think first of the clergy, but these often lack the charisma we associate with shamans, and may derive their authority from a central institution (the manager at a fast food franchise is not like a chef de cuisine). New Age trance channelers and TV evangelists are closer. Remember that Shamans also heal diseases (e.g. by entering spirit worlds to return souls that have wandered away). give advice on various subjects using divination, and may have a leadership function. But we don’t think of them in the same category as doctors, economists, or politicians. Maybe we should.
Absolutely, beidawei. The titles may change throughout history, from civilization to civilization, but the underlying functions don’t. On shepherding the people:
“Understanding the Common Knowledge Game has been the secret of successful shepherds since time immemorial, in business, politics, religion… any aspect of our lives as social animals. The only difference today is that technological innovation provides a media toolkit for modern shepherds that the shepherds of the Old Stories could only dream of.
This is why sitcom laugh tracks exist. This is why performances, whether it’s an NFL game or Dancing with the Stars, are filmed in front of a live audience. This is why the Chinese government still bans any internet pictures of the Tiananmen Square protests, with their massive crowds, more than 20 years after they occurred. This is what John Maynard Keynes called the Newspaper Beauty Contest, which he believed (and demonstrated) was the secret to successful investing through the 1930s. This is how Dick Clark built a massive fortune with American Bandstand. He didn’t tell Middle America what music to like; he got a crowd of attractive young people to announce what music they liked (‘it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, I give it a 94, Dick!’), and Middle America took its cues from that. Not only is that all you need to motivate sheep, it’s far more effective than any efforts at direct influence.
This is why executions used to be held in public and why inaugurations still are. This is why Donald Trump cared so much about the size of his inauguration crowd. This is why he’s always talking about the viewership and ratings of his televised appearances. Trump gets it. He understands what makes the Common Knowledge Game work. It’s not what the crowd believes. It’s what the crowd believes that the crowd believes. The power of a crowd seeing a crowd is one of the most awesome forces in human society. It topples governments. It launches Crusades. It builds cathedrals…”
https://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/
Among the Zulu, at least at the time of Shaka Zulu, the tribal leaders would be lined up and the medicine man would pass along them to “sniff out” a witch. Witches have a particular smell. Everyone would participate in this activity freely and those accused of being a witch would accept the (fatal) accusation with resignation, not denying it, but only wondering how they had become witches.
Madness such as we are seeing today also reminds me of the Anabaptists of the Munster Rebellion. That was yet another corrupt communist nightmare.
The city was under Anabaptist rule from February 1534, when the city hall was seized and Bernhard Knipperdolling installed as mayor, until its fall in June 1535. It was Melchior Hoffman, who initiated adult baptism in Strasbourg in 1530, and his line of eschatological Anabaptism, that helped lay the foundations for the events of 1534–35 in Münster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellion
The wikipedia version of events in Munster is very mild indeed compared to accounts I have read elsewhere.
I’m not an historian, but I found this 4+hr. podcast about those events quite riveting:
https://archive.org/details/48ProphetsOfDoom
(Had been free when I listened to it; now $1.99 on the Dan Carlin site.)
P.S., the above link is a free archived version.
Thanks, Lidia. I will get this.
Check out this modern witch hunt. Imagine triggering a whole boatload of Karens simultaneously (first 1 min. of this video gives a taste).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcztPCUHNN8
Interview with the male victim here (19’) if you want more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n7HXV7VGhg
There are more clips of other crazy accusers elsewhere, and for real masochists the entire 4-hr. Zoom mtg. video is online, as well.
I don’t know why I am drawn to watching this train-wreck.
We now have two different ways of thinking. The article you link to follows the belief of the rich: We have moved into a new era; we don’t need many police; all people are pretty much alike, if we just treat them right.
Then there are the pragmatists. We never really made it so the world where everyone is equal. Now there definitely is not enough to go around. We cannot waste valuable resources in forever fighting COVID or promoting ideals that cannot really be the case now. We need to look around at the world we really have today.
An excellent comment.
“Big and mid-cap firms globally are expected to slash capital spending by an average 12% this year as they reel from the fallout of lockdowns and other measures imposed to rein in the coronavirus pandemic, analysts’ estimates show…
“The predicted cut is bigger than the 11.3% decline that occurred in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-companies-costs-graphic/companies-seen-slashing-capex-12-this-year-deeper-than-in-2009-data-idUKKBN2480YH
“Bond investors are losing their appetite for South African debt after the government increased issuance a second time this year to help plug a yawning budget deficit… some analysts questioned whether investors have the stomach to continue absorbing the pile of new debt at a cost that’s still low enough for the government to afford.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/debt-sale-may-tell-if-investors-can-stomach-south-african-glut
“The government of Zimbabwe has spent millions of dollars on luxury cars for senior officials despite a deepening economic collapse that has plunged its people into profound hardship.
“The new cars, including dozens of Range Rovers and Toyota pick-up trucks… were distributed to ambassadors and senior civil servants.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/07/zimbabwe-spends-millions-on-officials-luxury-cars-as-country-goes-hungry
“Experts have advocated a review of the national food security structure to address an imminent possibility of food security crisis that may hit Nigeria as a result of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the agricultural sector.”
https://punchng.com/experts-say-food-crisis-imminent-in-nigeria/
Right. And that review will need a big committee and they will of course all require new Range Rovers to get about doing their investigative work.
If they are smart about it the committee will be made up of underrepresented people.
Any criticism of their salary or work (what reviewing will they need do if it’s already very obvious food production will be inadequate in the future??) will be construed as a hate crime. Above them will be a layer of administrators who make even more money for doing nothing and no one will complain because they will be invisible.
A person might wonder who would want to buy the debt of South Africa, Zimbabwe, or Nigeria. All sad cases.
“Ethiopia’s Water, Irrigation and Energy Minister Seleshi Bekele has pointed an accusing finger at Egypt over recent unrest…
“The government says the neighbouring country’s motive was to stop Ethiopia from continuing with the Grand Renaissance Dam project… Construction of the mega dam has sparked tensions with neighbouring countries that are downstream on the Blue Nile.”
https://www.nation.co.ke/kenya/news/africa/ethiopia-blames-egypt-over-unrest-vows-to-fill-mega-dam–1446814
“Kurdish authorities fear a humanitarian disaster in northern Syria where Turkey is accused of deliberately inducing a drought by cutting off water from the Euphrates River.
“Water levels have declined by up to two-thirds, with Syrian farmers in Qara Qawzaq — just outside Kobane — warning that their livelihood will be seriously hit by the shortages.”
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/fears-of-humanitarian-disaster-turkey-cuts-water-supply-northern-syria
Not enough to go around is a big problem!
“A review of the bank-specific results published by the Fed using February’s pre-pandemic assumptions shows that some large banks would be operating with thin capital margins even under those more benign scenarios.
“For instance, Goldman Sachs’s supplemental leverage ratio dipped as low as 3.5%; Morgan Stanley, 4.5%; JPMorgan Chase, 5.1%. Unfortunately, we don’t know how these and other large banks will fare under the more-distressed conditions caused by the pandemic.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2020-07-07/fed-s-bank-stress-tests-weren-t-transparent-about-pandemic-risk
“Absent the sharpest of V-shaped recoveries, Europe’s banks will at some point need to recognise the new economic reality and raise their provisions for loan losses dramatically.”
https://www.ft.com/content/918fe325-8a7f-4646-9031-6e7f2d61b3db
“Japan’s financial regulator is running out of patience with regional banks that are struggling to adapt to an increasingly grim business environment.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/08/business/corporate-business/banks-models-adapt/#.XwV6jyhKjIU
Banks everywhere are going to be in terrible shape! Eventually, so will pension plans and insurance companies, too.
Have a paid-up Whole life insurance policy with Nationwide (who bought out the original Provident Mutual Company), whose Chief Economist I last heard was my old college classmate David Berson, the same guy I asked during our 2006 college reunion how Fannie Mae ( where he was Chief economist at the time,) was doing. His reply: “Oh Fannie’s fine. Doing well.” We know what then happened.
I now wonder if I should just cash this out along with my Provident Variable Whole Life (again bought out by Nationwide) I bought back in 1988. Combined death benefit from both would be about 250K to my 16 year old daughter, but cash value may be 80K. (Haven’t looked at their CV in years.) At 65, and a black sheep of the medical profession who can no longer work, I am worth more to her dead than alive. I never thought I would be looking at things through such a grim distorted lens, but being out of work and a useless eater really is depressing.
And plow the cash into physical gold and silver of course.
There is a second hand market for unwanted life insurance policies which may pay out more than cashing it in.
My impression is that the reason they pay out more is because the buyers generally have diseases which are expected to end in death in a matter of months. The proceeds are needed to pay for hospital expenses.
If you are in good health, I wonder if you could get a good “deal.”
I expect that taking money out of the whole life policy might make sense now, given how much the situation has changed.
A major question is what you do with the proceeds. I am not sure gold and silver coins are the only solution. Arguably, you could buy large boxes of Latter Day Saints storable food, and keep them. Some people want to invest in land and planting equipment. Or guns and ammunition, to keep others away. Or $20 bills, hidden under your mattress. It is a question of what will work when, but I honestly don’t know the answer.
We can guess that Social Security and pension plans of many kinds will not last for many years. But they may last for a while, if debt and more debt is used to try to fund them.
Will your daughter outlive you? In a collapse, it is not obvious.
My advice has been to first spend whatever is needed/useful today. Of course, trips are pretty restricted right now, and big gatherings get to be problematic too, especially if they run into New York Covid-19 14-day quarantine requirements.
Beyond this, my advice has been to diversity. Some in bank accounts, and perhaps some in other types of assets. It is up to you.
“We can guess that Social Security and pension plans of many kinds will not last for many years. But they may last for a while, if debt and more debt is used to try to fund them.”
I just signed up for early retirement just for that reason and I know several others who have already done that and are going to do the same.
“Arguably, you could buy large boxes of Latter Day Saints storable food, and keep them. Some people want to invest in land and planting equipment. Or guns and ammunition, to keep others away. Or $20 bills, hidden under your mattress. It is a question of what will work when, but I honestly don’t know the answer.”
A mixture of all these things (and more – don’t forget water purification, and also upgrading your practical skills) would be good, and would also be true diversification, not the faux diversification pushed by the financial industry.
Cheers,
-GBV
Hubbs, I wish you good luck in finding some honest and rewarding work to keep you occupied. That’s the best medicine for your current symptoms.
When you write “I’m worth more to her dead than alive”, I am reminded of that Jimmy Stewart movie It’s a Wonderful Life. Perhaps the corniest film ever made, but very uplifting just the same.
As Clarence (the angel) says in the film to George, who has gotten into deep money troubles and tried to drown himself in the river, and subsequently been shown what the town would be like if he’d never existed: “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
“Pakistan’s financial woes are going from bad to worse as the national fiscal deficit surges to over 7% of gross domestic product (GDP) and could breach 9-10% as state revenues dry up amid Covid-19 economic devastation.
“That’s raising questions among analysts and business executives of whether the country is headed towards a budgetary blowout-induced financial collapse.”
https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/pakistan-on-brink-of-covid-19-financial-collapse/
“Investigations into at least three major crashes in Pakistan in the past decade found the pilots were either at fault or didn’t follow guidelines. Khan said that 262 of over 850 pilots in Pakistan had fake qualifications and many didn’t even sit the exams themselves.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/deadly-crash-and-fake-pilots-expose-pakistans-broken-airline/articleshow/76845236.cms
What???!!!!
I would have expected something bad but that is beyond…beyond I don’t know what!
It is a puzzling story, for sure.
I may be missing something but wouldn’t it be self-defeating, perhaps even suicidal, to fake one’s way into a job as a pilot?!
Perhaps being a pilot isn’t as tough as we’d otherwise believe (for a majority of the everyday, let-autopilot-fly-the-plane situations, anyway)?
My buddy has been playing flight simulator games for at least a decade – wonder if he could fake his way into a pilot job? Though, not sure how many pilots we’ll be needing in the future with coronavirus and financial collapse and all…
Cheers,
-GBV
As part of the hiring process at US carriers, all applicants for pilot positions are tested in a simulator to make sure that you are who you claim to be. The simulated aircraft is entirely hand flown. They don’t let you turn on all that gee whiz stuff. And while the simulator can’t fly, it will quickly determine if you can. Nintendo pilots would not stand a chance of passing the sim check.
Cheers, D3G
Glad to hear that!
There was a fake book restorer, of all things, going around 10 years ago.
He’d turn up with lovely books restored or bound by someone else, get work on the strength of it and then return wholly ruined books to the dealer.
Quite mad, I suppose.
But I was rather taken aback when people suspected I hadn’t done my own samples, as imposture in a craft would never have occurred to me.
Could a fake book restorer also be a restorer of fake books?
Apparently, fake Books are collections of songs with a notated melody line, chord symbols, and complete lyrics. According to a blurb I read, these books are the mainstay of professional musicians, and once you’ve learned how to use a fake book, you’ll enjoy a new level of playing experience.
Bizarre! But people will do whatever they have to do to earn a living. Perhaps if they are clever, they can learn to understand the basics.
“France, Italy and Spain will contract more than 10 percent this year, the commission said in its summer economic forecast on Tuesday.”
https://euobserver.com/economic/148877
“Despite dealerships starting to open and the automotive sector resuming business, sales in June in Germany, Spain and the UK were still down by more than 30% compared to 2019, and were 23% down in Italy. The ACEA now forecasts a 25% fall in new car sales for the whole of 2020.”
https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/financial-models/europe/analysis/new-figures-reveal-catastrophic-coronavirus-impact-new-car-sales?a=JMA06&t%5B0%5D=ACEA&t%5B1%5D=SMMT&t%5B2%5D=KBA&t%5B3%5D=Anfia&t%5B4%5D=ANFAC&t%5B5%5D=new%20car%20sales&t%5B6%5D=COVID-19&curl=1
“”The number of UK jobseekers has surged at its fastest pace since 2009 as the coronavirus lockdown recession has hit jobs hard, recruiters have warned.
“Salaries for new starters are falling as more applicants chase fewer jobs, as employers across all industries cut back hiring, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/07/08/number-jobseekers-surges-fastest-pace-since-financial-crisis/
“Thousands of protesters have clashed with riot police in the Serbian capital Belgrade after the country’s president announced the reintroduction of a lockdown following a spike in coronavirus cases.”
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-riots-in-the-serbian-capital-after-government-reimposes-lockdown-12023505
People power wins out:
“Serbia’s president U-turns on plan to reinstate coronavirus lockdown after thousands protested against the move and tried to storm parliament building.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8503323/Serbias-president-U-turns-plan-reinstate-coronavirus-lockdown-thousands-protested.html
“China went out and snapped up cheap crude at such a breakneck place that they now have their own critical oil storage issue. International news has been reporting for weeks on China’s jam-packed waterways filling up with crude tankers.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Worlds-Biggest-Oil-Importer-Is-Running-Out-Of-Storage.html
“U.S. crude oil stockpiles rose last week, against expectations for a draw.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil/oil-falls-as-u-s-inventory-build-stokes-supply-fears-idUKKBN249049
“Iran has slashed crude oil production to its lowest level in four decades as storage tanks and vessels are almost completely full due to a fall in exports and refinery run cuts caused by the coronavirus pandemic…”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/iran-oil-storage/irans-oil-storage-almost-full-as-sanctions-and-pandemic-weigh-idUKL8N2E83XE
“Mexico’s state oil firm Pemex is asking some of its contractors if they would agree to be paid for their services next year, people familiar with the payment situation at the company with US$105 billion of debt told Bloomberg.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Debt-Stricken-Mexican-Oil-Major-Asks-For-Payment-Deferrals.html
“The world’s top oil and gas companies locked in cheap borrowing rates to raise a record amount of debt in the second quarter of 2020 and boost cash reserves as a buffer against a collapse in revenues because of COVID-19.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-oilmajors-debt/coronavirus-pain-drives-big-oils-dash-for-record-debt-idUKKBN2481KF
“The Great Lockdown has been a common shock felt by refiners around the world, though some sectoral end-users and major economies are emerging faster than others.
“But the slump in margins and profits is intensifying the competitive pressure on the oldest, smallest and least complex refineries, mostly in Europe and North America.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-oil-kemp/column-global-recession-will-hasten-refinery-rationalisation-idUKKBN248206
Good that they can keep going for now.
Mexico is well along to total collapse.
This is why crude imports for China are expected to fall in the future.
“In a financial crisis, the theory goes, people cut back on gym memberships, eating out, and holidays. But on a bad day (and during a financial crisis, those bad days are legion), a consumer will still reliably reach for retail therapy: picking up a cupcake, a magazine, or, famously, a tube of lipstick.
“This financial crisis might be different. After all, why wear lipstick when no one can see your smile anyway?”
https://fortune.com/2020/07/07/lipstick-index-face-masks-coronavirus-nail-polish/
How true.
I learnt to bake my own cupcakes and pastries in lock-down, haven’t bought a magazine in months and won’t take out a subscription for delivery in case the publishers go bust.
And as for lipstick, well darlings, for whom would I be putting it on? The dog?
One imagines that male grooming has plunged on your island, too, Sir Harry?
Xabier, alas it is so. I haven’t had a haircut since February and am starting to look as if I have escaped from a Jim Henson show.
https://img.cinemablend.com/cb/7/f/0/b/9/9/7f0b99bc322893384e861c3605b34c35d654a186555ee2f13ac0ffb38386486c.jpg
One might name it the ‘Freedom for Scotland!’ cut? Such an inspirational film of total twaddle.
“Braveheart” was fantastic entertainment but unfortunately also anti-English celluloid demagoguery, and quite harmful in that respect.
Well, with spatial distancing of 6 ft, no one needs to wear deodorant anymore!
Have deodorant sales fallen?
Here’s a story about difficulties with supplies of imported goods in New Zealand caused by effects on supply lines of cut backs of international flights since the onset of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The article suggests that it is a tough situation but that retailers are more positive about future prospects. I have to wonder how reliable such positive expectations are given energy and other resource issues not related to COVID-19 – which the article does not mention at all, of course.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/122057391/empty-shelves-as-retailers-struggle-to-get-stock
“There was a significant improvement in retailer confidence, with 73 per cent of retailers saying they expected their business would survive the next 12 months, he said.”
so 27% of retailers expect to fail within the next 12 months.
“We are still in a period of catch-up, but we will emerge out of this in late August or September and that is when there will be a reckoning around job numbers and the economy,” he said.
this is what I keep sensing as the reality of the situation. The reckoning is coming later this year when a large % of the unemployed realize that they are permanently unemployed.
Just what preys on my mind as I view the shops in the city centre which are still closed and boarded up here, quite a few of them. It’s painful to think about.
It will be particularly hard for people as the winter brings long, dark and often depressingly wet days in Britain.
A saving grace during lock-down was the lovely weather here, one of the loveliest Springs I’ve ever seen.
One wonders what the political effects will be. The Left should be the champions of the unemployed working class, but they are mired in the puerile absurdities of identity, gender and race politics, which are totally irrelevant to the real hardships which are descending on the masses.
FACT OR FICTION ?
” “The Great Reset agenda would have three main components. The first would steer the market toward fairer outcomes. To this end, governments should improve coordination… and create the conditions for a “stakeholder economy…” It would include “changes to wealth taxes, the withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies, and new rules governing intellectual property, trade, and competition.”
The second component of the Great Reset agenda would ensure that, “investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Here the WEF head states that the recent huge economic stimulus budgets from the EU, USA, China and elsewhere be used to create a new economy, “more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building ‘green’ urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”
while such things as “fairer outcomes” and “equality” are noble endeavors, these paragraphs are a load of pseudo Utopian fantasy.
it’s intellectual rubbbish.
If the total profit is zero, perhaps it can be shared equally. But it won’t allow reinvestment.
Whenever I hear the term “stakeholders” I fear for my freedoms, my money and my property.
Or, put another way, all stakeholders are not equal. It seems the controlling stakeholders always have the advantage.
Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense. — Ron Paul
New York (CNN Business)It’s no longer all about the Benjamins. Or the Jacksons, Lincolns and Washingtons, for that matter.
The pandemic has accelerated the demise of cash because of infection concerns — and that’s great news for Square as well as Venmo owner PayPal.
Their stocks are surging this year as people shun physical bills and coins, shop online and send payments digitally in an increasingly contactless world. The use of paper currencies was already in decline before the coronavirus outbreak, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
PayPal (PYPL) shares have surged 65% while Square (SQ) has more than doubled so far in 2020. Both stocks are at all-time highs. And given the favorable trends, it’s likely that each stock could continue to thrive
Yes, Apple has set up shop on Amazon. That means you can get official Apple products with free Prime shipping.
When we go back to eating out, more of us will pay with our phones
When we go back to eating out, more of us will pay with our phones
Analysts are particularly bullish on Square and its popular Cash App.
On Monday SunTrust’s Andrew Jeffrey boosted his price target on Square, led by Twitter’s (TWTR) Jack Dorsey, to $150 a share — nearly 20% higher than the stock’s current levels.
“Square is poised to take meaningful direct deposit share from banks,” Jeffrey said in a report, adding that “pandemic stimulus highlights Cash App’s unique functionality, which we think can ultimately supplant traditional checking accounts.”
Square and PayPal are modern day banks for younger users
Other analysts agree that Square — thanks largely to its Cash App — is becoming the modern day version of a local community bank branch for millennials and Gen Z.
“Customers are clearly flocking to Square’s neobanking services,” said Rosenblatt Securities analyst Kenneth Hill in a report last week.
Hill upgraded his rating on the company to a “buy,” adding that “as Square develops, rolls out and monetizes a slew of services across the payments and financials ecosystems, it will lay the groundwork to make the company a need-to-own name for years to come.”
PayPal is benefiting from some of the same trends.
“Even as the broad Covid-19 lockdown measures are slowly eased around the world, demand for PayPal’s services remains at the elevated levels observed in April,” MoffettNathanson analyst Lisa Ellis wrote after her meeting with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman last month.
Ellis said that Schulman noted there is “absolute certainty” that PayPal will add at least 15 million new active users in the second quarter.
Paypal co-founder: Tech companies must start taking the moral view
PayPal co-founder: Tech companies must start taking the moral view 02:01
PayPal is also looking to expand its offerings to become even more of a one-stop shop for the financial needs of younger consumers. In addition to Venmo, the company recently bought shopping discounts and rewards site Honey.
There has also been speculation that PayPal and Venmo could soon offer the ability to buy and sell bitcoin through the two platforms.
PayPal has not made any formal announcement about that just yet. Such a move would make sense given how successful bitcoin trading has been for Square.
Its Cash App revenue from bitcoin has nearly quintupled from a year ago, to $306.1 million, Square said when it reported its first quarter results in May. Bitcoin transaction sales accounted for nearly a quarter of the company’s total quarterly revenue.
With that type of growth, it seems only natural that PayPal would want a piece of the crypto pie.
“After Square’s large success with bitcoin trading…it was inevitable companies such as Venmo and PayPal [would] follow suit,” said Guy Hirsch, US managing director for brokearge firm eToro, in a report last month. “These large fintech payment firms see an opportunity for significant growth in the cryptomarket.”
The cloud will run things
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/fbi-chief-slams-chinese-cyberattacks-against-us-hudson-institute.html
‘FBI chief slams Chinese cyberattacks on U.S., calls it ‘one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history’
“To achieve its goals and surpass America, China recognizes it needs to make leaps in cutting edge technology, but the sad fact is that instead of engaging in the hard slog of innovation, China often steals American intellectual property and then uses it to compete against the very American companies it victimizes, in effect, cheating twice,” he said, adding that the Chinese government targets “research on everything from military equipment to wind turbines.”
“When asked if the United States had an estimate on the financial damage the Chinese government has caused on the American economy, Wray said he didn’t know of an exact number, but added that “every figure I’ve seen is breathtaking.”
China has a different code of ethics. Not coming from the Judeo-Christian tradition, I don’t think, “Thou shalt not steal,” is part of it.
I’m assuming you would need a smart phone or something like it. Smart phone use was at about 60% of the world population in 2019, What are you going to do about the other 40%, who’s going to pay for the other 3 billion phones and the energy to run them when they make less then $4 a day?
I was at Moscone Center when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, held and examined it, and wasn’t quite sure (it was released months later).
Never have had a “smart phone”, even when Apple tried to give me one.
Excellent tracking device.
Cryptomoney has no ultimate value, because its perceived (imagined) value is only what the ‘creation process’ says it is.
which is nonsense
Because money is only a token of energy exchange.
you fix my car—i give you money, you use that money to buy food—-that food delivers enough energy for you to fix somebody else’s car. It is a fixed process of universal economics that cannot vary other than in size.
Even Bezos is locked into the same system. He must continually redirect his capital assets into more throughput warehouses that ultimately deliver cardboard boxes to your doorstep by a food consuming man in a fuel burning van. (in exchange for your ‘real’ money)
It isn’t possible to bend the economic process to suit your idea of ‘value’, If the process of fixing my car is worth say $£500, you can’t alter that input value and charge me £$ 500,000 just on a whim, or some kind of electronic bidding system that delivers a different value figure–or because rates had changed since yesterday.
The underlying value of the ‘exchange of goods or services’ is what it is, in physical terms.
It’s easy to prove to yourself: Just ask for more wages than your labour is worth–you’ll quickly starve to death. Brain surgeon or garbage collector—the law is fixed. Bank robbers might work to different rules, but only in the short term.
Yes, some people have made money out of cryptocash–just as there are people who always make money out of Ponzi schemes. They get out early and sell their holding to the suckers coming up behind. The oldest trick in the book.
Ive tried to explain it here:
https://medium.com/@End_of_More/the-myths-of-crypto-currency-f5dea863d116
“Because money is only a token of energy exchange”
I agree with that. But my intuition is that in a few months/years, only digital currencies will allow people to get most services or goods. Which will give the banks an incredible power over people meaning they won’t be able to control their wages or savings. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t belive the dollar to survive any longer. Today looks like being in a desert with 1 billion dollar but with no food or water. What will you do with 1 billion? nothing…
Just another thing: the cryptocash as we know it today will be much different when controlled by central banks…
How does cryptocash work without electricity? asking for a friend
Slowly
LOL!
you don’t need so much electricity. Only a few data centers with solar panels and batteries. Must people don’t believe there is a plan but I do. Rich people has known what happens right now. They are prepared and not ready to lose their power / money. So they need a very little tiny quantity of energy to transform their dollars into cryptocurrencies before it’s too late and the dollar disappears. What other solution do you think they have? Of course the rest of humanity will have no or a little quantity of this new currency (which would require a lot of electricity that can’t be produced).
Don’t kid yourself.
We are already on an electronic system. In relation to the overall amount of currency in the world, cash is only a fractional amount. Everything is ones and zeros.
If the grid (or the net) were to go down, then so does the money system along with your ability to buy most items. Banks no longer carry much cash on hand.
quote: “Cryptomoney has no ultimate value…”
You can say exactly the same thing about all current (fiat) and historical money/currencies (gold / metal based). They are all means of exchange with no intrinsic value. The value they have is based purely on people’s trust. Trust, that in the future you will be able to exchange them for something valuable for you.
The crypto-currency is the same thing, only in digital form. Instead of hybrid money system – digital (electronic-banking systems zeroes and ones) plus physical (cash) – we’ll have purely digital, under control of the centralized banking system.
Concentration of power. This is what is required by the PTB right now.
Trust is worth its weight in gold – so how much is that?
Craig, I agree. During almost two years here in Malta, I have never signed a contract or written a cheque. Every purchase, every house improvement (to date, EUR 4000 and counting) has been based on a verbal quote, sealed with a handshake, and paid for cash on the nail.I suppose an economist would call it “disintermediation”, but its true name is trust. As the Quakers said and lived by: “Verbum meum pactum”.
Well, it requires two levels of trust: one in the rules of the abstract system, and one in the physical means of delivery and reckoning.
Economics, money, and rule of law in my opinion have now been relegated to the dustbin of useless thought experiments, now that the specters of true energy costs, resource depletion, population demographics, and wild out of this world money printing have emerged.
At some point, it will dawn on people that fiat currencies of the world are meaningless and worthless, just like the imaginary monopoly game money.
People then will flock to “own” hard assets. So then what will be the new certificate of “ownership” in this new scheme? Stock certificates? I am not sure these haven’t been rehypothecated by Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), so if you don’t own the actual stock certificate issued by the corporation, you may be out of luck, just as you would be if you suddenly want to exchange your paper gold for physical. You own a certificate in a pool of non -allocated certificates.
The implication is a breakdown in rule of law that follows. How do you “prove” you own your farmland? A deed locked up in the court house? Yet another piece of paper.
My surgeon colleague whose family immigrated from Cuba at the onset of Castro’s regime related to me how the government officials just showed up at the door one morning. Suddenly his house, the family warehouse distribution business, and the building had become government property. This, like your bail-in-able bank accounts, belong to the bank or the government. Even the US government has issued under an Obama executive order that in the event of an emergency, the government can commandeer private property, and more.
Maybe Mao? was right- justice comes at the barrel of a gun- and it really depends which side of the barrel you are on.
In a state of emergency you don’t own even your own skin, it’s always been so.
“My surgeon colleague whose family immigrated from Cuba at the onset of Castro’s regime related to me how the government officials just showed up at the door one morning. Suddenly his house, the family warehouse distribution business, and the building had become government property.”
I came to a similar realization after hearing about local government officials ordering businesses to shut down indefinitely, and with no “relief” which guarantees that business will go bankrupt in a couple months. Most businesses don’t have a year’s worth of revenue in savings. Co vid gives governments the precedent to seize property at will. This does not bother socialists or Communists because they are hoping it will only be the rich, “The Man” or some other privileged group who will be deprived of their wealth and will be redistributed to them. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work out. Governments don’t only turn to the rich for money and resources, like physical land if they want to take some.
” Even the US government has issued under an Obama executive order that in the event of an emergency, the government can commandeer private property,” I thought the U.S. government could already do that in times of war. Since September 2001, the U.S. has two long emergencies… and since then Those Who Will Not Be Named have been chipping away at Constitutional Rights. It’s not Safe. Now, hand over the car keys, before you hurt someone. Self driving cars are safer.
Castro died of old age.
Batista was so bad, Castro and Che just walked into power.
A little conservative for my taste.
Yes, these Covid shut-downs are clearly a government taking. I tried to talk to a local rep. about this and got no traction at all. I don’t have a business any longer, but if I did, I would be up at the State House screaming every g-d day.
Might makes right. But I assume that some forms of might are better evolved toward compassion and commonsense than others.
You cannot count on having anything permanently. Government can take it away. Bandits can take it away. Protester can burn what you have down. You can lose the electricity, sewage disposal and fresh water that you are accustomed to, making your home no longer useful where it is, especially if no food is available either.
Reminds me of a saying somebody once said:
“Two is one and one is none”
– Somebody
Cheers,
-GBV
When stocking essential goods and tools, the saying is:
‘Three is two, two is one, and one is none’. If you only have one of something, one loss of breakage is a potential disaster.
This is probably why I have such a large collection of axes (OK, I just love axes) lamps, work tools, boots, stoves…….
I’m working on two or three wives, in order to have a spare on hand at all times, but that’s not an easy purchase -at the moment.
Multiple wives seems like a good idea at first, until you consider the idea of her having multiple husbands…
But hey, who am I to say polyamory is wrong? 🙂
Cheers,
-GBV
That is also true of life itself. Stuff has two parts, acquiring and then maintenance, maintenance of all sorts.The more you have, the greater the maintenance.
Reminds me of a patient who when I inquired how she was doing gave the reply, “Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.”
This damn virus has taken away real social interaction, confusing facts regarding the disease make socializing a throw of the dice, a sneeze at the wrong time can take it away.
If you have the aptitude for it, what can be kept is what is between one’s ears, it is portable and with a bit of luck grows until a person’s death. The only way to have it taken from you is to lose life itself, and then who knows?
All the best,
Dennis L.
Exactly so, Denis.
‘You only truly possess what you would not lose in a shipwreck.’ Persian proverb.
That’s if you assume ownership of anything to start with. Maybe Dennis is right: maintenance, maintenance, maintenance is all there should be. Maintenance of relationships, communities and systems that work, included. I understand that a portion of the San people in the SA desert have been there since the dawn of the modern human. I’m sure they never looked at possessions the way we do.
Dear Gail,
with the huge amount of money created by the Fed and ECB, could it be that the plan would just be destroying the dollar and euro (and any fiat money) to create a new crypto-currency?
This was said in february by Lael Brainard “The prospect for rapid adoption of global stablecoin payment systems has intensified calls for central banks to issue digital currencies in order to maintain the sovereign currency as the anchor of the nation’s payment systems”
full speech here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/brainard20200205a.htm
I don’t think cryptocurrencies really work because, as i understand it, they rely on electricity to do computations to generate them. We can’t keep wasting electricity on this kind of activity. Electricity isn’t here for the long term either.
Money of any kind cannot work across country boundaries very well, either. Relativities need to keep changing. This is a big problem with the Euro. The southern countries in the group need a lower relativity relative to the northern countries than they currently have. (In fact, pretty much all of the countries are doing poorly, even Germany.)
I do fondly remember the days of the Greek Drachma which without failure would devalue every year against Sterling to compensate for the price inflation of things we tourists bought. As soon as they entered the Euro all that changed, prices unfortunately kept going up and things eventually got too expensive for us to afford going there on holiday. Never been back since.
Not only have they really messed things up economically by joining the Euro, they threw away centuries of progress towards settled, localized cultures and more devolved, self-governing power.
The Greeks threw off their dynasts – the Ottomans and their satraps -in the 1820s only to then have the same system reimposed on them by the EU. It has been the same all over Europe, in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, in Italy and Germany – two centuries of trying to throw off the dynastic and imperial powers (including the Soviet powers) and then being caught in the net again. There had been so much progress for the people to free themselves from enslavement to the old centralized model of dynastic empires under the Windsors, Hohenzollerns, Romanovs, Habsburgs, Ottomans, etc, with their satrapies and exploitation and neglect of the periphery.
Even more for Greece, what was the point of the population exchange of 1921 (The Treaty of Lausanne) that swapped 1.4 million of the people of Turkey and Greece, if less than a century later Greece once again found herself powerless under the governance of the banker representatives of a centralized empire and being forced to reintegrate with the Ottoman Empire redux and Islam via mass immigration?
A few of things we know about the dynasts (globalists, imperialists): they take a very long view of history, they do not like the nation state (less power for them), and they are utterly determined to reverse and overthrow it.
Oh, and most of our leaders are on the side of our enemies.
Kim, much of this was foreshadowed over a hundred years ago, in a very long epic drama by Thomas Hardy, called, I kid you not, “The Dynasts”.
“Electricity isn’t here for the long term either”
I tend to disagree because electricity may remain as the only affordable energy in the future and this is the only way to control people with all the data it can provide through mobile phones, for exemple. I take the bet!
The prices we pay for electricity are not high enough to keep the whole supply chain in place to obtain the electricity we need. Parts of the supply chain will at some point break.
The subsidies given to wind and solar are a big part of the problem. Because of their intermittency, their value to the electricity system is very low. Yet, they are given priority on the grid. When they are available, the price of electricity for other providers drops very low or even negative. This drives all kinds of other providers out of business. Nuclear power, which has historically been a much bigger source of low-carbon electricity than wind and solar, is driven out of business, unless the companies get local subsidies. Wholesale electricity prices are too low for other fuels are too low as well. These leads to closed coal mines and less drilling for natural gas. Fires under electrical transmission lines get to be an increasing problem.
At some point, the electrical system will stop functioning. In fact, pieces may stop functioning sooner. California had outages and fires last year. Venezuela was in the paper for its outages too. These, too, were related to fires set by transmission lines. Getting these fixed and keeping them fixed, is a huge issue.
Perhaps when the grid goes down we will see pockets of semi-modern life continue near hydro-electric dams and, perhaps, near large solar and wind farms (those that can be kept in service post-collapse, at least for awhile, anyway)?
Cheers,
-GBV
I live in France in an area where we have a nuclear plant and a lot of hydroelectricity. We do not depend here on renewable or fossil energies to produce electricity. I guess this is more resilient than most areas in the world.
The parts and other inputs to keep that nuclear plant going probably rely on a lot of fossil fuels (and a JIT delivery system) though…
Cheers,
-GBV
Thierry, try moving to parts of Puerto Rico which are now dark, due to their electric utility being bankrupt, even before hurricanes destroyed most of the grid. Explain why the largest electric utility in California, supposedly one of the richest nations in the world, has declared bankruptcy multiple times, and cannot afford to maintain the grid. Try moving to those areas where your house will go dark regularly, then permanently.
The truth is that grid operators will increasingly lose money, cut corners, and let the grid fall into disrepair.
Go to parts of the Mideast, that have blackouts every day.
Our civilization is based on electrification and as Gail has so well explained, we are killing our grids by forcing solar and wind on them.
You are not immune, even though you are presently near a functioning nuclear reactor.
Actually, the whole idea of cryptocurrency stays in line with de-complexification progress. It allows to process and register transactions in ‘cheaper’ (energy-wise) model. Block-chain / DLT solutions allow to get rid of complex, centrilized, prone to hacking systems. It might consume more energy in terms of IT system operation, but it offers much more savings (in terms of people and infrastructure) in maintenance and especially in IT security area.
IMO the concept of ‘cashless society’ will be required to:
a/ control interest rates – including negative values to support consumption,
b/ control money flows and eliminate grey/black zones of the economy.
kesar
good point!
Gail, if cryptocurrencies don’t work because they rely on electricity, then nor do millions of other things….like electric lights, cars, dishwashers, you name it. Or the Internet.
On the contrary, cryptocurrencies are incredibly smart and useful. They are
Global
Permissionless
And distributed…ie, not controlled by any central authority.
In these three respects they mimic the design of nature. You find trees everywhere – they’re global. They need nobody’s permission to grow – they’re permissionless. And they’re not centrally controlled by anyone or anything.
So you can send money with a cryptocurrency anywhere in the world without having to ask anyone’s permission. Also, there are many cryptos that will do this at zero cost. And there are many that will do it anonymously too – just as a cash transaction is anonymous.
But there’s much more. They are programmable too, so that payment is irreversible once certain conditions are met, eg, your goods are shipped.
Finally, they are recorded in an encrypted ledger thatq cannot be hacked. And they can’t be created out of thin air either.
Their only problem is that the establishment in all its forms hates them because they disintermediate the establishment. You no longer need banks, insurance companies, all manner of middle men and regulations, governments even.
An update on China’s woes from Crossroads. Again, impressive flooding images. Bubonic plague makes for eye-catching headlines, but it is easily controlled with antibiotics, for now.
Bubonic Plague Re-emerges in China; 17.7 Million Impacted by China’s Floods, as Situation Worsens
Thanks M of 1, these crossroads are interesting.
Kim, what changes did you make to your diet to resolve the health issues you mentioned a couple of days ago? Add new food items, remove some, both?
There are two intertwined goals to this diet: 1) reduce inflammation and 2) improve digestion. They are two sides of the same coin.
1) Reduce inflammation and improve the state of the intestinal biome. So that basically means resolving leaky gut and stocking the intestine with good bacteria.
Key points:
– Eat little to nothing that comes in a packet, jar, etc. There are exceptions of course but you have to be careful.
– Low carb. This doesn’t mean no carb, but my diet revolves around steamed vegetables, lots of green leafy and and orange vegetables. I am not a nutcase about it but I stay away from high glycemic vegetables like potatoes and so on. Do not eat corn. Most corn is GMO and very suspect wrt leaky gut. I eat avocadoes in season. They are great.
No wheat. No rice. And so on. That is, no grains. This is the hard part for most people, I think.
Remember that bad bacteria in your intestines thrive on carbs.
Fruit? I do eat some fruit, in particular papaya, pineapple and mango (occasionally and in season), but papaya and pineapple are rich in papeine and protease, which are digestive enzyme. Still, you have to be aware that they are high glycemic, so you can’t overdose.
.
The overall point, especaily wrt carbs, is to have a steady insulin level throughout the day with no big spiking. High insulin means low cortisol and low testosterone. That is not good for body repair. In this connection, also do not eat two hours before dinner as that will spike insulin and lower cortisol. You need the cortisol to be operating as long as possible while you sleep, for body repair.
Alcohol? I have a drink a couple of times a year.
Don’t smoke.
– Adequate protein. So anything you want but personally I eat plenty of fish. I tend to cook things in advance and put them in the fridge so I always have a few different meals to choose from to go with my veges. I also eat eggs, beef, liver ( you can just par-boil it and keep it in the fridge then slice it into all kinds of things you are knocking up), whatever
– No dairy. I am not against it except that modern milk is not remotely like real milk, which I love, I have a guy here who can give me raw milk. My God, it is heavenly, but it is at least 30% fat. I would end up like Old King Cole if I drank it daily. Modern milk is just all carbs. Diabetes fuel.
– No legumes (e.g. peas, garbanzo beans, peanuts) and nuts unless they are fermented. So, soy sauce is usually fine because it is fermented. Soy products like tofu are usually fine because they are usually fermented. Fermentation stops the soy from being estrogenic. We don’t want more estrogen. We already have plenty from plastics, from being overweight, etc.
– Get most of your calories from fats and oils. But make sure the oils are good. Do not use modern factory seed oils like canaola or safflower or corn oil or peanut oil. I use only palm oil (cheap and tastes good) or coconut oil which is easy to get here and i like the taste. Olive oil is fine of course (if it is not a Mafia fake product).
Lard is great, even though people don’t cook with it any more. My mom used to save the lard from the lamb roast and cook with it. Everyone used to. It is as healthy for you as can be. Enjoy the fat on your steak. It is the best part.
Make soups with a nice sheen of marrow from the cow’s shin. Mmm mm.
– Must, must, must eat sauerkraut or similar (like kim che) every day. Home make sauerkraut. Easy and delicious. Sip the juice if you like. I make it with some grated fresh turmeric and eat it as a vegetable with my meals. It is probiotic of course and will help your system build up its good bacteria and crowd out bad bacteria.
– I do take vitamin C daily. I get adequate sun – D3 is linked to digestive health too – but if I am not getting enough sun for whatever reason I take a D3 supplement. Adequate D3 is needed for good sleep. Good sleep is needed for body repair.
2) Improve digestion: specifically restore proper levels of hydrochloric acid (HCl) to the stomach and – a downstream result of that,- increase the production of protein and fat-processing enzymes.
A very common problem many people have, especially as they age, is low or weak stomach acid. Our stomach acid is a first line of defense against all kinds of hostile microbes entering our systems and of course it is involved in adequate digestion. We don’t want poorly-digested food entering our intestines as that can lead to leaky gut (undigested proteins penetrating the intestinal wall and provoking auto-immune reponses, possibly leading to chronic inflammation).
So, first thing, no coffee. Coffee is alkaline. We want to have an acid stomach. This was very hard for me as I was a big coffee drinker, but it definitely worked. I still miss coffee.
If you have a chronic long term problem with low stomach acid (indigestion), you might try a course of Betain HCl. It is an over the counter product. You take it before meals as a digestive assistant. You start with a higher dose and over a few weeks reduce it. Our bodies recycle HCl, so over the course of a few weeks your stomach acid levels will improve as yu retain the HCl and you will no longer need the Betain HCl.
Low stomach acid leads to low enzyme production. Enzymes for digesting fats and proteins are produced in the gall bladder in response to the stimulus of increasing HCl levels in the stomach. You get hungry, HCl levels rise, this rise signals the gall bladder to produce enzymes.
A great way to supplement and stimulate enzyme production is to eat papaya seed. Papaya seed is chock full of papeine, the enzyme used in meat tenderizing. Fresh seed is best but dried is okay too. This stuff works like a charm. Buy a papaya, scoop out the seeds, dry in the sun if yu want to keep them. Modern papyas from Hawaii and California are GMO. I do not know whether that is a problem. Maybe not.
Also, don’t graze all day. Give the system a rest. Let your insulin drop back and flatline. Eat just once or twice a day. You might like to research a little on “intermittent fasting”.
Anyway, the emphasis on HCl and enzymes is important because the goal is to reduce inflammation and you can’t do that if you have leaky gut and undigested rogue proteins are penetrating your gut wall and entering the bloodstream. We have to have good, thorough digestion.
Finally, if you do have intestine wall damage, you can help repair it by consuming twice a day 5 grams of the amino acid L-glutamine. You don’t have to keep this up. Just do it until you heal. It really does work.
So that’s about it. Probably more than you expected, but I hope it helps.
“do not eat two hours before dinner”
Sorry. I mean “two hours before sleep”
Like a lot of US people, I had my gall bladder taken out quite a few years ago. (It wasn’t even causing a problem. Some doctor saw something he thought looked abnormal on an image of some kind, and told me that I should have it taken out. Might be pre-cancerous, he claimed.) I wonder whether being without a gall bladder reduces my ability to digest fats. I tend to eat a fairly low-fat diet, and I don’t seem to have a problem.
A lot of people who have the gall bladder removed will supplement with Ox Bile tablets or similar. But why remove the gall bladder? Who knows? I don’t know why doctors do a lot of the things they do.
As to your eating a low fat diet and having no problems, I expect that you would need an enzyme supplement if you were to eat a fattier or more high protein diet. Fats and proteins don’t digest themselves.
But as always, if you are having no problems, then there is probably no reason to mess with things. Some people get sick easily. Other people just have the constitution of a mules. Just seems to be how it goes.
I agree with the health benefits of most of your recommendations. Though, I still consume a significant amount of grains in my home made and 100% whole grain sourdough bread. Sour dough fermentation enables your digestion to absorb the plentiful minerals in the whole grains, it also turns the bread into a much more easy to digest product. Gluten is partly to almost fully broken down for instance. Sour dough breads are also more delicious and quicker no bake than ordinary breads, a couple of minutes of work for each bread to mix the ingredients. No kneading. Of course you have to wait a day or two in order for it to ferment (depending on the level of sourness you wish).
Cooked potatoes are not that bad. I always consume them unpeeled, many nutrients in the peel, similar to grains. White rice and sifted wheat flour are much worse than potatoes.
Dairy products seems good except for the processed low fat milk. Butter is an excellent fat, tasty on sour dough bread.
Beside eating decently, training and fasting are important contributors to health. I indulge in intermittent fating most of the days, only eat within a 6-7 hour time span. Feel energized from it, even when doing forestry work at home. Of social reasons I sometimes consume breakfast, no need to fast every day.
Interesting. I’ve never felt ‘energised’ from fasting, although people do refer to it as a common experience. My clarity of thought is pretty high anyway, and energy levels.
Right about lard, the traditional fat, of course, for frying an English breakfast, roast potatoes, batter pudding – simply delicious stuff!
And in this climate you could rub yourself down with it for the winter.
Kim, thanks for this very extensive report.
There’s a lot in there to digest. 🙂
Thanks for the detailed reply. Plenty for me to chew on, so to speak. Most of the foods you suggest I already eat, and like. GMOs I try and avoid like the plague, I think they are uncommon in the UK, but you never know. I have read that although you don’t get gmo milk here (whatever that means), the animals can be fed on gmo grains from abroad, so I usually buy organic. One of the few products where there is not a big premium for buying organic.
Very close to Dr Gundry’s “Plant Paradox” diet (no processed food, no grains or animals fed on grains, no legumes, no nightshades, no vegetable oils, no dairy from northern European cattle). Dr Gundry also emphasises the importance of a healthy gut biome and the prevention of leaky gut. Perhaps the main difference is Gundry recommends olive oil for cooking rather than animal fats.
You were on your diet long before Dr Gundry’s book came out. How did you find out about healthy eating? The only thing I can remember being taught about a healthy diet in my school biology classes is our teacher telling us fish and chips is a well balanced meal!
The first part of the video talks about the floods and other natural disasters affecting China.
The latter part of the video is about how China manipulates world thinking through its influence of the stories news reporters write. It does a lot of influence peddling, by building mansions for leaders of underdeveloped countries, and bribing them with projects.
One thing the latter part of the video mentions is that the EU is resuming air flights to China, but not to the US or Taiwan.
The weather section on the BBC’s website often does special videos on areas of the globe that are experiencing weather extremes. At the moment there is a video re India and Bangladesh, and another on Japan.The country that lies in-between, China, is missing. Oddly it gets a passing mention at the end of the Japan video. 200-300 mm of rain over the next 5 days. The same weather system is affecting China and Japan. Not sure that you can see this video outside of the UK.
Japan expects more rain after weekend of flooding [plus China] (06/07/20202)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/53308003
I could see the video. The amount of rain that China has been getting is simply amazing. The fact that it is supposed to continue is even more amazing.
It would seem like such a huge amount of rain would have an adverse impact on crops, even apart from the flooding. Of course, the northern part of China always seems to be quite dry. We don’t know whether that is continuing.
Northern China is in for a dousing, too:
As downpours continue to batter vast stretches of China, especially areas in the south, leaving at least 121 people missing or dead, forecasters have warned of a grim flood control situation in the north, which hasn’t seen major floods for years, from precipitation that is expected to be much heavier than normal.”
http://www.ecns.cn/news/2020-07-06/detail-ifzxwann9879607.shtml
Dmitry Orlov was in a pithy mood in his latest post “Charting the Collapse of the American Empire”.
He says: ” . . . this empire, just as any other, rests on three pillars: Culture, Ideology and History. Knock out any of these out, and the empire’s collapse becomes likely. Knock out all three, and its collapse is assured. Since the 1970s the US was at the top of their game in all three of these categories; today—not much any more.”
He asserts that economic damage such as that (self) inflicted by COVID is survivable for an empire, but when belief in the stories at the foundation of a culture are lost, then collapse follows.
“Public statues that are being toppled in the US right now. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and many lesser ones are coming down from their pedestals. While they stood, they served as bungs in barrels full of history that was said to be full of heroism and virtue. But what do you think will come pouring out once the bungs are removed?”
And finally:
“It may be painful to admit that the American Empire may be collapsing . . . [but] the good news is that, to save yourself the pain, you can always follow contemporary American political tradition and just blame it all on Russia.”
Question: Who will Putin elect this Nov – Trump or Biden?
The joke may also be on Australia because we’re 100% a US lapdog politically. E.g. we’re busy screwing up our #1 trading relationship with China with no plan B in sight.
“He asserts that economic damage such as that (self) inflicted by COVID is survivable for an empire, but when belief in the stories at the foundation of a culture are lost, then collapse follows.”
And I would have to disagree with him because the Global eCONomy along with it’s supply chains are highly complex. When they become disrupted bad things happen even to the periphery. Let’s see Russia try and sell oil which it is highly dependent on to customers who no longer need it or have the money to pay for it.
Let’s see China run its eCONomy with customers who no longer have the money to buy their trinkets. Let’s see China run its eCONomy without oil because production is way, way down, because oil producers are either out of business or find the oil not worth pulling out of the ground because of costs. Orlov, tends to think USA = bad, Russia and China = good.
Notwitstanding, Russia has a better survival rate than most countries: big area, vast ressources. Population peaked at 148 M. in 1991. One hundred years before, in 1897, their pop. was ~70 M. USA IOW has ~60 M people in 1890 and 320 M now. Five times more against two times more in Russia. Who’s a shorter way to go?
OTOH
For psychopayhological reasons that perhaps only he could explain, Orlov lives for his anti-American schadenfreude. Don’t anyone let him in on the secret that it’s the whole shebang that is going down, not just the US.
Simply a huge case of sour grapes
It does get tiring and obvious that he hates the West and the good guys are in the East. Yet he lives in a Western Nation.
I am not sure where he lives. His wife and son live in Russia, as far as I know. For a while, he lived on a sail boat, but that doesn’t work with a family.
His post seems to be available to subscribers only. This is where Google sent me. https://www.subscribestar.com/orlov
I no longer read Orlov. His anecdotes and attitude were sometimes amusing, but why should I pay money to read recycled stuff from Oswald Spengler, Halford John Mackinder, and others who thought better and wrote better.
He turned into a propagandist, it’s really only the old Soviet line about the uniquely corrupt and doomed West.
A pity, as he wrote some informative stuff in the past.
Jason said it best, his thoughts sounds more like sour grapes
“Growth in company profits has slumped in recent times as the worldwide economy has cooled. Investors need to brace themselves for a shocking annual fall in 2020 too as the Covid-19 outbreak weighs, a report shows…
“According to the asset manager corporate earnings will sink by more than a fifth (22%) year on year…”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roystonwild/2020/07/06/global-dividends-could-collapse-34-in-2020-profits-to-fall-by-a-fifth–janus-henderson/#584666102549
Markets, which we have come to view as all-encompassing judges of risk and opportunity, are reading this crisis wrong. Sharemarket optimism should be ignored. Its high-flying mood is nothing more than a punt on the flow of free money.”
https://www.ekathimerini.com/254353/opinion/ekathimerini/comment/markets-are-mistaken-the-new-normal-is-here-to-stay
“…gold still retains its glitter and was still lingering at near an eight-year high thanks to a fantastic second quarter, up 12.5 percent to around 1,800 dollars per ounce, the highest in eight years. Add that to the 4.5-percent gain in the first quarter, gold has in total risen 17 percent so far this year – the best rally since 2011.”
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-07/Gold-at-8-year-high-still-retains-its-glitter-RW5xFTJm12/index.html
Profits way down; dividends way down. Pension plans that were having problems will have even more problems, especially if some companies collapse completely.
“Global oil demand could fall by 2.5 million barrels per day as coronavirus cases surge in several countries, including the U.S., according to a new report.
“If coronavirus-stricken regions impose new restrictions on business and travel, global oil demand could fall to 86.6 million barrels per day, down from the current 89 million barrels per day, a report from Rystad Energy said.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/global-oil-demand-could-fall-by-25-million-barrels-a-day-as-coronavirus-cases-surge/ar-BB16oyLy
“U.S. crude supply is falling at its quickest pace ever… Weekly U.S. output recently fell to 10.5 million barrels a day, down from a near-record of 13 million barrels a day from late March, government data show.
“With companies from Chevron Corp. to Continental Resources Inc. shutting in productive wells in response to the coronavirus, the slide marks the biggest 11-week drop on record in figures going back to 1983.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-oils-rise-is-a-historic-drop-in-u-s-crude-output-11594027801
“These days, the Bakken is looking like anything but a boom.
“Drilling in the once-prolific shale formation straddling North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada has all but halted — another victim of the pandemic that sapped fuel demand worldwide.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/the-one-time-heart-of-shale-may-never-boom-again-with-dakota-access-shut-1.1461449
This story is about the impact of the recent court ruling, disallowing the use of one of the pipelines taking oil away from the Bakken. According to the story:
In another example of falling demand, I saw that in Poland production and consumption of electricity for April this year was down 11.55 for production and 9.76 for consumption compared with April 2019. May was down 12.2 for production and 8.25 for consumption.
Surely production and consumption of electricity are the same. If there is a difference where does it go?
Export?
Production decrease in country could be greater than consumption decrease because they also import some from neighboring countries. That was my guess at explaining the difference.
There is a lot of importing and exporting of electricity among European countries. Intermittent electricity leads to a lot of shortages and oversupply. Electrical transmission capacity is not necessarily sufficient to do as much swapping of supply as desired. Some countries want to keep out German exports of unwanted electricity because they lead to negative wholesale electricity prices.
Actually, the MSN story says that before the big drop in demand in April, global oil demand was 100 million barrels per day. The story is about a double dip forming. After the dip, consumption will be down to 86.6 million barrels per day, or about 13% off of pre-collapse consumption.
A bus driver in France was declared brain dead on Monday after being attacked for refusing to let passengers on board without face masks, in line with rules imposed to combat coronavirus.
Can we chalk this one down as another COVID-19-related death?
A French bus driver attacked over face mask stance is declared brain dead.
“A police source in Bayonne, near the ritzy Atlantic resort of Biarritz in south-western France, said five people were now in custody over the incident on Sunday evening.
The source said the driver, in his fifties, tried to prevent a man who was not wearing a face mask from boarding the bus with his dog. The driver also asked four other passengers, who had already mounted the bus without masks, to get off.
Face masks are mandatory on public transport in France, where the Covid-19 outbreak has claimed nearly 30,000 lives.
The driver was repeatedly punched in an assault that resulted in a serious head injury, said the source. He was unconscious when he arrived at a hospital, and doctors declared him brain dead on Monday.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/07/french-bus-driver-attacked-face-mask-stance-declared-brain-dead/
Five have been arrested. But no pictures of the alleged perps? Odd.
If there are no pictures, we know exactly who is not being pictured.
in a country where a single truck can run over “286 people”, “killing 84” of them, performing at photofinish without a single drop of blood in sight, why waste your time with photos? L’état profonde there seems to be very active. Psy-ops galore in the last decade. C’est tres jolie.
The wearing of masks is definitely controversial. If face shields (with a clear transparent piece of plastic extending down below the chin line) would be acceptable, they might be a compromise. They allow easier breathing and they allow people to see each other, and to talk normally. They are mostly sold to medical places now, and perhaps to the food industry. They can be wiped off with soap and water after use, also.
If more people were concerned with improving their own health ( moving away from obese, slothful/sedentary, poor sleep and over-processed “food”) they wouldn’t need to worry about masks or face shields. Strong people are harder to hurt/infect/kill, and are generally more useful.
We most often get what we focus on, at any rate, so a focus on improving strength/health/robustness seems most wise overall.
Masks and face shields do not improve health in any way.
I don’t think the problem is the cumbersome nature and/or deficiencies of whatever PPE is selected. I think it’s that people don’t like to be told to do things they don’t want to do, especially when they don’t see the benefits (perceived or otherwise) of having to do said thing.
On top of that, I’m sure some people – myself included – get frustrated by anyone who tries to suggest another person’s decision not to wear PPE in a public place puts their health at risk, as if suddenly everyone else in the world became solely responsible for our personal health & well-being. A bit like peanut allergies I suppose… perhaps we should scour the world for every last peanut and obliterate them from existence, because god forbid someone with a peanut allergy should come in contact with one. Probably should eliminate all bees, cats, dogs, smoke of any kind, and artichoke (my personal allergen-kryptonite) while we’re at it… 😐
Cheers,
-GBV
One day soon, we are all going to have sit down together with a nice cup of tea or coffee and have a cosy chat about the pathological fear of germs.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c0/1c/7a/c01c7a5178c07555cf92797e96b39e6d.jpg
Good point! My mother had a master’s degree in medical technology. She was convinced that we needed to keep away from germs of all kinds. But that was years ago. Somehow, our thinking needs to evolve.
“A squad of gun-toting police officers patrolled Myanmar’s sacred site of Bagan under the cover of night, taking on plunderers snatching relics from temples forsaken by tourists due to COVID-19 restrictions…
“Times are hard in an area dependent on tourism.”
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2020/07/07/2003739514
“Thailand has been cited as a success story in containing the coronavirus outbreak, having gone more than 40 days without any local transmission of Covid-19. Yet its economic outlook is the darkest in Asia.”
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1947252/thailands-economic-outlook-worst-in-asia-analysts
“The second quarter of 2020 could be the worst three-month stretch on record for Macau’s six concessionaires. That’s as the special administrative region’s (SAR) gaming industry remains hindered by travel restrictions keeping gamblers away from the casino center.”
https://www.casino.org/news/macau-q2-numbers-could-be-worst-ever-says-morgan-stanley/
There seems to be a ban on incoming flights to Thailand. Such a ban discourages tourism.
“This period of national crisis has not inspired unity. Americans are aiming their anger at each other, talking past each other, invoking race, class and culture. They cannot even agree on the need to wear a mask to protect against a virus that has killed more than 130,000 Americans.
These forces are converging as the country hurtles toward a convulsive presidential election.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/america-disrupted-troubles-cleave-a-nation-and-a-city/2020/07/07/0ba028b6-c019-11ea-8908-68a2b9eae9e0_story.html
“New York City, hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, is mired in the worst economic calamity since the financial crisis of the 1970s, when it nearly went bankrupt.
“The city is staggering toward reopening… Even so, the city’s unemployment rate is hovering near 20 percent — a figure not seen since the Great Depression.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/nyregion/nyc-unemployment.html
“Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. Thousands of businesses have shut down, some for good. Tax revenues have plummeted by hundreds of millions in just months since COVID-19 arrived in Hawai‘i.
“And Gov. David Ige on Monday said the worst is yet to come.”
https://bigislandnow.com/2020/07/06/looming-financial-crisis-ahead-for-hawaii-as-tax-revenues-plummet/
The Greatest Depression in world history is becoming more and more evident. Made possible by “more ons” in charge, who don’t understand the basics on how an eCONomy works.
This is what happens when career politicians such as Governor Cuomo decides for everyone that shutting down one of the world’s premier cities doesn’t have any consequences. Only a “more on” wouldn’t see that.
What’s taking place is with just one lockdown, expect more. It’s becoming painfully obvious that the Deep State in the USSA has decided they want Trump out of Office no matter the casualties, since the Russian Hoax did not work, even if it means bringing on the Greatest Depression. I am not a Trump sympathizer since I did not vote for him because I have never voted and never will.
Governor Cuomo made the situation worse by his ban on travelers from a long list of states, with a 14 day quarantine:
Alabama
Arkansas
Arizona
California
Florida
Georgia
Iowa
Idaho
Louisiana
Mississippi
North Carolina
Nevada
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
“Americans are aiming their anger at each other…. ”
Harry, this is just not true. It’s the left which is aiming anger at everything and everyone they can find, lashing out and using the useful idiots to do so. I see little evidence of any anger let alone looting, marching, burning and rioting from the center and the right.
john, I agree with you. But one would hardly expect the ultra left Washington Post to tell the truth: that a cabal of Marxist revolutionaries are trying to foment civil war, using black US citizens as mere cannon fodder.
“The coronavirus crisis has disrupted global food supply chains, leading to shortages in some countries. The World Bank warns 130 million people could be at risk of starvation.
“But an increasingly popular urban farming system could provide a solution.”
Video:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/swedens-vertical-farms-solve-global-food-shortages-200706083559427.html
“From Thailand to Kenya and Argentina to Britain, coronavirus lockdowns abruptly left millions of people… unable to earn enough money to feed themselves and their families.
“This is a new poverty and three months ago it did not exist,” said Angela Frigo, secretary general of the Brussels-based European Food Banks Federation.
“Due the pandemic and lockdown measures, some persons who had a good or normal financial situation now find themselves in a situation of food insecurity,” said Frigo, whose non-profit works with food banks and organisations in 29 European nations.”
https://news.trust.org/item/20200706113353-pqcfl/
Huge price tag for a few low-calorie greens, I expect. Very dependent on business as usual.
“China’s stock market recorded its biggest rally in more than a year on Monday after state media encouraged investors to pile into the market and reap the benefits of a post-coronavirus economic boom.
“State-owned Shanghai Securities News ran a story on Friday titled “Hahahahaha! The signs of a bull market are more and more clear.”
“A Xinhua story on Monday said investors were “running” into stocks while a front-page editorial in the state-run China Securities Journal on Monday talked up the prospect of a “healthy” bull market, adding that investors could look forward “to the wealth effect” of rising prices.”
https://www.ft.com/content/6a26f8c0-5538-4605-a64f-dce5a08d0600
“The speed of the past week’s gains in China is in many ways unseen since the stock bubble that burst five years ago. Monday’s surge alone added more than $460 billion to Chinese stock values, behind just one day in July 2015 as the biggest increase in shareholder wealth since the global financial crisis.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-07/all-eyes-on-china-s-unstoppable-stocks-after-460-billion-rally
“When things cannot go on forever, they stop. And so it is with China’s support of the US dollar…
“Ever since 2001, when China was allowed unfettered entry into the World Trade Organization, the country has played a huge behind-the-scenes role in pushing up the value of the US currency and suppressing US bond yields…
“We estimate that the bulk of the near-30 per cent rise in the US currency since the mid-2000s and about three-quarters of the drop in US bond yields can be attributed to China effects. These gains are fragile, though.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8e7379c5-9324-4d31-9fcb-fd1e7bc621b0
Wow!
Have those guys in Shanghai looked out the window at the Yangtze lately?
China getting absolutely inundated. I saw that poor old Wuhan set a new rainfall record:
“In the central city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus epidemic first erupted in December, a record-breaking 426 millimetres (16.8 inches) of rain fell on Sunday, the official China Daily reported and authorities were using giant pumps to remove water from the flooded roads.”
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/toll-rises-from-rain-storms-in-china-as-student-bus-plunges-into-reservoir-12909582
How long can the Three Gorges Dam hold up with this deluge?
Hopefully not much longer.
Whoops, did I just type what I was thinking? 😐
Some days it’s just too hard to pretend I don’t wish the whole world would implode / burn down / spontaneously combust…
Cheers,
-GBV
I had a deep look at the sustainable path and found it to be a utopian fantasy world if the world goes down this path expect massive amounts of money printing to support all the energy sinks that sustainability worships so much such as renewable energy ,recycling and many others.
I liked Norman Pagett’s description of the problem, “wish politics, wish science and wish economics.”
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2020/07/109779-open-restaurants-open-streets-program-announced-nyc
Twenty-two streets will be allowed to have tables with diners at them, instead of cars, in NYC, since restaurants are still not allowed to open.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-06/young-adult-who-think-they-are-invincible-hit-hard-by-coronavirus-newsom-says
‘Young adults who think ‘they are invincible’ increasingly infected by coronavirus, Newsom says’
“Now, it’s working-aged adults who are seeing their share of hospitalizations rise, while the elderly’s rate falls. By the Fourth of July, middle-aged adults made up roughly 45% of hospitalizations; seniors made up less than 30%; and the youngest adults made up more than 25% of hospitalizations.”
With those stats for younger sufferers, we really need a breakdown on class, occupation, ethnic group, other morbidities and whether or not they are obese.
It may be that if you are a sick, lazy, poorly-nourished young fatty the outlook is not that good – what a surprise! It wasn’t that good anyway……
It may be that a lot of them are Antifa or BLM members who’ve been out on the town recently.
I warned ’em those black bandanas don’t stop germs! 🙂
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-afEGotTmMBg/WpTPH8YGaII/AAAAAAAAHgI/SAteQQxTLsE2jNeRRBcqD6zmsND611hGwCLcBGAs/s1600/germs-germs-everywhere.jpg
Hospitals are the worst place for sick people, just like banks are the worst places for money.
Education system?
Justice system?
Renewables?
Green way forward?
Figured it out yet?
People under 45 are more at risk from lightening than Convirus.
They are in the firing line for the fallout though.
Here’s another COVID-19 cure for people who come down with nasty symptoms. Apparently, it involves vaporizing a corticosteroid called Budesonide in a nebulizer and inhaling it. And according to this doctor, it has worked wonders every time he’s used it on his patients.
https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=DW17519OBKGB
I see that it requires a doctor’s prescription.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/budesonide-inhalation-route/description/drg-20071233
According to Wikipedia:
I was prescribed budesonide along with a whole raft of drugs when I had pneumonia back in 2013, and have kept some on hand ever since in case the air pollution here provokes asthma (usually I’m a very mild asthmatic).
Being who I am, I decided to experiment with doses, and found that it does indeed stop an attack and is not only a preventative. In my case, it stops it quite dead.
This is actually found in the small print of the box leaflet, but doctors generally think it’s only to be taken regularly as a preventative.
Really serious asthmatics do, I believe, take it every day, about 4 times the dose that works for me, and then even higher doses when they have an attack – their lungs must be truly dreadful to need that!
Causes thrush if you don’t gargle with water after each use.
I stocked up on a lot in February when I saw what was coming, just in case – I feared the supply chain might be disrupted more than anything (as it still may be.)
Whats on the back burner? Its the main course. CV19 just a appetizer. Black lives matter just a appetizer. Both preparing for the main course. Cv19 with a command economy where certain things are curtailed. Black lives matter preparing with a foundation of hatred for the non PC. The main course War with russia of course. Obama took us to the brink but couldn’t pull the trigger. Hillary well she would have had war with russia in the first month. They learned. Its a hidden agenda until the election. The Boltons and his like of course hate trump. No war. Biden will do whatever the party wants. Obama had a mind and a heart. Biden is just a shell. He will deliver. My prediction. Biden will win. Thermonuclear war before end of 2021.
I don’t see a spec of sense in that nuclear war kind of “reset” (?). A thermonuclear war could never benefit anyone. There are only three independent countries in the world, and Russia is surely one of them. US has zero chance of win anything in a direct militar confrontation with Russia. Russian nationalism is very strong and cohesive and they cannot be bought (Putin canceled that attempt) nor conquered (occupied), Of course, Russia could be destroyed, but only at the price of MAD. So, unless the plan is to use nuclear war as an instrument of depopulation (which for obvious reasons would be totally dumb) you theory doesn’t make much sense, IMO. Are you suggesting the dems want to destroy the world? Including of course themselves and dear families?! – So its really true, they are alien reptiles?! OMG.
The dems dont make decisions based on outcomes only ideology and power. They have no tolerance for viewpoints other than their own. A good example is promoting wind and solar as alternatives to fossil fuel. It cant possibly achieve that goal yet it is promoted because it meets ideological beliefs. Physical world does not matter. Decisions are ideological based. The dems portrayal of anyone that has differing opinion as tyrants and hitlers has a clear base in intended violence. Clearly they see war as a legitimate policy to implement. This is also demonstrated by their tied at the hip relationship with various hawks and MIC. You can place my prediction in the “conspiracy theory” trash bin but the dems actions and rhetoric are quite clear.
Did you ever hear about The Great Reset?
It sounds to me a lot like the controlled demolition of the industrialized West using COVID-19 as a pretext.
The Great Reset
On June 3 WEF chairman Klaus Schwab released a video announcing the annual theme for 2021, The Great Reset. It seems to be nothing less than promoting a global agenda of restructuring the world economy along very specific lines, not surprisingly much like that advocated by the IPCC, by Greta from Sweden and her corporate friends such as Al Gore or Blackwater’s Larry Fink.
Interesting is that WEF spokespeople frame the “reset” of the world economy in the context of the coronavirus and the ensuing collapse of the world industrial economy. The WEF website states, “There are many reasons to pursue a Great Reset, but the most urgent is COVID-19.” So the Great Reset of the global economy flows from covid19 and the “opportunity” it presents.
In announcing the 2021 theme, WEF founder Schwab then said, cleverly shifting the agenda:
“We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind.”
The implication is that climate change is the underlying reason for the coronavirus pandemic catastrophe.
To underscore their green “sustainable” agenda, WEF then has an appearance by the would-be King of England, Prince Charles. Referring to the global covid19 catastrophe, the Prince of Wales says,
“If there is one critical lesson to learn from this crisis, it is that we need to put nature at the heart of how we operate. We simply can’t waste more time.”
On board with Schwab and the Prince is the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres. He states,
“We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.”
Note his talk of “sustainable economies and societies”—more on that later. The new head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, also endorsed The Great Reset. Other WEF resetters included Ma Jun, the chairman of the Green Finance Committee at the China Society for Finance and Banking and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China; Bernard Looney, CEO of BP; Ajay Banga, CEO of Mastercard; Bradford Smith, president of Microsoft.
Make no mistake, the Great Reset is no spur-of-the moment idea of Schwab and friends. The WEF website states, “COVID-19 lockdowns may be gradually easing, but anxiety about the world’s social and economic prospects is only intensifying. There is good reason to worry: a sharp economic downturn has already begun, and we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.” The WEF sponsors have big plans:”…the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.” This is big stuff.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/davos-great-reset/5715515
Global reset of capitalism! Waste no opportunity? “. . .we could be facing the worst depression since the 1930s. But, while this outcome is likely, it is not unavoidable.”
If you build ridiculous economic models, I suppose that you can claim any result is possible.
The idea of a Re-set’, ‘Transformation’, ‘ Clean Green Transition’, ‘New Doughnut Economy with Extra Coffee’ or what you, will over-estimates human agency in the face of an established complex system; and, of course, ignores Nature herself.
It’s reminiscent of the fantasies which were discussed excitedly at the time of the French Revolution -the perfect, just, prosperous society was about to be ushered in, sweeping away everything rotten. It was said that the time had come to right all social and economic wrongs and seize the moment.
Well, it didn’t happen, and they got 2 decades of imperial wars and millions dead, and the seeds of the arrogant nationalism which fuelled WW1 and WW2 were sown.
Mother Nature will do the ‘re-setting’, and it will not accord with any of these fantasies.
Mother Nature doesn’t do public consultations, and global elites and planners mean nothing to her.
‘O Great Mother, who makes all things to grow and all things to DECAY’.
Nationalism didn’t fuel WW1 and WW2. If anything, it was resistance to nationalism that caused those wars. Especially resistance to German national self determination.
In 1871 Germany became a nation that, in the eyes of Wall Street and the City of London, was economically and culturally too powerful for the liking of the bankers. They did not like the competition. Not one bit.
Thus they were left with two choices: control Germany or destroy Germany.
To say that the national aspirations of the Balkans, or Germany, or Hungary, or Africa, or Vietnam, or Korea were the cause of the world wars puts the cart before the horse as it was in fact the financiers of the hegemons (the globalist/imperialist ancestors of the EU, the Fed, Goldman Sachs, Vickers, Rothschilds, and so on) who brought those wars about as they resisted the nationalist aspirations of peoples and processes which they held captive. Thus, as always, they had a great reset for their times, sweeping the table clear with war as a way to reset it according to their own plans.
Nonsense, I’m afraid.
All the participating nations in 1914, at least, were ardently, almost insanely, nationalistic, that was my point.
But it was Germany that really went off the deep end – read Thomas Mann’s essay on the mood of 1914. And came back for more of the same in 1939, with an unchanged programme of expansion over inferior races.
Nazism itself has it’s ideological roots in the German resistance to Napoleon: the superiority of German culture, the right of Germans to rule other lesser races,such as the Slavs, etc. And it cemented the leading role of Prussia, a highly militaristic state, in German politics. Prussia after all, won the battle of Waterloo.
You also overlook the fact that many bankers in the US, above all German Jews, were in favour of German aspirations in 1914, and did everything possible to prop up Imperial Germany during the war with credits,a nd assist in reconstruction.
The US was profoundly anti-British at that time, and thought they could as well do business with a victorious Germany as with the old enemy, the English.
It was therefore particularly unjust of Hitler later to blame the Jews for undermining the German war effort. But such are the ironies of history, and ignorance….
“Victors write the history books”
‘Nuff said.
Cheers,
-GBV
We have to take the Je ws at their word that Hitler wrongly blamed them for undermining the world effort. Even though the U.S. only got involved with the political lobbying of J ewish groups.
The whole thing was great for Zionism. Like Gail has said, persecution of a group or social alienation is great for keeping a group together to prevent them from assimilating itoo much into other cultures and losing their identity. You know, “forgetting where they came from”.
It seems they have all figured out, or at least that’s what they believe. Managed degrowth (IOW austerity forever) enforced by violence (all kind of) in an attempt to come at…what? Sustainability? I am afraid that sustainability for our species would be now in the range of 50M-500M individuals (i’m wild-guessing here of course, and taking no account of the nuclear predicament). The crux is in the path from 7,8 B to ~250 M. What a ride that will be. I wish them luck.
Like most people here, I feel this year we have entered a period of accelerated change. Change almost by the day. It’s very frightening and excitong at the same time. Apparently the financial house of cards is teetering, signs of it are everywhere, and the growth machine (commodities et al) seems dead for good. It’s not easy to see what the world will look like in say July 2021. One thing is certain, 2019 BAU is now neverland. It may even become the symbolic year of normal and happy times. “2019: the last time we were happy confident/etc or “The last year of Prosperity”.
Anyway, what a time to be alive. We must be grateful.
I really dig the opening lines of Nobel laureate Bob Dylan’s song High Water.
High water risin’, risin’ night and day
All the gold and silver are being stolen away
Indeed, the entire song is loaded with entertaining imagery.
So yes, BAU is on its last legs and collapse of some kind looks inevitable. But in the background it seems to me that there are still a bunch of elite people who are busy stealing as much gold and silver as they can get their hands on.
high water everywhere!!
https://youtu.be/cfPL64mkj18
Sorry, Tim, of the record, i must confess i hate Bob Dylan’s music, although I recognize he’s a good lyricist. (Don’t tell anybody please, or my reputation here will sink to unfathomable levels)
For the most part, I don’t enjoy Bob’s live performances. You’d have to be tone deaf to appreciate them. 🙂
But the studio version of this song is much much easier on the ears. You can hear the words, and it even has a melody!
Please give it a whirl.
https://youtu.be/7fdqF4XIUsE
Very true JMS.
Th speed of this makes one’s head spin, if all the implications are grasped.
It makes a mockery of all our plans and estimates, however pessimistic or cautious.
2019 was in retrospect our ‘Summer of 1914’: a golden time, with rising tensions and clouds on the horizon,certainly, but – compared to this destabilised era we have entered, with I suspect no hope of exit – it will seem, viewed from the future, simply idyllic.
Consider the former low-paid, insecure worker of last year, now facing the prospect of permanent unemployment and maybe the disappearance of the sector they worked in…..
The whiners and belly-achers of 2019 ain’t seen nothing yet!
i call this period the scapegoating period.
Remember when oil production started to tank in several ME countries, and suddenly their leadership was corrupt and had to be overthrown..? I think it was called Arab Spring and it was lead by many “educated” young people i.e., the children of the elite.Everyone thought the problem was mismanagement and that new management would restore oil production and the regional economies that depend on it.
i wonder how that worked out.
a lot of those educated people probably migrated to Europe or the u.s. and are blaming their lack of opportunities on institutional prejudice.
It’s even more absurd: the ones who have actually got somewhere in line with their ambitions are now saying: ‘But it was so hard for me, being BAME!’.
Like the Cambridge academic who is always whining in the Guardian, but has made it to a Chair in English, which is hardly evidence of institutional exclusion.
Having a job where you leave your home is now considered selfish and putting everyone’s life at risk. It’s very funny how quickly people have given up the rat race. How will people strive for social status behind computer screens?
>> It’s not easy to see what the world will look like in say July 2021.
I think that by Christmas 2020 we will be living in a different world.
“We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.”
Sounds like 1984 double-speak. The last thing on these rich clowns agenda is increased equality and inclusiveness, unless they mean all those not in the club will have equal access to hunger and poverty.
Guterres has always been a wind bag, or a verbal sausages machine.
In his days as a young parliamentarian, he was known in Portugal was “the talking pickax”. Now he graduated to globalist’s waterboy. Good for him.
the planet looks after itself and will reset itself irrespective of our antics
It is a fantasy to imagine that the social structure of humankind will reset itself, because it implies a form of ‘control’ that will enable it to happen, no matter what words famous people utter. Over the years I’ve noticed that being famous and rich is not immunisation from stupidity. They string words together because they will be reprinted and taken notice of.
But they still don’t make sense.
All those famous resetters listed will not surrender their current situation to the functional realities of a radical reset.
That being so, their words are wish politics, wish science and wish economics.
And I for one, wish it wasn’t so.
Humankind will not submit itself to any form of overall control, because we will not trust the ‘controllers’
with good reason
because controllers (they would have to be dictators of the most extreme kind) would divert diminishing resources to themselves and their own tribe, and to hell with the rest of humanity.
any ‘resetting’ that was human-driven would try to create a reset situation that somehow mirrored what we have now, No one will undertake a reset that resets us back to 1700. But that is what ‘reset’ actually means.
Prince Charles might dream of a reset to the time of his ancestors, doddering around his garden (s) where peasants were happy with their lot, (outside his gates) but unfortunately life has moved on.
We all want to live like kings. (plenty of food, warm houses and our own wheels) I don’t intend to surrender my kingly status unless forced to do so. Neither do I expect King Chas to buy the house next door to me.
The planet can support 100 kings. It can’t support 7.5 bn kings.
I agree!
Well said. 7.5 billion kings is only possible in a political equivalent of Farmville. Perhaps some entrepeneur will produce one of this days The Kingville, where we can all be virtual kings, with dozens of virtual horses, virtual palaces and virtual concubines at our disposal.
Yes, the human race is being canceled with Prince Andrew first to the cleaners. Messing around with the processes and operating principles of Gaia isn’t taken lightly. Never challenge the fury of a planetary sized matriarchy. We might be cruel and petty to each other, but she can eradicate the whole rapacious monkey business.
I heard about it a few weeks ago. It was predicted as early as 2017 by Cathal Haughian, who wrote 3 books about capitalism. Unfortunately his website beforethecollapse.com seems emptied precisely since Davos announced this “Great reset”. Strange!
Cathal predicted that the reset would take place in 2017 I believe, and he hinted that he had inside information.
Perhaps the reset was delayed until the controllers could get all their ducks in a row?
I don’t know very much about China’s economy but this looks like it might be an issue, amongst the many others (6 min):
Gold Scam has begun a chain-reaction that China can’t control. Its biggest shadow bank collapse
Interesting! Most of the loans of these shadow banks seem to be to the real estate sector, including to those who build the big cities of unoccupied homes. The loans (if I understood this correctly) were allegedly backed by gold. But in the case of Sichuan Trust, the large shadow bank that just collapsed, the Trust asked for the collateral behind the loan, and found it was fake: gold-colored foil around copper bars. In the next few days, this story will start to become more clear, as other shadows banks fail, since their loans are likely to also be backed by fake collateral.
It will be up to the provinces to bail out these shadow banks. Perhaps the rich provinces can bail out the shadow banks, but the poorer ones cannot.
– – – – – – –
Back in November, I was speculating that China would be a country whose government might collapse. The rich provinces might band together to go forward, but the poorer provinces might fail.
if this is the new Chinese reality, then the next step is likely to be to start a war
The Chinese have already created new territories by enlarging islands in the south China sea—People made a bit of a fuss about it but ultimately did nothing
Now the focus is on Hong Kong. The powers in the world are making threatening noises over Hong kong too, but that will come to nothing.
That will embolden the Chines government to take the next step
Which is?
Invasion and Annexation of Taiwan.
Nations in trouble always divert the attentions of their people by invading somewhere else.
It the late 30s, Hit ler started annexing adjacent territories, and found that other world world powers did nothing but make noises about it, Hi tler was forced to expand, or face collapse
We are perhaps seeing the same thing happening again.
Ultimately of course expansion serves no purpose, but it puts off the day of reckong for another few years.
I’ve said for years that those Chinese tower blocks were loonytoon economics
Fortunately, the Taiwanese can sleep easy in their futons became they are supported by the Americans, led by that great anti-totalitarian and hammer of the commies, Donald J. Trump.
On the other hand, if Mr, Biden takes over in November, one of his first acts will be to extend a welcome mat for the CCP across the Taiwan Strait.
These totalitarians are ideologues who have no tolerance for anyone who disagrees with them. That is their main weakness. They are short on pragmatism and subtlety is alien to their nature. And so the more they tighten their grip, the more star systems will slip through their fingers. Take the Nine Dash Line; it has upset every one of their neighbors in Southeast Asia.
https://d32gw8q6pt8twd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ChineseClaimToSouthChinaSeaMap0011.jpg
Let’s reflect that while they have made tremendous progress over the past half century, a significant portion of the Chinese are extremely poor and a significant portion of their workforce is effectively slave labor. The Chinese state has an extensive and very active GULAG archipelago .They exercise brutal control over the population under their control. They have presided over the wholesale destruction of the natural environment and the creation of horrific levels of pollution.They are currently cracking down in Hong Kong, They are fighting on the border with India. They have placed their own capital city of Peking under lockdown. And they are working with the Globalists to bring their socioeconomic system to a Western nation near you.
Fortunately, though, the Bhutanese mouse may yet save the day by poking the Chinese dragon in the eye. China has had boarder disputes with Bhutan ever since they conquered Tibet. The present new additional Chinese claim represents 11% of Bhutan’s sovereign territory. Interesting that the world’s unhappiest country is now snapping at the world’s happiest country.
I take your points Tom
I agree that they have wrecked their own country and made it economically unviable, but their brand of politics provides only the denial route. Losing face is all.
But as you said, Taiwan will be safe as long as it is seen to be under the protection of the USA
Unfortunately the current POTUS has shown himself to be mentally unstable. (Listen to any speech he has to make which does not involve praising himself—his words are stilted rambling and childlike)
The Chinese (as with so many world leaders) were unsure of this in 2017, thinking—‘he’s just a bit eccentric’ and will measure up when necessary.
But the last 4 years have clearly demonstrated that the man is truly incompetent, and incapable of any actions that would define him as a statesman on any level.
Any aide who might have helped has left, and he is left with only sycophants.
So they have started to push their boundaries, to give the Chinese people an alternative focus
The Americans might supply Taiwan with weapons, but get into a war with China over it?—Forget it.
If Trump gets a second term, the USA will be too busy fighting itself to get involved in anybody else’s wars. The Chinese and the Russians can see this very clearly now.
If Biden takes over, the mess he’ll have to clear up will be too big for him to bother much about Taiwan
Can you tell me what Obama accomplished ? Presidents don’t run the country.I love how you blame everything on one guy and the people who control the House or Senate don’t get any blame. Norman, I’m not trying to insult you here, but are you slow?
Do you really blame Trump for decades of increasing political polarization following the Civil Rights movement?
Biden isn’t even capable of cleaning up a mess in his pants.
Please.
The PRC’s leaders know that they can’t afford to take Taiwan by force. The price they would have to pay is far too high. And what they are doing now to Hong Kong makes it very unlikely that the Taiwanese would consent to be wooed into the PRC. I don’t blame them. Given a choice, how many people around the world would willingly live under the current CCP rule?
However, once the PRC dynasty falls, and a new dynasty arises in China, the Taiwanese may want to become a part of that.
problem is, as i see it, that dynasties rarely collapse peacefully, because they never realise that they are in the process of falling.
from their perspective it usually seems like a temporary imbalance that can be corrected through certain ‘actions’—the violence of which depends on the degree of ‘imbalance’ involved.
wars are always a favourite diversionary tactic, to deflect attention from economic stupidity.
the common masses can always be relied upon to cheer as war starts, with no thought of the consequences of what they do. History is littered with such incidents, large and small.
Trump incites the same emotions with his ‘white power’ invective. The neckless idiots who cheer him on don’t understand what they are screaming for—only that ‘others’ are responsible for the loss of the ‘American dream’ that was never theirs in the first place.
What they are cheering for is war upon themselves, by themselves.
The ultimate ‘diversionary tactic’
It is a symtom of a failing ‘system’ rather than a failing dynasty–but the effect is the same.
As the Chinese fail, they will adopt the same diversionary tactic. Give people something else to focus on for a year or two, in the hope that ‘something turns up’. Taiwan becomes the festering sore of western imperialism.
Everybody navigates through the rear view mirror of history, looking to restore ‘what was’, and using that to promise certainties of what will be.
Wars are a great way of increasing demand, because they are a good way for the government to convince the people they need to take on debt. This debt is mostly paid back to young workers in wages. In this way it increases demand. There is also demand for armaments of various kinds. This leads to a need for mining and more industry. The price of commodities can rise, allowing more production of many kinds.
Good points!
In an energy-starved future, I suspect China will have trouble maintaining it’s control over its entire geographical area, let alone projecting power onto nearby regions.
I remember reading (and enjoying) the book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nations
I suspect some sort of similar dynamic exists in China.
Cheers,
-GBV
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/georgia-governor-declares-state-emergency-deploys-national-guard-due-atlanta-chaos
Hope you’re keeping safe, Gail…
Cheers,
-GBV
I am doing fine.
As I have remarked before, the City of Atlanta (500,000 population) is a relatively small part of the Atlanta metropolitan area (4.6 million). Even if the area is expanded to include Fulton County (1.06 million), it is still less than a quarter of the Atlanta Metro Area. I live in Cobb Country, away from the problems.
It was interesting that Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (Democrat) asked Governor Brian Kemp (Republican) to declare a state of emergency and send in 1000 National Guard Troops. They seem to work together OK.
I like Atlanta– had a gig that I spent quite a bit of time over 2 years (film) there.
Surprised me.
We could do production there at a fraction of the cost of LA.
Without aircon, it will probably go back to a population of 25,000.
Even a significant cutback in the airline transportation industry will hurt Atlanta significantly. Lots of workers, directly and indirectly. Trucking industry goes on for now.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/politics/keisha-lance-bottoms-coronavirus-positive-test/index.html
I hear that all of the schools in the University of Georgia system are requiring masks for this fall, for both students and faculty. There are some exception (outdoors when social distancing possible; in dorms). So Georgia is going somewhat the way of other states.
CHS, makes good points !
“What Makes You Think the Stock Market Will Even Exist in 2024?”
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/07/what-makes-you-think-stock-market-will.html
My observation: The big increase in financial assets started about 1980, which is when interest rates started dropping and the amount of debt (now called “leverage”) started rising. Falling interest rates can be expected to make assets more affordable. It will push up the number of potential buyers and raise asset prices.
This is a chart CHS shows:
https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2020/financial-assets1-20a.jpg
That is around the time roughly that the income gap began between normal workers and workers with “college degrees” i.e. the Elite. The 1%.
The same time tuition and healthcare costs started to go up significantly.
All that money being spent on a fewer products and services left very little for anything else. We have luxury apartments being built in urban areas where the streets are full of potholes and cracks.
Nope, a phenomenon described by John Kenneth Galbraith, “Private Affluence, Public Squalor”, more than 50 years ago. One cause of this phenomenon is too much wealth disparity: the poor cannot pay much in taxes; the rich have many ways to avoid paying taxes; so more wealth disparity means poorer communities and worse services. There are of course many other reasons for the terminal decay of many US cities, but I think the rot started there.
You’re still describing a symptom and not any root cause.
Wealth disparity isn’t causeless.
You still have yet to explain how the rich were able to get richer if economic growth slowed down around that time wealth disparity started to widen. Where did the wealth come from?
Nope, that’s why I referred you to the primary reference that did explain the root causes. But it seems you would rather sneer than learn. Goodbye.