.
Many people believe that humans can have a sustainable future by using solar panels and wind turbines. Unfortunately, the only truly sustainable course, in terms of moving in cycles with nature, is interacting with the environment in a manner similar to the approach used by chimpanzees and baboons. Even this approach will eventually lead to new and different species predominating. Over a long period, such as 10 million years, we can expect the vast majority of species currently alive will become extinct, regardless of how well these species fit in with nature’s plan.
The key to the relative success of animals such as chimpanzees and baboons is living within a truly circular economy. Sunlight falling on trees provides the food they need. Waste products of their economy come back to the forest ecosystem as fertilizer.
Pre-humans lost the circular economy when they learned to control fire over one million years ago, when they were still hunter-gatherers. With the controlled use of fire, cooked food became possible, making it easier to chew and digest food. The human body adapted to the use of cooked food by reducing the size of the jaw and digestive tract and increasing the size of the brain. This adaptation made pre-humans truly different from other animals.
With the use of fire, pre-humans had many powers. They spent less time chewing, so they could spend more time making tools. They could burn down entire forests, if they so chose, to provide a better environment for the desired types of wild plants to grow. They could use the heat from fire to move to colder environments than the one to which they were originally adapted, thus allowing a greater total population.
Once pre-humans could outcompete other species, the big problem became diminishing returns. For example, once the largest beasts were killed off, only smaller beasts were available to eat. The amount of effort required to kill these smaller beasts was not proportionately less, however.
In this post, I will explain further the predicament we seem to be in. We have deviated so far from the natural economy that we really cannot go back. At the same time, the limits we are reaching are straining our economic system in many ways. Some type of discontinuity, or collapse, seems to be not very far away.
[1] Even before the appearance of hunter-gatherers, ecosystems around the world exhibited a great deal of cycling from state to state.
Many people are under the illusion that before the meddling of humans, the populations of different types of plants and animals tended to be pretty much constant. This isn’t really the way things work, however, in a finite world. Instead, the populations of many species cycle up and down, depending on particular conditions such as the population of animals that prey on them, the availability of food, the prevalence of disease, and the weather conditions.
Even forests exhibit surprising variability. Many undergo regular cycles of burning. In fact, some species of trees, such as the giant sequoias in Yosemite, require fire in order to reproduce. These cycles are simply part of the natural order of self-organizing ecosystems in a finite world.
[2] A major feature of ecosystems is “Selection of the Best Adapted.”
Each species tends to give birth to many more offspring than are necessary to live to maturity if the population of that species is to remain level. Each of the individual offspring varies in many random ways from its parents. Ecosystems are able to keep adapting to changing conditions by permitting only the best-adapted offspring to survive. In favorable periods (suitable weather, not much disease, ample food, not too many predators), a large share of the offspring may survive. In less favorable periods, few of the offspring will survive.
When selection of the best adapted is taken into account, a changing climate is of little concern because, regardless of the conditions, some individual offspring will survive. Over time, new and different species are likely to develop that are better adapted to the changing conditions.
[3] The downsides of living within the limits provided by nature are easy to see.
One issue is that every mother can expect to see the majority of her offspring die. In fact, her own life expectancy is uncertain. It depends upon whether there are nearby predators or a disease against which she has no defense. Even a fairly small injury could lead to her death.
Another issue is lack of shelter from the elements. Moving to an area where the weather is too harsh becomes impossible. Our earliest pre-human ancestors seem to have lived near the equator where seasonal temperature differences are small.
Without supplemental heating or cooling, humans living in many places in the world today would have a difficult time following the way of nature because of weather conditions. As we will see in later sections, it was grains that allowed people to settle in areas that were too cold for crops in winter.
In theory, there are alternatives to grain in cold climates. For example, a small share of the population might be able to get most of its calories from eating raw fish, as the Inuit have done. Eating raw fish is not generally an option for people living inland, however. Also, in later sections, we will talk about the difference between the use of root vegetables and grains as the primary source of calories. In some sense, the use of grains provides a stepping stone toward big government, roads, and what we think of as a modern existence, while the use of root vegetables does not. Eating raw fish is similar to eating root vegetables, in that it doesn’t provide a stepping stone toward a modern existence.
[4] Animals make use of some of the same techniques as humans to compete with other species. These techniques are added complexity and added energy supply.
We think of complexity as being equivalent to added technology, but it also includes many related techniques, such as the use of tools, the use of specialization and the use of long-distance travel.
Animals use many types of complexity. Bees build hives and carry out tasks divided among the queen bee, drone bees, and worker bees. Many birds fly to another continent in winter, in order to gain access to an adequate food supply. Chimpanzees use tools, such as waving a stick or throwing a rock to ward off predators. Beavers build dams that provide themselves with an easy source of food in winter.
Some members of the animal kingdom, known as parasites, even leverage their own energy by using the energy of other plants or animals. Such use of the energy of a host is subject to limits; if the parasite uses too much, it risks killing its host.
While animals other than humans may use similar techniques to humans, they don’t go as far as humans. Humans employ a variety of supplemental materials in their tools. Also, no animal other than humans has learned to control fire.
[5] Pre-humans seem to have learned to control fire over 1 million years ago, allowing humans to gain an advantage in killing wild beasts.
Richard Wrangham, in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, makes the case that the controlled use of fire allowed the changes in anatomy that differentiate humans from other primates. With the controlled use of fire, humans could cook some of their food, making it easier to chew and digest. As a result, the teeth, jaws and guts of humans could be relatively smaller, and the brain could be larger. The larger brain allowed humans to compete better against other species. Also, cooking food greatly reduced the time spent chewing food, increasing the time available for making crafts and tools of various kinds. The heat of fire allowed pre-humans to move into new areas with colder climates. The heat of fires also allowed pre-humans to ward off some of the impact of ice-ages, which they were able to survive.
James C. Scott, in Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, explains that being able to burn biomass was sufficient to turn around who was in charge: pre-humans or large animals. In one cave in South Africa, he indicates that a lower layer of remains found in the cave did not show any carbon deposits, and hence were created before pre-humans occupying the cave gained control of fire. In this layer, skeletons of big cats were found, along with scattered gnawed bones of pre-humans.
In a higher layer, carbon deposits were found. In this layer, pre-humans were clearly in charge. Their skeletons were much more intact, and the bones of big cats were scattered about and showed signs of gnawing. Who was in charge had changed! We know that human controlled fires can be used to scare away wild animals, burn down entire forests if desired, and make sharper spears. It shouldn’t be surprising that humans gained the upper hand.
[6] Grains, because of their energy density, portability, and ability to be stored, seem to have played a major role in the development of governments and of cities.
Scott, in Against the Grain, also points out that early economies that were able to grow grains were the economies that were able to place taxes on those grains, and with those taxes, were able to fund governments offering more services. Grains are a storable form of energy for humans. They are portable and energy dense, as well. It was grains that allowed people to settle in areas that were too cold for growing crops in winter. The year-to-year variability in production made storage of reserves important. Governments could provide this function, and other functions, such as roads.
If we analyze the situation, it is apparent that the existence of grain crops provided a subsidy to the rest of the economy. Farmers and their slaves could grow far more grain than they themselves required for calories, leaving much grain for trading with others. This surplus could be used to feed the population of cities, such as Rome. It was no longer necessary for everyone to be hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers. There could be new occupations such as merchants, teachers, carpenters, and sailors. Many more goods and services in total could be produced, and the population of cities could grow.
Cities, themselves, provide benefits, because they allow economies of scale, and they allow people with different skills to mix. Geoffrey West, in his book Scale, notes that larger cities produce disproportionately more patents. Thus, technology is advanced with the growth of cities.
It might be noted that root crops, even though they could provide most of the same food energy benefits for humans as grain crops, did not help economies grow in the same ways that grain crops did. This, likely, was part of the reason that they were not taxed: They produced no excess benefit to give back to the government.
Root vegetables are not as helpful as grains. They are less energy dense than grains, making them heavier and bulkier for transport. They do not store as well as grains. In early days, root crops could be about as efficiently grown by individual families as by farmers specializing in such crops, making it hard to leverage the labor that went into growing root crops. In fact, there was less real need for government with root crops: There was no way to store supplies of root crops in case of poor harvest, and there was little need for roads to transport the crops.
[7] The added energy benefits of grain crops created a situation where the grain was “worth” far more to customers, and to the economy as a whole, than what would be indicated by their cost of production.
There is a belief among economists, and among much of the population, that the selling price of a commodity will be determined by its cost of production. In fact, the example given in Section [6] indicates that back in the early days of grain production, grain’s selling price could be far greater than its direct cost of production, with the difference going into taxes that would benefit the government and the economy as a whole.
In fact, there was a second way that the usage of grain was helpful to governments. The efficiency of grain production, transport, and storage reduced the need for farmers. Former farmers could offer services not previously available to citizens, often in cities. Income from the new jobs could also be taxed, to give governments another stream of income.
[8] The use of coal and oil also produced situations where the value of energy products to the economy was far higher than their direct cost of production, allowing these products to be heavily taxed.
Tony Wrigley, in his book Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, indicates that with the use of coal, farming became a much more productive endeavor. The crop yield from cereal crops, net of the amount fed to draft animals, nearly tripled between 1600 and 1800, which was the period when coal production ramped up in England. Coal allowed the use of far more metal tools, which were vastly superior to tools made from wood. In addition, roads to mines were greatly improved. Prior to this time, few roads were paved in England. These improved roads helped the economy as a whole.
Oil is known today for the high taxes it pays to governments. The governments of oil exporting countries are very dependent upon tax revenue relating to oil. When the selling price of oil is low, this results in a crisis period for oil exporting countries because they have no other way of collecting adequate tax revenue to support the programs for their people. For a short time, they can borrow money, but when this alternative fails, governments are likely to be overturned by their unhappy citizens.
[9] The economy tends to move further and further away from the natural order (described in Sections [1], [2], and [3]) as more energy consumption is added.
Even though the natural order would be sustainable, it doesn’t represent a situation that most people today would like to live in. In fact, most humans today could not live on completely uncooked food, even if they wanted to. While a few people today eat “raw food” diets, they often use a food processor or blender to reduce the amount of chewing and digesting of raw foods to a manageable level. Even then, their weights tend to stay low.
If energy products are available at an affordable price, humans find many ways to use them, to stay away from the natural order. Some examples include the following:
- To provide transportation, other than walking.
- To pipe clean water to homes.
- To make growing and storage of food easy.
- To allow homes to be heated and cooled.
- To allow medicines and vaccines.
- To allow most children to live to maturity.
[10] Because energy consumption is important in all aspects of the economy, the economy seems to reach many kinds of limits simultaneously.
There are many limits that the world economy seems to reach simultaneously. The underlying problem in all of these areas seems to be diminishing returns. In theory, these issues could all be worked around, using increasing energy consumption or increasing complexity:
- Too little fresh water for an increasing population.
- The need to keep increasing food production, with the same amount of arable land.
- Increased difficulty with insect pests, such as locusts.
- Increased difficulty in dealing with viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
- Overfished oceans so that farmed fish are required in addition.
- Ores of metals of ever-lower grade, requiring more processing and leading to more waste.
- More expensive techniques required for the extraction of fossil fuels.
- Many unprofitable businesses; much debt likely to default.
- Too few jobs that pay well enough to support a family
- Governments unable to collect enough taxes
Energy and complexity work together to leverage human labor, in a way that the economy can make more goods and services in total. Unfortunately, we cannot use complexity to make energy. Technology (which is a form of complexity) can convert energy to useful work and, through efficiency gains, increase the percentage of energy that is available for useful work, but it cannot make energy. If we add more technology, more robots, and more international trade, we likely will need more energy, not less.
The net impact of all of these issues is that to maintain our economy, we really need an ever-increasing quantity of energy. In fact, energy consumption likely needs to grow more rapidly than population simply to keep the system from collapse.
Wind and solar certainly cannot meet today’s energy needs. Together, wind and solar amount to about 3.3% of the world’s energy supply, based on BP estimates for 2019. Furthermore, wind and intermittent solar certainly cannot be sold at a price high above their cost of production, the way grain, coal and oil have been sold historically. In fact, wind and solar invariably need the huge subsidy of being allowed to “go first.” They actually are reliant on a profitable fossil fuel system to subsidize them, or they fall completely “flat.”
[11] The problem, as the economy reaches limits, is too few goods and services being produced to satisfy all parts of the economy simultaneously. The parts of the economy that especially tend to get shortchanged are (a) governments, (b) energy producers, and (c) workers without special skills who are selling their labor as a form of “energy.”
When economies are doing well, the price of energy products tends to be high. These high prices allow very high taxes on energy products. They also allow significant funds for reinvestment for the energy companies themselves. Indirectly, these high prices allow a significant share of the goods and services made by the economy to be transferred to these sectors of the economy.
In addition, energy products allow non-farm workers in many areas of the economy to produce their goods and services more efficiently, thereby helping push up the wages of common laborers.
As economies reach limits, there is, in some sense, a need for more energy in many sectors of the economy. The catch is that the “wages” and “profits” needed to purchase this energy aren’t really available to provide the demand needed to keep energy prices up. As a result, energy prices and production tend to fall. Government-imposed limitations, intended to stop the spread of COVID-19, may also keep energy demand down.
Governments often fail, or they get into major conflicts with other governments, when there are resource shortages of the kinds we are currently encountering. Today is in many ways like the period of the Great Depression, which preceded World War II.
[12] Perhaps warm, wet countries will be somewhat more successful than cold countries and those without water, in the years ahead.
I showed a chart in my most recent post, Energy Is the Economy, that illustrates the wide range of energy consumption around the world.
If fossil fuel energy falls, I expect that the parts of the world with cold temperatures will experience particular difficulty because they tend to use disproportionately large amounts of energy (Figure 2). Their citizens cannot get along very well without heat for their homes. Winter becomes very dark, if supplemental lighting is not available. Walking long distances in the cold becomes a problem as well.
The warmer countries have a better chance because they do not require as complex economies as cold countries. They can feed at least part of their population with root crops. Walking is a reasonable transportation option, and there is no problem with months on end of darkness if supplemental lighting is not available. For these reasons, warm countries would seem to have a better chance of passing through the difficult times ahead while sustaining a reasonable-sized population.
Meanwhile BTS broke 20k.
Yep, sloshing $Ts in gambling pocket change are simply front loading the 2021-2022… expected stagflation.. Moreover, the example of people who in a mere decade made 20 000 x gains on this digital stallion mirage is just unbearably attractive not only for the young but increasingly for the old guard as well.
Bloomberg
Bankruptcy Is the Solution to the Student Loan Crisis
Joe Nocera
Wed, December 16, 2020, 7:00 AM EST·7 min read
Seems that’s the solution to unpayable debt…..
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bankruptcy-solution-student-loan-crisis-120019280.html
The handwriting is on the wall…the Financial System is bankrupt and going through a systemic process ….God Help Us poor common people….the very rich 🤑 will live as they always have…
Just ask Fast Eddy
Dwindling FF is a predicament. The only problem is that people don’t accept it, and so they end up living worst than if they did. Everybody here is complaining about the pandemic, but it was an avoidable outcome. Another path would have been to tax say 300% long distance travelling, but the masses wouldn’t have accepted it, be it with the argument of peak oil or the one of climate change. So PTB had to kill 2 million people to get the rest stopping traveling, even if it hurts lots of businesses that are not energy intensive and that could still be working if the whole of society acted rationally.
I think the Don knows very well all this stuff, that’s why at first he said he was confident that China would control the outbreak and did nothing about it. But the masses needed some entertainment and democracy bluff should be played, so he later changed course, “fought” and “campaigned”. He’s a showman, that’s his job.
It’s just as with the Catalonians: they resisted living with less, so struggled for independence, made a mess of their land and many enterprises leaved because of chaos. So now they have less tax revenues, and they are poorer than if they had accepted things as they were. As long as people insist in living above their possibilities, they will end up living worst than what they can. This is also true about control and censorship: the more people reject reality the more they will be subject to control from the State (and will receive more exaggerations and lies).
The catch is to assess properly what are the possibilities and match behavior to it.
Great points, climate change has been propped up and nurtured for public consumption for decades as possibly ~happy go story after-all, while peak oil not so much, perhaps deemed too technical, daunting-depressing (and too much tied to FP action e.g. Iraq-Libya) or simply evaluated as even weaker argumentation basis with no actionable bearing on the general pop attitudes..
After all, as for climate change, any number of ads on Youtube now assure me that I can switch to ‘100% Green Clean’ electricity and Save the Planet – wow!
Peak oil is far too sophisticated and incomprehensible to most.
Xabier, I know the ads you mean and they drive me to distraction. YouTube ads generally are a cringe-fest of clunky, cultural virtue-signalling these days. I can’t hit the “skip” button fast enough!
I just watch ‘Cocktails with a Curator’ from the Frick museum in NY, which is so unpopular it is ad-free.
The oil company ads rebranding themselves as Green are particularly nauseating.
The clever female engineer redesigning a gas pump for electricity, etc.
Xabier and Harry,
I would recommend watching you tub on firefox with the addons adblock plus and ublock origin installed. You will never see another ad.
Also for those of you that hate ads too you may enjoy this podcast which discusses many issues about them and how the ad model has wrecked everything.
https://attackadspodcast.blogspot.com/
and you won’t hear an ad on it at all.
By the way, WordPress marked this comment as “spam” also.
try Adblock Plus:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus-free-ad-bloc/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb?hl=en-US
“Adblock Plus is an open-source browser extension for content-filtering and ad blocking. It is developed by developer Wladimir Palant’s Eyeo GmbH, a German software company. The extension has been released for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Safari, Yandex Browser, and Android.”
i’ve been using it with Chrome and it gets rid of those pesky youtube ads. Some websites may object to it and ask you to unblock to view their pages and allow ads.
if you don’t want to turn off adblocker, you can use outline.com or archive.is. archive.is will allow you (usually) to view articles behind paywalls
The pandemic was not avoidable at all , because it was engineered.
Well, as you know, the Catalans who seek independence are still living in the 20th century when Catalonia became rich through industrialisation: fanatics lead their followers into disaster.
No good thinking about and longing for the past: one of my ancestors helped to found the Catalonia/Aragon empire, but I don’t think putting on a suit of armour would do much good today…..
Knowing how the land really lies, we must adapt to it, certainly.
Resistance must go underground, as so often in history.
The best of the human spirit will remain alive until the bio-sphere collapse, maybe even beyond.
Sure! I suppose it was an inconscious typo, I meant wasn’t avoidable. It would have been if humans were more rational, but we don’t. And for the elite, they choose the easiest path, which was to pandemic us and not to tax us
Pandemic yields a higher degree of control, dampens protests, etc. A lot of people will take the vaccine, whatever vaccine, if they think they will get a little crumb of normality from the elites’ table.
Plus if they were to give a t shirt or a button “I vaxed” or “club vax” . Just saying.
Meanwhile in Taiwan:
T-shirts on sale: “I exterminated covid”
“I think we are on the verge of entering into a new kind of ice age — an economic one — around the world today.
“Massive debt loads weigh down the economy in every sector, forcing central banks to fight tooth and nail to keep interest rates low.
“Meanwhile, demographic researchers recently posited that the peak of human population on the planet is coming much sooner than previously expected and will decline rapidly afterward.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4394575-global-economic-ice-age-is-coming
“…we should not confuse [an economic rebound, driven by vaccines] with the sustained global recovery the world needs.
“The world economy is heading for a low-growth, high-unemployment decade… Many advanced economies have exhausted their fiscal headroom in the rescue phase.”
https://www.ft.com/content/e6b2fced-7392-4624-8e4e-ff039e0020dd
Countries are running out of solutions!
No mention of energy issues, or course, in the seeking alpha article. Falling birth rates will lead for fewer people globally, long term.
“The pandemic hit economies the world over, but Argentina is closing a decade of stagflation in 2020 – with at least two deep recessions during this period. The expected pronounced contraction this year threatens to take GDP per capita back to 1980 levels.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2020/12/15/political-risk-analysis-how-serious-is-argentinas-economic-crisis/?sh=1ebd94558399
“Venezuelan tax offices stand deserted, classrooms lack teachers, and utility bills go uncollected, as meager civil servant salaries drive chronic absenteeism and resignations in the hundreds of thousands.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/venezuela-wages-insight-idUKKBN28Q1LM
Without enough oil revenue, Venezuela is in deep trouble. According to the article,
“Anova calculates at least 25% of state employees survive on the minimum wage. It dropped below $1 per month – which would buy 1kg of rice or corn flour – for part of the year amid annualized inflation of 4,087%.”
Argentina’s big problem is that it is past peak oil. It does have some shale resources, but oil prices are too low to make extraction profitable.
“Mexican state oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) could sink deeper into junk territory if Mexico’s under-pressure sovereign credit rating is downgraded, ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service said on Wednesday…
“The credit metrics for one of Latin America’s largest oil companies will remain weak for the foreseeable future, the ratings agency said.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-pemex-ratings/update-2-pemex-could-be-downgraded-if-mexicos-govt-debt-rating-is-cut-says-moodys-idUSL1N2IW2HS
“The economic blow from coronavirus has wiped out 81 million jobs across Asia-Pacific this year, with women and young people disproportionately affected, according to the International Labour Organization.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/pandemic-saps-81-million-jobs-in-asia-pacific-in-2020-ilo-says
“Latin America’s deep, structural inequality has contributed to the disproportionate health and economic impacts COVID-19 has had on the region, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Tuesday.”
https://www.devex.com/news/k-shaped-recovery-threatens-an-unequal-latin-america-imf-head-says-98798
If the buyers of Southeast Asia’s exports stop having parties and meetings of all kinds, it affects many kinds of exports, I expect.
“China has slammed Australia, accusing it of “logically absurd” claims designed to “tarnish” its reputation, as the trade war intensifies.
“Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin hit out at reports on Tuesday that at least 10 consulates in Shanghai had employed CPC members as staff.”
https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/economy/chinas-latest-blast-at-australia-ng-e480ac41403b11a2924d9639487ac70c
“Australia will launch a formal appeal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) later on Wednesday seeking a review of China’s decision to impose hefty tariffs on imports of Australian barley, Minister for Trade Simon Birmingham said.”
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20201216-australia-to-take-trade-war-with-china-over-barley-tariff-to-wto
Some allegations:
“The trade sanctions aimed at Australian exporters by China just keep on coming.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-17/australian-trade-tension-sanctions-china-growing-commodities/12984218
“China’s leaders are likely to convene this week to lay out their economic priorities for 2021, with analysts expecting a renewed focus on slowing the pace of debt growth and insulating the economy from tensions with the U.S.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/china-eyes-economic-goals-for-next-year-as-debt-levels-soar
“China debt: how big is it and who owns it?
“The Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimated that China’s total domestic debt rose to 335 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter of 2020.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3084979/china-debt-how-big-it-who-owns-it-and-what-next
The SCMP article is a fairly comprehensive article about debt. At the end, it has a 33 minute podcast about updated information on coronavirus in China.
Slowing the pace of debt growth? How else, do we keep the debt bubble from popping?
“The light at the end of the tunnel isn’t getting any closer for OPEC and allied oil-producing countries, as forecasts of the world’s need for their supplies next year are cut again.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/opec-treads-a-narrow-path-as-demand-outlook-weakens-again
“American shale producers are likely being kept up at night over what could be in store for their industry over the next four years, if pledges made by some lawmakers in Congress and President-elect Joe Biden are anything to go by.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/oil-and-gas-us-shale-should-be-worried-energy-secretary-says.html
An annoying article that covers an important issue, ie Big Oil is losing funding when it needs it more than ever:
“Big Oil Slammed With A $7 Trillion Reality Check:
“…over the past half-decade, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing has emerged as the single biggest global megatrend… Sustainable investing assets now total $17.1 trillion. That’s up 42% just from 2018.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Big-Oil-Slammed-With-A-7-Trillion-Reality-Check.html
“Sustainable investing” is popular because it is government subsidized investing. With all other types of energy losing money, it looks like it is the way to go. Except that sustainable investing only is possible thanks to subsidies from fossil fuels. It cannot continue either. It survives on a fairy tale.
“The U.S. poverty rate has surged over the past five months, with 7.8 million Americans falling into poverty, the latest indication of how deeply many are struggling after government aid dwindled.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/16/poverty-rising/
“A growing percentage of U.S. homeowners are looking to delay making mortgage payments, the latest sign that the economic recovery is hitting a snag.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/opec-treads-a-narrow-path-as-demand-outlook-weakens-again
“Factory activity in New York loses momentum in December… Empire State index dips to 4.9, third consecutive monthly decline.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/slowdown-of-factory-activity-in-new-york-continues-into-december-11608039130
“The number of Americans taking road trips this Christmas is poised for a slump of as much as 25%… more evidence of declining demand for gasoline…
“Gasoline demand in the U.S. has dropped by 17% since mid-August…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/christmas-driving-set-for-slump-with-most-americans-staying-home?srnd=markets-vp
I suspect that there is normally a drop of gasoline demand between August and December.
According to my calculations, gasoline demand for the latest week (ended December 11) is down 15.4% since a year ago. Weekly numbers are quite volatile, however.
Looking at August monthly numbers, US gasoline consumption was 8,545,000 BPD in 2020, compared to 9,834,000 in 2019. This represents a 13.0% drop in consumption.
Overall US oil products consumption in August was down by 9.6% in August, since diesel use would remain close to level.
The index had been 17.0 earlier in the year, so an index value of 4.9 sound pretty dreadful.
This is perhaps the link you mean with respect to the growing percentage of US homeowners looking to delay mortgage payments.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/more-u-s-mortgage-borrowers-start-to-seek-loan-forbearance?sref=eWpk04kZ
The link shown is with respect to OPEC’s difficulty in determining the amount to pump given weak demand outlook.
Gail, it is – good catch.
This is a link to the academic report. https://harris.uchicago.edu/files/monthly_poverty_rates_updated_thru_november_2020_final.pdf
Black citizens and those with a high school education or less are especially affected. I would expect that black citizens without a high school education would be very badly affected.
“Pub and restaurant bosses have warned of jobs “carnage” in the new year as official figures revealed redundancies hit record levels, with the hospitality sector bearing the brunt of the losses.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/12/15/job-losses-hit-record-370000/
“Rishi Sunak could be forced to extend the UK taxpayer-funded furlough scheme beyond March after a record spike in redundancies, experts have warned.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/12/15/jobs-crisis-could-trigger-furlough-extension-economists-warn/
“Struggling UK households will be able to pause council tax payments and other bills for 60 days under a new scheme launching next year.
“…the breathing space scheme will protect hard-up Brits from bailiffs and prosecution for two months.”
https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/13493178/council-tax-paused-breathing-space-scheme/
“Soaring funding costs for Britain’s subprime lenders are making it hard for them to meet growing demand from households crushed by the pandemic…
“Investors concerned about strained household budgets in a historic downturn have pushed up borrowing costs for subprime door-to-door and credit card lenders, including major players Provident Financial and Non-Standard Finance.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/britain-finance-subprime-lenders/analysis-uk-subprime-lenders-face-funding-squeeze-as-covid-19-fuels-demand-idUKL8N2IJ1UQ
“Expect the UK’s debt time bomb to explode in two years’ time… the great reckoning is to come.
“History tells us that there is typically an 18 month to two year time lag after a crisis before the proverbial rug gets pulled.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/15/expect-the-uks-debt-time-bomb-to-explode-in-two-years-time
Maybe the debt bomb can hold off for 18 months to two years, and maybe it can’t. We seem to have a lot of debt bombs around the world, probably feeding into each other.
I haven’t watched disneys verision of Loki and Thor. From your description it looks like disneys Loki is more tame than the loki of tha sagas.
He’s an excellent example of what Carl Jung called the trickster Archetype:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
This was meant as a comment in an earlier thread concerning Trump…
“Economic crises have a tendency to morph. After a crisis gets under way, its epicentre can shift and it can turn contagious in unpredictable ways, impacting areas previously presumed relatively safe…
“…central banks can’t deal with solvency issues, which are the next threat. The demand shock has led to solvency problems because many companies can’t pay their essential expenses…
“Rising bankruptcies could deliver a rude shock to many banks, which may not have been monitoring the solvency of their borrowers during the forbearance period.”
https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/the-covid-19-economic-crisis-could-morph
“The Bank of England has written to UK bank bosses telling them to review their exposure to losses that could emerge from businesses hardest-hit by Covid-19, as part of efforts to head off potential risks to the financial system.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/15/bank-of-england-tells-bank-bosses-to-review-exposure-to-losses
2021 looks like it will be the year of defaulting debt. I don’t know if there will be a way of propping up banks, insurance companies, and pension plans that depend on this defaulting debt. It there isn’t the world is in deep trouble.
Spiked has a new article on energy and the economy more generally.
They champion nuclear and fusion, criticise renewables and they say nothing about the declining profitability of fossil fuels.
They want an ‘ambitious’, more productive economy, a dissolution of zombie (unprofitable) companies and sectors and investment in new technologies and infrastructure.
I previously argued on their site (comments) that capitalism is now ‘decrepit’, as productivity growth has converged toward zero since the 1970s in all ‘mature’ economies and it has flatlined at near zero since 2008.
Declining systemic unprofitability, with a particular locus in the energy sector, due to a rise in the costs of fossil fuel extraction relative to energy returns and its unaffordability to energy customers, looks like a potential ‘mechanism’ for the decline in productivity growth and in profitability, even if it has a geological aspect and it is not ‘purely economic’.
Indeed, the onset of the downward tendency of productivity growth does correlate with the 1970s oil crisis and higher oil prices since then; and the falling profitability of the energy sector and its implications for the rest of the economy is now clearer.
They are speaking of ‘decrepit rulers’, and they emphasise the view that a change of strategy is possible to boost growth and productivity.
My own intuition is that an increasing ‘socialisation’ of production will be necessary, with a redistribution of funds to maintain increasingly unprofitable companies and sectors, particularly in the energy sector. Spiked rather want to withdraw support for zombie companies and sectors, and to focus on state investment in infrastructure and technological innovation.
Their take on Britain’s future energy provisions will interest OFWers. Perhaps Gail in particular could give an evaluation of their plans. It would be exciting if Gail and Spiked would agree to a video debate on Spiked’s energetic, economic and political perspectives. It could clarify the state of the debate around energy and the future of Britain. Perhaps we could try to organise that? Would you be up for it, Gail?
> The ‘reset’ we really need
…. On the positive side, the promotion of advanced nuclear power, explicitly advocated in the policy paper published alongside the 10-point plan, could be a boon. It is certainly a move that advocates of degrowth would staunchly oppose. The paper even goes so far as to argue that Britain should be ‘the first country in the world to commercialise fusion-energy technology’ – in other words, harnessing the huge amounts of energy that can be generated by combining atomic nuclei. This would be a massive benefit as it would mean virtually unlimited amounts of clean and cheap energy.
On the other hand, offshore wind makes little sense as a widespread energy source. The cost of constructing wind turbines and erecting them at sea – in both financial terms and energy terms – is enormous. Before even one watt of energy is generated, a huge amount of energy must be expended. Once they are erected the energy supplied will be intermittent – since it depends on the wind blowing – and once the turbines’ lives are over they have to be disposed of. This is also a task that demands a huge amount of energy.
…. Indeed, the likelihood is that the much vaunted energy transition will bolster unemployment. Think of those who work in the fossil-fuel sector – a significant chunk of the economy – as well as those in aviation and tourism. Little is made of the likely impact on their jobs of a reset package. That is despite the fact that many of these sectors have suffered the most as a result of the lockdown restrictions associated with the Covid pandemic.
…. To achieve such an objective requires genuine ambition rather than hype. It means providing backing for new sectors and technologies to help them get underway. It also means being prepared to remove backing from obsolescent or unproductive enterprises when they have passed their time. This is in sharp contrast to recent policy, which emphasises the provision of plentiful cheap credit in the form of ‘quantitative easing’. The effect of this approach is simply to shore up zombie companies rather than promote the emergence of new areas of economic activity.
It is also necessary to be willing to develop large-scale infrastructure where necessary. This means, among other things, aiming for plentiful cheap energy and encouraging physical mobility. It means building nuclear power stations, rapid transport networks and roads. It means taking inspiration from the rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines to promote rapid growth in other areas.
…. But as time goes on – well ahead of the 2050 deadline – the ‘net zero’ target will make it harder for Britain to meet its energy needs. Energy generation based on fossil fuels will be phased out while any nuclear plans will face stiff resistance. Yet renewable energy, such as wind and solar, is limited because of its intermittent character….
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/16/the-reset-we-really-need/
* and it has flatlined at near zero since 2008. [Declining productivity growth explains the intensified dependence of British capital on an influx of workers to expand the labour force and thus to maintain GDP growth, systemic profitability, and the survival of the profit and growth based capitalist economic system. The need for influx to the metropole is a post-imperialist trend that is due to the loss of colonies with their labour pools, resources and protected markets, and the need has intensified as productivity growth has declined. British capital now depends entirely on influx to maintain GDP growth and systemic profitability (and to repay structural debt) in the near absence of productivity growth. The intensification of influx reflects collapsing productivity growth.]
** does correlate with the 1970s oil crisis and higher oil prices since then. [Note also, the correlation of the collapse and flatling of productivity growth since 2008 with the peak of conventional oil production in 2005, the rise of more expensive fracking, peaking oil price in 2008, and high oil prices since then. The decline in productivity growth correlates with higher oil prices, with particular loci in the mid-1970s, 2008 – and soon as fracking gets pricier and goes bankrupt. Energy production is increasingly unprofitable to producers and unaffordable to customers, which collapses productivity growth and leads to systemic unprofitability – and potentially to complete economic collapse if/ when the socialisation of production (QE, ZIRP, bail outs, debt write offs, state buy ins and subsidies etc.) fails to countervail systemic unprofitability and rising energy costs.]
I would be happy to participate in any debate you can arrange.
Spiked is at least thinking a little outside the box here.
I have emailed Tom Slater, deputy editor of Spiked. I told him that he can contact you directly or reply to me.
Re: debate invite from Gail Tverberg
Hi Tom,
Gail Tverberg of ourfiniteworld.com would be happy to debate the energetic, economic and political perspectives of Spiked in a video debate.
She is aware of your perspectives and she would be happy to debate your views on the declining profitability of fossil fuels, on nuclear and fusion as alternative energy sources for Britain, and on the ambition of replacing the zombie economy with a more productive one through the withdrawal of state support for zombies and through investment in infrastructure and the development and implementation of new technologies.
Gail is one of the best known theoreticians of nuanced peak oil perspectives and she has a global audience. She has spoken at many conferences on the subject around the world and published academic papers. Many of her readers are British and they are also aware of your work. A debate between yourselves and Gail would help to clarify the present state of the debate regarding the potential economic future of Britain. It would afford you a wider domestic and global audience.
Gail can be contacted at GailTverberg comcast net or at [redacted here] by phone (USA). Her twitter feed is @gailtheactuary. Or you can reply to me as I am in constant contact with Gail.
This would be an exciting, illuminating and welcome debate to many.
Thank you for your consideration and all the best to you.
Thanks for doing this. I’ll try to be on the look out for this.
Hungarian ageing and imploding population:
Brussels ‘sex party’: Hungarian MEP József Szájer fled along a gutter with drugs in backpack
https://www.euronews.com/2020/12/01/brussels-sex-party-public-prosecutors-office-will-not-discuss-identity-of-suspected-mep
https://www.euronews.com/2020/12/07/jozsef-szajer-hungarian-mp-berates-former-fidesz-mep-using-drainpipe
József Szájer resigned last week after he was caught by police fleeing a gay sex party in Brussels he had been attending, despite coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
Szájer, the most senior figure of Hungary’s governing Fidesz party in Brussels, tried to escape the authorities down the guttering of the apartment building.
The scandal generated fresh backlash against the ruling conservative Fidesz party, who have pushed through anti-LGBT policies in Hungary.
Take a Walk on the Wild Side..😜🤣👯
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RsVLIiI8Vfo
Men ….easily bored 😴
There will be lots of empty glass buildings, and indoor farms can benefit from them. Indoor farming is trending, and is a viable supplement to other kinds of farming, while providing many jobs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankateman/2020/07/14/is-the-future-of-farming-indoors/?sh=ce919192cc0c
This hopes to show how opportunistic shelter can be,; it can glom on to all sorts of nooks and crannies, and not just be cold and impersonal concrete towers. (The Eschif in Périgueux, France was a lookout for a toll bridge. It’s an oak timber frame building with wattle & daub infill built in 1347.)
https://www.facebook.com/archpng/photos/a.229584810531632/1824329194390511/?type=3
Art,
If you can make it work, go for it, no sarcasm. Gardening is hard work out the back door and with these field sizes, this is gardening, large gardening, but gardening.
All that dirt, mud, tools, fertilizer, etc. in the elevator is going to be a maintenance challenge.
Dennis Loeffler
Dennis L: As we see below, it’s far from clear whether ANYTHING along the lines of indoor farming can work energy-wise. But at least it wouldn’t involve dirt; just aquaponics.
Norman and Worldof, thanks a bunch for the points. So it would be well nigh impossible to pull off, especially hands-off. from a distance, with zero practical knowledge. I’m thinking along purely planning (social-engineering?) lines, and I’d still look into the least harmful ways to experiment for something short term…in the Tropics, where heating, at least, won’t be necessary.
Young people don’t have land to plant on otherwise, and travel and other land-based expenses are a problem too. Any way I look at it makes some kind of central management look necessary. Mixing in “ecotourism” shelter in thith the “plant” would be worth a try as well. I can consult creditably well with building design issues, but the really hard stuff–permits, daily management, business plans–would have to be the work of some as-of-yet-unencountered angels.
indoor farming is a fascinating subject and I’d like to know more about the basic way it functions.
I probably don’t know enough to offer a worthwhile comment. (imagine that!!)
but it seems to me that the ultimate problem is how many food calories can be extracted per sq m, as opposed to all the accumulated calorific values going in.
the crops seem to be of low calorific value by weight.—ie you have to extract a lot of greenstuff to obtain the necessary 2000 cal per day to live. Kale provides only 9 cal per ounce.
if this is so, then ultimately indoor farms will run into the same problem as coalmines, where the necessary energy to extract the coal is greater than is in the coal itself—meaning that the coal (or kale) cannot be accessed other than at a net energy loss.
if energy is extracted at a net loss, (to the community at large) then that loss has to be made up from somewhere else.
If factory greens are produced that way, then richer buyers will be able to access them , while poorer ones may not.
yes I know other calories can and will be produced by conventional means, but if population continues to grow, so will the delusion that we can grow our food by ‘alternative’ means, just like the delusion that we can get our other energies by alternative means.
I admit I might have missed a trick on this subject. No doubt someone will point out what it is
Good points, even the best “beyond organic” farms run on (so far) uninterrupted just in time flow of supplies, tools, precursors (natural) or man-made, skilled labor, and electricity for seedling grow lights (at least for colder – short season climates).. and specific demand enabling above usual market prices..
Basically, converting some of these glass RE into (partial) farming places you eventually ran into similar issues as per the Cuban special period, it helps a bit – buys time avoids acute universal famine – (say in veggies and if we stretch it potentially in aquaculture) but it’s hardly long term savior given the cascading-ricocheting issues elsewhere in the system.
after I’d put down my thoughts on indoor farming
it suddenly hit me—that that evil mastermind Bill Gates is behind them, (plus a few of his buddies of course)
Once every country comes to rely on them, they will be turned into Soylent Green factories.
I can see it now—Gates gets something stuck in his teeth—” EEEeewwwwww—thats a bit of unrendered Fast Eddy!!”
OK, OK, no need to rub it in. I can take the hint! 😉 This is probably not going to work.
Indoor gardening is not sustainable, as I see it. Replacing glass windows becomes a problem. Keeping these buildings cool becomes a problem. Elevators don’t work for very long.
Same problem for millions of other building, though.
As prescient as Nostradamus and twice as clear.
Could this be the song of the vote counters?
Heard about Houston?
Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, P.A.?
You’ve got to learn not to stand by the window
Somebody see you up there
Or of the lockdowners?
This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain’t got time for that now
Or maybe of the doomers?
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Can’t write a letter, can’t send no postcard,
I ain’t got time for that now
https://youtu.be/jShMQw2H2cM
“The researchers have so far identified 12,706 mutations in SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19.”
Good COVID News: None of the SARS-CoV-2 Genetic Mutations Appear to Increase Transmissibility
https://scitechdaily.com/good-covid-news-none-of-the-sars-cov-2-genetic-mutations-appear-to-increase-transmissibility/
We certainly are not seeing a lot of people falling over dead in the street, as they appeared to be (perhaps as played by actors) in early cases in Wuhan. There was discussion of an early mutation that made the virus spread more easily, I thought. The D614G mutation, as I recall. The new version started in Europe and soon spread worldwide.
This is a link to a Nature article called, The coronavirus is mutating-does it matter? It shows the image below regarding global spread which says, “By the end of June, the D614G mutation was found in almost all SARS-CoV-2 samples worldwide.”
https://media.nature.com/lw800/magazine-assets/d41586-020-02544-6/d41586-020-02544-6_18347862.png
Regardless of whether your new article agrees with what was published earlier, your new link says,
So perhaps the power that be have found a way to make the virus stick around even longer. Use a vaccine to try to get rid of it!
Looking back, six things perhaps served to feed the COVID hysteria in February/ March:
1/ The Chinese drama – videos of people dropping dead in the street, the welding into apartments, and rumours of the massively increased use of cremation in Wuhan. And of course we all suspected that if those things got out of China, it must have been so much worse in reality…..
2/ The hysterical videos which came out of Northern Italian hospitals -‘Warn the world!’. W were told that the best hospital system in Italy was being over-whelmed.
3/ The exaggeration of the cruise-ship fiascos, portrayed as potential Death Ships.
4/ Grossly exaggerated death-rates,which we all did our calculations from and were shocked by.
5/ The ‘We don’t have enough ventilators!’ scare, which fostered visions of not even being treated if one fell ill.
6/ Sloppy modelling by supposed pandemic experts -still relied upon by scientifically illiterate politicians.
All of these factors were perhaps arranged in some way, by different actors, including, but probably not necessarily always, governments.
I have now come to the opinion, reinforced by the current crude censorship and side-lining of reputable, even distinguished, scientific and medical opinion that goes against the pandemic/vaccine narrative favoured by Bill Gates and co. that we are facing deliberate and cynical deception and manipulation, by a variety of groups, whose interests converge in doing so against the general good.
Xabier> Yes, excellent summary, thanks.
And I must admit it worked on me for the first several months.
Now, what does that tell us? Especially, the peculiar Chinese or Russian angle of things (towing the line).. Major logical scenarios to ponder as of this date:
A/ Genuine pandemic outbrake and govs just trying to maintain power and BAU with regard to already pre-existing forcing of bad economic situation
B/ Plandemic diversion with goal of resetting national, regional and global arrangements into the incoming age of PROFOUNDLY enhanced scarcity and its effects on population
C/ Some kind of variation on B/ incl. the coordination with western faction (the big tech and likely at least some portion of the perennial fin groups) NOT dissimilar to prior key pre- negotiated geopolitical maneuvers of the past (e.g. unilateral USSR disarmament, WW coalitions, .. etc.)
Well, worldof, I am ordering my thoughts on this around two related concepts:
1/ ‘Convergence of Opportunism’ (also used by the great -and I think brave – Dr Yeadon).
2/ ‘Convergence of Interests’.
I am coming to see most governments, or the majority of people within most governments, even the most senior, as the patsies in this, most of the time, just as much as we are. There is probably no global inter-governmental plot.
Other,cross-national, actors are far more important than governments these days – in fact, ever since Jewish merchants and bankers invited the Arabs to invade Spain in the 8th century, when their interests converged……
Reviewing the propaganda/psy-ops aspect, I really can only take my hat off to them, whoever they are:a truly professional job, and most effective, duping even the educated. Perhaps especially the educated?
Not all lies, just enough to do the job and get the bandwagonor lock-downs, far, and economic chaos rolling.
The great irony in this is that those most near to the truth from the beginning were perhaps the red-neck ‘I don’t want no gubermint interference’ types.
But then it did take the simple little boy to point out the nudity of the Emperor. didn’t it?
Even Dr Yeadon says that he supported the initial lock-downs,until the light dawned, so none of us need feel any shame at having been taken in initially.
Fair enough.
That’s why I listed more vertically operating gov structures such as the Chinese or Russians. They are either *duped into following the situation blindly, or dragged around to some sort of sparring match with the tiny global faction hydra you alluded to and basically trying to play they “limited” hand as best given the circumstances.
Also, I structured my post in such a way, even novice students can get up to speed. Specifically, we can hint at “secret” amendment articles to major historical treaties etc., where only a handful of top gov individuals knew about, while 99.9% of the apparatus ran on need to know basis to immediate next level higher up chain of command only..
—
* this sub scenario not very likely as the Russians already had learned the hard lesson of mid late 1980s due to domestic conventional peak resorting to risky yet needed maneuver in terms of “voluntarily” begging to enter int pricing scheme for energy & credit & tech embargo lift (i.e. forcing on themselves end of lavish domestic and coalition energy subsidies); so in my book – logic follows they likely “must know” today’s game as well..
I think that Governor Cuomo and his theatrics need to be part of the list as well.
Didn’t Cuomo get an acting award or something? What fine leaders we are blessed with.
For those who are wondering how Slovakia’s testing and quarantining worked out, it is now far enough behind us that we can see what happened.
There was a definite dip in the number of reported cases. But it came right back again. It is now well above the EU average. The early peak was on November 4.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Slovakia-EU-and-US-New-Covid-Cases-at-Dec.-14-2020-1024×597.png
The number of deaths stabilized at a lower level than the EU or US. But it is not clear how long this will last, with the recent rise in cases.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Slovakia-EU-and-US-New-COVID-Deaths-Dec.-14-1024×595.png
The relationship between cases and deaths seems to vary a lot by country. There were a lot of deaths relative to cases early on, but deaths/cases have come way down.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/EU-US-Slovakia-deaths-as-share-of-cases-December-14-1024×598.png
dedicated to the Billionaires, the Elites, the Globalists:
Deteriorata
‘Fret not thyself.’
the sound of the UK in its glory days circa 1977:
Yes, no doubt progressive house does have some distant roots in progressive rock.
Deep roots of electronica also lie with Jean-Michel Jarre and his 1976 Oxygène.
“It was highly influential in the development of electronic music from that point onward and has been described as the album that “led the synthesizer revolution of the Seventies”[4] and “an infectious combination of bouncy, bubbling analog sequences and memorable hook lines”.[5]”
There is more awareness of techno roots in 1980s USA but that was influenced by 80s Euro pop. The roots lie deeper.
Deteriorata seems to be from 2010. The song is from earlier than that.
And now for something completely different and more important in finite world terms.
I found this image fascinating. In terms of gross biomass, humans and their livestock absolutely dominate the Mammals category, but we are still far outweighed by the annelids, the mollusks, the fish, and most of all the arthropods.
https://theautomaticearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BiomassDistribution.jpg
A beautiful illustration.
Such a pity they can’t all gang up on us: but their revenge will be in dying, as we rely on them utterly.
Not really as plant bases stuff can be edible and even if all of them perish mankind won’t miss them other than the delicacies
Yes, you’re right, if ‘they all perish” mankind won’t miss them. Why? Because we will all be gone before them. There will be only a few hunter gatherers who might miss them as their lives of hard scrabble hunting and gathering will be much harder than our ancient ancestors..
The problem is most of the annelids, mollusks and arthropods are affected by human activity and already most of fish have enough mercury to make them inedible to humans. eating lots of tuna cans will make someone suffer mercury poisoning
Eating lots of tuna cans will damage your teeth, slice up your mouth and throat, and fill your stomach with aluminum and/or steel. If you must eat tuna, it’s better to open the cans first and just eat the contents.
Riddle me this?
Why is mercury so poisonous when eaten as a fish contaminant but just dandy when injected as a component of vaccines? Just askin’ for a young friend who’s been subjected to sixty shots in his first eighteen years of life.
Tim, the vaccines injected into you have been adulterated with chemicals to prolong their shelf life. One of them is an organo mercury compound.
The trick is simple: the pure vaccines are tested and proved effective; the adulterated vaccines are never tested. The mercury compound is broken apart by heat, body hear for instance, and the inorganic part is then metabolised to metallic mercury.
One effect of mercury poisoning in childhood is autism. The rate of autism increased in parallel with the amount of vaccination, and it has decreased over the past year with the decrease in vaccination. Food for thought.
Because I have a mildly autistic adult son, I have belonged to groups concerned with autism. These groups kept bringing up this possible issue. Giving a huge number of shots to infants when they are only about 8 days old seemed ill advised.
I understand that the number of sudden infant deaths dropped dramatically during the lockdown period. Perhaps this is what you are referring to.
Another risk that is sometimes brought up, especially with respect to ADHD, is too little vitamin D in the mother. This is especially likely if the mother is working inside an office all day. I suppose that the mercury and vitamin D issues could interact.
Mercury was removed from vaccines decades ago. The compound was called thermerosal and the link to autism has long since been debunked and people who continue to peddle this dangerous nonsense do great harm. H O
wens MD
Vaccination and Health Outcomes: A Survey of 6- to 12-year-old Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children based on Mothers’ Reports
A. Mawson, B. Ray, Azad R. Bhuiyan, Binu Jacob
http://www.encognitive.com/files/Scientific%20Study–Non-vaccinated%20are%20healthier%20than%20vaccinated.pdf
“With regard to acute and chronic conditions, vaccinated children were significantly less likely than the unvaccinated to have had chickenpox and pertussis. However, contrary to expectation, the vaccinated were significantly more likely to have been diagnosed with otitis media, pneumonia, allergic rhinitis, eczema, ADHD, ASD and a learning disability.”
Could the smaller incidence of problems in non-vaccinated children be explained by the fact that the parents of such children are less likely to take their children to see a doctor?
Why have so few studies been done to compare the health of vaccinated and non-vaccinated children? Isn’t this an important topic? Is the pharmaceutical industry afraid of what the results might show?
Also, sudden infant death syndrome.
I know thermerosal was removed. There are now new compounds to improve shelf life. Are they safe?
Mercury seems to be a problem with coal fired power plants, natural gas I wonder?
Dennis L.
My impression is that coal has many pollutants with it, when it is extracted. Coal ash is formed, and to a significant extent captured by filters, when coal is burned. The EPA says,
According to Earthjustice.org:
Of course, in poorer countries without much filtration, coal ash tends to simply rain down on inhabitants. Even where it is filtered out, disposal is a problem.
Oil and gas seem to have two types of impurities:
(1) Those dissolved in the oil and gas themselves, and
(2) Those found in the waste water that is extracted when the oil and gas is extracted.
My impression is that the impurities in the oil and gas themselves are pretty much removed in the refining process. This leaves large amounts of sulfur and perhaps other minerals (such as vanadium), but these are not too much of a problem.
The waste water that comes up with the oil and gas has all kinds of “stuff” carried up with it as well. It is often radioactive. Apparently mercury is also an issue. I found a document called, Mercury management in petroleum refining: An IPIECA Good Practice Guide.
My impression is that the quantities of pollutants are not as large for oil and gas as for coal.
Interesting, nearly all mammalian biomass would be gone without us and our livestock. Something for the vegans to think about.
That would be good riddance to both the exploited animals and the pretentious vegans. A win-win situation.
I rather like vegans; they are so easy to tease. Whenever somebody tells me they are “vegan”, I usually answer with “and how do you like Earth?”, or “excellent disguise; I would never have guessed you were a lizard”, or “how do you contact the mother ship?”.
By the way, I once had a colleague who was a vegetarian. When I asked him why he was eating a cheese omelette he replied “I am a lacto ovo vegetarian”. That was when I decided I was a “carno vegetarian”, and have enjoyed the moral high ground ever since. And I take my vegetables medium rare.
Q: How do you know if somebody is vegan?
A: Don’t worry, they will urgently tell you.
Joking aside, aspiring to eat more plant-based is an ethical thing to do.
That is just an hallucination of your rapacious limbic system.
Yup, a mighty convincing hallucination. One that involves eons of evolutionary pressure. In direct comparison to the newer socialist engineering entities roaming the net. 😇
Going vegan is an ethical thing to do, however, you are free to disagree with me, but then again, you’d be …. 🤣
Fish levels seem to be down greatly from what they were previously. If they are still at 29%, I wonder where they were earlier? Of course, the total was very much higher. We have already wiped out most of the wild animals and birds, making it impossible for a large share of us to turn to hunting an activity to provide food.
It’s lamentable, I agree. Where it comes to wildlife, the more the merrier in my book.
However, during the glacial periods, there is a lot less animal life on land—not much roaming the Canadian or Northern European ice sheets, for a start— and probably less in the oceans too.
Contrariwise, there tends to be more animal life around when the climate is warmer, earth greener, and the blessed gas is present in higher concentrations. the Bible is essentially correct when it states, “There were giants on the earth in those days.”
There is a logical contradiction at the heart of today’s SJW Green philosophy in that it ostensibly aims at more wildlife while simultaneously working against creating the climatic conditions that allow more wildlife to flourish.
I must ask George Monbiot about this next time I see him down the pub.
The question in the near-term is – which flora and fauna can evolve quickly enough …genetically?
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-12/nuos-gwi121020.php
…And/or behaviourally to make the best of the changing situation?
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/arctic-animals-movement-patterns-are-shifting-in-different-ways-as-the-climate-changes
Some creatures like jellfish may do very well:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/attack-of-the-jellies-the-winners-of-ocean-acidification-50576
Harry, is this really an issue? Weather varies tremendously from year to year in many places—always has and always will—and yet living things in the wild survive this variability.
human activity has affected weather patterns
weather variability directly affects food availability
when food volumes diminish through weather alterations, critters move to where the food is
but humankind has interrupted this movement, and taken their food supply
so survival of critters is directly affected
this is why species are going extinct
“Harry, is this really an issue?”
Extensive loss of biodiversity from human impacts is already an issue for us and the flora and fauna involved, of course – but taking the longer view I’m sure the biosphere will sort itself out.
Warmer may not necessarily mean greener btw, as water stress has in some places been significantly impeding the ability of plants to benefit from additional CO2 since the 90’s:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/8/eaax1396
Option 2….hunting and eating our fellow mate…
book How to Serve Man.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp_EhjlLGkQ
Well, we can put window dressing on it all…just like this sci-fi twilight show
https://imgur.com/UeGY9E6
Most whites in USA do not realize that the demographic shift has turned decisively against them.
Of course any Dem candidate will receive millions of more popular vote than Rep, because the nonwhites will mostly vote Dem to spite the Republicans.
Republicans will NEVER win the Presidency again. NEVER. They still do not realize that the days of Republicans are over forever; instead, the Democratic Party will split into half, the pro-rich liberal party and the pro-minority ‘handout’ party.
After all, the Republican Party was the result of a split in the 1830s (it was initially called the Whig Party).
How the assumptions that the economy is recovering are made:
The Slovak Minister of Finance Eduard Heger says in an interview that based on the data of the electricity consumption and the toll collection system they see that the Slovak economy is recovering: i.e. the energy consumption, namely the electricity and the oil, are used.
https://jakubsimek.blog.sme.sk/c/541920/prisny-otec-financii-eduard-heger.html?ref=sekciabox
The voluntary Ag testing on coronavirus in Slovakia brings better results than the compulsory one, as the recent data show.
Unfortunately, the article is in Slovak:
https://www.postoj.sk/67711/dobra-sprava-nasli-sme-vybornu-zbran
“With the price of Western Canadian oil languishing around $35 a barrel and Canadian oil sands companies hemorrhaging both workers and money, the province of Alberta sees its future in another fossil fuel: coal.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/15/alberta-canada-coal-rush-mining-exports
But coal prices are also too low!
“Poland’s coal mining sector was PLN3.67bn (€830mn) in the red at the end of October, the loss deepening by over PLN1.3bn compared to the full-year result for 2019, the ministry of state assets said.”
“Largely state-owned coal mines in Poland are going through one of the worst crises of recent years.”
https://www.intellinews.com/polish-coal-mining-sector-s-loss-exceeds-830mn-at-end-october-198811/?source=poland
Poland just received lot of $B (pledge) in new round (budget) of EU funding..
Some of it will be used on energy projects, and wasted on large scale RE sector “investments”.. But as long as “value” and jobs are flowing, all is jolly good..
Coal prices are too low everywhere!
“Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called China’s rumored move to not approve Australian coal imports a “lose-lose” situation on Tuesday and said it would be a breach of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.”
https://www.dw.com/en/australia-blasts-china-on-apparent-coal-ban/a-55942836
China doesn’t seem to need as much imported coal now thanks to the world recession; it can get what it needs from Indonesia.
“Iraq’s Economic Collapse Could Be Biden’s First Foreign-Policy Headache: If the Iraqi government fails to pay state workers’ salaries in January, it could lead to widespread instability and violence…
“Iraq is headed for a financial collapse, and in its current fragile state, fiscal ruin is likely to bring down its rickety political system, which could then ignite yet another round of civil war.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/14/iraqs-economic-collapse-could-be-bidens-first-foreign-policy-headache/
“The post–civil war boom in shark fishing that saved Congolese fishermen and their families is now drying up: As sharks become scarcer, following the trajectory of other species before them, prices have shot up.
“At the same time, Congo’s latest economic crisis, prompted by falling oil prices and exacerbated by COVID-19, means that she also faces the double threat of fewer customers and rising competition from more and more women entering the processing sector to provide for their struggling families.”
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/a-fragile-economy-balanced-on-a-sharks-back/
“At least 20 people died when a boat sank off the eastern Venezuelan coast over the weekend and the vessel’s owner has been arrested, the country’s chief prosecutor said on Monday.
“At least 40,000 Venezuelans live in Trinidad and Tobago, many of whom arrived in small rickety boats overloaded beyond capacity, with limited supplies of fuel and food.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idUSKBN28O2JI
If Iraq lapses into civil war, this would likely reduce world exports of oil, and push the world economy in the direction of collapse.
A fine mess Mister BAU will leave behind
Bloomberg
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/toxic-spills-venezuela-offer-bleak-090021485.html
Toxic Spills in Venezuela Offer a Bleak Vision of the End of Oil
Broke and subject to international sanctions, President Nicolas Maduro’s government is squeezing what it can from Venezuela’s collapsing oil industry, unleashing an environmental disaster in one of Earth’s most ecologically diverse nations. As the country’s vast resources become a toxic burden, Venezuela offers a bleak vision of the end of oil in a founding OPEC member…..
With global demand plummeting during the pandemic, the reality for Venezuela as elsewhere is that the world is moving on from fossil fuels. Oil-dependent economies everywhere will need billions of dollars to safely retire decades of infrastructure buildout, but in Venezuela’s case the money isn’t there and there’s little prospect of foreign aid, while the industry’s legacy stretches back a full century.
“The level of neglect has been brutal,” said Raul Gallegos, a Bogota-based director at Control Risks, an international consulting firm. What’s more, the impact is only going to get worse since the Maduro government “isn’t going anywhere,” he said.
….
Spills also occur regularly, and each time Venezuela is able to dodge sanctions and export a few tanker loads — as happened when an Iranian vessel loaded crude this fall — it frees up storage space to start pumping oil through leaky pipelines. Iran’s biggest fleet of tankers yet is at sea now bound for Venezuela.
Best practices went out the window two decades ago following a failed coup and nationwide strike against the late Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s populist president who renationalized the industry and built up massive debts even during the era of $100-a-barrel oil.
Yes, even today those living without the privilege of BAU get the dirty end of the 🍡
Fortunately, there are bacteria that “eat” oil, so the system does get cleaned up, eventually.
In fact, some microbes exist that can use electricity, directly. We don’t hear these details, when these stories are posted.
From what understand 😀 we people are already assisting in that digestion of hydrocarbons by consuming significant particles…helping to speed up the process
Mister BAU is going to miss Donald J Trump too…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/americas-last-wilderness-highest-bidder-113204058.html
6 January, the Bureau of Land Management, directed by the Trump administration, is scheduled to hold a virtual oil and gas lease sale – an “aggressive, competitive exploration and development program” – for drilling in ANWR. More specifically, in the 1.5m acre coastal plain, the refuge’s biological heart: the birthing grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, the prime denning area for the Beaufort Sea population of polar bears (a threatened species, numbering only 900), and the breeding sites for birds that every year fly across oceans and continents to raise their young on undisturbed, flower-embroidered tundra.
Ten thousand years of natural beauty and balance – America’s last great wilderness – will soon be “open” to the highest bidder, beginning at $25 an acre. The winner could initiate seismic testing: shaking the earth with massive vibration trucks, awakening polar bears in their dens. If the testing shows a strong promise of oil (which is presently unknown), they may build an industrial complex of roads, well pads, desalinization plants, airstrips and pipelines, all tied into Prudhoe Bay, some 80 miles to the west. If not, the seismic testing alone will produce many scars visible for decades.
How can this happen? Easy. On the final page of the massive 2017 feed-the-rich federal tax bill, the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski added oil and gas exploration as a “purpose” of ANWR. She and her Republican colleagues said it would pump significant revenue into the treasury, a claim which Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization, has called “blatantly irresponsible and fiscally reckless”.
Doubt Joe and Company will do much to stop Mister BAU…except for some Window dressing🤑
Remember, humans are part of nature.
Also, unless oil prices are a lot higher than they are now, it is doubtful that this area will ever be developed. There may be some folks willing to bid on land, however.
Another way this oil could be developed would be through global warming, making this area a more amenable place to work and grow crops. Such development is a long ways off, I expect.
Suppose we can view cancer too as part of nature.
Hurricanes are part of nature. Tool to remove old growth and clear out .
Remember an author writing we can look at a massive mood growth on an apple tree as a disease or a spectacular colony of fungi growing in an ideal setting
it was we who decided the planet was property with a cash value that would pay our wages forever.
Actually, that’s what was expected of the Brazilian Rainforest by a former leader, saying it had to pay for itself or be developed.
Of course, those profiting by development saw to it that it would never do so.
Brazilian rubber tapper and land rights leader Chico Mendes pioneered the world’s first tropical forest conservation initiative advanced by forest peoples themselves. His work led to the establishment of Brazil’s extractive reserves protected forest areas that are inhabited and managed by local communities.
Mendes was slain because Mister BAU profited more by development
seems to me that we will go on making ‘profit’—ie turning the planet into cash, until we can’t.
at that point our political problems will be over
BAU = ecocide = human suicide
no BAU = human suicide
Not exactly, we hope. Perhaps the system will go downhill slowly, and there will be some who are able to adapt to the new situation. Our self-organizing system supports energy dissipation, to the extent possible. Keeping the economic system as close to BAU as possible is in some ways optimal.
’bout sums up the situation I think
turn the planet into cash, and you’re bound to spend it all
Chico Mendez – murdered December 22, 1988
“Mendes was the 90th rural activist murdered that year in Brazil”
Chico Mendes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chico_Mendes#Assassination
Thanks for posting… remember it well via the Rainforest Action. Network, which hasn’t worked at all from what I see in the last decades…but it has all been recorded very well…just like the ….well it has to do with camps during WW2….
“it was we who decided the planet was property with a cash value that would pay our wages forever.”
That is a great quote!
Over the years, I’ve be restrained in my praise of Donald Trump. But after almost four years of Making America Great Again, and having to endure rabid attacks on his integrity, his honor and his hairstyle, as a civilized human being, an admirer of fair play, and a lapsed Catholic, I feel I must say something in defence of his record.
Despite some major disappointments, Trump is awesome.
He’s the first president to have stepped foot in North Korea. He’s reversed the horrendous US foreign policy of turning “rogue states” into failed states, has tried his best to end quagmires that the US is still in because of the policies off Dubya and Obama, gave the US record low unemployment until the Dems and the Deep State weaponized the pandemic to trash the economy (something comedian Bill Marr called for in 2019), he signed the First Step Act (you’ll have to look that one up, won’t you Norman?), allocated more funding to historically black universities and colleges than any president ever, and made that funding permanent, and brought Churchill’s bust back into the Oval Office and had the entire place redecorated, exorcised and fumigated after all that’s been going on there since Reagan departed.
And now he has the chance to crown these achievements of his first term by pardoning Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, both to cock a snoot at the establishment and because it’s the right thing to do. So I sincerely hope he does this.
Another likeable thing about Trump is that he isn’t vindictive—unlike Obama, for instance, who used the DOJ to specifically target conservatives, and who had Dinesh DeSousa locked up on trumped up charges—Trump hasn’t actually had any of his political opponents locked up. This may prove to be a weakness on his part. America has changed for the worse, and perhaps Trump is too nice, too reasonable, too civilized, and too forgiving for his own good. There are some real monsters out there, and some of them are amassing political power and are out for blood.
Once Trump leaves, whether in 2021 or in 2025, and people have endured a few years of life under his successor(s), perhaps then they will begin to appreciate what a great privilege it was to have lived under his enlightened guidance.
As a reminder, this was always about the “Great Reset” which is in motion by the likes of Klaus Schwab, Soros, Gates and the rest of those tyrants. Trump was just in their way so they decided to replace him with an aged Globalist who appears to suffer from Dementia and is a serial grouper. The good part of being a serial grouper and suffering from Dementia is you forget who you grouped, so you can’t be accused of lying.
I think you mean groped
unless he used both hands
A distraught woman runs into a police station screaming, “I’ve been graped!” I’ve been graped!”
The desk sergeant, trying to be helpful, says, “Don’t you mean raped?”
“No,” replies the woman, “There was a bunch of them.”
that joke is so old I sent it to a dendrochronologist
If people can accuse him of being a reptillian, then why is a fish any less plausible?
hmmm
that’s a point to ponder.
maybe because a two handed fish would be an oddity in nature?
Unless there was a shoal of them of course
America just cut off it’s nose to spite it’s face.
is this the. same Donald Trump who had to settle a $25m lawsuit for fraud before taking up the office of POTUS, or am I confusing him with someone else?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/06/trump-university-court-upholds-25m-settlement-to-give-students-money-back
Such a generous man! What other college do you know that gave its former students their money back?
especially in exchange for the biggest prize of all;
presidency of the United States of America
Except that it’s turned toxic and cost him everything .
(And I still think you’re trying an elaborate windup–I wouldn’t wish the alternative on my worst enemy, even if I had one. I don’t even have a best enemy come to think of it)
I’ll let you into an open secret. Trumpy is trying on an elaborate windup. He is first and foremost a showman who has been trolling his way through life since forever. And the beauty of it is that he gets great results by rubbing people up the wrong way. I think the biggest reason many people don’t like him is that they are envious of his success, which they regard as unearned.
But stick him in a pile with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden and he is definitely the odd man out. Why is this? I think its because with Trump, what you see is what you get—whatever that may be.. He lacks the ability to convince people that he is something he isn’t. The others are all far more deceptive by a factor of ten at least. Also, Trump is narcissist, but the others are all to some extent sociopaths.
And people said he wasn’t qualified!
People don’t stop and think how distorted news reporting has become.
Part of the issue is simply one of “style.” I president is supposed to be a polite, smooth talking individual, who fits in well with leaders from around the world. He is supposed to address the world with polite speeches. He is also supposed to find leaders of cabinet and other high level posts from an accepted group of candidates, who are not too different from the candidates chosen by previous presidents.
If the economy had stayed on the path it had been prior to March 13, 2020, Trump certainly would have been re-elected. (The rest of the world, however, was doing pretty poorly. The world economy was close to tanking, which is why the ideas of shutdown spread so quickly, especially in areas doing poorly, economically.)
The US dollar started to “tank,” immediately after March 13. Someone should have reported that shutting down economies on this scale was an untried experiment that could have terribly negative consequences. Fauci and Gates are still quoted as if they are infallible.
I suppose this is all part of how a self-organized system works. Ideas catch on, because those with control over what is published want them to catch on. Over the long term, Biden surely cannot fix the situation. Biden can perhaps try to dole out more debt, to try to keep asset prices inflated a little longer. This may keep the bubble inflated a bit longer. At some point, the benefit cannot last, and the system will have to change, I expect.
Gail, thanks for aiming at the hearth of it, yes it may keep the bubble inflated a bit longer. However, now with the big tech on high horse the doors for digital gulag are wide open at least before the system have to change (collapse stage further). That could be next 5-15yrs away or even longer, in fact because of age this could be the very last section of time on this Earth available for many of us at this blog comment section..
I guess their internal analysis tells something like (in order to prolong quasi BAU) lets push multi spectral policy consisting of: at least partial and basal survival UBI, free movement restrictions, political and information censorship, trimming market demand (selected services and goods no longer available) and what will remain available on-line store purchase and delivery only, .. mop up any spiking unbalances by coordinated $(xyz)T print.
In summary, pretty dismal existence, no wonder some voiced preference for swift “natural” collapse sequence, which is not coming (for now).
Maybe this is a natural collapse, if an economy depends on promises of all sorts (debt, and asset prices that depend on ever-rising debt availability).
On similar note at Surplus recently:
—
Johan on December 15, 2020 at 12:35 am said:
Cynic,
I fear that you may be right.
The lives that we knew are now over.
Many people still think that we will all take a vaccine, and that things will be back to the way they were 6 months ago.
– Not happening.
Too much damage has already been done to the economy, so it cannot get back to where it was. Too many civil liberties have been given up, and to believe that governments will simply return these is beyond gullible.
No, we are now on the threshold of the Police State, so look forward to more and more meddling into your private life. The curtain has been pulled back and governments no longer need to maintain the pretext of democracy.
Climate change politics will now determine your future – air travel for the masses for example, is not coming back.
Next on the list is the family car, and then will come restrictions on moving outwith your local area.
Also look out for ever recurring mutations of Covid to keep the masses fearful and hence under control.
—
>>Also look out for ever recurring mutations of Covid
>>to keep the masses fearful and hence under control.
Speaking of which, a new mutation discovered in the UK in the MSM news yesterday.
Quite so, worldof, the people who wish to demolish the so-called ‘legacy’ economy and society -ie the fairly normal, functioning, human one we have grown up with – are now triumphant with the Biden win: their arrogance will be unlimited, and their intrusion in our lives will be unrestrained.
One looks in wonder at people like the Swedes who seem to be all too eager to rush headlong into it.
Are they collectively, for some historical or cultural, reason blind to human evil?
Tell me again which country that has been a dominant force within telecommunications (Eric, something) and electrical/electronic infrastructure components (Asea Br.., whatever) and heavy machinery (Atlas Copc.., dunno). Surely no business advantages can be made if it is possible to eavesdrop on peoples little dirty secrets. Of course not, such things would never happen in this perfect world. Gelaine Maxwell you say. Tinfoil hattery I respond.
Then again, I think that same country “invented” the Stockh.. syndrome, school of economics and institute. Yes, donates a lot of money to UN, *cough*, *cough*, bribes.. *cough*. Yup, first central bank on planet earth. Relentless and viciously corrupt banking sector. Collaborated with the naz1s during WW2.
I had it on my keyboard a little while ago, I hope I didn’t forget to type it out. Nope, I forgot it again, now which country was it again…
Could someone help me out here?
The country that gave the world this?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0&w=560&h=315%5D
Xabier, not sure what you mean by this:
“One looks in wonder at people like the Swedes who seem to be all too eager to rush headlong into it.”
Sweden seems to a much lesser degree to have turned into a police state from corona restrictions, at least compared to most other states.
Right, but on the other hand:
JMS, thanks. You are right Swedes are really progressive when it comes to technology.
>>their arrogance will be unlimited
That was my thought exactly after the UK MSM destroyed Corbin with their consistent lies about him being an anti-Semite. They still go after him now. I don’t support any mainstream political party, never have done, but seems to me Corbin was destroyed mostly because he was pro-Palestinian.
Corbin and Julian Assange. The lies told about Assange are consistent and outrageous. Source mainly and allegedly MI5. He has been in the UK’s most high security prison, Belmarsh in London, since April last year. His prison sentence for hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy finished about a year ago, but the High Court insisted he stay there until the current extradition to the USA proceedings are completed (January), at least .
Thus TPTB in the UK believe that they can get away with anything. And with CV19, they can. We are a very docile population and a fascist state already. Reminds me of another European country in the early 1930s.
Bill Gaede has said for years that we are the last humans on earth anyways.
http://youstupidrelativist.com/EZxtinction.html
“If the economy had stayed on the path it had been prior to March 13, 2020, Trump certainly would have been re-elected.”
If Dominion voting machines and voter fraud had not been an ace for the opposing side, Trump would have easily won as he was on his way to a huge victory until his votes essentially stopped and Bidens votes came by the thousands out of thin air….oops.
*and for the record, I have NO party affiliation and have and never will vote for anyone.*
The corruption of the Biden victory is palpable even over here on the other side of the Atlantic; and the hypocrisy of Biden -the upholder of the ‘torch of Democracy’ as we are supposed to believe – simply nauseating.
How can anyone in the US not choke on it, and on the smoke as that torch is extinguished….
We have very effective censors within the main street media.
Even worse than being treated as infallible, their gross and patent errors are just passed over.
A little while ago Melinda Gates confessed – honestly or not – that they ‘had not considered’ what the economic effects of lock-downs would likely be. Whoops, Apocalypse! indeed.
A few days later, Uncle Bill expressed regret – how sincerely we may be allowed to doubt – that lock-downs and restrictions should continue until 2022 and the arrival of a new generation of ‘vaccines’ even more super-duper than the wondrous ‘90% effective’ ones being pushed on us now.
I have come to suspect that I am in fact already dead, and being mocked in Hell by demons masquerading as saints and philanthropists.
I’m inclined to regret that I didn’t have much more wicked fun on the way there, just to make it all justified…..
Bill Gates: Coronavirus could still be a risk into 2022
He told CNN on Sunday that the virus could still have an impact into 2022, and that the nation won’t be “closer to normal” until the end of next summer.
2021 looks tough, Gates said.
“Well, sadly, the next four to six months could be the worst of the epidemic,” Gates told CNN host Jake Tapper, noting that the IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington) forecast shows over 200,000 additional deaths in the US over that time period.
Wearing masks and not mixing with other households could help prevent a large percentage of those deaths, he said.
“But even through early 2022, unless we help other countries get rid of this disease, and we get high vaccination rates in our country, the risk of reintroduction will be there,” he warned.
Tapper asked when Gates envisioned things returning to the “normal” of January 2019, meaning no masks or social distancing required.
“Certainly by the summer, we’ll be way closer to normal than we are now,” Gates said, noting that big public gatherings could still be restricted even by summer. But Americans should stay hopeful: “We have a chance, if we manage (vaccinations) well, to get back to normal.”
When asked if one of the vaccines was better than the other, Gates unequivocally said no, and that he was “super happy” with all of the vaccines announced. And he’s willing to back that up, noting that he would, like former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and president-elect Joe Biden, get the vaccine publicly — though he noted he would wait his turn and not pull any strings to receive a vaccine early.
Gates previously said that “almost all” coronavirus vaccines will work by February.
https://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-says-coronavirus-could-still-be-a-risk-into-2022/
It is a tragedy, both for him and for the global population, that this absolute horror of a human being has been enabled to this extent.
Bill Gates is the new Uncle Joe Stalin: everyone’s friend and helper – until he kills you.
And who, dependent on a grant from the Gates Foundation, would ever the blow the whistle on him?
Great post, Tim.
Trump is a Loki-character who reached into the heart of American politics. I guess that a more traditional hero (someone without repulsive qualities) wouln’t have managed to challenge status quo.
According to disney.fandom.com > wiki >Loki_Laufeyson:
I haven’t watched disneys verision of Loki and Thor. From your description it looks like disneys Loki is more tame than the loki of tha sagas.
He’s an excellent example of what Carl Jung called the trickster Archetype:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickster
Spoiler alert.
In the Marvel films, Loki comes across as a tragic character – clever, ambitious, untrustworthy, ruthless – but ultimately impotent. He has an identity crisis due to his adoption – it eventually turns out that he was from a different planet and species.
He deeply loves his adopted mother and his father loves him but he favours and raises his brother Thor for the succession as King of Asgard, and so Loki feels almost disowned and estranged from the family, even though they do love him as family. He is very much a loner in his own mind.
He inadvertently gets his mother killed in some scheme, which cuts him deep. He is unable to overcome his resentment and jealousy of his bother Thor, who always tries to embrace him. He schemes to destroy Asgard and to rise in power through another people. Asgard gets destroyed and Loki ends up dead (as far as well can tell, he is an illusionist.)
He is a sad, tormented character. He is a figure also of the tribal ‘outsider’ who never really fits in, who is potentially destructive and never really trustworthy. Obviously the Nordic tribes were insular and they competed for resources with other tribes, so their identity was important to them. Humans are deeply tribal and territorial like chimps and our common ancestor seven million years ago.
The Loki character explores some of the human emotional identity issues regarding the adoption of a child from outside the tribe, who is loved but who never really feels fully developed within the tribe as a part of it, and who is ultimately frustrated by his inability to resolve his identity issues and to cope with the situation.
The angst and the loss of his brother is a great source of distress for Thor. Everyone else is basically glad to see the back of him, although they sympathise with Thor for his loss.
And so much for the ‘right to life’….
“How dare the NHS throw us on the scrap heap! Four pensioners who live life to the full were still given ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders. But now they are fighting back…
“The pensioners are among hundreds of people who have told the Mail that they have been slapped with ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders against their wishes under a new NHS policy that affects over-65s.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9052831/How-dare-NHS-throw-scrapheap.html
Deagel’s model says the UK is due an 80% population by 2025.
I don’t see how they are going to get there, but every little helps.
If Scotland, Wales, and NI all leave, would that amount to a 20 % reduction?
always check daily mail stories 3 times from independent sources
The ‘left’ and the ‘right’ in Britain really do not like each other’s ‘papers’ and they try to put people off from ever reading them.
The USA-located lot probably understand the situation.
Of course all of the ‘papers’ in Britain are party aligned and thus ‘biased’.
Norman’s just a bit nervous as he’s now in the “Do Not Resuscitate” age group.
Incidentally, several years apart, both of my parents died in hospital in their seventies, and both insisted on having “Do Not Resuscitate” orders hanging on the bottom of their beds.
Due to their declining physical health, they had reached the end of their decent quality of life expectations and found being conscious an unbearable torture.
There are fates worse than death. And if you are in need of resuscitation, it is possible that you would be better off without it. Although of course, it’s case by case.
my advice was only to check sources
nothing more
Joanna over at Spiked has a new article about the proposals of the law commission to expand hate crime laws.
> The Law Commission’s hate-crime proposals must be rejected
If implemented, they would hand the state frightening new powers to police speech.
The right to free speech, curtailed by so many different acts of parliament, has long existed more in myth than in reality in Britain.
…. Under the Law Commission’s proposals, the legal definition of hate speech would be amended so that any utterance perceived to be hostile to a protected group, regardless of the actual words or images used, or the intention of the speaker, will be assumed to be hate speech. This means that cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, such as those used in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, would be outlawed in the UK….
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/15/the-law-commissions-hate-crime-proposals-must-be-rejected/
My own position is that ‘rights’ are a social construct; they are accorded by the society and they have no pre-social existence.
All morality and all law is ‘will to power’, it is aimed at ‘interests’. The state is itself a ‘will to power’ with its own historically located interests.
The interests of the British capitalist state currently lie in the ethnic and cultural transformation of the workforce, to allow for its expansion and for GDP growth and the maintenance of the profit and growth based capitalist economic system.
Laws and rights concerning speech are thus ordered primarily to the interests of the capitalist state. It wants the citizenry to be able to function in a cohesive manner to allow for the peaceful domestic accumulation of capital. In a secondary manner the laws concern the interests of particular citizens and the laws are presented according to that aspect.
CCP also analogously accords rights and orders its speech laws to the interests of the state. It too is a multi-ethnic society in so far as some expansive, geopolitically important regions with natural resources are populated by ‘minority’ groups. Any separatism or nuisance is ‘racist’ as it denies the ‘right’ of all citizens to be members of the Chinese state regardless of their ethnicity.
It is the same thing. States enact laws and controls on speech that are ordered to its current material interests. They are presented as ordered to the ‘rights’ of the citizens whereas they are primarily ordered to the material interests of the state.
The West does not really have ‘free speech’ or ‘freedom’ as underlying values. That is a posture, an imposture, that is useful to the state as it encourages adherence and ‘loyalty’ to the state and it functions as a pretext for ideological and military hostility to other states – which is also aimed at the material interests of the state.
All morality and all law is ‘will to power’ that is aimed at interests, principally the material interests of the economic state.
Monkey no see, monkey no hear, monkey no speak.
https://www.amazon.in/images/I/81ZmxMPQ%2B0L.jpg
” … any utterance perceived to be hostile to a protected group, … will be assumed to be hate speech.”
And we all know who belongs to that “protected group”. If you want to know who rules over you, find out whom you are not allowed to criticise.
Dennis, mea culpa! I’ve been looking around online and I can’t find any corroboration that what that video is saying is current news. And from what I could see on the weather maps there is no heavy rain in China at present—some light snow or rain but mostly clear skies and lots of sub-zero temps.
I may have unwittingly spread some fake news there.
“The Chinese clothing maker that controls brands including The Lycra Company and Gieves & Hawkes revealed on Monday that it had failed to pay back investors on a $153m bond, the latest in a string of defaults in the country…
“It has joined a growing list of defaults among troubled companies that have sent tremors through China’s $4tn corporate bond market since November.”
https://www.ft.com/content/930a7fd5-6d89-4778-9eeb-01b5573ae74a
“China has suspended one of its top credit rating agencies after a former executive was accused of taking “massive” bribes, as a growing pile of defaults rattle the country’s $4tn corporate debt market.”
https://www.ft.com/content/7be0944b-1560-40fe-893b-8aba0b955c13
“China Offers $145 Billion to Banks as Cash Supply Tightens:
“…The need to buoy the amount of liquidity in the financial system has becoming more pressing after a spate of corporate defaults squeezed lending in China’s interbank market.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-14/china-set-to-plug-liquidity-gap-as-92-billion-of-funds-mature
“What was conceived as the world’s biggest development program [ Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road ‘project of the century’] is unravelling into what could become China’s first overseas debt crisis.
“Lending by the Chinese financial institutions that drive the Belt and Road, along with bilateral support to governments, has fallen off a cliff, and Beijing finds itself mired in debt renegotiations with a host of countries.”
https://financialpost.com/financial-times/what-was-touted-as-the-worlds-biggest-development-project-is-unravelling-into-what-could-become-chinas-first-overseas-debt-crisis
The FT has it backwards (as usual). The covert purpose of “belt and road” was to saddle the countries involved with unpayable debt, after which China could loot their natural resources. Much like the EUs investment games, or, for that matter, the US Marshall Plan. That’s how empires work, and has been ever since an ascendent Athens created the Delian League.
Yep, WWII was a complete disaster for Britain. Britain went from global hegemon to highly indebted, client state overnight.
Post-war British state governments actually blew their share of the Marshall funds on trying to maintain the Empire and global influence, all of which failed.
Germany and rest spent it on rebuilding and modernising their economies. Britain fell behind the continent in industry by the late 1950s and never regained its competitiveness. Thus the subsequent deindustrialisation of Britain; the 1970s industrial stagnation and 1980s Thatcherism. British productivity is stay way behind Germany.
Churchill is still hailed as the prime ‘hero’ by the British state, and what else can it really do? But it was a complete, unparalleled disaster for Britain; and half of Europe ended up under the USSR and the world in the Cold War.
“There is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic… You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.” Dr. Mike Yeadon PhD, Pfizer’s former Vice President and Chief Scientist for Allergy & Respiratory Disease
Thank you for pointing it all out….seems the Elders are playing it up a bit!
What could they possibly have in mind?
😜👍🌎
I’m planning to put a small pamphlet together and call it a book. No formal publication; just a little something to put out there on social media for free. Lots of people here have better abilities to do something similar. I was thinking how Fast Eddy finds his amazing images, and his posts can range from informative to outrageous to hilarious. I can see lots of people wanting to read such things. OFW as a mini-publishing facilitator.
Go for it Artleads! It may go viral and create a celebrity out of Fast Eddy making him Universally infamous….creating a myth and legend, that, of course, if the Elders find a use for it all in their program of controlled demolishing of the Economy.
Fast Eddy will happily join with the forces of the Elders, creating a force that will control the Planet post BAU!
The power of the setting/western Sun:
The centers of the biggest world religions are situated on the western coasts/the western parts of the mountain ridges:
Rome – catholicism
Mekka – islam
Nepal – hinduism
Thank you, excellent geographical ideas.
You are somewhere in Croatia?
Dennis L.
Slovakia, the vicinity of Vrsatec Rocks, the border between Czech Republic and Slovakia:
https://foto.turistika.cz/foto/r/800/13685/40757/full_a90eda_f_normalFile1-dscn1658.jpg
Dennis, sorry for spacing on your name in my last post, related to growing food indoors. I had the cheek to suggest that the idea beat mining the moon. But anything innovative is going to take so much will that a smart person would steer clear of either idea. 🙂
The orientation of the of St. Peters Basilica in Rome is that the altar is towards the setting Sun:
https://st2.depositphotos.com/1087752/6686/i/950/depositphotos_66864539-stock-photo-the-st-peters-basilica-at.jpg
The picture above is actually the sunrise. This is the sunset:
https://p4.wallpaperbetter.com/wallpaper/793/236/1/cityscape-pink-sunset-pink-sky-st-peter-square-wallpaper-preview.jpg
Christian churches almost always face “ad orientem”, to the East. Mosques face Mecca, wherever that maybe on the compass, and have a special feature, the qibla, that indicates the right direction.
The idea of the setting Sun seems to represent the diminishing power of the existing energy sources, motivating towards searching some other power behind all the stuff.
The moon and the star in islam seems to represent the night, i.e. the state without the energy source, too.
Nepal is not the “center of Hinduism.” There is no single center, but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapta_Puri
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_pilgrimage_sites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirtha_(Jainism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Temple
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Mountains_of_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Athos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fener
But here’s one that supports your thesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%CA%BC%C3%AD_pilgrimage
You are right, but it still looks like the centers of hinduism occupy the southwestern slopes of Himalaya.
It’s raining cats and dogs again in China.
https://youtu.be/LokuLywuXxk
Tim,
I went to your link, it is sad the Chinese people need to experience this, those I have personally known are wonderful people.
Should the dam break, that will most likely finish the world economy, it is the Seneca cliff.
Thanks,
Dennis L.
By contrast, some good news from China. Yesterday she reaffirmed her commitment to the Paris Accords on greenhouse gas reduction. The less good news is that under those same accords, China is free to generate as much greenhouse gas as she pleases, but by 2030 must come up with a plan to reduce them. Don’t hold your breath.
manna then
This video sounds bad, but the video seems to have been recorded almost a week ago, on December 9. My impression is that any threat to the Three Gorges Dam is now past. When I looked on Google, I didn’t find any new information.
>>It’s raining cats and dogs again in China.
The video gives the impression that the flooding is occurring now, but it is from Aug/Sept. There is next to no rain over China over the next 5 days or so.
If there was flooding in China now, China in Focus, Dreadopedia and DOBRINICH CHANNEL would all be talking about it. None currently are.
Dreadopedia is however discussing the dodgy china-is-flooding videos currently doing the rounds on YT. There seems to be quite a few of recent.
Three Gorges Dam Update December 15 2020
Its very strange out there. There is the MSM world that is acting like Biden is the legitimate president elect. ALT-media says election is stolen.Today the contested states had alternative electoral college votes. THe GOP sent their votes in. The Ds sent their votes. MSM not reporting or acknowledging the GOP votes.
MSM seems quite content to just ignore the evidence of election fraud. If its ignored it doesnt exist. Its quite widely known there was fraud. Even among Ds. stole it fair and square.
The GOPs hopes seem to rest on a 2018 executive order that requires the military to monitor the election for ‘foreign interference”. It requires the military to file a report to the DOJ and other entities 45 days after the election. Thats in 4 days.
The ALT-media seems to believe that the military has collected absolute proof of a stolen election. MSM doesnt even mention the executive order. Seeing that the order was issued over two years ago and filled with clear and present danger type language I cant see that there wasnt very very strong surveillance of the election by the military of the election.
The executive order says anyone collaborating with a foreign government property will be taken. What does that mean? Do facebook and twitter get confiscated in 4 days? The means by which it is confiscated is not specified…
If that happens I am pretty sure martial law will accompany it. The half of the people that listen to MSM think the election is a done deal will see this as Trump seizing power by military force.
Or does the 18th just pass as another date where nothing happens?
Another fly in the ointment is “foreign interference”. It would seem that the military has no say so whatsoever cheating or not unless there was “foreign interference”.
Barrs resignation is a interesting twist. He knows that report gets plopped on his desk in 4 days.
Im sure the MSM know about the EO. So we have two conflicting alternate realities. Rubber hits the road in 4 days.
If there is conclusive evidence in the military report how does that translate into cross examination and action in a civilian legal system? OR What are the implications of a military justice system operating domestically? That is only supposed to happen for service members and foreign hostiles. If the MSM is still operating they are going to have a field day with this and they will have a point.
I dont think its out of the realm of possibility that China has interests in Biden winning and has made some bribes within the Ds. I however lean toward the conservative side. If i was on the other side i would have doubts about military deciding that and acting on it.
Its been clear to me that we dont have a free press for some time. Frankly i wouldnt have a problem with them all going off to gitmo. What then is left? What would replace the MSM? Where would a press with journalistic integrity come from? JUst as the MSM is not trusted by conservatives im not sure the new press would be trusted by … ANYONE. Because the essence of a free press is where all sides are presented. Where multiple viewpoints are evaluated and even GASP respected not this finger pointing name calling Jerry Springer show the MSM has become.
The idea of a free press is pretty ingrained even if people dont have the critical thinking skills to realize we dont have one. This valuing the free press has led to the power which has been abused by the MSM or quite possibly their use by some power structure. If you dont already accept they are compromised like me the idea of shipping them off to gitmo would seem quite tyrannical.
The stolen election can not stand.
But it might.
Barr apparently doesnt want a piece of the action.
And even a conservative like myself wonders what would be ahead for our society should the military act as both judge and jury.
Both paths have dystopian implications albeit different ones. One cant help wondering if those calling the shots have their bets covered either way.
After all. VAX gets rolled out either way.
The reserve currency is going away. Just faster under the Ds.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/09/14/2018-20203/imposing-certain-sanctions-in-the-event-of-foreign-interference-in-a-united-states-election
thanks for that.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/14/republicans-in-key-battleground-states-create-alternate-slate-of-electors-to-keep-trumps-legal-challenges-afloat/
“States will send their votes to the Senate by December 23, and Congress will count the votes on January 6. Per Brookings, “battles over competing slates of electors would play out during the tally could depend in part on which party controls the newly seated House and Senate,” as a “divided government could produce challenges to Pence’s decisions as to which competing slates of electors to accept.”
January 6, then perhaps the Supreme Court.
Trump’s a con man, simply milking a cash cow, his followers for more money and adoration based on an evidence vacant assertion of voter fraud. My suggestion is to always demand evidence and not made up suggestions of evidence to ground your assertions. Remember none of those court cases went anywhere and many of them had conservative judges, some even Trump appointed. The Supreme Court went by the Constitution to uphold the vote. The voting this term was counted later than usual due to the pandemic – many people mailed in their votes. Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million. Case closed – move on.
There are a lot of conmen in politics, aren’t there?. And name me one politician who isn’t simply milking a cash cow? Why are you singling out Orange Man Bad?—he asks innocently.
Your suggestion of always demanding evidence was lost of a number of courts including the Supremes. There are mountains of evidence, much of it unequivocal, that the election is being stolen. They have decided not to hear the cases because they say the people bringing the cases “do not have standing”. In this case, that’s code for, we’d rather not get involved. We don’t want to have to be the ones who rule on this.
The voting this term was counted later than usual due to the pandemic
Yes, and the way the changes to the election system permitting this were made in some states were unconstitutional. That’s one of the plaintives’ main points.
No, there will be no moving on from this one, I’m afraid. Half the nation thinks this election was stolen and the dying legacy media is doing its best to encourage each half of the nation to hate the other half.
The US will be lucky to have a military dictatorship after this mess. The alternatives include a Yugoslavia type civil war, a communist or fascist revolution, a Rawanda-type genocide, a Chinese-led UN occupation complete with black helicopters, or an acting out of The Road. If I were you, I’d be rooting for the United States Armed Forces.
Though the Supreme Court of the US didn’t hear the case, this isn’t true of all cases brought before courts at various levels in various states. Judges have referred to the lack of evidence or the week evidence. Yet Trump supporters continue to repeat Trump’s claim that they haven’t yet found a judge that will allow the evidence to be presented. Judges include Trump-appointed judges. If Trump has now reached the end of the road and still thinks he has evidence, not just hearsay, then he should present it to the public, since there is no reason now to withhold it from the public. Of course, Trump’s claims that he won the election easily show that he has no solid evidence, since it is impossible for him to know the actual count of legal votes other than the counts certified and voted on in the Electoral College and we all know what that result was.
Sidney Powell: “People who say that there’s no evidence are just lying through their teeth.”
Now, in my book, Sidney has oodles of “standing” and credibility, and she has mountains of evidence too. I found this December 14 interview very enlightening.
https://youtu.be/pKfK8jkSwPA
The Sidney Powell video, posted by Tim Groves, is disturbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKfK8jkSwPA&feature=youtu.be
(Too “deep” to have a replay button to it.)
Powell says the Dominion Voting machines were by a Venezuelan-owned system, to assure Hugo Chavez’s re-election. She claims that Dominion machines gave 5% extra votes to Biden. Algorithm varies by precinct.
In Georgia, recounted ballots were run through the same fraudulent machines that were used previously, to “prove” that the counts were correct.
Actually, many different types of fraud occurred.
This type of fraud has been going on for 15 or 20 years. Republicans had benefitted as well as democrats. It has been known that Dominion voting machines have been sold with the understanding that they will produce whatever outcome a person wants.
The people behind Dominion fraud threaten lives to keep the story hidden. She claims that the young man killed in a strange back-end car accident was killed on purpose, to keep the story quiet. The young man was on Kelly Loffeler’s staff. I know from news articles here that he was the boyfriend of Governor Kemp’s daughter, and that Kemp went to his funeral.
“Dominion was founded in Canada, not Venezuela. Since 2018, it has had the same majority owner: Staple Street Capital.”
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9809670730?fbclid=IwAR3yuoGk8F6oqEjANgJqrzEzzQWOz2cuxJfTXjnHc0f0KmpcCsZuIRYNwgo
Staple Street Capital sold Dominion to UBS.
https://billlawrenceonline.com/china-bought-dominion-fact-checked/
Prove the ballot box wasnt stuffed. You cant. When the the facts that all the safetys to keep the election honest were disabled you change the subject. Pretend not to understand and use words that are virtue signalling. If their was a honest election you could cite the things that kept it honest. You cant. They were all disabled. If you say they wernt you are disregarding testimony of all that were there. After all their all white racists. All guilty. all deserving horrible fates. If the evidence was brought b4 a judge we could find out. Judges like their life family and children. They know the game.
If Democrats had any integrity they would be demanding that the evidence be brought forth. There not stupid. BS virtue signalling arguments dont go well in court. Have some honesty. You stole it fair and square. At least chuckle about it with your friends. All those racists. You showed them.
The pollbooks have never added up in philly detroit. Never. Now big tech is on board to help. Now we have millions of ballots.
Special rules.
THIS IS **** COUNTY.
Think Im wrong? Demand the evidence come before a court that it be heard.
Thats what I thought.
And UBS has a Chinese connection.
Moreover, Harry, a CNN fact-check on Dominion Voting Systems connects them to Clintons, Soros, and Venezuela:
https://noqreport.com/2020/11/21/cnn-fact-check-on-dominion-voting-systems-connects-them-to-clintons-soros-and-venezuela/
These attempts to dodge the facts remind me of how Bill Clinton “debunked” the accusation that he had an affair with an intern?
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
It would be an amusing symmetry if Trump had been fraudulently elected by the Russians and fraudulently ousted by the Chinese.
The latter must be kicking themselves now that Biden is continuing the trade war.
Tim, interesting fact-check. Though, the fact-check only seems to connect Smartmatic to Venezuela, not Dominion. The issue is to connect Dominion to Smartmatic.
Tim:
“Dominion” – “Panda Electronics” – “Ericsson” – “House of Sweden in DC” – “Swedish Kings of Cyberwar”
Is it just me or do you also smell the whiff of ABBA?
Surely the country of the first CB and telecoms infrastructure, *cough*, *cough* eavesdrop devices, *cough*, peddlers has nothing to do with meddling and fraud to oust Orange Man Bad?
Money, money, money. 🤑
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/the-swedish-kings-of-cyberwar/
As a friend of mine puts it, “ with the Republicans we are driving off the cliff at 40 mph but with the Democrats we are driving off at 90 mph.”
Gentlemen, you are watching, in fast motion, the Fall of the Republic. For much the same reason as the Fall of the Roman Republic, which was made inevitable, and irreversible, the day Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
A self important and parasitic elite, a complete loss of patriotism and honour among that elite, an ongoing debasement of the ordinary people by propaganda and corruption, and a systematic dismantling of the checks and balances an earlier and wiser people had created.
All of which was set out in detail by Oswald Spengler in the second volume of “Der Untergang des Abenlandes”, which I shall spend the coming weekend rereading.
So turns the Wheel of Karma.
Dear OFWers, I wish to draw your attention to a point of US history. On December 24th, George Washington crossed the Delaware River in the dark of night to ambush the Hessian mercenary.
on January 6, the members of Congress will meet to certify the presidential election.
if there is a single objection to the electoral votes of just one state, then Congress votes state by state to decide the President.
each state delegation has one vote, and a simple majority determines the winner.
Rs have control of 26 states, and VP Mike Pence presides over the vote.
could be a big date in US history.
January 6 seems awfully soon for a big change to take place. It would be easier to believe something such as this happening a year or two from now, after Biden has had a chance to preside over a period of bad outcomes.
William Henry Harrison might want to ask a question about it
The Republicans are in with the Deep State. AG Barr could have intervened in the matter but he resigned. He is an “R” and also part of the Deep State apparatus. Trumps’s fatal move was to vocally go after and threaten the Deep State. Then they removed the two who helped get him elected, Steve Bannon and Gen Flynn who were Washington outsiders.
Then he decided to bring into his cabinet Deep State and Swamp characters. Trump will be removed and the election appears to have been stolen. Funny how the Evil Empire goes around the world telling other Countries they must hold open, fair and honest elections and then they go rig the 2020 US election and the Media is all in on Biden. They hate Trump.
The POTUS will be Biden even with all the shady and illegal stuff he and his son have done. The Media will not say a word unless Biden turns on them which he won’t.
Unless Trump does an Erdogan. If Trump was as Hitlery as Norman insists, all the Deep State critters would have been in cages in the zoo long ago.
William Barr has an interesting history. He’s a nice bloke but he’s also a coverup artist, and recently he’s been covering up things Trump would rather have had uncovered.
Barr is an ex-CIA covert operative recruited out of high school in 1971, who was nominated for Attorney General by President Ronald Reagan. He became AG in 1991 under Bush the Elder. At that time, he orchestrated the legal coverup that allowed the co-conspirators in the Iran Contra affair to avoid jail time. Through the nineties he stopped investigation into all Bush and Clinton CIA crimes—including the famous BCCI bank scandal.
This time around, he’s also been sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop for almost two years. All that weight has probably broken the screen and totaled the keyboard.
Did he resign or was he fired? Possibly, Trump has asked him to do something this week or next that he isn’t prepared to go along with, and they’ve parted by mutual consent.
We are getting into extra time now, but there’s still a bit of play in this election tussle. Trump isn’t going to give up while he thinks he still has viable options.
Trump said, a couple of weeks ago, that he would leave the White House if the Electoral College confirmed Biden as the winner. It did, so, unless one thinks Trump is a liar, it is finally all over.
I do not have a game on it but some states sent two groups of electors whose legality has to be debate in the house so it ain’t over yet
I’ve never met anyone who didn’t think Trump was a liar on occasion.
Anyway, Trump said he’d leave on January 20, so in fairness one can’t call him a liar about that until January 21.
So, we still have a way to run. It’s a good game. If Trump thinks he still has some viable options, he is entitled to pursue them. What’s your problem with him doing what he’s legally entitled to do?
He may want to expose the fraud and have Biden declared a loser—and then leave on January 20, refusing to serve his rightful second term—for the good of the country, etc., etc.
Could it be that you have no problem about letting systematic voter fraud stand, but you do have a problem with investigating it? Because in my book, that would be morally suspect to say the least.
lol
always up for a bit of pointless wordery on a Tuesday morning.
But maybe use other people’s words too:
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/lawyers-condemn-michael-flynn-and-lin-woods-breathtakingly-morally-treasonous-call-for-trump-to-declare-martial-law-and-hold-new-election/
This was from previously appointed. jailed and subsequently pardoned National Security Advisor in the trump admin. (Flynn). Flynn also called for the military to re run the election.
This is a Lt. General, not a common soldier.
Biden and Hillary didn’t orchestrate neckless screaming free dumb fighters in choruses of ‘lock him up’
Or give credence to calls for martial law and suspension of the election/constitution. Or to the dangerous hysterical lunacy of QAnon.
It will come to nothing this time.
But, the seeds have been sown:
Biden will not be able to change the course of economic energy decline, and inevitable collapse.
The vast majority still see this as a problem to be solved by political means.
It won’t be
But next time, the screaming mob will elect someone more competent to run a (Theo) fascist state, for no better reason that there will be no other option. Hi tler was the prime example, he arose out of the chaos of post WW1 Germany. (to make it great again)
we use him as a measure for those who learned from his playbook.
He ran his 12 year Ponzi scheme by setting factions against one another, constant conflict, blaming ‘others’ for faults in himself.
He threw dissenters in jail.
Closed down conflicting media.
Suppressed criticism
(stop me when I veer off the similarities here)
Trump has advocated the same things, but lacked the means to do so.
By 2024 collapse will be much further advanced than now, not just in the USA. And the certainty will still be there, that the American Dream (that never was) can be resuscitated from the debt induced coma it is now in.
Fair enough, Norman. So you don’t think Donald Trump is our lord and savior then?
I tend to agree with that conclusion.
But you compared Trumpy to Adolf on a whole bunch of points where Trumpy hasn’t acted like Adolf and then you have the unmitigated gall to suggest that they only reason why Trumpy hasn’t emulated Adolf is because he doesn’t have the power to do so. That’s despicable.
As for General Flynn—an innocent man and a patriot, so I’m told by reliable sources—it was a travesty of justice to incarcerate him.
The Trump supporters are not squeaky clean, but the vast majority of really guilty people are on the other side. I know you don’t want to see or hear or speak of it, but it happens to be the fact.
Obvious fraud and foreign interference. Proven well beyond reasonable doubt.
25 minutes in the company of Sidney Powell should convince any fair-minded, reasonable, or neutral third party of that. Are you in any of those three categories, by any chance, Norman?
I must assume you are indulging in a little wind-uppery
Powell is so obviously bonkers that bringing her into any discussion negates that discussion entirely
Calling somebody “so obviously bonkers” isn’t exactly a refutation of their arguments though, is it, Norman?
If it was, then any one of us could win any argument just by calling their opponent “so obviously bonkers”, couldn’t we?
Indeed, it is so obviously bonkers of you to even suggest such a thing, and you present yourself as a scholar with a tremendous grasp of logic, reason and intelligence!
Ad Hominem (Attacking the person): This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone’s argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. The fallacious attack can also be direct to membership in a group or institution.
Bonkers or not, Sidney Powell was a federal prosecutor for 10 years before she went into private practice out of disgust over the corruption in the courts. She has argued over 500 cases before the 5th Circuit Court of appeals, that in itself is a huge accomplishment.
She is arguing that the US presidential and congressional elections were stolen by the same methods that were used by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. It’s not such a wild assertion. Many people have suggested it in the past. Just because you don’t agree with the claim doesn’t make her bonkers. And she says she can prove it. And the establishment is doing its best to prevent her from proving it in court.
For those who are unaware of the historical record, Chávez was a leftist/socialist military officer who came to power by winning an election in 1998, after previously unsuccessfully attempting a coup. So he was not a scrupulous observer of democratic norms. He fits the Hit-ler mode (ex military/failed pustch/election) far better than Trumpy does.
The establishment will always attack anyone who tries to interfere with their plans. And they will always have plenty of help from ordinary people who regurgitate their propaganda. What psychological issues people have that makes them regurgitate propaganda in this way I won’t speculate about, but they have them in enough abundance to be seen as so obviously bonkers by those of us who don’t share the trait.
when even Trump nominated (in anticipation of this exact circumstance) Supreme Court judges unanimously toss out this stuff, I think we can safely use the word bonkers.
Fact check: Dominion is not linked to Antifa or Venezuela, did not switch U.S. 2020 election votes in Virginia and was not subject to a U.S. army raid in Germany
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-dominion-idUSKBN2861TB
Dominion is owned by Staple Street Capital, which is owned (or something like that) by the chinese UBS Securities Co.
So the right answer is not Venezuela, but China.
https://billlawrenceonline.com/china-bought-dominion/
I want to thank you for your posting. I tend to give my fellow countrymen the benefit of the doubt that they are in large part levelheaded and in touch with reality. It’s important that I be reminded that that is not the case. Most folks I meet day to day, in person, don’t exhibit their cray-cray overtly, so it’s easy to forget.
I don’t think Norman’s opinion of Trump, or Powell matters in the slightest.
I agree absolutely. My opinion counts for nothing in the grand scheme of things. No false modesty I assure you.
however—I toss in the odd comment here and there because whoever is POTUS affects me—I wish it didn’t but there we are.
If he was president of Guatemala or Bhutan or somewhere, none of this would get said.
But when the current POTUS insists that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to wreck American industry,
or asks if hurricanes can be nuked,
or suggests using disinfectant to cure Covid, (whereas I understand that Obama put in place a system for dealing with a pandemic years ago, which Trump tossed as unnecessary)
or been involved in 3500 cases of litigation in the past 30 years:
https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/attorney-and-author-on-his-portrait-of-donald-trump-through-more-than-3500-lawsuits
(I don’t think there have been any against Obama in private life?)
or has a lie count way in excess of political normality: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2020/05/05/trump-is-lying-more-than-ever-just-look-at-the-data/?sh=5a5ed97b1e17
Or spent years on the birther nonsense.
Or posts endless deranged tweet rubbish at 3am. (does Biden tweet?)
(plus much else) you will perhaps allow me a slight doubt about his state of mind. If I was the only one making such observations, it would be a different matter.
both in the sense of ‘bonkers’
and in the sense of ‘crooked’
I recall the incident where a McCain supporter was screaming about Obama being a Muslim, McCain stopped that immediately. The right thing to do. Any chance of Trump doing that?
All holders of high office are flawed, that’s the inevitable nature of the game. We have our Trump lite here in UK.
I also accept that I am an outsider looking in. I’m not immersed in it all.
People are starting to figure out the Covid 19 was mostly BS and they are starting to notice, thank goodness and speaking up. Better late than never.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/man-bullhorn-takes-stand-against-newsoms-lockdowns-california-costco
And fears about overwhelmed hospitals was another lie just to panic the Public and it worked.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/data-shows-fears-over-overwhelmed-medical-system-overblown-ample-hospital-capacity
To much noise to get a clear picture but at least have some Vit D, Ivermectin and Doxycycline on hand and bleach for good measure.
I suppose there might be some local areas that have trouble finding open bed, but it does sound as if the system as a whole is handling the current level of illness quite well.
If the level of illness suddenly doubled from where it is today, it might be a problem. There are already some elective surgeries being postponed, to keep beds clear for COVID-19.
Julia Hartley-Brewer of London-based Talk Radio has been at the forefront of CV19 common sense in the UK. Many of her shows are videoed and put on YT. This video is from 17 Nov, it only just appeared in my YT recommended list today, but still excellent and worth watching. Here she interviews a Professor Anthony Brookes who also seems to be sensible. Certainly back in mid-Nov, the number of people in Hospitals and people dying of pneumonia and coronavirus illnesses was the same as any other year. 11m 33 s long. All worth listening to.
‘The number of people dying today is the same as it would be any other year’
This one won’t play for me. But I shall try to find some of Ms Brewer’s programmes.
But while I was over at YT, I noticed that Bill Barr has resigned as AG.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=witoSg7TSQU&w=560&h=315%5D
Perhaps Bill Barr wants to spend the holidays with his family.
Czechoslovakia:
Czech Republic: the coal deposits
Slovakia: the barren rock
Once more the divide on the Czech/Slovak border:
The Vrsatec Rocks:
http://www.vibrama.sk/archiv/2013/20130427/Foto_Vrsatec027.JPG
Why the West is rich?
It is about the Sun:
The fjords are on the western side of the continents:
Norway, Chile, Canada, Europe
The capitals of the cold islands/continents are on their western side:
Reykjavik, Nuuk, St. Petersburgh or Moscow
The rocks are untouched on the eastern side and erroded on the western side:
e.g. Vrsatec Rocks in the White Carpathians where I live:
The eastern side is the rocks, the western side is the forest:
https://sk.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BAbor:Vr%C5%A1ateck%C3%A1_bradl%C3%A11.jpg
https://www.trencinregion.sk/en/22815/observation-tower-on-vrsatec-rocks
It is the power of the setting sun that plays a decisive role in the mild and cold areas.
Unless the key rivers flow to the East: England, Ireland, Scotland, USA
That way we have the primary Western countries:
Western Europe, California, Chile – the Sun from the West and the river flows to the West
The secondary Western countries:
the eastern coast of the USA, Britain, Argentina, Uruguay
That way Britain pulls the shorter part of the rope during the Brexit negotiations
Hi Gail:
POSTING HERE SINCE IT CAN BE CHALLENGING TO FIND BACK POSTS
You mentioned that China’s land use strategy was similar to one I proposed–congregating a lot more people in cities, and leaving the spaces beyond cities alone (MOL).
Local govts owning the land makes sense, but they could be tempted to use it to gain competitive advantage too.
In my post, I was looking at limited uses for New World Order kind of centralization that would leave the protection of wilderness solely to a central authority, and monitored from space–among a vastly decreased number of space functions.
I don’t know if the China example you quoted–super tall buildings–includes producing food indoors under LED lighting. I had thought that less likely than would.could be the case in the US, which prides itself on freedom to innovate along with its historical abundance of the resources to afford it. OTOH, I could see China pulling off centralised wilderness management more successfully.
I like to limit such proposals to experiments I’ve tried, and I certainly haven’t tried growing food inside. But my ability to pack boxes, and make more fit into given spaces than the average–not kike mechanically piled-high concrete buildings–is more what I had in mind. Getting a lot of built spaces tucked into the urban environment so you don’t notice them and they actually yield more open space is as much of an art/architecture proclivity as an engineering one. So I suspect that something similar can be actually achieved spatially. But again, such a big venture might need powerful central investment/coercion.
Cities, with all their tangle of roads, bridges, parks, alleys, street lights are inherently too complex and variegated for central authorities to manage (as China has not seemed to quite recognize), and, apart from the requirement to grow its own food and supply its own water, should be left to myriad small, local groups. There should be lots of things to do, and lots of rewards for doing tham. People should be encouraged, and should be happy, to stay in one small place all their lives.
Lester Brown and his series State of World did a study of nations that industrialized.
If I remember correctly, agricultural producing areas were downsized dramatically in the
transformation of the economy. If I recall correctly South Korea lost up to 50% of prime producing food farming area
I can’t imagine a future for indoor farming. Certainly not under LED lights. What I remember from China was the use of plastic to make something related to a green house, to extend the growing season. That was outside, however.
If I can’t fathom your reasoning at first, I usually come to get the point in time. So I’m almost sure to get the connections you’re seeing and I’m not.
I’m thinking of a stream of energy production managed by a militarized, very powerful elite. A non capitalist dictatorship, sort of like what the New World Order folks seem to have in mind. Otherwise, wilderness deforestation to grow food (like in the Amazon) will rob us of rain. You may be reasoning that this system will run out of steam, and people will move to where they can hang on. Or things will get so catastrophic that there will be massive human die offs.
There needs to be a highly selective and reliable source of FF energy for indoor farming to work at optimal scale. That would seem now to be only possible under some form of dictatorship. I think this beats David L’s proposal to mine the moon.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankateman/2020/07/14/is-the-future-of-farming-indoors/?sh=ce919192cc0c
Time appears to be up for the billions of Third Worlders, who have no place on the cutthroat, inimical , super-efficient and super-financialized future.
The first world will apologize to them before letting nature take course over these billions.
Most of the people here are first worlders who at least enjoyed some of the material comforts of the modern world. However, there is nothing for the Third Worlders, so they will be excluded
Just thinking about the self entitled bourgeoisie princes and princesses of the core IC countries makes me twitch and squirm.
How about this. Fsck ‘em first before the poor schmucks in the third world gets thrown under the bus? Yeah, how about that for a refreshing take on events?
Indeed, take em “protesters” and throw them over the Seneca crest to make the crash landing for the rest of us a bit softer. It must be “oh so easy” to run some database lookups to get juicy lists of useless eaters sorted in priority of uselessness and start in the head of that list. Guvmint drones first. 😬👍
Evolution is red of tooth and claw.
The first world will receive a lot of people of the third world, peafully or violently…
But being from the Third World, I understand that it has more potential than that (whether it wakes up to it or not). Whether we call it a sub civilization or not, the Third World basic lifestyle is what we need to adopt as a global civilization. It is run on infinitely less energy than the First World. What it needs is shoring up by Western systems thinking and sophistication.
Actually, the First World won’t live like the Third World.
Much less people enjoying First World life or many more people enduring Third World life. the ones doing the choosing will choose the first option
Yes, and a good start would be to rationalize the guvmint wank to oblivion. Reform the finance and banking racket and slap it all onto computers without the need of pretentious bourgeoisie sleaze pretending to work.
That would free up some resources for the third world while preserving a decent lifestyle for the artisanry.
++++++
The problem is that the First World is mostly cold countries. If they were forced to descend to Third World living standards and energy consumption levels, most people would die of hypothermia in winter.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (Yeats)
——————-
Twitter post: This monstrosity is the Vatican’s nativity scene. Nothing like ugly robot space aliens to undermine the beauty & humanity of the Holy Family at Christmas time, during a pandemic when we need our timeless Church traditions more than ever. Thanks, Pope Francis!
https://twitter.com/RCamposDuffy/status/1337512686221996033/photo/1
Maybe it is an attempt to make the Bethlehem scene hi-tech as well.
“Hodie infusum est venenum in ecclesia dei”
Today, injected poison into the church.
Gail, thank you for the translation. The original is from an obscure, and puzzling, product of the English Reformation, “Eicasmi: seu meditationes in sacram Apocalypsin”, by John Fox.
Rather poor latin, and worse argument, but in sum a meditation on the history of the Christian Church, inspired, perhaps unwisely, by the Book of Revelation. He attributed the sentiment to angels; the occasion being the establishment of Byzantine Caesaropapism by Constantine the Great, which does make sense.
The last time I used that quote was at the opening of Vatican II; I respectfully submit that history has proved me right.
Pope Francis is a total moron. He was joking the other day about people having ‘funeral faces’. He has zero respect for the most solemn, and traumatic, events in the life cycle, or for his place as the head of the church. It is all just a joke to him. He has the mental age of a 5 year old, and that is frankly unfair to 5 year olds. A complete moron. I have nothing but contempt for him. I would slam the door in his face. I am just glad that I am not a RC and that I do not have to even think about him from one month to the next. One could almost think that he actually wants everyone to just leave his church. But then who would keep him and his gang?
The pope is only infallible in matters of faith and morals, not in his capacity as an interior decorator.
OK, so he is all in favour of gay civil unions now. If only someone had told the infallible popes of the past, a lot of intolerance could have been avoided.
I doubt the pope was responsible for that “nativity”scene; it shows too much knowledge of the left hand path. Those statues are not icons, nor idols; they are Herms. For thousands of years, they have been associated with human sexuality. People would celebrate then at the Vernal Equinox, to ensure fertility for themselves, their livestock, and their crops. This was an enjoyable, and benign, “white” ritual.
Their use on the Winter Solstice, by contrast, is a “black” ritual, often marked with same sex activities, ie barren ones. Aleister Crowley used to perform them, the story goes that one of his (male) partners was driven mad in the process. And whoever set up that display, it seems to me, knew exactly what he was doing.
Robert, thank you for explaining that vile display.
It is sad beyond words.
Dennis L.
“The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told”
(William Butler Yeats, “The wrongs in the deeps of his heart”)
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
We shall see
“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”
George Carlin
But somehow they nailed the Covid 19 vaccine in record time, within months? How many unexplained serious illnesses were swept under the rug and not reported by the Media who’s job is to be looking out for the Public. No instead the media kowtowed along with the Government narrative. So the Gov’t having a complicit media just ignored those serious and unexplained illnesses and fast-tracked this BS vaccine.
They have purposely scared the stoopid that many are now begging for this poorly tested and rushed to market vaccine. I will resist at all cost but I know the stoopid will pressure the Govt to force everyone to take this bogus vaccine and from what i’m reading individuals will have to take it every few months.
I’ll bet Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Bill Gates and the rest of those tyrants will be excluded. They know better.
My comment was responding to Fast Eddy on vaccines.
“Tyrants”?! What the hell did they all do? Near as I can tell, one hosts annual events for the rich and powerful to schmooze (and has people all worked up over some fluff piece on the Davos website), the next gives money to pro-democracy groups (causing *real* dictators to cry foul), and the third is a computer guy who primarily does philanthropy now (including vaccine research, the rascal).
What the hell did they DO, you ask? You sir/madam needs to educate yourself. Let me point you in the right direction. Klaus Schwab heads the World Economic Forum in Davos each year where you can find Soros, Gates, Lagarde, Zukerberg and others at those Elite or as Fast Eddy likes to say The Eld.ers yearly meetings.
Klaus Schwab is behind the Great Reset. Have you heard lately the term by several World Leaders: “Build Back Better? That’s the catchphrase from the Davos group at the World Economic Forum. Klaus Schwab openly stated that they are using Covid 19 as an excuse to implement The Great Reset.
Also, according to Klaus Schwab there won’t be a single world superpower. Instead it will be shared by several nations. Think The EU but on a Global scale.
Klaus Schwab wants to create the 4th industrial revolution “Green Movement”. Now there’s something Greta Thunberg can smile about. His vision going into the year 2030: “You will own NOTHING and you will be happy”. That’s in his own words. So that’s just a quick sampling you can find just by going to the World Economics Forum website. They have their vision for us Plebs all laid out. John Kerry who will be part of the Biden Administration is part of the Davos Group and he recently said “there is no going back to normal”.
Bill Gates is on record calling for planet wide depopulation. He says Earths population needs to be under 1 billion. Guess who’s invested in the Big Pharma Covid 19 vaccine program? Ah ha, none other than Bill Gates who stands to be even wealthier now that the tyrants are saying Covid 19 vaccines will be needed several times a year and that’s for just Covid 19.
tl;dr yeah they’re tyrants !
Isn’t Bill right that we need a lower population level to be anywhere close to sustainable? By choice or force we will depopulate as we are far into overshoot.
Nature will select the best adapted to remain. What Bill will select is not clear.
It is not clear to me that the folks trying to put together these plans will really be able to do very much. Their plans are so fantastic that they will soon far apart. They do keep newspapers and magazines full of optimistic stories, so not many people are very worried about the real problems ahead, Instead they are worried about some different pseudo-problems, which we humans don’t really have power over.
“It is not clear to me that the folks trying to put together these plans will really be able to do very much.”
yes, their talk is cheap.
82 year old Klaus Schwab has a small page on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Schwab
he has doctorates!
he wrote some books!
bow down and fear the mighty Schwab!
Never doubt the stoopidity of humans. We seem to have an INFINITE supply of that.
It is not stupidity that defines sheep, it is the emotional inability to face the truth when it seems too horrible.The sheep are keen to believe that shepherds exist to protect them, because the alternative seems too cruel. Adolf Hitliar proved to understand perfectly this psychological denial mechanism when he stated that:
“in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in th. and art of lying. “
We can loathe pluto-technocrats, and i do, but we must recognize that at least they have an alternative plan to chaotic collapse (which is the scene of all nightmares) and the power to act on it. We commoners will not like it, nobody likes to be a slave, but unless we hide in a cave of ugly death, how can we escape from them? How to evade the technofascists’ radar, that’s my concern at the moment.
A classic now
*I quoted part of comment in case Word Press doesn’t reply directly to your comment*
JMS says:
December 14, 2020 at 9:08 pm
We can loathe pluto-technocrats, and i do, but we must recognize that at least they have an alternative plan to chaotic collapse”
But that is exactly what they will create with their alternative plan and they know it and really don’t care. It’s why they are using the Global trendy catchphrase which is being spouted by various World Leaders such as Boris Johnson, Merkel, Biden, Trudeau.
“Build Back Better”, is the mantra of the Davos Group from the World Economic Forum, hosted by Klaus Schwab.
I have spent the past nine years thinking that the collapse, when it happened, would be chaotic and fast (that is, in a span of months, more than years or decades), following a Seneca cliff trajectory.
Since March of this year, it has become obvious to me that the el.ders had a plan after all, and that that plan is to try to gradually demolish our system, replacingour liberal capitalist democracy with Chinese-style techno-feudalism.
In other words, if before I thought that in the future the enemies would be the hordes of hungry zombies storming at my door, today I believe the enemy will be the police forces of the totalitarian state. And what would be worse, utter chaos or totalitarian imposed degrowth? Hard to say.
I being immune by political orientation volunteer my dose of vacs to a young wokester woman of child bearing age, because you know the little babes, the little little babies (for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
“Human damage to biodiversity is leading us into a pandemic era… Environmental destruction …is putting humans into closer contact with wildlife…
“A major report says up to 850,000 undiscovered viruses that could be transferred to humans are thought to exist in mammal and avian hosts.”
https://www.brinknews.com/up-to-850000-animal-viruses-could-be-caught-by-humans-unless-we-protect-nature/
“Glaciers: The hidden source of pandemics? …We all need to remain vigilant of the increasing pace of glacier melting and the consequent biological disasters it could unleash.”
http://tehelka.com/glaciers-the-hidden-source-of-pandemics/
If resources were not a problem, we could think about the “new” source of viruses and bacteria as simply a new source of jobs for workers. People could be encouraged to go into the biological sciences because this is where a lot of new jobs will be.
Of course, the rest of us cannot pay an infinite amount of taxes to pay for these services. We are simply trying to get rid of another manifestation of overshoot.
In the movie Worldwar Z, one should not make too much noise out of it, or the zombies will start climbing the wall.
as I’ve been saying—every species, without exception carries a defence mechanism against predators
humans, without doubt are the ulimate predator (though not top predator)
seems to me the the Earth’s actual biosphere has a defence against predators
No, we are excavators, headers and cultivators.
The Volterra Lotka dynamics (predator-prey) does not apply to a species going wild with finite (mineral) resources cultivating land and raising cattle using those excavated materials and substances as fertilizer and (industrial) civilization building materials.
It is the Seneca dynamics that applies. Full bore over the crest into the troughs of eternal misery. Just as in the “good” olden days.
I agree. Voterra Lotka models produce big swings.
Overshoot and collapse produced a big upward swing and then a Seneca type collapse.
I agree with K. The biosphere as the totally of living things and the things they live on is indifferent to human presence. It neither attacks us nor defends against us. Rather, our own activities produce consequences. If we insist in soaring up to the heights of absurdity, eventually we will stall and plummet down the Seneca cliff to the depths of depravity.
“unless we protect nature”
Aren’t we part of nature? Who is in charge?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9poCAuYT-s
Not sure if this is procedure for links but if not please refer your search engines to the tune “Ball of Confusion” published by The Temptations in 1970.
Imho we are here to learn about nature and ourselves as well as we are creative to shape or “beautify” the earth (music…). That includes the free will to make it heaven or hell. We are in charge! Hunter Gatherers or software developers for AI
there are more life forms on you and in you than there are people on the planet
they keep you alive and as healthy as possible for as long as possible so they can use your body for their mines and prairies
if they die—you die. If your body is attacked, they defend you and heal you. If they fail, you die
and you think humankind is in charge here?
I am the vessel and my skin is their border.
Humans are disspiative structures. We know that.
If I drink bleach my nice helpers will go.
My free will.
But in part you are right. Call me a Zach Bush ian.
“unless we protect nature”… there, right in front of your eyes, is the problem. No? The framing of the problem is such that we, the humans, have been put in charge when, as you rightly point out Gail, we are part of nature, not the overseers of such. I will add to your comment(not wishing to put words in your mouth, object if you will) by saying this: we are not in charge, never were, never will be.
Good questions Gail. 🙂
“As Australia’s relationship with China deteriorates beyond repair, we need to find new trade partners:
“So, what’s Plan B? For Australian exporters suddenly caught in the headlights of an increasingly hostile regime in Beijing, the answer, it appears, is: there isn’t one.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-14/australia-has-to-look-beyond-china-as-relationship-breaks-down/12979900
“Joe Biden has said his nominee for trade chief Katherine Tai will target abusive trade practices by China in a possible sign that Donald Trump’s trade war will continue.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3113726/us-china-trade-war-joe-biden-hints-he-will-keep-pressure
Katherine Tai was previously in charge of trade enforcement, both in US-China relations, and also with the World Trade Organization.
That could “ruffle a few feathers.”
Harry, in the US the left/right paradigm is bogus. Both parties are two sides of the same coin. There is little difference between the two if any. They just go out and play the public and get them lathered up and then they do the opposite.
When Obamacare was passed it took Republicans to pass it into law. Prior to that they were talking up a good game how it was terrible and Republicans needed to kill the idea before it went into Law.
I notice that Australia’s iron ore exports have risen, as prices rose.
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-of-iron-ore-concentrates
So lack of responsiveness by Australia to China’s needs doesn’t look like it is behind China’s unhappiness with Australia.
One report says Australian Iron Ore Exports Are Mostly China Bound
This chart seems to indicate China receives about 83% of Australia’s total iron ore exports.
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/auto1.jpg