There are a huge number of people doing energy modeling. In my opinion, nearly all of them are going astray in their modeling because they don’t understand how the economy really operates.
The modeling that comes closest to being correct is that which underlies the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others. This modeling was based on physical quantities of resources, with no financial system whatsoever. The base model, shown here, indicates that limits would be reached a few years later than we actually seem to be reaching them. The dotted black line in Figure 1 indicates where I saw the world economy to be in January 2019, based on the limits we already seemed to be reaching at that time.
The authors of The Limits to Growth have said that their model cannot be expected to be correct after limits hit (which is about now), so even this model is less than perfect. Thus, this model cannot be relied upon to show that population will continue to rise until after 2050.
Many readers are familiar with Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) calculations. These are favorites of many people following the Peak Oil problem. A high ratio of Energy Returned to Energy Invested is considered favorable, while a low ratio is considered unfavorable. Energy sources with similar EROEIs are supposedly equivalent. Even these similarities can be misleading. They make intermittent wind and solar appear far more helpful than they really are.
Other modeling, such as that by oil companies, is equally wrong. Their modeling tends to make future fossil fuel supplies look far more available than they really are.
This is all related to a talk I plan to give to energy researchers later in February. So far, all that is pinned down is the Summary, which I reproduce here as Section [1], below.
[1] Summary: The economy is approaching near-term collapse, not peak oil. The result is quite different.
The way a person views the world economy makes a huge difference in how one models it. A big issue is how connected the various parts of the economy are. Early researchers assumed that oil was the key energy product; if it were possible to find suitable substitutes for oil, the danger of exhaustion of oil resources could be delayed almost indefinitely.
In fact, the operation of the world economy is controlled by the laws of physics. All parts are tightly linked. The problem of diminishing returns affects far more than oil supply; it affects coal, natural gas, mineral extraction in general, fresh water production and food production. Based on the work of Joseph Tainter, we also know that added complexity is also subject to diminishing returns.
When a person models how the system works, it becomes apparent that as increasing complexity is added to the system, the portion of the economic output that can be returned to non-elite workers as goods and services drops dramatically. This leads to rising wage disparity as increasing complexity is added to the economy. As the economy approaches limits, rising wage disparity indirectly leads to a tendency toward low prices for oil and other commodities because a growing number of non-elite workers are unable to afford homes, cars and even proper nutrition.
A second effect of added complexity is growing use of long-lasting goods available through technology. Many of these long-lasting goods are only affordable with financial time-shifting devices such as loans or the sale of shares of stock. As non-elite workers become increasingly unable to afford the output of the economy, these time-shifting devices provide a way to raise demand (and thus prices) for commodities of all types, including oil. These time-shifting devices are subject to manipulation by central banks, within limits.
Standard calculations of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) ignore the fact that added complexity tends to have a very detrimental impact on the economy because of the diminishing returns it produces. To correct for this, today’s EROEI calculations should only be used to compare energy systems with similar complexity. The least complex energy systems are based on burned biomass and power from animals. Fossil fuels represent a step upward in complexity, but they still can be stored until their use is required. Intermittent renewables are far ahead of fossil fuels in terms complexity: they require sophisticated systems of storage and distribution and therefore cannot be considered equivalent to oil or dispatchable electricity.
The lack of understanding of how the economy really works has led to the failure to understand several important points:
(i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,
(ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices,
(iii) The economy is experiencing the historical phenomenon of collapse, rather than peak oil, and
(iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.
[2] The world’s energy problem, as commonly understood by researchers today
It is my observation that many researchers believe that we humans are in charge of what happens with future fossil fuel extraction, or with choosing to substitute intermittent renewables for fossil fuels. They generally do not see any problem with “running out” in the near future. If running out were imminent, the problem would likely be announced by spiking prices.
In the predominant view, the amount of future fossil fuels available depends upon the quantity of energy resources that can be extracted with available technology. Thus, a proper estimate of the resources that can be extracted is needed. Oil seems to be in shortest supply based on its reserve estimates and the vast benefits it provides to society. Thus, it is commonly believed that oil production will “peak” and begin to decline first, before coal and natural gas.
In this view, demand is something that we never need to worry about because energy, and especially oil, is a necessity. People will choose energy over other products because they will pay whatever is necessary to have adequate energy supplies. As a result, oil and other energy prices will rise almost endlessly, allowing much more to be extracted. These higher prices will also enable higher cost intermittent electricity to be substituted for today’s fossil fuels.
A huge amount of additional fossil fuels can be extracted, according to those who are primarily concerned about loss of biodiversity and climate change. Those who analyze EROEI tend to believe that falling EROEI will limit the quantity of future fossil fuels extracted to a smaller total extracted amount. Because of this, energy from additional sources, such as intermittent wind and solar, will be required to meet the total energy demand of society.
The focus of EROEI studies is on whether the EROEI of a given proposed substitution is, in some sense, high enough to add energy to the economy. The calculation of EROEI makes no distinction between energy available only through highly complex systems and energy available from less complex systems.
EROEI researchers, or perhaps those who rely on the indications of EROEI researchers, seem to believe that the energy needs of economies are flexible within a very wide range. Thus, an economy can shrink its energy consumption without a particularly dire impact.
[3] The real story seems to be that the adverse outcome we are reaching is collapse, not peak oil. The economy is a self-organizing system powered by energy. This makes it behave in very unexpected ways.
[3a] The economy is tightly connected by the laws of physics.
Energy consumption (dissipation) is necessary for every aspect of the economy. People often understand that making goods and services requires energy dissipation. What they don’t realize is that almost all of today’s jobs require energy dissipation, as well. Without supplemental energy, humans could only gather wild fruits and vegetables and hunt using the simplest of tools. Or, they could attempt simple horticulture by using a stick to dig a place in the ground to plant a seed.
In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure, which is a self-organizing structure that grows over time. Other examples of dissipative structures include hurricanes, plants and animals of all types, ecosystems, and star systems. Without a supply of energy to dissipate (that is, food to eat, in the case of humans), these dissipative structures would collapse.
We know that the human body has many different systems, such as a cardiovascular system, digestive system and nervous system. The economy has many different systems, too, and is just as tightly connected. For example, the economy cannot get along without a transportation system any more than a human can get along without a cardiovascular system.
This self-organizing system acts without our direction, just as our brain or circulatory system acts without our direction. In fact, we have very little control over these systems.
The self-organizing economy allows common belief systems to arise that seem to be right but are really based on models with many incorrect assumptions. People desperately need and want a “happily ever after” solution. The strong need for a desirable outcome favors the selection of models that lead to the conclusion that if there is a problem, it is many years away. Conflicting political views seem to be based on different, equally wrong, models of how world leaders can solve the energy predicament that the world is facing.
The real story is that the world’s self-organizing economy will determine for us what is ahead, and there is virtually nothing we can do to change the result. Strangely enough, if we look at the long term pattern, there almost seems to be a guiding hand behind the result. According to Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee in Rare Earth, there have been a huge number of seeming coincidences that have allowed life on Earth to take hold and flourish for four billion years. Perhaps this “luck” will continue.
[3b] As the economy reaches limits, commodities of many types reach diminishing returns simultaneously.
It is indeed true that the economy reaches diminishing returns in oil supply as it reaches limits. Oil is very valuable because it is energy dense and easily transported. The oil that can be extracted, refined, and delivered to needed markets using the least amount of resources (including human labor) tends to be extracted first. It is later that deeper wells are built that are farther from markets. Because of these issues, oil extraction does tend to reach diminishing returns, as more is extracted.
If this were the only aspect of the economy that was experiencing diminishing returns, then the models coming from a peak oil perspective would make sense. We could move away from oil, simply by transferring oil use to appropriately chosen substitutes.
It becomes clear when a person looks at the situation that commodities of all kinds reach diminishing returns. Fresh water reaches diminishing returns. We can add more by using desalination and pumping water to where it is required, but this approach is hugely expensive. As population and industrialization grows, the need for fresh water grows, making diminishing returns for fresh water a real issue.
Minerals of all kinds reach diminishing returns, including uranium, lithium, copper and phosphate rock (used for fertilizer). The reason this occurs is because we tend to extract these minerals faster than they are replaced by the weathering of rocks, including bedrock. In fact, useable topsoil tends to reach diminishing returns because of erosion. Also, with increasing population, the amount of food required keeps increasing, putting further pressure on farmland and making it harder to retain an acceptable level of topsoil.
[3c] Increased complexity leads to diminishing returns as well.
In his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Joseph Tainter points out that complexity reaches diminishing returns, just as commodities do.
As an example, it is easy to see that added spending on healthcare reaches diminishing returns. The discovery of antibiotics clearly had a huge impact on healthcare, at relatively little cost. Now, a recent article is entitled, The hunt for antibiotics grows harder as resistance builds. The dollar payback on other drugs tends to fall as well, as solutions to the most common diseases are found, and researchers must turn their attention to diseases affecting only, perhaps, 500 people globally.
Similarly, spending on advanced education reaches diminishing returns. Continuing the medical example above, educating an increasing number of researchers, all looking for new antibiotics, may eventually lead to success in discovering more antibiotics. But the payback with respect to the education of these researchers will not be nearly as great as the payback for educating the early researchers who found the first antibiotics.
[3d] Wages do not rise sufficiently so that all of the higher costs associated with the many types of diminishing returns can be recouped simultaneously.
The healthcare system (at least in the United States) tends to let its higher costs flow through to consumers. We can see this by looking at how much higher the Medical Care Consumer Price Index (CPI) rises compared to the All Items CPI in Figure 2.
The high (and rapidly rising) cost of advanced education is another cost that is being passed on to consumers–the students and their parents. In this case, loans are used to make the high cost look less problematic.
Of course, if consumers are burdened with higher medical and educational costs, it makes it difficult to afford the higher cost of energy products, as well. With these higher costs, young people tend to live with their parents longer, saving on the energy products needed to have their own homes and vehicles. Needless to say, the lower net income for many people, after healthcare costs and student loan repayments are deducted, acts to reduce the demand for oil and energy products, and thus contributes to the problem of continued low oil prices.
[3e] Added complexity tends to increase wage disparities. The reduced spending by lower income workers tends to hold down fossil fuel prices, similar to the impact identified in Section [3d].
As the economy becomes more complex, companies tend to become larger and more hierarchical. Elite workers (ones with more training or with more supervisory responsibility) earn more than non-elite workers. Globalization adds to this effect, as workers in high wage countries increasingly compete with workers in lower wage countries. Even computer programmers can encounter this difficulty, as programming is increasingly moved to China and India.
Individuals with low incomes spend a disproportionately large share of their incomes on commodities because everyone needs to eat approximately 2,000 calories of food per day. In addition, everyone needs some kind of shelter, clothing and basic transportation. All of these types of consumption are commodity intensive. People with very high incomes tend to buy disproportionately more goods and services that are not very resource intensive, such as education for their children at elite universities. They may also use part of their income to buy shares of stock, hoping their value will rise.
With a shift in the distribution of incomes toward those with high earnings, the demand for commodities of all types tends to stagnate or even fall. Fewer people are able to buy new cars, and fewer people can afford vacations involving travel. Thus, as more complexity is added, there tends to be downward pressure on the price of oil and other energy products.
[4] Oil prices have been falling behind those needed by oil producers since 2012.
Back in February 2014, Steven Kopits gave a presentation at Columbia University explaining the state of the oil industry. I wrote a post describing this presentation called, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending. Oil companies were reporting that prices had been too low for them to make an adequate profit for reinvestment, back as early as 2012. In inflation-adjusted terms, this was when oil prices were about $120 per barrel.
Even Middle Eastern oil exporting countries need surprisingly high oil prices because their economies depend on the profits of oil companies to provide the vast majority of their tax revenue. If oil prices are too low, adequate taxes cannot be collected. Without funds for jobs programs and food subsidies, there are likely to be uprisings by unhappy citizens who cannot maintain an adequate standard of living.
Looking at Figure 4, we see that there has been very little time that Brent oil prices have been above $120 per barrel. Even with all of the recent central bank stimulus and deficit spending by economies around the world, Brent oil prices remain below $60 per barrel.
[5] Interest rates and the amount of debt make a huge difference in oil prices, too.
Based on Figure 4, oil prices are highly irregular. Much of this irregularity seems to be associated with interest rate and debt level changes. In fact, in July 2008, what I would call the debt bubble associated with subprime housing and credit cards collapsed, bringing oil prices down from their peak abruptly. In late 2008, Quantitative Easing (QE) (aimed at bringing interest rates down) was added just prior to an upturn on prices in 2009 and 2010. Prices fell again, when the United States discontinued QE in late 2014.
If we think about it, increased debt makes purchases such as cars, homes and new factories more affordable. In fact, the lower the interest rate, the more affordable these items become. The number of purchases of any of these items can be expected to rise with more debt and lower interest rates. Thus, we would expect oil prices to rise as debt is added and fall as it is taken away. Now, there are many questions: Why haven’t oil prices risen more, with all of the stimulus that has been added? Are we reaching the limits of stimulus? Are interest rates as low as they can go, and the amount of debt outstanding as high as it can go?
[6] The growing complexity of the economy is contributing to the huge amount of debt outstanding.
In a very complex economy, a huge number of durable goods and services are produced. Examples of durable goods would include machines used in factories and pipelines of all kinds. Durable goods would also include vehicles of all types, including both vehicles used for businesses and vehicles used by consumers for their own benefit. As broadly defined here, durable goods would include buildings of all types, including factories, schools, offices and homes. It would also include wind turbines and solar panels.
There would also be durable services produced. For example, a college degree would have lasting benefit, it is hoped. A computer program would have value after it is completed. Thus, a consulting service is able to sell its programs to prospective buyers.
Somehow, there is a need to pay for all of these durable goods. We can see this most easily for the consumer. A loan that allows durable goods to be paid for over their expected life will make these goods more affordable.
Similarly, a manufacturer needs to pay the many workers making all of the durable goods. Their labor is adding value to the finished products, but this value will not be realized until the finished products are put into operation.
Other financing approaches can also be used, including the sale of bonds or shares of stock. The underlying intent is to provide financial time-shifting services. Interest rates associated with these financial time-shifting services are now being manipulated downward by central banks to make these services more affordable. This is part of what keeps stock prices high and commodity prices from falling lower than their current levels.
These loans, bonds and shares of stock are providing a promise of future value. This value will exist only if there are enough fossil fuels and other resources to create physical goods and services to fulfill these promises. Central banks can print money, but they cannot print actual goods and services. If I am right about collapse being ahead, the whole debt system seems certain to collapse. Shares of stock seem certain to lose their value. This is concerning. The end point of all of the added complexity seems to be financial collapse, unless the system can truly add the promised goods and services.
[7] Intermittent electricity fits very poorly into just-in-time supply lines.
A complex economy requires long supply lines. Usually, these supply lines are operated on a just-in-time basis. If one part of a supply line encounters problems, then manufacturing needs to stop. For example, automobile manufacturers in many parts of the world are finding that they need to suspend production because it is impossible to source the necessary semiconductor chips. If electricity is temporarily unavailable, this is another way of disrupting the supply chain.
The standard way to work around temporary breaks in supply chains is to build greater inventory, but this is expensive. Additional inventory needs to be stored and watched over. It likely needs financing, as well.
[8] The world economy today seems to be near collapse.
The self-organizing economy is now pushing the economy in many strange ways that indirectly lead to less energy consumption and eventually collapse. Even prior to COVID-19, the world economy appeared to be reaching growth limits, as indicated in Figure 1, which was published in January 2019. For example, recycling of many renewables was no longer profitable at lower oil prices after 2014. This led China to discontinue most of its recycling efforts, effective January 1, 2018, even though this change resulted in the loss of jobs. China’s car sales fell in 2018, 2019, and 2020, a strange pattern for a supposedly rapidly growing country.
The response of world leaders to COVID-19 has pushed the world economy further in the direction of contraction. Businesses that were already weak are the ones having the most difficulty in being able to operate profitably.
Furthermore, debt problems are growing around the world. For example, it is unclear whether the world will require as many shopping malls or office buildings in the future. A person would logically expect the value of the unneeded buildings to drop, reducing the value of many of these properties below their outstanding debt level.
When these issues are combined, it looks likely that the world economy may not be far from collapse, which is one of my contentions from Section [1]. It also looks like my other contentions from Section [1] are true:
(i) Low oil prices rather than high are to be expected as the economy reaches limits,
(ii) Most fossil fuel reserves will be left in the ground because of low prices, and
(iv) If the economy is not to collapse, we need energy sources providing a larger quantity of net energy per capita to offset diminishing returns.
Regarding (iv), the available energy supply from wind and solar (net or otherwise) is tiny relative to the total energy required to operate the world economy. This issue, alone, would disqualify a Great Reset using wind and solar from truly being a solution for today’s problems. Instead, plans for a Great Reset tend to act as a temporary cover-up for collapse.
Scientists: Vaccination Before EVERY Holiday May Be Needed
“The sort of criteria that might be introduced… is that when one travels internationally for a short trip, going on vacation for example, that one is vaccinated each time on that occasion for that particular trip.”
Scientists at Oxford University have suggested that people may need to have a coronavirus vaccination not once, not twice, but EVERY time they want to travel out of their home country.
The scientists published a report in the Royal Society Journal last week that acknowledged there is little data on how efficient or long lasting the current vaccines are, and so it is likely that countries will require a recent vaccination.
Having endless vaccinations when there is no indication of how effective they are, or what long term side effects there may be sounds absolutely mental, but that is what is being suggested.
https://summit.news/2021/02/22/scientists-vaccination-before-every-holiday-may-be-needed/
This will help keep up demand for vaccines!
Mental? Flip it around and think about what are the benefits when “lower caste” can’t cross borders regularly.. There are indeed number of them.
Bitcoin Mining Now Uses More Electricity Than Argentina
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/bitcoin-mining-now-uses-more-electricity-than-argentina/
“Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight….”
There will be an end, there will be an end…..
Bitcoin helps keep up demand for electricity!
I read recently that Bitcoin uses as much electricity as Argentina.
https://theenergymix.com/2021/02/19/bitcoin-draws-as-much-electricity-as-argentina-as-consumption-quadruples-in-four-years/
Bitcoin certainly doesn’t look scalable.
“The calm before the storm that pervades current fiscal behaviour is more suspect by virtue of the fact that central banks have embarked on an orgy of money printing that exceeds even the wanton excesses of governments. There are just no spending limits any more, anywhere, it seems.
“The coronavirus has blinded us to the huge debt obligations we will meet in an era of recovering interest rates. It is but small consolation to know that we are all in this together – up our necks. We are about to learn what a reality check really means.”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3122429/worlds-free-spending-money-printing-spree-will-cost-us-dearly-end
“It’s time for central banks to prepare financial markets to regain more influence over longer-term interest rates, breaking the move toward fiscal dominance and alleviating the threat of another economic collapse.
“Major central banks should envisage shifting gear… and starting monetary normalisation for when the Covid crisis is over.”
[Good luck with that! We didn’t manage monetary normalisation in the 12 years following the global financial crisis (quite the reverse, in fact), so how on earth are we going to manage it now?!]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/21/central-banks-must-change-gear-aim-monetary-normalisation/
“We are about to learn what a reality check really means”
Does he mean by reality, the true reality that economy is exchanging goods and services that are provided by energy, an amount of energy we have reached using fossil fuels and that is incomparable to any source used before and after?
I think that the great interest in alternative currencies and bitcoin comes from the fact that it is clear that the current financial system is stretched beyond its limit.
I told a woman at the mall that face mask don’t work for viruses, that they are called surgical masks for a reason. Her response: “So you’re saying the surgeon shouldn’t use a mask either?”
I sincerely hope she’s not representative of common men and women but I’m afraid she is …
Classic response!
This is probably why Bill Gates -and his handlers – don’t think that eugenics and rapid depopulation would be a crime
In 2020 they discovered just how poor at reasoning most people are: now, they are consolidating their success.
Doesn’t it kinda make you want to pull out a baseball bat and beat her to death?
I know that sounds a bit extreme but is it any different than stepping on a cockroach… or smacking a fly?
The roach and fly didn’t even do anything to offend you… yet you’d feel no guilt…
This is a two-page scientific paper that is easily read:
Is a mask necessary in the operating theatre?
No masks were worn in one operating theatre for 6 months. There was no increase in the incidence of wound infection.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7294681/
Might be a good idea to print out a copy to carry with you for just these sorts of confrontations.
[Not that it is likely to sway many people.. apparent “truthiness” and emotion-based fear-mongering has swept away all vestiges of rationality.]
“Currency crisis leaves Lebanese cupboards bare:
“Hunger threatens to reignite unrest as dollar peg slips and inflation soars in heavily import-dependent country… Lebanon’s financial crisis of more than a year, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, has left the economy ravaged by hyperinflation, job losses and soaring poverty.”
https://www.ft.com/content/69e1e040-d8d7-494e-9a90-6f02f68f0bf7
“The Syrian pound sank to a new record low on Sunday with a scramble for dollars in a country hit by sanctions and facing a severe foreign currency crunch, dealers and bankers said…
“Traders said it cost as much as 3,450 Syrian pounds to buy 1 dollar on the street on Sunday, more than 18% lower than the end of last month.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/syria-economy-pound/syrian-pound-sinks-to-record-low-on-foreign-currency-crunch-idUSL8N2KR0I6
“Sudan’s central bank sharply devalued the currency on Sunday, announcing a new regime to “unify” official and black-market exchange rates in an effort to overcome a crippling economic crisis and access debt relief. basic goods and rapid inflation complicated a fragile political transition.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-sudan-economy-idUSKBN2AL0B7
“Violence engulfs South Sudan as UN warns of looming famine.”
https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2021/02/20/violence-engulfs-south-sudan-as-un-warns-of-looming-famine/
“A staggering 80 percent of Yemen’s population, or over 24 million people, require some form of humanitarian assistance and protection, including more than 12 million children, according to data released by the United Nations.”
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-02/21/c_139755435.htm
Yemen is way past peak oil. Its population is way too high, and it has too little water. It is in terrible shape.
Interesting that that modern day Yemen is where the Queen of Sheeba, from Old Testament Bible, came from and went to King Solomon on a technology and investment junket to ancient Israel to see how Solomon managed all his Kingdom’s wonders.
Maybe time to dust off their history books for low-tech answers?
@Herbert Charles Goodrich
Can you recommend any book concerning this topic?
For Herbert: the expedition commissioned by Pharaoh Hatshepsut also stopped at what is now Yemen, and according to the inscriptions in her temple found it rich in spices.
Harry, an article from Zero Hedge you might like:
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/macleod-future-money-gold-not-crypto
They openly advocate a return to the gold standard. And not a “gold exchange” standard, but the classical gold standard where all scrip is exchangeable on demand into gold coin or bullion. And the article is mostly a long essay on the benefits of classical economics that it was a joy to read.
They also advocate an end to modern banking. A bank can be a custodian of private capital, or a source of interest bearing loans, but never both. At a stroke, that abolishes fractional reserve banking. It also restores the banking policy of the Knights Templar, which was one of the most successful currency arrangements in history. And, of course, it abolishes fiat money, as the wise authors of the US constitution did (Article I Section 8), until That Thug Roosevelt decided the Constitution no longer applied to geniuses like him.
Harry, I was glued to my chair. Here was almost everything I had learned about macro economics, in black and while, and said far more eloquently than I could have.
Robert, I can see how it would be right up your street and it all sounds very sensible – but I take a fairly mechanistic view of our situation and see it as inevitable that the financial system keeps expanding in ever weirder and more creative ways until it collapses under the weight of its own contradictions and dishonesties.
Nixon’s removal of the $ from the gold standard in 1971, mentioned in the article, was a response to rising inflation, which stemmed from higher oil prices, thanks the the US passing peak conventional crude production and their imported oil rising in cost. In fact Nixon also attempted to address this directly by imposing a price-ceiling on domestic oil.
When energy and resource-constraints bite, nations that can get away with it will simply compensate by pretending that their currencies are worth more and that they can afford to take on more debt – that just seems to be the way of things – and we are now in an era defined by ever-worsening energy and resource-constraints.
I would have to agree.
The System has a momentum all of its own, suiting so many who have their hands on the levers of power..
So, sadly:
The System 10, Reason and Logic 0.
This now seems to apply to the field of medicine, too.
The big issue is getting enough energy/money to the parts of the system that need it. Not only is there a need to keep up funding for big pharmacy and the medical system, there is also a need to keep up interest in the advanced education system. No one dares suggest that cheap older drugs may work.
It’s like advocating a healthy diet to a person in the terminal stages of cancer.
@robert firth, “the benefits of classical economics” — I am going to assume (correct me if I am mistaken) that you mean neo-classical economics which substituted marginal utility for the far older labor theory of value. “Classical economics” would include such earlier luminaries as Smith, Ricardo, and Marx.
Nehemiah, a reasonable assumption, but not true. I did mean “classical” economics, including Smith and Ricardo (and add Say). Marx completely misunderstood the “labour theory of value”; Ricardo got it right, what matters is not the quantity of labour, but its productivity, which depends on many factors other than navvies with shovels.
Falling currency makes the plight of these poor countries worse.
anti covid vaxxers Australia yesterday
https://twitter.com/i/status/1362960934784749574
Futile….
Part of the reason for the vaccine seems to be to sow discord.
We’ll be fighting in the streets…
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again
Air New Zealand will ask passengers to use a digital health pass on flights to Australia in a trial run of a “vaccine passport” system for travellers to prove they have been immunised against COVID-19.
The Kiwi airline said on Monday it will test the industry-developed Travel Pass app on Auckland-Sydney flights for three weeks in April, presenting a glimpse of what international travel will look like until the coronavirus is no longer a threat.
Travel industry leaders expect COVID-19 immunisation will become mandatory for international flights once vaccines have been widely distributed, with Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce saying in November it would be a requirement to fly on his airline. Incoming travellers to Australia already have to provide evidence they tested negative to COVID-19 within 72 hours of their departure.
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/australia/air-nz-trials-vaccine-passport-a-glimpse-of-post-covid-travel/ar-BB1dTnc3?li=BBqdg4K
A digital health pass adds yet more complexity to the system.
More from that letter:
Maybe if you, Whitty, Valance, Drosten, Farrar and Edmunds are all merrily putting communications in your junk folder you really are totally unaware of what is happening in the real world? Pause: think: what if they are right? What if only half of what I say is right? I thought scientists were supposed to welcome their theories being challenged? I thought that’s how they are tested.
You describe me as being “sucked into” an “alternate reality” – and that is precisely my beef – you are the one living in a land of modelled theories – I am the one asking you to look at my reality – the ‘on the ground Real World’ data. What has happened in countries which didn’t/couldn’t lock down?
Yes, look at Sweden, though it obviously pains you do to do so. How to explain its death rate? Or Texas? Or Brazil? Or Belarus? How is that a conspiracy?
Is the FT in on the conspiracy? Worldometers? Perhaps the health reporting agencies are in on it too!
https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FT.png
I might not be an epidemiologist but it’s fairly obvious to me that your model (and that of Imperial/LSHTM/Warwick University/Institut Pasteur Paris) is out by several orders of magnitude and the fact that you resort to calling people who disagree with it “conspiracy theorists” only serves to illustrate how far down the rabbit hole you have fallen.
Oh, and what is wrong in pointing out that you have made the self-same error with Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Foot and Mouth? Or do you dispute those figures when you say I’m quoting the “same old misinformation”? Are all those reporting your past predictions v the actuality also in on the conspiracy?
I find it unfathomable that you/Imperial/LSHTM/Warwick University/Institut Pasteur Paris were listened to, the Pandemic Preparedness Plan thrown away and we embarked on lockdowns, with the rest of the world following. Perhaps you could do some good at this late stage by trying to get the mass-testing/False Positive Rate sorted out (by following the WHO’s guidelines, for instance) otherwise we are never going to get out of this mess. My husband drew this up – from Government data.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FPR-TEST.png
Neil Ferguson’s Original Correspondent Responds – and He Responds Again!
The reader who originally wrote to Prof Ferguson has herself replied to his email – and he, in turn, replied to her, and she then replied to that.
Here is their exchange in full.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/2021/02/22/latest-news-293/#neil-fergusons-original-correspondent-responds-and-he-responds-again
Hmmm…
I’ve read the relevant minutes from Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) on March 22nd 2020 which says among other things:
A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened
The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent using hard-hitting emotional messaging
Use media to increase sense of personal threat
Personal threats can work both ways. A big part of the UK’s problem is that its nanny state operatives and administrators don’t feel personally threatened by the long-suffering British public. They’ve built their panopticon and their dystopian security state, and the think they are in complete control and untouchable. Perhaps they are, but we’ll see.
That correspondent sounds like a very nice sensible woman, not at all the threatening kind. But she did a very good job of shaming Ferguson—the arrogant pillock is not totally shameless it seems— and his final response to her shows him clearly on the defensive on that account.
I also think she hit the nail on the head when she warned that the politicians are going to use him, pin the blame for their failed policies on him, and hang him out to dry. Where he’s going to be hung from she does not say, but a lot of people must really have it in for him and the rest of the busy bodies. All it would take is someone who has lost everything, reached the end of their rope and is looking to go out in style.
I seriously wonder whether the reason the won’t end the lockdowns is that they are afraid of what might happen when people are allowed out again. So much pressure, frustration and bitterness has been stored up inside the inmates and a lot of them will have lost their jobs, their livelihoods and their marbles. If enough of them get together there could be a hung parliament!
Tom, I think the approved term is a “hanged parliament”. Which indeed I would like to see, but at a pinch I’ll settle for a replay of Pride’s Purge.
Like how he refuses to address her taunts to compare the UK with countries such as Sweden and Belarus which have never locked down and yet are no worse off than the UK…. no collapsing ‘NHS’ in those countries…
He obviously is aware of that… probably before she shoved it in his face.
I wonder if he is having a personal crisis of morality… why would he bother to respond to her otherwise…
I have a mate who opposes lockdowns — primarily because they have wrecked his business…
He believes much of what he reads about Covid (he insists it is far worse than any flu)…. but he believes we either stop the lockdowns or we get a worse outcome as the economy implodes.
But he only just changed his tune on this in recent months…. back in April he was all for the lockdowns and confidently told me this would be over by July (MSM told him that?) ….
I guaranteed that this was not going to happen citing discussions with a co-author of Barrington and email correspondence with a top epidemiologist and consultant to the WHO … both told me lockdowns were not going to stop this thing … and that the death rate was similar to that of a bad flu … so they had no idea why governments were locking us down…
Clearly there was something else at play here… some sort of plan … and Covid was cover…that is why I was confident – and remain confident — that Covid is not going to disappear… it is a means to an end…
No matter what facts I show my mate he continues to believe the governments will come to their senses and stop the lockdowns.
He blamed Trump and said the politicians cannot admit they made a mistake so they keep locking — I point out that Biden had the opportunity to change course and say Trump had it wrong – let’s follow Sweden…. I point out that leaders such as Carrie Lam are not elected and already hated so changing course is easy — politicians would benefit from ending lockdowns as their economies improve and the death rate does not worsen or even reduces…
I ask him why the MSM ignores the Barrington experts — why they remove YT presentations starting with the 2 California doctors who own clinics that test for Covid who challenged the narrative many months ago… why is Mike Yeadon blocked… basically any expert who gets traction with a challenge to the Covid response is blocked, ridiculed or ignored…..
He (maybe he’s Norm’s bastard son???) refuses to accept that there could be a conspiracy at play… how can so many medical professionals and governments keep such a plan secret
I show him the leak from Canada and point out everything to date has come true…
I show him Barrington — essential that is the mother of all leaks… you have tens of thousands of experts stating that Covid is BS…. but because the MSM does not acknowledge them … he I guess believes they are not credible….
No matter what it is impossible to breakthrough… and he will go on believing we’ll end lockdowns in a couple of months because they have no choice… his latest is the vaccines will allow them to unlock… even if the vaccines don’t work they’ll just to it anyway (as we lock even harder and longer….)
Back to Ferguson … (pay attention Norm)…. he is to a great extent the architect of this madness… he is Colin Powell….
Now imagine Ferguson decided that he wanted to come clean on this Big Lie…. what if he attempted to expose The Plan… if he said that the vaccine is meant to wipe us out…
How would he leak this? The MSM would not touch it…. he is far more important than other experts who have been thoroughly blocked from social media and YT…. so he’d be completely silenced… and a massive campaign would be launched to destroy him….
Take a look at the leak out of Canada…. almost nobody is aware of it… I’ve sent it to a few people — they generally dismiss it as ‘impossible’
Oh so Ferguson is going to leak that the vaccine is meant to exterminate us… PREPOSTEROUS!!!
The MSM would tell us he’s lost the plot … he might even be stuffed into a straight jacket and dumped in the nut house… (seriously).
He likely is aware of all of this (if not he’ll be reminded of it by the planners…) as would any other high profile person who had second thoughts….
The odds of anyone who knows the end game leaking it … is nearly 0.
If someone did decide to leak…. nobody would listen… their only option to spread the message would be to stand on the street corner and shout ‘the end is nigh – reject the Covid vaccine – it’s mass murder’…..
I have explained this to my mate… but he still thinks it would get out…. and he still thinks lockdowns will stop before summer…
I keep telling him he needs to bucket list asap — surely there must be something he can do that he has always wanted to do before he dies…. I tell him he’ll regret not doing it when the lockdowns take the economy down….
Good comment. It all sounds very plausible.
If it looks like a genocidal plan and it quacks like a genocidal plan, then it probably isn’t a public health initiative.
The odds of anyone who knows the end game leaking it … is nearly 0.
It would be like Dick Chenny admitting Nine 11 woz an inside job. If he ever tried to do that his pacemaker would be syncopating to an improvisational jazz beat before he finished the sentence.
Bitcoins recent surge isn’t by institutional investors, but rather Tether and retail suckers. (market manipulation)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eum-Qo_XIAAsrhT?format=jpg&name=900×900
This doesn’t fit here, but I’m having a tough time finding the posts where it fits better.
ASSEMBLED UNITS ARRANGED IN PODS OF 100-200 UNITS
– I see building as largely obsolete in a world creaking under unprecedented social ecological and economic pressures. Our time is not called the Sixth Great Extinction for no reason.
– Not only is our built environment unaffordable in monetary terms, it is unaffordable in social terms. If every structure must meet permitting guidelines meant for the high age of the industrial economy, then clearly the poor cannot afford to have shelter. The cost of such inequity is crime, sickness, apathy, misgovernance, ignorance. These all are in sync with monetary costs that are unaffordable were modern nations willing to crawl out from under an economic system based on unpayable foreign debt. And we simply can’t afford to lose more species to deforestation, to such barbaric ideas as clearing land to build houses and paved driveways or paved roads leading to them.
– So I would replace the term building with “assembling,” adapting and retrofitting. My guess is that retrofitting and augmenting most buildings–large abandoned ones especially–shelter availability could double within the current urban footprint. And very small shelter could be assembled without paved foundations, and moved around at will. If such shelter were based on shed-size that in the US needs no permit under a determined dimension (often in the range of 80 square feet) it could lead to a revolutionary breakaway from onerous, unaffordable permitting rules.
– The absence of more centralized regulations (themselves increasingly unaffordable) would not preclude standards, which would be handled in local self-governing pods set up in a manner not threatening to other such pods. Since we can’t afford a free-for-all in assembling, considerable local governance and regulations, linked or unlinked to existing bureaucracies, would have to be formed. I can see more freedom and more coordination coexisting. Shelter then becomes as much a community endeavor as an individual one. Land Trusts would perhaps be one means of organizing this.
– Utilities 1: Electricity (rationed?) could be served by the central grid, while solid human waste (humanure) could be collected and used or processed off-site. Using humanure as nutrient for replaced soil substances at various safe levels in abandoned, open mine pits ought also to be within the realm of possibility.
– Utilities 2: Water could also be be supplied by the grid, and pumped (by ration?) to 500-gallon water tanks that respectively serve each “unit.” Gray water would irrigate food gardens serving pods.
– Assemble units would be adaptable to serve as community spaces for pods. The units could potentially be joined together to create very large sheltered spaces for community functions.
– One key ingredient of assembled self-governing pods is a high degree of central management within and between pods.
This sounds like a way of adding additional housing for BAU. I am not sure that we need additional housing. There will be a huge number of empty shopping malls, for example, that could be used as housing. Also, if population is falling, rather that rising, and people are moving in together, the total number of required housing units is falling, not rising.
The reason we would need additional housing would be if we are repopulating rural areas as cities depopulate. Lots of mobile home units would be sort of equivalent, if they can be built. Unfortunately, a person cannot assume continuing electricity or water supply for the long run. It might be better to look at housing ancient civilizations built in the area.
Gail, on very rare occasions I have visited shopping malls. In my (limited) experience, they could not be repurposed for housing. They are mostly windowless, relying on artificial lighting and ventilation. They have no good sources of water, and no reliable scaffolding to hold up new piping.
They also mostly use flat roofs, which have rather a short useful life without continuing and expensive maintenance. In other words, they are fit only for scavenging.
A few extra (perhaps explanatory) observations.:
– I’m looking at what’s possible to do now on a low budget.
– The intricacies of procuring large buildings for housing are daunting.
– If they run afoul of permitting, small assemble-type structures can be sneaked in gradually (in smaller numbers) in some ways, since they can be the size of sheds that need no permitting.
– As envisaged, they will require no paved infrastructure.
– Done at scale, they benefit by collaboration with mining that can use humanure as compost in refilled pits.
– They can be of flexible use, ranging from homeless units, through teenage units, through ecotourist units.
– They could be small and modular enough that the parts could be easily assembled, disassembled and transported (one pickup trip per unit.)
– Electricity can be supplied by the grid in cities or by generators otherwise. They are meant to work with the grid and help it to be efficient.
– Water would need to be trucked in.
– They are primarily meant for the Tropics, and could support on-site artisanry and horticulture.
– They are compatible with social distancing.
It seems to me that there is less chance of there being a long term plot to change the world by the elders rather a series of opportunities that allow the less ethical people who happen to be in the right place at the right time to have a big impact on the situation. Which is effectively a self organising system. Examples of pushes that have over the last few decades allowed us to get to this place are – the diversification of investment by large shareholders who now have vested interests in other than their core businesses for example media tycoons who have interests in Pharma would want to spin in a direction that would benefit their investments. These Tycoons are more powerful now than in the past because of buying up opposition and creating monopolies that can label all alternative ideas as false news. Allowing their media to dumb down possibly allows the now less aware public to be more suggestable to pushes from adverts which is a large part of their income. Of course when you have the well intentioned but short sighted (idiots) wanting offensive comments banned then you can turn people who have reasonable doubts over experimental new “vaccines” into dangerous anti social extremists.
I agree with you that what we are seeing is the effect of a self-organizing system, much more than any kind of a plot. We have a lot of oligarchs with huge influence and power. They cherry pick the results of “scientific” models, to find those that indirectly give them the most benefit. They tend to work together, through organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and World Economic Forum. They make certain that they themselves look like do-gooders.
Let’s take a look at a quotation that is often attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
FDR was being honest there, IMHO.
And let’s add one of H.L. Menken’s observations:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Friends, OFWs, members of the populace, I ask you, are we not alarmed? Are we not menaced? Do the hobgoblins never seem to stop?
If so, there’s a reason for that. In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
All this says nothing about the profit motive. But of course there are vast profits to be made by planning it this way. Every businessman likes regular paying customers—a captive audience for their products. And pharmaceutical companies are going to love getting a cut of the Covid vaccine business, especially if it turns out everyone will need jabbing twice a year every year.
One might think that, if one hadn’t read the Rockefeller Foundation’s “Lockstep” document, or heard tell of Event 201, or listened to Bill Gates talk about his 20:1 investment gains in vaccines, etc., etc.
Scenarios that self-organize still need human conduits to do so. The “anti-social extremists” will be the ones that the Great Reset people condemn (as they have announced) to a feral existence beyond city boundaries. If you’re going to select for a core of people to help run your techno-redoubt, better select for those who are obedient and uncomplaining.
@downunder, Sure, there is plenty of opportunism (“never let a good crisis go to waste” as one of Obama’s advisors summed it up), but there is also organized conspiring to change the world, and has been going back at least to the late 19th century, but growing in effectiveness over time, and especially since WW2.
Events to come later this year
That was fun. An excerpt from 28 Weeks Later, a 2007 film starring Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne, and Robert Carlyle.
Six months after the Rage Virus was inflicted on the population of Great Britain, the US Army helps to secure a small area of London for the survivors to repopulate and start again. But not everything goes according to plan.
The “rage” Virus?
Storyline:
Six challenging months after the horrific events of 28 Days Later… (2002), when the unstoppable Rage Virus decimated the entire city of London, the U.S. Army has restored order and is repopulating the quarantined city. However, after the first wave of returning refugees, an unsuspecting carrier of the highly transmittable pathogen enters the dead city, and unknowingly re-ignites the spread of the deadly infection. Indeed, the virus is not yet dead, and this time, it is more dangerous than ever. Will the nightmare begin again?
Predictive programming or psychological preparation for a future pandemic?
People have had epidemics on their minds, as well as the reactions to epidemics, for a long time.
But the last one was in 1918-19.
This one is new to all humans.
Unless you are 105 or so.
This one is no worse than the 1968 flu pandemic—which started in Hong Kong in July of that year and rolled on into 1970, and according to Encyclopedia Brittanica and WHO “resulted in an estimated one million to four million deaths”—but if you were at Woodstock in sixty nine you would have been too stoned to have noticed it.
By comparison, the current Covid-19 pandemic has been running for a little over a year and resulted “officially” in the deaths of 2,485,291 people, many of which deaths have been misattributed in order to inflate the numbers. Even by the official count, this makes Covid-19 a bog-standard viral respiratory disease pandemic and not worth worrying about, vaccinating against, or banning rock festivals and casual sex in the park for. I suspect the people making the restrictions weren’t getting a lot of the latter and that’s why they moved to outlaw it.
If you have actually taken not one but two shots of an experimental genetic engineering intervention, then you are brave man indeed. You are courageously playing Russian roulette with your life, your health and your immune system. From what I can discern of your character, I can appreciate you saying you’ve taken the shots in order to to be perverse or to appear morally superior, but if your really have taken two shots at your age, then I can only say in my best Foghorn Leghorn voice “That boy, I say, that boy is as sharp as a bowlin’ ball!”
Duncan – be a good boy and Do As You Are Told!!!!
You’d make a good Nazi prison camp guard….
https://neonnettle.com/news/images/fauci-warns-americans-do-what-you-are-told-1141120.jpg
I hate fast zombies! Fast zombies are artistic sacrilege based on bad science. Any armchair biologist knows that the zombies’ cerebellar degeneration makes it impossible for them to progress in a way other than slow and jerky!
Therefore “28 weeks later” sucks (and “28 months later” is even worst IMO)
COVID-19: UK vaccine rollout should turn to children ‘as fast as we can’, says SAGE expert
Oxford University is studying the safety and immune responses in children and young adults of their coronavirus vaccine.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uk-vaccine-rollout-should-turn-to-children-as-fast-as-we-can-says-sage-expert-12224817
Hahaha … how funny is that!!!!
And the fools will be battling to get their kids to the front of the line … even though fewer children die from covid than from the flu hahahaha… oops… I think I’d busted a gut… let me stuff that back in and duct tape it up….
That said… if only that adults were injected with the Trojan Horse… that would create a global Lord of the Flies scenario …
Best to put the children down as well…
Thank you Elders… love you guys
If you read the comments on this story in the Daily Mail, people are overwhelmingly against the idea of vaccinating children.
2020 went so well for the Covidspiracists, that now they are really pushing the envelope to break through to that final victory: ‘predictions’ from Bill gates almost every other day on what the wonderful future will be; and calls to ‘inject everyone!’ etc.
If they can force through the mass regular testing and ‘vaccination’ of children they will know that they have won and can do anything to us that they like.
The elderly have mostly already sold the pass by grasping for those few months of years of additional life falsely promised by the vaccines: can parents do better?
Well I’m not having it and neither are my kids.
Under no circumstances.
Given how little is known about the vaccine, and how inadequately it has been tested, neither the children nor their caregivers can give “informed consent” to be vaccinated. This proposal is therefore a direct violation of Article 1 of the Nuremberg Principles, which are legally binding on all participants in the Nazi trials. Abandon those principles, and we are no better than Josef Mengele. Indeed, we are worse, for he did it because of ideology; we are doing it because of bribery.
They have an ideological motive as well, as far as I can make out: Transhumanism, as puerile as Nazism, but offering a similar golden vision of perfection and purity, to be reached by sacrificing the defective and inessential.
The spirit of Dr Mengele over-shadows all of this.
here are some more aspects of their plan remember it is an old plan from out of touch delusional elites who believe that they know best they will not back down from their plan D ‘Each year, an estimated one third of all food produced – equivalent to 1.3 billion tonnes worth around $1 trillion – ends up rotting in the bins of consumers and retailers, or spoiling due to poor transportation and harvesting practices.
If people worldwide switched to energy efficient light bulbs the world would save US$120 billion annually.
Should the global population reach 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets could be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles.
The COVID-19 pandemic offers countries an opportunity to build recovery plans that will reverse current trends and change our consumption and production patterns towards a more sustainable future.
Sustainable consumption and production is about doing more and better with less. It is also about decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, increasing resource efficiency and promoting sustainable lifestyles.’
Interesting interview of Aldous Huxley from 1958. Mike Wallace asks him who will bring in this “Brave New World” scenario and his reply is that it is not so much who as it is overpopulation. The solution to overpopulation has been a long time coming.
Huxley lived in Isla Vista, one of my old hang outs.
A interesting take on reality.
Soap. Hygiene. Cleanliness. Covid gone.
Gilding the Lily.
the plan seems obvious wipe out the middle class those with money in the bank houses paid off and sitting pretty us once that occurs they can bring in the sustainable development goals which is their plan D D for desperation if you wish to survive to witness the next 20 years of this madhouse we all live in refuse the vaccine .
I agree: refuse the vaccine.
it is obvious, and consistent with most info, that there is no coordinated plan, just each and every country trying to get back to economic growth.
failure is the only option.
One problem is that the refusers are not organized by state. If organized by state, they could declare cessation form the central state and make sure they can avoid direct military challenge–the timing for a military challenge would throw the Machiavellian “do all the evil at one time” into confusion, and shake up the popular trance mindset. But that’s only a dream. We’re just not prepared to move faster than the enemy.
My goodness, this place has turned into a conspiracy theory echo chamber! Here, chew on this:
https://covid19criticalcare.com/
Here’s a little nugget on life. Ready? Everyone including you and me and everyone else walking the planet will eventually die. There’s a 99.75% chance you will die from something other than Covid 19. Live life and to hell with this BS virus.
well yeah I guess you could say that most of the people on this website will be dead in 10 to 15 years just of natural or maybe cancer causes….so whey do you even care if the virus is real or not? Better get on and live your life
Also I can say I have had the virus and it is real….and it sucks….I know it is manipulated in China and I can see why it killed a lot of people. I think the government should allow people who think it is fake to actually get the virus it is a free country after all….
When I first started talking with friends about “covid 19” october of 19 i think. my friends thought it was absolutely in “ok man” “conspiracy theorist” zone. Whack o crazy stuff bat viruses and hepa filters.
The site you link has some discussion about the promise of ivermectin. This board had some discussion of Ivermectin back when it was in “conspiracy theory” territory. Was it wrong to discuss it before it was approved as non conspiracy theory? It quite amazing any conclusion even if its devoid of collaborators is “conspiracy theory”. So the meaning of conspiracy theorist is something different from the meaning of the two words grouped together.
How about the wuhan lab origin of the virus? Thats common place knowledge now.
That was a interesting transformation.
At first it was alright to ponder the origins of the virus. THis was when the idea of cv19 was not solid yet. Then it solidified. Then the WORD was out forth. THe virus originated from armadillos that went to a bat cave. Now pondering the fact that the covid 19 virus emerged a couple of yards from the worlds most formost bat virus labs was “xenophopic” which is apparently one stop away from racist. The foundation of gain of function research is as chinese as apple pie so the word xenophope is not applicable. In this function that word denotes a warning- conspiracy theorist zone run away! But then subtle shifts occurred. No not out and out telling the truth but hints that it was ok to go —halfway. The WSJ article for example. Questioning the armadillo bat interaction as origin but NOT mentioning alternatives. Redefining that that horrific unthinkable conspiracy theorist cliff is not quite where we said was. Its 4 meters south of cognitive dissonance now.
Why the change? What do you think? Im running short on guesses. Im giving you a top secret super duper pass good for one quasi taboo ponderance.
To some extent the negative association with “conspiracy theorists” has some justification. Who wants to hang out with some ego arrogant individual who is sure that they and only they are smart enough to see the secret code pattern? Thats why i consider the very first rule of the ethical conspiracy theorist to be ;
1; I might be wrong.
followed by
2; its good to be humble
Balance is good. Its not healthy to try to make yourself believe things that your heart and mind tell you are a lie. Its really not. Your body will give you problems. Your emotions will give you problems. The best solution for cognitive dissonance is open and free discussion about why is it there. Try it. You might find your more alive. You might find every cell in your body likes freedom in thought and expression.
Havnt you heard? We conspiracy theorists are out of the closet now! Were liberated. Marching in parades. I know its hard for you straights to accept.
Ann – these are the two best covid sites
https://lockdownsceptics.org/
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
Sweden – NO Lockdowns. NO Masks.
Not in the Top 20 Deaths per 100k
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
This discussion is…. Over.
Also, Swedens death rate for 2019 was unusually low. So some of those who died 2020 was already one year on overtime.
“The highest number of confirmed coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the Nordic countries as of February 17, 2021, was in Sweden, where the number amounted to 627,022. Denmark followed with 206,065 cases, and Norway with 67,497 cases.”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102257/cumulative-coronavirus-cases-in-the-nordics/
Even taken in account of Sweden’s larger population, their case count is way above the rest of our Nordic friends.
Quick question for you, Ann.
When do you think society will get back to normal so we can all party again like it’s 1999?
From the Lockdown Sceptics site…. if after reading this anyone still thinks Covid is not part of a Grand Plan …. I recommend a rope and a strong tree branch.
The great Dr Ferguson does not even attempt to argue against the assertions … he just dismisses them….
Dear XXXX,
I presume you sent me this because you feel upset, angry, that no-one is listening, want to hurt me or change my mind. Or all of the above.
I and my colleagues and friends (John Edmunds, Jeremy Farrar, Marc Lipsitch, Christian Drosten, Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty,…) get so many of these sort of emails that we barely notice anymore. Most get dumped into junk mail folders automatically nowadays.
But for a change, I thought I would reply to you. Not that I really expect it to change the alternative reality you seem to have got sucked into, but occasionally I feel I should try.
To start with may want to read this: https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ConspiracyTheoryHandbook.pdf
And ask yourself if a loved one started to exhibit those behaviours, would you be worried?
As to the article you refer to, it recycles the same old, same old misinformation. You may be surprised to learn that the Telegraph and Spectator have published over a dozen corrections in response to complaints from Imperial College about inaccurate articles. For instance, no-one ran the Imperial model for Sweden (other than us).
More substantively, the government never relied on just one model. The models written by LSHTM, Warwick University and Institut Pasteur Paris all agreed with “the” Imperial model. All used different code bases.
And in fact, there was never “one” Imperial model, but several. We now have 4 different COVID models, again which all agree.
Government responses were never dependent on one model. They were driven by the reality that any disease which generates epidemics which double every 3-4 days and for which over 2% of those infected require hospitalisation will overwhelm any health system that exists.
In fact, a case could be made that the U.K. government took too little notice of our (not just Imperial- all the SAGE groups) modelling. In that they basically only acted when they saw hospitalisations and deaths growing exponentially.
Best,
Neil Ferguson
Never rely on just one model. I have the same philosophy; I always buy three copies of the morning newspaper, just to be sure. And guess what: they always agree!
And the models always agree because they are all based on the same linear differential equations, which any student of ecology knows have never worked and never will, because they ignore feedback loops.
Classic.
If the plan with the CV19 ‘vaccines’ is to reduce global population pronto, there seems to be a hitch in the planning. Sometime this past week I thought I saw on the BBC website an article that said something like: Nearly 130 countries remain with no access to coronavirus vaccines
If so, it it seems to have vanished. Checking on Google there are a few articles, but none by what I would describe as MSM:
Nearly 130 countries remain with no access to coronavirus vaccines
https://112.international/society/nearly-130-countries-remain-with-no-access-to-coronavirus-vaccines-58890.html
130 countries is about two thirds of the world total:
“As of today, 2.5 billion people in about 130 countries do not have access to coronavirus vaccines.
…It is noted that almost 70% of people, who received the vaccine, live in the 50 richest countries, while in the poorest 50 countries this indicator amounts to 0.1%.”
If the 130 are the poorest countries, cutting off aid from the rich countries might have a similar effect as distributing the mRNA ‘vaccine’. We live in interesting times.
This is interesting. There seems to be a pretty good correlation between the countries getting most access to Moderna, Pfizer and Astra Zeneca Covid-19 vaccines and countries that are predicted to suffer drastic falls in population and living standards in the Deagel prediction for 2025. Could be a total coincidence, but we’ll bear it in mind. The “ground zero” of the Deagel collapse forecast is North America, Western Europe, Australia and NZ—the “Oceania” of Nineteen Eighty-Four. “Eurasia” and “Eastasia” get off relatively unscathed. So maybe Orwell knew something about the future too.
Sounds overall like a good plan. Reprogram the rapacious muppets. Those who refuse, keep on cranking up the lethality of covid until either:
a) Mankind gets its act together, or
b) Total and utter extinction
Could we boost this eminent gain of function program into a solid 11 (on a scale between 1-10)?
Once the inevitable times turn from worse to atrocious (depletion), oh yes, they will come for your ass. Nobody with any semblance of decency and spirit wound hold a candle agains the rapacity.
Anyhow, assume you’d survive. The tragic thing is that you’d take pity on their miserable souls anyway and there we go again.
Only a small group of customers willhave the means to purchase a vaccination every three months.
Sticking needles in poor people is ‘philanthropy’ and earns praise.
Whereas cutting off aid would be ‘racist’ and wicked.
As for access, this is still early days. Smashing up ‘legacy’ economic structures and habits of life in the high-consuming countries is the priority at present.
Good observation!
Poor countries have seen lots of epidemics. This one is not as deadly as many, although it can be disabling for a time. They aren’t as prone to being bullied to “stay at home.” There isn’t as much of today’s energy consumption to reduce.
Quite so: many of them are also producers, workers in fields and mines.
A good flow of young, eager, labour which is of use, and their consumption individually is comparatively minimal.
Should one, then, take refuge in some part of Africa?
In Spain, in a nursing home with 94 users, 46 have died since January, when vaccination started at the institution. Almost 50% of fatalities is certainly a feat.
Of course, the press attributes the deaths to covid. The fact that the deaths occurred shortly after vaccination was just one more of those coincidences that have now become commonplace.
https://sevilla.abc.es/andalucia/cadiz/sevi-brote-residencia-barrios-provoca-46-muertes-coronavirus-202102040941_noticia.html?ref=https:%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F#ancla_comentarios
Google Translate of the first part of this article says:
So we know that this was the Pfizer vaccine, which supposedly gives good benefit with one dose. The people had already received one dose, and some had received the second. Around here, newspaper articles seem to suggest that even one dose of Pfizer vaccine gives good coverage.
Another similar case in Spain. A nursing home that until January had managed to dodge covid, on February 3, after vaccination, had 103 infected, 22 of whom died. Bad luck to die now that they were vaccinated and “so close to immunization” …..
“Jesús Tocino came to believe that his father and mother could become centenarians. In their 99 and 94 years, respectively, José and Adela had already lived a long time: a war and its postwar period, the death of two of their four children and a global pandemic. On January 8, they were the protagonists of another historical milestone, they had just received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Immunization was close and Tocino couldn’t be happier. 18 days later Bacino buried his father just two days after his mother’s death
The Novo Sancti Petri center … was able to dodge the covid until now. It managed to evade the first two waves of infections and has reached the third with the first dose of the vaccine. However, now it has been affected by an outbreak that, in the last two weeks, already has 103 infected. Of them, 24 are workers and 79 are residents, where the 22 deceased are located, according to official data from the Provincial Delegation of Health of the Junta de Andalucía. The Andalusian Health Service medicalized the residence on January 23 and, until the outbreak subsides, it has paralyzed the inoculation of the second dose of the vaccine, according to the protocol recommended by the Ministry of Health, according to the same source”
https://elpais.com/sociedad/2021-02-03/una-residencia-gaditana-registra-22-fallecidos-por-covid-en-un-brote-con-103-infectados.html
even one dose of Pfizer vaccine gives good coverage
Don’t know the long term, but really good protection.
But go with the second also (I did).
Can you say 95%?
Come on Duncan, you’re being too modest.
In Israel they have much more chutzpah.
Can you say 99%?
Pfizer’s COVID vaccine 99% effective at preventing serious illness, death
Israel currently has 44,728 active cases of the coronavirus, 858 of which are serious. So far, 5,563 people have died.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/02/21/pfizers-covid-vaccine-99-effective-at-preventing-serious-illness-death/
And another thing…
Catching Covid is a cure for cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other deadly diseases…
Unfortunately you still die though.
A 50% lethality rate in the Cadiz nursing home, huumm… If by “coverage” Pfizer means “potentially lethal infection”, I would say the “coverage” looks pretty good 🙂 Stiil very far from “perfect” though, at least judging from the happy experience of our fellow Duncan Idaho!
almost all persons who are healthy enough to survive C19 are also healthy enough to survive the vaccine.
lots of old weak people will die from either.
isn’t this old news now?
“persons who are healthy enough to survive C19 are also healthy enough to survive the vaccine.”
Exactly!
Therefore vaccinating people who are not healthy enough to survive c19 is, in your opinion:
Risky?
Insane?
Criminal?
Devilishly smart?
the perpetual unfolding joy of the universe.
+1 JMS and david both..
UK speeds up vaccinations: All adults get 1st jab by July 31
The British government announced Sunday that it aims to give every adult in the country a first dose of coronavirus vaccine by July 31, a month earlier than its previous target.
The new target also aims for everyone over 50 or with an underlying health condition to get a vaccine shot by April 15, rather than the previous target of May 1.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/21/uk-speeds-up-vaccinations-all-adults-get-1st-jab-by-july-31.html
>>UK speeds up vaccinations: All adults get 1st jab by July 31
That I am aware of, all those that want one.
I may have to step up my campaign to educate my colleagues, my small team. I cannot possibly run our unit (one of several within IT) by myself, although that is a possibility if they all get mRNA jabs. Three minimum required, to allow for holidays and sick leave. It is going to be an ‘interesting’ year.
The future news will look something a little like this….
Unfortunately the vaccines are unexpectedly killing everyone as they encounter new viruses including the common cold and their bodies reaction is now deadly … but we had no choice but to rush them out without proper testing blah blah blah…
Poor Duncan Idaho. May he rest in peace.
I fear this is not a joke. It looks like the pharmers are culling the herd by trying to dispatch every chicken who is past their prime, no longer laying eggs, and currently or in the near future in line for pension benefits. George Carlin warned us, “They’re coming for your social security, and they’ll get it too,” or words to that effect.
Personally, I don’t mind so much being culled. But I can’t stand the thought of Hillary cackling and gloating about it afterwards.
I suspect the Elders will self-cull…
They can’t maintain the fuel ponds so their only realistic option would be to retire to massive bunker complexes stocked with supplies of freeze dried food, water and diesel… watching reruns of The Simpsons until they die off…
Basically they’d go into permanent lockdown in a luxury jail cell. They’ve not doubt funded studies on the impact of living in a hole in the ground for long periods… and noted that the subjects in the study hung themselves when they were told their isolation was permanent…
I seriously do believe the vaccine is all about a mass cull.
Even people who can see that covid is a stitch up will not likely realize The Cull is the end game… that is because they do not know or accept that we had hit a bottleneck in terms of oil in 2019…. and that the financial gimmicks aimed at keeping BAU alive had stopped working.
I’ve hinted at that to a few people (who are suspicious of the Covid thing) and suggested they do something crazy with their cash instead of riding the Bitcoin bubble to nowhere… but they think I am nuts and missing the opportunity of a lifetime.
I strongly believe that I will have the last laugh.
The top of generally recognized uber-rich are by reasonable assumption (if at all) no more than one step of separation from the true “Elders” (shareholders of the fin system basically sort of gov/CBs owners).
But for example Gates recently bought land and private jet company, and Muskianic brain seems to mount own league against the other top tech oligarchs (devout system loyalists) – and most recently even demanding meeting with the Vlad.
The “(self-)cull hypothesis” is just a scenario with given specific probability as any other. At the moment the preponderance of available evidence shows the agenda is “merely” about full spectrum social reset for the time window of ~2025-30 aiming into more authoritarian rule with curbed consumption patterns etc. I could be (half way) wrong but that’s the realistic assessment at the moment.
The old meme of the super rich living underground is good to reconsider/ Probably a last ditch plan if they can’t find an island to run their show from.
When Gates talks he seems so innocent and well meaning, till you consider that he’s put himself up as ruler of the world when no one appointed him to be that. And there’s plenty of justifiable sociopolitical push back that we are underappreciating with our globalist, smothered understanding. He shouldn’t even be given the time of day.
We need a Reset. We need people to stay in their buildings forever. To do it comfortably you need brilliant design of structures (physical and otherwise), primarily through adaptation of existing ones. You need to get money out of the way. You need very strict order. You don’t need Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Gates.
2019-24: the period of manipulation, partial destruction of ‘legacy’ structures, and mass conditioning.
2025 onwards: full consolidation established by a succession of sudden, fierce shocks.
Completed by 2030-5?
Well, even if that is not the true outline of their plan, it certainly gives a zest to daily life and makes one value any shred of normality which is left to enjoy.
Every day one survived, unwounded, in the trenches of Flanders was sweet, was it not?
You’re so right, Xabier. Every day of normality feels like a small miracle now. Every week unscathed is worth a mid-size kingdom.
And this feeling is even stronger when you’re lucky enough (as I have been so far) not to have suffered any financial losses with lockdowns. But of course this “security”, in my case at least, only lasts the few months of each contract. Nobody working in an area as “unnecessary” as culture can guarantee that following an order or assignment others will come. But what is guaranteed in this world other than suffering, death and the marvelous warmth of the sun? Saludos!
I wonder if they read the Calhoun rat “utopia” study? Yes, the one which turned into a dystopia rather quick. Well, of course they have, hence the virus/vaxx.
Nobody with half a brain wants to leave the planetary surface for any prolonged period of time. Just look at what the rather short lockdowns did to people. Now imagine 10 years underground, with chaos unfolding on the surface. Nukes flying, spent fuel ponds and trees burning until the whole biosphere is a barren radioactive wasteland. It is indeed worse than death.
Just imagine the horrors of being under permanent lockdown (in the most literal sense) with uncle Bill, Klaus and the rest of the bonkers therapy session crowd.
😳
If that is their “plan”, well, good luck with that one. Now that I think about it. Perhaps the conditions on Mars isn’t that bad after all, in comparison, that is. However, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if such a bunker complex exists.
Because bonkers does bonkers shit. Rosetta stones, anyone? Ignoring LTG, anyone? Perpetual resource wars, anyone? Relentless consumerism, anyone? Competing in vanity and status, anyone?
It’s just so amazingly idiotic, the only word that enters mind is total and utter disbelief.
🤣👍
The Elders would have a far more detailed study that LTG…. in fact they’d have dozens of related studies… how to respond to increasing costs of oil production … what to do when financial gimmickry pushes on a string… what happens when the economy collapses… is life possible after that…. spent fuel ponds in a post collapse world… and finally, how to compassionately exterminate humans to avoid suffering….. the list would be literally endless…
The Elders are very thorough… they have think tanks up the ass feeding them info.
Sure they have, however having a sinister “plan” isn’t quite the same as executing it with success.
Assume they are so cunning and clever, then look at the world with the moronic klimate and kovid BS, shocking isn’t it? Yeah, depletion and overpopulation, too. Stuff is indeed going fantastic.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? Perhaps, just perhaps. You know… 🤔
Oh, how I’d like to be the one hoisting down nukes in the shafts leading to their underground “Made by Calhoun” bunkers. Or why not little me ramming hypersonic missiles down their tubes? Awesome stuff. Where do I sign up?
Hey, at least they can schmooze in a therapy session of mutual back slapping. As you know, I’m all for people feeling good about themselves.
🤣👍
The geopolitical fall out of Brexit is worth keeping an eye on – not that it is likely to have much effect on us personally beyond the MSM propaganda that is daily coming our way – the state wants to herd its sheep to its latest geopolitical stances. Thus our daily servings of anti-China propaganda are rooted in geopolitics and ultimately in money-making, in economic deal-making. The state is fundamentally an economic state not a ‘nation-al’ state or anything else.
UK post-Brexit is likely to find itself ever further in the orbit of the USA economic state. If UK wants a trade deal with USA then it is going to have to subjugate itself to USA geopolitics. USA sees its economic dominance and geopolitical hegemony as threatened by the rise of China and it wants to limit Chinese expansion. But TP also eyes a trade deal with China and it refused motions to limit trade with it. UK had a trade deal with USA within EU and EU now has one with China – so UK is floundering with Brexit – and the MSM propaganda is flowing.
> London’s China policy will be decided in DC
…. The fundamental reason for the change in British government policy toward China is directly connected to Brexit. Despite Brexit being explained to the British people as being about “national independence,” its real content is quite different. Eighty years ago, Britain’s Empire made it a Great Power. Today, its economy is too small to pursue a truly independent path when confronted with two huge economic powers: the EU and the US. It inevitably allies itself with one or the other.
…. Instead of orienting itself toward the EU the British government led by Boris Johnson oriented itself to the US – setting as its most fundamental goal arriving at a free trade agreement with the US. But such an orientation to the US necessarily meant a subordination to US foreign policy; which under Trump was strongly anti-China.
…. In other words, the key to why the British government has gone along the “Australian” path of hostility to China, instead of the EU one of economic cooperation with China, and what will be its future actions, does not lie in London, but in Washington.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202102/1216048.shtml
US is organizing anti-China alliance.
5-eyes alliance is already set.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
France is joining, I guess:
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20210212-france-wades-into-the-south-china-sea-with-a-nuclear-attack-submarine
Germany is trying to be neutral / balancing power, for now:
https://www.dw.com/en/has-angela-merkels-germany-given-china-too-much-leeway/a-56616344?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf
Which is a little strange considering this whole speed-up of EU-China trade agreement by the end of last year (German EU-presidency period)
https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/the-strategic-implications-of-the-china-eu-investment-deal/
All of the strange things that happen.
If there is an anti-China alliance, there will also be a pro-China alliance, I would guess.
Certainly, China makes it’s own coalition.
Count France & Germany in it.
For now, I hope.
It is major mistake IMO.
A major mistake for those economic states or for the USA economic state?
I believe EU flirting with China is kind-of “Munich Agreement” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement) short-term solution. EU is trying to balance the power geopolitically and avoid major confrontation. In the long run it is a mistake IMO.
There is this interesting book:
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31125556-destined-for-war
explaining the mechanisms of confrontation between the hegemonic ruler and the challenger. We live in “pax americana”, but sooner or later both blocks are destined for conflict. It already started in sort-of hybrid, cyber, propaganda war. I hope it stays in that mode for as long as possible, but further escalation is most probable.
EU and US are in the NATO block for 70 years and I hope it stays that way. I believe it is in our best interest.
EU and Russia and India can join and stand for freedom from both China and US
A review:
Freedman makes various objections to the Allison thesis and I will just quote this:
“If lessons are to be drawn from past power struggles, perhaps the most relevant would come from the Cold War is that the avoidance of a hot war in this case had something to do with nuclear weapons. The nuclear issue might also encourage caution between China and the United States. The other instances come from times when issues of war and power were viewed differently than they are today, and their implications are not compelling. To try to find lessons from 15th century Portugal and Spain, or 17th century England and the Dutch Republic is unlikely to be fruitful.”
Sir Lawrence Freedman is Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College in England.
https://cco.ndu.edu/News/Article/1299660/destined-for-war-can-america-and-china-escape-thucydidess-trap/
I agree that nuclear deterrence has / might have positive impact on geopolitical tensions.
I am just reminding that throughout the history the lack of resources induced violence, either as internal revolutions or external wars.
This time will be no different. Pick your poison.
Thank you, a good article. But please do read the original, “The Peloponnesian War” (In the original just Ἱστορίαι, “Histories”). If that seems too long, my next choice is the second essay in Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy’s “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World”.
It describes the “hinge of fate”, the moment when the fortunes of Athens changed from impressive victory to inevitable defeat. Because of a totally unnecessary campaign against Syracuse. And the US is falling into the same trap, with her totally unnecessary campaign against Russia.
It was quite the coincidence, I was chewing over TOTI and I had just looked up Thucydides like 10 minutes before I read PW’s post that alluded to the use of him in the Allison thesis.
Nietzsche picked out Thucydides as a light of realism and a real Greek among the ‘decadent’ later Greeks with their need to supplement their declined instincts with far fetched ‘idealism’ and metaphysics.
He saw the earlier ancients as the ‘real’ Greeks who had no need of such to know who they were or how to organise their societies on a manly, aristocratic basis. The ‘ugly’ Socrates was thus an apt figure of the declined Greeks and ‘not’ a Greek at all.
I would like to find the time to read Thucydides. Perhaps if we can get away from things to the Med for a few weeks this summer. I am already familiar with the works of some of Nietzsche’s classical touch stones, obviously the philosophers, and I would like to fill in the gaps in the wider literature.
> …. My recreation, my predilection, my cure, after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and perhaps Machiavelli’s Principe are most closely related to me owing to the absolute determination which they show of refusing to deceive themselves and of seeing reason in reality — not in “rationality,” and still less in “morality.” There is no more radical cure than Thucydides for the lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the Greeks which the “classically-cultured” stripling bears with him into life, as a reward for his public school training. His writings must be carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so rich in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture “of the Sophists” — that is to say, the culture of realism, receives its most perfect expression: this inestimable movement in the midst of the moral and idealistic knavery of the Socratic Schools which was then breaking out in all directions. Greek philosophy is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides is the great summing up, the final manifestation of that strong, severe positivism which lay in the instincts of the ancient Hellene. After all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality — consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is master of himself — consequently he is able to master life. – What I Owe the Ancients 2, TOTI
For Mirror: Thank you, and I agree. Keep reading: for all their faults, the Greeks did not “deplatform” those who disagreed with the consensus. Perhaps made them drink hemlock, but that incident is famous because it happened only once.
China seems to be happy to trade with anyone and everyone.
Frankly one would have thought that in 2021 all of these trade deals would have been done long ago – and the various countries/ blocs are just trying to sort them out now – what is that all about? I would guess that there has still been a lot of protectionism going on. One tends to think of this as an ‘open’, cooperative period but perhaps not so much?
China perhaps sees its vulnerability. This year, it definitely needs to import food. Some of it is for animals, but it all (directly or indirectly) goes to feed its large population.
China has seen this vulnerability a long way out…that is why they have been snapping up land in Africa….
China’s food security at core of Beijing’s new five-year rural-revitalisation plan
The plan is the latest sign that China’s leadership aims to increase the nation’s reliance on its domestic harvest to feed its people while insulating the country from foreign uncertainties – the central tenet of the government’s dual-circulation economic strategy
. The need for greater self-reliance comes as the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the global food trade in the past year, as geopolitical disputes have worsened, and as droughts
and floods have hit the domestic agricultural supply.
“The uncertainty and instability of the external situation have increased significantly; we must not take the food-security issue lightly for even a moment,” said Tang Renjian, China’s minister of agricultural and rural affairs, at a press conference on Monday. “We must raise the safety factor as high as possible, and produce and store more grains as much as possible.”
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3122680/chinas-food-security-core-beijings-new-five-year-rural
So…in the end, these nations oppose each other while they collapse internally. It’d be a good joke if it were funny.
The endemic collective delusion human beings are trapped in is the worst virus. Worldly winds are blowing strong.
G7 appears to have told Biden no. Likely EU countries want ‘a foot in both camps’ – to trade with China but still be ‘pally’ with USA. It will be interesting to see what happens.
> Biden fails to pit allies against China in debut at G7, Munich events
…. However, Biden’s calls did not gain much traction among US allies in Europe. That was clear in a joint statement following the G7 meeting, which focused on tackling the real challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and economic recovery and noticeably only mentioned China once – in favorable terms.
“With the aim of supporting a fair and mutually beneficial global economic system for all people, we will engage with others, especially G20 countries including large economies such as China,” the statement reads.
The leaders did say that they would consult with each other on collective approaches to address non-market oriented policies and practices, which some foreign media outlets claimed to be a reference to China.
While the statement did not directly reveal a pushback from allies against Biden’s attempt to pit Europe against China, speeches by European leaders were notably straightforward in their disinterest in a confrontation.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a common approach toward dealing with China but she also noted the interests between trans-Atlantic nations don’t always line up.
French President Emmanuel defended European “strategic autonomy” and noted the postwar American-dominated world order needs to yield to new realities.
Chinese analysts said that Biden’s message was clear and predictable and that the US wanted to mobilize Europe to contain China’s development as it now lacks political resources and is mired in a flurry of domestic crises. Also clear was Europe’s intention to cooperate with China given the massive mutual interests….
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202102/1215998.shtml
There is no sign of a China-India trade deal, likely because of their border dispute. Maybe it is time for both sides to play the adults and to divide the disputed territories between them, maybe 50/50 – it seems to be a lot mountains, I mean, who even really cares?
> India favours bilateral free trade agreements over China-led RCEP
One of the three officials with direct knowledge of the matter said: “It is widely known that RCEP is not lucrative enough without India. But India cannot engage with any trade bloc led by China, which is globally notorious as an aggressor. Besides, it is a direct threat to India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea signed the world’s biggest free trade deal at a virtual ceremony hosted by Vietnam on Sunday.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-favours-bilateral-free-trade-agreements-over-china-led-rcep/story-fpBmI5hxfIxZLubDLqsznL.html
And Australia and China are just getting along swimmingly at the moment right??
‘Swimmingly’ – an ironic term for Australia, situated as it is.
AUS is economically dependent on China as its main trading partner (40% of AUS exports). Hostilities based on China’s ideology and internal affairs are not suited to AUS’ interests, so it has choices to make. China is no one’s coconut shy.
The “border dispute” is an ongoing stupidity. The border was settled over a century ago by he “McMahon Line” (1915). Nobody actually drew a line, or even surveyed the terrain properly; the agreement was that the border would be the watershed, the line that separates the two geographical drainage regions.
It was that prize fool Krishna Menon, (1896 to 1974) who broke the agreement, largely for his own self aggrandisement, by ordering Indian troops across the line into China proper. (Of course, the Indians turned around to try to put the blame on China, as is their established habit when they do something stupid). China responded by a small, and strictly limited, punitive response. But the damage was done.
TP, like EU, wants to press ahead with trade ties with China despite the protests of the USA and ‘humanitarian’ factions within parliament.
Countries and blocs have their own economic interests these days, which transcend any subjugation to waning USA hegemony. Arguably that makes war less likely as multipolarity avoids polarisation into binary hostile camps.
UK may not be hindered as an independent agent by anti-China rhetoric of the Trump era – but it remains to be seen. USA may try to use its own UK trade deal as leverage to subjugate the UK.
> Boris Johnson declares he is ‘fervently Sinophile’ as UK woos China
PM seeks to strengthen UK trade ties with Beijing at No 10 roundtable despite Uighur abuses
The UK is seeking to strengthen its economic and trade links with China after Boris Johnson stated he was “fervently Sinophile” and determined to improve ties “whatever the occasional political difficulties”.
The prime minister’s remarks at a Downing Street roundtable with Chinese businesses are likely to infuriate backbenchers in his Conservative party who want the government to take a tougher approach to Beijing’s human rights abuses.
Johnson also signalled that he wanted a resumption of formal trade discussions between the two countries by reactivating two forums – the Economic and Financial Dialogue, an annual discussion between the two countries, and the China-UK Joint Trade and Economic Commission (Jetco). Both had been suspended in response to China’s repression of civil rights in the former UK colony of Hong Kong.
The Downing Street roundtable took place on 12 February to mark lunar new year and was attended by some of the businesses most active in China such as the Swire Group and Tenacity, a Hong Kong-based real estate and investment group.
Johnson’s enthusiasm for rebuilding trading links with China comes as human rights campaigners demand a new approach and after the US criticised the EU for pressing ahead in December with an investment deal with China.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/21/boris-johnsons-warm-words-on-china-likely-to-infuriate-backbenchers
I also count myself a fervent sinophile: Lao Tzu, Master Kung, Li Bai, Cheng Ho, … For which reason, I loath and despise the Chinese Communist Party and all its works.
Woman kept in managed isolation after refusing Covid-19 test
Lucinda Baulch has been at the Grand Mercure in Wellington for 25 days while she waits for scientific evidence of the PCR tests safety and effectiveness.
The woman, who is a qualified vet nurse, said she had requested additional information from the facility – but had so far not been provided with any.
Once presented with that information she would get a Covid-swab – but until then she could not give informed consent, she said.
“As someone with a medical background and knowing the importance of informed consent, for my own peace of mind I really need that informed consent, I’m entitled to it, it’s a right, it’s an obligation of the party offering a consent form. For me, that’s quite an important step.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/436804/woman-kept-in-managed-isolation-after-refusing-covid-19-test
She makes a good point regarding why test, if she has been in isolation for 25 days, and the people she was with also tested negative.
With the new mutations of the virus going around, I wonder how accurate the PCR test can be today?
White House working with Facebook and Twitter to tackle anti-vaxxers
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/white-house-working-with-facebook-and-twitter-to-tackle-anti-vaxxers-2
How about some real information on the incidence of bad effects of various kinds, following vaccines given months ago in trials as well as now?
I assume, readers of OFW have some background about collapse processes.
We read a lot about the Roman Empire.
I want to shed a light on the issue of “civilizational collapse due to, or enforced by collective mass psychosis” and what the learnings thereof could be?
MM, this is an excellent topic.
Self-organizing systems behave strangely. I think collective mass psychosis can easily be part of collapse.
Leaders of some type (political leaders or oligarchs or both) decree a new way to salvation, and a large number of people believe them. Their story is based on a lot of half-truths, developed by scientists who only understand a small part of what they are trying to model. Everybody believes what they are doing is “based on science.”
The work that these researchers are doing is based on the false belief that economies can grow endlessly; there are no limits to growth even though the world is finite. In other words, the Earth and its biosphere cannot protect itself climate change and many other harmful effects. Our bodies cannot protect themselves from germs. We must use new techniques which the oligarchs approve of (because they will benefit monetarily from them) to protect our bodies and the Earth as a whole.
The cover-up story is in a way beneficial, because it keeps people from facing the awful truth. Also, we cannot be 100% certain of the outcome. A story that seems to have a somewhat happy ending seems to be preferable to one that does not, even if it is just a story. Life on earth has gone on for nearly all of the planet’s 4 billion years. Most likely it will continue to do so, even if humans do things that seem really strange.
I probably will write about this in a post.
Yes we need some treatment lol
A (ex esatern) german psychologist (Mr. Maaz) says something like this:
Unconcisously most people know that they live some sort of “wrong life”.
Usually this sort of permanent anxiety is “managed” by our psyche by means of pushing it all under the rug.
When a stressful event (that lasts a long time!) appears, the energy needed to keep the firewalls up, gets some craking of the walls.
You now have to options:
a) dive into your own life and figure out what is wrong and change it (uhm, yeah)
b) Accept a virus and the accompaning rules as THE ONLY reason for your woes and for your salvation as well.
b) of course after a while will bring some more psychic troubles until your mind can no longer cope with reality, psychosis.
That’s at least what I figured out so far.
I’d love to see Gail’s article about this topic.
Even from propaganda and self deception I have the feeling that “we the people” must look much much deeper into our own psychological limitations, accept them and refuse others playing with them.
Freud knew that when he wrote “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur”
I recall that successive Roman Emperors tried to keep the empire going by debasing the coinage. And that it worked, sort of, for a while, but eroded the public’s trust in the money system.
I also half recall that once the empire reached its maximum extent, keeping out the barbarians was a full time task. There was no much point in trying to conquer the lands north and east of the Danube and Rhine as there was no profit to be gained commensurate with the investment. And also, it was too cold and bleak for civilized life. Imagine walking around in a toga during a German winter!
But without carrying forward the process of civilizing the barbarians, the only alternative was to build that wall and watch that border for the inevitable waves of barbarians seeking to get into the empire to rape a pillage it. At times these waves were tsunami hgh and the borders didn’t hold.
There’s also a theory that at times of famine, caused by years, decades or even centuries of bad weather, people are forced to eat poor quality or rotten food, which is often contaminated by mold. This stuff can cause hallucinations, sending already overstressed and underfed people insane. That could go some way towards explaining the “collective mass psychosis” that often grips collapsing societies.
Robert is the acknowledged expert on this field of history—second only to Gibbon, who isn’t available—so I hope Robert will give us some thoughts on civilization’s decline and fall.
MM, many historians, including Edward Gibbon, have speculated that the Fall of the Roman Empire was caused by mass psychosis, namely Christianity. And certainly a movement that destroyed the Alexandria Library, and closed all the Empire’s hospitals (which were managed by the temples and offered treatment free to all comers), and abolished the Cult of Mithras that had sustained the cohesion and courage of the Legions, sounds pretty psychotic.
Was this an accident, or was the “Jesus myth” deliberately constructed by the Therapeutae of Alexandria for precisely that purpose? I fear we shall never know. But our current mass psychosis, fostered by people whose aim is clearly the destruction of Western Civilisation, is happening all around us, and we have still haven’t realised it.
I would like to turn this one more round:
“We” all “know” the five stages of grief (cough)
I think, a lot of people are simply stuck in the first phase (denial):
“Uh, my idea about my furture will not emerge”
including
“I now have a long time being locked in and think about my future”
(This may have some good outcomes that I still have hope for…)
We will have a long way to go from here………..
….and not many people have even arrived at “seeing the territory” as Dr Tim Morgan calls it
MM. I got over denial and bargaining, because they don’t work. Depression still hovers around the edges, but I’m trying for acceptance. Sustained by two things: first, we are all in the Hand of the Goddess, there is a higher purpose to this created universe; and secondly, whatever happens to me, the remaining 13 members of my tribe will cherish my memory.
Robert, I surely appreciate your continuation and contributions, for what my thoughts, words and crappy English is worth.
🥰
Thank you, Kowalainen, I also appreciate the many kind words that have come my way since discovering OFW. This group may be virtual, and we may not meet each other in the agora, but I believe we are a true “polis”.
I think I have recommended Rob M’s site before. He sometimes comments here. He has blogged quite a bit about MORT (Mind Over Reality Theory), which argues that denial is inextricable from the human species’ ability to progress and thrive. Basically, we maintain the aspects of intelligence that allow us to be productive, while “irrationally” negating inconvenient truths that would cause us to desist or despair.
While denial of death may appear to be a suspiciously complicated behavior to evolve quickly, it can, for example, be implemented by a modest tweak to the fear suppression module that mammals use when forced to fight. A side effect of this solution is that not only is death denied, but anything unpleasant is denied, thus the adaptation manifests as denial of reality (aka optimism bias).
On its own, denial of reality is maladaptive because it causes behaviors not optimal for survival. However the two maladaptive behaviors, an extended theory of mind and denial of reality, when combined, become highly adaptive by enabling the evolution of a more powerful brain, which is clearly useful for an intelligent social species.
https://un-denial.com/denial-2/theory-short/
People in whom the denial mechanism is weakened could be regarded as defective.
I feel the same, Lidia. MORT theory seems to be quite coheren, and the Varki / Bower book (apart some dumb uses of exemplification) seems to me quite convincing, grounded as it is on the solid pioneering investigations of Becker et alia.
So speaking from the modest pulpit of curious layman (aka Google Search Expert) and avid reader, I highly recommend this line of research! 👍
Robert, thanks I did not know this about Rome.
ad. 3. this is really strange. There is this fragment in dr. Quay’s analysis:
For two prior human coronavirus epidemics, an intermediate or proximate host was identified. For SARS-CoV-1 in 2003-4 it was the civet cat while for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012-4 it was the camel. In both of these human epidemics, the intermediate host was identified within four to ten months of the first clinically identified human infection. With CoV-2 we are at 12 months since the pandemic began and still waiting for evidence of, despite a much larger effort inside China to find an intermediate host. For both of these previous pandemics, a bat species reservoir host was also identified, but not in the case of SARS-CoV-2.
I assume thousands of species were analysed to find an intermediate species and none gave positive result.
There is the whole list of arguments in both documents, most of them quite convincing.
The WHO team – after initial delay with visas (?) – conducted the investigation. Dashak – main sponsor and promotor of ‘gain-of-function’ research – said that the lab-origin theory is highly unlikely and the team will not recommend making further research in this area.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55996728
Then WHO president says that all options are on the table and the lab-origin theory will also be analysed. We are waiting for the report.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00375-7
So my questions are:
– will the lab-origin theory be developed further in official channels/institutions?
– is WHO able to conduct objective investigation of this topic?
– in case of more arguments/analyses confirming lab-origin theory will the West use this against China in geopolitical context one day?
WordPress is making unexpected tricks. I replied to Gail’s previous comment and my post is suddenly on the next page without any reference/link. Really strange.
It is very easy to reply in the wrong “box.” I have done it myself. If you do that, your reply will be misplaced.
“Bubble Warnings Go Unheeded as Everyone Is a Buyer in Stocks: The American love affair with stocks is deepening as everyone from frenetic day-traders to staid institutions dive further into the market…
“Up 75% from March, the S&P 500’s gain dwarfs all previous bull markets at this stage of the cycle since the 1930s.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-20/bubble-warnings-go-unheeded-as-everyone-is-a-buyer-in-stocks
Signs that inflation is making a comeback are unsettling big investors:
“Past periods of high inflation have weighed heavily on real returns from stocks and bonds, which have flourished over the past decade when inflationary pressures have generally remained muted.
“But inflation forecasts are now rising following massive increases in government spending and the torrent of liquidity unleashed by central banks in response to the coronavirus pandemic…
“…recent increases in energy and food prices have driven up inflation expectations among consumers. The University of Michigan published a widely watched survey which indicates that consumers expect US inflation to reach 3.3 per cent over the next 12 months, the highest reading since 2014.”
https://www.ft.com/content/afc414f9-c6a1-4f37-afab-276d98973a09
It isn’t just stock prices that are in a bubble; property prices are as well. Debt is also valued as if it will pay back, and it won’t really. It is an everything bubble we are in.
I just watched George Gammon on how bitcoins could go to zero…scary.
Companies are making more buying bitcoins than products. Tesla operates at a loss🤔. Soon all companies will be forced to buy bitcoins! Pump and dump??
Tesla is finally turning a profit–not by selling its cars, but by selling carbon credits to other car companies that still sell mostly ICE cars.
Short term energy prices will go up with inflation….I know you have been saying energy cannot go up but what if it goes up to 120 a barrel but 120 will barley buy you a bag of coffee? Are you taking into terms hyper inflation along with a falling dollar? You base your arguments that everything is transparent but going forward I am starting to see that nothing or very little is transparent….so how can your charts data etc….be considered to be even moderately accurate?
The issue is that energy prices have to go up enough higher than other prices that they can afford to buy more equipment, hire more workers, and pay more taxes. So we are really talking about the inflation adjusted cost of energy products rising significantly.
If the all currencies are worth virtually nothing because of hyperinflation, that still will not get you more energy production. You need the system to be working well enough so that oil and other energy producers can buy the goods and services they need, using the higher prices they are collecting.
Gail, I think that, once again, you have the right of it. Valuations in fiat money are worthless; measure cost in terms of troy ounces of gold, and so factor inflation out of the calculation.
“Piracy surges in Gulf of Guinea as falling oil prices rock lawless Niger Delta:
“Vessels passing through the Gulf of Guinea, a vast stretch of water from Senegal to Angola, are suffering increasingly violent attacks by gangs who operate with near “impunity” in its poorly-policed waters.
“Where once the gangs concentrated mainly on simply robbing ships close to shore, some are now ranging out hundreds of miles to sea and taking entire crews hostage for weeks at a time, forcing shipping firms to pay up hefty ransoms.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/21/piracy-surges-gulf-guinea-falling-oil-prices-rock-lawless-niger/
“Two men have been shot dead in Libreville during curfew violations and protests against coronavirus restrictions, police in Gabon [another oil producer] said on Friday.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/19/two-men-killed-during-covid-protests-in-gabon
“Mass street protests are back in Algeria and the government is nervous.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56128140
So… the beasts are getting restless…
We’ve all seen where things head when they get seriously pissed off
https://media.voltron.voanews.com/Drupal/01live-166/styles/sourced/s3/2019-06/afp_hong_kong_march_12June19.jpg
Now imagine what would happen if there was an uncontrolled collapse… hundreds of millions of people would take to the streets in protest … and they’d become enraged when their govts were unable to do anything about the situation…
At some point the police and military say to hell with this … everything is unravelling .. we are not going to waste our time trying to control the protesters… we are going to use our weapons to make sure WE loot the shops and get whatever food remains…
The violence would then get completely out of control as the vicious beasts realize there is no one left to enforce the law….
The worst elements would be raping and murdering and robbing …. it would be the mother of all horror shows…
They’d quickly turn to killing and eating the weaker… then the stronger… many would venture into remoter areas looking for well stocked doomies… they would swarm over the land like locusts…
Then the radiation would arrive… and peace will return to the Earth.
You see… the vaccines are not evil… they are not particularly sinister…. nor are our leaders… they are aware of the above scenario…. and they have agreed to administer the Trojan Horse to their people…. to pre-empt this insanity.
It is the right decision. It is a good decision. It’s just a bit difficult to accept it even though I completely understand where they are coming from.
FE, I think Portland Oregon has discovered what happens when the “vicious beasts” are let out of control. Though Toynbee rather more politely called them the “internal proletariat”. The second lesson, that the last defence against anarchy is a “well regulated militia”, is one that they have yet to rediscover.
Yes – now we need to imagine that but with no police….
Poor people everywhere are protesting!
We’ve seen the heavy hand of the police at other Covid protests … there is ZERO tolerance.
Anyone who pushes too hard gets fined heavily and sometimes arrested.
As the totalitarians attempt to ram the bit into the mouths of the non-compliant… and some people decide to upscale their response and use extreme violence to push back (e.g. guns), I have no doubt whatsoever that they will meet the same fate as those African fellas…
Highly trained forces be despatched to deal with the naughty boys … and they’ll be supported by the neighbours of those who refuse to ‘do what they are told’…
This is the 911 CovIDIOT Hotline how can we help you?
I’d like to report a CovIDIOT… I saw him hiding with an assault rifle in the bushes out back of our house….
Thank you for reporting this … we’ll have 3 gunship helicopters and 500 troops in the are shortly… please lock your doors and stay inside. Stay Safe!
From the Canada Leak:
The other reason I am doing this is because roughly 30% of the committee members are not pleased with the direction this will take Canada, but our opinions have been ignored and they plan on moving forward toward their goals.
They have also made it very clear that nothing will stop the planned outcomes.
We were told it was in the individuals best interest to participate. When several committee members pushed relentlessly to get an answer we were told that those who refused would first live under the lock down restrictions indefinitely.
Ouch…. it’s really getting wild…
Hurry up Elders… get those children jabbed by April so the total cull can get underway…
I wonder if third worlders will not get the Trojan Horse…. maybe the Elders only care about helping out the winners… everyone else gets to join in the Final Dog Fight … then die of radiation poisoning… the Meek never Win…
OECD countries represent 18% of world pop. and 38% of their energy consumption, so it makes sense for culling to start here.
In a way, Africa, non-OECD America and other third worlders don’t really count as energy consommers. So why spend “vaccines” on them? Let mother nature solve the problem for them (IOW, let them eat each other.)
We had a video here:
Usually the bad outcomes of vaccinations show up after 4-14 months.
That makes something like a “natural end date”
….in terms of “collapse is alwasy two years away”…
If there are doctors that will write out scripts for narcotics for $ theres got to be ones that will use those fake spring needles on you for a handful of benjamins and certify you kosher in the database. Its just a matter of locating one and negotiating the delicate affair. Things so much easier in countries where accepting tips for special services are understood among grownups.
This is interesting:
EPA QUIETLY APPROVES CHEMICAL ‘AIR TREATMENT’ TO FIGHT COVID-19 & US VACCINE PASSPORTS ARE HERE
https://www.bitchute.com/video/7yTioxsqw7X5/
Long video (2hr.), but pretty worthwhile.. talks mainly about a new idea to continually disperse Triethylene glycol in “nanoparticle” smoke in public areas so that you’ll be constantly inhaling it (!) Supposedly this will “kill” the SARS CoV2 virus (viruses aren’t alive).
Article with more details:
https://www.naturalblaze.com/2021/02/epa-approves-chemical-air-treatment-against-covid-despite-known-health-hazards.html
The video’s creator actually calls the company and records an underling offering conflicting safety claims.
Gail, this may be coming soon to GA! Maybe you can find out where they plan to install these systems.
Enjoy the wonders of your new Smart City, citizens!
Smile, breathe in deeply and be proud of having arrived at the pinnacle of human evolution!
All Together! All medicated! All safe!
Madness. Didn’t the Chinese do lots of spraying about of something in Wuhan?
It’s looking more and more as though an early slot at the euthanasia centre would be a welcome escape ….
My favorite music venue tells me they spray hydrogen peroxide in their air system and it makes the state happy. I am not happy.
Wonderful! Air pollution to try to “kill” the virus.
It is amazing what is being done in the name of “science.”
I recall a comment posted here, I do not recall who posted it, suggesting that there was a risk of the vaccines currently doing the rounds causing the body’s cells to produce new virii. Does anybody here have any follow-up to that?
UK Government Shocking Report: Experimental mRNA Injections Caused 1716 Cases of Eye Disorders and Left 22 People Blind
https://humansarefree.com/2021/02/uk-government-report-experimental-mrna-injections-caused-1716-cases-of-eye-disorders-and-left-22-people-blind.html
This report does provide a disturbing picture. It seems like there are an awfully lot of serious injuries.
I would like the report more if it showed numbers that added up to the totals shown. Showing what seem to be totals that are far more than the sum of what seem to be the pieces is confusing.
A giant flaw in Texas blackouts: It cut power to gas supplies
3 min read . Updated: 20 Feb 2021, 07:18 PM IST
Bloomberg
Producers who depend on electricity to power their operations were left with no way to pump natural gas. And that gas was needed more than ever to generate electricity
The situation got much worse in the early hours of Monday as demand continued to climb
When the Texas power grid was on the brink of collapse and its operator plunged thousands into darkness, it didn’t make an exception for the oil and gas field.
Power was, unsurprisingly, diverted to hospitals and nursing homes. Ercot, as the grid manager is known, was staving off utter catastrophe, its chief executive later said.
MORE FROM THIS SECTION
People don’t realize how interconnected the many parts of the system are.
Maybe they should just have their pumps running on electricity from generators that run their own gas. Surely that would be cheaper.
Cheaper, but not fashionably “green.”
Sweden… freezing to death…despite 800 degrees…
https://youtu.be/ssqmu-MYwBQ
Video not available in US.
Swedish 18th century singer/songwriter Carl Michael Bellman. Found this english version of the linked song:
It got up to 21ºC in my corner of Kyoto and I was sunbathing on the kitchen roof listening to Johnny Cash. But we’ve had plenty of frost and snow over the past couple of months and used a lot of firewood. Tomorrow’s forecast is a repeat of today’s, followed by colder weather later and rain or snow in the week.
In the US, 12 states have had their coldest temperatures since reliable meteorological records began over a century ago. Also, a full 30% of all U.S. reporting stations set record daily cold highs and 20% set record daily cold lows from Feb. 14-16, according to NOAA.
ICE AGE NOW reports that:
From Feb. 7th to the 16th, 6,601 daily cold records (for a particular day) were tied or set.
There were 944 daily-record-cold highs on Feb. 14, alone. (Happy Valentines day everyone.)
Another 567 daily-record-cold lows were set on the following day, Feb. 15.
As impressive as those numbers are, dozens of locations set records, not just for a particular day, but for any day in their history.
Eighty – count em, 80! – all-time coldest daily high temperature records were tied or set from Feb. 14-16. That means it was colder than any day in December. Or January. Or for February. Or any other month. It was the coldest for any day in their history.
Those were the coldest high temperature record-breakers. On top of that came the 50 all-time coldest low temperature records, in 11 different states, from Feb. 11th to 16th, according to NOAA.
https://www.iceagenow.info/6601-us-cold-records-from-feb-7-to-feb16/#more-34820
This unusually cold cold snap is in line with what astrophysicist Valentina Zharkova has been warning us about for some years now, and it isn’t in line with globall worming theory.
Very true, Tim, can you Google record highs to record lows in a longer time frame and post it for us all, thank you!
Yes but this is to be expected with GW… oh sorry … KC…. (notice how the terminology was changed … the word wa rming… had to be eliminated … to restrictive)….
The broader term of KC can be manipulated to explain everything (so long as MORE ons are involved)…
If it gets wa rmer… its KC…
If it gets colder (see Texas)…. trot out some flunky scientist to explain that this is another effect of KC and the wa rming of the Arctic — (pay someone enough and they’ll also come up with ‘proof’ that a circle is actually a square)
And the MORE ons clap gleefully and scream and stomp their feet (in unison) to drown out anyone (including dissenting scientists) who dare to challenge their beliefs.
Notice how Fast Eddy has to take regular sabbaticals from the MOREons…
Fast Eddy once had a job ‘teaching’ MORE ons in a small town… he shared the workload with another teacher who explained to Fast ‘we only teach two classes per day … while other teachers of Normies teach 3 — otherwise if you spend too much time with the MORE Ons… you will start to mind meld with them… and you too will become a MORE on’
One of the classes had only 3 students — they were extreme MORE ons… mostly harmless… although one with a gimpy arm thought he was a tough guy so we had a WWF cage match one day and allowed him to wrestle a much smaller MORE on… and the smaller MORE on won…. it was very amusing to remind the Gimp of that ….
The other class involved mostly street MORE Ons… one had done time in the juvi for murder…. these were basically good MORE Ons… however the previous teach (who Fast replaced) was a bit too hardline and they threatened to smash her with a two by four and kill her baby (she was pregnant)…. Fast developed a very good relationship with these 6 MORE Ons…
This was excellent training for OFW… I think of it as MORE ON Management 101…. but as Mr G (the yoda of MORE ON management) says…. one must limit one’s exposure to MORE Ons…to maintain one’s sanity.
One other strategy is to only read the comments from the sane people on OFW (Tim, Xabier, Gail, JMS, Jarle, Ed etc…) and mass delete the rest.
Thank you….I goggled it myself
https://www.axios.com/climate-change-warm-cold-temperature-records-ratio-02f86e11-5d83-47d4-944b-5856745c1d2b.html
If you googled it that was your first mistake.
Yep – if you google anything similar to Texas Blackout Renewable Energy .. you get 10 bilion trillion results stating that blaming this on renewable energy is fake news…
You will have a hell of a time finding this:
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-wind-turbines-frozen-power-why-arctic-1570173
(just one would struggle to find Planet of the Humans… and for the same reason — any critique of renewables is NOT ALLOWED!!!)
I think that it is the pricing system that enables renewables which is wrecking they system, not the renewables themselves. The cost of the complexity that they add to the system is, in effect, being shifted over to the other electricity providers. When complexity is considered, the net value of adding intermittent electricity to the grid (above a small percentage) is almost certainly negative.
@Fast Eddy, great strategy for never learning anything new – just keep reading only the people that already agree with you.
I read what you write, and you write well. I realize that you are a very intelligent person.
And yet you are so wrong – you consider yourself special, outside of the rest of the people and not a “more-on” (the way you spell it).
Sorry to burst your bubble but you are human and you make mistakes. By demeaning the people you disagree with and not reading what they say you just make sure you will keep making the same mistakes and never learn.
Oh and one more thing. You mentioned earlier about how climate changed in the past and quite fast so you drew the conclusion that people have no influence on the climate.
I don’t know what fallacy that is that but let me rephrase it, maybe you will get it:
You see an angry bear and you know it mauled other people that came close so your conclusion is that whatever you do, the bear won’t attack you.
Same logic, but hopefully emotionally easier to accept.
The issue is that there is nothing we can do about the climate changing, except wring our hands.
In a sense, “people” caused the CO2 that some believe is changing the climate. It is really the economy that humans require to live that has caused CO2 to rise. There is essentially nothing we humans can do about this (except possibly stop eating, stop drinking water, stop heating our homes, stop wearing clothes, and stop building buildings). The self-organizing system seems to be in the process of kicking a lot us off of the planet. Intermittent renewables seem to be close to worthless for operating the economy.
We are not in charge of climate changing; the self-organizing economic system is.
I absolutely agree. Where did I say otherwise? But most people cannot let go of the illusion of control and free will. I appreciate FastEddy’s posts so I thought to share my disagreement.
But the green groupies do believe there is something we can do — if only we could more quickly transition to solar and wind power and EVs…. we could save the world.
Cuz CNN told them that… and because they are MORE Ons… they believe it…
There is no need to do anything … just keep burning coal and oil…. most of the heat will just dissipate into space — because contrary to popular belief… the earth is not wrapped in a duvet….
Just as an oven gives off more heat to the surrounding kitchen as its internal temperature rises, Earth sheds more heat into space as its surface warms up. Since the 1950s, scientists have observed a surprisingly straightforward, linear relationship between Earth’s surface temperature and its outgoing heat. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180924153430.htm
If the earth was wrapped in a thick duvet… then the accumulated heat we’ve produced by burning fossil fuels over the past 150 years would have a cumulative effect and we’d long ago be boiled alive (which is what Al Gore said would happen but has not and will not).
Obviously the earth self regulates…
But what it cannot easily control is the sun…because the sun pumps out a fair bit more heat than all the coal plants and ICE vehicles combined….
So as the earth wobbles slightly over long cycles… the sun gets closer and further away … when the sun gets closer the Earth gets warmer… when it is further the Earth gets colder… (ice age!!!)
Ya’ll learned something today. Now say Thank You Master Fast… very good you little MORE ons… now you can go for recess.
Well I’m at least proposing (under moderation) that we stop building and use ff’s in a command and dictatorial fashion.
“The issue is that there is nothing we can do about the climate changing, except wring our hands.”
Exactly! We can’t find more cheap oil or clear all the debt either but many want to look capable so they close shops, put ordinary people in house arrest and get elected again.
I don’t have a feeling re wearing clothes. The ability to sew them and patch them well might be the new big thing. Pretty much the same thing for buildings. Many things are evolving slowly, while the vaccinations are being pushed at warp speed (AND THAT IS THE MAIN ISSUE).
i STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT WHATEVER WORTHWHILE FUTURE WE MIGHT ENTERTAIN WILL REQUIRE US TO SPEND MOST OF OUR LIVES INDOORS. For that to be somewhat tolerable might require some telecommunication, but mostly it might require bringing the outdoors indoors.
For reasons I’m not entirely clear about, powerful forces don’t want us walking and moving around in the world, and will issue draconian penalties if we do. While it seems questionable that there will be any way around it, I’d at least recommend that we imprison ourselves rather than wait for “them” to imprison us. We might get lucky.
We’ll need organization, community, unity, power…
Let me provide more detail on my strategies:
I currently have 500+ posts in my inbox … some from here some from Dr Kendricks site… with the OFW posts I will usually search for the names of people who post what is worth reading…. then I will search for the people who post mass drivel and delete all of those… they pretty much never post anything of value so the odds of missing anything are slim and none.
Then I will go through what remains … I further delete without reading posts from others that are worthless… that leaves me with posts of some people who I forgot to search for but often post useful comments…. I also will open posts from new names because there is a possibility that they might have posted something useful…
I have no time nor interest to read posts from nor debate imbeciles… if you want to engage me then I will provide you a bank account number and I’ll bill you per second… like a lawyer…
As for being wrong … I initially had the Covid story wrong.. primarily because a friend of mine in Bali has a client who is a doctor who is a WHO consultant … and he told my friend that he should get the f&^% out of dodge because this new virus was like nothing they had ever seen before …
My friend attempted to get his family on a plane to fly to NZ to hunker down with us… he encountered a visa issue and was turned back … then the same guy informs him a little later that this was not as bad as they thought so he didnt not rebook…
Combine that with the WMD level propaganda and that made me a little suspicious… when I saw trucks spraying entire roads with disinfectant that was kinda the straw… a bit OTT I thought…
So ya — I am wrong sometimes… but unlike a MORE on… if the facts change… I change my mind.
The KC story is absolutely 100% garbage. Just as the renewable energy story is 100% garbage.
I have done very thorough research on both topics… I have looked at both sides …. based on the facts… I am right.
Oh I think I forgot to mention my 700IQ in that last post… that’s because I am very forgetful because I am thinking PHD quality thoughts and the small stuff gets overlooked.
Yup, the fallacy of the choice. Suppose you are given two theories, A and B, then proceed to research them both finding out that theory A is truer. Naturally the zealot would go bonkers on theory B’s ass.
While the sentients simply makes the default assumption of both theories being wrong at least in one aspect. Then of course proceeds to disseminate them into a truth of the mess that is objective reality.
It is safe to assume that releasing copious amounts of toxins and gasses isn’t a good thing for the biosphere. But, hey, I guess rapacious primates need something to cling to. The hopium is strong in most people. Hence wind turbines and solar panels as savior “tech” because of vested interests in the “future”
Kowalainen said:
“Yup, the fallacy of the choice.”
This is something that I see most people struggle with (even here) and I don’t know why.
It’s perfectly possible that we are messing up the Earth system (using the energy from fossil fuels mostly, it’s not our vaunted intelligence).
At the same time, it’s absolutely true that people are trying to use this crisis just like they used all others: to enrich themselves, to get power and to control.
So I can agree with Fast Eddy about almost anything but when he comes up with a first grade mistake (like see above about the Earth not being covered in a duvet) I have to suspect that emotionally he is still not ready to let go of the illusion of control.
Just because we can destroy something it does not mean we can fix it.
Alternately, just because we have no control over our own psyches does not mean we cannot do a lot of damage, on par with the Siberian Traps.
I remember one of JMG’s best posts (The next billion years) where the people on the other side of the coming dark age debate climate change.
The scientists insist that the changes they see are all natural and part of a cycle and that humans are not powerful enough to change the climate.
At the same time the religious use their holy books to claim that humans caused the spike in warming that melted the ice and cause gods to destroy the civilization.
Who is right?
Nomadic,
Right, nobody knows. Mankind simply does not have the rather advanced (simulation) tools needed for making accurate predictions on how the biosphere will respond to human activity, while all else being equal.
The cheap fossil fuels are running out at an alarming rate anyway. What that entails is rather obvious. Shit is going to get worse and those with a vested interest in the future (kids, pensions, savings) for sure is going to face the brunt of the blows.
Not that I am any saint, rather a hypocrite in the matter. I just spent $2k on a robotic vacuum cleaner and air filtration because lazy and allergic. Plus I just love that kind of stuff, being a “fancy” engineer, all while people in the third world can’t even feed themselves. Do I feel bad about it, yes, a little.
However, to my defense I’d like to point out that I’m not responsible for the overpopulation (having no children of my own) and lack the mental illness of competing with others in vanity while being close to zero productive, blowing finite resources on MOAR prestige, career, power, children, Potemkin facades, cars, stupid 2-week vacations in some silly resort, etc.. If it wasn’t for my rather poor and miserable brothers and sisters of the third world, I’d absolve myself if my sins.
😇👍
I guess my idea of IC is to be relieved of drudgery and illness. But I guess it got repurposed to a competition in growth, hierarchy and vanity.
Anyway, the sinner digresses.
🤔
Thanks.
Tim, road to 2030-40?
-OFW/Surplus energy issues
-Zharkova = Maunder minimum
-inverted demographic pyramid = japanification everywhere
-dumbed down pop w.out real skillz set
-debts in multiples of gdp
..
.
Eh, seems like a bad spot in history..
“This unusually cold cold snap is in line with what astrophysicist Valentina Zharkova has been warning us about for some years now, and it isn’t in line with globall worming theory.”
Record cold for Feb in E Europe and, simultaneously, record heat for Feb in places like Uzbekistan and Mongolia, as we are seeing, is *exactly* what we would expect to see in a world of jet streams increasingly destabilised by a rapidly worming Arctic.
Enjoy!
KKlimate, Culture, and Catastrophe in the Ancient World
This page presents a summary narrative of and links to geological and paleokklimatalogical data bearing on the remarkable events of 3000 BCE (calendar years BC), when urban/technological society began.
Most of our data comes from referenced scientific literature, although some of the studies, such as of the Mesopotamian delta,and certain sea level interpretations, are the author’s. You will also find a handy chronological index HERE. A summary graph of events around 3200 BC will be found here.
https://web.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnellyr/summary.html
I’ve done a lot of reading on this topic and as mentioned previously… often these changes were rapid (literally within a few decades)….
I bet you any day now archaeologists will unearth an ancient coal power plant and the remnants of some ICE vehicles.
Try asking someone who is deep in a delusional state the following:
So almost no children have died or gotten very sick from Covid… yet governments want to infuse all children with an experimental vaccine that could have serious long term side effects…..including death.
What do you think about that?
I think everyone should be vaccinated regardless of age.
Do you see the parallels between these two situations?
Russia…cold like hell.
https://youtu.be/Zki6xPc7hK0
Finland…the peasants in Finland are freezing too
https://youtu.be/21d0935Wp7U
In France temperatures are very mild for a February. 8 Celsius degrees above average. Sort of a winter heatwave.
“Texans are living through the collapse of a 40-year experiment in free-market fundamentalism…Fortunately, there’s a way out—and that’s precisely what Republican politicians in the state most fear”
Would not of been an issue without this——
California seems to have achieved a very similar result with liberal Democrats in power.
Cutting corners is popular everywhere.
In NYS regulators revolving door into high paying job in the electric industry. To start to resolve the ineffective nature of regulation we need to make it illegal to work for the industry you regulate, no gifts, no employment of children, no speaking fees, etc….
hint:
“legal doctrine known as inverse condemnation, which makes California utilities responsible for wildfire destruction regardless of whether the utility acted negligently or not. California’s interpretation of inverse condemnation is unique. The tenet is applied in other states, usually to government entities that damage private property when engaged in a public service. California’s courts have ruled the principle can be applied to utilities. So the utilities are held liable for damage, even if they comply with all of California’s strict energy-related rules.
This policy resulted in $30B of liability for PG&E from the 2017 & 2018 fires and drove it to bankruptcy proceedings. In July 2019, a new $21 billion wildfire trust fund was created to pay for damages from future wildfires, started with a 50-50 balance of utility and customer monies and also reduced the liability threshold for utilities to where customers must prove negligence before companies are held liable.”
But agree Gail, capitalism always short changes protection.
Duncan, I largely agree with your analysis, but respectfully disagree with its conclusion. Traditional capitalism cared about protection (as in the Plimsoll Line), and about the future. Capitalism created the “sinking fund”, to ensure that whatever was built today could be maintained for life, and then replaced.
It was fiat money that caused us to discount the future. Why save money for maintenance when that money might only pay for 80% of the maintenance, leaving the system to fail? Why set up a sinking fund when in ten years time it might buy only a single rivet?
Add to that the fatal propensity for governments to “do something”, however stupid, when the voters become discontented. So don’t maintain that bridge: when it collapses we will pay to replace it.
I remain convinced that the essential foundation of all economic activity is sound money, and the foundation of sound money is gold.
Duncan, free market fundamentalism and socialistic government control are the right and left hooks of oligarchic control. The system shifts periodically from one side to the other in order to keep the lower classes permanently off balance while the great game of boxing them into a corner carries on. No wonder most people are looking bruised and battered.
Why is this so difficult to get? 🤓
(OMG I’m afraid i got a kowaleinian emojitis!) 🙃
In computer service there is a QOS quality of service agreement that says what your are and are not getting. You can of course pay extra for high QOS. High QOS you will have compute 8700 hours every year (one year if 8765.813 hours), low quality you will have compute 6000 hours every year and the longest contiguous outage will be less than 18 hours. So too must be electric service to your house.
Gail, you can start a business pricing QOS contracts for electric companies! If you need staff I am available.
Electricity is a little different. According to Wikipedia,
I don’t play US music…since Europe is where the gods live…but since the peasants in Texas are freezing….
https://youtu.be/PJN_owwrk88
true, Europe has dominated the history of music, especially turning up the quality since 1800.
even prog rock, the highest quality rock music, is highlighted by Europeans late 1960s to the present.
this song is worth a listen to, but nothing special.
the video is lame, but almost to be expected in a country of decreasing average intelligence.
USA! USA!
Worth watching, they cover Texas, the ‘treatments’ and infection statistics, debt etc etc
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-19th-february-2021
Note: One modeling failure in Fig. 1. of Gail’s article is the disconnect between the decline in food production and the decline in population decline – five decades later. It doesn’t take five decades to starve to death. Since, 95% of global food production is currently petroleum economics dependent thru petro chemicals – any major food shortages are likely to accelerate quite a few other problems – and chaos.
I believe that the modelers of the 1972 Limits to Growth scenarios combined “food quality” and “food quantity” into a single variable. The assumption in the chart is more or less that people will move from a diet with lots of meat and perhaps other foods requiring a lot of resource investment to a mostly grain diet.
Grains are very high in calories, but at the same time relatively low in nutrients and also contain anti-nutrients. The excellent biochemists I know advise against having too many grains in your diet.
The modelers back in 1972 didn’t look into details like this. In fact, some of the cheap food may have been locally grown potatoes and sweet potatoes.
The modelers were barely out of graduate school, or still in graduate school. They tended to assume that there were solutions to problems. One of the models indirectly seemed to assume that nuclear was scalable to a huge extent and that recycling could be scaled up dramatically, without hitting limits. We have already seen that low prices are a limit to recycling. We hit that limit when oil prices dropped back in 2015, but it took until January 1, 2018 before China dismantled most of its recycling.
With regard to your comment Gail at around 11am. 2 retired dentists have made a formal complaint to the GMC (general medical council) with regard to Saga holidays stance on mandatory ‘treatments’ it is a must read. There is a great deal of information in this letter. To be in a position to give informed consent I would strongly recommend you read it in full. I won’t be giving consent no matter what I am threatened with. One of my work colleagues had the ‘treatment’ on Friday, I asked him if he had been advised of much of what is in this article he said no he hadn’t. I other words he did not give informed consent.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/complaint-to-gmc-about-mandatory-vaccines/
‘These mRNA vaccines are designed to instruct cells to produce certain proteins by the insertion of synthetic mRNA or DNA into the cells. Moderna does not call its drug a vaccine but “Operating Platform – The Software of Life”. The chromosomal DNA of the cell is presumably the ‘hardware’. However, once this “software” is downloaded and installed into the cell, there is no way of uninstalling’
From what I have read here it appears to be highly risky for all age groups.
I find the wording hard to follow. My understanding is nuclear DNA unzips is transcribed (in BP opposite image) to be mRNA which is shipped outside the nucleus where it is transcribed by the ribosomes reading by groups of three bases translated to one of 27(?) amino acids to form a string of amino acids that is a protein. The mRNA can not stay in the cytoplasm forever there must be a mechanism that retires them after some amount of use.
Some say reverse transcriptase copies mRNA into nuclear DNA. This is how all those ancient virus get embedded in the our DNA.
Operating Platform means what? edited DNA, cytoplasm packed with foreign mRNA that is long lived or short lived?
I am afraid I really cannot be an expert on all of these new vaccines. I would err on the side of caution in taking these new vaccines.
I suspect they are deadly to all groups
Oh those Germans!
machine translation for OFW:
In the current financial year, RWE expects a negative impact on earnings in the amount of “low to mid three-digit million euros”, as the company announced. The background is very strange and documents the unreliability of the “alternative energies”.
In Texas, around 24% of electricity comes from wind turbines. RWE is a big player there.
Because of “icy temperatures” it came “across all technologies to significant failures in power generation,” said the group. Since February 9th, “part of RWE’s onshore wind fleet in Texas has also been out of service due to icing and grid problems”.
The failure of the wind energy is considered to be the trigger for the blackout, which is concealed in the German media. Even more: Because energy was scarce everywhere because of the cold weather, the required electricity could not be provided even at completely inflated prices.
Even more dramatic: Since RWE had already sold the electricity from the wind farms in advance, the electricity giant had to buy new supplies in the wholesale trade in order to meet its delivery obligations. And – as the company explained – at record prices. The purchase prices for electricity have risen to up to $ 9,000 per megawatt hour (MWh), as RWE explained. For comparison: In Germany, a megawatt hour on the spot market currently costs a little less than 50 euros.
Texas had been hit in the past few weeks by “extreme winter weather conditions with exceptionally low temperatures and icing,” as RWE explained. This affected electricity generation across the board.
The experts at the analysis house RBC call the impact of the weather conditions in Texas “considerable” and expect RWE to lose EUR 300 to 400 million in Ebitda,
It would be good if this information would get out to the people of Germany. There are many ways things can go wrong with electricity. Losing a lot of money is one of them. It is not as obvious and painful as being without electricity for many hours or days.
By the way, I am sure problems like this are not included in EROEI calculations at all. They are considered a “money transaction,” not an energy transaction, even though it takes energy to make all goods and services, and these goods and services are what money is supposed to buy.
Electric contracts are being written and signed assuming the world is as it was 50 years ago, only base load generators. All parties will have to “upgrade” to language that says if the wind don’t blow or the turbine freeze we will no deliver. This will need to include the electric company to home owners if the system is short we will invoke blackouts. Just as Berkshire Hathaway tells customers if you get nuked we will never pay off on your insurance. The 365/7/24 always on is not “green”, the new norm sometimes you get electric and sometimes you do not.
so then maybe people will wake up and ask why we can’t go back to the old reliable electricity.
and the answer will be because all of you want more wind and solar and less FF, which isn’t true for everyone.
the bottom line is that more reliability will require more investment in the grid and generation.
as IC declines, more money and resources will have to be sent in the direction of essentials.
There are a lot of industrial processes, such as melting ores and pouring them into molds, that cannot tolerate being turned off and on. Refineries need steady electric power. Even refrigerators need power that they can count on.
When I visited India, I saw homes with televisions but no refrigerator, because intermittency is OK for television.
If you are in an elevator, do you just wait until the electricity comes back on, to get out, for example? You lose the use of high-rise buildings for example.
It is really not possible to do much with intermittent electricity.
Gail, I find one sentence in your comment most interesting. When my family moved to Africa, we had no electricity, but we did have a refrigerator. It worked ofh a gas cylinder, and its only moving part was the cooling fluid. Simple, robust, and effective technology. Maybe an opportunity for a startup company? Paging Tata.
$9000 per MWh sounds like an Enron. There should be a rule never go higher than 4X the normal rate instead start load shedding.
Some brain food for a “solipsist” movie event? (Psychology, 26 min)
Australian Media Runs Segment on Joe Biden’s Dementia
Of course, the US had Ronald Reagan before. He started out OK. He went downhill.
Never the brightest porch light on the block, by second term, totally gone.
Had some brief interactions with him (one one hour encounter). He was clueless, even before becoming governor of CA.
But, he was what the “voters” were served, and the damage was done.
He actually got a class I was attending canceled (taught by Tom Hayden).
As I was saying, too many vaccines causing cumulative neural damage, eventually resulting in dementia. Reagan and Biden are both classic cases.
Jimmy Carter (1977 – 1981)
There is no record of President Carter ever receiving a flu shot.
And Jimmy is still lucid in his nineties.
Ronald Reagan (1981 – 1989)
From a March 11, 1985 press release, summarizing President Reagan’s recent physical and medical examination, we know that the president received yearly flu shots as well as “weekly hyposensitization allergy shots.” Photos of four of those shots area shown here, but judging from the dates, it’s unlikely they show flu vaccinations.
And we know what happened to Ronnie.
George H. W. Bush (1989 – 2009)
There is no record of President George H. W. Bush ever receiving a flu shot.
Poppy Bush lived into his nineties.
William Clinton (1993-2001)
From a December 14, 1999 White House press briefing, we know of at least one instance where President Clinton received a flu shot.
Not looking so sprightly these days, is Bill. Premature aging?
George W. Bush (2001 – 2009)
There is no record of President George W. Bush ever receiving a flu shot.
Dubya is an outlier. Only borderline human by some accounts. But he’s looking a lot fitter than Bill Clinton.
Barak Obama (2009 – 2017)
The only photo we have definitively showing a president of the United States receiving a flu shot is that of Barak Obama on December 20, 2009. We also know that Michelle Obama receive the vaccination that same day and that their daughters received the shots earlier that year in October.
Barry’s still young, so we can only await the judgement of time.
Donald J. Trump (2017 – )
President Trump is known, not least, for his many contradictions, and his engagement with the flu is no different. After publicly courting Robert Kennedy, Jr. to head up a commission to inquiry, looking for links between vaccines and autism, and after claiming to have never received a flu shot, he apparently, and quietly, did so.
Somehow, I doubt he actually did. But who knows.
As for Biden, I haven’t seen his flu shot record, but he has multiple medical issues and has been taking pharmaceuticals like they were M&Ms for many years. The medication has taken away what little bit of sense he once had.
Biden seem remarkable coherent to me—-
(Especially when put up against a Texas Republican)
What are the issues?
(Never would vote for a dim or repug, so kind of a side issue)
He was doing ‘well’
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/where-hell-are-we-bidens-cnn-townhall-disaster-ignored-mainstream-media
Then he took his second vax shot and ….
https://rumble.com/vdwa0n-not-for-public-view-biden-interview.html
Stay tuned as Joe’s concerned wife is forced to put a leash on Joe and take him for walks in the park each morning so he can take a dumb… while Hunter Biden peers out from his hiding spot in the bushes where he has been smoking crack with Richard Quest who has been teaching him the ancient Kama Sutran art of tying a string around his balls to enhance his episodes with prostitutes.
Like I have said… Trump was an amateur…. The Biden Family…. this is as good (or bad?) as it gets.
Maybe you could get a bumper sticker sharing who you dont vote for so people could know your a man of integrity.
Biden (apparently) publicly took two shots of the vax, and then went on to say that when he came into office “we didn’t have the vaccine”.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/politics/bidens-coronavirus-vaccination/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/biden-second-dose-coronavirus-vaccine/index.html
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/17/joe-biden-to-cnn-we-didnt-have-coronavirus-vaccine/
It’s Clown World.
Well the bulb was certainly a bit dim when he signed the first legislation mostly excluding vaccine manufacturers from liability.
Bush signed the legislation that totally excluded vaccine manufactured from liability just after that buildings fall down go boom thing but no one noticed. Amazing foresight.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/gHyHlzW8ss6b/
Pfizer launches COVID-19 vaccine trial in pregnant women
Pfizer’s trial will include 4,000 pregnant women.
“It is awesome that they are doing a clinical trial in pregnant women because the physiology is so different in pregnant women,” said Dr. Laura Riley, OB/GYN-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine.
“These data will reveal information about safety, help us to understand the side effect profile of these vaccines in this population, and the immune responses of both mother and baby,” Riley said.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/pfizer-launches-covid-19-vaccine-trial-pregnant-women/story?id=75975999
The assumption, of course, is that no long-term harm could possibly come to the pregnant women and their unborn babies. We don’t know that this is true in general, unfortunately.
I notice that these women are being enrolled late (weeks 24-34 of their pregnancy) in their pregnancy. We still won’t know whether having the vaccine harms the fetus, early on in pregnancy. If the miscarriage rate shoots up, most of these babies will be close enough to the due date to live. https://healthcare.utah.edu/womenshealth/pregnancy-birth/preterm-birth/when-is-it-safe-to-deliver.php
If there are very many miscarriages, I expect that the study will be stopped.
One assumes that these are very poor women taking payment to participate in the trials? Dr Mengele applauds.
Navy Will Make COVID-19 Vaccination Mandatory ‘As Soon as We Can:’ 3-Star Admiral
Members of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group will get the option to receive the first dose of the vaccine for COVID-19, the sometimes-fatal illness caused by the coronavirus, on Saturday. So far, about 80% of the crew — roughly 5,000 strike group members — say they intend to get the shots, Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, U.S. Second Fleet commander, told reporters Friday.
“We cannot make it mandatory yet,” Lewis said. “I can tell you we’re probably going to make it mandatory as soon as we can, just like we do with the flu vaccine.”
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/02/12/navy-will-make-covid-19-vaccination-mandatory-soon-we-can-3-star-admiral.html
what is holding them back from mandatory?
You would think that it would not take long (some time this year) before ships would have to be decommissioned due to lack of healthy crew members.
Odd… you’ve got an experimental vaccine … and you force thousands of young healthy people to take it … potentially jeopardizing your national security…
Now why would you do that? What’s the upside (young and healthy don’t get very sick from covid…)
More protests https://www.9news.com.au/national/coronavirus-protest-melbourne-brisbane-sydney-pete-evans/a328629b-4d7f-48b1-a13f-72fe42dd8c2b
Bill Gates is now advocating for a Covid Vaccine Passport
https://preview.redd.it/7p2neccxtji61.jpg?width=572&auto=webp&s=974326fc26fae8d3884a8ea9060296fa97a94dfc
Uncle Bill is a bubbling fountain of wonderful, progressive ideas. Inspired and inspirational! How fortunate we are that lock-downs have dimmed neither his spirits nor his mental powers.
Wuhan Lab Eligible to Receive US Taxpayer Funding Through 2024, NIH Confirms
The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is authorized to receive taxpayer funding for animal research until January 2024, the National Institute of Health told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The WIV is at the center of widespread speculation that COVID-19 could have entered the human population in China due to an accidental lab leak. Researchers at the lab were studying bat-based coronaviruses prior to the outbreak, a project partially backed by $600,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds routed to the lab through the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance.
https://min.amac.us/wuhan-lab-eligible-to-receive-us-taxpayer-funding-through-2024-nih-confirms/
This article is definitely concerning.
I would like this article better if it could reference a written document saying the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is authorized to receive taxpayer funding for animal research until January 2024. There are links to the Epoch Times.
Wuhan was late to the game with SARS.
Many cases before, from patients who never were there.
But it where exposure became public.
First bat flu and now bird flu? Dr Evil has been busy?
If that strain spreads to wild birds and they spread it around the world…