Collapse is a frightening subject. The question of why collapse occurs is something I have pieced together over many years of study from a number of different sources, which I will attempt to explain in this post.
Collapse doesn’t happen instantaneously; it happens many years after an economy first begins outgrowing its resource base. In fact, the resource base likely declines at the same time from multiple causes, such as soil erosion, deforestation and oil depletion. Before collapse occurs, there seem to be warning signs, including:
- Too much wage disparity
- Riots and protests by people unhappy with low wages
- Prices of commodities that are too low for producers that need to recover their costs of production and governments that require tax revenue to fund programs for their citizens
- An overstretched financial system; conditions ripe for debt defaults
- Susceptibility to epidemics
Many people have the misimpression that our most important problem will be “running out” of oil. Because of this, they believe that oil prices will rise high if the system is reaching its limits. Since oil prices are not very high, they assume that the problem is far away. Once a person understands what the real issue is, it is (unfortunately) relatively easy to see that the current economy seems to be quite close to collapse.
In this post, I provide images from a recent presentation I gave, together with some comments. A video of the presentation is available on the Uncomfortable Knowledge Hub, here. A PDF of the presentation can be downloaded here:
In some ways, a self-organizing system is analogous to a dome that might be built with a child’s toy building set (Slide 4). New layers of businesses and consumers are always being added, as are new regulations, more or less on top of the prior structure. At the same time, old consumers are dying off and products that are no longer needed are being discontinued. This happens without central direction from anyone. Entrepreneurs see the need for new products and try to satisfy them. Consumers decide on what to buy, based upon what their spendable income is and what their needs are.
Resources of many kinds are needed for an economy. Harnessing energy of many types is especially important. Early economies burned biomass and used the labor of animals. In recent years, we have added other types of energy, such as fossil fuels and electricity, to supplement our own human energy. Without supplemental energy of various kinds, we would be very limited in the kinds of goods and services that could be produced. Our farming would be limited to digging in the ground with a stick, for example.
The fact that there is almost an equivalence between employees and consumers is very important. If the wages of consumers are high, relative to the prices of the goods and services available, then consumers are able to buy many of those goods and services. As a result, citizens tend to be happy. But if there are too many low paid workers, or people without work at all, consumers are likely to be unhappy because they cannot afford the basic necessities of life.
The problem civilizations are facing is a two-sided problem: (1) Growing population and (2) Resources that often degrade or deplete. As a result, the amount of resources per person falls. If this were carried to the limit, all of us would starve.
As resources deplete and population grows, local leaders can see that problems are on the horizon. At first, adding technology, such as a new dam to provide water to make farms more productive, helps. As more and more technology and other complexity is added, there is less and less “bang for the buck.” We can easily see this in the healthcare field. Early antibiotics had a very big payback; recent medical innovations that help a group of 500 or 1000 people with a particular rare disease can be expected to have a much smaller payback.
A second issue with added complexity is that it increasingly leads to a society of the very wealthy plus many very low paid workers. Joseph Tainter identified the combination of these two issues as leading to collapse in his book, The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Françios Roddier is an astrophysicist who writes primarily in French. His book Thermodynamique de l’évolution was published in 2012; it is now available in English as well.
The issue of starving people in Yemen is an issue today. In fact, hunger is an increasing problem in poor countries around the world. The world tourism industry is dead; the industry of making fancy clothing for people in rich countries is greatly reduced. People who formerly made a living in these industries in poor countries increasingly find it difficult to earn an adequate living with other available jobs. Rich countries tend to have better safety nets when there are widespread reductions in job-availability.
Businesses often make long lasting goods such as machines to be used in factories or automobiles to be used by consumers. Governments often make long-lasting goods such as paved roads and school buildings. When making these goods, they take some combination of commodities, built machinery, and human labor to make goods and services that people will use for many years into the future. The future value of these goods is hoped to be significantly greater than the value of the inputs used to create these goods and services.
There are at least three reasons that time-shifting devices are needed:
- Workers need to be paid as these goods are made.
- Businesses need to build factories in advance.
- Businesses, governments and individuals are all likely to find the future payments more manageable, even with interest added, than they are as a single payment upfront.
I don’t mention the issue in Slide 9, but once time-shifting devices are created, they become very easy to manipulate. For example, no one knows precisely what the future value of a particular investment will be. Governments, especially, are prone to make investments in unneeded infrastructure, simply to provide jobs for people. We also know that there are diminishing returns to added technology, but stocks of technology companies tend to be valued as if complexity will save the world. Third, interest rate manipulations (lower!) and the offering of debt to those who seem unlikely to be able ever to repay the debt can be used to make the economy of a country appear to be in better shape than it really is. Many of us remember the collapse of the US subprime housing debt bubble in 2008.
The purpose of a financial system is to allocate goods and services. High wages allocate a larger share of the output of an economy to a particular person than low wages. Appreciation in asset values (such as prices of shares of stock, or value of a home or piece of land) also act to increase the share of the goods and services produced by the economy to an individual. Payment of interest, dividends and rents are other ways of allocating goods and services that the economy makes. Governments can print money, but they cannot print goods and services!
As the economy gets more complex, the non-elite workers increasingly get left out of the distribution of goods and services. For one thing (not mentioned on Slide 10), as the economy becomes more complex, an increasing share of the goods and services produced by the economy need to go into making all of the intermediate goods that make that industrial economy work. Intermediate goods would include factories, semi-trucks, hydroelectric dams, oil pipelines and other goods and services that don’t directly benefit an individual consumer. They are needed to make the overall system work.
As the economy gets bigger and more complex, the non-elite workers increasingly find themselves left out. Besides losing an increasing part of the output of the intermediate goods and services mentioned in the prior paragraph, there are other pieces that take slices of the total output of goods and services:
- High paid workers take their quite-large slices of the total output. These individuals tend to be the ones who get the benefit of asset appreciation, as well.
- Pension programs and other programs to help the elderly and unemployed take a cut.
- Health insurance costs, in the US at least, tend to be very high, relative to wages, for lower-paid workers.
- The work of some employees can be replaced by low-paid overseas employees or by robots. If they are to keep their jobs, their wages need to be suitably low to compete.
With all of these issues, the workers at the bottom of the employment hierarchy increasingly get left out of the distribution of goods and services made by the economy.
We know some of the kinds of things that happen when economies are close to collapse from the writings of researchers such as Peter Turchin, lead author of Secular Cycles, and Joseph Tainter, mentioned earlier. One approach is for governments to try to work around the resource problem by starting wars with other economies whose resources they might gain. Probably a more likely outcome is that these low-resource-per-capita economies become vulnerable to attack by other economies because of their weakened condition. In any event, more conflict is likely as resource limits hit.
If the low incomes of non-elite workers persist, many bad outcomes can be expected. Local riots can be expected as citizens protest their low wages or pensions. Governments are likely to find that they cannot collect enough taxes. Governments will also find that they must cut back on programs, or (in today’s world) their currencies will sink relative to currencies of other countries. Intergovernmental organizations may fail for lack of funding, or governments may be overthrown by unhappy citizens.
Debt defaults can be expected. Governments have a long history of defaulting on their debts when conditions were bad according to Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.
It becomes very easy for epidemics to take hold because of the poor eating habits and the close living quarters of non-elite workers.
With respect to inflation-adjusted commodity prices, it is logical that they would stay low because a large share of the population would be impoverished and thus not able to afford very many of these commodities. A person would expect gluts of commodities, as occurred during the Great Depression in the 1930s in the United States because many farmers and farm-hands had been displaced by modern farming equipment. We also find that the book of Revelation from the Bible seems to indicate that low prices and lack of demand were problems at the time of the collapse of ancient Babylon (Revelation 18:11-13).
Much of what peak oil theory misunderstands is what our society as a whole misunderstands. Most people seem to believe that our economy will grow endlessly unless we somehow act to slow it down or stop it. They cannot imagine that the economy comes with built-in brakes, provided by the laws of physics.
Armed with a belief in endless growth, economists assume that the economy can expand year after year at close to the same rate. Modelers of all kinds, including climate modelers, miss the natural feedback loops that lead to the end of fossil fuel extraction without any attempt on our part to stop its extraction. A major part of the problem is that added complexity leads to too much wage and wealth disparity. Eventually, the low wages of many of the workers filter through to oil and other energy prices, making prices too low for producers.
Collapse isn’t instantaneous, as we will see on Slide 26. As resources per capita fall too low, there are several ways to keep problems hidden. More debt at lower interest rates can be added. New financial techniques can be developed to hide problems. Increased globalization can be used. Corners can be cut on electricity transmission, installation and maintenance, and in the building of new electricity generating structures. It is only when the economy hits a bump in the road (such as a climate-related event) that there suddenly is a major problem: Electricity production fails, or not enough food is produced. In fact, California, Florida, and China have all encountered the need for rolling blackouts with respect to electricity in the past year; China is now encountering difficulty with inadequate food supply, as well.
Economists have played a major role in hiding problems with energy with their models that seem to show that prices can be expected to rise if there is a shortage of oil or other energy. Their models miss the point that adequate supplemental energy is just as important for demand as it is for supply of finished goods and services. The reason energy is important for demand is because demand depends on the wages of workers, and the wages of workers in turn depend on the productivity of those workers. The use of energy supplies to allow workers to operate tools of many kinds (such as computers, trucks, electric lights, ovens, and agricultural equipment) greatly influences the productivity of those workers.
A person who believes energy prices can rise endlessly is likely to believe that recycling can increase without limit because of ever-rising prices. Such a person is also likely to believe that the substitution of intermittent renewables for fossil fuels will work because high prices for scarce electricity will enable an approach that is inherently high-cost, if any continuity of supply is required.
Thus, the confusion isn’t so much that of peak oilers. Instead, the confusion is that of economists and scientists building models based on past history. These models miss the turning points that occur as limits approach. They assume that future patterns will replicate past patterns, but this is not what happens in a finite world. If we lived in a world without limits, their models would be correct. This confusion is very much built into today’s thinking.
In fact, we are living in an economic system/ecosystem that has brakes to it. These brakes are being applied now, even though 99%+ of the population isn’t aware of the problem. The system will protect itself, quite possibly using the approach of evicting most humans.
The opinions expressed in Slide 13 reflect some of the views I have heard expressed speaking with peak oilers and with people looking into issues from a biophysical economics perspective. Obviously, views differ from person to person.
Many people believe that resources in the ground provide a good estimate of the quantity of fossil fuels that can be extracted in the future. Peak oilers tend to believe that the available resources will need to have sufficiently high “Energy Returned on Energy Invested” (EROEI) ratios to make extraction feasible. Politicians and climate modelers tend to believe that prices can rise endlessly, so low EROEI is no obstacle. They seem to believe that anything that we have the technical skill to extract, even coal under the North Sea, can be extracted.
If a person believes the high estimates of fossil fuel resources that seem to be available and misses the point that the economy has built-in brakes, climate change becomes the issue of major concern.
My view is that most of the resources that seem to be available will be left in the ground because of low prices and problems associated with collapse, such as failing governments and broken supply lines. In any event, we do not really have the ability to fix the climate; the laws of physics will provide their own adjustment. We will simply need to live with whatever climate is provided. Humans lived through ice-ages in the past. Presumably, whatever humans remain after what seems to be an upcoming bottleneck will be able to live in suitable areas of the world in the future.
On Slide 14, note that today’s industrial economy must necessarily come to an end, just as the lives of hurricanes and of people come to an end.
Also note that with diminishing returns, the cost of producing many of the things listed on Slide 14 is rising. For example, with rising population, dry areas of the world eventually need to use desalination to get enough fresh water for their growing populations. Desalination is expensive. Even if the necessary workaround is simply deeper wells, this still adds costs.
With diminishing returns affecting many parts of the economy simultaneously, it becomes increasingly difficult for efforts in the direction of efficiency to lead to costs that are truly lower on an inflation-adjusted basis. Advanced education and health care in particular tend to have an ever-rising inflation-adjusted costs of production. Some minerals do as well, as the quality of ores depletes.
An important issue to note is that wages need to cover all the rising costs, even the rising cost of health care. The paychecks of many people, especially those without advanced education, fall too low to meet all of their needs.
Slides 16 and 17 describe some of the reasons why oil prices don’t necessarily rise with scarcity.
I was one of the co-authors of the Ke Wang paper mentioned in Slide 18. We developed three different forecasts of how much oil would be extracted in China, depending on how high oil prices would be able to rise. The Red Line is the “Stays Low” Scenario, with prices close to $50 per barrel. The Yellow Line is the “Ever-Rising Prices” Scenario. The Best Estimate reflects the expectation that prices would be in roughly the $100 to $120 barrel range, from 2015 onward.
In fact, oil prices have stayed fairly low, and China’s oil production has declined, as our paper predicted.
Note that the chart on Slide 21 shows wage disparity only in the US. On this basis, the share of wages going to the top 1% and top 0.1% are back at the levels that they were in the 1920s. Now, our economy is much more global. If we consider all of the low income people in the world, the worldwide wage disparity is much greater.
There are two things to note on Slide 22. The first is that producers, in inflation-adjusted terms, seem to need very high prices, approximately $120 per barrel or more. This is based on a presentation made by Steve Kopits, which I wrote up here: Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending.
The other thing to note is that oil prices tend to bounce around a great deal. Prices seem to depend on the amount of debt and on interest rates, as well as the wages of workers. The peak in oil prices in mid-2008 came precisely at the time the debt bubble broke with respect to mortgage and credit card debt in the US. I wrote about this in an article in the journal Energy called, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis.
The US instituted Quantitative Easing (QE) at the end of 2008. QE acted to lower interest rates. With the help of QE, the price of oil gradually rose again. When the US discontinued QE in late 2014, oil prices fell. Recently, there has been a great deal of QE done, as well as direct spending by governments, but oil prices are still far below the $120 per barrel level. Middle Eastern oil producers especially need high oil prices, in order to collect the high tax revenue that they depend upon to provide programs for their citizens.
Coal prices (Slide 23) tend to follow somewhat the same pattern as oil prices (Slide 22). There is very much the same balancing act with coal prices as well: Coal prices need to be high enough for producers, but not too high for customers to buy products made with coal, such as electricity and steel.
China tries to keep its coal prices relatively high in order to encourage production within the country. China has been limiting imports to try to keep prices high. The relatively high coal prices of China make it an attractive destination for coal exporters. There are now a large number of boats waiting outside China hoping to sell coal to China at an attractive price.
The blue line on Figure 24 represents total energy consumption up through 2020. The red dotted line is a rough guesstimate of how energy consumption might fall. This decline could happen if people wanting energy consumption coming only from renewables were able to succeed by 2050 (except I am doubtful that these renewable energy types would really be of much use by themselves).
Alternatively, this might also be the decline that our self-organizing economy takes us on. We are already seeing a decrease in energy consumption related to the current pandemic. I think governmental reactions to the pandemic were prompted, in part, by the very stretched condition of our oil and other energy supplies. Countries were experiencing riots over low wages. They also could not afford to import as much oil as they were importing. Shutdowns in response to COVID-19 cases seemed like a sensible thing to do. They helped restore order and saved on energy imports. Strangely enough, the pandemic may be a part of the collapse that our self-organizing economy is arranging for us.
Slide 25 takes the blue line from Slide 24 and looks at what happened in more detail. On Slide 25, we are looking at the average annual increase in energy consumption, for a given 10 year period. This is split between the rate of population growth (blue), and the energy consumption growth that went into other things, which I equate to change in “standard of living” (red). The big red humps represent very good times, economically. The post-World War II bump is especially high. The valleys are times of disturbing changes, including wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Of course, all of these situations occurred during periods when energy consumption was generally rising. If these unfortunate things happened when oil consumption was rising, what might possibly happen when energy consumption is falling?
We now seem to be hitting the Crisis Stage. In the past, collapse (which takes place in the Crisis Stage) has not been instantaneous; it has taken place over quite a number of years, typically 20 or more. The world economy is quite different now, with its international trade system and heavy use of debt. It would seem likely that a collapse could happen more quickly. A common characteristic of collapses, such as avalanches, is that they often seem to start off fairly slowly. Then, suddenly, a large piece breaks away, and there is a big collapse. Something analogous to this could possibly happen with the economy, too.
One of the major issues with adding intermittent renewables to the electric grid is a pricing problem. Once wind and solar are given subsidies (even the subsidy of “going first”), all of the other types of electricity production seem to need subsidies, as well. It is the pricing systems that are terribly detrimental, although this is not generally noticed. In fact, researchers who are looking only at energy may not even care if the pricing is wrong. Ultimately, the low pricing for electricity can be expected to bring the electric grid down, just as inadequate prices for fossil fuels can be expected to lead to the closure of many fossil fuel producers. Both Texas and California are having difficulty because they have not been collecting enough funds from customers to build resilient systems.
The focus of EROEI research is often with respect to whether the EROEI of a particular type of energy production is “high enough,” relative to some goal, such as 3:1 or 10:1. I believe that there needs to be more focus on the total quantity of net energy produced. If there is an EROEI goal for highly complex energy types, it needs to be much higher than for less complex energy types.
Today, it is common to see the EROEIs of a number of different types of energy displayed side-by-side as if they were comparable. This type of comparison is also made with other energy metrics, such as “Levelized Cost of Electricity” and “Energy Payback Period.” I think this approach makes highly complex types of energy production, such as intermittent wind and solar, look better than they really are. Even intermittent hydroelectric power generation, such as is encountered in places with rainy seasons and dry seasons and in places that are subject to frequent droughts, is not really comparable to electricity supply that can be provided year-around by fossil fuel providers, if adequate storage is available.
Earlier in this post, I documented a number of reasons why we should expect low rather than high energy prices in the future. I am reiterating the point here because it is a point energy researchers need especially to be aware of. Production is likely to come to an end because it is unprofitable.
One characteristic of human-made complexity is that it has very little redundancy. If something goes wrong in one part of one system, it is likely to ripple through that system, as well as other systems to which the first system is connected. An outage of oil is likely to indirectly affect electricity because oil is needed to fix problems with electricity transmission lines. An electricity outage may cause disruption in oil drilling and refining, and even in filling up automobiles at service stations. An international trade disruption can break supply lines and leave shipping containers at the wrong end of the globe.
We know that collapse tends to lead to less complex systems. We should expect fewer jobs requiring advanced education. We should expect to start losing battles against infectious diseases. We should expect a reduction in international trade; in the future, it may primarily take place among a few trusted partners. Some intergovernmental organizations are likely to disappear. Peak oil cannot happen by itself; it can only happen with disruptions and shrinkage in many other parts of the economy, as well.
The climate is indeed changing. Unfortunately, we humans have little ability to change what is happening, especially at this late date. Arguably, some changes could have been made much earlier, for example in the 1970s when the modeling included in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth by Donnela Meadows and others showed that the world economy was likely to hit limits before 2050.
It is clear to many people that the world economy is now struggling. There is too much debt; young people are having trouble finding jobs that pay well enough; people in poor countries are increasingly more food insecure. Leaders everywhere would like solutions. The “easy” solution to offer is that intermittent wind and solar will solve all our problems, including climate change. The closer a person looks at the situation, the more the solution seems like nonsense. Wind and solar work passably well at small concentrations within electric systems, if it is possible to work around their pricing problems. But they don’t scale up well. Energy researchers especially should be aware of these difficulties.
The book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee points out that there have been an amazing number of what seem to be coincidences that have allowed life on Earth to flourish for four billion years. Perhaps these coincidences will continue. Perhaps there is an underlying plan that we are not aware of.
Bloomberg VIDEO:
Guaranteed basic income can replace ‘expensive’ income assistance programs: Professor
Calls for a universal basic income have been growing in Canada throughout the pandemic. Now that the proposed Bill C-273 for establishing a national program is with the federal government, we check in with Evelyn Forget, economist and professor with University of Manitoba, about the merits of this hotly-contested initiative.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/economics/video/guaranteed-basic-income-can-replace-expensive-income-assistance-programs-professor~2151824
Ms. Forget is obviously in favor of the program. I was confused regarding whether this is truly universal basic income (for all) or only for those whose incomes would otherwise be below the threshold. If it is truly for all, the cost will be very, very high. The only way it can be paid for is with more debt. Countries that add a lot of debt will likely see their currencies fall relative to other currencies.
check here https://www.ubiworks.ca/basicincomebill
Expecting this to get passed in Q2 … as per the leak
“Guaranteed basic income can replace ‘expensive’ income assistance programs: Professor”
Presumably by replacing them with an even more expensive program. But with no goods or services on offer, what will that income buy? Oh sorry, I forgot: according to Modern Monetary Theory, goods and services are not generated by energy harnessed in support of productive labour; they are printed by banks.
Sorry, if discussed already, but Gates seems to have just new ad out (ft himself) explaining how every sector (transport, agri, ..) needs to be trimmed by 10% in order to reach climate 2050 target, then it went into some bizzare biofuel for jets example (doubling the price hah).. also plugged his book in the conclusion.
Well, he appeared there himself, which shows some courage or stick prodding by senior “colleagues” of his, lolz..
Bill Gates is the new Himmler, getting all the dire ‘futuristic’ announcements to make.
‘Why do I get all the dirty jobs?!’ as Himmler said after being told to exterminate the Jews.
Still, the gloves are coming off now and the thesis of a coordinated reduction/elimination of sectors and ways of life is proven by this intervention.
To which my answer is go ahead, if you will, we are doomed anyway; but don’t push your drugs on me!
Freedom is choosing the means of personal termination.
See what happens when your IQ is 80…. if you capitulate and take the Lethal Injection primarily because you want to travel … the obvious course of action is to WAIT until they actual commit to letting you travel…. WAIT until they actual fulfill the promise to let the vaxxed to return to normal life.
What’s the rush to get the jab??????? SToooo… pid…. it…. y.
Peter Hitchens, one of the earliest of the UK’s small band of sceptical journalists, used his weekly conversation with Mike Graham on talkRADIO to discuss the mixed reaction to his Mail on Sunday column in which he revealed he had had his first Covid jab. He wrote:
Of course my selfish injection didn’t hurt. I’m a blood donor (so also please don’t call me selfish), used to far bigger needles in my arm, for a lot longer. I did feel a pang of regret and loss. For me, the vaccination was a gloomy submission to a new world of excessive safety and regulation. I’d tried to fight against it but I lost.
The New Jerusalem, in which we allow the state to boss us around even more, in the name of our own good, is now coming into being.
And so we are just going to be under surveillance a lot more, recorded a lot more and bossed about a lot more.
He had weighed up the pros and cons and concluded that, nearing 70 and with part of his family abroad who he had been prevented from seeing for over a year, resisting the coming vaccine passport system was un-winnable. In response, he was deluged with accusations of capitulation on social media yesterday. Anyone who has listened much to Hitchens for the last year will know that he has said very little about the vaccine and certainly never said whether he would or wouldn’t take it, nor discouraged anyone else from taking it. On talkRADIO, he underlined the point that the battle was over as far as he was concerned.
Ehm, his IQ is 100+ as he evidently hints at some lite form of bucket listing tendencies and willing submission (claims traveling globe for visiting family).. He had good life as “drama queen” within the boundary of allowed (make believe) dissent out there on msm outlets and lecture circuit, likely earning some decent rewards along the way. He (cloaked establishment jester or not) likes to spend it now while IC works .. so what..
The rich (or well connected) still fly (not all destinations but..) if you have not noticed..
On some carriers, one doesn’t need to wear a mask if in business class or first class. They aren’t even trying to hide that this has nothing to do with health, but with who will be allowed to participate as full members of society (hint: not the plebes).
Many are saying that Hitchens has ‘betrayed’ them: but he never, ever, touched on the fraud, and merely wittered on about wanting to go to the pub again and how incompetent the government was being.
After all, the man is just a ageing, low-brow MSM hack -what can one expect? Not the stuff of heroes.
I like Peter. He has always struck me as the saner, less flashy and more decent Hitchens brother.
But ya know, the Hitchens brothers could both be working for Intel in the Mockingbird Department. Their father was in the Navy and they both attended public school, and both were militant young Trotskyites at the same time as the Corbyn brothers (Piers and Jeremy). Christopher played the outrageously witty lefty until the late 1990s, at which time he swang around 100% and began cheerleading for the neocons. Peter has long played and still does the reformed angry young leftist turned curmudgeon paleocon.
But neither of them along with Noam Chomsky would touch 9/eleven with a barge pole. As de-facto gatekeepers, they have always known how far out of line it was possible to wander in the name of dissent. To dissect the Covid Plandemic/Scamdemic in all its gory self-contradictions would be several steps too far. One has to draw the line somewhere. Some things are simply off limits for mainstream media correspondents.
For all we know, Peter may have received the same “vaccine” that their Royal Majesties got and not the one that sent Captain Tom off on his final mission.
Exactly, even though Chomsky in his very late phase had to directly and obviously – dismissively talk down some of these rabbit hole entry points (ala don’t bother me anymore defense shield), mostly from the position that these are ..not worthy any proper young aspiring leftist intellectual’s attention.., trololol. What a clown.
I have no objections to a self-cull their own herd.
Don’t get the vaccine– our population is way too high.
Yes, I quite agree that your population is way too high.
Ours, by contrast, is so small already that we’re an endangered subspecies.
An experimental injectable mRNA intervention that claims to turn the patient’s own sells into coronavirus spike protein factories—just temporarily folks!—and has never been successfully tested on animals. And Tony Blair, Benny Netanyahu, Donald Trump & Jo Biden all want you to take it on a regular basis. What could possibly go wrong?
Let’s ask (some of) the experts!
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/ask-the-experts-covid-19-vaccine-now-banned-on-youtube-and-facebook_qIsNohSIeSgfz2J.html
“I lost.”
He didn’t lose; he surrendered.
Someone with his smarts, money, and connections could surely have found a dodgy Paki doc to give him a phony jab. (For all we know, that’s what he did.)
That’s a tiny bit raciss, Lidia.
On the other hand, so is this. But it’s such a classic.
From New Delhi to Darjeeling
I have done my share of healing
And I’ve never yet been beaten or outboxed
I remember that with on jab
Of my needle in the Punjab
How I cleared up beriberi
And the dreaded dysentery
But you complaint has got me really foxed!
So if all the people who are at risk have been ‘vaccinated’ … then why is the UK not ending opening up? They are saying nothing changes till at least summer…. Oh yes of course… the Mutants are Coming the Mutants are Coming!!!!
Oooooh …. let’s all be frightened … shall we
Health Secretary Matt Hancock struck an upbeat tone at the daily press conference yesterday where he announced that a single dose of either the AstraZenica or Pfizer jab reduces risk of hospitalisation in the over-80s by 80%. He continued:
The effectiveness of the vaccine on protecting people, and on reducing transmission, is critical to the roadmap [for lifting lockdown restrictions]… The data that we’ve published today shows that the roadmap is achievable, because it shows that we will be able to break the link from cases through to hospitalisations and to deaths, and until now in the pandemic that link from cases through to hospitalisations and deaths has been unbreakable. And we have demonstrated with the data today that the vaccines can break that link, and that is down to the power of science. So it’s good news for everybody.
Good, but given that all the over-80s and all the over-70s have now been offered at least one dose – and more than 90% have taken that offer – why is there so little urgency in when it comes to lifting of restrictions, considering what a whopping chunk of Covid hospitalisations and deaths these people account for?
Meanwhile, a ‘manhunt’ is underway for a missing case of the so-called Brazilian variant. Prime Minister Boris Johnson downplayed fears about the variant though, saying:
We have no reason not to think our vaccines are effective against these variants of concern. People should take that as some evidence of confidence.
Health Correspondent Nick Triggle at the BBC had this analysis.
It is tempting to think that if officials can identify the one missing case, the UK will be able to stamp out the Brazil variant.
But it’s unlikely this will be possible. There will no doubt be more cases either of this variant or others circulating with the E484 mutation that allows the virus to escape some of the effect of the vaccines.
That’s because not all positive cases can be checked for variants. The UK carries out nearly half of the genomic sequencing in the world and can check around 25,000 positive tests a week for variants.
That means about a quarter of positive cases were checked last week, but a month ago – with infection rates higher – it was under one in 10.
What is more, not everyone who is positive comes forward for a test in the first place. We are seeing just the top of the iceberg.
We received this intriguing comment about the variants from a well-connected reader who cannot be named lest he endanger his source.
I have good reason to believe that Hancock is desperate for variants, and that experts think it a waste of time to hunt for them and think vaccinations are fine to keep things going well, including coping with variants. He wants twice daily briefings on any possible variants.
Newsletter https://lockdownsceptics.org/
Bond liquidity
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Evf0cI_XAAE1P9Q?format=jpg&name=medium
On the bottom, the Bloomberg liquidity chart shows little liquidity for UST = US treasuries. I am not sure what the top chart shows. Liquidity isn’t something I have followed.
AstraZeneca, Moderna or Pfizer? Take whichever COVID-19 vaccine you’re offered, experts say
Canadians tempted to shop for a preferred COVID-19 vaccine have been given simple advice from experts who have examined the country’s three available options: Take what is offered as quickly as possible.
Dr. Watts at the University of Toronto said concentrating the mRNA vaccines on older and immunocompromised people may make sense because those vaccines have higher efficacy than AstraZeneca’s. People in those categories also have a weaker immune response, she said.
All three vaccines share some unknown factors, such as how long immunity lasts, how long the booster shot can wait and whether they can be used interchangeably in second doses, she said.
Jennifer Gommerman, also an immunologist at the University of Toronto, agreed mRNA vaccines “may be a better choice for groups with less immune response.”
“But for the rest of us, in the name of herd immunity, I would take what’s given as it contributes to the war on COVID,” she said. “All the vaccines prevent severe COVID requiring hospitalization. If you are offered a vaccine, you take it.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-astrazeneca-moderna-or-pfizer-take-whichever-covid-19-vaccine-youre/
Pfizer has the best data- 95%.
mRNA has been a killer (for the virus).
It cures cancer and Alzheimer’s too!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9307203/Coronavirus-jab-help-fight-cancer-chronic-pain-Alzheimers.html
They. are. desperate.
Why do they SO DESPERATE to make everyone take the vaccine, d’ya think, Duncan?
This doesn’t make your Spidey Sense tingle even a leetle bit?
This is hilarious. I wish I had thought it up. “oh yeah it cured 3 hang nails, a bad hemorrhoid, 2 rotten teeth and the hiccups. God praise the Vaxx.” The UnVaxxed will have to go to the quarantine centers. For everyone safety you understand.
I think with respect to dementia, I think a big thing with the vaccines is that they allow families to visit again. Being without visitors for months on end has to be terrible for dementia.
Regarding vaccines sometimes being helpful, the article mentions the tuberculosis vaccine. This is something that has been discussed before in the comments here as being possibly helpful in preventing multiple illnesses. This article says,
This is what the BCG vaccine study has revealed according to the researchers themselves.
“……. Jan 18: TB vaccine does not protect frail elderly from COVID-19
Monday, 18 Jan 2021
The BCG vaccine does not protect vulnerable elderly people against disease manifestations due to COVID-19. These are the preliminary results of the BCG-PRIME study among 6132 vulnerable patients aged 60 years and older. The study on the existing tuberculosis vaccine started in September 2020 and was conducted in 20 Dutch hospitals, including all UMCs and the Santeon top clinical hospitals. The study is led by Prof. Dr. Marc Bonten (UMC Utrecht), Prof. Dr. Mihai Netea (Radboudumc), Prof. Dr. Frits Rosendaal (LUMC) and Prof. Dr. Maurice van den Bosch (OLVG). The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and ZonMw made the study financially possible.
Because of the clinical implications for patients, the researchers are already releasing the most important findings. They are working hard to analyse and publish the results as soon as possible so that colleagues can assess the findings.
Research leader Marc Bonten of UMC Utrecht: “The conclusion is clear: the BCG vaccine does not protect against COVID-19 in the vulnerable elderly. Although disappointing, it is important to share preliminary data immediately during the pandemic. The BCG-PRIME study continues, to investigate whether BCG vaccination offers protection against serious respiratory infections and or severe forms of COVID-19.”
Mihai Netea, Radboudumc: “The results of the BCG-PRIME study are important because they provide a long-awaited answer to the question of whether BCG has an effect against COVID19. Although BCG does not have a significant effect in this group of elderly people, we look forward to the results of other clinical trials. These will examine BCG in other groups, including care workers.”
Frits Rosendaal, LUMC: “The large number of participants, as well as the fact that the study was randomised and double-blinded, mean that the results are very reliable.”
Maurice van den Bosch, OLVG: “The BCG-Prime study is an example of a special collaboration between the UMCs and Santeon top clinical hospitals. The innovation from the UMCs could be quickly scaled up and researched in a large number of hospitals and thus patients. This new infrastructure is of value for the future of clinical research in our country.”
The results
In the BCG-PRIME study, proven COVID-19 infection combined with morbidity occurred equally often in frail elderly who had received placebo or BCG vaccination. The study will continue to determine whether BCG vaccination affects the severity of COVID-19 infection or reduces susceptibility to other respiratory tract infections.
About the vaccine
The BCG vaccine is the most widely administered vaccine in the world and is used in many countries to prevent tuberculosis. This means that the possible side effects are well known. In this study among the elderly, the BCG vaccine was used that was ordered by the hospitals directly through RIVM. The study has no consequences on the availability of the vaccine for regular use in the Netherlands or abroad.
The study
In the placebo-controlled BCG-PRIME study, 6132 vulnerable patients aged 60 years and older will participate. They were followed through the hospital where they were treated for six months after vaccination. The study had two primary endpoints: (a) the incidence of corona infections, or (b) the incidence of respiratory tract infections (including COVID-19) requiring medical treatment. As the required number of corona infections was reached, these data were analysed last week and discussed in the safety committee. The results of the number of respiratory tract infections that occur will be presented later……..”
Thanks! I know that people were speculating that the vaccine would prove to be protective.
Ha! So desperate: the Elixir of Life itself!.
It really would be funny if we were not rats in their trap. In the meantime, we can enjoy them making fools of themselves.
I will wait till Cuba releases their Lethal Injection.. then I will mix it with a few of the others to achieve Super Lethality!!!
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/cuba-working-on-covid-vaccine-as-caribbean-islands-hope-for-economy-restart/JTZCESN4GM33YVAF5JOORIPBX4/
Careful, FE, it might back-fire on you: these vaccines are so super ++ good you might end up living forever…..
Yes take any of them… they are all the same at the end of the day… lethal injections
Or better still … cut to the chase and hang yourself from a tree… just so long as you are not alive when the dying begins… cuz it’s gonna be a Shocker of a Time!!!
They must find it terribly tedious to have to go through all the motions of weighing things up, just to get to the main message:
‘Take what you are given, now!’
I’ve noticed an odd thing: people make intelligent-sounding observations on vaccines and the pandemic; but once they have taken one, they become ardent supporters. Once fooled, can’t bear to admit it?
Lidia i was breeder of wolfdog breed of dog. I solded 280 puppys . And now people ask even more puppys….but After virus i goes Crazy and i closed every things
People like some company when they are forced to stay at home, more or less alone.
Not me. Well, I DO indeed have the company of my dear and incomparable spouse. And she wouldn’t like it, but I would be perfectly happy to spend the rest of my days on our 1/8th acre property.
Marco — if you run out of puppies… perhaps you could get a distributorship for those life-like blow up dollies….
Madness – The Q Ratio & Market Valuation: The biggest bubble & overvaluation in 121 years!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Evfka-fXMAADUT5?format=jpg&name=medium
It sounds like the ratio of liabilities to net worth for US Non-Farm Non-Financial Businesses, as reported in the Z.1 report. The chart certainly does look worrying.
Netanyahu: “We May Need To Get Vaccinated Every 6 Months”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Monday morning that Israelis may need to get vaccinated twice this year due to mutated virus variants and the fact that it’s still unknown how long the effect of the Pfizer vaccine lasts.
“We may need to get vaccinated twice in one year, so we’re in talks with Pfizer and Moderna for the establishment of a vaccine factory in Israel,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Army Radio.
“We’re negotiating with Pfizer and Moderna to sign an agreement to purchase vaccines which are effective against the new variants. If we need to vaccinate every citizen in Israel twice a year, we’ll need a total of 36 million vaccines.”
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/1952946/netanyahu-we-may-need-to-get-vaccinated-every-6-months.html
Great news for the folks hoping to make money off of vaccinations!
That appears to have been the plan all along.
Capitalism—-
It’s the system we worship.
Periodic injection of experimental substances into population forced by state mafia is neither capitalism nor “the system we worship”.
Netanyahu is facing corruption charges that will probably destroy his political career. Perhaps he is building a personal nest egg against that eventuality?
Does anyone get the feeling—like me—that the bulk of all human economic activity the world over could ultimately be given over to so-called Covid and its so-called vaccines? Between the vax factories and the apps and the passports and the contact tracing and the daily/weekly tests and health czars and the quarantine hotels and the journos and the plexiglass vendors….
Like on Easter Island, where constructing the Moai became the nonsensical be-all and (literally) end-all of their existence?
Are we different? If so, I wonder how?
Certainly, Lydia, it’s one of those immature markets ripe for investment that people dream of.
And of just as much use eventually as one of those stone heads as the energy foundation of our economies rapidly erodes.
That’s a great observation, Lydia!
Reading through the comments here, I feel like Forrest Gump thinking about the meaning of life (https://www.chrishowlett.me/chris_howlett/2012/01/forrest-gump-on-the-meaning-of-life.html).
In the end, if this is just the biggest mass hysteria event in the history of the world OR the biggest conspiracy, I find solace in comments like yours.
Even the Gates of the world are mortal and this too shall pass…
There would appear to be some disconnect in the Israeli Government:
Israeli Health Ministry: Pfizer Vaccine Killed ‘About 40 Times More Elderly Than the Disease Itself Would Have Killed
Forty is a rather large multiple. A danger this great must be known to all governments and the effort required to cover up this death rate must be huge.
While the full mathematical analysis may be found in the article itself, the authors demonstrate how among “those vaccinated and above 65, 0.2% … died during the three-week period between doses, hence about 200 among 100,000 vaccinated. This is to be compared to the 4.91 dead among 100,000 dying from COVID-19 without vaccination.”
“This scary picture also extends to those below 65,” the researchers continued. During the five-week vaccination process “0.05%, meaning 50 among 100,000, died. This is to be compared to the 0.19 per 100,000 dying from COVID-19 (who) are not vaccinated … Hence the death rate of this age group increased by 260 (times) during this five-week period of the vaccination process, as compared to their natural COVID-19 death rate.”
At first glance, this doesn’t look like a fair comparison. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to compare those who died of all causes who were vaccinated against those who died of all causes who were not vaccinated? We can’t assume that everyone who was vaxxed died from the vax, can we?
It’s not terribly clear. This paragraph
Yativ and Seligmann stipulate that even these “estimated numbers of deaths from the vaccine are probably much lower than actual numbers as it accounts only for those defined as COVID-19 deaths for that short time period and does not include AVC and cardiac (and other) events resulting from the inflammatory reactions.”
makes it sound like only the vaccinated categorised as having died from covid-19 were used in the comparison. In this case the comparison is fair provided the covid-19 diagnosis is applied to the same standards to both groups.
Given the difficulty of determining whether covid-19 is the main cause of any death, your idea of comparing all cause mortality for the two groups makes for the best analysis of all.
The vaccines, then DO keep the frail elderly out of hospital – by killing them at home!
You may have noticed a lot of ping backs to my current post from solar sites and other clean energy sites. Most of these links are really to the story “Examining the limits of energy return on investment.” This story, in turn, linked to my current OFW post.
The article is actually pretty good. I have not found the name of the actual author. In fact, I am not sure from which of these links this article originated. This is a link to one version of the post:
https://koliasa.com/examining-the-limits-of-energy-return-on-investment/
The article cites many different researchers, including Charles Hall, Euan Mearns, Schalk Cloete from a research organization in Norway, Michael Liebrich who founded BloombergNEF, Tom Palmer of Cornwall insights, besides myself. In fact, I would agree with nearly everything said in the post.
Michael Liebrich talks about the timing issue–energy later is considered the same as energy now. I very much agree. I know that Nate Hagans gave a talk on the timing issue several years ago, saying pretty much the same thing as Liebrich. Liebrich also says the concept “should never have got through peer review.” I have never said anything quite this strong, but I have said it only should be used to compare very similar types of generation, such as two different wind turbines, or one oil well, as it declines over time.
I have been speaking at meetings of the Biophysical Economics group, since the second meeting after its founding in 2007. My talks have nearly all been critical of various aspects of how EROEI works in practice. Charles Hall’s response to me has always been, “But how do we make it better?” In fact, he wrote to me after my current post went up, asking a similar question.
“What do you do with EROEI?” is a big issue. The sites that are posting this article seem to be mostly renewable energy/clean energy sites. They seem to consider getting rid of EROEI as beneficial to wind and solar.
I agree with the others quoted in this article that the concept is terribly flawed. But lots of people have faith in the EROEI concept, even if it really is terribly limited in what it can do. They even think that they can claim that the EROEI of shale oil is low, when studies show it is in fact, fairly high.
I think a lot of the criticisms directed at EROI are because people expect too much from it. For me, it has only ever been a “means of assessing comparative quality between energy sources from extraction to consumption”. I don’t see anything in the linked article which disputes that. People can build on that by all means, but the criticisms of EROI just seem like strawmen arguments to me.
Israel launches Covid-tracking ‘FREEDOM BRACELET’ as alternative to quarantine, as court reins in spy agency’s contact tracing
https://www.rt.com/news/516931-israel-covid-tracking-bracelet/
I honestly think they should compel people to buy two of them and change its name to FREEDOM SHACKLES. Sounds much better. They would sell twice as much.
China’s ‘gray zone’ warfare against Taiwan is now at the highest level, which could mean that Beijing is preparing for a full-scale invasion, Focus Taiwan reported citing local military experts warned on Thursday.
Gray zone conflicts are activities by a state that are harmful to another state and are sometimes considered to be acts of war, but are not legally acts of war.
https://in.news.yahoo.com/chinas-gray-zone-warfare-against-065116357.html
Another Woman’s Brain Lining Punctured While Being Nasal Swabbed for COVID
San Antonio woman leaks spinal fluid after receiving Covid nasal swab
A San Antonio woman is still in shock after she says a Covid nasal swab test went horribly wrong.
“It hurt, it was an immediate instant migraine,” says Chari Timm. “I’ve never had a migraine ever in my life.”
Chari was in need of a heart diagnostic test and protocol states she had to test negative for Covid before they could run any tests. She says the swab was inserted in her nose and she instantly felt pain.
“It started from the back of my head and just extend it to the front of my head and my entire brain was an extreme pain,” she says. “Instantly fluid just was leaking out of my nose.”
Chari was leaking spinal fluid.
https://foxsanantonio.com/news/local/san-antonio-woman-leaks-spinal-fluid-after-receiving-covid-nasal-swab
Horrible.
But the headline I saw today somewhere: ‘Japan demands that China stop carrying out rectal swabs on its citizens’ scored quite high on the surreal black humour scale.
(I do hope our Tim is safe,and will not get swabbed by Chinese special forces in a lightning raid!)
Who would have imagined being greeted by such news at the end of 2019?
I for one only expected the start of the final global Depression, dreary and dull, not to wake up every morning wondering exactly what my government, or another, intended to do to me, and via which orifice……
BREAKING NEWS! A new variant of Covid has been determined to enter the body through the a-hole…. Fauci says everyone must insert special Pfizer butt plug in their bungholio and keep in there except when pooing.
Long queues were observed forming outside of chemists as CovIDIOTS scrambled to get their plugs…
Celebrity bungholist Beavis was advising the use of coffee along with the butt plug… Fauci stated that the CDC was looking into this idea and would revert shortly.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6e/d7/b6/6ed7b68a7d181a70638798caef8c62b3–quick-meme-comic-strips.jpg
Fake News, FE: as it would probably give too many people far too much pleasure, and that is not allowed in the New Normal.
Remember, admissions to hospitals for dangerous insertions shot up in lock-down, at least in the UK.
America Has Been “COLONIZED” and Is Rapidly Approaching It’s Final Destiny
I have written about the predictive programming of a former show called Colony. There is a show that is profiling where America is at and where it is going. This is called predictive programming and we should be paying attention.
I was recently going over my voluminous notes on the show Colony and realized how much farther we have come to realizing our future through this predictive programming dystopian story. I would like to share my horror and hope that it serves to wake people up.
The Ultimate In Martial Law- Predictive Programming
The variables, which are a part of the show and make up the nature of the extreme martial law that we see in the show and are part of our growing level of enslavement. The following elements of this show, should quickly get your attention. This is the best in predictive programming.
https://thecommonsenseshow.com/activism-conspiracy-economics/america-has-been-colonized-and-rapidly-approaching-its-final-destiny
How I missed that show? It seems promising.
Predictive programming? Probably. Or we can simply say its authors are fairly attentive and well-informed people.
Quarantine hotel in Toronto accused of running out of FOOD & WATER as guests let loose on staff
Quarantined travelers formed an angry mob in the lobby of a Toronto hotel after it allegedly ran out of food and bottled water, leaving guests waiting hours to be fed during their mandatory stay.
Canada’s system of mandatory quarantine hotels for those entering the country from abroad are now in question, after a series of endless, chaotic setbacks including food shortages and even alleged sexual assaults.
Some of those experiencing the quarantines, which are mandatory for all incoming travelers for a minimum of three days and at a cost of up to Can$2,000, have documented the problems on social media.
https://www.rt.com/news/516893-quarantine-hotel-toronto-chaos/
The “rage” realization of upper / -middle classes they are just non entity disposable plebeians in the greater scheme of things after-all..
Jacinda Ardern reveals who’s next in line to get vaccinated for Covid-19
Will Kiwis wake up now? Vaccination of those who don’t need it one bit.
On the other hand, I’m delighted with the forced vaccination of hospital workers: they are, after all, among the enablers of this growing tyranny.
They can be first in the Transhumanist transformation for all I care: I am perfectly happy being an unmodified one-planet animal.
Would you look at those smiling CovIDIOTS getting their Lethal Injections.
Fascinating stuff!
I suspect I will not be playing hockey this winter — I was thinking of getting my ski pass… but will that be money wasted… when I refuse the jab?
Just rang NZ Ski and asked if I will get a refund if the govt mandates vaccine passports…. that threw them for a loop…
They said NZ as far as they know has no intention of requiring the passports to ski…. but as I pointed out many other countries that are vaxxing are requiring them … so we assume NZ will follow.
So I asked if they could commit to refunding my cash if the vaxx is required… not so keen on that.. so I said you just told me the vaxx is not going to happen in NZ so why can’t you just organize a commitment to me as a one-off on this… no downside right? Because I ain’t buying jack shit from you without that.
He’ll go to the health and safety manager to discuss and revert.
Death Rates Skyrocket in Israel Following Pfizer Experimental COVID “Vaccines”
https://vaccineimpact.com/2021/death-rates-skyrocket-in-israel-following-pfizer-experimental-covid-vaccines/
Exactly as was predicted by some of Israel’s leading rabbis, and indeed by some here at OFW. The question nobody is asking is Why? Look up “Donmeh” and follow the trail from there. You’ll find the trail ends in 2020 at the owner of Pfizer.
Clearly they intend lockdown to be permanent
CDC chief warns of ‘potential fourth surge’ and urges US to keep Covid rules
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), warned on Monday that a recent increase in coronavirus cases indicated a “fourth surge” could occur before a majority of the US is vaccinated.
“At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” Walensky said, during a White House briefing.
“Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can stop the spread of Covid-19 in our communities, not when we are so close. We have the ability to stop a potential fourth surge of cases in this country.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/01/cdc-chief-covid-us-coronavirus-cases-potential-fourth-surge
https://media.tenor.com/images/ea7ebb4c34b2e69ec275bfdd673b341a/tenor.gif
Double facemasks could be coming to Britain as ‘top doctor says coverings should be two or even three layers thick
Facemasks with at least two or three layers are effective at reducing the spread of Covid, a top UK health official has said.
Public Health England’s Dr Susan Hopkins last night told the Downing Street press conference the ‘more layers you have the better’.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9314931/PHE-officials-says-Covid-facemasks-two-three-layers-thick.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
She stands in much the same relation to the real public health of England as Dr Mengele to the well-being of his experimental victims.
She is breaking her oath -if she is a physician and not one of those people who merely have a degree in ‘public health policy’ and should be struck off.
Germany retail sales yoy -8.7% vs 1.7% expected.
Worst reading since 1980.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EvdMuYaXEAI9ivs?format=png&name=medium
Ouch!
Banks in Germany Tell Customers to Take Deposits Elsewhere
German banks are essentially telling customers to take their deposits elsewhere because the firms can’t afford to keep absorbing the negative interest rates they’re being charged at the ECB.
https://stockxpo.com/banks-in-germany-tell-customers-to-take-deposits-elsewhere/
It seems like this will happen anywhere that rates are sufficiently negative.
Banks are profit based companies and the same as any other in that respect. They function only through growth and profits. Like any other capitalist company, and like the capitalist economy as a whole, they cannot function without growth and profits.
Money printing can only disguise a lack of growth and systemic unprofitability for so long – and maybe not for long at all.
Negative interests rates redistribute wealth from savers, from citizens and from any profitable companies that are depositing savings, to companies that rely on debt to hide their unprofitability. It is taking money from people who have it and giving it to companies that need it. It is an aspect of the multifaceted socialisation of unprofitability, of company losses.
Capitalism no longer has the growth, due largely to historically high energy prices, to maintain profitability without a socialisation of company unprofitability.
The capitalist economic system is finding its way downward toward systemic collapse – which will happen once the various socialisation tricks no longer work to deflect systemic unprofitability. States may then have to go for an outright positive socialisation of the economy to keep some if it functioning.
Isn’t it sweet and if you go to spend it now – well you get sub par quality product because of over stressed workers and fracturing supply chains..
That ties also into your previous comment how stimulus on/off spikes lead also to acute spike in demand -> unobtanium product and services..
“China’s top banking regulator said he’s “very worried” about risks emerging from bubbles in global financial markets and the nation’s property sector, sparking fresh concerns about further tightening in the world’s second-biggest economy. Stocks dropped across Asia.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/china-worried-about-bubbles-in-property-foreign-markets
“Beijing’s decision to crack down on excessive borrowing by property developers was clearly driven by concerns that towering debt levels could undermine financial stability…
“[But] by cracking down on borrowing by property developers, Beijing has created another problem – it has cut off an important source of funding for local governments, many of which are also carrying hefty debt loads.”
https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/china-s-vexing-debt-issue-20210302-p57704
Local governments of China are important in all of this. They are fairly autonomous. They get revenue by selling off farmland for property development. They also do a lot of lending to businesses of very questionable viability, trying to keep local employment up.
“Texas’s largest co-operative power generator filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday as the financial fallout from a winter storm that plunged millions into darkness and sent wholesale electricity prices skyrocketing continued to mount.
“Brazos Electric Power Cooperative — a generation and transmission company that serves co-operatives across the state, many of which serve poorer rural areas — said it faced more than $2.1bn in bills for power it bought at surging prices during the storm.”
https://www.ft.com/content/5a7adedf-8328-42a7-9653-d8a88ace3370
The WSJ says regarding this:
According to the WSJ:
My impression is that Griddy Energy was only a reseller of electricity production. It did not level the wholesale costs it charged to its customers. When wholesale costs went up, its customers were not able to pay their bills. After Griddy’s shutdown, its customers were able to go elsewhere.
Brazos is actually in the business of generating electric power and selling it to others. It has a real business that needs to keep operating, or there will be less electricity for sale on the Texas grid.
Capitalism- in Texas, run by Republicans?
It’s a wonder it works at all.
Indeed, highly-regulated CA has done so much better on the energy front.
Mon, March 1, 2021, 12:50 PM
By Ernest Scheyder Reuters
“You can’t have green energy without mining,” Mark Senti, chief executive of Florida-based rare earth magnet company Advanced Magnet Lab Inc. “That’s just the reality.”
Rare earth magnets are used to make a range of consumer electronics as well as precision-guided missiles and other weapons.
Two sources familiar with White House deliberations on domestic mining told Reuters that Biden plans to allow mines that produce EV metals to be developed under existing environmental standards, rather than face a tightened process that would apply to mining for other materials, such as coal.
Biden is open to allowing more mines on federal land, the sources said, but won’t give the industry carte blanche to dig everywhere. That will likely mean approval of mines for rare earths and lithium, though certain copper projects – including a proposed Arizona copper mine from Rio Tinto Plc opposed by Native Americans – are likely to face extra scrutiny, the sources said.
The White House declined to comment for this article.
DIGGING NEEDED
Demand for metals used in EV batteries is expected to rise sharply as automakers including Tesla Inc, BMW and General Motors plan major expansions of EV production. California, the biggest U.S. vehicle market, aims to entirely ban fossil fuel-powered engines by 2035.
Biden has promised to convert the entire U.S. government fleet – about 640,000 vehicles – to EVs. That plan alone could require a 12-fold increase in U.S. lithium production by 2030, according to Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, as well as increases in output of domestic copper, nickel and cobalt. Federal land is teeming with many of these EV metals, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“There is no way there’s enough raw materials being produced right now to start replacing millions of gasoline-powered motor vehicles with EVs,” said Lewis Black, CEO of Almonty Industries Inc, which mines the hardening metal tungsten in Portugal and South Korea.
I agree with Gail…this is a pipe dream…no way is this replacement of ICE going to happen.
Not only would we need to mine a whole lot of rare earth minerals, we would also need to process these rare earth minerals. It is my understanding that we do not have the processing capability either. Then, of course, we need to make goods like semiconductor chips from them. All of this is energy intensive. The mining especially tends to have a problem with pollution. We can’t do this with wind turbines and solar panels.
Gail,
I do not have time to research it properly, but it has been my understanding we have the rare earth minerals in the US, the issue is processing, it is very dirty; this lead to off shoring not scarcity of minerals.
Should this be true, it was a win for the US, we got the minerals, exported paper and waste as well; not cynical, real world.
Dennis L.
Pingback: Examining the Limits of ‘Energy Return on Investment’ | Business, Energy, Science and Technology News
Most of these links are really to the story “Examining the limits of energy return on investment.” This story, in turn, linked to the current OFW post. The article is actually pretty good. I have not found the name of the actual author. In fact, I am not sure from which of these links this article originated. This is a link to this particular version of the post:
https://koliasa.com/examining-the-limits-of-energy-return-on-investment/
The article cites many different researchers, including Charles Hall, Euan Mearns, Schalk Cloete from a research organization in Norway, Michael Liebrich who founded BloombergNEF, Tom Palmer of Cornwall insights besides myself. In fact, I would agree with nearly everything said in the post.
Michael Liebrich talks about the timing issue–energy later is considered the same as energy now. I very much agree. I know that Nate Hagans gave a talk on the timing issue several years ago, saying pretty much the same thing as Liebrich. Liebrich also says the concept “should never have got through peer review.” I have never said anything quite this strong, but I have said it only should be used to compare very similar types of generation, such as two different wind turbines, or one oil well, as it declines over time.
I have been speaking at meetings of the Biophysical Economics group, since the second meeting after its founding in 2007. My talks have nearly all been critical of various aspects of how EROEI works. Charles Hall’s response to me has always been, “But how do we make it better?” In fact, he wrote to me, after my current post went up, asking a similar question.
“What do you do with EROEI?” is a big issue. The sites that are posting this article seem to be mostly renewable energy/clean energy sites. They seem to consider getting rid of EROEI as beneficial to wind and solar.
I agree with the others quoted in this article that the concept is terribly flawed. But lots of people have faith in the EROEI concept, even if it really is terribly limited in what it can do. They even think that they can claim that the EROEI of shale oil is low, when studies show it is in fact, fairly high.
Green Party leader urges feds to consider universal basic income as ‘safety net’ beyond pandemic
“A guaranteed livable income is almost inevitably going to have to be part of the solution if we’re going to ensure that everyone has a social safety net beneath them,” Paul said at a roundtable discussion Monday with Independent Sen. Kim Pate and co-founder of Revenu de base Québec Jonathan Brun.
Pressure for a basic income program has been mounting for several months. Last April, more than 50 senators signed a letter asking the CERB be turned into a guaranteed basic income program.
P.E.I. lawmakers are currently eyeing a pilot on the Island, with three senators representing P.E.I. sending a letter to the prime minister and P.E.I. Premier Dennis King last month calling for a pilot project, as well as for the program to be expanded to the entire country in the future.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/02/23/news/green-party-leader-urges-feds-universal-basic-income-safety-net
Too bad it isn’t possible to print actual goods and services as well.
Hi Gail,
This one went out of the park.
I’ve added it and some comments on “The Lost Generation” thread here:
https://www.ukcolumn.org/community/forums/topic/the-lost-generation/page/4/#post-101335
Thanks for your comments about and quotes from my post.
Peak Mental Illness: Parents Locking Kids in Quarantine Because Schools Told Them To Do It for Virus Protection!
https://offgridsurvival.com/peak-mental-illness-parents-locking-kids-in-quarantine-because-schools-told-them-to-do-it-for-virus-protection/
Quarantining children alone is bizarre. They usually don’t catch the illness to begin with. Even if they do, it really doesn’t matter if the rest of the family gets it.
Quarantine them all – no exceptions !
https://www.boston25news.com/news/trending/washington-high-school-uses-band-pods-keep-musicians-safe-covid-19/6NQRSK5TABF6XDPSKCJE63HYWE/
Stories like this … will make people beg for the Lethal Injection
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Perpetual scam …
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/holidays-boris-johnson-brazilian-variant-b1809661.html
Excellent! I am being told over whats app by a mate that I am a fool for not taking the jab.. that I will be trapped in NZ forever…
I just sent him that link informing him that he will be trapped as well… asking him why he doesn’t wait until the travel restrictions are lifted for those with the jab… what’s the point of taking the experiment only to find out in 5 months that he still wont be able to travel — or that it’s not effective against the Mutants.
Why not wait to see if there are any long term effects — what’s the rush????
I have also informed him that it is not a vaccine it is a treatment … so if it does not stop the spread then how do we resume travel?
Oh and I also mentioned that millions have had the jab…. so why aren’t they allowed into NZ????
We sure could use the tourism dollars.
He does not respond to any of this … logic.
These people will break down when they realise they won’t be going anywhere ever again.
I wonder, will they still love and believe in Big Mother Jacinda then?
If mummy locks you in the cupboard, it’s because she really loves you and it’s so dangerous outside…..
Fast Eddy, Xabier et al., how do you explain that a vast majority of people are fine being treated as second class citizens. The rich can travel, can eat at restaurants, can send their kids to private schools etc.
Most people seem fine with that – they even find excuses for the “leaders”.
I think it is a human instinct (identify emotionally with your torturer in order to survive) but do you have any hope people will get over it?
I know there have been revolutions in the past but those usually happen as the people get richer, not poorer.
I am trying to be stoic about this but I have a big streak of equalitarianism in me that always got me in trouble…
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Door-to-door vaccinations are starting in Texas
https://twitter.com/jeremiahk2017/status/1366139915403210754?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1366139915403210754%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.godlikeproductions.com%2Fforum1%2Fmessage4728610%2Fpg5
“How’d you like to spend eternity in heaven with your family? No? Then roll up your sleeve.”
WaPo: Anti-vaxxers = domestic terrorists
https://web.archive.org/web/20210301015135if_/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anti-vaccine-extremism-is-akin-to-domestic-terrorism/2021/02/26/736aee22-787e-11eb-8115-9ad5e9c02117_story.html
Hmm, shouldn’t they wait for the Ant-Vaxxers to actually blow something up or assassinate someone before calling them that?
I agree—
Let Darwin sort them out.
We are in overshoot with population.
Let it happen.
Any second thoughts?
I don’t think the Wuhan Flu is the Darwinian event you are looking for…
Their reasoning is that not vaccinating yourself means you will catch the disease, pass it on to someone else, and kill them.
This is what passes for intellectualism in American elite circles these days.
WaPo = the Bezos Times, a woke clickbait rag.
I would have thought they’d be happy about that…. if people are too stooopid to take the Lethal Injection then they deserve to die….
Phil, while that is the superficial reasoning, the motivation is deeper and more cynical. Once they start “officially” using “terror/terrorist” language, it gives them excuses to justify a domestic Patriot Act 2.0 which (like its predecessor) was already written prior to the triggering event.
From the article: “There’s no room for partisanship in a pandemic that has killed more than a half-million Americans.”
So says the author of one of the most viciously partisan articles ever published in that abysmal paper. It is a screed calling for the abolition of informed consent, and the abandonment of the First Nuremberg Principle. As another poster said: the spirit of Dr Josef Mengele lives on.
The idea is to make the majority of Americans “enemies of the state”. “First they came for the Trump supporters…” then the vaccine hesitant, the math-proficient, the TERFs, and so on and so forth.
Right. Anyone who, in addition to two perfectly functioning neurons, has an ounce of independence running in their blood will soon run serious risks of being tormented under one of those infamous labels that rulers historically constructed as propaganda tools: Untouchable, Enemy of the People, Terr0rist, etc….
(Where’s the next cave?)
‘It just sucks’: America’s jobless owe thousands of dollars in taxes on their unemployment
Unemployment compensation is taxable. Many are just figuring this out as they sit down to do their 2020 taxes, even though they remain out of work.
Erika Rose was shocked this month when she sat down to do her taxes and realized she owed $600 to the federal government. She has been on unemployment since April and has spent much of the winter stretching every penny to pay rent and to keep the lights on. On a recent trip to the grocery store, she had only $20 in her bank account.
“I was so upset. How do I owe over $600 in taxes?” said Rose, 31, who lives in Los Angeles. “I have never been so fearful in my life of how I’m going to pay my bills.”
Rose is among millions of unemployed workers facing surprise tax bills, ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, and many say they just cannot pay. For tax purposes, weekly unemployment payments count as income just like wages from a job. But few people realize the money they get from the government is actually taxable. Fewer than 40 percent of the 40 million unemployed workers in 2020 had taxes withheld from their payments, according to the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/01/unemployment-benefits-are-taxed/
Yes south itali more more bad than North . Italia not Grown from 2007 and After arrived euro only had problems. Margaret Thatcher was right. For out economia was disaster.
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@All
We have now had one year of discussions about tests, virusses, death counts, lockdowns, masks vaccines, and now passport.
I propose you really look at the video by D.Orlov and read the CURRENT post by Gail once again.
We are now exactly in it
And we are being played for various distractions, currently being vaccine passports.
We all know by now where we go or not go.
Everybody has to decide
As we all know that everybody had to prepare for TSHTF
Does anybody remember short on oil?
I mean he always said: 2022 will be the end of the pipe.
What are we actually seing: the bloody rear end of the pipe.
I am glad that I encountered Gail a long time ago and I mailed my firend that I was preparing for this moment for a long time and I am quite ok with it.
Uhm, well Id like to purchase some of them damn PV elements and a battery sytsem for my bulbs and a radio, did I say ham radio?
So I really like the posts concerned about the energy and food as well as the supply issues and the riots starting.
But I can really get along if the C19 scam is going more into the backgroud of the OWF forum.
We know that it is some sort of theater even as we do not know the script and I admit that I am always open for new ideas about the script but you know…
Gail recently said, she did NOT want to write about C19 related stuff and imho she made a very wise decision.
Let’s focus on our strength:
gather historical examples
exchange good reads
exchange good music and art (craftmanship)
homesteading
flying under the radar
What have you.
I think, the train is already so deep on the wreck that loking at the head of the snake does not bring us further.
I hope you do not understand me wrong. A lot of C19 Ideas I have from this site and I really appreciate good quality input but a discussion about “vaccine quality gates”? Cmon guys, we can do better !
I propose: send a good link and let the readers digest.
ok, maybe a burp after a good meal 😉
It sounds wise! Let me try with this :
https://tessa.substack.com/p/pandemic-panopticon
Oh no, covid19 again! Anyway, she develops interesting thoughts. Some food to digest.
The audience tends to be pretty varied here, we have oldtimers going even back to 1970s LtG, then early peak oil forum members of the 2000s and also relative novices..
Hence different age groups and outlooks.
The Plandemomium_19 discussion has taken over like tsunami and for good reason, seems as its goals and timelines had to be shifted during past ~year it’s fun to watch and muse about it.
If I read you correctly, you would like to talk preps and that’s perhaps not the best site for it, besides this topic seems so climate, biome and culture over-dependent that it’s hard to offer universally valid solutions.
Besides it seems this boils down as ever to a lottery of life / history again, there will be probably various regional pockets with different level of potential ~working IC for a while, which would negate attempts at discussion simple remedies. Most importantly, for many regions it is already too late to work out on some arrangements alleviating the suffering (crashed economy, closed borders, war, ..) and the list of such places will only grow quickly in not too distant future.
Homesteading? Was it FE or someone used to have that catchy subtitle “..plundering ecovillages..” – in many places that’s reasonable to expect, while in some it will be covered under the “safety-protection” umbrella of newly emergent ruling entities, some tiny pockets might even enjoy relative freedom. Are you willing to bet with so much effort into that volatility?
Perhaps the only sane way how to front load the unpleasant future (apart from opting out for good) is to expect less convenience in broader sense with each passing day..
Thierry said:
“Perhaps the only sane way how to front load the unpleasant future (apart from opting out for good) is to expect less convenience in broader sense with each passing day..”
That’s it! Remember that monks in post-Roman collapse Europe survived by being even poorer than the poor people surrounding them.
Or to use Dmitry Orlov’s language – some people can survive indefinitely by eating bugs and tree bark.
The secret is – find something to believe in. Something bigger than you that makes your life (and death) insignificant. It doesn’t matter if it’s religion, ecology or philosophy.
I hope we can have a thread talking about this – what people use to comfort and prepare themselves? For me it’s working in the garden and reading about other collapsed. civilizations.
I agree MM. We all now there is a game a foot but we have no idea what the plot is. Better to stick with our strengths. I do value the posts on which nations are rioting and/or having food issues.
I wonder if there are two types of discussions to be had:
1. The micro-view
2. The macro-view
I take point 1 to focus on the self and supporting networks (i.e. family) to build resilience at the communal level.
I take point 2 to focus on what happens to the systems which organise us. On this point, I don’t think anyone is talking about the war which has been waged on our youth, not just in the last year but since around 2008 when the response basically favoured those with assets over those without. I don’t think the self-elected ‘system architectures’ can fully get a grip on that. As the opportunities evaporate and the realisation (despair) sets in, I think more of our young will realise this system offers them very little in the way of wealth and security. That presents a lot of ‘political capital’ to someone, say a Napolean Boneparte or a Julius Caesar…
AiD> please don’t take it as personal attack but there are many clues suggesting this generation of ‘youth’ is not predestined for mounting meaningful rebellion – simply there are larger historical-societal mega cycles which tend to shape docile, conformist characters. And again the inverted demographics pyramid is against them in numbers and leverage, as the 40-50+ have all the state oppressive and fin oligarchy apparatus on their finger tips.. Mil has been shaped for decades as mercenary-expeditionary force only.. etc.. Simply put there will be no new Napoleon instead it will be a “quiet” die off.. However, logic dictates eventually something of that nature happens on the rubble in following stages, but that won’t be even qBAU or IC situation at all at that point, so why bother to discuss it from our today’s perspective of plateau and phase shift into degrowth stage and or punctuated-sequenced collapse.
Hi WoH, no offence taken. But I think your reply fundamentally misses what humans are – animals in need of sustenance. I guess it depends if all of the programming can override our evolutionary past. I think the BLM protests / riots were just a small taste of what is to come. Of course I might be mistaken but I think that the currently level of political apathy is only maintained through bribery (gadgets, tech, apps, etc). Once the bribes are removed, then what happens? Second of all, despite the demographics, energy lies with the youth – if they really want to wreck stuff is there enough political force / law enforcement to stop them? I might be wrong, but I don’t think this line of argument can be outright dismissed.
In further “gloves off” phase, several steps ahead from today (~5-15yrs?) with very different attitudes among all participants, rioters depending on specific context for the place will be either eliminated down by the Mil using even heavy duty front line equipment or left to completely vandalize these triaged out areas deemed of no longer systemic importance..
In urban BLM context of say coastal NA or in parts of urban France, southern metro areas of UK, Scandinavia etc. these two basic approaches could tend to overlap at certain tight spots.
You see plywood house districts or most shopping mall boxes are not worth any deployment and protection..
And in a dire situation (riots – uprising not suppressed enough) even historic / political city centers could be tactically abandoned (selected art items removed first) if critical IC tech infrastructure elsewhere would happen to end up on low protection.
So, in summary the goal is large scale abandonment and targeted preservation of some of the core IC infrastructure (pre-selected for strategic retreat island-ing), plus private estates (inside such bubbles) these are the top priorities.
Naturally, not everywhere this will go smoothly according to the plan, actually it won’t likely work anywhere for long, these are very desperate last mad dash moves how to carve quasi autarky zones out of large hyper complex system.
In other words, perhaps some areas can become self sufficient, by ridding themselves of the unsustainable portions.
…”So, in summary the goal is large scale abandonment and targeted preservation of some of the core IC infrastructure (pre-selected for strategic retreat island-ing), plus private estates (inside such bubbles) these are the top priorities.”…
Does Capitol Building in Washington count as a core/critical infrastructure? 😉
WoH,
I think you hit the nail on the head with the word ‘triage’. Will the healthy simply abandon the needy? Quite possibly. And what about all of those unfunded liabilities – e.g. pensions?
I think this is a process (as I assume most here do). I think we currently have a system which functions a little like the pyramid building pharaohs, all economic effort is directed at building expensive tombs for the dying. Will those under 25 continue playing this game? Or will they triage elements deemed surplus to requirements? I honestly don’t know. I don’t think most under 25 quite understand what is happening right now, but I think one day they will.
Touching on both yours and Gail’s point about regions being triaged – perhaps we are seeing that now in the reduced utility of cities. I remember reading a while ago about ‘sustainable cities’. That since changed to ‘sustainable regions’. I am thinking that will further change to ‘get out of the city’…
Comments welcome.
Well so the abandonment has been based n age not geography. Old horses out to pasture. I expect that to continue. We are in a place where ideas about what constitutes law and law enforcement are changing very fast. These changes are packaged as so to appeal to younger generations who are faced with a resource depleted environment and are trying to put solutions in place that dont exist. Their education has placed false paradigms that are supported both financially and emotionally. Cognitive dissonance will be kept minimum for a while with those tools.
Older generations have a different false paradigm that is contrary to the new.
This is quite convenient for hiding the reality of a finite world. As the inevitable lessening of consumption occurs one paradigm always has the other to blame. This also keeps tools sharp for those keeping control in place.
The radical changes in law and law enforcement that have occurred may show a geographic preference based on demographics but i expect the lines continuing to be drawn on paradigms not geography.
Those lines are due for a reinforcement soon as demonstrated by the prep work in the press. That reinforcement will be manufactured directly if they fail in overt means. They really feel they can get it done with overt manipulation but it would seem that a wide spread awareness of how they operate has thankfully prevented even morons from stupid actions. They cant wait forever. The stop watch button has been pressed. Finite resources necessitate a faster than optimum timeline.
Enjoy this time of relative freedom. Now that the exoskeleton of control has been revealed it pretty clear IMO it wont last.
If geographic abandonment occurs i wouldnt count on the cities being “the place” as mentioned. Those places are rather energy and infrastructure expensive intensive.
If your really curious where “the place” is look for continued infrastructure investments. It may not be in any particular country. Countries where the “report card” is best might not have preference. Those with better report cards may have agreed to actions that make them less suitable. Raw resources in conjunction with enough infrastructure to make use of them may be the quality that is most prioritized. I wouldnt be at all suprised if South America fits the bill.
They would prefer to keep control in place. They certainly are not counting on it.
Even control is finite.
When Napoleon escaped from Elba with just 1000 men, the entire political and military establishment of the Bourbon regime mobilised to “bring him back to Paris in an iron cage”. The highly decorated Marshals of France unanimously agreed. The rank and file thought otherwise. They defected en masse shouting “Vive l’Empereur!”. The rest is history.
You are perfectly right!
My pension officially starts in 12 years. Well, uhm, If I look at our governemt page for my pension aspiration (1200 EUIR a month), i could say; 1.well I can never spend that money in a month: 2. There will be no people to support this aspiration because they will have nil for their own life (@Gail?)
I could say that an economy to pay my pension will never emerge.
It siimply makes no sense.
It makes sense that you pay for an egg from a guy in your village but payment from a (any) pension is unobtanium.
I hate to rain spent fuel radiation on your parade…
https://straighttalkmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SpentFuelPool1.jpg
That’s what awaits anyone who survives once the cages are opened:
https://www.theleader.com.au/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/9fa64597-0031-4bee-9cc4-a1199469f2c8.jpg/r0_0_800_600_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg
As I have been suggesting (warning) on OFW for many years now … the only course of action is bucket listing…
Unfortunately if bucket listing involves travel, that is not really an option any longer. And will become less of an option going forward.
A good mate of mine and his girl went to the north island to learn to sail — they are currently trapped and unable to get back to QT…. their flight was cancelled… they paid $340 to change to another one … and that’s been cancelled…
If there are any good restaurants still open where you are — I recommend indulging… it’s unlikely that this will be an option in the near future… Q3 looks to be when things get iffy.
Thanks for the input!
– There is a wide age range here and I am not the youngest either. Unfortunately I did not encounter J.Hendrix life …
I really appreciate the “generational topic” that was pieckd up here because history, yeah, in the end there is a “living” expreience (Are you experienced?) and sharing these I like a lot.
– The youth is definitively kicked under the bus! OFW is not a teenage party… But some have kids and I do not and therefore I like to hear about stories from the younger generations that you know
– We can assume “the war between we the people” will pick up steam. So the relations of the elderly and the younger might deteriorate, but elders (some, cough) have one thing: Experience. (Did I mention this before?)
– No, I did not want to focus on prepping, I just wanted to say, that if OFW had any impact on your life you might have considered certain steps. If you have a good read (low-tech-magazine-style) I would really appreciate it.
My latest take on the theater:
“Our civilisational model is dead and something has to be shaken off. Some want to shake us off and we want to shake them off!”
Unfortunately I am really p*d with the c19 scam and I decided to ignore it as good as I can but I must know what they “do” to stay under the radar as good as I can.
Thank you again and do not take it personal 🙂
MM, thanks for your comments.
I do have kids and we are struggling to teach them. They need socializing and that is the hard part.
The problem is even I need socializing and online is not enough. I am slowly meeting people and getting to the point where we can talk openly about this.
I understand Fast Eddy’s approach (seize the day) but I am trying to balance that out with planning for some future.
The best plan would have been to realize that this is the sort of thing that your children would be facing when civilization failed… and to have not had them.
Some people will say better to have had them even if there is no future…because they give you much joy… I wonder what the people who said think now…
It’s only going to get worse… first it’s the mental torture… then … who knows…. hopefully the CEP stays on the tracks… if not it will get very nasty … very nasty indeed… as in roasted over a fire nasty… rape nasty… slavery nasty… horrifyingly … nasty
ISRAEL’S GREEN PASS SEGREGATES VAXED FROM NON VAXED
https://www.bitchute.com/video/c1wq5UCdrcPC/
I heard also that they were going to publish the names of the un-vaxxed:
https://news.yahoo.com/israel-adopts-law-allowing-names-153232886.html
A Mr. (ahem) Cohen in the Guardian has recently written an article with the title, “It is only a matter of time before we turn on the unvaccinated”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/27/it-is-only-a-matter-of-time-before-we-turn-on-the-unvaccinated
His solution is apparently, and unsurprisingly, “a bigger NHS and stronger state”. They need to bring everyone into the Borg -why?- not for protection from the virus so much as protection from the very Karens they have whipped up into hysteria.
If a person is vaccinated against COVID-19, will they still be able to spread the virus to susceptible people?
An ideal vaccine will stop everyone from carrying the infection as well as protecting them from becoming seriously ill. It is currently unclear whether the vaccine only protects against symptomatic and severe disease, or if it can also stop all infection, including asymptomatic infection (i.e. showing no symptoms).
If the vaccine is only able to stop the symptoms of the disease, but unable to stop the virus from infecting us and reproducing, then the virus may still be able to be spread.
Auckland University https://www.immune.org.nz/covid-19-vaccines
As Off Guardian states… and this confirms… there is no ‘vaccine’ there is at best something that mitigates the worst effects of Covid…. But the Off Guardian paper suggests even that is BS https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/22/synthetic-mrna-covid-vaccines-a-risk-benefit-analysis/
So what is the point of a vaccine passport? Obviously people are still going to spread Covid….
>>So what is the point of a vaccine passport?
To encourage doubters to get vaccinated.
Perhaps the people with the passport won’t get sick and fill up the hospitals and ICUs. This is all about “not overstretching the medical system.” Also, most likely, lots of money for vaccine makers, and interesting young people in the ever-growing medical area.
If the result of vaccines is a lot of COVID illnesses without symptoms, that is tolerable, if everyone is vaccinated, at least according to the thinking of the folks selling vaccines. They can just sell more and more vaccines for the mutated versions in the future.
Yes that is what we have been told … but it is BS… why didn’t we lock down here:
The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent-care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures: asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
I understand that this flu is more deadly for frail, old, diseased people than the usual flu… and far less deadly for healthy people.
Sooo…. why not follow the recommendations of the Great Barrington people and focus protection on the at – risk people … let everyone live life normally … we get herd immunity … the at-risk then can them come out of hiding?
Or better still… to hell with the old frail dying bastards…think of Covid as a gift… that puts them out of their misery and saves the health care system billions!
Remember — the Elders are quite happy to blow up entire countries killing and maiming and ruining the lives of millions — because it is strategically in their interests…. they are even willing to kill 500k children and state ‘it was worth it’
https://youtu.be/K8YQ8gKIV8U
Does anyone really think the Elders give a shit about these old people dying from Covid? More importantly …. would they jeopardize the very system that keeps them in power… for this????
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2509/4229422735_12235a8dab_z.jpg
Of course not — they’d allow every person over 60 to be tossed into a funeral pyre next to the Ganges if it meant preserving their exalted position.
This has zero to do with keeping the hospitals from being overwhelmed…
Are Sweden’s hospitals overwhelmed? Nope. No lockdowns. No masks. (hot chicks!)
This is an epic lie… a scam…. and it is 100% tied to the oil story… the Elders started to push on a string in 2019…. so they launched the CEP….
Gail, in the US all the overflow facilities that were made available went virtually unused, so “overstretching the medical system” cannot be used as a credible excuse. Most hospitals have been empty, the nurses dancing in the halls if they hadn’t been laid off or fired. Films of empty hospitals were censored with alarming ferocity.
They control the horizontal; they control the vertical.
The plan was only ever to do with power and control and the groundwork for this was laid well before people started appearing to drop dead on the street in Wuhan.
I agree with you about selling more vax doses and variants, but I think that is a relatively minor part of the tectonic social upheaval we are undergoing.
FE, yes, everyone who read the details about the vax trials knew this, and so did everyone who listened to Fauci say we’d all still have to mask up and social-distance even after getting the vax.
If people are too stupid to figure out what’s going on even after **that**… well, then they are just too stupid to be spared the full horror of the technocratic state to whatever extent they will be able to push it before things go boom. Problem is, they are causing the rest of us to get dragged into it, too.
At this point, you could show people Bill Gates’ signature on their personal death warrant and they still would go along with the program like zombies.
Exhibit 457— random black guy in a track suit gets pedestrians to submit to his lint-roller security check:
https://twitter.com/RichWillett2/status/1365214901841629184
A Cohen encouraging the persecution of the unvaccinated: he might like to reflect on history.
There is a great deal of irony here.
Double irony.
The first is in reference to Germany, 1933-1945.
The second irony is in reference to the USSR, 1917 to cca. 1949 or so.
How cool would it be if they decided to burn the heretics!!!
How easily the humans could slip back into barbary.
Ikea stores in Israel offer COVID-19 vaccinations
“Our main goal is to get everyone vaccinated,” an MDA spokesman said, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“The idea is that if you won’t come to us, we’ll come to you. We have special pop-up vaccination stations that can be set up quickly almost anywhere.”
https://nypost.com/2021/02/23/ikea-stores-in-israel-offer-covid-19-vaccinations/
They will have to put the vaccine together themselves though.
The Surprising Key to Combatting Vaccine Refusal
It’s not just one problem—and we’re going to need a portfolio of approaches to solve it.
“I call it vaccine dissent,” Kolina Koltai, who studies online conspiracy theories at the University of Washington, told me. “And it’s way more complicated than being anti-vaccine. It goes from highly educated parents who are interested in holistic, naturalistic child-rearing to conspiracy theorists who want to abolish vaccines entirely.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/vaccine-hesitancy-isnt-just-one-thing/618164/
Who is this Re Tar DED MOR on?
I guess it did not occur to them that people might be anti Covid Vax because they are aware of that fact that it has not been properly tested… that the makers are indemnified if something goes wrong… and that after nearly 20 years there is still not SARS Coronavirus vaccine…
Or maybe it’s because only 100 or so out of 75M people in the US under 18 have died from Covid
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-children-deaths/2020/09/25/9df39bf4-fdad-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html
Let me see if I can find a contact for the MORE on and express these thoughts it personally
I’ve exploded a bomb in his face here https://www.facebook.com/dtkhomp86/about/
Problem is these clowns are not journalists… as long as they get paid they will continue to regurgitate edicts from the Ministry of Truth…
Yes, one might assume they have shame.
They don’t.
The only question is are they sociopaths or robopaths?
Not that it matters to their victims (aka us).
Yohan Blake says he would rather miss Olympics than get COVID-19 vaccine
‘Don’t let no one take away your choice,’ Olympic gold medallist says
Olympic champion sprinter Yohan Blake of Jamaica said he would rather miss the Tokyo Games than get the COVID-19 vaccine, although getting vaccinated will not be required of the athletes competing there this summer.
“My mind still stays strong, I don’t want any vaccine, I’d rather miss the Olympics than take the vaccine, I am not taking it,” he was quoted as saying in Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner.
“I don’t really want to get into it now, but I have my reasons.”
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/trackandfield/yohan-blake-miss-olympics-vaccine-covid-1.5931481
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U.S. Manufacturing Expands Most in Three Years as Prices Climb
Select ISM Industry Comments
“Things are now out of control. Everything is a mess, and we are seeing wide-scale shortages.” – Electrical Equipment, Appliances
“Supply chains are depleted; inventories up and down the supply chain are empty. Lead times increasing, prices increasing, (and) demand increasing.” – Chemical Products
“Steel prices have increased significantly in recent months, driving costs up from our suppliers and on proposals for new work that we are bidding.” – Transportation Equipment
“We are still struggling keeping our production lines fully manned.” – Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products
“Logistics times are at record times. Continuing to fight through shipping and increased lead times on both raw materials and finished goods due to the pandemic.” – Fabricated Metal Products
“Prices are rising so rapidly that many are wondering if (the situation) is sustainable. Shortages have the industry concerned for supply going forward, at least deep into the second quarter.” – Wood Products
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/u-s-manufacturing-expands-most-in-three-years-as-prices-climb-1.1570388
This seems to be what happens when everyone is trying to stimulate their economy at once, with lots of debt available at very low interest rates.
People use this money for all kinds of building projects, from adding on to their current home, to building a new home. Governments start new stimulus projects as well. All of this spending in the building sector sends prices up.
And my whole town is out of black oil sunflower seeds and my birdie birds are pissed!
Gail et al.,
talking about the virus debate I saw here in the comments.
First, thanks Gail for allowing all ranges of opinions – sometimes it is frustrating but I think being frustrated is a good way to learn.
Second, I notice the same pattern as with the climate change debate. People that focus on one small part of the problem play right into the hands of the propagandists.
In regards to CC, the debate is always between believers (that propose grand “green” projects that will destroy what’s left of the ecosystems and enrich the oligarchs) and skeptics (that want more “brown” projects that will destroy what’s left of the ecosystems and enrich the oligarchs).
That is what is called “controlled opposition”.
Very few people actually focus on what’s important – what everybody can do in their community to stop the use of pesticides for example or plant a garden. Yes, those actions might be futile but if there is a future they can make a difference for the survivors (humans or not).
Similarly in regards to Covid, why do you debate the existence of the virus? I don’t care if viruses don’t exist – diseases for sure do. And we know that whatever causes Covid the effects are mild on most people and focused protection is recommended by WHO.
So why not focus on what we can do in our community – that is what I want to hear about. Anybody has any ideas? I am already living in a community where most people ignore the lockdowns but it’s hard to fight the big gov.
Thank you!
One of my big gripes is that there seem to be a whole lot of things that can be done both to prevent COVID and to treat it inexpensively. Vitamin D comes high on the list. There seem to also be a lot of medical interventions. TPTB are terribly focused on getting everyone to take vaccines. These have a huge number of issues. The mRNA vaccines especially distort our natural systems and are untested for any reasonable term.
I am not a medical practitioner, so I cannot reasonably say, “We should do that, that and the other thing.” So I have not tried to put together a post of what we should do.
I personally have not been debating the existence of the virus, if you look at the comments. If an article heads in this direction, and then tries to make some other point, I figure the article will be totally ignored. It is just not an issue that needs to be discussed. There is a different related issue that with all of mutations, the PCR tests (if readjusted, so that they in fact pick up mutations as well as less mutated forms) can ‘t really count the number infected very well. If the focus is only on the non-mutated part of the virus, it is not large enough to give correct results. It is likely that there will be a lot more false positives, so there will be an over-count of infected individuals.
Gail, thanks for your reply!
I know your position and I appreciate your balanced view and agnosticism. My comment was mostly to the people that are really passionate about an idea and tend to rathole into debates about minutiae.
While the medical aspect is interesting and I tell everyone about vitamin D, fresh air and good food, I am also curious if people here have any suggestions for life moving forward?
I know that maybe a lot of the regulars are retired and enjoy their life on the internet but what are people doing in real life?
To start with me, I am building a lot of garden beds, a hoophouse, talking to a lot of people in the community that raise animals etc.
I am also meeting people face to face when I go get freebies or for garage sales.
But the community here is not very strong. Yes, most people ignore the masks but there are no places that I know of where you can meet and learn.
I wonder if it’s time yet to start “speakeasies” – not for drinks but for free speech.
Good for you, but stay vigilant, for example there are hints that backyard or small scale hoop-houses will be compromised by various wild bird flue contagion – forced closure. Basically denying any self sufficiency.. This will not work in low density pop regions / countries but in many others it (already is) will be enforceable as Count Schwabulescu likes his food ration vouchers and locked in monopoly enterprises (incl. food and distribution).
I’m concentrating on the maximum production of nutritious greens and fruits to supplement anticipated (insufficient) government rations at some stage.
Not bothering with even chickens due to the disease/ regulatory/feed aspect -could all be snatched away in an instant.
A neighbour is losing her whole beautiful smallholding to make way for a ‘green’ road’, ditto for my supplier of firewood the local tree surgeon – quite a lesson! Two good, useful relationships gone just like that…..
Water storage, masses of fuel of multiple types, multiples of tools allowing for breakages, etc.
Improved defences of various kinds – I anticipate an upswing in crime quite soon, maybe even house raids, depending on unemployment levels.
Running possible scenarios so that I have an adaptable response prepared, so as to avoid shock or panic.
Trying to keep a finger on the pulse of supply chains and prices, as far as possible.
Trying to stay good-humoured.
All basic stuff. Trust in God and tie that camel.
A chicken.. what a valuable farm helper.
Isn’t it interesting, during WWII death sentence for unauthorized hens / coops on occupied territories – fast forward 2020s almost on the same path..
This time the cavalry won’t save the day though.
ps thanks for interesting tips
Thanks guys!
It’s sad to see the government attacks on homesteaders/back to the landers.
I guess we were always made fun of on movies and tv (trying to stop others from leaving the plantation) but now the situation is getting worse and like in every other aspect of our lives, the gloves are off.
I do see more people that are trying to prepare – I just talked to someone building a raised bed for asparagus. His house had no garden of any kind so this is a start.
@worldofhumanotg – do you have a link about the chicken coops in WW2, I would like to understand what we might expect next year. Joking, but who knows?
One thing we can all do is plant more trees and edible wild plants.
For some reason, nuts are not considered food (yet they are great for storage and energy content). Same with plants like Jerusalem Artichoke, dandelion or nettles.
Good luck out there!
Oh Gawd… are there still people who believe Doomie Prepping will save them … hahahaha… how ridiculous is that.
https://straighttalkmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SpentFuelPool1.jpg
https://youtu.be/ZvCI-gNK_y4
The experience of small farmers in Occupied Europe during WW2 was very varied: from being murdered, raped and robbed by the Germans, or simply left with very little to live on after the crops had been taken in tribute, to enjoying rather good terms, like some of the Dutch farmers. The German troops there knew that happy farmers meant that they would be well-fed themselves and proceeded reasonably.
In short, the state, its bureaucrats and soldiers, can always do just what it likes with you. When the state fails, criminals and mafias can do just the same.
We are now ruled by conspiring governments who are promulgating a great lie, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and preparing repressive measures of total control, just as then in Occupied Europe.
There is nothing they will not do, and that includes making it impossible for people to feed themselves.
There is a clear drive today to eliminate all forms of self-reliance, even the most modest kind, so the long-term prospects are not good.
On the other hand, it’s perhaps wise in times like these to live in the short-term.
I would do anything food/resilience – wise that didn’t take too much of an investment -one that you would regret if it came to nothing – and be prepared mentally to see it banned, destroyed, etc.
At present, the money I’m spending on that sort of thing would in normal times have gone on clothes, restaurants, art, etc, and if our bank accounts go to zero in the next engineered shock, I shan’t regret not saving it.
Besides, even to try to do it is a form of quiet mental resistance to their lies and arrogance -not accepting their narrative.
This is in response to FastEddy and Xabier.
FastEddy, why do you flatten the whole world in black vs white?
If you read my reply above I mentioned that I hope what I am doing makes a difference to the survivors – humans or not.
To quote an old movie, nobody gets out of this world alive. I still think it matters what we leave behind so I am trying to help insects or a tiny bit of forest. Plus like Xabier said, it works wonders for my mental state – otherwise I would be here online with you all the time 🙂
Xabier, thanks for all the info! Like you said, we don’t know how bad the push down from the governments will be. But the govs themselves are running out of energy…
Survivors?
https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/969/859/roach.jpg
Alpha one do we have confirmed rules of engagement?
Affirmative echo charlie tomato plant confirmed.
You have a green light alpha one.
rabbits are easier than chickens and reproduce much faster.
rabbits don’t till.. and the disease vectors on them are as plentiful as on chickens.. i.e. open to prosecution see above Xabier’s post-thread
if you are set in low pop-density non urban region, all power to you, do whatever is feasible..
No eggs, however.
Rabbits don’t make noise like chickens, so are better-suited for stealth husbandry.
Rabbits have a very low fat content, and need to be added to other protein.
Chickens?
The perfect domestic animal.
My recipe is :
one ground up baby + 3 ground up rabbits… if no babies available the hind quarter of an obese neighbour will do
Also, years ago I read a rather horrifying book by a lady who was dying of face cancer, which had left her being unable to recognise herself.
At the end she reflected on just why she was making a huge effort every day to water a shrub or tree in her garden, hauling the hose out – I can’t recall what exactly – and she asked herself ‘Why am I doing this when I am about to die and it really is of no importance in the great scheme of things?’
Her answer: Because I am here, still alive; it is here, alive, it needs to be done and I’m the only person to do it. ‘
So in a similar spirit I spent today pulling heavy ivy off the 200 yr-old hawthorns at the end of the garden with a bill hook: does the Universe care? Of course not, but it felt good and needed to be done.
I totally agree. You should focus on treating the sick i.e. only those with severe symptoms. Which are very few in the pop at large. Everyone else should be going about their lives. This should have been the policy from day one. But of course there are other agendas afoot and if there was no fear then people would not accept them.
Going forward I think things in general will simply fall apart. The distractions only work for a while, then people start to realise that things are not going back to what they were. Many will snap at some point. That’s when heavier measures will be used – national guard etc even foreign troops – but that’s not sustainable either.
Returning to a natural way of life is simply not possible for the numbers we have now. As systems break down, disease quickly finishes off the masses because of malnutrition, lack of clean water, medical treatment etc.
And then there’s the return of the most natural human instinct… to hunt and kill anything that moves.
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This one is for FE
https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/webinar/register/tJcoce-trjkiG9YuXONuNFx3elRcL7CbDV5R/success?user_id=dUV9ekUDQlCavF7aYte51w&timezone_id=America%2FNew_York
Where to Now for the U.S. Nuclear Waste Program?
Description
The federal government has failed in its statutory responsibility to deliver a disposal pathway for commercial spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and the high-level radioactive waste (HLW) generated by the Cold War arms race. A new report by Center on Global Energy Policy research scholar Dr. Matt Bowen explains how the United States reached its current standstill over SNF and HLW disposal, and discusses how the nation might restructure its approach moving forward. In particular, the report looks at nuclear waste management approaches in other U.S. contexts, as well as the consent-based strategy employed by several countries (Finland, Sweden, and Canada) to site geologic repositories for disposal of SNF. American policy makers could adopt elements of these approaches to improve U.S. management of SNF and HLW.
The Center on Global Energy Policy will host a webinar addressing the U.S. nuclear waste program and the policy options outlined in the report. Following the report author’s presentation, a panel of experts will discuss various aspects of U.S. SNF and HLW management.
Moderator:
— Dr. Matt Bowen, Research Scholar, Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia SIPA
Panelists:
— Dr. Evaristo “Tito” Bonano, Senior Manager of Nuclear Engineering Fuel Cycle, Sandia National Laboratories
— Dr. Phil Sharp, former U.S. Representative, Indiana’s 2nd & 10th Congressional Districts and former President, Resources for the Future
— Melanie K Snyder, Program Manager, Nuclear Waste Transportation and Disposition, Western Interstate Energy Board
If there is a lot of free debt to be given out, I expect that someone will come up with a way to spend it. I doubt that it will really fix the problem, however.
“The federal government has failed in its statutory responsibility …”
Stop right there. If the federal government had any sane statutory responsibility, it was the responsibility not to permit the generation of waste that could not be safely disposed of. It has been failing that responsibility for over a century, and we are only now waking up? The fault belongs perhaps 1% to the government, and 99% to the people, who allowed and encouraged the promiscuous pollution of the environment, provided it did not happen in their back yard. Well, there are no alternative back yards left. You made your bed; now lie in it.
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The Slovak government, dissatisfied with the slow deliveries of the Pfizer etc. vaccines, orders 2 million doses of Sputnik V:
https://domov.sme.sk/c/22605913/koronavirus-slovensko-covid-automat-opatrenia-minuta-po-minute.html
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rdif-sputnik-v-approved-for-use-in-slovakia-301237559.html
https://kosice.korzar.sme.sk/g/179291/prilet-lietadla-so-sputnikom-v-na-kosicke-letisko?gref=https%253A%252F%252Fdomov.sme.sk%252Fc%252F22605913%252Fkoronavirus-slovensko-covid-automat-opatrenia-minuta-po-minute.html&photo=p6843402
The vaccination with Sputnik V in Slovakia is going to be voluntary.
Are they allowing the use of ivermectin ?
Yes, but ivermectin is no miracle.
If it does work, I am sure that certain protocols need to be used. The dose needed to be high enough, over a long enough period, for example. Perhaps other drugs need to be used with ivermectin. It is strange that some claim very good results, but others don’t.
Will the whole nation be tested for a third time after the vax?
Those who go to work or want to have some free movement, need to have a negative (mostly PCR) test. The mass PCR tests are carried out in the towns or villages on Saturdays, where one can attend, if he or she is not tested at work.
How can they afford all the testing? Biden is going to charge reporters $170/test if they want to attend Psaki’s ever-so-informative press briefings. Range for PCR tests in the US seems to be $100-200-ish.
Sorry, I meant antigen test, for just quick and approximate results.
Congrats, good for you as this goes against EU “certification” procedures..
Hungary and Serbia (non member) made the first bold step. Now Austria seems to be negotiating import and or licensing to local manuf, similarly perhaps in Germany soonish..
This is huge derailment for the original agenda because it makes the future jab passports mandate either invalid or not fully adhering to the original plan. Even if this is merely a delay to next round – it’s not unimportant.
On macro scale it demonstrates the war for spheres-zones of influence is on, all these countries are either on the old or new natgas (or both) connectors among other deals at play.
And implied from that means there is ongoing fight for qBAU – hence the IC implosion is not necessarily around the corner now.
The new Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been approved for use in the US. I saw a recent article that I thought was interesting:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/podcasts/trackthevax/91323
What Do We Really Know About Adenovirus Vectors for Vaccines?
— The newest COVID shot uses an existing technology but one with lingering questions
by Serena Marshall and Lara Salahi February 24, 2021
There is both an audio recording and a transcript shown. The person being interviewed is obviously a fan of vaccines in general.
It seems to me that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine might be a “less bad” version of the vaccine to take, compared to Modern and Pfizer. It uses “old” technology. It still would possibly have a problem with ADE. But it wouldn’t seem to be as likely to lead to autoimmune disorders and to reactions to things like PEG in the vaccine.
Awesome. This just means more money for the vaccine makers who are immune to prosecution and more sickness and deaths for the dumb-asses.
At this point, I agree with the TPTB to do the killshot because of the absolute stupidity of the masses.
Let this thing collapse and kill us off.
All very calm in Italia…where Is my collaps??
Italy is absorbed into the EU economy and it will stand or fall with that.
IT has seen near zero GDP growth since the Euro was introduced in 1999, 1.6% compared to 34.5% in Sweden, 28.7% in USA, 26.4% in UK and even 6.6% in Greece.
On that performance IT economy would likely have collapsed by now. The EU sees it as ‘too big to fail’ and IT is now basically an EU project.
EU and Draghi want to now ‘reform’ the IT economy – but good luck with that.
> Can Mario Draghi Recharge Italy’s Economy?
Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Draghi, has a well-earned reputation for turning around difficult situations. But can he reverse Italy’s relative economic decline? And what does his program mean for Italian bond yields?
As president of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi made his name for doing “whatever it takes” to save the euro. Now, as Italy’s prime minister, he faces another daunting challenge.
Italy’s Growth Has Lagged Peers
It will be a tough task to transform Italy’s longer-term outlook. The Italian economy has performed poorly in recent years. Real per capita GDP has lagged developed-world peers (Display below, left), and the relative decline has been stark against euro-area comparators such as Germany (Display, right).
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/2021/02/26/can-mario-draghi-recharge-italys-economy
Mirror, you might be right about Italy standing or falling with the EU.
I see that based on BP data, Italy’s “total liquids” oil consumption is down 37.1% in 2019, compared to 1999. In comparison, the EU’s total oil consumption’s down 10.6%. With this kind of drop in consumption, the economy cannot be doing well.
I think it is important to distinguish between north and south Italy.
https://i.redd.it/xd52fnstc5s41.png
Compare that with example Sweden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedish_counties_by_GDP
March 1, 2021 at 2:54 pm
Yes south itali more more bad than North . Italia not Grown from 2007 and After arrived euro only had problems. Margaret Thatcher was right. For out economia was disaster.
Some gov factions (UK) shortly after the WWII called for severe depop of Germany (even incl. forced sterilization etc.) to “solve” the problem for the future. Perhaps it was a valid call then or not all as both Germany or now US (*well up to recently prior decay) are mere tools for the agenda of private powers behind. And gullible public ready to be bamboozled sits just everywhere.
The Euro is yet another (4th ?) historical attempt at continental Reich ver_XYZ, but it always slams into the wall of problems based on clusters of dissimilar natural endowments be it resources, climate, cultures, geography..
—
* on tangential note ~30x Congress people now demand sharing doomsday keys with Bi-Xiden for some strange reason
I’m quite happy for the hefty immigration into Germany and Sweden. It’s about time to open up the flood gates for Switzerland to take care of the last in the disgusting “lebensraum” troika.
And now, oh yes, president Tsai has caught wind of the muppets so called “plan” with the CCP and halted the production lines of those hitlermobiles in Stuttgart. Vergaser mein führer Angela. Jawohl, keine Elektronik.
Good job on you Tsai. 🤣👍
Purge out the conformist poison with some third world stock that doesn’t give a rats ass about that delusional “superiority” brain washed into every spiritually, morally defect and halfwit muppet that mindlessly executes the “program”.
Easily bamboozled indeed, by the crazy of an era.
Good point mirror. Now Draghi Will do MMT and print and doing debit and debit more. If Summer Will be whitout turism i think can collaps any moment
Marco, don’t worry, MMT / print & debit is only starting to show on the final hockey stick section in the graphs.. Eventually, there will be dragons.. but not for now..
People are already dropping dead from the vaccines.
This is a PLANdemic, okay?
Watch the 10yr yield…..if it rises into the range of 2% or higher….the stock market is going to start crashing in a deflationary manner……
If this happens watch the FED come out and do yield curve control…..if this happens we go into a hyperinflation.
Either way, the collapse is really going to take off this fall….not much time left.
The Powers that Be know we are not far off from collapse which is why they have engineered a fake pandemic in order to kill demand and prolong the system a little bit longer. This is basically a controlled demolition of the existing order.
I have accepted collapse for 10 years. Since studying peak oil I am really tired of this stand-by situation wait wait I haven’t started anything. I didn’t start a job or just pursue my hobby as a dog breeder and that’s it.
I think it could happen in November as far as possible but I think it will happen sooner. More or less in November, but certainly also
Do you really long for collapse?
That’s crazy talk.
BAU is crap, for sure, but compared with poverty, if not outright starvation and cannibalism…
🤔
Tired of recent decade+ on stand-by?
Look at it as gift, full overflowing shops with food, running water and electricity (well some places), live streams across the globe etc..
This will be in future retrograde view considered as past age of utmost miracles..
Life is what happens while you’re waiting.
There is something debilitating about living in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A commenter over at NBL once upon a time, I forget who it was, had a kind of formula for living by parsing future time into threes: he’d think about the next three hours, then the next three days, the next three weeks, the next three months, and lastly the next three years. In each range of time going forward one has less and less personal control, and that’s… ok… but we can all think of something worthwhile to do in the short term, even if it is only distracting or self-soothing.
Marco, how about protective dog breeds? Could fulfill a demand.
I don’t feel I am living in limbo because I have The Leak and it indicates that Big Things are going to happen by the end of the year….
I am looking forward to martial law… UBI…. vax passports … collapse of the supply chain and the empty shelves… and finally the impact of the Lethal Injections — towards the end of the year?
The leak doesn’t get into that but one has to think that is the timing of the Great Dying… once they have forced everyone to take the injection then why keep them alive much longer than necessary?
And then Mother will turn us all into compost 🙂
Stock market will go up, not down. Going down has been a terrible bet for the past 100 years or so.
Dennis L.
Sure it can go up in any terms…..look at Venezuela in nominal terms they have the best stock market in the world.
In order to prop this thing up…..you just need a printing press and the mechanisms to get the currency to flow into stonks.
You may be right. I used to think it would go down, but as long as TPTB are pumping money into the system, it seems to make the stock market go up.
Confirmation that vax passports have been in the works since before the big C:
https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/vaccination/docs/2019-2022_roadmap_en.pdf
Our brilliant, spontaneous, solution to the crisis is to give you that digital identity and complete abolition of civic and human rights which you were, secretly, always longing for!
Peace of mind and Safety for All!
And you don’t even have to wait for the cake to bake: here’s one we made earlier!
Things Are Getting Better, Comrades!