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Most people have a preconceived notion that there will be a clear winner and loser from any war. In their view, the world economy will go on, much as before, after the war is “won” by one side or the other. In my view, we are basically dealing with a no-win situation. No matter what the outcome, the world economy will be worse off after the fighting stops.
The problem the world economy is up against is the depletion of many kinds of resources simultaneously. This depletion is made worse by rising population, meaning that the resources available need to provide an adequate living for an increasing number of world inhabitants. Because of depletion, the world economy is reaching a point where it can no longer grow in the way it has in the past. Inflation, food shortages and rolling blackouts are likely to become increasing problems in many parts of the world. Eventually, the population is likely to fall.
We are living in a world that is beginning to behave like the players scrambling for seats in a game of musical chairs. In each round of a musical chairs game, one chair is removed from the circle. The players in the game must walk around the outside of the circle. When the music stops, all the players scramble for the remaining chairs. Someone gets left out.
In this post, I will try to explain some of the issues.
[1] In a world with inadequate resources relative to population, conflicts are likely to become increasingly common.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is one example of a resource-associated conflict. The allies underlying the NATO organization have chosen to escalate the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in part, because the existence of the conflict helps to hide resource shortages and accompanying high prices that are already taking place. No matter how the war is stopped, the underlying resource shortage issue will continue to exist. Therefore, the conflict cannot end well.
If sanctions lead to less trade with Russia (or even worse, less trade with Russia and China), the world economy will have an even greater problem with inadequate resources after the war is over. In fact, many parts of the current economic system are in danger of failing, primarily because depletion is leading to too little energy and other resources per capita. For example, the US dollar may lose its reserve currency status, the world debt bubble may pop, and globalization may take a major step backward.
[2] There is a huge resource depletion issue that authorities in many countries have known about for a very long time. The issue is so frightening that authorities have chosen not to explain it to the general population.
Mainstream media (MSM) practically never mentions that there is a major issue with resource depletion. Instead, MSM tells a narrative about “transitioning to a lower carbon economy,” without mentioning that this transition is out of necessity: The world is up against extraction limits for many kinds of resources. Besides oil, coal and natural gas, resources with limits include many other minerals, such as copper, lithium, and nickel. Other resources, including fresh water and minerals used for fertilizer are also only available in limited supply. MSM fails to tell us that there is no evidence that a transition to a low carbon economy can actually be made.
[3] The big depletion issue is affordability of end products made with high priced resources. The cost of extraction rises, but the ability of the world’s citizens to pay for end products made using these high-cost resources doesn’t rise. Commodity prices do not rise enough to cover the rising cost of extraction. When this affordability limit is hit, it is the resource extracting countries, such as Russia, that find themselves in a terrible situation with respect to the financial well-being of their populations.
The big issue that hits because of depletion is a price conflict. Businesses extracting resources need high prices so that they can reinvest in new mines, in ever more costly locations, but consumers cannot afford these high prices.
In a sense, the higher cost is because of “inefficiency.” As a result of depletion, it takes more hours of labor, more machine time, and a greater use of energy products to extract the same quantity of a given resource that was previously extracted elsewhere. Growing efficiency tends to help wages, but growing inefficiency tends to work the opposite way: Wages don’t rise, certainly not as rapidly as prices of end products.
As a result, commodity exporters, such as Russia, are caught in a bind: They cannot raise prices enough to make new investments profitable. The problem is that the world’s consumers cannot afford the resulting high prices of essentials such as food, electricity and transportation. Russia reports very high reserve amounts, especially for natural gas and coal. It is doubtful, however, that these reserves can actually be extracted. Over the long term, selling prices cannot be maintained at a sufficiently high level to cover the huge cost of extracting, transporting and refining these resources.
The success of a country’s economy can, in some sense, be measured by the country’s per capita GDP. Russia’s GDP per capita has tended to lag far behind that of the US (Figure 2).
Russia’s inflation-adjusted GDP per capita fell after the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was able to grow again, once oil prices began to rise in the early 2000s. Since 2013, Russia’s GDP per capita growth has again fallen behind that of the US, as increases in oil and other commodity prices again lagged the rising cost of production. Given these difficulties with depletion, Russia is becoming increasingly unwilling to ignore poor treatment it receives from Ukraine.
There may be another factor, as well, leading especially to the escalation of the conflict. The US seems to covet Russia’s resources. Some powers behind the throne seem to believe that Western forces supporting Ukraine can quickly win in this conflict. If such an early win occurs, the aim is for Western forces to step in and inexpensively ramp up Russian resource extraction, allowing the world a new source of cheap-to-produce fossil fuels and other minerals.
In this context, Russia launched an attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Ukraine has presented Russia with problems for many years. One issue has been transit fees for natural gas passing through the country; is Ukraine taking too much gas out? Another problem area has been the rise of the far-right Azov regiment. Russia has also expressed concern that NATO has been training soldiers within Ukraine, even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Russia doesn’t want military, trained by NATO, at its doorstep.
[4] World economic growth very much depends on growing energy consumption.
There are two ways of measuring world GDP. The standard one is with the production of each country measured in inflation-adjusted US$, with the changing relative value to the US$ considered. The other approach uses “Purchasing Power Parity” GDP. The latter is supposedly not affected by the changing level of the dollar, relative to other currencies. Inflation-Adjusted Purchasing Power Parity GDP is only available for 1990 and subsequent years. Figure 3 shows the high correlation between energy consumption and PPP GDP during the period from 1990 through 2020.
The reason for a strong association between GDP growth with energy consumption growth is a physics-based reason. Producing goods and providing services requires the “dissipation” of energy products because the laws of physics tell us that energy is required to move any object from one place to another, or to heat any object. In the latter case, it is the individual molecules within a substance that move faster and faster as they get hotter. The economy is a “dissipative structure” in physics terms because of the need for energy dissipation to provide the work needed to make the system operate.
Human beings are also dissipative structures. The energy that humans get comes from the dissipation of the energy found in foods of every kind. Food energy is commonly measured in Calories (technically, kilocalories).
[5] World economic growth also seems to depend on factors besides energy consumption.
The fitted equation on Figure 3 (the equation beginning with “y”) implies that GDP is rising much more rapidly than energy consumption, almost twice as rapidly. Over the entire 30-year period, the actual growth rate in energy consumption averages about 1.8% a year. If energy consumption growth had really been 1.8% per year, the fitted equation implies that growth in GDP would have greatly sped up over the period. (In fact, the growth rate in energy consumption was falling over the 30-year period, but GDP grew at closer to a constant rate. In terms of the fitted equation, these two conditions are equivalent.)
How can GDP rise so much more rapidly than energy dissipation? There seem to be several ways such a higher rate of increase can occur, on a temporary basis:
[a] A worldwide trend toward an economy using more services. The production of services tends to require less energy consumption than the production of essential goods, such as food, water, housing and local transportation. As the world economy gets wealthier, it can afford to add more services, such as education, healthcare, and childcare.
[b] A worldwide trend toward more wage and wealth disparity. Such a trend tends to happen with more specialization and more globalization. Strangely enough, a trend to more wage disparity allows the world economy to continue to grow without adding a proportionately greater amount of energy consumption use because of the different spending patterns between low-paid workers and high-paid workers.
Analyzing the situation, the world is filled mostly with low-paid workers. To the extent that the pay of these low-paid workers can be squeezed down, it can prevent these workers from buying goods that tend to use relatively high amounts of energy products, such as automobiles, motorcycles and modern homes. At the same time, growing wage disparity allows the higher-paid workers to be paid more. These higher-paid workers tend to spend a disproportionate share of their income on services, such as education and healthcare, which tend to consume less energy.
Thus, greater wage disparity tends to shift spending away from goods and toward services. The main beneficiaries are the top 1% of workers (who buy mostly services, requiring little energy consumption), rather than the remaining 99% (who would really like goods such as a car and their own home, which require much more energy consumption).
[c] Improvements in technology. Improvements in technology are helpful in raising GDP because technological improvements tend to make finished goods and services more affordable. With greater affordability, more people can afford goods and services. This effect is favorable for allowing the economy, as measured by GDP, to grow more quickly than energy consumption.
There is a catch associated with using improved technology to make goods and services more affordable. Improved technology tends to increase wage disparity because it nearly always leads to owners and a few highly educated workers being paid more, while workers doing the more routine parts of processes are paid less. Thus, it tends to lead to the problem discussed above: [b] A trend toward wage and wealth disparity.
Also, with improved technology, available resources tend to be depleted more quickly than without improved technology. This happens because finished goods are less expensive, so more people can afford them. Once resources start getting exhausted, improved technology can’t fix the situation because resource extraction costs are likely to rise more rapidly than can be offset with the impact of new technology.
[d] A worldwide trend toward more debt at ever-lower interest rates.
We all know that the monthly payment required to purchase a car or home is lower if the interest rate on the debt used to finance the purchase is lower. Thus, falling interest rates can make paychecks go further. Both businesses and citizens can afford to purchase more goods and services using credit, so the overall level of debt tends to rise with falling interest rates.
If we are only considering the period from 1990 to the present, the trend is clearly toward lower interest rates. These lower interest rates are part of what is making the GDP growth higher than what would be expected if interest rates and debt levels remained constant.
[6] The world economy now seems to be reaching limits with respect to many of the variables allowing world economic growth to continue as it has in the past, as discussed in Sections [4] and [5], above.
Figure 6 shows that there have been two major step-downs in world inflation-adjusted per capita PPP GDP. The first one occurred in the 2008-2009 period; the second one occurred in 2020. Figure 7 shows the sharp dips in energy consumption occurring in the same time periods.
In 2021, energy prices started to rise rapidly when the world economy tried to reopen. This rapid rise in prices strongly suggests that energy extraction limits are being reached.
Another clue that energy production limits are being reached comes from the fact that the group of oil exporters, OPEC+, found that they couldn’t actually ramp up their oil production as quickly as they promised. Once oil production is cut back because of inadequate prices, it is hard to get production to rise again, even if prices temporarily rise because the many pieces of the chain supporting this extraction are broken. For example, trained workers leave and find jobs elsewhere, and contractors go out of business because of inadequate profits.
If we think about it, Items [5a], [5b], [5c] and [5d] are all reaching limits as well. Item [5d] is probably clearest: Interest rates can no longer be lowered. In fact, nearly everyone says that interest rates should now be raised because of the high inflation rates. If interest rates are raised, commodity prices, including prices for fossil fuels, will fall.
With lower fossil fuel prices, there will be pressure for oil, gas and coal producers to reduce their production, even from today’s lower levels. Because of the tight connection between energy and GDP, lower energy production will tend to push economies further toward contraction. Of course, this will make resource exporters, such as Russia, worse off.
As the world economy enters recession, we can expect that Item [5a], the shift from goods toward services, to turn around. People with barely enough money for necessities will reduce their use of services such as haircuts and music lessons. Item [5b], globalization and related wage disparity, is already under pressure. Countries are finding that with broken supply chains, more local production is needed. In the US, recent wage gains have tended to go to the lowest-paid workers. Item [5c], technology growth, cannot ramp up as resources needed from around the world are increasingly unavailable, due to broken supply chains and depletion.
[7] We are likely facing a collapsing world economy because of the limits being reached. Adding sanctions against Russia will further push the world economy in the direction of collapse.
Many sources report that Russian exports of wheat, aluminum, nickel, and fertilizers will be “temporarily” disrupted. A few sources note that Russia plays an important role in the processing of uranium fuel used in nuclear power plants. According to the Conversation:
Most of the 32 countries that use nuclear power rely on Russia for some part of their nuclear fuel supply chain.
We have become used to efficient air travel, but sanctions against Russia make this less possible, especially for flights to Southeast Asia. A Bloomberg article called Siberian Detour Requires Airlines to Retrace Cold War Era Routes gives the example of direct flights from Finland to Southeast Asia being canceled because they have become too expensive and are too time-consuming with the required detours. It becomes necessary to fly indirect connecting routes if a person wants to travel. Many other routes have similar problems.
US President Joseph Biden is warning that food shortages are likely in many parts of the world as a result of the sanctions placed against Russia.
According to a video shown on Zerohedge,
“It’s going to be real. The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”
If the world economy were doing well, and if Russia were a tiny part of the world economy, perhaps the sanctions could be tolerated by the world economy. As it is, the Russia-Ukraine conflict acts to hide the underlying resource shortage problem. This is possible because, with the conflict, the resource shortages can be described as “temporary” and “necessary” in the context of the terrible things the Russians are doing. The way the West frames the problem provides a scapegoat to deflect anger toward, but it doesn’t fix the problem.
Russia started out being very disadvantaged because commodity prices, in recent years, have not been rising high enough to ensure an adequate living for Russian citizens and high enough tax revenue for the Russian government. Adding sanctions against Russia will simply make Russia’s problems worse.
[8] There is little reason to believe that Russia will “give up” in response to sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries.
The attacks by Russia of Ukrainian sites seems to be occurring for many related reasons. Russia can no longer tolerate being inadequately compensated for the resources it is extracting and selling to Ukraine and the rest of the world. It is tired of being “pushed around” by the rich economies, especially the United States, as NATO adds more countries. It is also tired of NATO training Ukrainian soldiers. Russia seems to have no plan to gain the entire territory of Ukraine; it is more of a temporary police action.
Russia’s underlying problem is that it can no longer produce commodities that the world wants as inexpensively as the world demands. Building all the infrastructure needed to extract and ship more fossil fuel resources would take more capital spending than Russia can afford. The selling price will never rise high enough to justify these investments, including the cost of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Russia has nothing to lose at this point. The current situation is not working; going back to it is no incentive for stopping the current conflict.
Russia is in some ways like a heavily armed, suicidal old man, who can no longer earn an adequate living. The economic system of Russia is no longer working as it should. Russia is incredibly well-armed. The situation reminds a person of the story of Samson, in his old age, taking down the temple of the Philistines and losing his own life at the same time. Russia has no reason to back down in response to sanctions.
[9] Leaders of the world, including Joe Biden, appear to be oblivious to the situation we are facing.
Leaders of the world have created ridiculous narratives that overlook the critical role commodities play. They seem to believe that it is possible to cut off purchases from Russia with, at most, temporary harm to the rest of the world economy.
The history of the world shows that the populations of many civilizations have outgrown their resource bases and have collapsed. Physics points out that this outcome is almost inevitable because of the way the Universe is constructed. Everything is constantly evolving, even economies. The climate is constantly evolving, as are the species inhabiting the Earth.
Elected leaders need a story of everlasting growth that they can tell their citizens. They cannot even consider the physics-based way the world economy operates, and the resulting expected pattern of overshoot and collapse. Modelers of what are intended to be long-lasting structures cannot accept this outcome either.
Limits which are defined based on affordability of end products are incredibly difficult to model, so creative narratives have been developed suggesting that humans can move away from fossil fuels if they so desire. No one stops to think that economies cannot continue to exist using a much lower quantity of energy, any more than an adult human can get along on 500 calories a day. Both are dissipative structures; the ongoing energy requirement is built in. Factories close when electricity, diesel and other energy products are cut off.
[10] The sanctions and the Russia-Ukraine conflict cannot end well.
The world economy is already on the edge of collapse because of the resource limits it is hitting. Intentionally stopping Russia’s output of resources like fertilizer and processed uranium is certain to make the situation worse, not better. Once Russia’s output is stopped, it is likely to be impossible to restart Russia’s production at the same level. Trained workers who lose their jobs will likely find jobs elsewhere, for one thing. The shortfall in output will affect countries around the world.
The United States dollar is now the world’s reserve currency. The sanctions being applied indirectly encourage countries to use other currencies to work around the sanctions. There seems to be a substantial chance that the US economy will lose its role as the center of international trade. If such a change takes place, the US will no longer be able to import far more than it exports, year after year.
A major issue is the huge amount of debt most countries of the world have. With a rapidly slowing world economy, repaying debt with interest will become impossible. Debt defaults will further wreak havoc with the world economic system.
We don’t know the exact timing of how this will play out, but the situation does not look good.
“A value is valuable when the value of value is valuable to oneself.” – Dayananda Saraswati
What is something worth? For many, this is a simple question with an easy answer: whatever somebody is willing to pay for it. In practice, valuation is critically important to the core functioning of finance over the long run. How value is determined – and who gets to do the determining – can make the difference between fortunes won and lost. As with all such circumstances, if there is big money on the line, there will be people with the means, opportunity, and motive to stretch the boundaries and grab more than their fair share of it.
In the public stock markets, valuation seems straightforward. Stocks trade hands between willing buyers and sellers during market hours, and when the markets close there’s a final trading price for the day. But things aren’t always so transparent. Imagine you are a money manager with a large position in XYZ stock. It is somewhat illiquid in that it doesn’t trade in big volumes. Since your compensation depends in part on the closing value of XYZ on December 31st, you decide to make a series of small buys in the last few minutes into the close, artificially pushing the value of XYZ up by 5%. Your entire stake now gets marked there, but it isn’t real – you have merely “painted the tape.” This brilliant meme from @Keubiko captures the essence of the issue well:
If a founder sells 15% of her startup to an accredited investor in exchange for an injection of $150,000, then it might be fair to say her company is worth $1 million. What if it is the founder’s parents making the investment? A best friend? A business partner in a different but related venture? Throw into the mix critical deal terms like distribution preferences, board seats, voting rights, anti-dilution protections, and other negotiated concessions, and it quickly becomes apparent how difficult the concept of private value can become – and how easily it can be manipulated.
Things get really interesting when the public and private company worlds collide, and no person has pushed the envelope harder at this interface than Masayoshi (Masa) Son, Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank. SoftBank is a large Japanese conglomerate consisting of run-of-the-mill operating companies and a staggering array of aggressive private investments deployed through all manner of complex structures, often with significant leverage.
Known as a swashbuckling gambler with an incredible tolerance for volatility, Masa Son is famous for his bizarre investor presentations during which he rails against the value the public markets assign to the whole of SoftBank, especially compared to what he believes is its proper sum-of-the-parts valuation. Below is a famous moment from his 2020 presentation, delivered at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which Masa Son claimed SoftBank’s equity was worth 25 trillion Yen, yet the market was assigning it only 9 trillion Yen (on the slide, he’s backing out the 4 trillion Yen in SoftBank debt).
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/crouching-tiger-hidden-problems
https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff23d8144-8f7e-408e-9263-655677bf7fb0_1200x799.jpeg
I notice that Zerohedge has an article today,
“They’re In Desperate Need Of Capital” – SoftBank Halts Investments As It Scrambles To Raise Cash
It sounds like Japan may have a big default on its hands in not too long. This will push Japan down further.
“The balance of long-term Japanese government debt may have topped 1,000 trillion yen ($8.2 trillion) for the first time at the end of March, officials said Thursday.
“The estimate signals that the nation’s fiscal health, already the worst among major developed countries, has been further deteriorating on swelling social security costs as a result the aging population, falling tax revenues and emergency spending in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the officials said.”
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/03/6804679a5d0c-japans-long-term-govt-debt-may-be-at-worst-level-of-8-tril.html
If 1st booster fails, & we know in the Scottish and UK data (all the data) that the vaccinated are getting massive infection with serious sequelae, then why would the FDA approve a 2nd booster?
https://palexander.substack.com/p/if-1st-booster-fails-and-we-know
the science of negative efficacy.
hey look, everybody, I got a flat tyre.
Today I had for the first time in my life the distinct pleasure of filling up the tank of my car with diesel at 2 euros a liter! Stupidly expensive? Not at all, if I remember that my car weighs 1100 kilos and without fuel I would need the muscular strength of all my friends (to whom I would then have to give lunch) to push it to the nearest supermarket.
As a matter of fact, it was a sublime, almost intoxicating, experience, that I strongly recommend to every earthling. I only wish I could repeat it in a fortnight, and a fortnight after, and after, until the cows come home (to roost).
I’ll gladly pay $20 per gallon for gasoline, if that’s what it takes to keep it available.
“sublime” and “almost intoxicating” wooooooo!!!!!!!
2022 might become the most exciting year ever.
It may be that the intoxicating part was due to the inhalation of such precious diesel fumes.
Ya I got no problem with 20 bucks a litre even… a thousand bucks to fill up heheheh… now we’re talkin!
Peeple are fond of saying — oh we’ve been hearing about peak oil for so many years now … as if that is an indication that it would never come … cuz they are MOREONS>
BAU is on his knees… he is a punch drunk bum…. someone needs to take a heavy shovel and smash him in the head … making a Kwwwwwwang sound…
it isnt a matter of paying £xx for gasoline, its earning £xx to pay for gasoline.
the economic reality that most fail to understand, is that we can only ‘pay’ for gasoline through the act of ‘using ‘ it.
which is economist-speak for playing a game of circular leapfrog
that is how our modern economy has arranged itself
fuel is only ‘affordable’ as long as we produce even more volumes of fuel year on year
the reason things are falling apart, is that we are not producing more year on year to support the society we have created for ourselves.
The current events sure look like we are coming off the “bumpy plateau”. I envy your proximity to the finish line, Norman. I look at my school age children some days and feel overwhelming guilt for bringing them into this world at this time. No where to run. No where to hide. Perhaps I should be praying for a Russian nuclear strike.
i have 7 greats
i doesn’t get any easier—seeing them grow up, and being scared on their behalf
In the meantime, keeping your gas tank topped up (never falling below 3/4 full is helpful too.)
Sound advice, as we approach an age when a liter of oil can make the difference between dying in three days or in three months!
Time, as all more-ons will soon find, is after all not money but oil (energy) which unfortunately is much less infinite than the mighty fiat.
Do you think that having a full tank of petrol might get one a bit of … action… from the hotties?
‘Oooh a full tank… I wanna get wich u!’
Imagine the following situation: you know where the last ten cans of cat food are. Your neighbor knows too. You have a liter of gasoline in the tank, your neighbor doesn’t. You go to get the cans, and on the way back you inadvertently run over your neighbor. Survival guaranteed for another week (and that without counting the neighbor’s hams.) Glorious Victory!
even your inflatable neighbours must find you resistable eddy
I dunno about that … they keep trying to crawl under the fence in their panties and I have to send the dogs after them…
where are you JMS?
fast approaching £2 lt in uk i think
In sunny Portugal, a country that produces exactly zero million barrels of oil per year.
looks like a good place to sell photo voltaic sun hats
Better yet, parasols, since we have so many miles of southwest-facing beaches.
JMS,
Love Portugal, unfortunately don’t know language, spent time in Lisbon; incredible.
Home of “Mr. five percent.”
Dennis L.
And his shares of 5% of the Middle East oil allowed his Foundation to act in this country for many years as a kind of unofficial ministry of culture, so that Portugal, without producing a drop of oil, could benefit from this bounty, which amazingly keeps on giving today. Sometimes hospitality, you see, pays off!
Why isn’t Deion Sanders telling us how he eliminated the vaccine as a possible cause of his foot amputations?
Deion Sanders said he has a family history of blood clots. OK, so why did his multiple foot amputations all happen after he was vaccinated, and not before?
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/why-isnt-deion-sanders-telling-us
I STAND with Steve Kirsch.
though no one should TOE the line and just agree with him arbitrarily.
let’s WALK through the problem, STEP by STEP:
post vaccine, he has amputations.
temporal correlation often suggests causation!
I’m sure his insurance will FOOT the bill for the surgeries.
even if it cost an arm and a LEG.
Many are seeing this global economic shift as hugely positive, the end of unfair resource grabs and murderous demand destruction and a path to fair, true price of resources for all nations. Opening up the possibility for any and all to prosper.
Problem;
The world has never paid the true price for all the finite resources the planet has provided. This is doubly so for the US with its world reserve currency or as Michael Hudson puts it the US has had the greatest free lunch in history.
What is happening right now is potentially a shift to the true value of resources or at least closer to it. Problem is with the onset of Peak Everything the true value of those remaining resources are way more than most can pay. This is even more so when you include several BILLION new customers to the equation.
Unfortunately, it is not clear that the economy can support very many people when the cost of extraction is very high. The price doesn’t necessarily stay very high. The economic system can fail, in total or in part.
Enough of the bad news Harry — let’s have some happy news!
In memory of those who have “died suddenly” worldwide, March 22-28
“Sudden deaths” all over Europe, India and Australia, among other places, with some especially macabre “adverse events” throughout the UK and in Pakistan
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-have-died-9b5
In memory of those who have “died suddenly” in the United States, March 22-28
Four musicians (including Taylor Hawkins), four public servants, two students (who both “died suddenly” at school), and—among all too many others—several who “died suddenly of natural causes”
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-have-died-cd6
If you’re happy and you know it kick a MOREON in the face 🙂
What transpires in Ukraine means nothing.
The west covets Russia’s energy and mineral resources. The west needs Russia’s resources to survive. The west will have them. Taking them is just semantics.
Nato and the US will move into the Ukraine. They will call it a peace keeping mission “for the children.” Regime change. Something to that effect. It doesn’t matter.
The west will move immediately to Russia’s border and cross it, with the intention of accomplishing what Napolean and Hitler could not — the conquest of Russia.
Russia, having only the GDP of Texas, will not be able to defend itself. Hard decisions regarding a country’s very survival will have to be made.
Somebody, anybody with nuclear capability, will push the button. They will have to. They will have no choice. They know that after Russia they will be next. This thing will go nuclear.
The planet will be dead, but the excess population problem, along with the dilemma of energy scarcity, and diminishing resources, will be solved.
Jeff, you’re thesis maintains that a Western Elite acting independently of a Global Elite is effectively suicidal, if nuclear Armageddon is the obvious result.
What makes you think that an independent Western Elite, if indeed it exists, is effectively suicidal in picking a deadly fight that nobody can win? And for what (reason)?
History suggests attacking Russia is always a loose loose situation.
Genghis Khan might have a slightly different opinion.
That’s a good point, except for one thing; It was he, who can arguable be most attributed to having created it.
There is no history for World War III. Yet. Anything is possible. There is no “loose loose” situation. There is not even a “lose lose” situation.
The TPTB (your “Western Elites”) have believed for decades that they can win a nuclear war. World War III means nothing to them. Suicide has nothing to do with it. Suicide is for the rest of us, the hoi polloi.
Jeff, are you suggesting that — and this is just for starters — they don’t accept the straightforward science behind nuclear winter?
Please enlighten me on their nuclear game plan.
I’m bored with this planet anyway.
Jeff, a couple of points you appear to have missed.
” The west covets Russia’s energy and mineral resources. The west needs Russia’s resources to survive. The west will have them. Taking them is just semantics.
Nato and the US will move into the Ukraine. They will call it a peace keeping mission “for the children.” Regime change. Something to that effect. It doesn’t matter.
The west will move immediately to Russia’s border and cross it, with the intention of accomplishing what Napolean and Hitler could not — the conquest of Russia”
They can call it anything they like and it can sound as wonderful as you choose to believe.
The problem is that Russia long ago realised this* and have made provisions accordingly. Could I suggest you look into their hypersonic missiles(the west has none, but hopes to have some that can travel about 60% of the speed of that backward country in about 5 years) and their potential EW capabilities.
They have stated quite clearly what will happen if we attempt what you suggest.
Are we really that desperate?
You then point to the utter brilliance of their achievements with this.
“Russia, having only the GDP of Texas, will not be able to defend itself. Hard decisions regarding a country’s very survival will have to be made”
They spend about the same each year as the British on military(including development?) and appear to have covered those hard decisions.
Looking at what security that bought, who’d you bet on?
They are either part of the game, or showing the rest how retarded their thinking is.
*Around 2017 Putin made all relevant industry make plans to easily convert to a war industry. Big fines for those who didn’t comply.
Paranoia or foresight?
A name forgotten by most is Nicholas Trist, who negotiated the treaty with Mexico in 1849 after USA took Mexico City.
Trist was recommended by then-Secretary of State James Buchanan, since Trist was a friend.
Never an important man, he was coddled by the Mexican reps when he came to negotiate.
the Mexicans pleaded to him , and although for the future of USA (and the generals wanted) most of what we now call northern Mexico, very sparsely populated back then, should have been annexed he listened to them and allowed it to keep Baja California and most of the central states.
He was never punished for this Grand Treason, although he quickly did fall into the memory hole and was never given any important post again.
If he had been less merciful to Mexico, everything north of the Jalisco-Vera Cruz line would have been seized, including the San Luis Potosi silver mine which would have shorn Mexico its biggest source of revenue.
Shorning territories from weaker countries is not a bad thing, but a commendable thing and traitors like him helped to lead the world to where we are now.
Interesting!
(Reuters) ‘Putin explained to Italy’s Draghi how to pay for gas in roubles – Draghi’s office.
Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined to Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi a system for paying for Russian gas in roubles during a phone call between the two leaders on Wednesday, Draghi’s office said.’
https://uk.investing.com/news/commodities-news/putin-explained-to-italys-draghi-how-to-pay-for-gas-in-roubles–draghis-office-2615814
The article doesn’t give more details. Italy doesn’t have much to sell Russia to get the rubles, I am afraid.
Draghi is well connected…
Somebody said:
“The Elite values you in most parts from what connections you have”
If you do not have certain connections, your value is zero.
Italy does have considerable gold reserves….in the region of 2,500 tonnes….last time I checked.
At current prices 2,500 ton could purchase Italy’s fossil fuels for months not years. Gold isn’t geared for industrialism, which is why industrialism went off it.
In my view, the issue about Rubles is one of the most interesting part of these worrying times.
Regional currencies first step down the collapse staircase.
https://www.rt.com/news/552977-medvedev-us-eu-ukraine/
According to the article:
There is a way of saying in Italy for this kind of situation and it is:
‘fare i conti senza l’oste’, which could be translated like:
‘the clients wanted to calculate the bill without the owner of the restaurant…’.
If that’s the case then it’s possibly the first AND last step. The grid-dependent global nuclear power industry needs to be decommissioned before the petrodollar system dies or it’s curtains for the northern hemisphere. I believe the elite are in the midst of executing a plan to do exactly that because they are not suicidal and nobody really knows how their Southern latitude landholdings will fare if the industry goes fukushima. As such this Ukrainian business is I believe in part a problem-reaction-solution misdirection play in service of a near-to-medium term global political restructuring away from the obviously dying neolib/neocon order, and towards a pragmatic but unspoken Degrowth agenda which, frankly, began with the lockdowns and the vaxxxes.
You are right about all of the nuclear power plants in the world being a problem. Nearly all of them are in the northern hemisphere.
Maybe with enough global warming, people can move farther north and start farming, out of the way of the radiation. Or perhaps the radiation will change the population that lives through this event in an important way, allowing them to figure out how new ways to extract the remaining fossil fuel resources. Whatever energy resources remain to be dissipated will likely be dissipated.
Our narrative about protecting the Earth is not really right. Evolution will fix whatever needs fixing. The Earth is continuously being recreated in new ways. This is what a system of dissipative structures is all about.
Yeah, Gail, thank you. I agree with you that the protecting the Earth narrative is false; protection isn’t needed. Not treating it like a plantation economy is what is needed. A return to animism, in other words. But that’s a self-organizing principle.
Decommissioning the gargantuan collection of spent fuel rods, presumably by situating them in the bottom of the Marianas trench or wherever, is the (obvious) elephant in the room of Collapse. Nuclear power is the Pandora’s box that must be dismantled. Until the job is done, this is the issue around which all geopolitics revolves post- peak oil.
To this end, the fundamental reason for Russia’s invasion must be that the old Soviet nuclear power industry in Ukraine is deteriorating and also operating in the red, and Ukraine is effectively bankrupt because Western imperialism cannot afford to float it anymore. And the global elites have come to the obvious pragmatic conclusion that Russia is the logical country to take control of the industry in advance of decommissioning, and the war theater itself serves the function of destroying demand and fine-tuning that destruction just like with the plandemic.
Another Pfizer Slap as the stamping Orwellian boot lol. Hair falls out if you get hungry enough doesn’t it?
Any rods older than five year can just be thrown in the landfill. The fresh ones do need tender loving care for five years.
Of course a dry tunnel cut into granite in Nevada would be better than the landfill.
If that’s the case then why do they require constant cooling in spent fuel pools or segregation in dry chemicals? And why are both of these containments considered temporary?
Hahaha thrown in the landfill… hahahaha
250,000 Years
Spent Nuclear Fuel: A Trash Heap Deadly for 250,000 Years or a Renewable Energy Source? – Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-waste-lethal-trash-or-renewable-energy-source/
In my view, best option is to bring them to the Moon.
I’ve been told that we visited it 6 times, so we can go there the 7th to bring some delicate material. Isn’t it?
I am surprised that by now with the tech advances … we don’t have a hotel on the moon with regular flights… guests could ride moon buggies and go on exploration trips… they could put on space suits and hike… this would be huge.
Pricey – but huge.
Can you provide research that demonstrates that dumping many tonnes of hot spent fuel into the ocean would not kill everything in the oceans… and spread epic amounts of radiation etc… which due to convection would lead to the air being polluted by this toxic shit — and it being carried by the trade winds around the world – then deposited in fresh water and onto everything we eat.
Eddy it wouldn’t be dumped hot. The whole point of continuously circulated cold water is to keep the fissioning at bay. Water is an excellent radiation shield.
See this link and nose around some more if you like and then get back to us with your conclusion!
https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/
Hot means it’s still highly radioactive. If it could be dumped in the ocean without poisoning the planet – they would already be doing it
Yes, Eddy, I realize you meant radioactive.
You’re not making a counterargument, your making a strawman argument, because you are refusing to grow in this moment. Your refusal is your business but your straw-manning my argument makes it my business.
Feel free to try again with a counterargument. Or concede the point.
I never said it was a good scenario, dumping that shit in the most remote parts if the ocean, but I don’t see a better choice given the circumstances. And you clearly don’t either.
moving further north to farm–just like that, cannot work
farming requires weather to be stable within certain parameters—future weather is going to be anything but that,
unless of course you were being ironic Gail.
also farming requires masses of ancilliary services as well—they cannot be easily moved around.
And soil…
Canadian shield is a problem.
Dennis L.
“If interest rates are raised, commodity prices, including prices for fossil fuels, will fall.” I would like to see some ref. support for this statement – which is especially weak in the face of numerous extraneous economic variables beside interest rates. What I see is a huge drop in oil prices in 2014 while interest rates continued to decline. Primarily because of far more cost efficient oil production technologies and the technologies ability to increase the production not only from new wells, but even from some previous wells which nearly doubled global oil reserve potential extraction levels. Recently, oil prices have been rising along with interest rates – even though oil consumption was down during the pandemic.
“Russia is in some ways like a heavily armed, suicidal old man, who can no longer earn an adequate living.”
You seem not to understand that “Russia” from a policy and management standpoint – is totally Putin and his hand picked oligarchs. “Your old man analogy” only works for Putin – who is at 70 an old man, but not for Russia as a nation and a people. Putin’s managerial incompetence – primarily a failure to manage Russia as an enterprise – has failed. He spent far to much of the last decades effort amassing his and his oligarchs fortunes – at the expense of the Russian people and economy. The Ukraine for all of its faults – has little blame in Putin’s mismanagement of Russian resources and its economy. Ruining Ukraine will not make up for Putin’s increasingly failing management and incompetence. Clearly, it will only limit his international credibility and options to negotiate effectively for the Russian economy.
Additionally, Russia being “incredibly well armed” is also a relatively poorly qualified statement. Especially, if you consider the readiness of their military equipment whose readiness rates are about half most other western nations. That doesn’t mean Russia isn’t still dangerous, but as you also point out Russia’s failing economy – is also equally applicable to its military maintenance spending. “While Russia has produced new technological toys (such as the Armata series tanks and armored vehicles), Moscow’s ability to pay and sustain modernization efforts leaves lingering doubts about a resurgent Russian military. Despite the almost ebullient hysteria surrounding Russia’s new equipment and capabilities, its military is still hampered by structural, economic and strategic constraints that not only limit its evolution and growth, but also threaten its current progress.”
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/russias-deceptively-weak-military-13059
With respect to, “If interest rates are raised, commodity prices, including prices for fossil fuels, will fall”:
Commodity prices are balanced on a knife’s edge, so to speak. Any tiny downward fluctuation in demand for goods and services will reduce the demand for the entire mix of commodities used to make those goods and services. This is what makes commodity prices fall, if interest rates are raised. Less oil is needed; less steel is needed; less copper is needed, and so on.
Think about your own family. If interest rates are raised, suddenly the monthly payment for buying a house or vehicle will rise. Not everyone will be changing cars or homes (in a given month or year) but those who do will find their monthly payments increasing. There is no reason to believe that wages will rise at the same time.
To accommodate these higher monthly payments, the people with these higher payments will have to cut back on their purchase of discretionary goods and services, such as going out to eat or choosing to buy a new car. This is what leads to the fall in demand and the fall in commodity prices.
In fact, the decline in demand also leads to layoffs in discretionary areas of the economy. If people go out to eat less, restaurant workers will lose their jobs. If they buy fewer new cars, demand for steel and aluminum and energy products to produce the new cars will decrease.
Very clear explanation. Thank you Gail.
Zerohedge posted an article how Americans are now turning to store brand goods because brand labeled foods prices have gotten out of reach for families looking to make ends meet and let’s add shortages as well.
In the 70’s it was this way with many families getting by with pasta and spaghetti sauce.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/consumers-ditch-brand-name-generic-food-inflation-shortages-hit-supermarkets
In times like this .. best to keep an eye on your family pets.
While I agree with your finite critical resource – dilution and depletion economics – Gail you seem to be frequently running off the far right rails these days.
You might want to research who the Azov regiment is and how significant and representative they are in the Ukraine. “For comparison, Azov membership was estimated to be anywhere from 900 to 2,500 prior to the Russian invasion, while the Ukrainian standing military in total was composed of about 200,000 troops.” Ukraine defenders are no estimated to be over 600,000. (https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/02/what-is-ukraines-azov-battalion/)
Oh gosh… snopes?
Very strange comment
Anyone who quotes Snopes as an authoritative source deserves to be roundly ridiculed.
They are 50% owned by an ad agency that makes money by getting people to click on the site, and there is plenty of evidence that their output is biased and not reliable. For instance, they have been heavily influenced by Monsanto into “fact checking” factual claims against Roundup and finding them wanting.
Plus founder David Mikkelsen has been accused of embezzling $98,000 of company money to spend on “himself and prostitutes”.
Plus, in August 2021, this same David Mikkelsen acknowledged plagiarizing from dozens of articles done by mainstream news outlets over several years, calling the appropriations “serious lapses in judgment.”
You might want to “fact check” the above, but in my opinion, “Oh gosh… snopes?” is a pretty tame and reasonable reaction.
Oh — so his wife Works the Street — gives him the cash — then he blows it on ho okers…
I reckon it’s also going on meth — he looks like a well-rounded degenerate. I bet he stinks of stale piss.
such an elegant turn of phrase eddy
your english lessons are coming along very well
Facebook has announced plans to check for ‘fake news’ using a series of organizations to assess whether stories are true
One of them is a website called Snopes.com which claims to be one of the web’s ‘essential resources’ and ‘painstaking, scholarly and reliable’
It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research
Now they are divorced – with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on ‘himself and prostitutes’
In a lengthy and bitter legal dispute he is claiming to be underpaid and demanding ‘industry standard’ or at least $360,000 a year
The two also dispute what are basic facts of their case – despite Snopes.com saying its ‘ownership’ is committed to ‘accuracy and impartiality’
Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson’s new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the website as an administrator
She has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims website is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a ‘Dump Bush’ platform
Its main ‘fact checker’ is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog ‘ViceVixen’ says she is in touch with her ‘domme side’ and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking pot
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html
Melting snowflakes insted of melting glaciers. The new narrative.
Pretty sure he married a prostitute or a porn star…..and then has some sort of weird sexual criminal charge if I am not mistaken.
Not the person who you should believe.
Jeez… sounds like a real freeeek show …. I will call the SPCA … you can just imagine what they’d do with a pet dog… sickens me to think of it…
Durwood,
Anybody who has within themself a modicum of a personal center of gravity , has left the regressive MSM feedlot of the mind, for greener pastures. It is only from the feedlot loudspeakers that the pastures are said to be far right, and the echoes originating from the loudspeakers may seem like they are coming from inside yourself but I can assure you that they are just reverberations in the hollow man.
Calling us far right while not knowing the first thing about it is the hallmark of elitism. Elitism is mainstream supremacism. Hence all the censorship and dehumanization by the mainstream.
If you have loved ones depending on you, I suggest you take a step back and consider very carefully how you approach the future because we, here can all see that your worldview sits on the wrong side of history. Your kind are very clearly being run off a cliff.
Hahahahahhahahaha…. you are referencing a pi mp hahahaha with a po rn star / hoo ker for a wife…
let me salvage your reputation by pointing out you intended this to be sarcasm
NATO is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine, one that it cannot win, but just to do as much damage as possible. They live in a world in which they can act like that, but in another, they would be dealt with very severely. The present disposition of things is time limited. They must expect pay back at some point.
NATO may be dealt with very severely in this world, I am afraid.
The Americans made a huge mistake (I know Tim doesn’t like to hear the favorite word I like to use in this kind of situation) by not showing USSR the middle finger during the so called Race for Berlin.
Eisenhower wanted to save a few thousand working classs American’s lives and let the Soviets have Berlin, which gave USSR/Russia a moral superiority which Putin is exploiting even now.
With Americans taking Berlin, the Soviets/Russians would not be able to have claimed to be the victor of World War 2, which really , really gave it a lot of moral strength and the central Asian stans, which had nothing to do with Europe, are still kinda close to Moscow because ‘they also fought to liberate europe’.
With the Americans taking Berlin, sure, a few thousand Americans would have been killed. around the number of americans who died in traffic accidents during the same period of time.
Russia would not have anything to tie the ‘stans’ to it. In fact, Soviet youths would have suffered the same symptoms like the Vietnam vets did in 1970s; all these fight, for nothing.
I have debated it for years, and most Americans said Eisenhower saved American lives so it was a correct decision. Well, it is now proven to be not exactly a correct decision ; USSR should have been denied a spot in the world stage.
I won’t even go to the Rosenbergs. The failure to destroy Russia as a single unity during 1990s by recognizing Chechnya is another topic which is saved for another day.
kul,
How many son’s would you have sacrificed to take Berlin, et. al?
Dennis L.
as Patton may (or may not have) said—we’re gonna have to fight the russkies one day, might as well do it now, while we’re here
Was this the guy the one who smashed 4 divisions of deaf and stomach ulcer reservists?
I have heard of him, it seems he is some kind of rock star in usa mythology. I like western mythology, it is the ultimate case of simplicity.
My grandfather didn’t have much time for Patton… blowhard, smacked a shell shocked soldier. Gramps was a Morris Code operator for a supply battalion of the 3rd Armored Division under General Rose. Rose died in a blaze of machine gun fire after riding at the head of a tank battalion along a road surrounded by Germans.
i wasnt offering an opinion on Pattons character—one way or the other
Norm, thanks for your opinion!
Was that who was defending Messina? Lets hope he improved the local gene pool as he passed through…..
a few thousand. Compared to 40,000 in Korea and 58,318 at Vietnam.
what you seem to be saying is, that somehow, in 1945, using a crystal ball, Eisenhower should have been able to foresee the galloping growth in wealth and prosperity of the western world over the next 30 years, the creation and collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet union, and the effect that would have in 2022.
At the time, 1945, enough people had died on all sides.
eisenhower, and the allies wanted an end to it.
you cannot overlay 21st centiry politics onto 20th c circumstances and expect to be taken seriously.
we can all be military geniuses in hindsight.
Already signs of cold war were apparent given what was being done to Poland at that time.
Taking Berlin would have been the greatest middle finger to USSR, Stalin and everything which it stood for, and would probably created a war weariness in there which would have prevented it from getting adventurous.
If only Blucher’s Prussians had arrived a bit later at Waterloo, everyone in Europe today would be speaking dodgy French, I mean, ‘ow you say, la langue de la civilisation française.
we are all flotsam on the tide of chance, washed up on the shore of circumstance. (NP 2022)
we flatter ourselves in thinking we are not
A vast improvement over today, American English dominant but popular songs sung in Korean.
From what I read, Eisenhower knew the battle for Berlin would take many casualties on both sides, which it did.
Stalin’s attempt to take Berlin ahead of his allies in 1945, led to the death of 70,000 Russian soldiers. BBC
not counting the wounded or permanent maimed.
The division of Germany was already settled with Berlin in the Russian zone.
True, Stalin wanted the honor, but he paid a heavy price for it, or I should say his soldiers did.
Think Eisenhower made the best call given the circumstances.
The Germans could expect no mercy from the Russians so they fought very hard
Things would have been quite different if the West advanced; only the die hards, like SS foreign legion (people like Leon Dagelle) would have fought very hard, and the Nazi bigwigs would have sold Hitler to the highest bidder.
A. Stephan Hamilton has argued for years that Heinrici, the general in charge of the defense of Berlin region, was willing to lead the Americans to the German capital , just to spite the Soviets.
IF Stalin were denied the honor, we would not have a Russia, but Muscovy, Novogorod, Tatarstan etc, with USSR’s seat on the Security Council probably going to India.
just like our personal lives
history is full of maybes
Eisenhower couldn’t throw away soldiers lives without being accountable
Stalin didnt have that problem
simple as that
Sure there were generals who were keen to throw away lives.
I adhere to Wellington’s maxim that grunts are no more than ‘scum of the earth’.
They are just cogs in a machine.
Here is the account of Mark Clark, an American general whose tactics were responsible for a few thousand Texan deaths in the Italian Front but no one other than some Texans remember him.
http://www.vqronline.org/essay/question-leadership-5th-army-italy
my comment re soldiers lives was meant in the broad sense
if you get killed following a generals orders—then ‘your life’ was thrown away.
if expending your life saved a dozen others—was it ‘thrown away?’
Or not?
battle of britain pilots died–(the few)—but possibly saved millions by preventing invasion of the uk
just another way of looking at it.
norm did you participate in WW1? What about the Boer War?
How much of Europe do you really think is worth while anyway? Anywhere south of the Alps? Slavs, Latins?
I doubt that any geopolitical states are going to go out of their way to achieve your idiosyncratic objectives for you.
USA got global hegemony out of WWII. The USSR ‘threat’ to Europe helped USA to organise its own hegemony. Russia still is/ would be if NATO succeeded, which it will not.
Perhaps you think that the world itself contains inherent tendencies toward your own objectives?
This is the sort of site where people need to say what they really think, and not play games.
Urals.
The Scythians should have been kicked out east of that.
Kulm, recent archaeogenetic analysis of the Scythians suggests that they are probably not some historical ‘ideal’ or ‘archetype’ of what you have in mind. That anthropological myth seems to be busted, and that general sort of thing, of original, ancient, historical ‘types’, is not really sustainable. Blavatsky popularised that in its crudest, ‘esoteric’ form of original ‘root races’. We live in the Darwinian age of ongoing evolution and varied populations.
Scythians were a heterogeneous and hybrid confederation, mainly with large ancestral components of Eastern Europe hunter-gatherer, Near Eastern, and South Asian, in addition to minor East Asian ancestral components that are found in all of the groups.
The Yamnaya are currently presumed to be the population from which Indo-European languages spread into Europe, and they were a different hybrid people of Eastern European HG, Caucasus HG and minor Anatolian farmer ancestry; no one really knows which of those ancestral components, if any, was associated with pre-proto-Indo-European. Yamnaya were an historical part of the flux, as were the Scythians.
Humans are not static, they are in constant flux; and whatever your ‘ideal’ is, it is probably located much more recently – in so far as it is not entirely imaginary. A fussiness about populations and ‘types’ is as much about ‘art’ and ‘intuition’ as it is about ‘science’ and ‘reality’. The psychological ‘need’ for ‘purity’, or ‘singleness’, is probably related to the ‘singularity’ of the ‘ego’ construct in consciousness, the ‘unity’ of the ‘I’. Organic ‘unity’ is, at ‘best’, a ‘harmony’ of parts and drives, rather than a literal singularity. There is no enduring, set ‘essence’ to populations, which is abstracted, or imposed, as ‘identity’ out of the varied flux. So, ‘ideals’ are as much about ‘art’, about ‘creation’, as about ‘what is’. Ancient groups are used as poetic ‘figures’ or metaphors of what is had in mind, and they are not to be confused with reality.
Anyway, the Scythians. They represent an eastward, and indeed East Asian, shift on the Steppe. They were very much an Eurasian population. So, it probably makes less sense to associate your ‘ideal’ with them than with modern ‘Europeans’. Obviously, ‘ideals’ and reality are not the same thing. Indeed, no one is about to idealise modern Europeans per se. ‘Ideals’ are to be ‘realised’, they do not ‘just exist’, either in the present or in the past. The modern approach is very contrary to all of that, anyway – bourgeois society. It is probably very unrealistic to expect to ‘realise’ personal ‘ideals’, especially in this sort of society.
> Shifts in the Genetic Landscape of the Western Eurasian Steppe Associated with the Beginning and End of the Scythian Dominance
Results and Discussion
…. For a general genetic characterization, we first performed principal component and ADMIXTURE analyses, which confirmed the confederate nature of Scythian tribes shown by previous studies [1, 3]: all five spatiotemporal groups — Ukrainian Bronze Age (Ukr_BA; 2 samples), Ukrainian Scythians (Scy_Ukr; 9 samples), Ukrainian post-Scythian Chernyakhiv culture (Chern; 3 samples), Scythians and Sarmatians from the Southern Urals (ScySar_SU; 8 samples), and Scythians from Kazakhstan (Scy_Kaz, 4 samples) — were clearly distinct.
…. Summary
…. We present new whole-genome sequences of 31 ancient Western and Eastern Steppe individuals, including Scythians as well as samples pre- and postdating them, allowing us to set the Scythians in a temporal context (in the Western, i.e., Ponto-Caspian Steppe). We detect an increase of eastern (Altaian) affinity along with a decrease in eastern hunter-gatherer (EHG) ancestry in the Early Iron Age Ponto-Caspian gene pool at the start of the Scythian dominance. On the other hand, samples of the Chernyakhiv culture postdating the Scythians in Ukraine have a significantly higher proportion of Near Eastern ancestry than other samples of this study.
…. This study’s Scythian and Sarmatian samples did not overlap with any published Bronze Age samples from the Eurasian Steppe, being clearly more “eastern” than a dense cluster of mostly Middle–Late Bronze Age populations from various studies [2, 16, 17, 18] at the edge of modern European variation (Figure S1).
At K = 5, ADMIXTURE analysis revealed three major ancestry components in all five groups considered: (1) one prevalent in European hunter-gatherer (HG) samples (dark blue); (2) one prevalent in Near Eastern Natufian and Neolithic samples (light blue); and (3) one prevalent in modern and ancient South Asians (green; Figure S2). However, all samples of this study also possessed at least one additional eastern component, one of which was nearly at 100% in modern Nganasans (orange) and the other in modern Han Chinese (yellow; Figure S2). The eastern components were present in variable proportions in the samples of this study, mostly at lower frequencies than the three above-mentioned components but noticeably higher in two of the four Scy_Kaz samples and in one ScySar_SU sample….
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30712-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982219307122%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
they do
but then someone becomes highly affronted because it conflicts with what they think,
then the abuse starts, and rational exchange of viewpoint goes out the window
then the forum itself is degraded to the lowest common denominator
Clearer than that it is not possible..
(Hareetz) “Without in any way minimizing Ukraine’s heroic defense against the Russian invasion, there’s also a behind-the-scenes hero: the precise intelligence the United States, Britain and other NATO countries have given the Ukrainians. Without this vast trove of intel – and the ability to quickly put it to use in military operations – it’s doubtful whether the Ukrainians could have successfully stood up to the huge force that invaded its territory”
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-western-intelligence-has-been-a-force-multiplier-in-ukraine-1.10708444
“A month into Russia’s devastating invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s military is surprised about what they are seeing.
“Comparing it to “a war of the past,” senior military officers have said that while Russia has deployed a large number of troops to its neighboring country and a large number of military platforms, they have yet to make use of any of their advanced weaponry.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/israeli-military-surprised-at-how-the-war-in-ukraine-is-going/ar-AAVD1KJ
What with Ukraine and the gas spat, there’s lots of news today, Sir Harry. And you are doing a grand job covering it.
Why, thank you, Tim. There are certainly a lot of balls to juggle right now!
Interesting. This is an article from the Jerusalem Post, being picked up by MSN, so it is not just an anonymous blogger saying this.
Ahhhhhh… so that’s why there are no selfies with dead bodies … it’s a Fake War… War Lite….
Just enough boom boom to give the appearance of a war with some fake photos thrown in .. a bit of video game clips…..
Yes…. yes… that’s how you fight a war — you tie your hands behind your back cuz.
Distracts the MOREONS as we Let er Rip and wait for that deadly Devil Covid to arrive.
Germany Scrambles To Ration Gas After Refusing To Make Payments In Rubles
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/germany-scrambles-ration-gas-after-refusing-make-payments-rubles
My personal opinion – I think we will see the next chapter or the next drop (JMG catabolic collapse) or a perhaps a total collapse in the petrodollar or the financial systems.
My personal feeling: This is all scripted. The play calls for the fall of the West, and it will be horrible for the people in Europe and North America to live through. But it’s scripted all the same. Norman will insist it can’t be—a scenario that extensive cannot be written. It would be bigger than Gone With the Wind! I would reply that the Elders have supercomputers these days. They no longer need to work only with pencils and crayons. They are crashing the West deliberately and the Covid caper and the Ukraine imbroglio and the “we won’t pay Rubles for the energy we buy from Russia” gambit are all part of The Great Deception—the plausible deniability that they need in order to escape the blame for the death and destruction to come. Just my personal intuition.
Spot on Tim. 100% agree.
Agreed, Tim.
There’s nothing natural or organic when it comes to the world of man. You’ll find natural and organic elements in nature, certainly, but not in the manmade systems of civilization (e.g. politics, economy, news media, education, corporations, currencies, etc.). The systems of civilization require human agency, management, and hierarchy. Thus human beings will always be responsible for any changes that occur within these systems.
For example, plenty of fools have proclaimed, “COVID-19 decimated small businesses” and other similar nonsense. No, in actuality it was hysteria generated by the news media’s 24/7 fear campaigning coupled with authoritarian city, county, and state health measures that decimated small businesses. Human beings were 100% behind that and their actions are entirely traceable by their recorded legislative decisions, executive orders, and mandates.
first off—lets get rid of that ‘elders’ thing
no one knows who/where/what they are. I have been assured that they exist—so far they seem to be a creation to lend credibility to whatever ‘conspiracy’ is current.
last year it was covid—this year it’s ukraine invasion. No doubt they were equally involved in the WTC collapse. (without supercomputers) and probably Kennedy’s assassination.
the elders seem to be a focus of justification, of ‘reason’—without them, current circumstance ‘could not be’. They are the ‘driving force’ of our current predicament.
We fantasise them into our reality. To suit our circumstance-of-the-moment.
‘they’ must be responsible.
]The elders’ in whatever form they exist, are concerned only with one thing—profit. If the global economic system collapses, their profit base vanishes with it.
I grant them the fact that they are smarter than me. And I know it. So do ‘they’—trust me.
******
That said, the liklihood is that Putin, as with all dictators, is doing what all dictators do—thrust outward to justify his own existence. (check your history books).
Why?
because of his domestic predicament.
56% of his national income is oil derived.
without that Russia cannot exist in its current form. Oil use is obviously going to fall away. Any fool can work that out.
Ukraine represents a food-resource base—Putin wants to build the old USSR before the oil-world is cut from under him.
we are adding complexities where there are none.
If Putins action crashes western economy–so much the better–he splits NATO –EU—USA in ways that cannot be conceived as yet. Hopefully to Russia’s advantage.
in other words Putin is a chancer. He throws the political dice—see what comes up. Europe needs his gas and oil or faces immediate collapse—that is the major part of his dice-throw
The industrial powerbase of europe, Germany, becomes unemployed.
major recession and economic collapse then becomes a certainity—work that out for yourselves folks. 1929 all over again. Putin is not answerable to an electorate, therefore Russia can take a major hit. We can’t.
No one will be concerned with the ‘deniability’ of what is to come—we will be too involved with personal survival
Definitely all scripted… impossible to know what is really going on …
But I suspect they are none to pleased about Devil Covid not emerging … so they are pushing hard on the boosters + Letting er Rip Big Time .. a massive push to get us over the line…
But in the meantime there is the global economy to manage… the energy situation is critical so they dropped the Ukraine War Lite scenario to cover up the energy deficit and are blaming it for supply chain issues and rationing … (can’t say we’re out of gas — so you have to cut back — that would panic the herd)
There are other structural problems including the Chinese property market — all TBTF and TBTB … so they are desperately levitating that…
What’s it gonna — does the CEP complete — or do we get Ripping of Faces…
It’s all so exciting…
It is a controlled demolition in a sense of the post-1944 system that was established. The current system can no longer go on and it won’t. There are too many internal contradictions at every level and in every sphere. The West is mired in deep delusions and has a social-economic system that has set up an inverted pyramid where everything is catered to the unproductive.
The new system will be ran out of Eurasia since they have a lot of the remaining resources needed and the industrial capability to create products. I imagine that Putin, Xi, and Modi have come to agreements as they will be the new power brokers. The junior partners will be other countries such as Belarus, Kazahkstan, Krygstan, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. China will bring many other countries as trading partners which will make up large amounts of the world. The next system is likely to focus more on realistic achievements and realistic and measurable attributes.
There is an obvious mega financial collapse coming that will make 1929 look like a picnic as many here have identified. There will be a lot less people. I think we can expect that the sick and diseased will go first, since much of the medications will no longer be transported and other such items such as dialysis will likely not be possible in the future due to resource constraints. The immobile and likely large amounts of elderly who cannot work will likely also go. The social security scam will no longer function or exist. Mentally ill people who cannot function will go. When you consider those populations especially in Western countries that will reduce the populations considerably. There is a high likelihood that civil wars will erupt along ethnic lines in Western countries due to the importation of foreigners, this will also cause a significant drop in population. I think it is likely that the US can lose up to 50% or more of its population when the collapse happens and the aftermath works itself out.
The situation is terminal and dire for the US and other Western nations.
I am afraid you are right.
This is a good article, pointing out that the need to make payments in roubles (or gold or even bitcoin) is being taken seriously. To cut back total electricity requirements, businesses would be cut off before homeowners from the grid, for example. This would create recession.
> Russia won’t demand immediate switch to rouble gas payments, Kremlin says
March 30 (Reuters) – Russia will not immediately demand that buyers pay for its gas exports in roubles, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, promising a gradual shift and saying Russia should work on an idea to widen the list of its exports requiring rouble payment.
President Vladimir Putin issued an order last week for Russian gas, which accounts for 40% of European needs, to paid for in roubles instead of dollars or euros.
Earlier on Wednesday, Russia’s top lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the European Union would have to pay in roubles if it wanted Russian gas and said oil, grain, metals, fertiliser, coal and timber exports could be priced the same way.
The government, the central bank and Gazprom are due to present proposals for the switch by Thursday.
Asked whether the payments should be in roubles starting from Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Absolutely no.”
“As we discussed before, payments and delivery is a time consuming process … This does not mean that a tomorrow’s delivery should be paid (in roubles). From a technological point of view, this is a more prolonged process,” he said.
Putin’s order to charge “unfriendly” countries in roubles for Russian gas boosted the Russian currency after it plunged to all-time lows when West imposed sweeping sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. European gas prices also rocketed up.
The Russian demand has been rejected by European countries, which pay for Russian gas mostly in euros and say Russia is not entitled to redraw contracts, and by the G7 group of nations.
Commenting on the Russian rouble plan, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the financial committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, said this week: “I believe we don’t have to change the law, it’s all stipulated there.”
“The foreign currency will be exchanged at a market rate, which will be set at the Moscow Exchange,” he said. “They can buy the roubles wherever.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-will-not-demand-immediate-switch-gas-payments-roubles-kremlin-2022-03-30/
I am not even sure if this news is real or fake…
It is reasonable.
It is even more reliable than say ‘pay tomorrow in rubles’.
Every business needs to organize things properly.
If they give time to business managers, it is a reassuring information that the change is probably inevitable.
Russia is too kind
Impossible to know.
Consider that all news sources claim we have landed on the moon many times – and work off of that.
Also recall that CIA honcho who said he wouldn’t be satisfied till people believed in world that was completely fake (Matrix)…
Consider that billions of people have injected an experiment that they were told would stop them from getting Covid — you can even show them this https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1463932846570192901
And they will insist that the vaccines were never meant to stop them from getting covid
You can show them this 1000000000x https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1463932846570192901
And they will insist that the vaccines were only ever meant to stop serious illness.
Then you can show them that the vast majority of covid deaths and hospitalizations involve fully vaxxed people.
They will refuse to accept that and will repeat what they heard on the news earlier.
We are to the point where people will believe just about anything – if it’s on the news — so we have to assume nothing in the MSM is true… it is a massive lie machine
People in the West literally pay to be brainwashed…..they pay for CNN, FOX, MSNBC, etc.
There is no hope here.
Way too many people think that what they hear on their favorite television station is the gospel truth.
Hahahah… good point — they PAY!!!! The f789ing MOREONS actually Pay hahahahaha
Even if they paid me to watch I could not do it … I’d go out of my mind… I can barely open an MSM website without having to take a shower and scrub myself raw afterwards
My husband and I were talking about the fake news out of Ukraine. I remembered and -amazingly- found this 10 min, compilation, which they clearly can’t even be bothered to censor: CNN reporting from a fake set with fake palm trees during the Iraq war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWY14eyMFg
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
What I think has changed since then is that they aren’t even embarrassed about lying any longer—in fact, they rub our noses in their lies to humiliate us.
I’ve shown that to MOREONS years ago — no reaction
Playing the ruble card does not make sense not waiting for the next weakness of the West to materialize.
A phased-in approach, starting with natural gas in roubles, and not all immediately. Sounds reasonable.
“Japanese companies will be asked to refuse Russia’s demand that energy payments be made in roubles, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on Tuesday.
“Russia demanded last week that “unfriendly” countries must pay in roubles, not euros, for its gas in the wake of the United States and European allies teaming up on a series of sanctions aimed at Russia.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/29/japan-to-ask-firms-not-to-pay-in-roubles-for-economic-transacti
“Japan Power Retailers Exiting Business as Energy Crunch Worsens.
“The war in Ukraine is making a bad situation worse for Japanese power providers struggling with the energy crisis, forcing more companies to quit the business. In the last month, at least four companies halted power retail operations…”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-30/japan-power-retailers-exiting-business-as-energy-crunch-worsens
Japan’s electric power sector is based on ten regional electricity operators that handle generation and transmission. They used to be monopolies in their respective regions, but for the past decade, steps have been taken to liberalize the electricity supply market, leading to the establishment of about 250 supplier companies, or power retailers, some of which also have limited generation capacity. These supply companies piggy-back on the transmission networks of the ten regional operators. It is these supplier companies that are quitting the business.
Japan made one huge mistake in my opinion, in idling all its nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima NPS accident. It was only a disaster but they treated it as a catastrophe. Nuclear was providing 30% of power generation in 2011 and this ration was set to rise to 50%. These plants were shut down for five years, forcing the country to rely heavily on coal and gas and taking fossil fuel-based electricity production from about 65% before the accident to 90% afterwards. Currently, with some nuclear back online, together with hydro and an expansion of solar, the FF ratio is just under 80%. This is not a good time to be getting into a shouting match with Russia about the gas bill. That, I fear may be the second huge mistake.
Liberalizing the electricity supply market may have seemed like a smart thing to do at the time to the smartest men in the room. And a similar strategy did wonders for the mobile phone market. But electricity needs to be reliable as well as affordable. No major industrial or commercial state can afford to operate on an unreliable power grid.
Gail has long said that reliable power grids are not going to be around forever. This looks like a sign that Japan’s national grid edging into unstable territory.
“But electricity needs to be reliable as well as affordable. No major industrial or commercial state can afford to operate on an unreliable power grid. ”
I think the EU made the same mistake.
This is a factor in the Ukraine imbroglio.
Japan can always resurrect the four nuclear power sites it has mothballed. It is places like Italy or Eastern Europe (very little nuclear) that will go into a tailspin early in the crisis.
Thanks for your close-up view of what is happening.
Another thing that may affect Japan’s decision may be its high level of debt and the fact that fossil fuels must be imported. It cannot afford to import high-priced fossil fuels, whether in dollars or rubles. It will have to decline some imported fuel; it might as well be the Russian fuel, priced in rubles.
Here is a graph that attempts to show Japan’s electricity production over the past century. It’s from Wikipedia and was produced by an individual named Kaj Tallungs.
Since 2000, total production has been between 900 and 1,000 TWh/year. However, as recently as the early 1960s it was only 100 THw/year, and back in 1920s and 30s it was only 10 to 20 THw/year.
The amazing thing is that while a lot of people were very poor materially, a lot of these very poor people had fulfilling lives. Whether the current generation could adapt to such a relatively low-electricity lifestyle is another matter. I expect it would drive a majority of us into mental illness.
We’ve created a society that worships convenience, physical comfort, technology and progress in an almost cargo cult-like fashion. What happens when the cult leaders can no longer deliver the goods?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan#/media/File:Electricity_production_in_Japan.svg
https://youtu.be/tTq6Tofmo7E
A lot of people believe this is our future — and they look forward to it
Pfizer sponsor of the Oscars has a new Alopecia drug under approval by the US FDA. Alopecia is the condition from which Will Smith’s wife suffers. Alopecia is also one of the side effects of mRNA serums.
The above have been described in two recent ‘True Defender’ and ‘Byoblu’ articles.
TrueDefender:
https://thetruedefender.com/pfizer-sponsored-the-oscars-and-has-new-alopecia-drug-in-development/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pfizer-sponsored-the-oscars-and-has-new-alopecia-drug-in-development
Byoblu:
https://www.byoblu.com/2022/03/30/schiaffo-oscar-gentilmente-offerto-pfizer/
Side effect Alopecia of Covid-19 vaccine, scientific article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8673931/
All is theatre, how fortunate to put the spotlight on the issue then release the product.
Good marketing!
So the first party to hop on the RUB bandwagon is….. The Vatican
Will we see catholics canceling The Vatican for trading with the Devil?
This is getting hilarious and we are 2 days away from April’s Fool.
https://www.forexfactory.com/news/1147550-vatican-bank-transferred-10m-euros-to-buy-rubles
Interesting. Thanks.
There exist a disinfectant question for the financial market “pundits” where everybody was on the gold wagon:
“Who has been proposing to buy roubles two years ago?”
If you find a single person match on earth to this question, I will immediately go for a paid subscription.
The Vatican is not a member of NATO, so I suppose it can do that.
Bulgaria is also going to purchase gas in RUB. We already stated it officially. It is just a colony without sovereignty but it is both nato and eu country.
Harry McGibbs links are an excellent summary of why many countries will not sanction Russia.
Relatively wealthy western countries may suffer higher prices, but for poorer countries it’s potential mass starvation. Those driving round in Bentleys are probably benefiting from the chaos, whilst the poorest can’t afford to feed or educate their children
Harry McGibbs, in my view, is one of the best and reliable comments contributor of this fantastic blog.
Thank you!
And to think he only posts about half of it here, the other half is on his own blog!
Good points!
I agree.
Also, the narrative about not needing fossil fuels doesn’t completely permeate world thinking. Europe has been pushing this line for a long time, “We can move away from fossil fuels.” But anyone who looks at the real situation can see that renewables don’t really do much. Without fossil fuels, and without nuclear, economies collapse quickly.
Killing Russia is the new virtue-signaling. The Empire‘s rulers seem to have no idea of the critical role of Russian energy (oil, coal, gas) in keeping civilization (e.g., Europe) viable. Europe cannot afford high-priced American LNG for very long. U.S. rulers ignore the costs of energy extraction; they prefer unrealistic stories about renewables (undependable wind & solar) replacing fossil fuel and about increasing complexification in the future. They also ignore increasing demand and the deteriorating quality of natural resources. In addition, they assume that their is no limit to how much they can charge others (e.g., Europe) for their energy supply (think LNG).
America’s European vassals are under crushing political pressure to bankrupt themselves in order to further Washington’s goal: the destruction of Russia following the ancient principle of Væ victis! (Woe to the conquered). But if Europe goes bankrupt, which seems increasingly possible, the world system will collapse.
The Democrats are trying to inflate with more $trillion Build-Back-Better boondoggles. In counterpoint, the Fed will be increasing interest rates to slow already raging inflation caused by them. The increase, however, will result in yet higher fuel prices and lesser affordability for everything, i.e., a recession. Plus, America’s Ukrainian proxy war against Russia is adding even more stress to the global economic system. The simultaneous quasi-religious agitprop is dumbfounding the lemming mind.
The planet, including (believe it or not!) America is coming to the end of its fossil-fuel rope. War is usually the preferred response to this kind of dilemma. Because Disneyland cannot exist without massive subvention from elsewhere, and without the circuses that the masses require along with their bread.
In short, the Great Reset will be a return to feudalism.
I am afraid your analysis may be correct.
I am not a poker player but from the movie scenes I watched, the bets increase until one can no longer increase and the cards have to be shown (?)
Doubling down is the current mode of operation. This would mean a doubling of collateral damage as well. The question is what side can withstand more damage until the bank is exhausted.
Then we just build back better a new bank.
It’s often implied on OFW that there is nothing we can do. But what you’re saying is that the West is engulfed in very bad ideas, and that ideas matter. In which case, I would agree.
You could bet that “The great reset” is the maximum close the narrative can go in the direction of depletion topics.
Actually Agenda 2030 and all of this is aiming at resource depletion.
You can easily spot that this tactic is successful because the resistance goes full on the digital prison discussion or even “get oil and gas from somewhere else, but we need that s*t”. The resistance is not engageing in a discussion of
“ok, resources are gone (at least for low imcome people), so what can we do now?”
Also some “right” people are full in “let’s grab what is left on the planet for our betterment, f789 the greeny environment guys….”
They drive trucks to some capital city. Preposterous.
“Problem solution mismatch”.
Hegel squared.
So far the resetters have the better cards.
Art, we are still on the no solution. But we do have choices between going down or going down faster. Cutting the EU out of energy will be the faster way down for US and UK. might be good for China for awhile.
BETTER IDEAS
Ed says:
March 30, 2022 at 10:03 am
“Art, we are still on the no solution. But we do have choices between going down or going down faster. Cutting the EU out of energy will be the faster way down for US and UK. might be good for China for awhile.”
I’m as confused as can be. While trying to balance out Gail with JMG is helpful, I’m drawn in a third direction re collapse. I side with Gail about the likelihood of a higher power that has set things up for many of us; otherwise, we couldn’t explain how so many thing in life are so timely and fortuitous.
My upbringing in a Third World country long ago laid down a world-view pattern that subsequent experience reinforced, interpreted and complexified. I was very privileged in comparison to the silent, unobtrusive sea of peasants that sequestered into the hills. (I had no clue that my class was a small minority of the nation’s population.) But through personal dynamics, I was also hugely oppressed. Although I’m male, the custer of oppressive memes affecting me included personally type and gender. I’m far out of the normal wherever I go. So I don’t see collapse as either Gail or JMG see it. I’m not exactly a Westerner, and don’t see the world though the Western lens. I’m more or less a hybrid of the (unacknowledged) African and mystifying-European world in which I was formed. Franz Fanon (author of The Wretched of the Earth) and I have a lot in common.
I was the victim of ideas.
The long and short of it is that circumstances of all types have taught me to see the world mostly through the lens of Africa. (‘Africa’ is one of those mystifying designation, since there is no country bearing that name. ‘Africa’ is something to be constructed. and that ‘construction’ is something, I think, that the entire world system needs. The way in which ‘Africa’ could fit into the world is highly unrelated to how it fits there now. Although it’s easy to brush aside difference and subject all of creation to simple definitions like dissipative systems–so we look at the world from a great celestial height and say that it evolves and dies–we also can consider the here and now. In the here and now, Africa has the greatest assembly of megafauna, much of he planet’s remaining rainforest, oil and gas (which, in a totally different economic system, could be sustainable long term), and it has cobalt that is universally used in batteries. Important too, it has the largest swathe of dark night sky on the planet. ‘Africa’ is also not limited to the African continent, since there is no nation there by the name of ‘Africa.’ It is open to speculation that much of the new world is ‘Africa.’ Much of southern Asia is ‘Africa.’ Clearly, skin color alone does not define ‘Africa.’ Climatic and cultural conditions allow Africans to survive on a tiny fraction of the energy used for the West.
A huge portion of the African continent (and ‘the continent,’ too, has not been coherently defined) gets by on a tiny fraction of world energy. Those places appear not to be losing population. Their lifestyle has endured for millennia, while now severely challenged by industrial civilization (IC), forcing them to crave catastrophically more energy. Much of that forcing comes from the West. It resembles what the West is doing in Ukraine: forcing energy-critical policies on a part of the world in such a manner as to deprive themselves of energy and other resources they themselves will need for a reasonably tolerable lifestyle.
Africa has great energy resources, including those which, like rhythmic sophistication and energy-sparing, non-growth-dependent tribal cultures) that allow available raw global energy to stretch farther. Aligning and concentrating energy sources like rhythm and mud huts could be seen as a form of passive energy. It is an idea that might be preferable to many competing ones. If the West were to study and somewhat emulate and promote those passive-energy behaviors, it would keep them viable longer in Africa too. But what goes to Africa won’t remain exclusively there.
This (my preferred) ‘response’ from the West would prohibit aid. Any place that is not ensconced in the world’s globalized economy should be left to its own devices. It is completely absurd to be foisting paved roads and permanent buildings onto African soil…all in the assumption that this is the normal and indispensable thing for human civilization to do. We should be looking out for our own block, neighborhood, tiny village or town instead.
It is also said that we can’t remove any part of the world networked economic network lest the Leonardo Dome effect ensues. But a huge part of the global network has been shut down from the Covid thing during the past two years, and there has been no Leonardo Dome sudden collapse. Instead there has been a heightened collapse of an order that was collapsing before…like somewhat of a sudden seismic shift that relieves subterranean pressure but that is not as totally devastating to us as it could be. The noose that has been placed around our necks could be tightened and hoisted at any given time, but in the here and now we have volition and the ability to choose better ideas.
One thing we can take for granted, if humans survive the collapse of IC, it will be in the place where they came from and whose climate most suits a naked ape: tropical Africa.
hahaha 43M for a property that will be underwater soon? cuz
https://t.me/c/1588731774/10507
Whilst you were distracted by Russia, Will Smith & “Party-Gate”, the UK Gov. released a report confirming the Fully Vaccinated now account for 92.4% of all Covid-19 Deaths in England
“Just before Omicron struck the country, and the much more severe Delta variant was rampant, the vaccinated population were actually suffering less deaths, and only accounted for 82% of all Covid-19 deaths in England. What happened to the Booster giving someone the “ultimate protection”?”
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/30/distracted-russia-will-smith-uk-gov-data-92-percent-covid-deaths-vaccinated/
hahahaha… more Boosters. cuz
It appears that vaccination doesn’t matter much.
Adam Tooze looks at the arguments for and against a move towards de-dollarisation:
“Triggered by the sanctions imposed on Russia’s central bank there is a lot of excited talk right now about the possibility of major holders of reserves diversifying away from the dollar.”
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-106-the-new-buttresses?s=r
“As sanctions ‘weaponize’ U.S. dollar, some Treasury buyers could fall back… which could… soften demand for Treasuries just as the Federal Reserve, the largest holder of U.S. debt, looks to cut its bond holdings.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/sanctions-weaponize-us-dollar-some-treasury-buyers-could-fall-back-2022-03-29/
Interest rates may rise even more than planned, because buyers will want higher interest rates to hold US debt.
One quote:
The current period is an anomaly.
Another quote:
“Oil Hedging’s Growing Costs Are Imperiling Real-World Deliveries.
“It’s getting both costlier and more time consuming to hedge oil as liquidity shrinks in the futures market, slowing transactions and threatening to ultimately disrupt real-world deliveries if the situation doesn’t improve.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-28/it-s-getting-harder-to-hedge-oil-imperiling-real-life-trading
Somehow, this story reminds me of the story not too long ago about farmers not really being able to cash in on the higher prices that the market is delivering because no one is convinced that the high prices will last long enough to cash in on the high prices. Thus, in the real world, hedging really isn’t necessarily available.
“Argentina’s retail stations begin rationing diesel amid price controls.
“Argentina’s service stations have started rationing diesel, as price controls and import restrictions are discouraging refiners from bringing in enough supplies even as demand rises for the crop harvest, a trade group said March 29.”
https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/032922-argentinas-retail-stations-begin-rationing-diesel-amid-price-controls
“Kenyan firms hoard petrol, diesel to protest late payments.
“Motorists in some parts of the country are grappling a major fuel shortage as oil marketing firms reportedly hoard petroleum products to protest at the government’s failure to pay them outstanding subsidies running into billions of shillings.”
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/business/article/2001441663/firms-hoard-petrol-diesel-to-protest-late-payments
“Sri Lanka plunges into 10-hour daily power cut as fuel crisis worsens.
“The Sri Lankan government on Wednesday, March 29, 2022, imposed a nationwide 10-hour daily power cut due to shortage of hydro-electricity triggered by non-availability of fuel. Sri Lanka is facing an unprecedented acute economic and energy crisis…”
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sri-lanka-plunges-into-10-hour-daily-power-cut-as-fuel-crisis-worsens/article65273346.ece?homepage=true
“Sri Lanka hospital suspends surgeries over shortage of medicines as economic crisis worsens
“External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Tuesday asked the Indian High Commissioner here to help a Sri Lankan hospital that has suspended surgeries due to lack of medical facilities, amidst an unprecedented financial crisis in the island nation.”
https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/sri-lanka-hospital-suspends-surgeries-over-shortage-of-medicines-as-economic-crisis-worsens-1095736.html
“Arrests in Tbilisi [Georgia] as fuel price protests block central interchange…
“On Sunday, demonstrators rallied on foot around Tbilisi’s busiest roundabout — Heroes Square, refusing to unblock it until the authorities provided them with guarantees to curb the skyrocketing fuel prices in the country.”
https://oc-media.org/arrests-in-tbilisi-as-fuel-price-protests-block-central-interchange/
“Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activists staged a protest outside the Union Petroleum Ministry here on Tuesday against the rising prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas.
“In the video, the protesters are seen performing a mock funeral as they carry an LPG cylinder. The protesters also raised slogans against the central government.”
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/youth-congress-protests-outside-petroleum-ministry-381810
“Pakistan’s Energy Crunch Spurs ‘Barter’ Trade for Afghani Coal.
“Cash-strapped Pakistan can’t afford to buy fuel on the spot market and is either skipping purchases or turning to alternatives such as Afghani coal as it grapples with a worsening energy crisis.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pakistan-energy-crunch-spurs-barter-044200661.html
“The Pakistani rupee on Monday plunged to yet another record low of Rs182.19 against the US dollar in the interbank market.
“Speculative trading due to political unrest, mounting demand for the dollar, rising commodity prices in the international market and other weak economic/political indicators all exerted downward pressure on the rupee.”
https://www.geo.tv/latest/407866-rupee-hits-historic-low-of-rs182-continues-to-struggle
No wonder many countries are ignoring US mandated sactions. They simply can’t afford to boycott Russian resources. The US oligarchs don’t seem to appreciate that for them, running a private jet may cost a bit more, for many others in developing, it’s starvation
Pakistan just persuaded China to rollover some of their colossal debt to Beijing; they are also in hock to the IMF and World Bank; really an economic basket case, and, as you say, they do not have the luxury of boycotting Russia.
In fact they desperately need the Pakistan Stream pipeline to be built: “Pakistan plans to finalise a Russian-built gas pipeline despite international pressure to isolate Moscow economically… Energy makes up about a quarter of Pakistan’s import bill.”
https://www.ft.com/content/9294890a-593c-442b-bc53-13099d14d36f
Pakistan really needs a steady supply of reasonably priced natural gas.
Too many things going wrong around the world.
“Russia’s Ukraine invasion, which has already exacerbated food woes in parts of Africa and the Middle East, is marring preparations for the holy month of Ramadan and forcing a turn to frugal iftar sunset meals.
“From Lebanon to Tunisia and Somalia, Muslims who traditionally break a dawn-to-dusk fast with lavish family meals, are now struggling to secure even the most basic staples…”
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220330-muslims-face-frugal-ramadan-as-ukraine-war-drives-up-food-prices
“Egypt counts on France to secure wheat supplies amid Ukrainian crisis.
“Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Monday that Egypt counts on “its strategic relations with France” to secure some supplies of basic commodities like wheat, in case the Ukrainian crisis continues for a long time.”
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/africa/20220329/aec2c41b7f204fc181660afa7c819ed7/c.html
“Indonesians Urged Against Fried Food as Cooking Oil Prices Rise.
“The party backing President Joko Widodo is urging Indonesians to start boiling, steaming and roasting food instead of frying them as the price of edible oil surges. “The food today must showcase the cook’s creativity, use local ingredients and can’t use any cooking oil,” said Wiryanti Sukamdani.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-28/indonesians-urged-against-fried-food-as-cooking-oil-prices-rise
Good luck on getting France to help!
“No Relief for China’s Debt-Ridden Developers as Housing Sales Stay Weak…
“Housing sales by floor space fell 49.1% year-on-year in March in 17 Chinese cities, a deeper contraction than a 23.4% drop the previous month, according to Monday data from property think tank China Index Academy. The cities tracked include larger, more developed first-tier cities as well as second- and third-tier cities.”
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-03-29/no-relief-for-chinas-debt-ridden-developers-as-housing-sales-stay-weak-101862991.html
“Big Four under growing pressure as Chinese developers delay audits.
“International auditors are resigning from China’s heavily indebted property developers as a wave of delayed financial results has increased uncertainty over the full scale of the sector’s worst-ever crisis and raised the threat of hidden debts.”
https://www.ft.com/content/1114aeee-4a8a-479a-815f-1828aa6b12e6
“China Company Borrowing Slumps, Rates Spike, Beige Book Says.
“Borrowing by Chinese businesses plunged in the first quarter and interest rates on loans surged to a record despite the central bank’s efforts to encourage more lending, according to China Beige Book International.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-29/china-corporate-borrowing-slumps-as-rates-spike-beige-book-says
“China truckers use fake travel records, ‘clean’ drivers to dodge COVID rules.
“Chinese truck drivers hoping to outwit COVID-19 inspectors are faking travel histories to get through checkpoints or avoid quarantine, state media reported, as weary citizens struggle with restrictions more than two years after the pandemic began.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-truckers-use-fake-travel-records-clean-drivers-dodge-covid-rules-2022-03-30/
“China’s economy was losing momentum in the first quarter, even before the full impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on commodity prices and global supply chains was felt…
“If China’s manufacturers and service-sector businesses were not struggling, it is likely oil and other commodity prices would have soared very much higher already.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/chinas-cooling-economy-takes-some-heat-out-commodity-prices-kemp-2022-03-30/
Now, it is good news that China isn’t growing as rapidly as before.
Wow! 49.1% fall in floor space sold. Prices fall and cash flow for developers becomes a problem with such a huge drop in floor space sold.
“War, inflation hit euro zone recovery hopes.
“France and Germany saw bigger than expected drops in consumer confidence this month as rising inflation and concern about the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took their toll, surveys showed on Tuesday.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/war-knocks-french-german-consumer-morale-back-more-than-expected-2022-03-29/
“Germany triggers gas warning amid Russian ruble demand.
“Germany triggered an early warning level for natural gas supplies and called on consumers to save energy amid concerns that Russia could cut off deliveries unless it is paid in rubles, the government said Wednesday.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/germany-triggers-warning-gas-amid-russian-ruble-demand-83756182
“U.S. To Discuss LNG And Hydrogen Supplies With German Authorities.
“U.S. and German government officials are meeting this week to discuss the supply of liquefied natural gas and hydrogen to Europe’s largest economy, which is the most dependent on Russian oil and gas imports.”
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-To-Discuss-LNG-And-Hydrogen-Supplies-With-German-Authorities.html
“Spain approves emergency package to tackle high energy bills.
“Spain will cut connection fees and tax excess profits on newly signed electricity supply contracts as part of a multi-billion euro emergency package to cushion businesses and consumers from soaring energy prices, the government said on Tuesday.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/spain-spend-25-bln-euros-cut-interconnection-fees-power-hungry-industries-2022-03-29/
I wouldn’t count on much, very quickly, from the US. Hydrogen will probably never be a solution.
“The Polish government has adopted draft legislation that will allow a ban on imports of Russian coal, a cabinet spokesperson said on Tuesday.
“Russia dominates Polish coal imports, accounting for about 20% of domestic use. Some 9.4 million tons of Russian coal was imported to Poland in 2020…”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/polish-cabinet-approves-law-to-ban-russian-coal-imports/ar-AAVDefU
I would think that Poland would have better sense than banning Russian coal imports.
(Financial Times) ‘Germany takes step towards gas rationing over payment stand-off with Russia’
https://www.ft.com/content/0706d6f4-6668-4f67-ab1c-d535d847caf7
“U.K. Would Be in Recession Were It Not for Post-Covid Bounce.
“Britain would be in recession this year due to the global inflation shock were it not for the rebound in growth from the pandemic, according to the government’s official independent forecaster.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-28/u-k-would-be-in-recession-were-it-not-for-post-covid-bounce
“UK credit card debt hits record high as inflation and cost of living bite.
“UK consumers borrowed a record amount in February, with some economists saying it was a sign of the cost of living crisis hitting wallets even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed energy prices higher.”
https://www.ft.com/content/929a4297-7517-432c-85a3-6616b45e8fe1
“A disabled university graduate [Hamilton, Scotland] is choosing between eating or heating as she expects her bills to soar.
“Kyra Edwards, who suffers from severe OCD, anxiety, and depression, said ‘there is nothing left to cut back on’ as she faces one of the worst economic crisis since the 1970s.”
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/20026494.disabled-hamilton-graduate-choosing-food-heat-energy-crisis/
“Schools in Northern Ireland are facing a deepening financial crisis, a teachers’ union has warned, with fears classes may not be able to run.
“The National Association of Head Teachers said funding pressures could make it “simply impossible” to maintain basic services.”
https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2022-03-29/ni-schools-face-unprecedented-financial-crisis-union-warns
compulsory school for all came into force in the uk about 1874, and then only up to 12
it happened because the nation could afford it, in terms of available surplus energy.
we seem to have reached the end of that particular line.
i know i keep banging the same drum–but there just doesn’t seem to be another one
We will need to do school the same way we are doing work that is zoom meeting. School ages 12 to 15.
a zoom meeting requires surplus energy—ie everyone must have screen access
in 1874—high tech was a slate and chalk
I am afraid you are right.
There will be plenty of energy available to power PCs for school use. The students will simply have to keep peddling their stationary bikes to keep the batteries topped up.
and to keep the school lights on of course
More Boosters will solve the problem. Boosters will also alleviate the diesel deficit.
I reckon there is no point in going to school — keep the kids home and feed them hard co re p or n including a Daily Dose of tranny p or n. I also advise that they be given a list of the Best of Justin Bieber and Kim Karda$$$ian interviews… Beavis and Butthead Reruns… Trailer Park Boys and other trash
Let’s take this thing to Full REEE TARD.
One Facebook friend made the interesting point that digital learning will keep kids hooked to the New World Order system. That and the scarcity of energy might make screens not optional for schools. Plenty of alternative human arrangements are available (if novel for our time).
More Boosters = way out
The post-recession bounce makes everything look temporarily better.
“Biden’s Trillion-Dollar Deficit Reduction Barely Dents U.S. Debt.
“President Joe Biden’s budget request highlights shrinking cumulative deficits by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, but that barely makes a dent in the government’s ballooning debt.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-29/biden-s-trillion-dollar-deficit-reduction-barely-dents-u-s-debt
“U.S. Households Face $5,200 Inflation Tax This Year.
“Inflation will mean the average U.S. household has to spend an extra $5,200 this year ($433 per month) compared to last year for the same consumption basket, according estimates by Bloomberg Economics.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-29/u-s-households-face-5-200-inflation-tax-this-year-chart
“U.S. auto sales slump as less affluent buyers walk away.
“U.S. new vehicle sales could fall to the lowest first-quarter volume in the past decade as chip shortages and the Ukraine crisis squeeze inventories and rising prices push less affluent buyers out of the market, research firm Cox Automotive said Monday.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-auto-sales-set-weakest-quarter-decade-cox-automotive-2022-03-28/
Not surprising!
Woooooah… BAU ain’t feasible no more bro.
Even with big increases in taxes, it won’t help much for very long:
“Sand pirates are driving global shortages in this vital construction material.
“Much of the world’s sand cannot be used in construction. Desert sand is too smooth to be used as a binding agent for concrete and sea sand is too high in chloride levels for most construction purposes. So most of the sand used for building is extracted from rivers, lakes and shorelines – regions with high environmental and human impacts.”
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/03/29/sand-pirates-are-driving-global-shortages-in-this-vital-construction-material
“Global supply lines brace for ‘menacing’ economic storm to widen…
“”We thought Russia was just a resources story that was going to push energy prices up — that it would make supply chains more expensive but it wouldn’t disrupt them,” said Vincent Stamer, a trade economist with Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “It appears a little more threatening than we initially anticipated.””
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/03/29/business/global-supply-lines-strained/
The world could have more corn to sell on the open market if all ethanol from corn was curtailed for two years. And if the governments of Australia, US and Europe bought and culled half of all meat producing animals currently standing, grain prices would drop into the basement and there would be much less worry about famine. And there is no processing capacity to handle half of the rich countries standing stock so governments would have to carry the costs , not the farmers. Although we might find ways to bail out the too big to fail bankers , sorry to say we will let a lot of people starve….soon.
during the Irish famine of the 1840s, Ireland was still exporting food
i don’t think the callousness of the system has changed much since then
As I understand it, there is some corn that is intentionally grown because it produces relatively more ethanol than other corn. I am not certain this corn is as useful for other purposes. (It is possible I am wrong on this, but I remember a discussion from years ago.)
If this is true, it would be necessary for seed producers to be producing the correct type of seed corn.
In principle I would agree.
The problem is that the ethanol path was probably chosen due to depletion issues in the first place.
In Europe this is called E10 fuel.
The question that would need further investigation is what is of more value, food or transportation. As E10 is gasoline and not diesel I bet that transportation could be scrapped.
In all cases: whatever “is done” in a shrinking energy economy will affect an awful lot of people.
Remember: Klausi said, the biggest danger for the great reset is too much of a public resistanc due to too much chaos evolving.
It looks like chaos is ahead but so far in the West (TM) the problem looks manageable. The problems for the second/third world will need some time to materialize…
Some people claim there will be hordes of refugees but will people ride their bikes from Kenya to Germany?
Someone should take one of his kids or grand kids… and force him to come clean or else.
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/did-ralph-baric-of-unc-design-omicron
This article is called Did Ralph Baric of UNC Design Omicron?
This article seems to present pretty good evidence that Ralph Baric and his patent 11225508 are behind Omicron.
More importantly how would Ralph react to photos of a family member being roasted alive …
This is what would have happened a few hundred years ago — humans are so soft these days…
Oh – but you can’t do that! That’s not fair….
But, from the standpoint of “immunizing” people against COVID-19, is Omicron a good thing or a band thing?
Did Ralph Baric of UNC Design Omicron?
“COVID Bioweapon Against Mice” Patent 11225508
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/did-ralph-baric-of-unc-design-omicron
Thank you FE
“GOF Reveals that SARS-CoV-2 is Man Made & Paid for by U.S Taxpayers
1999: U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services (HHS) funds research amplifying the infectious character of Coronaviruses.
2000: In May* Ralph Baric successfully uses reverse genetics (cDNA**) to rescued infectious clone*** of SARS-CoV Urbani.
2002:In April Christopher M Curtis, Boyd Young & Ralph Baric file a patent for a recombinant (chimeric) DNA means of producing “an infectious, replication defective, coronavirus.” Funded by NIH Grant GM63228. Dr. Shi Zhengli and colleagues increase infectivity by combining an HIV pseudovirus with SARS-CoV-1.
2003: Dr. Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill receives NIH grant AI23946-08 officially classified as affiliated with NIAID. • Baric works on synthetically altering Coronaviridae.
2006: Chinese**** researchers combine HCV, HIV-1, SARS-CoV-1 & SARS-CoV-2.
2007: NSF Grant IIS-0513650 (Italy, France and Indiana University) study addresses FIRST CRITICAL STEP to control a pandemic – shut down International Travel. Given this knowledge why did Fauci tell Trump a Travel Ban was unnecessary?
2011: Scientists express Concerns about GoF after Labs in Wisconsin and the Netherlands mutate already lethal H5N1 Asian Avian Influenza Virus (Bird Flu) increasing infectivity.
2013: Middle East Respiratory Virus (MERS) outbreak with 30-40% fatality in Saudi Arabia (2014) and South Korea (2015). Rhesus macaques show early treatement with interferon-α2b and ribavirin critical to treatment success.
Baric***** and Chinese scientists isolate 3 coronaviruses from bats with HKU4 spike protein – unable to infect human cells.
2014: CDC accidentally exposes workers to Anthrax; ships deadly flu virus. NIH finds 50-year old forgotten vials of smallpox. Obama Administration halts Gain-of-Function Research
2015: Dr. Zhengli et al “re-engineered HKU4 spike aiming to build its capacity to infect human cells.” “To this end, we introduced two single mutations…mutations in these motifs in coronavirus spikes have demonstrated dramatic effects on viral entry into human cells.”
Baric and Zhengli announce they can make a more dangerous, virulent and infectious virus. ******
2017: Gain-of-Function Research Ban Lifted
2018: Zhengli presents research at Shanghai Jiao Tong University on 14 Nov. 2018 entitled “Studies on Bat Coronavirus and its cross-species infection.”
This presentation has since been deleted from the University website.
2019: Summer deletion of Wuhan Institute of Virology Corona Virus data bank.
December 31 Wuhan Municipal Health Commission report******* discussing COVID-19 pneumonia – deleted”
* U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/206,537, filed May 21, 2000
** Complimentary DNA is Reverse Transcription (mRNA->DNA) frequently using Moloney murine leukemia virus.
*** https://www.pnas.org/content/100/22/12995
**** Huang Q, Cheng Y, Guo Q, Li Q. Preparation of a Chimeric Armored RNA as a Versatile Calibrator for Multiple Virus Assays. Clinchem 2006; 52(7):1446-1448 and Supplement A.
***** Yang Y…Baric RS, et al. Receptor usage and cell entry of bat coronavirus HKU4 provide insight into bat-to-human transmission of MERS coronavirus. PNAS 2014;111(34):12516-12521. Funded with NIH grants RO1AI089728 &
****** Zhengli S, Baric RS, et sl. Two Mutations Were Critical for Bat-to-Human Transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. J Virol.2015;89(17):9199-9123. Funded by NIH grants RO1AI089728, RO1AI110700.
******* Wuhan City Health Committee (WCHC). Wuhan Municipal Health and Health Commission’s briefing on the current pneumonia epidemic situation in our city 2019 [updated 31 December 2019, 14 January 2020]. Available from: http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2019123108989
https://21a86421-c3e0-461b-83c2-cfe4628dfadc.filesusr.com/ugd/659775_6f632cc8d75d4d8c8b90cc749262f4b4.pdf
This does sound like damaging evidence.
“Soaring Prices Are Changing the Way People Eat.
“With the world economy already shackled by Covid-related shortages and now reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, prices of such basics as bread, meat and cooking oils have jumped across the world, sending shock waves through the commodity markets and damaging the global food system.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-28/rising-food-prices-could-spell-social-unrest-demand-destruction-and-less-bacon
“Fertilizer Price Surges 43% to Fresh Record as Supplies Tighten.
“Fertilizer prices continue to spike to records as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine puts a massive portion of the world’s fertilizer supply at risk, adding to concerns over soaring global food inflation.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-28/fertilizer-price-surges-43-to-fresh-record-as-supplies-tighten
“The UK government is to host a crisis planning meeting with farmers about rocketing fertiliser prices, as as ministers move to reduce the impact of rising costs on food production.
“Quotes for ammonium nitrate fertiliser prices have risen as high as £1,000 a tonne in recent weeks, compared with £280 a tonne a year ago.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/30/defra-to-hold-crisis-meeting-to-tackle-impact-of-fertiliser-costs-on-food-prices
Where are the food riots??????????? Maybe they’re substituting cake or caviar????
What is wrong with these people … rip some faces already. I demand violence. Maybe some We Burn You Burn…. the dog is not even barking let alone biting…
I am afraid of what the next year or two will bring.
Those with children should not allow them out to play… in the coming months.
Let’s take a look at the future
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u-57e7XP_8E/VU48va-TodI/AAAAAAAABr4/z_f6iSixQvQ/s1600/apocmonday70.png
Funnily enough, I re-watched The World Without Humans a couple of days ago.
I hope that the documentary is correct and some higher life forms are able to survive the spent fuel pools igniting, but I fear your assessment is more accurate.
Putin https://t.me/robinmg/17952
“Dr. Elizabeth Eads is on the frontline of medicine, treating patients who have been injected with the experimental CV19 so-called “vaccines.” Dr. Eads is now seeing first-hand Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly referred to as AIDS. Let that sink in. Dr. Eads explains, “Yes, we are seeing vaccine related acquired immunodeficiency in the hospital now from the triple vaxed. . . . It is a vax injury, and we are not really certain how to treat this. We are kind of throwing the kitchen sink at it. . . . .We are trying to use everything we can think of to boost up the CD4 and CD8 counts and reverse this collapse or calamity of this immune collapse. It’s very stunning.”
Dr. Eads says it is particularly bad in the double CV19 vaxed and boosted. She calls the third injection “The Kill Shot, the Money Ball or whatever you want to call it. It is just devastating to the immune system, and I’ll tell you why. If you look at the recent Stanford study, and I am just going to read a couple of sentences from the Stanford study: ‘The spike protein in the CV19 vaccines that everyone is talking about is called the Lentivirus. The Lenti contains a combination of HIV, types one through three, SRV/1, which is AIDS, MERS and SARS.
In the Stanford study, the best-known Lentivirus is the human immune deficiency pathogen, which causes AIDS. This is why we are seeing autoimmune and neurodegenerative decline after the Covid 19 (Vax) especially the booster. . . . It permanently changes the genome of the cell. That is why this is so terrifying to us in the medical community. We just don’t know how to attack this.”
https://usawatchdog.com/millions-get-aids-from-vax-by-fall-dr-elizabeth-eads/
The problem of the cold countries like Russia is that they do not have hard wood, i. e. the wood with higher energy content. This adds another inefficiency to living in cold areas. It is like using low grade coal.
Interesting point. More wood needs to be cut an transported to where it is to be used.
ancient history kicks in on that
the prehistoric peoples who gradually moved into the regions of northern eurasia over 000s of years had to utilise available energy resources to do so.
there were only 2 sources for that
animal meat and timber
thus growth was self limiting
Pound for pound, softwoods such as spruce and cedar yield only about a quarter of the calorific value of hardwoods such as oak and chestnut. Pine, at least in my part of the world, is intermediate between the two. So to keep warm in winter you would need to cut and stack four times as much softwood and the stove or furnace gets through softwood four times as fast. Hardwoods also tend to produce a much more satisfying glow (heat spectrum), as anyone sitting by the fire with old bones or lumbago will testify. The embers will tend glow a deep red and remain hot for a lot longer. Those bags of coal the Eddy loves to throw on the Rayburn are even better, providing more gain for less pain.
The other thing about wood is that it doesn’t burn efficiently if it isn’t properly seasoned. And the drying process for any wood takes longer in places with cold climates. That means storing the wood several years before burning, which in turn requires a bigger woodshed.
I ended up with 5 cubes of blue gum — but will still burn the coal as a priority… I love that black smoke
A lot of people think you can just cut down a tree and burn the green wood… just like a lot of people think a spent fuel pond is big swimming pool.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Dunning-Kruger-effect
hahaha https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/34140
Tick, tock…
> Gas flows via Yamal-Europe pipeline fall to zero, other flows steady
Physical gas flows through the Yamal-Europe pipeline at Germany’s Mallnow point fell to zero on Tuesday afternoon, data from operator Gascade showed, while Russian gas deliveries to Europe on the other two key pipeline routes were broadly steady.
Eastbound flows into Poland from Germany along the Yamal-Europe pipeline at the Mallnow border point last stood at 1,451,155 kWh/h by 1300 local time (1100 GMT) but since then it has fallen to zero, data from operator Gascade showed.
The usually westbound pipeline reversed on March 15 as nominations to ship gas into Germany fell to zero, while Polish customers bought gas from Germany.
Gascade did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
Russia said it would work out practical arrangements by Thursday for foreign companies to pay for its gas in roubles, raising the probability of supply disruptions as Western nations have so far rejected Moscow’s demand for a currency switch.
However, flows to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline across the Baltic Sea last stood at 73,389,870 kilowatt hours per hour (kWh/h), little changed from the previous 24 hours.
Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked some westbound gas transit capacity via the Yamal-Europe pipeline for Tuesday night and for Wednesday, Interfax news agency reported, citing auction results.
The actual flows are not guaranteed because Gazprom does not always use booked capacity.
Nominations for flows into Slovakia from Ukraine via the Velke Kapusany border point were at 882,249 megawatt hours (MWh) per day on Tuesday, data from Slovakian operator TSO Eustream showed.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-gas-flows-europe-remain-steady-2022-03-29/
Still some flow. We will be seeing more articles about actual flows in the new future.
This gives another analysis of the military situation in the Ukraine. Russia has largely destroyed Ukrainian military capacity and mobility, which it will not be able to rebuild. Russia is mainly interested in the east and south of Ukraine. The next stage of the operation is about due to unfold.
> Ukraine SitRep – Part II Of Russia’s Military Operation Unfolds
This map of the situation in Ukraine on March 29 is provided by the French Ministry of Defense.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/12i/ukrwar1.jpg
Here are my own situation report notes:
Overview:
The Russian military operation in Ukraine began with a rather small force of some 150.000+ men against a much larger (including reservist and territorial forces) Ukrainian force of some 400.000. The Russian force used maneuver warfare to fix the larger Ukrainian forces into place. It attacked on a large front and threatened major population concentrations, i.e. cities.
The Russian operations started with the destruction of the Ukrainian command and control network. Over the last four weeks the Ukrainian navy, its airforce, its radars and air defenses and a huge number of its armored vehicles were destroyed. Throughout the last week fuel depots all over the Ukraine were attacked and destroyed over night. Ukraine’s large ammunition depots are gone. Military production and repair facilities have likewise been destroyed. The Ukraine is no longer able to move large numbers of troops between the various fronts. Its army has lost its mobility.
While this was ongoing threats to Kiev, Odessa and other large Ukrainian cities have held significant numbers of Ukrainian troops in place and prevented reinforcements to move to the east. There units from the Donetsk and Luhansk republics attacked the 60,000 strong main force of the Ukrainian army to keep it in place.
This allowed Russian forces from Crimea and from the Russian border in the north to move into positions that will now enable them to envelope the east.
Details:
The move east and west of Kiev was, as I have said for a while, a feint to fix mobile Ukrainian units around their capital city. The feint is no longer needed as the Ukrainian army has now lost its mobility. The Russian troops around Kiev and Chernigov will be mostly withdrawn probably up to Chernobyl where a part of them may take defensive positions while most of the units deployed around Kiev will be moved back to Belarus and Russia for new operations in eastern Ukraine.
Fighting around Kharkiv is ongoing. Ukrainian counterattacks on that front have failed and the next phase of the war will see increased activities there.
The move on the west side of the Dnjepr river towards the important industrial area of Kryvyi Rih and on to Dnipro has been relatively slow. The move on the eastern side of the Dnjepr towards Dnipro has been at the same speed. Note that the western and eastern parts of those fronts are at the same level. They are well coordinated. The next phase will probably see more movement on the eastern side of the river.
There are still a few pockets of Azov fighters in Mariupol with the main units encircled in the vast Azovstal steelworks. They have little food and ammunition and the Chechen unites of the Russian army and national guard are working to dig them out. The Russian forces that encircled and stormed Mariupol are now freed up and will be moved to attack further north.
Ukrainian forces at Mykolaiv have attempted counterattacks in the direction of Kherson. These have failed.
Prospects:
The Russian command has decided to now concentrate on enveloping and destroying Ukraine’s main forces at the Donetsk front. These are the most heavy equipped and most experienced units of the Ukrainian army. Since last fall some 60,000 men had been assembled there for a full fledged war on Donetsk, an attack that the Russian operation successfully preempted.
It will probably take a few days for the Russian forces to regroup and resupply for that next phase of the war. I expect it to start around the end of this week.
The U.S. and Polish military are helping to smuggle small arms stuff through the western Ukrainian boarder. These are anti-tank missiles, old short range anti-air missiles as well as machine guns, mortars and ammunition. This is equipment for a guerilla war against an occupation force. But except for the east and maybe some parts in the south the Russian forces do not plan to occupy anything.
Those regions are tundra, very flat with little woods, where one can see an approaching enemy from miles away. It will be extremely difficult for a guerilla force to survive there. That is likely the reason why the Russian forces have done little to interrupt the arms smuggling into western Ukraine. (Those smuggled weapons will for years haunt the ‘western’ Europeans as they are certain to proliferate to right-wing extremist groups all over the continent.)
The general task for the whole military operation as set out by the Russian command was to de-militarize and to de-nazify the Ukraine.
The material de-militarization of the Ukraine is mostly done. During the next few weeks the Russian air and long range artillery forces will finish that task. The Ukraine would have to completely rearm, starting at about zero, should it want to regain significant military capabilities. It is hard to see how it will ever be able to finance that.
The de-militarization of the main forces of the Ukrainian army will happen in the Donbas cauldron. The units there will have to give up or they will be destroyed by the materially vastly superior Russian forces.
The Russian forces will probably take another four weeks to destroy the Ukrainian units at the Donetsk front. The Russian command will then have to decide which parts of the Ukraine it will want to keep under control. Next to Donetsk and Luhansk the region north of Crimea is a likely candidate. Odessa and Dnipro may also be still on the menu. The regions can be kept as statelets under local control or form a confederation that may well institutionalize a new country.
Anything beyond that depends on the willingness of the U.S. proxy government in Kiev to submit to Russia’s demands. Russia can leave it at that or it can continue to mow the grass until none is left.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/ukraine-sit-rep-part-ii-of-russias-military-operation-unfolds.html
This interesting analysis gives an overview of the successful Russian strategy so far. It may clarify a few things about what has been going on. (I have removed the links within the text.)
> Sitrep: Operation Z
By Nightvision for the Saker Blog
Several big developments are giving us an idea of a shifting picture on the ground today. First let’s start with the fronts where the largest changes took place, and then give a broader strategic analysis.
– Many reports today confirm our previous determination that Russia is in fact conducting a major regrouping of its forces following what Shoigu today has called the successful conclusion of the main objectives of the first phase of operations:
“Shoigu: In general, the main objectives of the first phase of the operation have been achieved. The combat capabilities of the VSU have been significantly reduced, which allows us to focus our main attention and main efforts on achieving the main goal – the liberation of Donbass.”
This is in conjunction with the announcement from RF that some VDV units will be withdrawn from the Kiev region as a sign of good faith for the negotiations.
Of course the Western press/analysts have predictably spun this news as, ‘Attritioned Russian forces are pulling out and downscaling their operation in order to concentrate on more realistic objectives in the east’.
There is a very informative thread by Scott Ritter today who explains the simple concept of a military ‘feint’ (misdirection, deception, diversionary tactics etc) we’ve often mentioned before in the discussion of Russia’s opening maneuvers which seemed to many of us who actually follow military matters, to be a ‘pinning strategy’ that keeps Ukrainian forces from redistributing and relieving their primary forces in Donbass and elsewhere.
“1/ Big Arrow War—a primer. For all those scratching their heads in confusion, or dusting off their dress uniforms for the Ukrainian victory parade in Kiev, over the news about Russia’s “strategic shift”, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with basic military concepts.
2/ Maneuver warfare is a good place to start. Understand Russia started its “special military operation” with a severe manpower deficit—200,000 attackers to some 600,000 defenders (or more). Classic attritional conflict was never an option. Russian victory required maneuver.
3/ Maneuver war is more psychological than physical and focuses more on the operational than on the tactical level. Maneuver is relational movement—how you deploy and move your forces in relation to your opponent. Russian maneuver in the first phase of its operation support this.
4/ The Russians needed to shape the battlefield to their advantage. In order to do this, they needed to control how Ukraine employed it’s numerically superior forces, while distributing their own smaller combat power to best accomplish this objective.
5/ Strategically, to facilitate the ability to maneuver between the southern, central, and northern fronts, Russia needed to secure a land bridge between Crimea and Russia. The seizure of the coastal city of Mariupol was critical to this effort. Russia has accomplished this task.
6/ While this complex operation unfolded, Russia needed to keep Ukraine from maneuvering its numerically superior forces in a manner that disrupted the Mariupol operation. This entailed the use of several strategic supporting operations—feints, fixing operations, and deep attack.
7/ The concept of a feint is simple—a military force either is seen as preparing to attack a given location, or actually conducts an attack, for the purpose of deceiving an opponent into committing resources in response to the perceived or actual actions.
8/ The use of the feint played a major role in Desert Storm, where Marine Amphibious forces threatened the Kuwaiti coast, forcing Iraq to defend against an attack that never came, and where the 1st Cavalry Division actually attacked Wadi Al Batin to pin down the Republican Guard.
9/ The Russians made extensive use of the feint in Ukraine, with Amphibious forces off Odessa freezing Ukrainian forces there, and a major feint attack toward Kiev compelling Ukraine to reinforce their forces there. Ukraine was never able to reinforce their forces in the east.
10/ Fixing operations were also critical. Ukraine had assembled some 60,000-100,000 troops in the east, opposite Donbas. Russia carried out a broad fixing attack designed to keep these forces fully engaged and unable to maneuver in respect to other Russian operations.
11/ During Desert Storm, two Marine Divisions were ordered to carry out similar fixing attacks against Iraqi forces deployed along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border, tying down significant numbers of men and material that could not be used to counter the main US attack out west.”
By the way, von Manstein, considered one of the greatest German WW2 generals famously employed such tactics, particularly in the same Donbass region against the Soviet forces, where he utilized feints and strategic retreats in order to capture a much larger encroaching force by way of misdirection and diversions). You can watch videos such as this one to see how an extremely agile mechanized force can employ diversionary tactics and misdirection to bait a much larger force.
A source from Kiev further has reported that “Russia now has MORE armor units accumulated on the border than it did prior to the war…” This is extremely telling, and if true, a clear sign that a major phase 2 operation is in the preparatory stages. And there’s many sightings/videos of new forces coming in such as this one.
The full statement: “Russia has pulled more equipment to the border than it was before the invasion – according to Ukrainian resources affiliated with the intelligence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The intelligence community “Informnapalm” specifies that specifically in the Kursk region a huge amount of military equipment is recorded – more than it was on February 24th.”
– Now onto a few actual tactical updates: ….
https://thesaker.is/sitrep-operation-z/
12/ The Russian fixing attack pinned the main Ukrainian concentration of forces in the east, and drove them away from Mariupol, which was invested and reduced. Supporting operations out of Crimea against Kherson expanded the Russian land bridge. This phase is now complete.
13/ Russia also engaged in a campaign of strategic deep attack designed to disrupt and destroy Ukrainian logistics, command & control, and air power and long-range fire support. Ukraine is running out of fuel and ammo, cannot coordinate maneuver, and has no meaningful Air Force.
14/ Russia is redeploying some of its premier units from where they had been engaged in feint operations in northern Kiev to where they can support the next phase of the operation, namely the liberation of the Donbas and the destruction of the main Ukrainian force in the east.
15/ This is classic maneuver warfare. Russia will now hold Ukraine in the north and south while its main forces, reinforced by the northern units, Marines, and forces freed up by the capture of Mariupol, seek to envelope and destroy 60,000 Ukrainian forces in the east.
16/ This is Big Arrow War at its finest, something Americans used to know but forgot in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan and Iraq. It also explains how 200,000 Russians have been able to defeat 600,000 Ukrainians. Thus ends the primer on maneuver warfare, Russian style.
So they say
And the vaccines are safe.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russian-gas-flows-europe-remain-steady-2022-03-29/
The people who are embracing all the the nonsense of COVID and practicing what they preach (i.e. the commoner, not the politicians) are the one who will get sick the most.
Understand these people will continue to triple mask (or whatever) which will only weaken then body as they are breathing back their stale air. Their immunity, already compromised by the “vaccines” will be even worse off. The sicker they are, the more they hide at home (no sun), the more they mask and it is a vicious circle.
All this will never end well. It is just a matter of time.
Let the suffering … continue!!!