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In the post-World War II era, the US has been known for its hegemony–in other words, its leadership role in the world economy. According to one definition, hegemony is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. I believe that the US is not far from losing its hegemony. The conflict over future hegemony could lead to a major war.
Hegemony is surprisingly closely tied to leadership in energy consumption. A country with a high share of the world’s energy consumption doesn’t have to depend on imported goods and services from around the world. It can manufacture weapons of war, if it chooses, in as large quantities as it chooses, without waiting for outside suppliers.
One part of today’s problem is the fact that the world’s fossil fuel supply, particularly oil, is becoming depleted. Extraction is not rising sufficiently to keep up with population growth. In fact, total fossil fuel extraction may begin to fall in the near future. In some sense, the fossil fuel supply is no longer adequate to go around. To relieve the stress of inadequate supply, some inefficient users of energy need to have their fossil fuel consumption greatly reduced.
My analysis suggests that the US and some of its “Affiliates” tend to be inefficient users of fossil fuels. These countries are at great risk of having their consumption cut back. The result could be war, even nuclear war, as the US loses its hegemony. After such a war, the US could mostly be cut off from trade with Asian nations. In this post, I will elaborate further on these ideas.
[1] Hegemony is closely related to energy consumption because energy is what allows an economy to manufacture goods of all kinds, including armaments needed for war. The energy consumption of the US as a percentage of the world’s has been falling since 1970.
Data on energy consumption by part of the world is readily available only back to 1965, rather than 1945. Based on this data, US energy consumption as a percentage of the world’s total energy consumption has been falling since 1965.
Figure 1 shows that the US’s share of world energy consumption amounted to 33.3% of world’s energy supply in 1965, but only 15.6% in 2021. In other words, in 2021, the US’s share of world energy consumption in 2021 was less than half of its 1965 level.
There are some economies that have much in common with the US. The countries in this category are advanced economies that have democratic governments. I expect these countries would tend to follow the US’s lead, regardless of whether its actions really make sense. The selected economies are the EU, Japan, Canada, the UK, and Australia. For convenience, I call these countries Affiliates.
[2] Affiliates consumed over 35% of the world’s energy supply in the 1965 -1973 period, but this has fallen in recent years.
Figure 2 shows that Affiliates consumed 35.5% of the world’s energy supply in 1965. By 2021, their consumption fell to 17.6% of the world’s supply. This, too, is less than half of the 1965 percentage.
[3] The energy consumption of US plus Affiliates as compared to the energy consumption of Rest of the World has shifted remarkably since 1965. The consumption of the Rest of the World has been soaring, while that of US plus Affiliates has shrunk.
In Figure 3, I add together the amounts in Figures 1 and 2 and compare them to the indicated energy consumption of what is left, which I call, “Rest of the World.” It is clear that there has been a huge shift in which grouping consumes the majority of the world’s energy supply.
We all know that if a political party has the support of almost 70% of voters, it is likely to be dominant. There is a similar issue with energy consumption. Energy consumption is used in every aspect of the economy. It is important for manufacturing goods and transporting them to their destinations. It is also important for creating jobs that pay well.
If world energy supply is growing, it encourages growth of the world economy. Growing energy supply indirectly allows debt to be paid back with interest. In general, the faster the world’s energy supply is growing, the higher the interest rate that can be supported.
Without growth in energy supply, an individual economy is forced to become a service economy. It is forced to import almost all of the manufactured goods that it needs, even armaments needed for war. Such an economy is forced to place an emphasis on growing debt and growing complexity. Unfortunately, both of these things are subject to diminishing returns. As growth in energy supply turns to shrinkage in energy supply, we should expect debt bubbles to pop.
A country is likely to stop making advances in the sciences as it shifts to a service economy. This linked chart by Visual Capitalist analyzes patents in 2021 by the country of the individuals listed on the patent applications. On this basis, China’s patent count was more than double that of the US. China is also the major producer of many clean energy technologies because it has both the resources and the technology.
As a service economy, the US has tended to specialize in healthcare, with spending in this sector accounting for 18.3% of GDP. Yet the US’s healthcare results are dismal. US life expectancies have fallen behind those of other advanced countries. The recent covid vaccines, which were strongly advocated by US health authorities, worked far less well than had been hoped. In February 2022, the New York Times published an article, US Has Far Higher Covid Death Rate Than Other Wealthy Countries.
[4] US data shows that its energy consumption was rising rapidly in the 1949 to 1973 period. Such rapid growth in energy consumption would make other countries envious. It would tend to expand America’s hegemony.
Figure 4 shows how quickly US energy consumption was growing, starting in 1949, using EIA data. Energy consumption growth averaged 3.5% per year in the 1949 to 1973 period. This rapid growth is what we would expect of a country that was an energy leader for the rest of the world. Standards of living could rise. Parents could often afford to raise several children.
An article in the Oxford University Press says that the US’s proliferation of major military bases overseas was developed in the 1950s and 1960s to contain communism and to provide global defense of US interests. Such a huge build-out of bases during this period would not have been possible without the rapid ramp-up in US energy consumption.
Between 1960 and 1969, the number of miles of high-voltage long distance electricity transmission lines tripled. This was evidence of the rapid growth in electricity production that the US was achieving; it was a pattern that other countries would want to emulate. It added to the hegemony of the US.
Statista shows that between 1951 and 1973, the number of US automobile sales per year more than doubled, from 5.16 million to 11.42 million. With this increase came a need for more paved roads and more pipelines to carry oil products. With its growing energy consumption, the US was able to accomplish all this growth. Growing energy consumption also allowed the US to manufacture nearly all the vehicles sold in the US in this period.
[5] US hegemony faced a major challenge in 1970 when US oil production hit a peak and started to fall.
US crude oil production rose rapidly until 1970, when it suddenly started falling. Work was quickly begun on oil extraction from the North Slope of Alaska. This oil offset most of the decline in oil production from the lower 48 states through the mid-1980s.
US hegemony depends upon the quantity of energy products US businesses and citizens consume. When oil prices become unaffordable, citizens and businesses buy less. Figure 6 shows that oil prices had been amazingly low prior to 1973, averaging only $16.31 per barrel, even after adjusting for inflation to 2021 price levels.
Comparing Figure 6 to Figure 4, we see that once oil jumped up to an average of $73.14 per barrel in the 1973 to 1983 period, US energy consumption flattened out. At this high price, efficiency became more important. Smaller imported cars, often from Japan, became popular. The US and several other parts of the world started building nuclear power plants to replace electricity created by burning oil. Within a few years, oil production was ramped up in other parts of the world, such as the North Sea and Mexico, relieving the tightness in oil supply.
Once oil prices began to rise again in the 2005 to 2008 period, US oil from shale became available in response to higher prices. The catch was that at these higher prices, oil tended to be unaffordable by the American public. Oil was still affordable in most of the Rest of the World, however.
These “Rest of the World” countries tended to use oil much more sparingly in their energy mix. They often had other advantages as well: warmer climate, lower wage levels, recently built factories, and an energy mix that emphasized coal (which tended to be inexpensive). These advantages helped bring down costs of both manufacturing and resource extraction for the Rest of the World. The shift in energy consumption shown on Figure 3 could occur.
This shift in manufacturing and resource extraction away from the US and Affiliates creates problems, however. If the US and Affiliates are increasingly at odds with countries outside this group, it becomes much harder for the US to exert hegemony over these countries. The problem is that the US depends upon the countries it is at odds with for necessities. Even in making munitions for the Ukrainian conflict, the US needs to depend on China and other Asian countries for parts of its supply lines.
[6] The world economy is now headed for a bottleneck. The world economy is similar to a Ponzi Scheme, with growth in the output of goods and services necessary to fund financial promises of many kinds. There are limits to the amounts of fossil fuels available at affordable prices, and the world is hitting those limits now.
Because the world economy follows the laws of physics, the growth in the output of goods and services depends upon the continued growth in the production of energy products.
We have known for a very long time that fossil fuel output is limited. Back in 1957, Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy gave a speech warning that world-wide fossil fuel energy supplies were expected to become unaffordable between 2000 and 2050. High oil prices seem to have been a major factor underlying the Great Recession of 2008-2009. This especially affected the US, with its large amount of subprime housing debt. The problems experienced since late 2021 with spiking prices of oil and high prices of imported coal and natural gas are also evidence of the limits the world is reaching.
Figure 8 shows my view of where future world energy supply is headed. While this chart was originally prepared in 2020, the forecast still seems to be reasonable, especially if regulators get their way in mandating the reduction of (unaffordable) fossil fuel use.
If energy consumption falls this rapidly, the world economy will have to adapt in many ways. Economies that cannot tolerate high oil and energy prices are likely to be squeezed out. Based on what already has been happening in Figures 1, 2, and 3, the United States and Europe are especially likely to be adversely affected. The countries that are likely to fare better are ones that don’t require as much energy per capita. These countries are likely to be in warm climates and have relatively poor populations, such as those in Southeast Asia.
As energy supplies fall, business failures and debt defaults can be expected to soar. Governments will be tempted to backstop every financial promise, including failed banks and pension plans. If they do this, other countries will be unwilling to trade using their debased currency. With too much money and few imports, the result is likely to be hyperinflation. If the governments simply allow bankruptcies to take place, the result is likely to be deflation as banks and businesses fail.
[7] The US has been having increasing difficulty in its hegemony role. Some countries have come to believe that the US is now acting unfairly.
Back when the US first attained hegemony, oil and other energy supplies were inexpensive and their supply was growing rapidly. The US was experiencing great economic growth, and other countries wanted the same sort of success. The US plus Affiliates were the ones using the majority of energy products, so the interests of almost all energy users were aligned.
Things have “gone downhill” since 1970 when the US oil supply first started to shrink (Figure 5). Suddenly, the US needed help from the financial system to work around the need to import more oil. One change (in August 1971) was making the dollar a fiat currency, rather than tied to a gold standard. This enabled greater use of debt in operating the economy.
Without the gold standard, the US dollar was able to become the world’s reserve currency. Instead of gold reserves, other countries began buying US Treasuries, which they considered to be a safe store of their money. The US dollar could also play a greater role in financing international transactions. A 2021 analysis by the Federal Reserve shows the dominance of the US dollar in many areas of trade.
This dominant role for the US dollar is now being questioned after the US froze the central bank assets of Russia, as part of the sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Other countries are beginning to wonder if holding Treasuries is really a good idea, if the US can impose sanctions which make them unavailable. Countries are also figuring out that it is quite possible to arrange sales of commodities and other goods in currencies other than the US dollar.
Also, the US’s ability to win wars is not very clear. The US’s first big loss was the Vietnam War. After 20 years of fighting, that war ended in 1975, with communist forces seizing control of South Vietnam. The Afghanistan War did not go well either. After 20 years, the US abruptly pulled out. While the US claims the mission was accomplished, it is hard to see that the high cost was justified.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict does not appear to be going well for Ukraine and the allies supporting Ukraine. The US and NATO are having difficulty supplying as many armaments as quickly as President Zelensky would like. Ukraine seems to be using up its conventional weapons very rapidly. Neither the US nor other NATO countries can manufacture weapons very quickly, in part because supply lines from around the world are required. How helpful is the US’s hegemony, if the US can’t even easily win a “proxy war” in Ukraine?
There are sanctions, other than freezing assets, that are of concern to other countries. A recent list from a Chinese source lists the following types of hegemony that it considers to be problematic.
- Political hegemony – Throwing the US’s weight around
- Military hegemony – Wanton use of force
- Economic hegemony – Looting and exploitation
- Technological hegemony – Monopoly and suppression
- Cultural hegemony – Spreading false narratives
Quite a few countries in my Rest of the World grouping are clearly getting fed up with America’s hegemony. Increasingly, Middle Eastern countries that were previously at odds with each other are setting aside their differences. They are also becoming much more closely aligned with China. Countries in this group, as well as the BRICS group of countries, are already taking steps toward trading in currencies other than the US dollar.
[8] The path ahead looks very bumpy. The US is likely to be kicked out of its role as global hegemon. Rival countries may choose to attack the US with nuclear weapons, or the US may lash out with nuclear weapons as it sees its hegemony fail.
As I analyze the world economy’s future trajectory, I see the following situations falling into place:
(a) The world economy is being stressed by inadequate energy supplies. When prices rise, it tends to cause inflation. Some countries are experiencing a second kind of stress, as well. Their central banks have raised interest rates. This is a dangerous thing to do because it tends to cause falling asset prices in addition to slowing the economy.
I expect that countries that have recently raised interest rates will have many bank failures. Partly, this will come from the falling value of long-term bonds. In time, it will also come from failing real estate mortgages and other loans, since asset prices will tend to fall with higher interest rates. Governments will be tempted conduct massive bailouts. The countries that have recently raised interest rates include the US, the UK, Eurozone countries, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and Brazil.
Countries that did not raise interest rates, which seem to include China, India, and Iran, will find their economies less affected by bank failures. Russia temporarily raised interest rates, and then lowered them again, so Russia would also seem to be less affected by bank failures.
Countries that raised rates will be tempted to do bailouts of banks and of “too big to fail businesses.” These bailouts will greatly increase the monetary supply, making countries that didn’t raise interest rates unwilling to trade with them. This dynamic will tend to increase the trend toward two separate trading areas–one including much of Eurasia and one including the US, Canada, Europe and perhaps South America.
(b) If we think about it, cutting back greatly on trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific shipping would save a great deal of oil if there is not enough oil to go around. This will be another impetus for “Rest of the World” countries, especially those in the Asia-Pacific area, to cut back on shipping across the major oceans.
(c) With failing banks and a cutback in trade between regions, the US dollar will cease to be used as a reserve currency for a large part of the world. The US dollar might still be the reserve currency for some trades, particularly with other countries in the Americas.
(d) I expect that a block of countries will eventually coalesce, centered in Asia, that will mostly trade among themselves. China will probably be the leader of this block.
(e) The US and Europe will mostly be pushed off to the side, to trade among themselves and some geographically close neighbors. These areas may need to set up new financial systems using much less debt. These countries will not be able to produce advanced goods, such as computers, by themselves. They will not be able to build new solar electricity generation or new wind turbines because too much of the supply chain will be out of reach. While these countries have been looking at digital currencies, it is not clear that there will be a stable enough electricity supply to make such currencies possible.
(f) There will probably be war at the time of the division into the two (or perhaps more) trading areas. Nuclear weapons may be involved since there are many countries with nuclear weapons. The supply of conventional weapons available for warfare is depleted, with the ongoing war in Ukraine. According to a study done at Harvard, involving 16 cases in which a major rising power challenged an existing major power over the past 500 years, 12 cases ended in war. This analysis would suggest a 75% likelihood of war.
(g) I don’t know what the timing of all these things will be. Bank failures are just beginning. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the world economy holds together a while longer.
Isn’t the simulation metaphor just an update of the old metaphor of life as a dream or illusion?
Just asking for a friend, since metaphysics gives me too much sleep and anyway I’m sold to Chuang Tzu
https://i0.wp.com/whoisidentity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/20220624_110509.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1
It 100% is an interpretation of the same general model except now using computer simulations as a metaphor.
It’s similar to how a century ago the human brain was compared to a machine but now people compare it to a computer.
Might explain why norm thinks Fast was posting at 3am… and that he stopped cuz norm said he was posting at 3am… why would Fast stop???
I might – just to f789 with norm – set my alarm for 3am …drop a few Tommy Telegram links — then go back to sleep…
Writing this post has been the most concerning of all the posts I have written to date. We must determine if what I am seeing is certain. The evidence and logic for this hypothesis disturb me greatly.
A very interesting paper about an extremely rare form of Prion Disease caught my attention. As the readers of my Substack know, I have believed since the beginning of the Pandemic that the Spike Protein is capable of inducing Prion Disease. However, if you have been following my work, I now believe that the Spike Protein ITSELF behaves as a Prion.
https://wmcresearch.substack.com/p/long-covid-as-prion-disease
How long does it take to kill?
Depends on whether its a turbo prion.
Common or garden prions can take years or more likely decades to turn somebody into the equivalent of a mad cow.
According to the Mayo Clinic:
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (once it eventually breaks out) is marked by changes in mental abilities. Symptoms get worse quickly, usually within several weeks to a few months. Early symptoms include:
Personality changes.
Memory loss.
Impaired thinking.
Blurry vision or blindness.
Insomnia.
Problems with coordination.
Trouble speaking.
Trouble swallowing.
Sudden, jerky movements.
Death usually occurs within a year. People with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease usually die of medical issues associated with the disease. They might include having trouble swallowing, falls, heart issues, lung failure, or pneumonia or other infections.
So, one might call CJD a sort of turbo-Alzheimer’s. While some of the symptoms overlap, CJD progresses much faster, and sufferers do not go gently into the long dark night.
Forgot one symptom — cannot tell time.
Ba-hahahahahaha
Russia incinerates the remaining hold outs! Showy last action before Wagner takes a break.
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/world/russians-literally-incinerating-bakhmut
Sounds pretty horrible” I imagine US papers will be reporting nothing other than, “Ukrainian spring offensive will begin shortly.”
Had photos taken by my father in Pacific islands, flame throwers; Japanese were literally black caricatures of humans. Marines didn’t care, they would shoot no more. Entire scene was a waste land, including dead Marines lying in the sea by the shore, between landing craft. War is not as pictured on TV and print.
Dennis L.
I had a great uncle explain to me in graphic detail as a 10 year old what being an infantry man on a landing craft coming into Juno beach in France during the Normandy landings was like.
“I told the guy crouched down next to me to keep his f…..g head down as we came in. I looked away for a second and when I looked back he had no head”……
Industrial level war……
As with doomie prepping…
hahahahaha – this is utter nonsense — but I can imagine there is an audience for this koombaya bs … there ain’t one for ROF or UEP.
All of this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.
In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.
Prigozhin loses it.
Bakmud has not been a nice place.
It happens.
Prigozhin and Wagner are going home. They will probably never return. Wagner will probably be disassembled. Russian regular army is taking their place.
Alexes talk Prigozhin
https://www.bitchute.com/video/4VMxGpKCsq0/
Prigozhin completely loses it. Many just killed Wagner bodies displayed. Calls Gerasimov and Shoigu bad names. Blames them for the death displayed. He has been saying they are not giving Wagner ammunition because of politics, Called them corrupt, In previous video Prigozhin implies Wagner did all the fighting in Syria. Wagner esprit d corps is destroyed. Russian army eprit d corps is harmed. Russia has lost Wagner and will never create a private force again. War breaks people. Many survivors never recover. All the snazzy Wagner videos. All un done. Wars face is shown. There was no military organization to see the signs and stop this. Prigozhin lost it and broadcasted it to the world. Bakmud was a meat grinder. This can be considered Russias biggest loss in the war to date.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/htIbmPQt78G3/
Always an optimist, perhaps he has just broken from the stress, too much death and destruction; killing others often kills our souls.
Dennis L.
hahaha this is a clip from that page you post of the incineration … most of the clips are CGI video game stuff… and rather poor quality
This is just small scale fakery https://twitter.com/i/status/1654593865888792576
If you want to understand what is energy crunch, visit Hungary: a lot of old, empty houses, bizarre buildings from the socialism era before 1989, a lot of historical 19th century energy inefficient buildings in Budapest, little or no insulation of the old homed or buildings, a rapidly ageing population.
All these buildings are doomed to delapidation, as there is no cheap energy and no humans to upgrade and operate them.
Or visit the river cities of New York State. Exactly the same. But not to worry Jake Sullivan has it covered.
Dad and I just watched a show about the Grain industry in Buffalo, NY along the Erie Canal prior to widespread railroad transportation.
I saw something similar along the canals and rivers tour boats take from St. Petersburg to Moscow in Russia. They used to be used to transport industrial materials.
True, all palatial-style architecture is virtually uninhabitable today, since it was designed to be ostentatious, not comfortable or economical, with those oversized areas, too many windows and ceiling heights of +5 metres.
That’s why most of these buildings are now museums or company headquarters, where no one sleeps.And in an apocalyptic situation, these grand houses will certainly be the first to be reconquered by the brambles.
“It’s Spooky”: Stanford Professor Warns Thousands Of US Banks Are “Potentially Insolvent”
Rapidly rising interest rates create perilous conditions for banks because of a basic principle: The longer the duration of an investment, the more sensitive it is to changes in interest rates. When interest rates rise, the assets that banks hold to generate a return on their investment fall in value. And because the banks’ liabilities — like its deposits, which customers can withdraw at any time — usually are shorter in duration, they fall by less.
Thus, increases in interest rates can deplete a bank’s equity and risk leaving it with more liabilities than assets. So it’s no surprise that the US banking system’s market value of assets is around $2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value. When the entire set of approximately 4,800 banks in the United States is examined, the decline in the value of equity is most prominent for midsize and smaller banks, reflecting their heavier bets on long-term assets.
In an interview with The Guardian, Seru was more precise about just how many banks were burning through their capital buffers and were underwater. The estimate is shocking: Almost half of America’s 4,800 banks.
“It’s spooky. Thousands of banks are underwater.
“Let’s not pretend that this is just about Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. A lot of the US banking system is potentially insolvent.”
Since monetary tightening works in long lags (9-12 months), many of the rate hikes over the last year have yet to filter through the real economy. In the coming quarters, the US banking system will face its toughest challenge yet, as tightening lending standards might spark more breaking.
In Seru’s NYTimes op-ed piece, he noted, “There’s another looming area of concern that could spark such panic: The commercial real estate sector.”
Commercial real estate loans, worth $2.7 trillion in the United States, make up around a quarter of an average bank’s assets. Many of these loans are coming due in the next few years, and refinancing them at higher rates naturally increases the risk of default. Rising interest rates also depress the value of commercial properties, especially those with long-term leases and limited rent escalation clauses, which also increases the likelihood of owner default. In the Great Recession, for example, default rates rose to about 9 percent, up from around 1 percent, as interest rates rose.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/its-spooky-stanford-professor-warns-thousands-us-banks-are-insolvent
Let’s take a look at the cannisters
https://youtu.be/Z_O_Ly8REqk?t=156
I think I see the same problem as the Stanford professor.
So Gail, in about 6 months, will it be safer to keep your money a) in a mid sized regional bank (probably not) ; b) local crredit union with a ratio loaned/held assets of only 166%; c) Citibank or other TBTF?
I spread my billions between various banks like a squirrel hiding nuts for the winter
Writing as an outsider from Europe with some experience of the way the US banks and financial institutions function within the banking network, I see plenty of reasons to assume that many institutions will fail and be subsumed into larger institutions.
Whether or when the whole system will fail is not so easy to decide.
In Europe most banking or electronic and more or less instant these days.
A cashless society seems to be the objective. That would give the “authorities” full tracking over all residents and what those residents think of as their “wealth”.
Obviously the main purpose is security for all… Right?
Yellen will print money and make everybody whole.
Been there done that and inflation continues to explode higher
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/04/despite-banking-turmoil-ecb-accelerates-qt-plus-hikes-by-25-basis-points-balance-sheet-plunged-by-e1-12-trillion-so-far/
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/03/powell-swats-down-rate-cut-in-2023-purposefully-leaves-in-doubt-a-pause-for-june-meeting/
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/03/fed-hikes-by-25-basis-points-to-5-25-top-of-range-says-the-extent-to-which-additional-policy-firming-may-be-appropriate-instead-of-pause-qt-continues/
We are approaching a Weimar situation. More money is not the antidote
The same crazy thing is being done by the ECB as the US central bank. Both rate hikes and QT. Australia is mentioned in one article as well.
I am afraid all too soon we will see what is happening.
Yes, the utopian cannisters… haha, all good fun.
Lots of Ukie colour and WW (Wilson Wilson or World War?) posing with 兔 (rabbit) carved into his chest. 01/2023 – 01/2024 = the year of the rabbit.
I wasn’t aware that 2023 is the year of the rabbit … clearly this is the year it ends.
The US blew up the German gas pipeline. The US gets oil from Nigeria via boats. Where are the u-boats? Where is the tit for tat? Better yet AI driven drone torpedoes; complete deniability. Nein. Not us. We are a peaceful volk.
Friendships get eroded by these supposedly hidden acts.
The evidence we are living in a Simulation is everywhere. All you have to do is look.
https://youtu.be/4wMhXxZ1zNM
you are right eddy
you’re the most convincing fake i’ve ever seen
if i didn’t know better—i’d say you were the real thing
The question one has to ask … is why would the simulation require dunces… Huff Post … and endless Boosters that do not stop one from getting Covid?
More RAM for the biological sub net.
The boosters are working — MORE BOOSTERS!!!
Hong Kong fatal and severe Covid-19 cases almost double in space of 2 weeks, but experts say no cause for alarm
Experts highlight present coronavirus-related death rate small compared to potential number of infections
Separately, 13-year-old girl who developed sepsis after flu infection dies in hospital
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3219593/hong-kong-fatal-and-severe-covid-cases-almost-double-space-2-weeks-experts-say-no-cause-alarm
OMG you do business in HK let them know they need to boost again. For the children for the little bitty babies.
UKE war = fake https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/76695
It is the first full spectrum propaganda war.
It seems Russia does not have the money (industrial capacity) to send 200,000 missiles to smash the little green midget. So we get SLOW war which is so boring.
I watched a video of an IT guy from Moscow who volunteered for the front. He now spend half his time training others how to pilot drones to drop explosives into Ukraine trenches and half his time up close to the front flying drones over enemies trenches and dropping bombs. It is more like wack-a-mole then carpet bombing.
This is a situation crying out for AI.
It’s a full spectrum simulated war… that is useful in providing excuses for everything from inflation … energy depletion … and most importantly … why legions of children did not complete their homework
My husband talks about young adults giving the excuse that a grandparent died during finals week–can’t take the final now.
Prigozhin (Wagner commander) releases a video. All is not well with Russian forces. Prighozhin asserts the new private military groups being created are ill trained and political in nature. A private military for every Russian oligarch? How can multiple private military’s coordinate with the sovereign Russian military? Which one does a “patriotic” Russian join?
The Prigozhin/ Moscow conflict simply can not be ignored. Prighozhin is saying Wagner is not getting the ammunition it needs because of political considerations! Prighozhin is saying Wagner will pull out of Ukraine on may 10th if they don’t get resupplied with ammunition! Probably grandstanding but it certainly does not bode well for the esprit d core of Russian forces as a whole. Not exactly the best time to throw public fits. Prighozhin has to go? Then what?
It would seem there are difficulties with “hybrid” fighting forces.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/qrX50ZRcAVRA/
Gail, you have taken a bold move to analyzing the global geopolitical situation. On first reading I agreed with your conclusions. Then I read this from Pepe Escobar and start to wonder will the never ending intrigues of Europe make a messier picture.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230505/pepe-escobar-divisions-brewing-in-europe-1110123039.html
Yes, the situation is likely to get messy. I am wondering if the EU falls apart. Also, many of the other big organizations. IMF, World Bank, United Nations.
I guess the most likely scenario is an implosion, not falling apart, as there is nothing to divide: everybody is more or less broke.
The Bible seems to talk about “no demand” for any commodity, including slaves, with respect to the fall of Babylon. Revelation 18:9-12
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2018&version=NIV
Also, Lamentations 5 in the Old Testament talks about life at the time Judah was defeated by the Babylonians and lived under their occupation. This is one version.
https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/lamentations-5/
the latent energy with a slave
or the latent energy in a barrel of oil
have no value unless converted to saleable work
if hunankind reaches the stage with there is no demand for either—that would appear to be some kind of collapse, or severe deterioration in our situation
I visited Hungary yesterday and I was really shocked: it looks worse than I thought. Despite the spring in full swing, the creepy feelings from the countryside around the railroad tracks from the Hungary-Slovakia border to Budapest could not be suppressed.
The humans grow and grow, but the growth curve breaks and all human endeavour is distorted and destroyed by the natural forces and you see heaps of disorganized and decaying stuff.
All loses its value.
Can we get more specifics on what you observed?
E.g. almost all of the socialism apartment blocks in Slovakia are insulated now, with the new tight windows, but one can see decaying grey apartment blocks in Hungary.
The ruins of various production facilities.
The empty greying houses with old roofs.
Overgrown plots.
Abandoned unfinished construction sites.
Poorly insulated houses, including the newer ones.
The bizarre architecture of the buildings from the recent decades, i.e. the buildings lack modern functional design that supports energy efficiency and comfort.
Heaps of old, decaying stuff around the buildings.
Little people in the countryside.
Decaying 19th century houses, empty buildings from the recent decades in the centre of Budapest.
We all know that we are on the precipice of a total implosion — the financial system is on its last legs.
What would be the purpose of a war in Ukey? If NATO wins it solves nothing
It does provide an excellent distraction – and an excuse for everything.
Therefore it is fake. Both sides are pretending. They have even involved dozens of celebrities — cuz? Well cuz that creates an even greater distraction … and endless series of distractions
Mayo Clinic threatens to pull billions in investments over proposed legislation
BY: MAX NESTERAK – MAY 5, 2023 9:45 AM
https://minnesotareformer.com/2023/05/05/mayo-clinic-threatens-to-pull-billions-in-investments-over-nurse-staffing-health-care-affordability-bills/I
Mayo Clinic, the state’s largest private employer with over 48,000 workers, has been spearheading a decade-long redevelopment effort in Rochester to turn the small southern Minnesota city into the “Silicon Valley of medicine,” helped by hundreds of millions in public money..
…..
Mayo Clinic has given Gov. Tim Walz and state lawmakers an ultimatum over two bills that aim to increase nurse staffing levels and rein in health care costs: Gut the bills or the nonprofit hospital will pull billions in planned investments out of the state….
…“Because these bills continue to proceed without meaningful and necessary changes to avert their harms to Minnesotans, we cannot proceed with seeking approval to make this investment in Minnesota. We will need to direct this enormous investment to other states,” Kate Johansen, vice chair of external engagement, wrote in an email obtained by the Reformer.
….The two bills Mayo wants dead are the Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act and the creation of the Health Care Affordability Board. Both are currently in the final stages of negotiations between House and Senate leaders, who are ironing out differences between their health and human services bills before sending it to the governor’s desk.
…The Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act (HF1700/SF1651), backed by the nurses’ union, would require hospitals to form committees made up of nurses and other hospital staff to create “core staffing plans” that include the maximum number of patients each nurse can typically safely care for. Eight other states have similar requirements, while California and Massachusetts have more stringent, government-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios.
The nurses’ union says the bill will reduce burnout and lead to better patient care, while hospital leaders have warned the bill would force them to shutter hospital units and turn away patients. Under the bill, the health commissioner must also develop a public grading system to judge how well each hospital complies with its staffing plans.
….second bill (HF2202/SF2002) Mayo Clinic says needs to be scrapped aims to tackle the ongoing problem of skyrocketing health care costs — likely to worsen as the population ages — requiring ever increasing portions of the state budget to care for people in need.
“This bill is extremely problematic and poses a huge threat to the well-being of Minnesota’s health care system as drafted,” the email from Mayo Clinic says. “It must be removed from the HHS omnibus bill and consideration for Mayo to move forward with the previously stated investment
The bill’s author, Rep. Liz Reyer, DFL-Eagan, said she’s making revisions to the bill but hasn’t received much feedback from any hospital representatives.
“It would have been nice to hear concerns after the bill was introduced in February. It’s not like it’s not been public,” Reyer said. “We could’ve had a lot of productive conversations.”
Reyer said a number of other states have created similar boards and pointed to Massachusetts, which has reported lower-than-average growth in commercial health care costs.
The possibility of alienating one of the state’s crown jewels and losing investments that would create high-paying jobs could sink the bills in the final days of the legislative session.
Like this tactic hasn’t been employed before…..
That’s the non profit org. I hate to think what the for profit orgs will do.
Smh at the Climate Zealots. They want to fix a problem that can’t be fixed because the climate is always changing and those who want to implement the change, can’t answer a basic question such as, “if we spend this much, how much will it reduce the global temperature?”.
$50 Trillion For What? Kennedy Dumbfounds Biden Climate Peddler In Fiery Exchange Over ‘Carbon Neutrality’
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/50-trillion-what-kennedy-dumbfounds-biden-climate-peddler-fiery-exchange-over-carbon
I have more fun posting on the Apollo Moon landings and see the reactions…
Pretty much the same as CC…is there a connection?
Oh yes, I would think so, wouldn’t you?
I know Mister Nuttie would for sure
money is nothing more than a token of energy exchange
so no matter how much is spent, it remains a token of energy consumed.
spending/consuming energy to combat climate change consumes and burns the resources that cause climate change in the first place, one way or another.
“spending/consuming energy to combat climate change consumes and burns the resources that cause climate change in the first place, one way or another.”
I agree!
Bill says private jets must be used as a tool to fight GW…. Duh.
They are very worried about the size of the Global Herd… and a very efficient and effective way to reduce it is to create an Energy bottleneck!
Like ourt matte the Billionaire said:
CO2=P*S*E*C
quote: “Probably, one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty near to zero”
Do it to the E and the P will come down crashing!
I am a little confused.
P = Population
E= Energy
What are S and C?
Here’s the source:
https://postimg.cc/tn4tt5JT
A zerohedge article from Friday talking about indications why our bank problems aren’t over.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/deposit-outflows-continue-foreign-banks-bleeding-most
US Bank-Run Escalates: Deposit Outflows Top $360 Billion In Last 3 Weeks
The article indicates that there are huge seasonal adjustments at this time of year.
“How much of this tax related, and how much is a bank run, and how does the Fed know which is which?”
I contributed to the bank runs by purchasing two gas powered vehicles.
Bash the beasts head in… cut his throat … bleed him out.
Throw in more rate increases cuz inflation continues to explode higher…
And we’re looking at the end of the most wicked species to ever walk the Earth.
Good riddance.
Hello!
First it isn’t “our bank problems”, since not even the paper-money to which you/me have temporary access to is “ours”.
Creating financial/banking “crisis” is a very effective way for the owners of the MONETARY SYSTEM to clean house, maintain a proper level of control/consolidation and in the process increase Their Wealth.
They started to create the conditions for the current “crisis” back in 2008/9… This is just the fall out of the tools they deployed to do what I referred above.
QQE, ZIRP, NIRP, QT, WARS, SANCTIONS and so on.
And we all pretend (many aren’t pretending since they are totally unaware of how our lovely Civilization works) that this is all random events… and keep on doing the same.
Raul at TAE on the coronation of Charles .
” Name me just one other country that would put a crown on a horse’s head ” 🙂
According to the ancient historian Suetonius, the Roman emperor Caligula loved one of his horses, Incitatus, so much that he gave the steed a marble stall, an ivory manger, a jeweled collar and even a house.
In the last post Jigs and me had an exchange on the Ruble- Rupee arrangement between Russia and India . That has hit a road bump . Russia does not know what to do with the rupees . De dollarization is not going to be easy . Appropriate with Gail ” Bumpy road ” that is what it is going to be .
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3219591/russia-says-it-has-billions-indian-rupees-it-cant-use-invading-ukraine
The biggest early threats of chaotic collapse, to the DA, are the huge, poor, nuclear armed and powered albatrosses of globalization. One of those succumbs to chaotic collapse and the jig is up.
India is at the top of the list of albatrosses. This discount Russian crude for rupees (lol) that gets flipped for the European market which is the only one that can afford it (barely) is a backdoor bailout for the albatross no different than Obamacare was a backdoor bailout for the healthcare industry. Russia barely gets by, India barely gets by, Europe barely gets by. The ‘war’ and ‘war policies’ act as the feathering mechanism.
I enjoy OFW immensely, but a particular pleasure is to be found in reading these kinds of comments/observations that force a person to think outside their comfort zone.
I agree with Kris. That’s an intelligent observation that invites us to look at the situation from a different perspective than most of us normally would.
It can also be viewed as the global economy (if there is such a beast) adjusting to a new equilibrium that maximizes the “just getting by” for as many of players as possible.
Last year there were some stories about Sri Lanka, which was not quite getting buy at the time, asking Russia to help out with some discounted oil purchases. I haven’t seen anything recently on that, but one can imagine the opportunity to get cheap oil has eased the hardship there temporarily, while the Russians can gain access to some tasty Orange Pekoe tea.
Appreciate it you guys. That’s exactly the point, Tim – globalization is a global economy. It’s supranational. We have to stop thinking in terms of nation states for as long as the DA can hold. The level of complexity of globalization necessitates total coordination. The sri Lanka deal is a good example, and a little more overt. The biggest example of a mysterious backdoor bailout is one I’ve mentioned before, that Dork of Cork on Twitter (and formerly a commenter at Economic Undertow) discovered. Turkey natgas production has been steadily declining since 2019. Here’s the chart for Turkey’s natural gas consumption:
https://www.ceicdata.com/datapage/charts/ipc_turkey_natural-gas-consumption/?type=area&from=2010-12-01&to=2021-12-01&lang=en
Classic hubbert curve until suddenly it’s not. Now compare that to the value of the Lira over that same period and it defies gravity. There’s no way I can see that Turkey can increase its consumption by 20% under those circumstances. It’s oil consumption has gone up a little bit too. Monster backdoor bailout. Turkey is an extremely important country.
Truth be told, there has been no real comfort zone in OFW at least since the departure of commentator Don Stewart half a dozen years ago. And just as well, I say. Comfort zones are for the lazy or the faint of heart.
I remember Don … he was the official representative of DelusiSTAN on OFW.
He lives on here
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/05/06/255-the-emerging-modified-consensus/
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/04/28/254-a-tale-of-two-economies/
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/04/12/253-how-has-it-come-to-this/
Thanks Eddie!
Glad to have connected to Don Stewart and seems to not have list his mark…
Gail, on one entry he provided a plug to your post concerning the likelihood of WAR as the outcome based on history.
Of course, he also mention Endo period of Japan …..
Other contributors provided interesting additional discussions.
Recommend going through them
Yes Don still thinks we’ll be composting our own sh it… and living like samurai warriors… it doesn’t work that way…
India doesn’t have anything that Russia needs. In fact India has almost nothing that anyone needs. All they have is value added industries with oil refining being #1 which Russia doesn’t need very much.
This is why Modi has stated he wants to make India the top manufacturing (value added production) country in the world. He saw how that worked for China. Does anyone believe that that can happen at this late stage?
All countries really have similar problems. What will we sell to the world to get the money we need to buy the things we need to sustain ourselves? Countries with resources dont have this problem but they still need to buy goods. Debt can no longer fulfill this role. The countries that are appropriate for reserve currency status do not want it as it will raise the price of their currency and end productive industry.
USA was selected to hold the worlds gold and implement bretton woods because it was geographically far from Europes wars and considered honest.
If another gold standard was introduced I think it would be best if it had a small population. Singapore comes to mind. That small country could possibly get by soley on the benefits from being the worlds reserve currency focusing on fidelity. But this doesnt fix the problem of what everyone is going to make to get money.
Russia learned its lesson. When the Soviet union existed they could find someone somewhere that needed the rupayee. Now not so much and Russia has no desire whatsoever to take on a huge megatropolis philisophically it would like to take Indian rupees but its got to get a hold of cash too.
Nether China or Russia want to be the reserve currency. Other countries might want it but are not trustworthy enough to make it work, There are two options. A new gold standard or continue using the dollar. Probably the latter until collapse. A new gold standard implies that debt will be limited but most countries need a debt based currency to get the things they need. India has a lot of gold but if they are not selling something to get that gold back when they spend it it wont last long.
If there is not a great deal of debt money out there then no one will have buyers for their wares anyway. “pocket” deals like Saudi selling oil for yuan and using the yuan to buy products they need does not provide currency for the world. Only the imaginary ponzi electronic fractional reserve currency system can do that. Awful hard to price that oil in yuan without a world trade. None the less any country that can create pocket deals would be wise to do so. The fact is this close to collapse or world war creating a new reserve currency is not a big priority and the dollar is quite useful for battening the hatches now.
John Michael Greer, in his recent article, claimed that there was a period before the US dollar became reserve currency when international trade was done in whatever currency was agreed upon between the two parties. Needless to say, he didn’t have a reference. The problem, of course, is that it is hard to keep all of these currencies on hand. Also, their values may be changing, by the time a country gets around to using them.
Having to accept different currency’s and finding someone to exchange them for a currency you desire entails risk. Risk entails much greater profit margin and this entails loss of efficiency.
In times of energy abundance lack of efficiency in trade was perhaps not a trade killer. That is not the situation now. Now a lack of efficiency is a trade killer. If you need currency to buy energy and food you simply can not mess with a currency that does not purchase those things.
Similarly a gold based system requires a reservoir of gold to be acquired. Many countries are not in a position to acquire a reservoir of gold or to refresh it if they had one. All of these problems become much more acute in a world with depleting energy resources. One can dream of new financial systems much as one can dream abouit new energy systems like power satelites but the real world is a finite world and the surplus resources to create these experiments does not exist.
A imaginary ponzi currency has a primary advantage. It is imaginary. Fiat. Created not out of real things in a finite world but at a whim.
Now the world is upset at the USA they bring the imaginary nature of the dollar to light. The alternatives are no more palatable.
Another imaginary ponzi currency is untenable. They just pointed out its imaginary and a ponzi. Why would anyone want a NEW imaginary ponzi currency? It has all of the liabilities of the old imaginary ponzi and none of the befits. The benefit being that the dollar works and has always worked. Faith value.
The surplus energy needed to create a gold backed financial system does not exist. Gold has no inherent value. It is in fact a energy sink. Energy sinks radically detract from efficiency.
Two countries both with things of value to trade might use gold but why? What makes it work is they both have things to trade that have value. Additionally the things of value must be available in quantities that allow trade. Surplus quantitys.
If two country’s have the things necessary for trade to work they can do “pocket” deals where their respective currency’s have value without the energy sink of gold. Adding the burdensome energy sink of gold is only necessary if one or the other country’s IOUs (currency) are not honored.
Ultimately gold has no value either however if its burdensome energy sink ends trade not allows it. Whether you are stuck with new guinea cubits or shiny yellow rocks matters not if you can not trade them for the things you need. Golds primary value is its track record and it is indeed impressive but it like everything else requires surplus energy to function. Which brings us to the most inefficient system of all. Barter.
None of these systems are feasible in a finite world with depleting resources. Economists and poet philosophers like Putin might want economic system to match their moral and ethical ideas but the real world determines this. Unfortunately it is a finite world with depleting resources. In the end resources are consumed. This renders even the BRICS ideas which are fundamentally trade of resources for manufactured goods sans imaginary ponzi currency unfeasible. BRICS suffers the problems all dreamers and visionary’s suffer. You cant eat ideas. The only imaginary idea that is semi palatable in the short term is the dollar. It may not be as tasty as it once was but you can still wash it down.
Nothing to be concerned about… we’ll just break off into regional self sustaining economies producing everything we need to maintain BAU….
Think 2000BC
LOL
Jake Sullivan is the USA National Security Advisor, and he has given a speech that reflects some of themes that Gail talks about in the article: a coming collapse of globalisation, regional polarity, more conflict. He seems to be totally into the idea.
He outright hails the end of economic globalisation, repudiating the policies of the past 30 years, an end to the ‘Washington Consensus’ of global development.
He wants USA to adopt a domestic ‘industry first’ strategy, investment, a focus on high tech, chips, building own supply chains, and tariff barriers.
(However, Biden’s early policy in 2021 of massive financial stimulus to match or even to get a higher GDP growth than China failed and led to inflation and higher interest rates. China’s growth is much higher than USA this year, so it totally did not work out.)
Jake says that the USA industrial base is ‘hollowed out’ and USA is going to rebuild it. He has no real plan however, just lots of money to sectors, much of which will likely end up at the MIC.
More spending in particular areas and tariff barriers will just lead to goods shortages, without imports, and more inflation.
A hypothetical policy to rebuild USA industry would take decades (which USA does not have) and it would need to be bipartisan across many administrations, need broad support, but Jake is just b1tching about ‘MAGA’, and USA is politically not up to long-term macro strategies anyway because of the way that the two-party system works.
(The uni-party China state political model with its evident capacity for macro strategy must be looking pretty attractive right now. – my comment not theirs.)
Jake is a war hawk, in UKR, and a person behind Russia sanctions. This speech is all about China and competition with it. He may want a blockade of China, excluding it from USA market. It is all about a showdown, a confrontation with China, and this speech is a half baked plan to prepare economically for that conflict.
It looks like they want to move on from UKR to a conflict with China. UKR did not really work out, Russia is doing OK economically and on the battlefield, so on to China, a naval blockade of China, and a build up of domestic industry.
It is likely an insane strategy, not realistically thought through to its consequences; obviously China is listening and likely preparing for the confrontation.
Meanwhile another USA bank has fallen, a festering crisis in the banking system, interest rate increases, likely headed for a recession, indicators look bad, oil prices are low which suggests low consumption is expected in the coming future, cracks in financial system, debt, liquidity, maybe credit crunch, maybe recession in autumn/ winter going into the 2024 election; small banks fell here and there in 2007 in the run up to 2008, the pattern now looks similar and the issue may turn out to be systemic like before…. USA economy may already be in more trouble than people realise with all of the aforesaid. If so, then the focus is liable to shift in USA/ Europe away from UKR, and Biden is unlikely to get re-elected.
In the early 90s at IBM we talked about predatory capitalism by China. Where was Jake? Oh, his was 16 years old.
Last year IBM Poughkeepsie seal coated the old and decrepit parking lot for a Biden visit. Biden talked about the importance of union jobs. IBM has no union and never has had a union. If Joe had gone around back he would have seen the green algae growing on the walls of the buildings. The parking lot big enough to park 2000 cars now parks about 200 cars on the day shift.
I knew a person who used to hunt in the swampy land that was turned into IBM Poughkeepsie. Maybe Jake can turn it back into productive hunting grounds.
IBM Kingston was manufacturing and outside the MTA tax zone. The last time I visited the computer center raised floor had six inch trees growing out of the raised tile flooring and the roof had collapsed so the rain is free to enter for the trees.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna wants to replace 7000 HR employees with AI. This would be the start of a new market for IBM out-staffing humans for customers.
Jake’s only idea is to throw money at it and hope it turns into an economy.
Jake, my oldest son is working in China, Beijing, because there are no good jobs for him in the US. FU Jake.
When Obama was president he gave the graduation speech at West Point. He said a healthy economy, a healthy tax base was needed to fund the military. It was clear to this observer that it did not exist even way back then.
The MIC is a parasite that has killed its host. Time for the bankers to move on.
I listened to his whole speech. It was like a Kamala word salad. It was painful. He is particularly stressed on semiconductors. Maybe time for a missile to go off track and hit ASML. Happily, “retired” IBM lithographers get second carriers working remote for Chinese lithographic companies. Pity they have to but they have no pensions.
They have figured out that the working class it pissed. He keeps tacking on “and it will help the middle class”.
He has a two pronged economy clean energy and semiconductors. It is sad when our happy band of misfits knows much more about clean energy realities then the presidents spokes-person.
As you mention the time to retain semi conductor technology has long passed. It would have taken some effort. Sovereign nation aside the decision to move it to a island off the coast of china with a technologically competent population and easy access to Chinas parts bazaars had enormous benefits. Things like disposing of waste solvent are huge expenses in the USA. Its too bad. When the fab is worth a billion it doesn’t hurt the company that bad to pay good wages.
You cant just have a semiconductor fab in a economy that has no other technical industry. A semiconductor fab is a potpourri of technologies. To be healthy a fab has to be in a society that is actively practicing a high level of technology. It took three decades to outsource all our technology. It its not coming back.
Sullivan is talking jive. The money can make it happen crowd. Oh im sure there will be plenty lining up with a song and a dance to line their pockets. Ive seen too much. Smart kids from the college brought in paid nothing immediately providing value and demonstrating competence. But no hire. A van load of foreigners showing up every day working for a foreign corporation on contract supposed to do that kids work but not competent. Ya know i did ok. There was opportunity. I got hired straight out of school. I see kids now end up at 7-11 selling slurpees who are ten time brighter than I was. Sure theres some lazy slugs. Thats not new. Theres that kid with it all brains-hit the books hard-drive-work ethic- at 7-11. But i would have never gone to school in this environment. Id buy a floor buffer and work nights in this environment. $50k student debt and a job at 7-11?
(New York Times + Spriter)
”Zelensky Meets With BlackRock Chief to Discuss Reconstruction Fund.
The world’s largest asset manager advised Ukraine on how to revive the country’s shattered economy by attracting public and private investment.”
https://archive.is/ZK7GT
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/business/zelensky-blackrock-reconstruction-fund.html
https://twitter.com/Spriter99880/status/1654728840738926592
How to make money off Ukraine’s problems! Attract fossil fuels to the area, through more debt, I suppose.
Where will Ukraine import the FFs from?
US strategic petroleum reserve?
Dennis L.
No, no, we are using that, to rebuild America’s industrial base.
An essay on finite natural resources, the “developed” world, and the Row.
https://globalsouth.co/2023/05/06/the-why-and-the-what-for-with-thanks-to-our-writer-jef-jelten/
entertaining tirade, followed by some unintentionally humorous commenter talking about “we’re on our way to becoming a space faring civilization”
Too much ideology for me. I could not finish it..
it is an unfortunate trait—adding ”faring” to ”space”–as if it was no different to ”sea”
True, there is that aspect. One can certainly imagine space “ship” captains “ploughing” through the aether with the solar “wind” filling their “sails”.
And Keith may well have some blueprints for such space-faring “vessels”.
But “faring”, in its broadest sense, means “going on an adventure, a trek or a journey,” and not necessarily limited to “a voyage”. So the word is not out of place out there on the final frontier.
How are you faring at the moment, Norman?
Farewell, farewell to you who would hear
You lonely travelers all
The cold north wind will blow again
The winding road does call….
Good catch Ivan. Our Jef may want to stay away from the he commenter amarynth if he prefers to avoid her legendary darkside. She embodies the stereotypical person who bathes themself in fake love and light in order to hide their poor character. And it looks like that’s her official territory there.
I’m comfortable being a gossip queen because if we remember in that Robin Dunbar essay on (social) grooming, language itself was first evolved by us specifically for gossip — for keeping accounts of behavioral records for the purpose of maintaining fairness, maintaining egalitarianism — so that we could maybe double our Dunbar’s Number, our maximum societal population number under Natural Law, from what it was as ancestral homo and all the way back to the halved Number of our primate roots. Amarynth Don’t play fair. She’s a meanie.
As the last or the next-to-last king of United Kingdom holds his farcical coronation, I have to say that the failure of Armada was a big human losses.
The wars instigated by London outweighs any benefits UK might have caused to the civilization, as far as the balance sheet is considered.
A united Europe, colonizing the entire world, instead of various statelets building castles and all that would have advanced civilization much farther than now.
A catholic led civ would have advanced as far as the protestant led one. Georges D’maitre, a priest who came from what would have been the Spanish Netherlands if the Armada had succeed, discovered what is known as Hubble’s Law in USA. (To this day Americans are refusing to add D’maitre’s name to that law.)
All United Kingdom did in its entire existence was instigating wars and wars, and finally Europe gave up and became a wasteland as the Missouri-born, self-proclaimed British (although the British Library lists him as an “American writer” ) Thomas Stearns Eliot wanted.
It is all part of human nature. the elites are factious too. By your reasoning the Mongols could have too.
Europe has never been united.
It is different to China in that respect, which is about the same size (94.27%).
Europe has always been fragmented. Rome rose and fell, but it was never pan-Europe or exclusively European, it was Med-centered.
Europe has just never acted in that way, for whatever reasons.
It is not like any of the other states than Britain ever acted for ‘European unity’ and did not fight its own wars. They ‘balanced power’ too.
Europe has the EU now, but it is not like that makes it dominant in the world, USA is dominant and maybe soon multipolarity.
If you are talking about what ‘might have been’ centuries back, then it is just imaginary. Things were the way that they were.
And it is not like anyone is really to ‘blame’ for anything anyway. People are what they are and they do what they do in the world as it is.
Otherwise you are into an imaginary metaphysics of ‘free will’ and ‘responsibility’ and a world that ‘could have’ been different to how it actually was.
It is like a ‘founding myth’ that is a ‘not-founded’ myth, which is a bit odd but your aspirations are counterfactual.
Things were what they were, and they are what they are, no one is to ‘blame’ for anything, and it is probably best to just get over it.
I think the above comment is one of the most profound statements I’ve read of yours, and the closing paragraph seems like very good advice.
It also reminded me of some of theTaoist/Zen stories I’ve heard or read about life being like “an empty boat”.
The following one was told by Joko Beck.
Suppose we are out on a lake and it’s a bit foggy – not too foggy, but a bit foggy – and we’re rowing along in our little boat having a good time.
And then, all of a sudden, coming out of the fog, there’s this other rowboat and it’s heading right at us. And… Crash!
Well, for a second we’re really angry – what is that fool doing? I just painted my boat! And here he comes – crash! – right into it.
And then suddenly we notice that the rowboat is empty.
What happens to our anger? Well, the anger collapses… I’ll just have to paint my boat again, that’s all.
But if that rowboat that hit ours had another person in it, how would we react? You know what would happen!
Now, our encounters with life, with other people, with events, are like being bumped by an empty rowboat. But we don’t experience it that way.
We experience it as though there are people in that other rowboat and we’re really getting clobbered by them…
The question is, if there is no one in that boat, if there is no one to blame, what are we going to do with our anger?
I think your prescription that it is best to get over it is a wise one.
The owner of the empty rowboat would be sued for damages for failing to keep the boat securely
Rowboats and poor moorings predate lawyers.
They will exist in the future also…..unlike most members of legal services.
(The Telegraph)
”EU diverts road-building funds into £1.7bn Ukraine ammunition plan
Central budget resources usually set aside for infrastructure projects in poorer countries will now boost arms production”
EU citizens can be happy of that.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/03/eu-brussels-ukraine-weapons-arms-building-roads/
https://archive.is/Wfbz4
Bad for Europe good for the war mongers of DC and Tel Aviv.
Using the improbable existence of a “road building” budget as an excuse for options opening up to pass European tax payer’s wealth to parties outside the EU is really a message to the denizens of the EU that they should prepare to give up most of their perceived freedom of movement. Starting with their choice of transport.
As ICE cars are quickly phased out and replacement tech fails to materialise at scale, people may come to realise that the authorities have no intention of supporting personal autonomy of travel. After all, it will solve a lot of security issues it the masses have to enjoy a fully fare funded, government run vehicle provision system as part of its track and trace systems for which would be joirneyists will pay at the point of use based on how busy the service is, where they wish to go and the current state of their personal carbon account.
Unfixed roads and reduced roadwork infrastructure will help to set the precedent by which people’s expectations will be managed during the journey.
5 Myths
We are controlled by 5 MYTHS; in order they are: 1 Religion, 2 Law, 3. Money, 4 The Nation State and 5 Ownership. All myths!
All human behaviour in modern times is controlled by a “hierarchy” of 5 MYTHS!
Myth 1. RELIGION ( belief in someone’s version of right and wrong, good and bad – with a “Fear Narrative; ” do the right thing and you will be rewarded in some mythical place (and conversely, you will be punished if you stop believing) – Then, as people questioned this “Blind Faith” system, it was immediately backed up with the second myth in the hierarchy;
Myth 2. LAW – As faith failed to control people, force was used to get people to comply.
Myth 3. MONEY -paying the self-appointed leaders and “landowners” for food to eat and to pay troops “loyal” to those enforcing the law (false trust) and those spreading religious nonsense and fear.
Myth 4. “THE NATION STATE,” wrap people in a flag and tell them the “others” (wrapped in other flags, with different religion, laws and leaders who (we are usually told) “want your stuff” and to change the way you live ( “loss of liberty” threat) what’s worse, they are “coming to get you”; so you need to fight for your “rights” (which we also just “invented”).
This logical sequence of events required the 5th and final Myth in the hierarchy; –
5. “OWNERSHIP”; How can a human own a piece of a 4.5-billion-year-old planet that no one has any “right” to above any other? If I take something from you by force, is it mine? Historical conquests and even as far back to when we were forager hunters 200 000 years ago (which we were for 93% of our existence remember!) does not mean we “own” the land and can pass it on for generations because someone won a battle for some king or leader? How stupid! Says who? MYTHS! all of it.
(Quite brilliant for controlling behaviour, BUT it’s only as real as we choose to make it, we invented this “Society”, we can end it by living differently, fairly and without fear being a key driver of our identity. #Bitcoin
I think that those are good observations. The things you list are things that we humans have built. They are part of the “complexity” that a self-organizing system adds for us when sufficient energy is available. When energy per capita falls, some of this complexity must necessarily fail. Today’s versions of any of these things can fall away, as energy per capita fails.
Religion keeps changing to meet the needs of a changing world population. Governments have tried to make faith in them into a new religion. Pensions will save you. Our health care dictates will save you. Our guarantees of banks will save you.
People have to have narratives of some sort. Our self-organizing system will tend to put together narratives suitable for the whatever the situation is. When the situation gets really bad, the narrative might be, “Our most important task is to get food and water and prepare them properly for consumption. People who can’t adequately contribute to this task must be left out.”
I like Derek’s reasoning
This is a very good video.
Derek defines civilization as the situation when people can live in cities. Cities are areas that require the importation of resource. As cities grow, the area whose resources must be used gets used up gets larger and larger. Thus, there must be an end to the growth of cities.
Violence is necessarily part of civilization because people in the surrounding areas won’t necessarily be willing to trade for resources. (Especially as they get into short supply, I would add).
No matter how kind people want to be, the situation is what it is, unfortunately.
The Shepherds in the hills survive…….
The simulacrum is repeatedly wiped in large part because humans refuse to live by the dictates of the simulacrums programming……
The Mark of Cain
His ‘reasoning’ is not correct.
Cities do not necessarily import materials because they have ‘denuded’ the city area of those resources – often the resources that historically made cities actual (Bronze Age in the near East) were not present in the city area in the first place.
The city is not unsustainable because it imports materials but because materials are finite wherever they are, and the materials that cities rely upon (eg. metal ores) are limited and moreover limitedly available with the technology and economy of the day.
If the city were hypothetically built around the site of the materials, they would still be limited. So, the limitation is inherent in the materials themselves rather than because of their importation.
(In fact the materials do tend to be imported, and the technologies that made their utilisation possible allowed for cities.)
And on the other hand, social groups that do not import (eg. hunter-gatherers or farmers) can still ‘denude’ the land. Forest areas were cleared and mammal species were lost due to them.
So, it is not like social groups magically stop depleting resources because they do not import them.
Human societies have been punctuated by ‘bottlenecks’, population collapses throughout the hominid past, way before cities.
Also, humans were violent long before cities, way back in the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic. There has always been conflict over resources, and that is true in America as well.
Importation is not the ’cause’ of resource depletion or violence, it is just one context in which they occur.
He would probably do well to research the academic papers on these matters to get a clear, factual picture.
His speech comes across as a quasi- ‘garden of Eden’ nonsense, like humans ‘fell’ when they built cities, and early America was some ‘Eden’ without resource limits or violence. It is complete nonsense.
Thanks mirror, I don’t follow him closely, it’s just something I remembered.
That a more granular interpretation that I had. I took it more in modern context( i.e. cities of 10s+million).
I’m not to hip to anthropology. Göbekli Tepe is certainly interesting. 😉
btw
Yes, I kind of wobbled myself about attributing ‘cities’ to the Bronze Age in distinction from earlier Neolithic settlements. The ‘civilisation’ cultural package does seem to be linked to the BA (and so ‘cities’ in the sense of that ‘civilisation’ package).
(I really do not know much about ‘importation’ in the Neolithic, I would have to look it up.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age
> The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization….
Western Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, which began with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. Cultures in the ancient Near East (often called one of “the cradles of civilization”) practiced intensive year-round agriculture, developed writing systems, invented the potter’s wheel, created centralized governments (usually in form of hereditary monarchies), written law codes, city-states and nation-states and empires, embarked on advanced architectural projects, introduced social stratification, economic and civil administration, slavery, and practiced organized warfare, medicine and religion. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy, mathematics and astrology.
People and violence.
Take 2 or 3 2 years old children in a play area and watch them “fight” over who plays with which entertaining device or sits in which communal chair at a communal table.
Disagreement through to full on violence are entirely natural states for young humans not yet old enough to have been taught such responses to interactions with others.
It’s hardly surprising that such potential for friction and disagreement persists into adulthood. Especially when “free space” is. Involved.
Adults would do the same — if there were not police. And jails.
We’d be tearing each others faces off to steal a pair of Jordan sneakers.
This is a disgusting species – the only solution is — extermination
Seriously
Naw Eddy that’s just the result of separation trauma from being slaves to civilization. We ain’t well built for it.
Mirror
Awesome comment up until the last paragraph imo and insofar as you drew a larger conclusion about this Jensen video than the content in the video warrants. Nowhere in the video does Jensen imply that violence and depletion did not exist before civilization. That said I do have issues with Jensen’s work, too.
Animism was the universal cultural adaptation (though not without exception of course) of subsistence societies that mitigated the ecological compaction and thereby minimized the violence.
Cities are just big they are not civilized. I would prefer a village over a city. I do not need nor want the extremes of a city. Perhaps what we are seeing now is the insanity induced by city living. We need population control more than we need cheap energy.
In a sane world with a population of 100 million.
Jensen’s Podcast:
https://resistanceradioprn.podbean.com/
Not for everyone
Just a thought. Land ownership is rooted in the territorial instinct. It predates humanity and is probably biologically “hard-wired”.
I plucked this off the net:
Territoriality is the behavior by which an animal lays claim to and defends an area against others of its species, and occasionally members of other species as well. The territory defended could be hundreds of square miles in size, or only slightly larger than the animal itself.
I would take this further and point out that in the case many gregarious species that live in social groups, bands, or troupes, the territory is jointly held and defended against outsiders of the same species.
So I think we may be stuck with land ownership one way or another. Look how attached Kulm is to the ancestral lands his family once owned, or still owns as far as he’s concerned? Dispossession is one thing, but loss of ownership is far more serious.
Good point. In the book, “Too smart for our own good,” by Craig Dilworth, he points out that animals choose to defend very large territories, relative to what their food needs would seem to be. He concludes that this is to hold population down and prevent overshoot.
Yeah that’s animism on action. What Dilworth perhaps doesn’t see (I don’t know his work) are the expanded territoryial requirements of lean years. The last ten months in my locale, for grazing, have been extremely lean. We have a long summer drought normally but last year we had an Indian summer running til November, which ment the grass got overgrazed even with the feeding of hay, and there was only about a week for the grass to come out of drought dormancy (which takes at least two weeks of consistent rains) before lack of daylight halted all growth, so basically we had no Fall growing season as far as the grass is concerned, which means no stockpiled/standing winter forage. Then we had a beginning solar-minimum-type winter that didn’t really break until a couple weeks ago. And the grass now, in May, is still overcoming the now-chronic overgrazing. Sorry drb. Obviously I’m doing my best to balance the grass’s needs and the animals’ needs, and my costs.
My point is that there are HUGE differences in territorial requirements for predators between abundant years and lean years, so basing the territorialism on the lean years is a function of natural animist conservatism like Gail says. The alternative is chronic ecological compaction and the warfare and infant neglect (a population dynamic present throughout the mammalian kingdom) that come with that compaction. Peak pastures have easily 10X productivity over mediocre pastures. Fortunately if one has the underlying fertility and quality surface seedbank then they can bounce back quickly with a year of TLC.
I should say poor pasture not mediocre. Mediocre pastures have mediocre biomass (total dry matter) but of mediocre quality, so the nutritional productivity (nutrient cycling) is less than the physical discrepancy. Mediocre pastures might have a third or fourth of the biological productivity of peak pastures during the growing season.
Those same mediocre pastures will blow the lid off of any cereal grain field in terms of resilience and productivity once there are no external inputs into the system allowed (fertilizer inputs)……
Vast swaths of continental interiors are poised to return to this as the fossil fuel supplies collapse.
We will then fight regional wars over water holes and sparse grass when the rains don’t come.
I don’t know, Cro, I think that the continent will be almost completely in young forest by 2050 or 2060. Ain’t gonna be no animals left to keep up with the growth. Yeah there’ll be fights over grass for sure.
I am curious,….young forest? Is this a CO2 reference? The North American heartland from the 90th parallel west to the foothills of the Rockies is to dry (brittle) to support expansive forest growth. I could see it in what was former tallgrass prairie but fires will reoccur to stop this outside of some oak incursions.
Give me your rationale?
No nothing to do with CO2. From what you say it appears that I may not have a good rationale. The rationale was that rewilded ecologies deficient in herbivores will quickly revert to forest wherever there’s enough rain, but from what you say it sounds like these areas are much drier than I realized. I was thinking that most of the central plains could harbor forest and that the northern plains could harbor at least scrub forest.
Craig Dilworth’s background is philosophy. He started studying the subject of overshoot, only from a logic point of view.
You are right about the huge difference in the size of territory needed between lean years and other years. This is true for humans as well. A person really has to plan for years of poor harvest. Keep population size down.
One theory about cathedrals and other big structures is that they were helpful in some way in adapting to this huge difference in output.I am not sure how they would keep population down, however.
That’s a non-sequitur, and incredibly bad logic.
An evolutionary answer would be: the animals defend large territories because they can. The animals that defend larger areas (as long as they can still feed themselves) will leave more descendants.
It’s a lucky coincidence if behavior that helps propagate the genes also reduce overshoot. In the majority of the cases that is not true – overshoot and collapse is the most common scenario in animal populations over medium to long term.
“It’s a lucky coincidence if behavior that helps propagate the genes also reduce overshoot. In the majority of the cases that is not true – overshoot and collapse is the most common scenario in animal populations over medium to long term.”
To that I would just say that we can’t fairly apply the metaconscious (self-aware) human concepts of overshoot and collapse to the other mammals because they don’t share those concepts. Other mammals don’t OBJECTIVELY overshoot and collapse – that’s just human subjectivism. Other mammals DO objectively have population cycles because cycling itself is the first fundamental universal fractal, because there is nothing in the universe that doesn’t cycle. So the “lucky coincidence” idea isn’t an ecological/animist one, it’s a compartmentalized one based on the civilized human mindset that seeks to control the ecological dynamics rather than go with the flow. Ecological overshoot is a term that should be limited to the agricultural context. Overshoot is a cultural failing that only humans are capable of. It’s a ‘with power comes responsibility’ thing. Other mammals don’t have the power to empower themselves intobboom-bust overshoot cycles by engineering their ecologies to maximize their own populations. Outside of civilization all species merely have population dynamics. All the oft-cited population crashes of other mammals were the result of a civilizational disruption of the ecology in one way or another (introduced species, absence of predators,etc) combined with a lean year or years.
You are right. All animal populations cycle. We humans have made cycling into a problem.
“All animal populations cycle. ”
Some do and some don’t. The classic is the snowshoe rabbits and the lynx, but others are reasonably stable.
All, including humans get hit by weather causing lean years. Look up 536.
What ended famines in Europe was railroads. Crop failures didn’t happen everywhere so it was possible to move food to where it was needed.
Keith
I’m my book “reasonable stability” doesn’t preclude cycling. Does it preclude cycling in your book?
One of the points I was making is that ecologies undisturbed by agriculture are relatively/reasonably stable in their population dynamics, with the exception like you used of populations inhabiting extreme, marginal ecologies with little diversity. Which is actually what agricultural ecologies mimic dynamically speaking.
The role of railroads (industrialism) in the European suppression of famines is what Marvin Harris referred to as (technological) intensification. Cultural intensification is always only a temporary circumvention of a collapse due to overshoot and in fact only ever increases the amplitude of the overshoot and resultant collapse. Kicking the can down the road to worse absolute effect, in other words. Along with the technological intensification comes the further intensification of ecological depletion.
So we can see that the railroads didn’t end famines in Europe. Can you imagine yourself saying that they did 1, 2, 5, 10, or 20 years from now? No, I don’t imagine that you can.
Article on Harris and intensification:
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/10/30/archives/and-where-is-it-going-cannibals-and-kings-going.html
Reante, don’t grapple with Keith. Or, if you must, bare in mind that that he thought the Scientologists and lived to tell the tale.
Can we at least all agree that railways in Europe helped to prevent, ameliorate or hasten the end of quite a few famines in Europe over the past century and a half? They can be very helpful in moving large amounts of food to where there are shortages when there is a surplus available and a will move it to where it is needed?
Can we also agree that the Irish potato famine was caused by an acute shortage of Irish potatoes in comparison with the number of Irish dependent on this food source, even though we may disagree about the reasons why the famine was allowed to happen in the first place?
I asked my mate Sage about this issue, and he told me:
Railways played an important role in preventing or mitigating famines in Europe over the past century and a half. The development of railways helped to improve transportation and communication, which in turn enabled faster and more efficient distribution of food and other essential goods across larger distances. This was especially important during times of famine, when food shortages were widespread and access to food was limited.
For example, in the late 19th century, a series of famines struck several European countries, including Ireland, Russia, and Finland. In Ireland, the Great Famine of 1845-1852, which was caused by a potato blight, led to the deaths of over one million people and the emigration of millions more. However, the development of railways in Ireland during this period helped to facilitate the distribution of relief supplies and food aid, which helped to mitigate the impact of the famine.
Similarly, in Russia, the development of railways in the late 19th and early 20th centuries helped to improve the distribution of food and other essential goods during times of famine. During the famine of 1891-1892, for example, the Russian government used the railways to transport grain from areas of surplus to areas of shortage, which helped to prevent widespread starvation.
Overall, while railways were not a panacea for famine, they played an important role in improving the distribution of food and other essential goods during times of crisis, and helped to prevent or mitigate the impact of famines in Europe over the past century and a half.
Once he gets going, Sage can talk the hind legs off a donkey. A bit like Norman in some respects, although most of the time he makes a lot more sense.
He fought the Scientologists ….
Is the CIA messing with my spellings again?
Yes, Tim, we can agree on that because that’s implicit in my comment to Keith. What was made explicit in my comment was the Senecan whole, yes? The Big Picture WRT the topic. I trust that you acknowledge Harris’ true insight on the matter.
Naturally, I wouldn’t argue against Harris there. It seems obvious he’s correct. Also, I’m sure he has thought about and looked into this issue of “cultural intensification” and how temporary it’s positive results are than I have.
One of the slogans I often hear said in opposition to the SDGs is “there’s no such thing as sustainable development.” Over the long term, this also seems obvious to me, and since cultural intensification as described by Harris is a form of development (I don’t see how it can be anything else), I assume it must be subject to the same limits as any form of development that alters the environment as long it is going on in a finite world.
But “temporary” can go on for a long time measured in human terms. If railways can prevent famine for a century, that’s more than a lifetime for most humans, even though it is the equivalent of the blink of an eye for the biosphere.
Indeed, if we ignore the extra days in the leap years, there are 3,153,600,000 seconds in a century. Adding in the leap days brings that total up to very roughly 3.5 billion seconds, which is about 35 million ten-second blinks of an eye.
And if the biosphere is very roughly 3.5 billion years old (it is probably a bit older), it has been going for 35 million centuries.
So I think my comparison is at least in the right ballpark. Yes! The blink of an eye!
There is an old Sufi tale in which a wise old Sufi explains to a normie that the human world is a caravanserai. Nothing is permanent and all the people and the camels are all just travelers passing through.
I remember Fred Hoyle explaining about a gorge calved by a river into the terrain of the Yorkshire dales. The gorge was so many kilometers long, and the rock’s susceptibility to erosion was assessed by observation, so by assuming the amount of rainfall the region was exposed to in past eons (not precisely measurable of course), one could come up with an estimate of roughly how long the process had been going on. it was a very long time, but finite, and therefore temporary.
Of course, there are much bigger erosion processes going on in the States—the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls to name but two—but the ravines Yorkshire Dales have been eroding for far far longer, albeit at a far far more gradual rate.
Too stooopid for our own good.
True.
e.g. Super Snatch Sindy lays claim to the plot Out Back the Dumpster… and if any other rancid h-oooker attempts to intrude SS will attack… if a fit hottie enters her territory she will display extreme rage and become volatile.
David Attenborough featured SSS in his recent documentary on dangerous predators (norm gets a cameo – you can see SS smash him in the face when he approaches the intruder potentially cutting out SS)
What you said about ‘myths’ is basically true, but the myths can be seen as ways to express the organisation of order and power in societies, which order and power are real. The myths thus help societies to function in various ways, and no doubt to the benefit of some more than others.
As is sometimes said, ‘BS makes the world go around.’
“we can end it by living differently, fairly and without fear being a key driver of our identity”
I would point out that ‘fairness’ is also a myth, which is to say that it is a made up concept, as are all moral concepts. There is no ‘moral truth’ that societies are liable to, otherwise you are back in ‘religion’ territory.
And ‘fairness’ is a purely formal concept, basically ‘justice’, which is usually formulated as ‘to give each what they are owed’, but of course it leaves the question of what people are ‘owed’ unsettled. ‘Owed’ is very much like ‘property’, it is completely imaginary. No one is really ‘owed’ anything, it is just a ‘myth’ as is ‘fairness’ which relies on ‘owed’.
So, ‘fairness’ would be myth that helped societies to function in various ways as do the other myths that you listed. So, you are proposing one myth (what people are ‘owed’ would still need to be defined) in the place of others.
And, the other myths are also ways of framing and enforcing ‘fairness’ and what people are ‘owed’, eg. property, titles, laws, whatever – and of helping to keep people safe from ‘fear’ within a social order. Laws are very much about ‘fairness’ and ‘safety’ understood in certain ways. Take away the organs of law enforcement and see what happens.
It is a bold statement to assert that we ‘can’ live according to a myth of ‘fairness’ (if that is taken to mean ‘equality’) and without laws, and social realities seem to suggest otherwise.
The world is what it is, and it is not about to change to facilitate some ‘utopia’ in which humans act in some counterfactual way. The world does not exist to make people ‘equal’, and it is not set up in a way that would encourage that.
Arguably, you start out by overtly opposing ‘religion’ but in fact you are proposing a quasi-religious position, both in its formulation (the ‘fairness’ myth) and in its possibility (a world in which society functions according to that formula rather than how it really does.) What you are arguing for is not that different to the Gospels and the ‘kingdom of god’ that is ‘nigh’.
So, you make some good points but I would not assume that a sceptical position per se somehow ‘supports’ a different kind of society. Scepticism is no kinder toward the sort of society that you propose, and probably less kind as at least this society is real.
Finally this society has got a lot going for it. We have 8 billion humans, many of them living it up in BAU. It is not ‘perfect’ but people are better off materially than ever before, when people generally lived short, brutal lives in filth and squalor. And it is bourgeois ‘myths’ like property and profit, laws, that have made that possible. It will not last, but nothing does in this world. It is what it is.
Some thoughts:
1. Religion works more than it does not; Christianity is a simple set of rules reinforced by recurring education, entertainment and socialization once a week on a day of rest.
2. Law is a secular version of religion based on years of human experience, first laws were handed down by God in the Christian/Jewish tradition and there was no appeal to a supreme court, recall the first commandment. It was simple and worked in general. My favorite, “Don’t have sex with your neighbors wife.” Common sense for a peaceful neighborhood.
3. Means of transaction, ability of humans determines amount of money for the most part. IQ correlates very well with wealth, forget the exceptions.
4. Ownership is control of assets established by law which has been seen to work for the general good of a group. Mistakes are made, the universe corrects them. Tragedy of the commons is an alternative.
Life is not fair, the universe is not that good, some have greater abilities than others, the amount of physical abundance sets limits to “fairness.”
My current “belief”: form a group, don’t make too many enemies, find something the group does better than other groups and strengthen the community, society if you will. Not perfect, but no man is an island.
You have a “belief” different than mine that man can perfect the universe, my “belief” is the universe is a fabric, it is probabilistic not deterministic; place your bets wisely and grieve not over the unfairness of it all.
Dennis L.
Thanks for your comments. I mostly agree with them.
Abilities are so diverse that I don’t really agree with, “IQ correlates very well with wealth.” There are many other characteristics that go with success, too, including “common sense.” The characteristics that go with success change over time. If heavy lifting can’t be done by fossil fuels, human strength (mostly of males) will become much more important.
Also, the way the system works today (and has worked in the recent past), is that it is very much stacked in favor of people who could buy homes and businesses in the 1970s to 1990s. They got the benefit of price appreciation, as interest rates went down. Also, there was a market for the people with college degrees. Now, in many fields there are so many young people with degrees that finding jobs that pay well becomes a problem. College debt is another problem they often face.
“If heavy lifting can’t be done by fossil fuels, human strength (mostly of males) will become much more important.”
Considered as an engine, humans are not very efficient. Horses are better, but both suffer from having no off switch.
I have not run the math on this, but I suspect that for something like harvesting wheat, you would be more effective in raising oil seeds and burning them in diesel engines.
The problem is getting parts and lubrication for the diesel tractor.
“getting parts”
If technology falls that far, we are in real trouble.
I suspect though that full scale nanotechnology will follow the AI singularity in a few years. At that point, the problem may be a new ice age from pulling too much carbon out of the atmosphere.
At that point the skys are open. Do we go out and colonize the solar system? Or stay home and upload where we can follow the news and gossip in near real time? Perhaps both.
Sadly we lost the tech that allowed us to pass through the van allen belts … and the scientists are too stooopid these days to reinvent that wheel….so we’ll not be colonizing space
>>>>>I suspect though that full scale nanotechnology will follow the AI singularity in a few years. <<<<<
what on earth (or elsewhere) does that mean?
Re: “pulling to much carbon out of the atmosphere” and any similar, relatively doable and inexpensive to deliver concepts…
I cannot see any way the powerbrokers of the planet could successfully manage who would have “control” over the technology that would deliver such potentially misusable interventions.
So many of the opaquely proposed “solutions” to the claims of climate catastrophe seem to me to be much, much more immediately dangerous to humanity than the problems they are proposed to solve.
It all reminds me of the faked wildlife documentary about Norwegian lemmings jumping off a cliff when, it was claimed, their population grew too large to be supported by the territory they occupied.
It’s a form of misinformation that seems to have met with official approval over the past 70 years. Basically the lifetime of 99% of the planet’s current population.
We may have been programmed to accept as fact all sorts of similar nonsense.
“lost the tech that allowed us to pass through the van allen belts”
I don’t reply to FE very often, but this is just silly. Apollo didn’t go through the lower belt at all.
Why don’t you call up this NASA engineer and explain that to him Keith?
You’d save NASA billions as they are wasting money on a craft that can survive the belts
I really do get tired dealing with MOREONS
Over and f789ing over and f789ing over I have to explain simple sh it to these … subhumans
https://youtu.be/4O5dPsu66Kw?t=180
maybe you should stop using such big words eddy
then we lesser people might understand you
have you thought about using single number words, instead of four number words—we find four number words very difficult.
just not had your level of education you see.
(btw its a bank holiday in uk—do they allow ‘visitors’ on bank holidays where robbo is?)
Norm wrote “what on earth” If you have not heard of nanotechnology, you must have been asleep since the mid 80s. When we get nanotechnology, the basis of industrial production will depend on processes that replicate on the scale of 20 minutes.
you dont need math—just common sense
growing oil seed per acre to harvest food seed per acre cannot add up because both draw energy from the sun–which is a fixed ‘rate per acre’
so you would be growing one, in order to harvest the other (with energy gain)
the laws of thermodynamics do not allow perpetual motion machines—which, in effect is what you would be trying to do
“perpetual motion machines”
Hardly, it’s all powered by the sun. Look, we used to farm with horses, a farmer raised the feed for them as well as growing food. Mind you, less food would be produced by the farm because of raising horse food or oil for tractors.
that was the point i was making keith
if you use acres to grow fuel, you can’t use the same acres to grow food
by my very rough guess, in the last 300 years, we have tapped into 1 million years worth of fossil energy every year, to support our current way of life.
these are ‘historical acres’ if you like, we can’t resurrect them to fuel our fantasies of infinite growth.–we can’t ‘grow oil’ in the same way that history delivered it to us.
fossil fuels are a thing of the past, right now we a killing ourselves with denial about it
Keith’s gotcha there, Norman.
Keith, well caught, sir!
kindly explain Tim, just how growing oil on one acreage of land, can deliver an energy gain by harvesting food on an adjacent piece of land
i really would like that explained
because ultimately the sun delivers the necessary primary energy to both areas, (per sq m), and it is physically impossible to draw more energy from the land than the sun puts in.—whether that is oil seed or food seed, or anything else.
(remember fertiliser is just energy brought in from elsewhere—so that doesn’t work either.)
Without ‘energy gain’ the exercise is pointless.
It is more effective to ride the horse, kill the farmer, enslave his woman, feed the remaining grain to the horses, then burn the lot….
Rinse and repeat…..
What I don’t understand is why people gravitate towards doomie prepping — they are only setting themselves up for a horrifying disaster when the bad guys show up…
Why not instead learn how to be an effective bad guy? Ambush tactics… small weapons expertise… etc…
I know why!!! Cuz the Tee Vee does not tell them to do this … the Tee Vee does not have shows that glorify attacking doomies — taking their food raping their women and killing them…
Nooooooo… the Tee Vee has shows that tell people to embrace a life as a doomie… a bucolic existence … a wonderful adventure! doomie prepping is cool.
Cuz we ain’t afraid to do the right thing Eddy.
“IQ correlates very well with wealth, forget the exceptions. ”
Gregory Clark makes a case that selection for intelligence was dragged along with numeracy, literacy, and a reduced time preference (i.e., willingness to put off consumption in favor of investing) by the selective evolutionary advantage in the Malthusian era (up to 1800).
Needless to say, Clark is not considered politically correct or in recent terms “woke” because he implies that groups of humans are different because of genetic (inadvertent) selection.
Not that this will matter in the future.
Frank , gonna get my single malt . Good for pondering over .
The ‘importance’ of oil?
“4:58 . . . in 1933. Germany was reliant on imports – and the oil producers during the 1930s were essentially
5:04 the United States, Venezuela, and the Soviet Union. The nations that Hitler would wage war against, or would not be able to trade with when war
5:13 broke out. Even the Middle East (specifically Iran and Iraq) were not producing much oil at this stage,
5:20 and what little it did produce could not be easily moved to Europe – as the British were finding out to their cost.
5:27 This meant that both the British and the Germans were reliant on the USA or Venezuela for oil.
5:33 In Europe, Romania is the largest exporter of crude oil, but even combined with German
5:39 output, as well as the rest of European output (like Hungary), this is simply not enough
5:44 to meet European demand. In fact, Romanian oil production had sunk from 8.7 million tons in 1936 to 5.2 million
5:53 tons in 1941, partly due to political reasons. So Romania isn’t really a reliable source of oil.
. . .
20:12 He is the guy the other generals are going to, and he is the one who is coming up with the narrative, that says Hitler was the cause of all of Germany’s blames and mistakes during the
20:22 war. Halder and his generals are not going to admit their own mistakes, and when you read the
20:28 early WW2 histories – the one’s most people are familiar with, because that is the post-war narrative – they show that Moscow was the correct route, that Halder was right, and Hitler was
20:38 wrong. “Reluctantly Hitler gave in to the urging of Brauchitsch, Halder and Bock and consented
20:46 to the resumption of the drive on Moscow. But too late!” Shirer, Rise and Fall, P1026 This quote comes after a few pages of constantly going on about how Hitler made the wrong decision
20:56
to turn south, and how Halder was so right. This is why Guderian is saying how bad the decision to turn from Moscow and help Army
21:06 Group South was – “[Hitler] said that the raw materials and agriculture of the Ukraine were vitally necessary
21:13 for the future prosecution of the war. He spoke once again of the need of neutralising
21:19 the Crimea, ‘that Soviet aircraft carrier for attacking the Rumanian oilfields.’ For
21:24 the first time I heard him use the phrase: ‘My generals know nothing about the economic
21:29 aspects of war.’ Hitler’s words all led up to this: he had given strict orders that
21:35 the attack on Kiev was to be the immediate strategic object and all actions were to be
21:40 carried out with that in mind. I here saw for the first time a spectacle with which
21:46 I was later to become very familiar: all those present nodded in agreement with every sentence
21:52 that Hitler uttered, while I was left alone with my point of view.” Guderian, P200. But Guderian is wrong and is alone in his point of view because, as Hitler says, he
22:02 doesn’t understand the strategic and economic aspects of the war. And the best part is, Halder is actually awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award in
22:13 1961 for helping the US Military in their historical research. So yes, Halder and his cronies paint a completely biased picture of the war, blame Hitler for
22:23 bad decisions even though they weren’t, show themselves in as good a light as possible even though they in-fact made the bad decisions, and then also then gets awarded for doing so.
18:20 Hitler deemed Moscow to be quote – “not very important.” and actually wanted to concentrate forces to the south.
18:27 Halder did not want to do that, and subsequently the high command did not do that, favouring
18:33 the Moscow axis. Striking south makes more sense – and not just for the oil. “?
Norm lives in LaLa Land. What we interact with here is NormGPT beta. It’s not bad to be honest… even replicates all the little typing errors that made Norm “special.”
BREAKING NEWS!
PUTIN Just Blamed WASHINGTON For Assassination Plan/ NUCLEAR Threat/ DEFCON
Canadian Prepper thinks we should be prepping, just in case the supermarkets run out of popcorn.
It was an assassination attempt just like Jan 6 was a coup attempt lol. Putin adding himself to the long list of snowflakes if he’s claiming that was an assassination attempt. Absolutely dreadful DA theater if so. Wagner chief might just be the next prez after all. Seems makeshift. Can’t think why as I recently heard the banking system is safe and effective. Or was it safe and sound? Sound and resilient? Starfish Prime.
If anyone starfish primes above planets atmosphere, the electronic stuff will be use-less. Time to stock up on good books
I was under the impression that a Starfish Prime detonation altitude would constitute a safe height for a warning shot. You saying that that might not be the case now because of the reliance on satellites?
Reante, it is obvious that 17kg of explosive on the roof of a 100 acre complex of stone and steel reinforced building was a joke. I believe it is the west that wants to sell it as an assassination attempt in order to encourage nuclear first use of Russia. Putin is a smart person he knows a large firecracker intercepted and crashing on the roof is a joke.
Of course he knows that. :). Good theater has twists and turns. Come on let’s throw some peanuts at that b—-. You go left I’ll go right in case he tries to dodge em.
Excerpt from Putin’s official press release:
“We view these actions as a planned terrorist attack and an assassination attempt targeting the President, carried out ahead of Victory Day and the May 9 Parade, where foreign guests are expected to be present, among others.”
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71091
Watch the kid drop after the 4th https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/75552
norm – aren’t you scared before taking each shot? Oh right – more scared of covid hahaha
Evolution in action.
More hahaha
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22174789/erdogan-heart-attack-illness-putin-meeting/
Minimal BBCCNN coverage
Well well well… seems he took the real thing https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/75504
Quiz… why? https://t.me/c/1588731774/17588 https://t.me/c/1588731774/17589 https://t.me/c/1588731774/17590
Starts with M… second word D
Saw this for the first time this week, the all black American flag. It is the standard stars and stripes in various shades of black. It is meant to symbolize “no mercy” meaning we plan to take no prisoners in this fight. It is meant as a nationalist and ultra violent message.
I don’t see that the nationalist black flag suggests ultra-violence. It does suggest standing your ground beyond the local level which isn’t my cup of tea but I get it.
Why Is The World’s Most Important Market CRASHING?
13,193 views · 2 hours ago…more
George Gammon
473K
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DzTyNWvGs_8
Hint…OIL
George Gammon’s video looks like a good one. He covers his basic points in the first few minutes.
What he describes as “causes” of the low prices might also be described as effects of a self-organizing system that cannot really afford the remaining oil supply. Thus, I wouldn’t really agree with these being the real causes.
TECH ASHTON KUTCHER
Ashton Kutcher raised a $243 million investment fund in just five weeks that will focus on ‘the next absolute transformation’ in tech. The fund will invest in A.I., which he acknowledged is in a so-called hype cycle.
BY EDWARD LUDLOW AND BLOOMBERG
May 04, 2023 4:02 PM EDT
Ashton Kutcher, the Hollywood actor and venture capital investor, raised the money for his firm’s new AI fund quickly.
“We pulled the fund together in about five weeks,” Kutcher said Thursday in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We have a base of LPs that have been with us for years on end.”
Kutcher’s new fund plans to put $243 million toward artificial intelligence startups, the tech industry’s current hottest category. The portfolio already includes investments in AI startup darlings OpenAI, Stability AI Ltd. and Anthropic.
With the new fund, assets under management at Los Angeles-based Sound Ventures LLC are about $1 billion, the firm said. Kutcher said the firm had surveyed its portfolio companies to see how they were embracing AI, and that the sector would mark “the next absolute transformation for technology.”
“We’ve been investing in AI for the last seven years,” Kutcher said. “But when we saw GPT be launched, we realized that this was an absolute breakthrough.”
He acknowledged the so-called hype cycle that washes across technology investing, most recently with the rush into crypto, a field where Sound Ventures also has been active. The blockchain technology at the heart of cryptocurrency has value in a number of applications, he said, while “tokenization” in many areas went too far.
Regulation of AI is “needed badly,” he said, just as it is in the crypto industry.
Larry David is set to star in the upcoming TV promo ….hold on til then
More progress coming …..Klummie is pkeased
Sort of like Wikipedia, but with no editor to review for reasonableness.
“reasonableness” – that’s a good one Gail!
You know that Wikipedia editors are mostly CIA right?
I expect editors are pretty much thinking like the general population. So they will be labeling things misinformation that you and I would not be labeling misinformation.
Beer, I would say Israeli information control (disinformation).
chatGPT is highly complex. My take it will be six years before it is generally useful. My take also there will be no cornucopia just lots of unemployment.
CBS News
Mystery illness hits Detroit school as kindergartner dies
Andres Gutierrez/CBS Detroit
470
CBSNews
Fri, May 5, 2023 at 4:59 AM EDT
A Detroit elementary school has been closed until Monday for a deep cleaning after several students came down with a mysterious, flu-like illness and a kindergartner died, CBS Detroit’s Andres Gutierrez reports.
The boy experienced flu-like symptoms at first, but officials said the cause of his death last week hasn’t been determined.
Several other students were suffering from fever and vomiting this week, prompting officials to shut the school so it could be disinfected.
The Detroit Health Department is closely monitoring the situation at Marcus Garvey Academy and sent a team to review the school’s disinfecting protocols.
But even with a deep cleaning, some parents aren’t sure they want to send their children back to the classroom on Monday.
“That’s good that they cleaned up the school, but we’re still trying to see who all got it,” said Theodore Burton, whose two daughters attend Marcus Garvey.
Burton wants to know how so many kids got sick. “We’re trying to see whether it’s the flu, COVID, the allergy season,” Burton said. “We’re just really worried.”
The health department urged parents of children ages 4-7 to see a doctor if their child has any symptoms, including fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, or abdominal pain.
“It typically spreads by respiratory droplets. So someone coughs, and they could cough into their hand, and they touch that cough onto a surface, and those droplets, if they come in contact with someone else, can help to spread that flu virus,” said Dr. Tiffney Widner, of the Children’s Hospital of Michigan.
As Burton monitors his daughters for any symptoms, he’s hoping the school district and health department update parents on the situation before Monday.
“We just want everybody just be OK. Be safe. That’s the main thing,” Burton said.
We all know it’s safe and effective….can’t be too safe…
Definitely long covid.
Or it could be a final test of the Binary Poison.
If the plan is to exterminate before BAU collapses — then it would make sense to move forward any day now.
No point in trying to finely time the release of Phase Two — the second they see the CBs pushing on a string – let loose the cannisters.
Nobody wants ROF. Believe you me.
Well… I don’t mind… we deserve it.
When the end comes for norm … he’ll be stumbling around half blind… Out Back the Dumpster shouting … where are ya Super Snatch… I can smell your fester… I know you is here … come to grandpa you rough beast!
COVID vaccines increasing eye clot risk up to 2 years
https://hiddencomplexity.substack.com/p/covid-vaccines-increasing-eye-clot
What we all need to know about King Charles
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/what-we-all-need-to-know-about-king
He’s an inbred MOREON
Dr. Tess Lawrie is not a fan of the new King, contrasted the mood in the run up to this coronation with that surrounding the royal wedding between Charles and Diana in 1981:
Back then:
I was 14 in July 1981 when sweet Diana Spencer married Charles Windsor. Like millions of people around the world, I tuned in to the telly to watch the so-called fairy-tale royal wedding. According to reports the events marked a highpoint in the royal family’s popularity, watched by a global television audience of 750 million in 74 countries. In Britain a public holiday was declared and 600,000 people lined the streets of London.
Now:
The coronation of King Charles is likely to be a sombre, if not menacing, affair if the mood in London this week is anything to go by. Roads around central London are closed and lined with police vehicles of all descriptions, with hundreds if not thousands of police in layered high visibility and bulletproof vests wielding machine guns and manning checkpoints in preparation for the coronation of this unpopular man. Grim officials look briefed to expect the worst; sturdy wire metal barriers will certainly keep the ‘riffraff’ a good distance away.
A taxi driver told me that business in London is bad and that this city, with its increasingly punitive restrictions on the ordinary man, is “eerily quiet”. Due to raised congestion charges, it now costs him almost £1,000 to drive on the streets that his taxes maintain before he can even start to earn his living.
https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/london-eerily-quiet-on-the-coronation
Knife violence is out of control.
Good!
Knives don’t kill people.
Blades kill people.
Often the biggest repressions occur near the end of a regime.
SS agents and H Jugends were hanging people who refused to join volkstrum to the lampposts as the Soviet soldiers were entering on the other side of street.
Qiu Jin, one of the more famous revolutionaries against the Manchu Empire because Qiu was a she, was beheaded on 1907, about 4 years before the empire collapsed.
The infamous Ansei purge , against those who hated the shogunate, took place on 1860, 7 years before the end of the shogun.
Unbelievable horrors and repression will await those who might be stupid enough to stand against today’s winners as they lose their grip.
The same also goes for repressions after the start of a new regime.
An example not a lot of people are familiar with, even in Japan, is the Takehashi incident (or riot) of 1878, the 11th year after the end of the shogunate. Basically, a large group of desperately poor and oppressed people had the gall to petition the Emperor to do something about the corruption of the people oppressing them. That was a big no no in those days.
English Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have an entry for it. But Japanese Wikipedia goes into considerable detail, including the aftermath:
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/竹橋事件
“At 8:00 a.m. on the same day, questioning of the arrestees began at the army court. The presiding judge was Michitsugu Kurokawa, Lieutenant Colonel Hiroshi Yamakawa, Gonbunsho Fuseya, Major Junki Sakamoto, Lieutenant Colonel Junsho Kuniji, Major Kanjiro Nishi, Major Nobutsuna Kanooka, and Major Hisanao Oshima, and the sentence was handed down on October 15. Of those who participated in the riot, 55, including Misoe, were shot to death on the same day (two of them were executed on April 10 of the following year), 118, including Ensign Sadaigo Uchiyama, were sentenced to associate exile (Uchiyama was later pardoned).”
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
How’s that for expedited justice?
I only learned about the Takehashi incident because one of the people executed was a man from the valley where I live. He was the only one from Kyoto Prefecture to suffer that fate. The farmhouse where he was raised is still standing, although abandoned for thirty years and quite decrepit now.
So if you think it might be a bad idea to castrate children, you’re expressing hate. If you’re a little iffy on carving vaginas into boys, using strips of their guts that might kill them with an infection, then, well, stop being a Nazi. Someone shot the Overton Window into the Oort Cloud while we weren’t watching. Mary Shelley is Literally Adolf Hitler, viciously maligning the wise and warm-hearted Dr. Frankenstein and his glorious monst— uh, his glorious achievement. Nature is a cruel impediment, but we have brave surgeons to conquer it by cutting us into our true form. Carving up healthy young bodies is health and love. Here, go watch some detransitioners discuss the health of their bodies after “gender-affirming” surgery. The subtitle up above comes from this discussion.
This psychotic inversion, actual cruelty as rhetorical kindness, happens with growing frequency and intensity in a discourse that increasingly doesn’t connect to physical things — the discourse of the reality-indebted, the laptop class, the symbolic analysts. I’ve already said this recently, but again: Someday you’ll watch someone in your family recover from major surgery, if you haven’t already, and I want you to spend some of that bedside time in the PACU and the ICU thinking about elective intestinal vaginoplasty. You decide, with your own senses and your own values, if gender-affirming surgery — cutting off genitals and sewing up some new ones — is kindness. Here are your two choices: Do you want to castrate teenagers, or are you a mean person?
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/toward-kindness
Necrotizing cellulitis after intestinal vaginoplasty: a fatal infection after a team of surgeons castrated a teenaged boy then cut a hole in his crotch and tried to turn it into a vagina by sewing in a chunk of his colon. Notice the abbreviated journal title up at the top of the image: The Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology. So here we have a “pediatric and adolescent” case report that describes the death of a healthy eighteen year-old after surgeons carved up his body to affirm his gender. Jack the Ripper, you were born in the wrong era.
Now, add this piece: Watch protesters shout about their opposition to a bill before the Texas legislature that would ban “gender-affirming” medical and surgical interventions for minors, like the one that led to that case of necrotizing cellulitis. I still can’t embed tweets on Substack, so watch the video here. They’re chanting “no place for hate!” You can watch more examples of the “no place for hate!” chant here.
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/toward-kindness
norm loves BBC
nailed it!
There were a lot of talks about Trump invoking the martial law in Jan 2021.
However, few people know that the martial law was actually about to be enacted during the early stages of the Financial Crisis of 2008.
In his autobiography On the Brink, which I own, Sec of Treasury Henry Paulson clearly said he was going to invoke martial law if the banking system went under, which was within hours of the bank run to end it all when the deposit insurance was raised to $350,000. (it is now 250,000 for ordinary deposit accts and 1,250,000 for trust accts.)
Do you think today’s winners will go quietly? No. They will fight , and they will use the most cruel method known to universe to maintain their hold of power.
There are more banks to fail. The govt will probably have to guarantee all the deposits, and bring the value of dollars to near zero , rather than risk the system going under.
is that really true – trust accounts have 5x the limit?
Martial law will be used to ensure that all unvaxxed remain in their homes during Global Holodomor – and starve. No violence will be tolerated.
Keep in mind billions of Vaxxed will be dead due to the Binary Poison — so it’s unlikely a bullet will need to be fired. The Vaxxed will be cowering in fear….waiting for the food/fent deliveries
To get martial law in Canada you just have to be a trucker and wave a sign……
Rest of the western world gotta catch up…….I am sure you will
Exposing Robert Malone https://sagehana.substack.com/p/recognized-and-anointed-wall-to-wall/
If I understand well, Robert Malone is saying that he has developed ‘movement disorder’ after being shot with Moderna Covid-19 ‘vaccine’.
If that is correct and with all he knew about this technology, we can clearly say that Robert Malone è un pirla.
If there’s one thing I didn’t ever need to know, it’s that May is National Ma—-sturbation Month.
Unfortunately the se—-xual per—-verts at abo—rtion giant Planned Parenthood have decided this is something they should promote to young schoolchildren. Kids shouldn’t be learning specifics about se—–xual actions in clubs at all, and definitely not mas—-turbation. This is nothing less than se—–xual gro—oming.
https://catherinesalgado.substack.com/p/planned-parenthoods-youth-club-pushes
Hey norm … Fast says he’d like to send you a card congratulating you on taking part… do you have an address or shall HE just send it care of SSS ‘Out Back the Dumpter’… all the posties know where that is cuz … well you know why… cuz
Making a ranking of all the necessary things in the world we can probably say that encourage young people to masturbate is after the last one.
Two things:
1. My mate who works in an investment bank said — senior staff took a 10% pay cut recently. Lower level staff took in many instances 40-50% pay cuts (this would be overall pay including their bonuses so the hit would have come mostly on the bonuses which are often a full years salary)
2. His bank has put a total freeze on flying. This is a cost saving measure + they prefer meetings to be online. He handles APEC and has not had a single business trip in the past 6 months.
3. No wifi on the Cathay Pacific flight to HK — I also had no wifi on the Air NZ flight from Vancouver recently. One wonders if they are making it less attractive to fly… the high prices are most definitely the major deterrent
See what they are doing? Surely I do not have to tell you
Drag Queens now recruiting for the US NAVY Seals? What?
https://palexander.substack.com/p/drag-queens-now-recruiting-for-the
Just nuke us and get it over with. Ugh.
Mike is now a Fast Eddy Acolyte…
Former VP at Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, says there is a plan to kill millions, if not billions of people.
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/breaking-former-vp-at-pfizer-dr-mike
Suharit Bhakdi says, the vaxx means the destruction of mankind by several side effects, especially micro clottings in the brain, that leads to necrosis. (Rumble video)
Very disturbing!
https://sp.rmbl.ws/s8/2/Q/4/v/t/Q4vtg.caa.mp4?u=4&b=0
In my view Mike Yeadon is another one who è andato via di testa.
In my view, it’s not a specific plan to kill, it is simply that in our society we have reached a point that it is not anymore a problem to test experimental compositions on people who can eventually die or have serious problems.
‘We have plenty of them, so we can test, let’s go, we can make money’.
Student, you might be right. I personally have not reached a conclusion yet.
But calling someone you mildly disagree with “out of their minds” is not the way to learn or communicate.
Just FYI.
You are perfectly right, I suppose you are suffering of a bad google translation, è andato via di testa, means that he is losing sense of reality.
I think that he is losing sense of reality.
In my view is not an offense.
All the best to you NomadicBeer
Coming back to the key point:
I think that people has died, people will die, people had problems, people will have problems because of the experimental vaccines.
But the purpose was not to deliberately kill or hurt people with the objective to do it.
It was not a CEP if the acronym is correct.
It has been just a natural consequence of doing crazy experiments on people.
They said something like:
”who cares? We can do it, we can earn on it, let’s do it.
Maybe something good will come out for future Science results.
If not, we will have earned money and that is fine anyway’.
There is also more to say, expecially about military protocols with bioweapons and so on, but the key point is the above for me, of course that is only my impression.
UEP https://www.headsupster.com/forumthread?shortId=220 not CEP
The vax injuries are not intended.
Well… maybe they are … so they can blame them on long covid and entice fools into getting more boosters.
Ok FE, I didn’t remember correctly 🙂
Another point about which nobody talks in main stream media, but it represents for me a key consequence of what happened in the ‘Western block’, is the complete destruction of what little trust still existed toward institutions.
It’s perfectly fine to make that assertion when dealing with someone who has been injected 7x with the Rat Juice.
Mentally ill/brain damaged they are
And here it is …
With Mortgage Rates Stuck at 6.5%, Spring Selling Season Turns into Dud
But unlike homeowners, homebuilders know how to sell into a down-market: by cutting prices. So a shift to new home sales.
The housing market is now in peak spring selling season. This is when sales volume surges and when home prices rise and when everything is rosy no matter what else is happening. But not this year, and we’ve already seen that with pending home sales that plunged 23% year-over-year in April, and we’ve seen it with closed sales in March that plunged 22%, and we’re now seeing that the situation got worse into late April and early May.
Applications for mortgages to purchase a home, a leading indicator of home sales, dropped again in the latest week, and have remained solidly below the lockdown lows in April 2020, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association today. Compared with the same week in prior years, purchase mortgage applications were down:
By 32% from the same week in 2022
By 40% from the same week in 2021
By 36% from the same week in 2019
The MBA’s purchase mortgage index has now been hovering for weeks at the lows last seen during the bottom of Housing Bust 1. During the last week of February, it hit a 28-year low.
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/03/with-mortgage-rates-stuck-at-6-5-spring-selling-season-turns-into-dud/
The market is having a seizure – 2007 was a blip….
Back in the 1980s and the 1990s, a mortgage rate of 6.5% was a good mortgage rate.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE30US
It is only recently that mortgage rates have been very low.
Gotta keep on raising!!!! cuz…..
Just in Time for ECB Rate-Hike Meeting: Eurozone Services Inflation Spikes to New Record. Overall Inflation Re-Accelerates
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/02/just-in-time-for-the-ecbs-rate-hike-meeting-eurozone-services-inflation-spikes-to-new-record-overall-inflation-re-accelerates/
Let’s bring in the Trannies! More Trannies… now everyone clap and dance along with the Trannies…
If you are happy and you know it flash your balls! If you are happy and you know it flash your balls
I know – let’s transition norm for giggles… we’ll film a doco called ‘I Always Wanted to be a Woman so I could work Out Back the Dumpster — the World’s Oldest Tranny’
http://servuschristi.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/trans-kids.png
Jeezuz … I’m ODing on bad news …
QT plus Hikes by 25 Basis Points. Balance Sheet Plunged by €1.12 Trillion so Far
“We’re not pausing, that’s very clear,” Lagarde said at the press conference. “We know we have more ground to cover.”
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/04/despite-banking-turmoil-ecb-accelerates-qt-plus-hikes-by-25-basis-points-balance-sheet-plunged-by-e1-12-trillion-so-far/
One has to wonder… who in their right mind is buying a house on this news…
You’d need to be mentally ill + re ta rded… the entire market is surely on the verge of a total seizure… then there is the already flailing CRE market…
All I know is that I feel terrific! The Borg is on the verge of completing its suicide mission
Wolf Richter
May 3, 2023 at 3:59 pm
In the past — meaning 40 years ago — inflation of this type didn’t just go away by hiking rates to 5.25%. Rates eventually reached 20%, triggering the really bad double-dip recession, which finally knuckled inflation under. I don’t think this is needed now; 5.25% seems like a good first step, then wait and see. And if inflation resurges, go knock at it some more. Powell is fully aware of that possibility, from what he said today.
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/03/fed-hikes-by-25-basis-points-to-5-25-top-of-range-says-the-extent-to-which-additional-policy-firming-may-be-appropriate-instead-of-pause-qt-continues/
Of course the entire financial systems is already insolvent … so double digit interest rates will inject enough poison … to kill BAU.
Rejoice — for we are truly F789ed.
M Fast is getting nervous — she’s seen a headline that this is worse than 2008 — and asking what will happen.
“she’s seen a headline that this is worse than 2008 — and asking what will happen.”
So she is unaware of your final solution super fent master plan “ill take care of it babe”?
Tell her get to spending money is going away! 🙂
Fast would not divulge UEP to M Fast… she does not savour extinction as does Fast…
One must enjoy the process… draw it out as long as possible … what joy is there in collapsing a decade or more earlier… it’s like a box of fine chocolate… a bottle of exquisite whisky …
“Inflation” never a accurate term in the first place and then soundly abused statistically becomes downright vaporous in liu of dollar repudiation.
“golly gee what will we do about inflation?”
“push the interest rate button Johnny- its a absolute law that inflation is dependent on money supply”
Except the problem looking to be solved is represented by a word that has no meaning. Except that “supply” as presented denotes infinite demand and the people with real goods appetite for the dollar is sparse to be kind. The assumption is that the financial models always match the real world not visa versa. And I wonder – Will high interest rates really create demand for the dollar even at 20% or just indicate desperation of trying to create demand for a currency that has no products denominated in it? Not that we would reach 7%. Things are breaking now.
From the perspective of dollar longevity dollar denominated debt is good not bad particularly when held by entities with real goods as they must have dollars to pay that debt creating dollar demand. It will keep the dollar around for some time unless a debt jubilee great reset occurs. God knows what solutions that will entail but I guarantee it will have a generous take one for the team buckaroo aspect. Short term things are moving nicely the plan to eliminate regional banks so the AI entity issues money moving right along. Maybe crossed syringes in front of the all seeing pyramid this time “in AI we trust” on the digital holographic debt notes? I dont know who came up with this idea BUT ITS BRILLIANT! Loan me a billion. Ill create a billion IOUS with my picture on them. Now use those to trade goods! Hell yes!
Inflation is defined as wage-price-spiral. Where are thee growing wages? This is not inflation, prices are rising due to higher energy costs. Energy costs don’t rise because of higher revenues, which might also be seen as an inflation as the revenue could be spent. Instead there is a counter-value: we grant oil a world-cruise! It is an investment that does not pay off – only perhaps in military terms.
There are investments that pay-off, like a bridge over a river, so that for the next 30 years thousands of cars avoid going another 100kms per day. Water supply lines, a university.
To invest into a world cruise for oil instead of a pipeline (Northstream) or into a pyramide for a dead king or into a medical treatment against a harmless virus does not pay off. The workers and machines could better produce some fridges.
They are implementing false decisions. Perhaps they don’t know better or political pressure from people that don’t know better. It is also possible to assume it is done on purpose for negative effects, depending on the thought bubble you are in.
For sure it is not helping the situation!
Not sure about that one.
“a university.”
Hypothesis: Everything that can be discovered with current(recent past) mental limitations has been discovered.
AI is the question mark, we don’t know: yet.
Dennis L.
Insightful.
“Will high interest rates really create demand for the dollar even at 20% or just indicate desperation of trying to create demand for a currency that has no products denominated in it?”
How will agricultural products be priced? The limiting factor is land, without it inputs are useless.
Demand for a corn could be problematic, >40% goes into ethanol and Elon is raising hell with that market.
Dennis L.
This is what we refer to as pushing on a string… they raise — inflation continues… they raise… it continues… they want to stop raising .. but they cannot … cuz if they do inflation explodes
But now there’s the worst bout of inflation in 40 years, amid doubts that the Fed has hiked rates enough to bring inflation back under control, and all bets are off about the length of the pause, or if the Fed will end the pause with a rate cut or a rate hike. The Reserve Bank of Australia just un-paused its policy and hiked out of the pause by another 25 basis points. So there’s that.
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/03/fed-hikes-by-25-basis-points-to-5-25-top-of-range-says-the-extent-to-which-additional-policy-firming-may-be-appropriate-instead-of-pause-qt-continues/
Wolf Richter
May 3, 2023 at 3:49 pm
Mike,
“The only solution to the broken business model of regional banks is to cut interest rates.”
LOL. No, the solution is to let the stockholders and bondholders of stupid-ass banks get wiped out. If you put your money on stupid-ass CEOs … on utter morons that bought 30-year securities in the summer of 2020 when they yielded 1% … you deserve watching your investment get wiped out. I’m so sick of this stuff.
The big problem this country now has is INFLATION. And I don’t give a rat’s ass about bank stockholders.
Smartly run banks will do just fine in this environment. They’ll thrive because of the higher interest rates they can charge. And moron-banks need to be taken out and dumped into a ditch.
Look at the stock of Republic Bank, that’s not a bank stock chart but a crypto chart. It’s the chart of a scam! The stock multiplied by 10 over a decade since its IPO. Well-run banks don’t do that. Investors who believed in this moron-scam-bank correctly got wiped out. That’s how scams should work:
Be careful what you wish for Wolfie!!!