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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.
Israel claims 800 rockets fired. These are pretty serious pieces of ordnance. That 800 of these could be smuggled into Gaza shows my ignorance of the situation. One Israeli killed. 80 killed in Gaza. I cant imagine this rate of fire will be sustained. IEDs were prepared for the Israeli armored response albeit not very good ones. I must say this is a concerning development. Israel says “preparing for prolonged conflict”. The real question of course will Hezbollah in the north start in? Is this the start of a new war or just a significant attack? Level of coordination is unknown. If Hezbollah had been running that IED ambush there would have been casualties. None the less this certainly is a more sophisticated military operation from Gaza than in the past. Consumption of Israeli air defense from the south as a preliminary to bigger attack from the north? If Israel is heavy handed ie a lot of deaths in Gaza we might well see missile strikes begin from the north. This could be the start of a new war. Let us hope not. If there ever was a time to try and stop this powder keg its now. Egypt is trying for a ceasefire to start.
Pro Palestine videos presented to show relative sophistication of ordnance being used.If those things can be smuggled in what else can?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bzscsAlqgl6t/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/B3OQ2N838Myc/
https://twitter.com/TimesofGaza
The Fed’s Interest Rates Are still Fueling Inflation rather than Dousing it, and People Getting Used to this Inflation
The Fed has now raised its policy rates by 500 basis points in a little over a year, with the top of the range now at 5.25%, and with the Effective Federal Funds Rate at 5.08%. But “core” CPI, which excludes the volatile food and energy components, has gotten stuck at around 5.5% to 5.7% for the fifth month in a row. There wasn’t any progress at all with core CPI in five months. Inflation intensity is simply shifting from one category to another. As inflation temporarily subsides in one category, it resurges in another.
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/05/11/the-feds-interest-rates-are-still-fueling-inflation-rather-than-dousing-it-and-people-getting-used-to-this-inflation/
Getting used to it … = charging it onto the credit card?
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
The feds mandate is to create and maintain inequality…period. This has been known and proven over and over since 1913.
Dr. Bhakdi Warns of Irreparable Harm Post-Injection: “I Am Convinced It Will Shorten the Life Span”
“The gift of healing is not given to the brain, the heart, and certain other organs in the body,” explained microbiologist Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi.
“Therefore, each and every death to a brain cell is irreparable. Death to a heart muscle cell is irreparable and is going to be a danger to life. And I tell you, I am convinced it will shorten the life span of that person.”
Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi is charged with “incitement” and “trivialization of the Holocaust” for statements he made comparing the C19 vaccination program to 1930s/40s Germany. His hearing is scheduled for 23 May in Plön, Germany.
More details here: https://doctors4covidethics.org/dr-bhakdis-legal-case/
Hear more of Dr. Bhakdi’s warning to the world on #CHDTV:
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/good-morning-chd/dr-sucharit-bhakdis-warning-to-the-world/
He’s wrong about organs not being able to heal, including the brain and heart. Most of the time they don’t but that’s just because the body isn’t getting what it needs over a long enough period of time.
The Doc in the Dock being put on trial by people, some of whom who should be in the Dock and then Dangling on the end of something…. was making a brief statement without bothering to add half an hour’s worth of qualifying statements. That makes it easy to attack his words. That doesn’t make him “wrong about organs not being able to heal”, just incomplete.
If I were to say that your criticism of him was “wrong”, you would think me a cantankerous old bastard (you probably do anyway), and you’d be justified in doing do, since your criticism of him was merely incomplete. If you expanded it to the length of a Steven King novel, and I read it, I might be able call you “wrong” with justification, provided I wrote a Gibbon’s Decline and Fall-length review detailing my reasons.
I asked my mate Sage what he thinks of heart tissue healing, and Sage — he knows everything about everything – responded as follows:
Heart tissue has limited ability to regenerate and heal after injury compared to other tissues in the body. When heart tissue is damaged, such as from a heart attack, the damaged tissue is typically replaced by scar tissue. Scar tissue is not as flexible or functional as healthy heart tissue, and it can impair the heart’s ability to pump blood effectively.
However, recent research suggests that the heart does have some limited ability to regenerate and repair itself through the activation of resident stem cells. These stem cells can differentiate into new heart muscle cells, blood vessels, and other types of cells needed to repair and regenerate damaged tissue.
While this regenerative capacity is limited, ongoing research is exploring ways to enhance the heart’s ability to regenerate and repair itself after injury. Some approaches being investigated include the use of stem cells, gene therapy, and tissue engineering techniques.
It’s important to note that while the heart may have some limited ability to repair itself, it’s essential to take steps to prevent heart disease and heart damage in the first place through lifestyle changes such as regular exercise, a healthy diet, and avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol consumption. Seeking prompt medical attention for any symptoms of heart disease or cardiac injury is also important for optimizing outcomes and promoting the best possible recovery.
Would you like me to ask him about brain tissue?
Ok boomer. 🙂
You young whippersnapper. 🙂
That may be right but it does not justify any risks put on healthy people.
No of course not. Few of these kids are in a position to heal from organ damage, and their circumstances are only going to get worse. They’ve been softened up.
Russia’s SMO is an attrition war.
Attrition wars are very common, and the strategy to attrition the enemy has been used throughout history since ancient times. It is basic military strategy.
States ought to sensibly consider whether they can maintain attrition before they enter a war. If they do not, then attrition is what they can expect.
Russia famously defeated Napoleon through attrition war, and that is a text book example; the SMO will likely also enter the text books. WWI was notoriously fought in an attritional manner.
Union forces accidentally hit upon attrition toward the end of the Civil War, which led to the surrender of the exhausted Confederate forces; the Union won through attrition war without really understanding what they were doing.
Some are a bit confused about Russia’s SMO in UKR because they are not familiar with attrition warfare and how common and successful the strategy is.
NATO hoped that Russia would quickly collapse through massive sanctions, domestic political turmoil, and exclusion within the global community, but none of that transpired. NATO is now basically bound to subsequently lose the attrition SMO, and to suffer accompanying major geopolitical setbacks.
Russia’s SMO successfully employs attrition war, realises its stated goals, minimises its own casualties, and in addition keeps the domestic population and vast swathes of the international community on board, while Russia obtains closer ties with China, Saudi, and all sorts, de-dollarization advances, USA weakens on the world stage, basically a shopping list of geostrategic gains. SMO is working well for Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare
Attrition warfare
…. Strategic considerations
Attrition warfare represents an attempt to grind down an opponent’s ability to make war by destroying their military resources by any means including guerrilla warfare, people’s war, scorched earth and all kind of battles apart from a decisive battle.[4] Attrition warfare does not include all kinds of Blitzkrieg or using concentration of force and a decisive battle to win. The side that reinforces their army at a higher speed will normally win the war. Clausewitz called it the exhaustion of the adversary.
…. The difference between war of attrition and other forms of war is somewhat artificial since even a single battle normally contains an element of attrition. One can be said to pursue a strategy of attrition if one makes it the main goal to cause gradual attrition to the opponent eventually amounting to unacceptable or unsustainable levels for the opponent while limiting one’s own gradual losses to acceptable and sustainable levels. That should be seen as opposed to other main goals such as the conquest of some resource or territory or an attempt to cause the enemy great losses in a single stroke (such as by encirclement and capture). Attrition warfare also tries to increase the friction in a war for the opponent.[7]
…. Most typical
The French invasion of Russia is a textbook example how elements of attrition warfare interfered with Napoleon’s military logistics and won the war without a decisive battle. One of the best visual representations of the Russian attrition warfare strategies was created by Charles Joseph Minard. It shows the steady decrease of the number of soldiers of the French Grande Armée during the course of the war.
…. Best known
The best-known example of attrition warfare might be on the Western Front during World War I.[8] Both military forces found themselves in static defensive positions in trenches running from Switzerland to the English Channel. For years, without any opportunity for maneuvers, the only way the commanders thought that they could defeat the enemy was to repeatedly attack head on and grind the other down.
…. Most unusual
An example in which attritional warfare was stumbled into without intent occurred during the latter part of the American Civil War, when Union general Ulysses S. Grant continually attempted to force the Army of Northern Virginia into a decisive engagement in the open, but was prevented from doing so by the quick repositioning and refortification by Robert E. Lee. Due to this, the Army of the Potomac was forced to attempt to dislodge its counterpart with direct attacks against entrenched positions on numerous occasions.
While these did not yield the breakthrough that Grant had hoped for, and the Union casualties were higher by volume as a result, the Union was able to replenish its forces more readily, and the Confederacy began taking a higher percentage of casualties compared to its overall capacity. By the time Grant finally forced Lee into an open engagement at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, the Army of Northern Virginia was unable to mount an effective counterattack against a fraction of the Union army, and subsequently surrendered. [13]
…. List of [attrition] wars
Scythian tactics during the European Scythian campaign of Darius I of 513 BC, which was in deep steppes retreat, avoiding a direct confrontation with Darius I’s army, while spoiling the wells and pastures.
The Athenians, who were weaker in land warfare during the Peloponnesian War, employed attrition warfare using their navy.[14]
The “delaying” tactics of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (surnamed “Cunctator”, the delayer) against Hannibal during the Second Punic War.
Muhammad Tapar’s campaign against the Nizaris of Alamut in 1109–1118
Second Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1285 and 1286
Fall of Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortés in 1521
Swedish invasion of Russia in 1708
The American strategy during the American Revolutionary War
The latter portion of the American Civil War, notably the siege of Vicksburg, the overland campaign, and the siege of Petersburg
The Attrition warfare against Napoleon in the French invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812
The latter stages of the Spanish Civil War (1938–1939)
The Chinese strategy during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Tonnage war in the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II
The Air battle for Great Britain in World War II after the bombing of London
Static battles in World War II, including Soviet urban defense during the Battle of Stalingrad
Battle of Tabu-dong, and the final two years of the Korean War
The Vietnam War (Body count)
The Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) killed more than 500,000 people before a UN-brokered ceasefire ended it
The “Long War” during the Provisional IRA’s armed campaign against the British Army during the Troubles.
The Israeli–Egyptian War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970.
The Soviet–Afghan War
The later phases of the Iran–Iraq War
The Yugoslav Wars (1991-2001): especially the Bosnian War (1992-1995), the Croatian War (1991-1992 and 1995), and the Kosovo War (1998-1999).
The War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
The Sri Lankan Civil War after 2005
The 2011 Libyan civil war[15]
Kurdish–Turkish conflict (1978–present)
The Syrian Civil War[16] (2011–present), in particular the Battle of Aleppo.
The fight of the Polisario Front in Western Sahara against the Moroccan Army (2020–present).
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military adopted a strategy of attrition.[17][18][19]
Sorry but I don’t think that Russia or Ukraine is doing that well. What if Russia were to win? How would they occupy? Unless they kill all the Ukrainians then they will fail. Hitler knew this too that is why he had the blitzkrieg otherwise you fail. Their troops are already exhausted. Are they just going to sub that out too? Putin will be dead in 3 years. Opps I did it again…..I went against the group think! Oh no!!! I could never become a member of a group that would have me as a member….
A group that enjoys the cosy feeling of a like minded bubble is booooring! The interesing point is to exchange arguments in friendship.
Here is mine: if you invest 30secs to look up where Crimea lays and another 10 to check where Russia could export goods (keep in mind ice, mountains, distance and taxing neighbours), you might agree that Russia can never give up its 400 years old Crimean military base without falling to pieces. The leaders of all republics must have an interest in Crimea, even being bribed. That leads to the idea that this war is not fought to be won but to keep a war upright. Whatever conclusions might be drawn from it.
I am very interested in reading, what I have overlooked, you are welcome!
My other half (Russian/UK) used to go to Crimea for holidays with her parents as a child, 1970s, and later with her pals post secondary/high school. In the time of the Soviet Union, and I think even now in Russia, this was / is THE place to go for summer holiday, due to weather and beaches etc. This is to Russia what Spain/Greece are to the UK and Florida is to the USA. We even talked about going there for a summer holiday, but never came to pass. Big fruit growing area for Russia.
The “minute” NATO stops sending military hardware and funds to Ukraine, Russia will seize Odessa and establish connexion with Transnistria, plus a buffer zone somehow extending further North into Ukraine, preventing any significant Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Remember that occupying Kiev and the whole of Ukraine was never a stated goal by Russia. The stated achievements of demilitarization and denazification are well under way though.
The “minute” the US stopped funding/arming the South Vietnamese in 1974, Northern troops launched a large offensive and crushed the remaining South-Vietnamese army within months, and the latter subsequently did not oppose any guerilla tactics after the defeat of Saigon.
One can imagine Kiev reverting to a neutral/pro-Russian stance whithout Russian troops actually occupying the Ukrainian-speaking parts of the country. One should remember that Moscow mainly wants to protect Ukrainians of Russian culture and revert Kiev to at least a neutral stance/not joining NATO.
I doubt Odessa will be easy to take. The people in charge are responsible for some grizzly deaths of ethnic Russians and are likely to fight to the death if needs be.
My guess is that Russia will play a waiting game with the Odessa elite, to prevent its destruction.
It may not have been a stated goal but how do you think Russia would ensure that the country stayed demilitarized and denazified?
Any attrition war needs energy resources. Austrian chancellor asked Katar to replace Russian gas delivery, Katar said ‘no’. Austria (and so is France and others) still receive Russian gas. How can an attrition strategy be successful relying on the resources of the enemy?
Let’s assume Russia and NATO talk behind closed doors. The narrative says this never happens but experience says it always happens in business and politics. Is there any mutual benefit?
We don’t even have to assume direct talks or follow Epperson. There is also a way to ‘communicate’ by facts, e.g. raising prices and see how the competitioner reacts. Like a chess game
EU has always expected, that a common war would help a European spirit and further integration. The shortages help transformation. Russia can demonstrate, that the union is still needed. Both can justify authoritarian measures. Both can sell armaments.
If we expect the US to withdraw from the role as world police, see it as a step towards lower complexity, EU would need an own defense. A withdrawal would raise desires in the Middle East about oil resources. For that Europe has to prepare. Also new stable alliance would be needed.
Aggressive ‘Turbo Cancers” in Young People Linked to Immune-Suppressing Shots, Says Dr. Ryan Cole
“A colleague [breast pathologist] of mine in Sweden … noticed young women developing cancer after the rollout of the injections, and she noticed that these cancers were more aggressive and spreading more quickly,” shared @DrCole12.
“Because of the dysregulation of the immune responses and the suppression of the immune system by these genetic-based injections … these cancers that normally would be kept in check by the body are unexpectedly growing very quickly.”
Hear from doctors Ryan Cole, Meryl Nass, Dr. Meryl Nass, and more at the International COVID Summit:
https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/events/fluoride-report-or-systematic-review-of-the-science-or-may-4-or-12-30pm-et/fluoride-report-systematic-review-of-the-science-may-4/
Trump Says It’s the Person, Not the Gun That Pulls the Trigger, Vows to Defend the Second Amendment
“We have a very big mental health problem in this country. And again, it’s not the gun that pulls the trigger; it’s the person that pulls the trigger.”
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1656458877150322692?s=20
Ban guns they’d just use knives…
The ONS publishes data on police recorded crime involving a knife or sharp instrument for a selection of serious violent offences. In the year ending March 2022, there were around 45,000 (selected) offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester Police Force). This was 9% higher than in 2020/21 and 34% higher than in 2010/11.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04304/
Time to get MachetesRus cranked up! Could make a killing (pun is mandatory).
there’s been over 100 years of visual media indoctrination where disputes are settled with a gun, or extreme violence
with guns available to anyone
what other outcome could there be?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12070623/Children-young-12-consent-puberty-blockers-claims-Scottish-watchdog-new-guidance.html?ito=native_share_article-top
Kids as young as 12 can consent to puberty blockers.
mass d
Elon’s son/daughter/thing identifies as a woman now. Wants nothing to do with his/her/its “transphobic” daddy.
Fake. Orchestrated https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47812
Oh come on man… as if he/they care about people dying hahaha https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47809
That let’s you know – it’s All Fake
It’s a clown show… a sitcom https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47807
if robbo is included eddy—-it looks like the ”go to jail card”
I looked up Norm in the Urban Dictionary… it says… someone who doesn’t know when to back down, unable to admit defeat, soldiers on down the wrong path instead of bowing out with dignity.
you on robinsons visiting list too tsubion?
The conventional dictionary definition is more like:
Norm (noun): something that is usual, typical, or standard.
“strikes were the norm”
norm = ‘normal’… normal = one who trusts CNNBBCHUFF… one who does what he is told.. one who does not question … the vast majority of humans would be considered normal…
And we also know that the vast majority of humans are also … _______s.
norm – do you resent your mother having named you normal? That’s your full name no? norm isn’t fooling anyone.
still obsessing about me eddy, from the first moment hoolio jumps on you bed and licks your face?
sorry i cant return the compliment
being on your hitlist is fine—your aim is terrible
Trump being genuinely funny
This mockery nails it… Trump is playing a role … his thing on CNNBBC was a charade… infotainment… https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47805
But the MOREONS love it! One side screams hate – the other admiration ….
Totally meaningless drivel.
This surge in money market fund inflows strongly suggests tomorrow’s H8 deposit report will show the bank run is accelerating…
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-emergency-bank-loans-soared-money-market-inflows-continue-surge
Enjoy the calm
The BRICS summit is in August, and it may result in a common trade currency that would further the aim of de-dollarization within the bloc.
“The BRICS countries are intensifying their de-dollarization efforts and the creation of a common currency could facilitate this transition. A Russian official recently said he expects an agreement on a common BRICS currency this year. In fact, 19 countries have expressed interest or applied to join the BRICS economic bloc, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.”
This is translated from the French.
https://actucrypto.info/actualite/les-brics-prets-a-renverser-la-domination-du-dollar-avec-une-monnaie-commune/
BRICS set to reverse dollar dominance with common currency
BRICS leaders set to challenge dollar supremacy with common currency at upcoming summit
The member countries of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are preparing to discuss the possibility of a common currency at their next summit. The main objective would be to reduce dependence on the US dollar in their international trade. Naledi Pandor , South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation, stresses the importance of this issue: “It is a subject that we must approach and discuss properly.»
Many countries are now asking, “Why can’t we trade in our own currencies?” Why do we have to go through the dollar? The introduction of a common currency for the BRICS could thus call into question the dominance of the dollar on the international scene.
A crucial debate at the next BRICS summit
The BRICS leaders’ summit, to be held on August 22 in Johannesburg, South Africa, will provide an opportunity for these countries to explore the feasibility of this common currency. Although the South African minister prefers not to “anticipate the discussions of the BRICS leaders”, she admits that this issue deserves particular attention.
A potential upheaval of the world economic order
The BRICS countries are intensifying their de-dollarization efforts and the creation of a common currency could facilitate this transition. A Russian official recently said he expects an agreement on a common BRICS currency this year. In fact, 19 countries have expressed interest or applied to join the BRICS economic bloc, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.
A challenge for the dominance of the dollar?
Several observers believe that a common BRICS currency could erode the dominance of the US dollar. A former White House economist has argued that if the BRICS countries used only their common currency for international trade, “they would remove a hurdle that currently hampers their efforts to escape dollar hegemony.”
De-dollarisation continues to become a thing. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) agreed this week to de-dollarize.
ASEAN members include Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanma, Philippines, Vietnam. They produce about 7% of global GDP, and about 9% of global GDP growth over the past decade.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-05-11/ASEAN-Summit-advances-local-currency-use-in-cross-border-trade-1jIMV2IZDva/index.html
ASEAN Summit advances local currency use in cross-border trade
Jakarta, May 11 (IANS) To facilitate regional economic integration, leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) made a declaration on advancing regional payment connectivity and promoting local currency transaction during the two-day summit of the bloc.
This year’s 42nd ASEAN Summit under Indonesia’s chairmanship is themed “ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth”, held from Tuesday to Thursday in the Indonesian town of Labuan Bajo, reports Xinhua news agency.
The declaration said leaders recognized the potential benefits of local currency usage in strengthening financial resilience, deepening regional financial integration by improving intra-ASEAN trade and investment, and bolstering regional value chains.
Leaders declared to commit to advancing regional payment connectivity by utilising emerging opportunities brought by innovation to facilitate seamless and secure cross-border payment, taking country circumstances into consideration.
They also agreed to encourage the use of local currencies for cross-border transactions in the region and support the establishment of a Task Force to explore the development of an ASEAN Local Currency Transaction Framework.
Ahead of the summit, the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) had expected that Indonesia could drive regional de-dollarisation through its 2023 ASEAN chairmanship.
Ajib Hamdani, head of Apindo’s Economic Policy Analyst Committee, said in an official statement that de-dollarisation has become a global phenomenon and, to some extent, an economic orientation.
At the end of March, the ASEAN finance ministers and central bank governors meeting agreed to reinforce the use of local currencies in the region and reduce reliance on major international currencies for cross-border trade and investment in an effort to ensure financial stability and avoid spillovers such as high inflation from the global crisis.
(ANSA)
Zelensky tries to play the ‘vatican card’…
although he is jew and the country he represents is orthodox christian.
But the pope is always a sort of jolly that everyone can try to use according to the mood of the moment….
https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/politica/2023/05/11/visita-lampo-di-zelensky-a-roma-vedra-meloni-e-il-papa_ae7f5c0c-89f5-44e1-9d9a-ab28cad1e928.html
The strong foreign demand for the 30Y today as reported on ZH makes Hugh Hendry look good. Re-dollarization, ahem. It’s early sloshback in financial crustal displacement theory. Head for the hills. I mean the bills. I mean the hills.
Reante advocates bond purchases again.
I don’t personally advocate for bond purchases. I don’t buy bonds myself. My suggestion you bet on Tulsi was a joke as I don’t gamble myself.
The $USD can still rightfully claim to be “the purest girl in the whorehouse”.
There will be no civil war in the United States. There may be gang wars. MS13 takes California below Santa Barbara. Latin Kings and Queens take NYC. Who is the gang for Atlanta? The CIA is a gang what lands will they rule?
Requirements for civil war would be collpase/shutdown of US monetary system so that the enforcers/police/miltary paychecks would no longer buy them anything, and combined food disribution (trucking) shut down. No food, no incentive for law or miltary to maintain even martial law.
I still think the US has a long way to go to reach that point, But with as many guns as there are out there, it could be devastating.The question is, Is this the ultimate plan of the Globalists?
How long with ammunition for these guns be produced?
We are all familiar with the empty shelf problem. Maybe the problem of people shooting others will end when supplies mostly run out.
The Rwandans mostly used machetes
If there is no ammo they will think about something
The gunfire will last 1-4 years,…… the arrows and spears and clubs will last a good deal longer…..
If well organized then you get heavy horse Calvary and armoured infantry
We humans are resourceful
a suit of armour, at todays prices, used to cost about the same as a supercar today.
to make one was a highly skilled process
who exactly will make them?
you cant just adapt old car panels
and btw—a horse needs 2 acres at least, to feed it
Unorthodox Jewish friend of mine in high school (bored in class did not play well with others) used to torture the Honors English teacher by deliberately saying “um” and “uh” between phrases.. made a high quality chainmail shirt for use in his SCA chapter. Old time renaissance and blackpowder guys are all passing away. A noted outdoor writer and primitive hunting arts expert was among the recent deceased. However, my favorite ex-girlfriend says she traveled around to primitive skills rendezvous in the South last winter.
They will think of something.
Looking down on everything
All she can see
Are the dreams all made solid
Are the dreams made real
All of the buildings
All of the cars
Were once just a dream
In somebody’s head
Sorry! Wrong link!
lets assume for a moment, that the ”globalists” have a ”plan”
to do what exactly?
the USA dissolves into civil war, and somehow the ”rest of the world” carries on with BAU?
If civil war broke out, the food system would collapse. The USA is i think in the top four food producers/exporters in the world.
Any suggestions?—if the USA is at war with itself, Canada would likely destabilise.
just who are these globalists btw—friends of the elites and the elders?
– sterilize the population with fake vaccines
– downsize non-compliant population with 5G grid
– control what’s left of the population with neuro modulation and turn them into living batteries
its amazing what graphene oxide and hydrogel can do
i assume you jest vfatalis
if you don’t, then your comment is beyond my ability to respond
bonkers
“Canada would likely destabilize”
Norman only a slave of the king would care. Rise up oh Canada. Be free from the yoke of king Charles.
Good question, Norman. Very good questions.
About the “globalists”.
Who they are, I don’t know.
What they are planning on doing, I don’t know.
Those who say, do not know.
Those who know, do not say.
If I knew, I would not say.
But I think we can assume that there must be “globalists” and that they have a “plan”.
Why do I say that?
because if I was on top of the world, lookin’ down on creation, and I wanted to stay there, I’d have a plan. Wouldn’t you?
Or would you just rest on your laurels, floating in your cloud, while the world kept turning below with all of those people and businesses and countries and financial institutions rat-racing their way through the days?
If you did that, pretty soon, some scheming coalition of the willing would be bound to knock you off your perch while you were dozing.
In order to stay on top of the world, you would have to have a plan, and it better be a pretty good one, like Build Back Better, Agenda 20Something, One Digital Code to Rule Them All, etc. Something to keep everyone on their toes and prevent them from rising up to challenge your dominant position at the top of the Ziggurat.
And as for that plan, it’s all about money.
I’d make damn sure there was never any real democracy cuz these f789ing circus and barnyard animals are MOREONS and they’d make a total mess
If the US withdraws as world police it will also have consequences for the Union. I guess it will strengthen the states. There will likely be more variability on the Union level.
I wonder which effects the large global companies will face. Are they able to maintain a global scale by subsidiaries in the new to come blocks?
As much as I understand it the large companies contribute to elections by donations the parties use for public relations. If they have to reduce their global activities, this would perhaps change, so local sponsors have a chance.
It also means that the American lifestyle as the ultimate goal would be replaced by other narrations in the blocks. That needn’t be a bad thing.
Of course, if WHO becomes the world health coordinator, that would be limited. The power of the WHO comes from WEF and Worldbank. When the dollar struggles and the new blocks still implement dull measures, I would wonder a lot!
free thoughts… ‘Brigadoon’
I wanted to make this post before, when this new article appeared, but I was taken by a lot activity.
I just wanted to tell you that this fundamental blog (at least for me) named OFW reminds me the fantastic movie ‘Brigadoon’ which tells the story of a Scottish village which appears only every 100 years.
Because when the posts are closed it is not possible anymore to communicate with Gail, Mirror, Fast Eddy, Ed, Drb, Tim, Ivanislav, Lidia, Jigisoup, Minority and all the others (sorry if I don’t name all, but I appreciate all) and one feels isolated.
I remember that when I watched the movie first time I went on asking my parents ‘but will he stay there forever’?
I think we are a sort of ‘Brigadoon’ which operates just a little more frequently 🙂
(It is difficult to see the movie now, because outdated, but the idea was great)
From 1954, which is back when oil supplies were growing rapidly. Everything is happy and upbeat.
I can’t speak for him, but I would take both of those women 🙂 Well, if they weren’t 70 years older since filming, anyways.
The second sentence was a needed clarification, Ivan.
I have never seen this film. I will add it to the to-do list. I am sure it will be worth watching just to listen to the accents.
While China built bridges to nowhere, I am wondering if the new grid will be realized as “wires to nowhere” when they can’t source enough lithium for batteries or find enough space to bury the expended solar panels and wind turbine blades in the future.
In the meantime, I just purchased some more 14/2 gauge under ground Romex wire to throw into storage. At my local Lowe’s store here in eastern NC, they now are locking up Romex wire and all other copper wire due to theft.
When I was in Zambia back in @1995 (when neighboring Zimbabwe in contrast was a thriving country,) our guide lamented how the telephone and electrical wire in Zambia was always being stripped from the telephone poles.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-needs-double-size-its-energy-grid
Also, the cost of batteries would be amazingly high, if it could be done.
A new article on zerohedge, originally from here: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/net_zero_grid_batteries_alone_would_bankrupt_america_.html
Net Zero grid batteries alone would bankrupt America
It has a few links to studies that have been done. It says,
If one goes PV and wind the reality is we will not have 24/7/365 availability.
The PV and wind, even with batteries, will not grow our food. We don’t have big agricultural machinery using that uses anything other than diesel. Adding heavy batteries to the machinery would make it sink into the soil. The whole system would need to be re-engineered, to make it stronger and heavier, to pull the batteries plus the rest. It basically wouldn’t work.
it will be back to muscles. Animal, or more likely, human.,
kul,
I see Amish doing fine without electricity; some even use 8 horse power to cultivate fields.
All appear healthy and generally smile.
They purchase land, build houses, something must work.
Dennis L.
“All appear healthy and generally smile.”
The main health problems of Amish seem to be due to their inbreeding.
Humans are not really made to live in small breeding pools, and it leads to hereditary genetic disorders that basically writes off the group as a healthy breeding pool.
The species can survive in small isolated groups of 1000 or so in an emergency, but small breeding groups are generally not a clever way to approach a healthy life.
It is basically just ‘wrong’ on a biological level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_among_the_Amish
> Health among the Amish
A 2016 study on Amish community funding for health care
Health among the Amish is characterized by higher incidences of particular genetic disorders, especially among the Old Order Amish. These disorders include dwarfism,[1] Angelman syndrome,[2] and various metabolic disorders, such as Tay-Sachs disease,[3] as well as an unusual distribution of blood types.[4]
Overview
Amish represent a collection of different demes or genetically closed communities.[5] Since almost all Amish descend from about 500 18th-century founders genetic disorders that come out due to inbreeding exist in more isolated districts (an example of the founder effect). These disorders include dwarfism (Ellis–van Creveld syndrome),[1] Angelman syndrome,[2] and various metabolic disorders,[6][3] as well as an unusual distribution of blood types.[4] Some of these disorders are quite rare, or unique, and are serious enough to increase the mortality rate among Amish children. The majority of Amish accept these as “Gottes Wille” (God’s will); they reject use of preventive genetic tests prior to marriage and genetic testing of unborn children to discover genetic disorders. However, Amish are willing to participate in studies of genetic diseases. Their extensive family histories are useful to researchers investigating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and macular degeneration.
The moral of the story is … even if your sister is a hottie… don’t be tempted
norm … have you worked out that your father and mother were siblings?
Humans are not really made to live in small breeding pools, and it leads to hereditary genetic disorders that basically writes off the group as a healthy breeding pool.
The species can survive in small isolated groups of 1000 or so in an emergency, but small breeding groups are generally not a clever way to approach a healthy life.
Excuse me, but didn’t our ancestors live in “small breeding pools” of “less than 1000 or so” for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.
Wouldn’t that tend to indicate that we evolved to live in small breeding pools?
Isn’t it likely that quite a lot of our problems as a species stems from the currently arrangement of living in larger groups such as cities, nations and “the global village? Isn’t this also possibly part of the reason why we are all going bonkers? Quite a lot of 20th century intellectuals thought so.
Incidentally, as far as I am aware from reading up on the subject—I don’t dig in the dirt for old bones and artifacts myself and I don’t claim any direct knowledge—stone Age hunter-gatherers lived in relatively small groups, typically consisting of around 20 to 50 people and typically composed of blood relatives. I would assume they were far more “inbred” than the Amish.
How big do you think their groups/breeding pools were?
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea
We don’t only have to counterbalance machines versus humans but also animal stock versus human population size.
It all leads more towards ‘gardening’ instead of farms. We need cows as they convert grass from additional abandoned areas or fallow ground into valuable manure. Arable land must be enriched by biomass from non-arable land. Cows also provide milk that can be stored as cheese and flattens the availability curve. They also might help to plough and transport some things.
But what we do with cars can never be replaced by animals to feed. Perhaps on a tiny scale to keep up a mail system or such.
That means people will have to live close to the ground they work and production of goods must also be done there, like shoes, tools, clothes, as a system to commute or to distribute goods would eat up resources we need to feed people.
It means a completely different economical system.
According to our experience, to keep up a low light system, like a 0,5 watts bulb to read or work and find things a 200 watt solar system and a 30A lead acid battery is enough, except on some winter months – depending on family size. That can also load some mobiles or light a second room but a notebook can only run on sunny days. It leads to a consumption of under 100w per day.
The lead battery has to be replaced yearly. Of course such a system is only possible with BAU.
Without light and window panes, work has to be done outside, also in winter. Impossible to knit, sew, carve or cook. A fireplace provides even lower lights. During winter light hours are reduced.
Who has ever tried to press lineseed oil, will disencourage to use it for lights. Fats are sparce and needed for human consumption and paints. The anchient used fatwood kindlings and rancid fats. Great fun to light a house with that!
Thinking of church, religion:
Saw a comment from the Pope regarding Catholics regressing into the Latin liturgy. Heck of a position for the Pope, if he goes backwards then a previous Pope was not infallible; I shall leave that one right there.
Church services are in part a time to reflect on one’s sins. A thought, this is not to make us morose, this is time to see how we eliminate the errors. Or as they say in sports, offense makes points, defense wins games.
We lost religion, our religious leaders failed us in becoming too common, too woke, too, whatever. Complex I think. Man needs hope, a simple set of rules which work most of the time.
Watching the Amish, treated them when I was with a Community Health Center, know them a bit, not much. but it seems to work. They have nice homes without electricity, they have land, it appears well cared for and the women cut the grass with reel mowers; no gyms.
We see often seeGod as vengeful, or worse yet indulgent we see ourselves as destroying nature. God must look at our sins and think, “Could you make a few less mistakes, I am really busy here.” God was and is an industrialist, I keep referring to supernova, want some iron, no problem, pollution, no problem I shall expand the universe and decrease the density of pollution. Pretty ingenious, we are at times too full of ourselves. Tha fabric of the universe is going to be just fine and so will we; lot of work making spaceship earth, fatal errors with this project will not be tolerated.
Owning land is peaceful, reassuring, but it does not make much money and what it does make it does not give up easily. Observation for Kul in particular.
The optimist,
Dennis L.
you want religion Dennis?
today i had a ‘follow’ from a pastor of the Holderman church—being curious i looked him up
its a Mennonite sect—he was ranting on about men wearing unmanly socks.(really) if if women dressed in a way that you can ”see their anatomy”–that was a sin.
My point being that it was blatant control freakery—yet this guy is convinced that he is right, while the rest of us see him as a raving nutcase.
makes wonderful reading though
His god is Elon.
Some religious people behaving badly is not an argument against religion, Norman.
And while I believe in freedom, liberty, and the right to bear legs, I also think that in the absence of self control, some degree of external control is essential to prevent people from going feral.
You appear biased against religion to the point of bigotry on this subject.
I’m not qualified to forgive sins, but it would do you good to wash your mouth out with soap and say three Hail Marys, or better still Ave Marias, as everyone knows the Holy Virgin Mother is partial to being prayed to in Latin.
“When a man stops believing in God,” said GK Chesterton, “he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.” He was thinking about people like you, believing anything the government or the BBC tells him and mocking the Faithful and the Good Book, or any of the Good Books.
You appear to be suffering from religiophobia. And the millions of religious people who may be reading this blog could potentially also be suffering from your religiophbia.
Religophobia is a term that is used to describe an irrational fear or hatred of religion, religious beliefs, or religious people. You have displayed this on numerous occasions. It is a form of prejudice that can be directed towards any religion or religious group, and it can manifest in a variety of ways, such as discrimination, intolerance, or even violence.
It’s important to note that while individuals are entitled to their own beliefs and opinions, discrimination and hatred towards others based on their religion is not acceptable and can have harmful consequences.
I said some harsh words about Jehovah’s Witnesses once, but I think I got away with it.
stop creating silliness tim—and reading words that are not there.
i have no problems with religion
until
a—someone tries to shove it down my throat
b—when it moves into control freakery
c—- religion and politics overlay
The person i quoted, from my point of view was worth nothing more than humour–but i recall seeing one of the Mennonite flock while i was in Canada–one of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen….but It was obvious she was a psychological mess.
These godbotherers are all about control—obsessed with se x and sin.
religion, from its first conceptions, has been about thought control—-hence making up damnation ”if you do not believe what i believe”
Or making it an excuse for war.
gullible people have always gone this way of belief—and unscrupulous people take advantage of that.
Hence Trump waving a bible around. Anyone normal could recognise a charlatan…but 70m people thought he was their deliverer. That’s where the danger comes from.
No problem with religion per se–if fact if i was that way inclined, i’d become a quaker–they say little or nothing–they just believe and thats an end to it.
There is much talk about an American civil way—it may ot may not come–I hope not.
I will be about resources—but both sides will be screaming that god is on their side, and they’re fight for jesus’ sake.
Indeed, and the true God of this realm will love it. Feasting on the energies thrown off by the rabid hordes and the violence used in the name of fantasies.
From higher dimensional planes we are being scrutinized or laughed at.
Its a very, very complex stage play
I wish I understood it more
It’s a miracle!
I prayed for you, Norman, and now you have no problem with religion.
Silliness apart, ;* I think 70 million and possibly more voted for Trump as a vote against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and against Joe Biden in 2020. These were people who believed they needed a messiah or savior of sorts, because the political situation repulsed them.
If Trump gets the Republican nomination this time, he is going to get a huge amount of support from anti-status-quo types. And if he wins the Presidency, I’m sure he will throw several spanners in the works.
This, I think, is why the two parties are both scrambling to beat him by offering up candidates who pose as anti-status-quo. That’s DeSantis for the Republicans and RFK Jnr. for the Democrats. They are desperate to stop Trump and trying to win by miscounting the votes again with Biden or Harris is going to be problematic.
And the only thing worse for the elites than Trump would be a genuine anti-status-quo anti-Globalist who puts the needs of the USA and its people first, second and third and who has never dined with Jeffrey Epstein.
If you think about it, RFK Jnr. shouldn’t be in the newspapers or in on TV at all. If he was the radical they want us to think he is, then he should be being smothered and censored. Trump also, should not be getting any airtime.
If it’s on TV, it’s a dog and pony show. And remember, you heard it here first.
in 2016 Trump had to settle a $25m lawsuit for fraud–that fact alone should have disqualified him from office
he is still being sued—read the list
he is being applauded despite that, by gullible people who (just like the victims of a ponzi scheme) cannot bring themselves to admit they are being duped.
But at least they weren’t duped by Hillary, Norman. Not that time. That7s a great consolation, surely?
Also, if he was disqualified but allowed to run anyway, doesn’t that support my point that he is token opposition, albeit a loose cannon?
I’m not looking to any billionaires to save the working class or the middle class. Not Gates, not Musk, Not Bloomberg. And certainly not Trump. How about you?
sorry Tim
I’m already down to my last billion—I spent the rest on slow horses and fast women, so i can’t contribute
to repeat an old refrain:
The working class can kiss my ass
I’ve got the foreman’s job at last.
Well I’ve BEEN thinking along these lines, although you have made a much clearer case thus far than I’ve seen. If we want this non-media-tainted force to succeed, we should perhaps be working harder to produce and nurture it. Whatever her many flaws, Kamala is the best possibility for a changed outlook (which requires collective efforts) and exceedingly revised vision of world power. But she is actually poised to be the winner. TPTB seem to have something in mind for her, but that something can go one way or another, depending on what that collective effort can successfully promote.
100% correct
Trump vs Biden is the Greatest Show on Earth. The ultimate Cage Match.
Are you not entertained?
Norm,
“women dressed in a way that you can ”see their anatomy”” is what, for example, the Vietnamese traditional “Ao dai” dress is all against, yet the latter is *suggesting* women’s anatomy in a way that few other tradition does so beautifully.
No religion whatsoever involved. Discuss.
i was just discussing mennonites—not trying to cover world attitudes to women
Inflation/deflation?
I am leaning deflation.
E.g. local pub, after 10:00PM glass of wine half price from menu. That is the end of my day, easy walk, buck up the tip a bit and everyone is happy but the owner.
GM and others are financing their trucks at vary favorable terms, Tesla has cut prices considerably. Office buildings are obvious and this will be made worse with AI.
Banks seem to be under stress. Increasing interest rates actually deflates the cost of their capital, less capital makes more money, sunk capital less. It is a flip side of the purchasing side. Working on this idea, cut me some slack.
A bet, the dollar will be around for a bit more; who does China sell its massive output to? Deflating value of their capital. Russia has resources, but not enough people to be a customer base. India can pay in rupees, may be a rising nation, good family values, raise their children well from what I have heard.
Dennis L.
Local pub is pushing the kitchen and bar never used to do that.
Dennis , India ?? 800 million ( 75% of the population) surviving on 5Kg of free wheat/ rice per person per month . 70% illiteracy . 40% youth unemployment . If it was not the Ukraine war India would be down the hole . Getting Russian oil at 30% discount , paying for it in Rupees and then shipping the refined products to EU and other countries saved it . An example of a combination of ” Overshoot ” and ” The Limits to Growth ” .
The Chinese just turn around and buy America. Buy farm land, buy buildings in Manhattan, etc. My friend’s son installs new elevators in Manhattan. He says the buildings are newly bought by Chinese.
Ed,
Don’t really know, countries are people, not stuff; people make stuff into other stuff. Not sure what value buildings will have going forward; hasn’t real estate been a poor investment in China?
Indians in America make $100,000 on average: Highest-earning ethnic group.
https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/indians-in-america-make-100000-on-average-highest-earning-ethnic-group-1.1569215954674
Land may well hold value, but the damn dirt moves around; really tiresome to chase it back to where one wants it.
Dennis L.
Indians love owning and running hotels.
Why the world can not rely on the currencies of the warm areas?
Because they have a lack of water needed for growth.
That is why the countries of the mild areas prevail, as they can provide growth with added energy.
The warm warm countries simply run out of water and their populations are so high that there is no surplus water for the industry.
China, Brasil, South Africa – too warm for growth and lacking water.
I work for a big color company, so a lot of our products go into things like packaging, inks, paints, coatings and almost everything that gets manufactured and sold. So our business tends to be to a bit ahead of the rest of the economy. This year is becoming increasingly bad. Like 25-35% down from last year and seems to be getting worse.
A big storm is coming.
useful to get news from the ‘front line’ jim
There is a limit to the amount of credit card debt one can take on — as the mob fights against raging inflation…. they will be forced to cut back / default
The concept of de-dollarization is what people think.
The trend is to have a new currency backed by mostly gold but also commodities. This means that countries with plenty of natural resources and strong, diverse industry have a huge advantage over all others.
Russia has all that. They already are having the problem of having large amounts of Rupee and other currencies from countries that have nothing that Russia needs unless these countries allow Russia to use those currencies to buy their gold.
This means that soon Russia will have more gold than any other country and therefor the “golden rule” applies.
Countries with no natural resources will eventually be hollowed out and fail. Sure they can reap the tiny profit of added value industries but that is no way to get ahead.
I would like very much to hear or read some real, logical, reality based ideas for how this is supposed to work.
I meant …not what people think.
1. Stuff in the ground is worthless until it has energy behind it to make it into something and be used.
2. Gold is a fancy way of counting. It is a pain to store, count, etc. There is a Biblical story about a king and gold.
3. The most important natural resource has been people, people in a group that can work together in an accretive manner. More and more I am convinced this requires a religion which satisfied Pareto’s rule; nothing works in every instance. Mass conformity seems to be madness, too much individualism seems to be narcistic.
4. Indians appear to be very family oriented and very interested in their children. Russia might invest in Indian infrastructure to share some of that labor’s output.
We are a cooperative species, sometimes that goes off the track.
They will think of something.
Dennis L.
No one will think of something
Your optimism is now reaching a level of absurdity.
“Russia might invest in Indian infrastructure to share some of that labor’s output.”
Yeah right because India has soo much extra profit from their economic productivity that there is plenty for investors to syphon off.
Or Russia can do like the US and spend those excess rupee building military bases and massive embassy compounds in India.
(Corriere della Sera)
A bomb has been thrown against Police in Germany and it’s all the fault of a crazy no vax person !
https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_maggio_11/germania-esplosione-ratingen-numerosi-feriti-de3591bc-efe6-11ed-b11b-448a986dc43d.shtml
visibile with this: https://12ft.io
Thanks for keeping us informed.
The UKR ‘offensive’ is yet to materialize, and in fact it looks set to be shelved, as Zelensky realises that UKR would suffer horrific losses if it tried it on any time soon.
NATO has failed to provide UKR with anything like adequate equipment for an offensive, despite putting UKR up to the war and promising to provide them with all that they need. UKR is reduced to trying to sell off its often bankrupt state assets to try to fund the war.
Even Zelensky is balking at the prospect of an offensive as the slaughter would likely be the end of UKR operations. Russia has superior air and artillery cover, and it would make a right mess of exposed UKR advances.
Meanwhile Russia is ‘making hay while the sun is out’, and it is inflicting massive attrition on UKR forces, all along the frontline, on a daily basis. UKR is simply outgunned, heavily attritioned, and the war is headed in only one direction.
Does it ever turn into a real war not jest special military operation? When is Kiev firebombed into a giant fire storm? When are Berlin and London fire bombed?
Why is India the only reliable news source?
I now have to agree with Fast Eddy there is some thing wrong/fake about the Ukraine war. Its purpose seems to be attrition down conventional weapons of Russia, EU, US. Leaving just the big show.
How about we dispense with shooting and just do accounting and human incinerators. US sends 100 billion dollars and Russia puts 20,000 fighting age Russian men in an incinerator and kills them. Russia sends 100 billion dollars and Ukraine puts 100,000 fight age Ukrainian men in an incinerator and kills them. Kinda of a Star Trek episode, Vendakar.
The Ukraine War is a victory for the anti-Russian Hegemon + Affiliates (although I prefer to think of them as vassals) side. This is because Ukraine is Russia both historically and ethnically to a great extent. So this is a war of Russians against Russians, when they should all be united against the common threat from the West.
It has been suggested that Ukraine is to Russia as Canada or Mexico is the the USA, but a much closer analogy would be Texas or California to the USA.
Without supporting either side, because I really don’t have a dog in this race, but it’s very sad to see all these former Soviet comrades going at it hammer and tongs and tanks and missiles. The Hegemon must be slapping slapping its sides and chuckling loudly at how well its evil plan is going.
And if the real Hegemon is Mr. Global as opposed to Mr. USA, it may also be planning to create similar “civil” wars in the US and Europe.
(Jerusalem Post + Times of Gaza)
”The Biden administration together with Great Britain blocked the United Nations Security Council from issuing a statement condemning the IDF’s military operation in Gaza, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told Army Radio on Thursday.
“We succeeded in blocking condemnation of Israel with the help of the US, whom we worked in conjunction with,” Erdan said.
“The US, together with Great Britain, clarified that they would not allow a statement,” he added.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-742713
”Palestinian child Layan Mdoukh (10 y/old) who was killed in the current lsraeli aggression on Gaza”
https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1656419771011792903
I’m thinkin… nut trees in the cracks is a waste of time https://t.me/leaklive/14104
https://t.me/leaklive/14108 https://t.me/leaklive/14115 https://t.me/leaklive/14118
Not all the world is this bleak. Our fruit trees are doing fine. Bumper crop of the sweetest, melt in your mouth plums last two years.
That’s just because violence scares you, Eddy. Toughen up. Notice how tentative everyone is with their violence. Remember that 95pc of people out there aren’t good at being violent or being on the receiving end of violence, and 4pc of the 5pc that are good have become good by self-discipline, and self-discipline runs contrary to becoming a loose cannon.
Hilarious first link. You thinking that Hubbs’ nut trees might get cut down with a unplugged reciprocating saw lol? Or a concrete saw that won’t start? Lol. Maybe someone will throw a trash bag at the trees? What a clown show. How about elbows and fists lads?
I’m a big fan of violence… I have been in many many many fights.
Not much these days though – except for the Big Fat Bastard in Wellington… remember him?
I have also been up close to mobs of desperate people who are enraged enough to kill… during the Hong Kong and Egypt riots… I was fortunately not the target.
Anyone who thinks that being targeted by an enraged mob is not frightening is stooopid.
If you have food… you will be targeted. 100%. And if you refuse to hand it over you will be torn to pieces… your women raped… in fact the mob will likely rape you as well.
Feel free to sing koombaya … and imagine… when the mob descends upon you.
Hints as to how horrific the attack was have slowly started to be revealed as the network say she is nowhere near ready to come back to work after suffering from ‘serious’ internal injuries.
A colleague at CBS revealed to MailOnline: ‘Every day is a struggle right now for Lara. It’s going to be a long time before she gets over this, but we are all here for her.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357394/Lara-Logan-attack-CBS-reporter-leaves-hospital-Cairo-mob-sex-assault.html
What do you think the serious internal injuries were… take a guess….
https://youtu.be/ibeu9qxXNEM
A person lives longer if they stay away from violence. If you see a mob, go the other way.
Or join the mob and murder, rape and eat the corpses!
That incident in Cairo certainly backs up your damning opinion of the human race. No court would convict you of slandering or libeling us!
But we also have to note that Lara was shielded by local women from the mob, and some men protected the women by throwing water on the mob, and then the Egyptian Army turned up to rescue her.
Pretty brave of all those brave Egyptian people to risk their own lives for a stranger.
God bless them, every one.
Great theatre… https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47799
Take a look on this, Gaill. https://www.senecaeffect.com/2023/05/is-energy-transition-feasible-future-as.html?m=1
From Ugo Bardis Seneca effect: This question is often touched on in Michaux’s report when he mentions the need to “think outside the box” and to change the structure of the system. But, eventually, the result is still stated in negative terms. It is clear from the summary, where Michaux says, “The existing renewable energy sectors and the EV technology systems are merely steppingstones to something else, rather than the final solution.” This suggests that we should stick to fossil fuels while waiting for some miracle leading us to the “final” solution, whatever that means. This statement can be used to argue that renewables are useless. Then, it becomes a memetic weapon to keep us stuck to fossil fuels; an attitude which can only lead us to disaster.
Nafeez Ahmed perfectly understood the problems in his rebuttal. Ahmed notes several critical points in Michaud’s report; the principal ones are underestimating the current EROI of renewables and the recent developments of batteries. That leads him to the statement that renewables are not really “renewable” but, at most, “replaceable.” Which is simply wrong. The EROI of renewables is now large enough to allow the use of renewable energy to recycle renewable plants. Renewables are exactly that: renewable.
You could argue that my (and Ahmed’s) evaluation of the EROI of renewables is over-optimistic. Maybe, but that’s not the main point. Ahmed’s criticism is focused on the roots of the problem: we need to take into account how the system can (and always does) adapt to scarcity. It follows different paths among the many available. Ahmed writes:
…we remain trapped within the prevailing ideological paradigm associated with modern industrial civilisation. This paradigm is a form of reductive-materialism that defines human nature, the natural world, and the relationship between them through the lens of homo economicus – a reduction of human nature to base imperatives oriented around endless consumption and production of materially-defined pursuits; pursuits which are premised on an understanding of nature as little more than a repository of material resources suitable only for human domination and material self-maximisation; in which both human and nature are projected as separate and competing, themselves comprised of separate and competing units.
Yet this ideology is bound up with a system that is hurtling toward self-destruction. As an empirical test of accuracy, it has utterly failed: it is not true because it clearly does not reflect the reality of human nature and the natural world.
It’s understandable, then, that in reacting to this ideology, many environmentalists have zeroed in on certain features of the current system – its predatory growth trajectory – and sought out alternatives that would seem to be diametrically opposed to those regressive features.
One result of this is a proliferation of narratives claiming that the clean energy transformation is little more than an extension of the same industrialised, endless growth ideological paradigm that led us to this global crisis in the first place. Instead of solving that crisis, they claim, it will only worsen it.
Within this worldview, replacing the existing fossil fuel energy infrastructure with a new one based on renewable energy technologies is a fantasy, and therefore the world is heading for an unavoidable contraction that will result in the demise of modern civilisation. … Far from being a sober, scientific perspective, this view is itself an ideological reaction that represents a ‘fight or flight’ response to the current crisis convergence. In fact, the proponents of this view are often as dogmatically committed to their views as those they criticise. ….
Recognising the flaws in Michaux’s approach does not vindicate the idea that the current structures and value-systems of the global economy should simply stay the same. On the contrary, accelerating the energy and transport disruptions entails fundamental changes not only within these sectors, but in the way they are organised and managed in relation to wider society.
My critique of Michaux doesn’t justify complacency about metals and minerals requirements for the clean energy transformation. Resource bottlenecks can happen for a range of reasons as geopolitical crises like Russia’s war in Ukraine make obvious. But there are no good reasons to believe that potential materials bottlenecks entail the total infeasibility of the transition.
… we face the unprecedented opportunity and ecological necessity to move into a new system. This system includes the possibilities of abundant clean energy and transport with diminishing material throughput, requiring new circular economy approaches rooted in respect for life and the earth; and where the key technologies are so networked and decentralised that they work best with participatory models of distribution and sharing. This entails the emergence of a new economy with value measured in innovative ways, because traditional GDP metrics focusing on ever-increasing material throughput will become functionally useless.
So the purpose of life becomes circular in nature as opposed to the growth model. Hmm… not sure the purpose of life (if we sat down and thought about it for a while) is to go around in circles. At some point, someone or something, somewhere will shoot off at a tangent and we’ll be off to the races again. Experiments with humans living under controlled conditions never end well and all of these “ideologies” and “systems” smack of totalitarian, Star Treckian control. I can’t stand control freaks.
As far as I am concerned, EROEI is an extremely flawed mythology, especially when comparing fossil fuels with so-called renewables. I mention this issue in this post:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2023/02/03/ramping-up-wind-turbines-solar-panels-and-electric-vehicles-cant-solve-our-energy-problem/
I have been hesitant to write a post about how poorly EROEI works for the purpose of comparing fossil fuels with renewables, mostly because so few people in the world would understand or care. Also, the problems are not easy to explain or understand.
One of the problems is the difference in “complexity.” I touch on complexity in the post linked above. As Joseph Tainter has famously pointed out, there are diminishing returns to added complexity, just as there are diminishing returns to digging deeper wells, and diminishing returns to extraction of minerals with lower ore concentrations. It takes energy to add complexity, but this energy is hard to measure, so it goes unmeasured in EROEI calculations.
Electricity has to be
(a) at the right place
(b) at the right time
(c) with the right characteristics for the grid
These three issues, by themselves, become an overwhelming problem, when a system starts with intermittent electricity that doesn’t match the grid characteristics. We need heat in winter, solar energy is mostly available in the summer. Storing solar energy from summer to winter cannot be done using batteries.
With respect to the US grid, even if we did not add manufacturing capability (which we desperately need, if we are not to depend on China and the rest of Asia), we would at least need to double the size of the US grid. If we were to add manufacturing capability as well, we would be talking about an even larger grid.
Then there is the issue that the number one thing we get from oil is food production. Even if we ramp up wind and solar, it cannot substitute for the diesel that operates the big machines farmers use in the field, and the trucks that bring food to market. There is no way we can electrify these huge machines, either. The batteries would weigh the machines down terribly, causing the machines to sink into the soil. The machines would need themselves to be built much stronger (and heavier). The physics works against making the machines feasible.
Then there is the detail that fossil fuels are used to make our roads, whether they are asphalt or concrete. We don’t have a way to substitute electricity (especially intermittent electricity) for making roads. It becomes impossible to keep society operating, without paved roads.
Intermittent wind and solar cannot work by themselves. We really need a double system, so that fossil fuels can back up the wind and solar. But this fossil fuel system must operate very inefficiently, to be in standby mode for when it is needed. We need trained engineers for both, and someone needs to pay these engineers year-round.
——-
One point that is obvious to me, but may not be to other people, is that EROEI has to be a measure of energy in and out the same year (or month, or week, or day). Normally, when calculation are done for fossil fuels, the calculation is energy out compared to energy in, with respect to a particular year, or other time period. The model used in the 1972 “The Limits to Growth”, doesn’t look at energy out versus energy in, it looks at “all resources out versus resources in” during particular half year periods.
In the computer model output I saw, not more than 5% of resources could be used as an investment to get output, or the system would fail.
Wind and solar, plus their transmission, plus everything that would need to be done to transform farming to an electrical endeavor, plus all of their storage, would need to be done in this 5%. The inefficient fossil fuel back up system would need to be included as well.
You really need a full model of all costs, including where and how you are going to get all of the resources, rather than an EROEI calculation. EROEI is just a “back of the envelop calculation.” It works passably well when comparing two very similar types of electricity, but it falls about completely when comparing wind and solar with fossil fuels.
If intermittent wind and solar really were highly efficient sources of energy, they would not need all of the subsidies that the get today. The subsidy of “going first” drives the other electricity producers, especially nuclear, out of business unless they get subsidies as well.
Hi Gail. This Saturday night comment is a fine re-summarizing. I have to read pieces like this from you over & over to keep it straight in my mind. I’m grateful for your patience in repeating & tweaking. Thank you.
Slow Teddy,
I’m sick and tired of scrolling when on OFW; make your own blog and snow that under!
Type the name into search – then mass delete – I do this often
He actually has his own blog, but no one visits and he constitutes 90% of the comments there:
https://www.headsupster.com/forumthread?shortId=220
The text is poorly structured for a blog post; there is no sensible segmentation and I expect that to put off most readers. But it has some interesting links and makes some good points.
i imagine the chief commenter there is tommy robinson
That site is a repository of key links … for future reference. The form at the top is the primary directive … you can send abusive emails to people without identifying yourself hahaha
What future? Hasn’t the world ended, like… hundreds of times already in the last few years? Are you betting on being wrong? Or will you access your “repository” from the afterlife?
Future … until ROF or UEP arrives…
Jarle MYOB.
Today article 42 expires. Article 42 based on the covid epidemic has been the primary means of deporting illegal immigrants in the USA. There is some speculation that this is why the public health emergency was ended but the EAU was not.
The average illegal immigrant is deported three times with some deported as many as ten times. A estimated 700k to 1m have gathered on the USA southern border to enter waiting until the expiration of article 42. It is estimated 12% of the USA population is illegal immigrants and this percentage will rapidly rise now article 42 is expired. The left represents the illegal immigration as correct for humanitarian issues. The right represents the illegal immigration as a attempt to change the demographics in favor of democrats.
There has been two horrific acts of violence on the border in the past days. I wont post the videos of the dead and wounded they are not hard to find. The alternative media has asserted these are acts ordered by the cartels. Bringing illegals in has become very lucrative for the cartels the rates being described as $5000 for a Latino $20,000 for a African national and $50,000 for a Chinese national.
Every time a deportation occurs they collect another fee and it is reported they are furious about this ending. It is reported some of the caravan that has assembled have not paid their cartel protection fee.The MSM has reported the acts of violence are acts of “white supremacists”. Both of the perpetrators were Latino males and the acts were against Latinos including children. One of the perpetrators had social media posts displaying very large swastikas and SS rune tattoos. The alternative Media asserts that the cartels have teamed to perform terrorist acts until their income stream is restored and the acts are cartel ordered and will continue.
It is very crazy on the USA southern border right now. I doubt European forum readers or even some USA readers understand just how crazy. The cartels are firmly in control of the Mexican side of the border with both a large amount of sicarios sophisticated weapons and armored vehicles from the international market and a high degree of technical sophistication including drones. There is no Mexican government presence on the border except at the official crossings. It is this cartel controlled zone complete with armored vehicles heavy weapons and drone operation that the illegal immigrants are transiting through.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/4EmQPFPH3G2f/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/eaU3S8qSfzcM/
The banality of sudden death .. can’t even be bothered to read them all … who gives a f789
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-db7
Some really good ones here including recently Olympians haha
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-7fb
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F911aaa14-28af-46ef-bada-12beb12806ce_1280x853.jpeg
David, this young lady should worry you.
She scares the willies out of me and I’m not even in the Putin Fan Club!
https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1654496248282464258
somehow “she” knew to block me on twitter.
(other tweets question if she is he. Any idea?)
or maybe they’re out to get me?
Vlad the Great.
Xi the Magnificent.
Is a dude.
Is a dude.
Sorry if I misgendered anybody, but….How can you tell?
I wish I was being facetious, but what with young people these days bending their gender and even breaking it, it’s getting hard to make assumptions.
I was on the fence: dude transition to female, or female transition to male? Then I saw the hands and immediately knew: is dude.
Uhm, large head with square-set jaw, height/weight/stature, coarser features overall. Man hands. Voice. High-set trapezoid muscles can be a giveaway.
But really the first signal to me is the completely improbable-looking blond[e] bob. It just screams “I am bogus”.
Tim, I sort of wonder whether you mightn’t be susceptible to a Hugh-Grant sort of scenario.
Who could have known this wasn’t a bona fide dame?!?
https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.2f59944b0db3f53df2e23ae03bb49ad0?rik=MznVUhT2asq9qA&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
I mean, yeah, I guess if you are drunk or high or both, and it’s dark.. but otherwise?
This is why Western civilization is doomed: the men can’t even discern a male from a female, a mission-critical task! Hoo boy!
This is sad news.
Glenn Greenwald’s Husband Has Died at 37
The handsome Brazilian politician, David Miranda, had been in ICU for a severe gastrointestinal infection for 9 months. Were covid vaccines to blame?
https://wholistic.substack.com
Oh wow – he f789ed himself… gotta be the vax…
In the absence of proof to the contrary, that would be my first guess. There are lots of possible causes of his problem, and Hippocrates is reported to have taught that ‘All disease begins in the gut.’ But at any rate, nine months with a severe gastrointestinal infection suggests a severely weakened immune system.
The elimination of the humans is inevitable, as they stopped to care about their environment.
Unlike other species, they are the creators of their environment. When they forget it, then they start to behave like wild animals, which, of course, they are not and this is the way the real wild species prevail: they use the self-deception of the humans for their benefit.
beavers build dams which flood areas with trees and then the trees die.
blue herons are fond of building their nests up high in the dead trees.
how dare they!
some bugs bore into bark and kill trees.
hurricanes and tornados kill trees.
carnivores eat herbivores and omnivores.
carnivores eat other young weak defenseless carnivores, and also old weak defenseless ones.
how dare they!
space rocks slam into the Earth and cause mass extinctions.
why is Nature so aggressive against itself?
Part of the fabric of the universe.
Dennis L.
I Am Nature.
You destroyer of dark chocolate!
Hershey’s Dark minis and thins are scarce and have disappeared from several local stores? Dark Davidina.. when can we expect this situation to resolve?
Rep, he is telling you right there that he intends to outstrip his resource base.
it isnt aggressive against itself—that implies studied intent.—it is saving itself.
the earth exists and survives as a biological whole—it just ”is”.
that survival strategy requires that the species that exist on it must compete for living space—there is no ”care about how we do it”
being a sphere, that space is finite
of the millions of species that exist on this sphere, only one has evolved the necessary thought processes that——-
a—think that our sphere provides infinite space
and b, if it doesnt we can invade other spheres and do the same there.
the bonkers idea that having looted this planet we can loot the galaxy.
Even Hawking—the chief smartass, thought that.
No concept that if a sphere elsewhere was conducive to life support, life would already have evolved there, and wouldn’t take kindly to us showing up.
Not the Dark Forest rather the Dark Beverly Hills. We evolved here, we have emplaced our weapons system here, you are not welcome to stay but you are welcome to a short visit now and then. Tell us can you do any amusing tricks?
I claim this sphere as my own. I’d like everyone else to leave now please.
gladly
as long as i don’t have an eddy on the sphere i end up on
Norman, Eddy keeps you alive. If I were as obsessive as you, I’d keep track of how many of your posts are replies to Eddy!
Love anyway… 🙂
“No concept that if a sphere elsewhere was conducive to life support, life would already have evolved there, and wouldn’t take kindly to us showing up.”
Well… that’s just your opinion Norm. How do you know what the nice folk on Talos 9 think about us or how they’d react to us turning up on their doorstep on our battery powered space scooters looking to trade some SuperFent for well… whatever they’ve got.
soooooo
let’s examine my ”opinion”
you have a concept of a sweet earth size planet, with trees, water, air—and everything else that makes life nice for us humans
but no competing life forms
May i ask which daydreaming planet you are on Tsubion?
If only humans would behave like wild animals
some of us still do.
People in the Tyrolen valleys told me, that it was always clear that too many children would mean they cannot be fed and have to leave the valley. Of course it is also a question of distribution.
I think, the dependency of humans on the consequences of their own decisions is part of the conditio humana. You cannot cut off one hand and blame God that you are one-handed!
Beavers and other animals are bound to the self-organizing system of nature. Humans are able to reflect, detect underlying mechanisms and act respectively to avoid the worst. All that can be communicated and understood and be included into self-discipline. No need for mechanisms of mandates, hidden side-effects and secret elitarian steering.
It is also a “tragedy of the commons” issue. If one restricts his reproduction, but others do not do so accordingly, his lineage is eliminated. So one must decide between (1) curtailing the number of offspring and gradually being eliminated by those who don’t versus (2) having my posterity attempt to survive the inevitable overshoot.
ivan, I too was thinking tragedy of the commons. option 3 curtail the number of offspring and aggressively and violently curtail the number of offspring of those who do not curtail on their own.
The solution to overshoot is murder. Or to sugarcoat it self defense.
Japan controls its borders. China controls its borders.
Those who control their borders will have a healthy nation. Those who do not will have a cesspit.
Agreed. Societies need a solution for that. I don’t agree that selections from an unelected elite or ‘neglected side-effects’ are the best solution.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has added his doubts regarding the fate of the dollar as the dominant reserve currency to the recent warnings of Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.
https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/2023/05/905990/us-says-it-does-not-have-good-answer-question-shifts-away-dollar
US says it does not have ‘good answer’ to question on shifts away from dollar
WASHINGTON: The White House said Thursday it did not have a “good answer” to a question from a reporter concerning a growing number of countries shifting away from the use of the US dollar.
“I’m gonna have to take your question, sir. I don’t have a good answer,” Anadolu Agency reported National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.
The US dollar has for decades been the reserve global currency, but several countries around the world have begun to move away from it in a process known as de-dollarisation.
Russia and China have each dropped the dollar for use in bilateral trade, trading in their own currencies instead amid worsening tensions with Washington.
Other nations have sought to either formulate new currencies, sometimes cryptocurrencies, or hold their central bank reserves in gold instead of the dollar, it added.
A new PhD thesis reframes the Thucydides Trap as the consistent tendency for war to result as the dominant currency hegemon is challenged by its emergent mercantile rivals. Moreover, USA sanctions on Russia have accelerated the trend toward a challenge of the currency hegemon.
“As the technological gap between East and West closes, demand for US Dollars will decline. US Dollar hegemony embodies all economic advantages won by the West at the expense of the rest, but those advantages are unravelling. Upon recognising that the march to war that we witness today has parallels in past lifecycles of declining currency hegemony, the question arises, can war be avoided?”
Thesis: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/29542.2
https://greekcitytimes.com/2023/05/08/thucydides-economics-and-war/
> What Thucydides Teaches Us About War
Thucydides, the ancient Athenian general, famously observed that “it was the rise of Athens and the fear this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable” in his account of The History of the Peloponnesian War in which Athens was the rising power, while Sparta was the pre-eminent hegemon.
In more recent times, American political scientist Graham Allison referred to the “Thucydides trap” in describing growing tensions between the United States and China, as did Chinese president Xi Jinping who insisted that “we all need to work together to avoid the Thucydides trap”. This raises the question, what if there are cyclical economic laws underpinning the Thucydides trap that can be observed throughout history?
My PhD thesis, titled Imperialism: How Declining Currency Hegemony Leads to War, answers this question with the following observation. Throughout history, the state that acquires the largest amount of wealth from conquered nations, or the state that produces the most physical goods through other means, can become the dominant currency hegemon, such that other countries around the world will demand its currency, however, such hegemony contains the seeds of its own decay.
The hegemon creates its own gravediggers in the form of the mercantile rivals, which are those states that develop their productive forces by producing and exporting physical goods in exchange for the hegemonic currency.
Because the hegemon’s currency is the world reserve currency, it tends to become reliant on imports from other countries, which can lead to the erosion of its domestic industries and the eventual industrialisation of its future rivals.
Reformulating Thucydides for our time, we can say that the emergence of mercantile rivals and the fear it inspires in the declining hegemon create conditions that make war inevitable, a phenomenon that has repeated throughout history. To provide three major examples of this, 1) the Iberian powers of Portugal and Spain, 2) Britain, and 3) the United States, have all played the role of the declining hegemon, leading to war every time.
Iberian Hegemony (1500-1648): See Chapter 4
The rise of the modern West was triggered by the discovery of the Americas by Spain in 1492 and the discovery of an alternate route to India by Portugal in 1498. These discoveries by the two Iberian powers could not have come at a better time given the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman a few decades earlier in 1453 had extinguished the Eastern Roman empire. From a European perspective, this gave Islamic powers monopoly over all trade routes to India and China, which at the time were the largest economies in the world and major destinations for the world’s gold and silver.
These two Western discoveries gave Europe new sources of gold and silver. From the Americas, the Iberians powers extracted large quantities of gold and silver, however, instead of developing their own productive forces with this flood of wealth, they mainly spent the money on imports from around the world, which ultimately produced their own gravediggers by stimulating the economic development of northern Europe.
Eventually, this created the conditions for the Thirty Years War that ended in 1648. Although this war is remembered as one between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, it also led to the rising power of Protestant northern Europe defeating and subjugating the declining power of Catholic southern Europe. Aristotle, who believed northern Europeans were “somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill” and “lacking in political organisation and capacity to rule their neighbours”, would have been shocked to see how far the barbarians had come.
British Hegemony (1816-1931): See Chapters 5 & 6
The next major leap in the rise of Europe after the conquest of the Americas was the conquest of India by Britain beginning in 1757. As Britain divided and conquered its way across the Indian subcontinent, it acquired the right to levy taxes, resulting in an outpouring of physical wealth from India that provided the cheap inputs needed to propel Britain to become the first industrial manufacturing power, which empowered Britain to issue the next major hegemonic currency, the Pound Sterling.
This incentivised Britain to keep its markets open to entice other countries to hold its currency, however, this inevitably led to the deindustrialisation of Britain, leading to another Thucydides trap, this time caused by the industrialisation of the US, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan that all developed from the 1870s onwards by producing in exchange for the Pound Sterling. Eventually, Britain found it difficult to meet its gold liabilities as those rivals began buying gold to establish gold standard currencies of their own.
Again, the rise of these industrial rivals and the fear this instilled in Britain made the two world wars inevitable. For Britain, the prospect of Germany gaining access to newly discovered oil resources in the then Ottoman province of Iraq posed an economic challenge, so it joined forces with France and Russia to cut Germany off from that oil by seizing its colonies and dismantling the Ottoman empire. Naturally, Greece attempted to seize control of western Anatolia from the Ottomans after WW1, which ended in Turkish victory.
One explanation for why the revolutionary Soviet government in Russia faced so much hostility was because it championed the ‘right of nations to self-determination’ as its foreign policy. This angered states like Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, who feared that their colonised territories might seek liberation with Soviet support. This policy also worried those states, like Germany, Italy, and Japan, that lacked the colonies needed to feed their industrial ambitions.
These would-be Axis states had industrialised from 1870 onwards by producing in exchange for Pounds Sterling, but in 1931 Britain ended the convertibility of its currency to gold. The ensuing depression compelled the Axis states to seize their own colonies by violent aggression, thereby initiating WW2.
In the words of Hitler, “what India was for England, the territories of Russia will be for us”. However, these attempts failed because the nations targeted for colonisation, primarily the Soviet Union and China, resisted and won at the cost of 47 million lives, with help from partisan resistance in Greece, Yugoslavia, and Korea.
US Hegemony (1944 onwards): See Chapters 7 & 8
Towards the end of WW2, the United States established global currency hegemony on the foundations of its own industrial dominance and took leadership of an alliance of states known as ‘the West’, including the defeated Axis powers.
The essence of the US-led Western strategy after WW2 has been to suppress the economic development of Russia and the growing postcolonial camp of nations to keep them dependent on the US Dollar.
To this end, the US embarked on a campaign of aggression, mainly the postcolonial world, however, in attempting to subdue Vietnam, the US over-issued their currency, which undermined faith in the US Dollar and forced US president Richard Nixon to end the convertibility of gold at the official rate of $35 per ounce in 1971.
New pillars were needed to support the Dollar. To that end, OPEC agreed to price its oil in Dollars in 1975, and the post-Soviet space was bled by capital fleeing to Western banks after 1991.
Meanwhile, China produced large quantities of goods in exchange for Dollars and received investment and technology from Western firms, thereby rapidly industrialising in the process to become the leading mercantile power of the current cycle.
The industrial productivity that propelled the US Dollar to its hegemonic status in the first place has been eroded by decades of deindustrialisation as shown by trade deficits since 1977.
After WW2 the US was the largest absolute net-exporter of capital, then it became a net-importer of capital from 1989 onwards, and today the US is the largest absolute net-importer of capital by way of its enormous net-external debt (p. 192).
Under these conditions, the US is incentivised to intentionally destabilise the world around them as their strategy to defend the Dollar. According to George Friedman, the founder of the US geostrategic publication StratFor, “the United States has no overriding interest in peace in Eurasia”.
As former IMF economist Eswar Prasad has pointed out, geopolitical instability increases demand for the Dollar.
This strategy appears to be reaching its limits. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West retaliated with sanctions and asset seizures, expecting the Russian currency to collapse, but instead, this move only accelerated de-Dollarisation, especially now that China is planning to interlink the world’s central banks using CBDCs.
This acceleration is because Dollars not held in cash are ultimately liabilities of the US central bank that can be seized at will.
As the technological gap between East and West closes, demand for US Dollars will decline. US Dollar hegemony embodies all economic advantages won by the West at the expense of the rest, but those advantages are unravelling. Upon recognising that the march to war that we witness today has parallels in past lifecycles of declining currency hegemony, the question arises, can war be avoided?
Freedom is ultimately our rebellion against the inevitable.
Pretty good article. Maybe I’ll read the entire thesis when I get the chance.
De-dollarization is proceeding rapidly.
The dollar has lost its share of the market since 2021 at 10X the former speed, and that speed is liable to accelerate as an increasing number of countries ramp up their efforts to de-dollarize.
The outcome may be catastrophic for USA. It is because of sanctions on Russia, which may be a monumental blunder.
“The dollar plunged 8 percentage points in share in a single year to just 47% so we lost about double the entire share of the Chinese yuan. And at that pace, the U.S. dollar would be eclipsed in about 6 years.”
“If the U.S. dollar does continue on this path, we will see soaring inflation, a catastrophic fallen American standard of living, and a U.S. that falls off the world stage — not by choice but by necessity — all of it, 100% our own making.”
https://news.bitcoin.com/economist-warns-of-catastrophic-fall-in-american-living-standard-elon-musk-weighs-in-on-de-dollarization-us-dollar-weaponization/
Economist Warns of ‘Catastrophic’ Fall in American Living Standard — Elon Musk Weighs in on De-Dollarization, US Dollar Weaponization
Economist Peter St Onge has warned that U.S. dollar weaponization will lead to “soaring inflation, a catastrophic fallen American standard of living, and a U.S. that falls off the world stage.” Commenting on the economist’s warnings, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk weighed in on de-dollarization.
De-Dollarization Happening Faster Than People Realize, Says Economist
Economist Peter St Onge warned about the dire consequences of weaponizing the U.S. dollar in a video he posted on Twitter Monday. St Onge is a Research Fellow and the Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Economic Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. Before joining the Heritage Foundation, he was a Fellow at the Mises Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Economic Institute, and an Assistant Professor of International Trade and of Marketing at Taiwan’s Feng Chia University.
Citing a former Morgan Stanley analyst, Stephen Jen, stating that the U.S. dollar has already suffered a “stunning collapse” and is losing its reserve currency status at an “alarming pace,” St Onge stressed:
“De-dollarization is happening faster than people realize.
“The dollar share went from 73% in 2001 to 55% in 2021, at which point it fell off a cliff, losing market share 10 times faster,” the economist detailed.
“The dollar plunged 8 percentage points in share in a single year to just 47% so we lost about double the entire share of the Chinese yuan. And at that pace, the U.S. dollar would be eclipsed in about 6 years.”
He added: “Separate data from central banks around the world confirm that after decades of complacency, the landscape is shifting.”
Effects of Sanctions on USD
St Onge went on to explain that what severely affected the USD in 2022 was sanctions. He noted that last year, the U.S. froze approximately $300 billion in Russian central bank assets.
“These were Russia’s sovereign dollars. They and everybody else in the world thought of them like gold. This was something we hadn’t even done during the Cold War — during the height of the Cold War with hot proxy wars all over the world — because we were run by adults. Why did Biden do it? The goal was to cause bank panics and crash the Russian economy — perhaps to set off mass unemployment and civil unrest. Of course, it backfired, instead, sending countries around the world in panicked flight from the dollar … and so overnight, the U.S. dollar went from the world’s rock-solid store of value to a political football held hostage to whichever lobbyist or activist caught Joe Biden’s eye this week,” he opined.
The economist concluded:
“If the U.S. dollar does continue on this path, we will see soaring inflation, a catastrophic fallen American standard of living, and a U.S. that falls off the world stage — not by choice but by necessity — all of it, 100% our own making.”
Numerous individuals have expressed similar warnings. A growing number of countries are also ramping up efforts to shift away from using the U.S. dollar in trade settlements. The Syrian foreign minister said last week that the U.S. imposes sanctions to steal targeted nations’ assets and keep them under its hegemony.
Commenting on St Onge’s video, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted:
“If you weaponize currency enough times, other countries will stop using it.”
> De-dollarization is proceeding rapidly.
The sooner, the better.
One point is weaponizing, second is decoupling of trade to prepare war. When trade decouples, economy shrinks and war cannot be financed.
Europe seems to aim to produce weapons against Russia more or less directly with Russian oil/gas. I doubt that can lead to a hot war. Apparently, NATO wants to demonstrate Russian regions, that the Russian military is weaker than thought and thus support ambitions of independence. There are enrollment declarations with Georgia and Azerbaijan to join EU. To make Crimea NATO territory is a supporting step. Azerbaijan has drilling rights in the Caspian Sea.
Speculating even more: if the US draws back onto their continent, developing Venezuela, Europe must expand to Middle East to secure oil transports. China has bounds with Iran, Europe is connected to Turkiya, Israel, Egypt and the Maghreb. If Europe had control over Caspian Oil, Europe and China could compete for Saudian Oil, perhaps letting the Street of Hormuz to China and the Red Sea to Europe. Impossible to think that a Chinese ally could access the Mediterranean into the Black Sea!
The Rat Juice is aging people https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47792
I saw a vax injured acquaintance the other day – not seen him for 4 or 5 months.. he looks ten years older
Even “Redacted” is picking up on your fake moon landing meme.
The Russians went along with it……now, not so much.
So many smart people……so gullible…….
I blame medieval manorialism myself…..and the gee wizz factor of the Jetsons
gotta keep the robbo fan club going eddy
what are visiting hours for your jailbird friend at the moment?
Now do you understand why they are exterminating us?
https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews/47786
Oh my… now why would they reuse a photo … https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/77188
FAKE. It’s all f789ing FAKE
here they go again … driving round and round in their Big Machines –oooh ahhhh go the anti vaxxers https://t.me/downtherabbitholewegofolks/77174
Time to inject some Telegrams
Australia Currently Ranks as the Highest Excess Mortality Rate Country in the World
https://magspress.com/fully-vaccinated-australians-dying-at-levels-not-seen-for-80-years-doctors-baffled/ (https://magspress.com/fully-vaccinated-australians-dying-at-levels-not-seen-for-80-years-doctors-baffled/
The west got 500 more years because of a figure few people remember – Nicholas von Salm.
Not much is known about his life other than the fact that he was born in Vielsalm, in what is now Belgium. In 1529, when he was 70, he was put in charge of defending Vienna against the Turkish sultan’s huge forces, and incredibly he managed to defend it with a small force. He died shortly after because of wounds he suffered during the defense, and the Austrian Emperor, his pride having been damaged because the capital had been besieged, chose to forget Salm’s achievements.
The British should have cleared Constantinople free of Turks in 1918-20 but actually sent a naval force to protect the Turks from vengeful Greeks, and now Turkey has become a huge thorn to the West. I regret not asking the late Dr. Firth how he thought about this stupid act by the Foreign Office.
A defense line in the center of Anatolia, making Western Anatolia a fortified area crossable by few migrants, would have done an enormous service to the West.
The DA has been propping up turkey for four years now with a monster natgas backdoor bailout. (Be nice if someone somewhere ferreted out the ins and outs of that bailout.) And in exchange, I presume, for that defense line you speak of. It’s a day late and a dollar short IYO I know but they operate on a different clock.
In a sense, The UEP (ultimate Extinction Plan) is a preventive measure by today’s winners to continue civilization and leave something for the future.
After the French and the Russian revolutions, today’s elites threw just enough bones to the general population so the latter would not revolt.
But, with the shaky economy and higher cost of energy,, bribing the people not to rebel won’t work anymore.
It is said that we are 9 meals away from chaos. That quote is real, but Jay Gould, probably ancestor of Stephen Jay Gould (who has always denied that he is a descendant of the infamous mogul but no proof has been given), said he can employ half of the poor to kill the other half.
The Hunger Games is copied from the Japanese movie/comic Battle Royale, in which only 2 out of 42 escape alive and they can never return to Japan, get a passport, or whatever to live a decent life -they will remain fugitives for the rest of their lives and will be out of the gene pool. The american version is much more ‘hollywood-ized’.
Removing those who won’t forgive today’s winners is a preventive measure by the latter, and whether you like it or not, such action will be justified by the smarter portion of the population as a necessity to maintain civilization.
Then they vaxxed the wrong people didn’t they? 🙂
They don’t need to risk trying to remove the resistant, they just need to convince most of the resistant that they, the elites, have been deposed, and then continue to manage the situation from the same smoke-filled backrooms. Safe and effective.
People can say this and that about the American dollar system, but if USA cannot buy from other countries without impunity, and pay them back with ever depreciating dollars with money they don’t have to pay back, the whole system ends.
I wonder why there are people who think there will be a world of multi-polarity, dollar not dominant, etc.
Russia suspended the ruble-rupee trades since no one really needs rupee.
Every single institution on earth , even those in North Korea, assumes dollar is the world’s reserve currency. If that falls the whole world falls, so it will be defended to death, whether it is fair or not.
>> the whole system ends
The whole system ends, for whom? Certainly not Asia, so long as Russia and Arab states export oil.
>> Russia suspended the ruble-rupee trades since no one really needs rupee.
I saw that. I suppose Russia bought their alliance in the early stages of the war, but now Russia has demonstrated sufficient stability that they feel confident in doing what makes better financial sense. Poor India, what a basket case.
BRICS is basically resources for manufactured goods trade trying to cut the dollar out. That only makes sense since the dollar is becoming despised. The idea that is a “fair” system is kind of rocked by countries that have neither resources or manufactured good. The imaginary debt dollars look good for those countries.
Pocket deals where currency swaps are arraigned that reflect manufactured goods for resources trades are certainly proliferating quickly. China made over 40 currency swap agreements. These detract from the dollars role as a settlement mechanism but only provide a particular settlement mechanism for the two parties. China is still fully participating in the dollar settlement for international trade. Dollar still constitutes settlement for 80% of international trade. Even countries that dislike the USA (the list seems to be growing) still participate in the dollar based financial system. Even countries thsat have agreed to pocket dollar avoidance agreements still participate in the dollar based financial system. If they stopped they would quickly have none of the things they need to function.
Im of the wait and see pilisophical on this. The fact is while many countries have jumped onto the Russian boat philisophically they continue to participate in the dollar system. Will the whittling away at the dollar system turn into a flood as it seems popular to forecast by the goldbugs and revolutionaries? There are many aguments for this. The counter thesis is very simple. World trade requires a lot of money. As unfair as fiat money creation is its the only way to provide for world trade as we know it.
I think China could pull it off. China doesnt want reserve currency status. Not at all. Its directly counter to the Chinese way of doing things which is let the other guy hold the bag- a wise philosophy. The only way China will jump in Russias boat is if forced- just like Russia was forced.
As we enter the intermediate term of Russia getting 86ed from the club it will be interesting . As we see in the Rupayee -ruble thing ending Russia is in no position to be a sugar daddy. What works for Russia is getting payed in Yuan. Where will India get Yuan? It doesnt look like China is at all keen on taking rupayes for chinese bonds and staring a new ponzi.
Countries without means to get what they need to survive will do what they need to. ALA IMF loans to Sri lanka.
Pundits are generally commenting on this subject from their political perspective. Thats not what will settle the question. Acquiring food and energy will be what settles the question. Which is the same as saying energy will settle the question. Since ALL of the energy producers seem to be in the dollar repudiation boat it would seem to be a slam dunk for dollar ending. Its complicated. If I had to forecast i would say more of the same. While we are witnessing huge macro changes that would seem to indicate huge changes in the reserve currency IMO thats not borne out by what we are seeing. Yes dollar repudiation seems to be in every headline including MSM. IMO this is more to transition to CBDC than a overwhelming international abandonment of the dollar. More of the same. A slow whittling away at the dollars prevalence in trade settlement. The radical sudden change will be implementation of CBDCs and this will be by choice. If by crisis contrived crisis.
I completely agree with that.
I recently saw an event on Youtube by two German (non-mainstream) financial experts who addressed this topic, among others, and the following points were mentioned:
The problems of the dollar are
– foreign countries finance the budget deficit of the USA
– the rest of the world has to steadily bear the inflation of the USA
– the dollar is used as a weapon
At the same time, it is also emphasized that the normal US citizen absolutely does NOT benefit from the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
There has been talk of the so-called “Triffin Dilemma”:
– The world economy needs US dollars. So the US is forced to constantly print dollars and export them to the world.
– this export succeeds through the trade deficit, which leads to an exodus of industry abroad
– if the USA would no longer provide enough dollars, we would get a world economic crisis
– on the other hand, the debt and trade deficit of the USA grow, which sooner or later leads to a loss of confidence and value of the dollar. This leads to global instability.
They also say that a world in “deglobalization” needs a neutral reserve currency. (The two like Bitcoin)
They also believe that replacing the dollar will be much more difficult and protracted than many currently believe and you read everywhere.
—
For me a few things remain unclear, one should have gone further into the depth here:
– what does it mean to have a world reserve currency?
– how exactly does the US export inflation?
– how does the foreign countries finance the debt of the USA?
Having the world reserve currency seems to confer great power, but at the same time no one wants to have it in the long run because it causes too much collateral damage?
Maybe someone with more knowledge can help me understand this?
Harry, I have the same questions.
There are two functions the world needs 1) to transact trade 2) to store wealth. Neither of these require dollars.
For trade anything that can not be faked it good. For example gold. It does not need to be a large amount of gold only enough to cover highs and lows of the trade flow. It does not need to be physically transferred it can sit in a vault inside the area painted on the floor for the owning nation. If too large an imbalance occurs the nation with the large pile does need to physically collect.
For storage ownership of real physical productive assets is the only store. Be they farmland, mines, factories, rental property, etc. So no dollars are needed. Even under the current dollar system no one should hold massive piles of dollars. Hold only enough for month to month fluctuation of trade. If you get too large a pile use it to buy the productive means of the source nation. KSA owns 10% of the US stock market. They know not to get stuck holding potentially worthless paper (bits on a computer hard drive).
Look up Brent Johnson “The dollar milkshake theory “
I just drove past a cemetary and found these Covid-hospital-protocol-kills signs affixed to the fence:
https://pasteboard.co/RLWtb1DcpUss.jpg
I found it mildly surprising because it was a personal experience rather than all the awareness campaigns that can be found online.
(Corriere della Sera)
Italy is exporting like hell a drug to China which is succesfull against Covid-19 and variants (and not dangerous), but Italy doesn’t use it because it prefers to push the Covid experimental jab….
😀
https://www.corriere.it/esteri/23_maggio_10/strano-picco-esportazioni-italiane-cina-motivo-farmaco-anti-covid-982a71d2-ef6f-11ed-948b-ad2f170e5fee.shtml
It’s paywalled for me. What’s the drug called?
I was able to access the article, for some reason. They don’t name the exact drug, just its active component.
È un farmaco in particolare, contenente uno specifico principio attivo, ad andare a ruba nel Paese asiatico: l’acido ursodeossicolico (Udca), di cui l’Italia è uno dei più importanti produttori al mondo. L’azienda leader a livello globale è la Ice Pharma (dove Ice sta per «Industria chimica emiliana»), che ha sede a Reggio Emilia e il sito industriale principale a Basaluzzo, in provincia di Alessandria.
Da un lato la Ice vende il principio attivo ad altre aziende che a loro volta confezionano compresse, dall’altro si occupa direttamente della produzione di capsule, ma solo per il mercato italiano. L’Udca, tuttavia, è normalmente prescritto per la cura di alcune patologie del fegato.
Perché mai i cittadini cinesi ne vanno a caccia? La spiegazione sta in un articolo apparso il 5 dicembre su Nature, nel quale due ricercatori dello Stem Cell Institute di Cambridge sostengono che l’Udca aiuterebbe a prevenire il Covid e a renderne più lievi i sintomi. Nulla di certo, sottolineano gli stessi autori, anche perché manca uno studio approfondito. …
Says it is used to treat liver diseases.
Wiki:
Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), also known as ursodiol, is a secondary bile acid, produced in humans and most other species from metabolism by intestinal bacteria. It is synthesized in the liver in some species, and was first identified in bile of bears of genus Ursus, from which its name derived.
Thanks. One of the first journal search results asserts that it suppresses cytokine and antibody production.
https://aasldpubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hep.1840160213
If it is paywalled, try this,
https://12ft.io
someone suggested to me in this blog. Sometimes it works, like in this case.
Thanks for that site, I’ll have to bookmark it and give it a go.
> Italy is exporting like hell a drug to China which is succesfull against Covid-19 and variants …
What do you call something that works against something that’s not dangerous?
Or doesn’t exist.
With this site https://12ft.io you can open the article.
It is a drug related to this research:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32575350/
In Italy we produce the basic component that China used and is using to treat people with Covid-19 (plus variants), but we didn’t use it because we liked to follow the crazy mass vaccination 😀
We still have no idea WHY. China does not inject rat juice, Russia may not inject rat juice, it is not clear. Brazil injects rat juice they are not a big population looser in the deagle (sic) web site. India unclear what they are doing. The murder of three African nation presidents who would not play ball suggests CIA/DOD hit squads. Why is it so important. It seems more than simple corporation profit. The fed could have just typed two hundred billion into the computer for the pharma companies and saved all the disruption.
OK, it might be depopulation then why is Brazil doing it? Why principally the west? Unless it picks up over the next ten years it is a failure.
I saw a photo of a big banner set up on a highway bridge somewhere in the US.
The slogan said: “NEED AN ABORTION? TRY THE COVID VACCINE.”
Very creative, I thought.
YES!
This is the sort of thing someone like Steve Kirsch should be putting onto stickers and distributing by the millions.
How about –
FEELING SUICIDAL? Take a Covid Booster
SICK OF LIVING? Take a Covid Booster
WANT A HEART ATTACK/Blood Clot/Stroke etc etc — Take a Covid Booster
F789 Yeah. I love this concept
(Haaretz)
”Haaretz Today: Israel Bombs Civilians in Gaza (including children). But Israelis don’t want to know” (and also the western Countries…)
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/haaretz-today/2023-05-10/ty-article/.highlight/israel-bombs-civilians-in-gaza-but-israelis-dont-want-to-know/00000188-066e-def0-a18a-beee79230000
https://archive.is/GVwsh
DON’T OPEN IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE IMPRESSED.
Today’s children https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1656321849620299779
Well.. A hell of a lot more children have died in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Libya from various causes The principle one being the seven countries in five years thing. . When will Hezbollah get serious? Just as soon as they figure out a viable strategy for tactical nuclear weapons being used against them. Hezbollah could make a serious move against Israel but they will be nuked forthwith. Just like overwhelming force is used in Gaza now for cooking off some bottle rockets.
Do you see a solution Student? I dont. Too much blood has been spilled on both sides. No one will accept the reality that Israel is quite nuclear capable including delivery- on par or quite probably above the UK- and Iran is probably nuclear capable at a much much lessor level. It doesnt take a genius chess player to see whats coming. Tiddly winks. Hezbollah is lucky they are so close- if they were just a bit farther away… Have no doubt. Current events. Fire will be danger close if necessary. Oh it came very close in earlier conflicts in much less contentious times. Very very close.
In a sane world we would see negotiations to end this senseless war and this nuclear showdown brewing. THe unfortunate fact is this is not a sane world. As Gail mentioned we have two cultures both with high birth rates in a geographic area with limited resources. One culture has spencer rifles the other doesnt. Someone goes to the res and someone doesnt. Guess who? But the damn injuns keep getting their hands on firewater and now gatling guns! Sooner or later someone sez nuke them from orbit its the only way to be sure. Things are not so nice in the res but good god that sure doesnt seem to keep the birthrate down. The only thing that keeps the birthrate down is cougars or drought for deer and no energy or nukes for humans.
Humans understand kindness. They understand the beauty of the world and the beauty in a child. All races all religions. No race society or religion has ever made it a priority in their behavior and I see no sign any race religion or society ever will. Correction. If any ever did(doubtful) they got consumed by their neighbors who bought gatling guns from the sears roebuck catalog. Our species is a failure. How much of a failure and to what extent is just now beginning to be revealed.
My guess is there is no salvage plan just a genetic reboot. The planet will try again in a couple million years after a little time off. Thats just a cat nap for the planet. Dennis’s enthusiasm is misplaced. There is a future but almost certainly not for our species. We turned out to be a downgrade from the dinosaurs. Program is cancelled.
We are too smart for our own good.
We are too clever by half.
Then you’re a red man with internalized wetiko. They done broke you. If you see the species as a failure then you see yourself as a failure, and you spit on the graves of all your ancestors. You spit on all life that ever lived because all life is Great Spirit In Sky (consciousness indwelling and animating energy).
Here you are, newly-done-broke red man providing ‘confirmation’ to other long-done-broke white men, of their own failures.
It’s a pity party. I see dead people.
Personal attack on my heritage and family by Reante. No issues discussed. Reante provides no honest statement. Does not discuss his opinion or feelings.
Nice try. I’m honoring your heritage by reflecting back to you the whole truth of what it is that your comment above explicitly states that you’ve come to believe about your heritage, in order to encourage you to get back to honoring your roots just as I encourage all people to do the same.
Be thankful that your ‘girlfriend’ does not service hobos Out Back the Dumpter.
Reante, it read like a personal attack to me.
I can’t grasp why you did that. You deliberately tried to hurt jigisup’s feelings. And when he called you on it, as he had every right and justification to do, you performed one of your artful dodges.
That was not helpful. That was mean.
You know me! I never give unsolicited advice, except when I do! And even then it’s usually out of momentary anger, or blowing off steam. And like any goody goody Henry Fonda-esqe man of conscience, I usually regret it after it pops out.
And my unsolicited advice to everybody right now is that if you feel must give unsolicited advice to others, it’s a really good idea to count to ten slowly and meditate on whether that unsolicited advice is likely to do you or the recipient any good, whether it needs to be given, and whether you are only giving it for reasons connected to your own overweening ego.
We’ve all got one. Please, let’s learn to keep it on a short leash.
The same unsolicited advice applies when you are angry with your spouse, your relatives, your neighbors, or the person at the supermarket checkout. You don’t have to vocalize it or let it out into the world like a sneeze or a fart. Not expressing the anger won’t hurt you. It will usually just dissipate harmlessly if you just calm down and sit with it a while.
I’ve thought about it … and my advice to keith norm is to continue with the booster shots…. I’ve got norm going first in the OFW vax injury pool… and I am intent on winning the Jack Pot.
go norm go … go norm go….
eddy
am trying to figure out whether you are more obsessed the se x or vaxxing
A dead cockroach?
I save my sympathy for the defenceless animals that we experiment upon.