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It may be pleasant to think that the economies that are “on top” now will stay on top forever, but it is doubtful that this is the way the economy of the world works.
Figure 1 shows that, for the Advanced Economies viewed as a group (that is, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)), GDP has been trending downward since the early 1960s; this is concerning. It makes it look as if within only a few years, the Advanced Economies might be in permanent shrinkage. In 2022, the expected annual GDP growth rate for the group seems to be only 1%.
What is even more concerning is the fact that the indications in the graph are based on a period when the debt of the Advanced Economies was growing. This growing debt acted as an economic stimulus; it helped the industries manufacturing goods and services as well as the citizens buying the goods and services. Without this stimulus, GDP growth would no doubt appear to be falling even faster than shown.
In this post, I will look at underlying factors that relate to this downward trend, including oil consumption growth and changes in interest rate policies. I will also discuss the Maximum Power Principle of biology. Based on this principle, the world economy seems to be headed for a major reorganization. In this reorganization, the Advanced Countries seem likely to lose their status as world leaders. Such a downfall could happen through a loss at war, or it could happen in other ways.
[1] The major factor in the downward trend in GDP growth seems to be the loss of growth of oil supply.
In the 1940 to 1970 period, the price of oil was very low (less than $20 per barrel at today’s prices), and oil supply growth was 7% to 8% per year, which is very rapid. The US was the dominant user of oil in this era, allowing the US to become the world’s leading country both in a military way (hegemony), and in a financial way, as the holder of the “reserve currency.”
Data on year-by-year oil consumption growth is not available for the earliest years, but we can view the trend over 10-year periods (Figure 2).
With the rapid growth in the world oil supply in the 1940 to 1970 timeframe, the US was able to help Europe and Japan rebuild their infrastructure after World War II. The US also did a great deal of building at home, including adding electricity transmission lines, oil and gas pipelines, and interstate highways. It also added a Medicare program to provide healthcare for the elderly. The emphasis at this time was on building for the future.
In the 1960s, the Green Revolution was started, aimed at increasing the quantity of food produced. This revolution involved greater mechanization of farming, the use of hybrid seeds that required more fertilizer, the use of genetically modified seeds, and the use of herbicides and pesticides. With these changes, farming became increasingly dependent on oil and other fossil fuels. The green revolution led to lower inflation-adjusted prices for food, as well as greater supply.
The 1970s was a time of adaptation to spiking oil prices and declining growth in oil supplies. At the same time, wages were increasing, and more women were entering the workforce, making the rise in oil prices more tolerable. There were also advances in computerization, changing the nature of many kinds of work.
The 1980s marked a shift to an emphasis on how to get costs down for the consumer. There was more emphasis on competition and leverage (the euphemism for borrowing). Instead of building for the future, the emphasis was on using previously built infrastructure for as long as possible.
Also in the 1980s, the Advanced Economies started to shift toward becoming service economies. To do this, a significant share of manufacturing and mining was moved to lower-wage countries. Transferring a significant share of industry abroad had the additional benefit of holding down prices for the consumer.
[2] Oil consumption growth and GDP growth seem to be connected.
Figure 3 shows that oil consumption growth was higher than GDP growth up until 1973, when oil prices started to spike. This was the period of greatly adding to infrastructure, using the abundant oil supply, as discussed in Section [1]
After 1973-1974, GDP growth tended to stay slightly above oil consumption growth as Advanced Economies started to focus on becoming service economies. As part of this shift, Advanced Economies began moving industry to lower-wage countries. This shift became more pronounced after 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol (limiting CO2 emissions) was promulgated. The Kyoto Protocol gave participating countries (in practice, the Advanced Economies) a reason to hold down their own local consumption of fossil fuels, which is what is measured in Figure 3 and most other energy analyses.
Figure 3 shows that even after moving a significant share of industry to offshore locations, there still seems to be a significant correlation between oil consumption growth and GDP growth. Even with a service economy, oil consumption growth seems to be important!
[3] Prior to 1981, increasing interest rates were used to slow economic growth.
With the rapid growth in oil consumption in the 1940 to 1970 period, the economy often grew rapidly despite rising interest rates. After World War II, government loans became available to returning veterans to buy homes, helping to make the usage of oil affordable.
It was only as growth in oil consumption slowed and interest rates rose to a high level in the 1979-1981 period that high interest rates created a major recession. At such high interest rates, builders of all kinds were discouraged from building. Hardly anyone could afford a new home. Businesses couldn’t afford new factories, and governments couldn’t afford to build new schools. Few people could afford new car loans.
On Figure 3, it is not surprising that GDP dipped at the same time as oil consumption shortly after 1981. The dip in oil consumption was larger because heavy users of oil, such as construction and manufacturing, were squeezed out by the high interest rates.
[4] Falling interest rates in the period 1981 to 2020, as shown in Figure 4, stimulated the economy in many ways.
The 1981 to 2020 period marked a time of generally falling interest rates, with short term interest rates typically being below long-term interest rates. Reducing interest rates tends to stimulate the economy in a variety of ways:
(a) As we all know, lower interest rates make monthly payments on new home mortgages lower. This means that more citizens can afford to purchase homes, leading to greater demand for new homes and their furnishings. Prices of homes tend to rise, partly because people with a given income can afford larger, fancier homes, and partly because more people in total can afford homes.
(b) Even on existing home mortgages, new lower rates can have an impact. In the US, mortgages are frequently set for a long term, such as 20 years, but they can often be refinanced at a lower rate if interest rates fall lower. In many other countries and in the US for business property, mortgage rates are set for a shorter term, such as 5 years. As the loans renew, the new lower rates become available. Borrowers are happy; there is suddenly a smaller monthly payment for the same property.
(c) With lower interest rates, there is demand for more homes to be built. This stimulates the construction industry and helps the prices of all kinds of built structures rise.
(d) A similar situation to (a), (b) and (c) exists for all kinds of items normally purchased using loans. New cars, new boats, and new second homes are affected, as are many kinds of business loans. Even loans taken out by governmental organizations become less expensive. It suddenly becomes easier to buy goods, so more goods are sold. Market prices can be higher because at the new lower interest rates, more people can afford them.
(e) There can be some benefit with respect to long-term bond holdings, if interest rates fall. Bonds generally promise to pay a stated interest rate over the life of the bond, say 20 years. If the market interest rate falls, the selling price of a high coupon-rate long-term bond increases because such bonds are worth more than a similar new bond with a lower coupon interest rate.
Financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, pension plans, and endowment funds generally have long-term bonds as part of their portfolios. The higher value of bonds may or may not be reflected in financial statements, depending on the accounting rules applied. Sometimes, “amortized cost” is used as the carrying value until the bond is sold, hiding the gain in value. Conversely, if bonds are “marked to market,” then the higher value becomes immediately reported in financial statements.
(f) With mark-to-market accounting, insurance companies, banks and many other kinds of financial organizations can reflect the benefit immediately. As a result, for example, insurance companies may be able to sell policies more cheaply in a falling interest rate environment. (Of course, as interest rates start rising, the opposite is true. I believe that is part of the problem with the spike in insurance rates that the world has been witnessing in the past two years. But this is seldom mentioned because it is less well understood.)
(g) With falling interest rates, practically all kinds of asset prices rise. For example, the prices of shares of stock tend to rise, as does the price of farmland. Prices of office buildings tend to rise. People feel richer. They can sell some of their investments and profit from the sale. Tax rates on long-term capital gains are low in the US, further helping investors.
(h) If generally falling interest rates can be maintained for many years (1981 to 2020), gambling in the stock market starts looking like a great idea. Investment using borrowed funds looks like it makes sense. Buying derivatives seems to make sense. Adding more and more leverage makes sense. People rich enough to gamble in the stock market or the housing market begin to gain huge advantages over the many poor people whose wages remain too low to buy more than the basics.
These advantages tend to drive a wider and wider wedge between the rich and the poor. As diminishing returns become more of a problem, wage and wealth disparities become increasingly major issues. These disparities arise partly because of competition with low-wage countries for less-skilled jobs, and partly because of the need to pay higher wages to highly educated workers. They also arise because owners of shares of stock and of homes have tended to receive the benefit of significant capital gains as interest rates have fallen, for the reasons described above.
[5] Since 2020, interest rates have begun to rise in the Advanced Economies. It is difficult to see how a shift to higher interest rates can turn out well.
News write-ups about the rise in interest rates often say something like the following:
The Fed hiked interest rates a total of 11 times between March 2022 and January 2024, making borrowing more expensive for banks, businesses, and people in an attempt to curb rampant inflation.
However, Figure 4 shows that long-term interest rates (the blue line) started to rise much earlier than this–about the time the US started to borrow a huge amount of money to support the programs it initiated to keep the economy functioning at the time of the Covid restrictions in 2020.
This funding went back into the economy to provide income to would-be workers who were forced to stay home and to small businesses that needed additional funds to cover their overhead. Pauses in student loan repayments had a similar effect. At the same time, fewer goods and services were created because non-essential activities were restricted.
This combination of more wealth in the hands of citizens at the same time as a limited quantity of goods and services were being produced was precisely the right combination of actions needed to generate inflation. So, it was no wonder that there was an inflation problem.
Indirectly, high US borrowing has been, and continues to be, part of the inflation problem. Total goods and services produced in the world economy are not currently rising very quickly because diesel and jet fuel are in short supply, something I wrote about here and here. The US and other Advanced Economies keep issuing more debt in the hope that using this debt will help them purchase a larger share of the goods and services produced by the world economy.
It is not clear to me that this problem can be fixed since the US and the other Advanced Economies need to keep borrowing to support their economies and to fight for causes such as the Ukraine War. Note the downward trend in Figure 1!
One of the big problems with high asset prices and higher-than-zero interest rates is that farmers find that the cost of their land becomes too high to make it worthwhile to grow crops. This is especially the case for new farmers, who may need to buy their land using the higher-cost debt.
People often believe that farm prices will rise indefinitely, but Reuters reports that high borrowing costs and low food prices are cutting demand for farm equipment from John Deere, the world’s largest manufacturer of agricultural machinery. Without a flow of new farm equipment to replace that which is breaking or worn out, food production can be expected to fall.
Another issue is that apartment owners find a need to raise the rent on their units if the interest rate they are forced to pay rises or if the cost of property insurance rises. If they raise the rent of their units, this leaves renters with less income for other goods and services. Indirectly, today’s wage and wealth disparity problems tend to become greater than they were before the rise in interest rates.
In theory, if long-term (not just short-term) interest rates rise and remain higher, the many benefits of falling interest rates in Section [4] will be erased, and even reversed. The economy will be far worse off than it is now because of falling asset prices and defaulting debt. Financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, will be especially damaged because the true value of their long-term bonds will tend to fall. This can sometimes be hidden by accounting approaches, but ultimately unrealized capital losses will cause a problem as they did for Silicon Valley Bank.
The heavy use of debt and leveraging in the Advanced Economies makes these economies especially vulnerable to major financial problems if interest rates rise, or even if they stay at the current level. The bubble of debt and other promises (such as pensions promises) holding up the Advanced Economies seems vulnerable to collapse.
[6] The problem facing the people of the Advanced Economies is like the problem the biological world often faces.
The biological world is constantly faced with the problem of too many animals (for example, wolves and deer) wanting to occupy a given space with specific resources, such as water, sunlight, and smaller plants and animals to eat. In some sense, the world economy is an ecosystem, too, one that we humans have made. The Advanced Economies are already in a conflict with the less advanced economies, trying to decide which parts of the world will “win” in the battle over the resources needed for future economic growth.
The Maximum Power Principle (MPP) tries to explain who can be expected to be the winners and losers in an ecosystem when there are not enough resources to go around. I think of the MPP as an extension of the “survival of the fittest” or “survival of the best adapted.” The difference is that MPP looks at the functioning of the overall system, which, in this case, is the world economy.
The parts of the system (such as the individual people, the levels of borrowing, the government organizations, and the narratives governments choose to tell to explain the current situation) will be selected based on how well they permit the overall world economy (not just the Advanced Economies) to function. The goal seems to be to create as many goods and services as possible by dissipating all available energy in as useful a way as possible. In this way, the world GDP, which is a measure of the output of the useful work performed by the world economy, can stay as high as possible, for each time period.
Writings by scientists on this subject tend to be difficult to understand, but they may add some insight. One definition of MPP says that systems which maximize their flow of energy survive in competition. Mark Brown, professor emeritus at the University of Florida, says that under the Maximum Power Principle, “System components are selectively reinforced based on their contribution to the larger systems within which they are embedded,” and, “When resources are in short supply, they need to be used efficiently.” John Delong from the University of New Mexico says, “Winning species were successfully predicted a priori from their status as the species with the highest power when alone.”
I suggest that if these principles are applied to the competition between the Advanced Economies and the less advanced economies of the world, the Advanced Economies will lose. For example, the Advanced Economies have been falling behind the less advanced economies in industrial output.
In addition, the Advanced Economies of the world have fallen behind in the bidding for oil supplies:
Furthermore, the NATO allies seem unable to pull ahead of Russia in the Ukraine conflict. In theory, this should have been an easy war to win, but with limited manufacturing capability, it has been hard for the allies to provide enough weapons of the right kinds to win.
To me, this all points to the conclusion that in a conflict over scarce resources, the Advanced Economies are likely to lose. The conflict could come in the form of war, or it could simply be a financial conflict. Figure 1 shows that the Advanced Economies are already falling behind in the competition for economic growth, even with all the debt they are adding.
[7] There is a lot of confusion about what is ahead.
We don’t know what is ahead. The economy is a self-organizing system that seems to figure out its own way of resolving the problem of not enough resources to go around because of diminishing returns. The world economy seems to be headed toward reorganization.
I believe that the Covid-19 era represented one rather strange self-organized response to the “not enough oil to go around” problem. Figure 6 shows a clear dip in the amount of oil consumed in 2020, particularly by the Advanced Economies. Some of this reduced oil consumption continues, even now, because more people started working from home, saving on oil. Another helpful change was a huge ramp-up in the use of online meetings.
It is possible that new adaptations to limited oil supply may appear in as strange a way as the Covid-19 era did.
Another possibility is that the Advanced Economies, particularly the US, will encounter severe financial problems as the rest of the world moves away from the US dollar. Or the problem could be falling asset prices because of higher interest rates, causing many financial institutions to fail. Or the problem could be too much money being printed, but practically nothing to buy, causing severe inflation of commodity prices.
War may be a possibility because it is an age-old way of dealing with resource problems. For one thing, it becomes easy to raise debt to pay for a war. This debt can be used to hire soldiers and buy munitions. With the higher debt, the GDP of the economy can be expected to suddenly look better because of the stimulus given to it. The major “catch” is that picking a fight with a major competitor or two could prove to be disastrous.
Let us hope that our leaders make wise choices and keep us away from severe problems for as long as possible.
Joe Biden in 1974 – entropy is real. There, but for the grade of God, go we all.
‘Grace of God’
Young Biden (1974) on campaign finance reform. Much more eloquent than today!
nothing there showing a lot of brains.
but certainly loaded with hints that he was already a willingly corrrupt prossstitute, to use his own words.
Agree David . JB was always a grifter . You might like this .
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-62924-bidens-unraveling-sets?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=146102454&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
“think there was a hope that one of the Ukraine also this this idea of densification
59:29
well that’s easily done if we want to do it and all you you purge all those those
59:35
symbols and you get rid of those people those people have to go somewhere else they can’t stay but there aren’t that
59:40
many I mean it it’s one of these it’s disproportionate in fact there was a one of these so-called Nazi Ukrainian units
59:48
got into a fight with a Polish unit because they wanted the Polish troops that were there to attack right into the
59:54
teeth of the Russian enemy and the Polish Commander told them you’re out of your mind we’re not going to do it and
1:00:00
so then they threatened them and the polls killed them we these things don’t reach the
1:00:05
United States we don’t know what the hell is really going on down there yeah the ukrainians have had it it’s over
1:00:11
it’s done the Russians have won we’re the ones who lack complete compassion
1:00:17
and human understanding we’re driving this nation of people to disaster
1:00:22
Millions have left Millions will never come back I don’t know what happens to rump Ukraine but I can guarantee you
1:00:30
that it will be neutral whatever it is and frankly Putin doesn’t care who runs”?
Peak oil demand is still a decade away
“The world’s demand for oil is expected by Goldman Sachs Research to grow for the next decade. Lackluster electric vehicle sales and rising incomes around the globe are increasing the appetite for energy supplies that will be met primarily with more fossil fuels.
While some prominent forecasters have predicted oil demand will peak by 2030, our researchers expect oil usage will increase through 2034. That’s in part because of demand for oil from emerging markets in Asia and demand for petrochemicals, according to a report by Goldman Sachs Research.
“We think peak demand is another decade away, and more importantly, after the decade it takes to peak, it plateaus, rather than sharply declines, for another few years,” write Nikhil Bhandari, co-head of Asia-Pacific Natural Resources and Clean Energy Research, and analyst Amber Cai in the team’s report.”
https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/peak-oil-demand-is-still-a-decade-away.html
Electric cars + Inflation + cost of living crisis+ Low birth rate + Long Covid = Peak oil Demand.
The catch is that building infrastructure for electric cars can’t work. They wear out roads more quickly, because they are heavy. They need places to charge, leaving them to be a toy of the rich, if the rich have electricity.
Yes and in addition, it will be a dangerous journey from A to B also for the rich, because if they don’t find a charge point during their way, they run the risk to mix with ‘the population’ in unsafe places…
Electric cars are a question mark at the moment for me (and in the best scenario…)
Nobody is interested in building them . No demand .
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/06/25/vauxhall-owner-threatens-to-close-uk-car-factories/
European EV sales for May.
https://insideevs.com/news/724867/share-china-made-evs-europe-may2024/
The plug-in electric car segment also declined to 226,665 units, a 9.5% year-on-year drop. This refers to fully electric cars, which were down 11%, and plug-in hybrids, which were down 7%. Plug-in
vehicle registrations in Europe in May 2024 across 28 selected markets:
EVs: 151,237 (down 11% year-on-year)
PHEVs: 75,428 (down 7% year-on-year)
Total: 226,665 (-9.5% lower than the same period last year) and a 20.8% share
US politics according to Jim Kunstler:
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/joe-biden-catches-cold/
More thoughts on the “debate” (cough, choke, cough)
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken 1920’s
Some of you will know of the YouTube channel “The Why Files” and its presenters A.J. Gentile and Hecklefish. Some of its presentations can be rather light-hearted. Not so this one. AJ is worried that he might get banned from YouTube. He talks about the history of DARPA and goes on to mention Agent Orange. To an extent it’s personal (he mentions his father’s experiences).
Start in at the 30:24 point to learn about Agent Orange and its effects. Horrific stuff.
The Dark Side of DARPA | The Human Cost of Technological Supremacy
https://youtu.be/zo68B3UG9VU?t=1823
An important reminder, particularly for US viewers: https://youtu.be/zo68B3UG9VU?t=2329
The precedent that has allowed a lot of rule-making to go to administrative agencies has been overturned. Hurray!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/scotus-overturns-chevron-deference-massive-blow-administrative-state
SCOTUS Overturns ‘Chevron Deference’ In Massive Blow To ‘Administrative State’
“Now, judges will substitute their own best interpretation of the law, instead of deferring to the agencies ”
Hrmmmmm………
I am not completely sure this is a big win for conservatives. The agencies that write the regulations are heavily influenced by the corporations they regulate. (the process known as regulatory capture.) It is very possible for a judge to interpret the intent of the law and the letter of the law in ways that are better for the public than a captured regulatory agency. ( also very possible for the judge to do a much worse job.)
>> The agencies that write the regulations are heavily influenced by the corporations they regulate.
Scientists and administrators at NIH and other agencies get royalties from products that they play a role in developing, overseeing, and regulating. Many researchers receive grants from companies, presenting a conflict of interest towards the attainment of objective results. The same sorts of problems aren’t immediately obvious if this regulatory power is turned over to judicial bodies, however the problem of tainted research that will be weighed as evidence will still be a problem.
The problem today is that everything is so complex that the only ones who can truly understand a given industry are ones working in that industry. Regulators go back and forth between being regulators and working in industry. If the main interest of industry is profit, (not safety or ability to do what is claimed), the regulators will go along with the same idea.
Of course, people reading the law coming from outside of industry may come from a different point of view. Hopefully, that will bring a different perspective.
Good pick up Gail. This decision followed up on my earlier post on Zero Hedge to day under my screen name “Hubbs:” Dor context, I include the whole rant, and have cited this argument in my memmoirs “My Medical -Legal Back Pages.” Archway. Pen name Bryce Sterling. I recall the chapter was “Rogue Agencies Everywhere.”
I posted on ZH:
“My career had been wrecked early on and I was driven into early retirement by the KY Board of Medical Licensure. Case #467, 1994, where my license was suspended and the Board’s decision was upheld by Chevron Deference even though the statutes of KY Medical Practice Act required that I be held to the standards of my own specialty. There was no ambiguity, and the time honored same specialty standard of care requirement for substantial evidence in med-mal lawsuits to establish liability clearly had not been met. The Board had zero evidence.
The operating room nurse had clearly violated her duty nursing standards of care and hospital rules by directing an unauthorized tech to do her (nurse’s) job of selecting and drawing up a drug for which I had given an explicit verbal order in the operating room. The nurse wrote my order down on her scrubs and read it back to me verabtim.
The tech drew up a lethal drug, later testifying she didn’t know what she was supposed to get. I was unaware this prohibited transfer of duty had gone on behind my back. The Board’s own same specialty expert thoroughly exonerated me, thus the Board had no evidence. The Board had even initially recognized this requirement in their minutes before they filed their lawsuit against my license. But KY politics and public relations required I be thrown under the bus to appease the public. The Board suspended my license anyway. On Appeals the KY Appellate court wrote: “Great deference must be given to the Medical Board because they are the most knowledgeable about the practice of medicine.”
There was no dispute about the facts or causation in this case. It boiled down to the most fundamental statutes and long standing case precedent
And, there was no dispute about my specialty’s standard of care: That of a scrubbed surgeon being able to give a verbal order to a nurse, and only a nurse, for drugs for injection- to prevent the very tragedy that happened where a 21 year old man died on the table from a lethal injection. Nothing happened to the nurse or tech.”
It is disconcerting that no one really appreciates this post either. No replies, and certainly not from any member of the legal community.
This case should have been dismissed through summary judgment after the evidentary deadline had lapsed and the KBML could produce no expert in my specialty, as required, to testify on their behalf that my act of not having checked the medication handed to me by the nurse under the circumstances had fallen below the orthopedic standard of care. This case was stone simple.
First they ignore you, then comes ridicule….
Considering that we may be living in a society with a legal system possibly too hobbled to be effective or reliable when some of its proclaimed biggest values are liberty and rule of law may be the biggest bridge to take for any “normal” citizen.
Also, as energy depletion continues to worsen the conditions of many, keeping middle to lower educated workers accountable will be increasingly difficult. Rising inequality is.morally only accepted by the masses if it pushes more resposabilities to fewer persons upward, but in practice elites likely will push it downward in the hierarchy without true acceptance. If inequality is high enough and income too low to live on many may even start to abandon previously accepted responsibilities. Leading to explosive situations and increasingly political judicial systems.
Not surprising! There is too much wind and solar already!
Europe’s Top Wind And Solar Builder Walks Back Growth Plans
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/europes-top-wind-and-solar-builder-walks-back-growth-plans
The Netherlands; email from my energy provider, the cost for ‘returning energy to the grid through solar panels’ goes only for households with solar panels at aug 1. We have a steady cost for transmitting and a variable for kwh. The cost goes out of ‘steady’ because not everyone has solar panels.
Here we go. I don’t have solar panels, i just cook my potatoes on the stupidity of others. And buy firewood in april. Until the others find out. And then, i’ll switch to burning crickets. Sshhh…
If you run out of wood, put on a warm sweater or go to bed early
I wonder should I laugh or cry . 🤞
Hey, world, let’s tune in to see America’s best and brightest! who will guide us through the perils of a planet populated by dictators and demagogues!? who will america choose to save us from injustice and servitude?!
to whit:
BIDEN: Well, anyway, that’s – anyway, just take a look at what he says he is and take a look at what he is.
Look, I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a 6.
And by the way, I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?
TRUMP: That’s the biggest lie that he’s a 6 handicap, of all.
BIDEN: I was 8 handicap.
TRUMP: Yeah.
BIDEN: Eight, but I have – you know how many…
TRUMP: I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: President Trump, we’re going to…
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Let’s not act like children.
BIDEN: You are a child.
THAT’S WHY WE TRUST YOU GUYS WITH THE NUKES!
we’re in good hands.
Biden started this ridiculous discussion.
In Italy almost al tv news are talking about the fact that Biden will be probably substituted in the next months, because he clearly appeared not able at all to be present to himself.
It is strange because also tv news perfectly in line with US Dem said that…
Many journalist said that not only for the next elections, but the problem is about who is going to run US in the next 7 months or, at least, who is going to appear to be running…, as it is clear that he is not even able to repeat what they tell him to say.
Are you talking about this possibility in US ?
We will see if the democrats really find a substitute for Biden. This will be an interesting few months.
It will be like trying to become the captain of titanic with the iceberg on the horizon.
“ . . . we have no integrated air defenses in NATO right now we can protect 5% of NATO territory from air
46:13 and missile attack think about that and people talk about going to war with Russia they’re idiots. . . “?
Our leaders like to believe that NATO can do well in a war against Russia. This seems strange!
Pingback: The real threat to our security
“Military operations are invariably planned well in advance. The October 7, 2023 “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” was not a “surprise attack”.
It was a False Flag operation carried out by a “faction” (intelligence assets) within Hamas, in close liaison with Mossad and U.S. intelligence.
The false flag logic –which has resulted in Israeli casualties–, has provided Israel with a justification to undertake a genocide against Palestinians.
On that same day of October 7, 2023 Netanyahu launched a military operation against the Gaza Strip entitled “State of Readiness For War”.
Had “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” been a “surprise attack” as parroted by the media, Netanyahu’s “State of Readiness For War” could not have been carried out (at short notice) on that same day, namely October 7, 2023. “?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/international-criminal-court-icc-prosecutor-karim-a-a-khan-kc-accuses-palestine-of-waging-war-against-israel/5857711
‘“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” ‘?
https://archive.md/2023.10.10-030658/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000
https://www.globalresearch.ca/is-the-gaza-israel-fighting-a-false-flag-they-let-it-happen-their-objective-is-to-wipe-gaza-off-the-map/5835310
Humans a good LIARS
It cannot be left up to the industry. There need to be rules and regulations in place; we need it to be much stricter.”
Up to 90% of carbon credits now sold are based on “avoidance” of emissions (such as funding renewable energy, so less fossil fuels are used) rather than actually removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The report recommended a shift to high-quality removals.
“Avoidance is an utter nightmare,” Maslin said. “All of us agree that getting a carbon credit for a renewable energy project in most countries doesn’t make sense because it’s already cheaper.”
Verra’s president and interim chief executive, Judith Simon, said in a statement that the organisation was “proud to support independent research that asks the tough questions” and that “key recommendations endorsed in this report are very much aligned with the many steps we are taking”.
“We entirely agree,” she added, “that carbon credits must be transparent, scientifically sound, and both well-measured and monitored with commitment to the principles of each project.”
It must be working…emissions keep going up ….it’s working alright…
Is this a surprise to ANYONE? Clean up? You got to be kidding…
It’s like Fast Eddie asking about cleaning up the spent fuel rod nuclear ponds!!!!
Can’t do that by those that profited from it, the investors or shareholders, it will spoil their ROR on their portfolios…can’t take responsibility for the external costs, that’s in the realm of what Rex Tillerson deemed, “publiç policy” , in one of his admittance on what to do about this mess…as Jay Hanson pointed out in one interview I posted here…”Humans are good Liars”…it has worked for our genes for us to become the dominant biological force …may take..It works until it doesn’t….
Gail, best wishes for your wedding Minnesota trip. One of my favorite locales and actual consider moving to Winona MN region. Now, Glad I did not because of the major once in a 1000 year flooding they experience now a days.
Most Colorado oil and gas wells do not generate enough cash to ensure they will be cleaned up, study say
Only a handful of basins in the state have wells profitable enough to cover the cost of remediation, leaving 27,000 wells at risk, a Carbon Track analysis finds
Profitable oil and gas production in Colorado is increasingly concentrated in a few basins leaving the rest of the operations with few resources and posing risk to getting all 47,000 of the state’s active wells plugged and remediated, according to a report from Carbon Tracker.
At least 27,000 wells — more than half the state tally — don’t generate enough cash to pay for their eventual plugging and site remediation, the report by the nonprofit think tank focused on climate and finance.
Like we didn’t know that to begin with at the start…good luars
I think the problem of having enough revenue to cap wells is an issue in many places. Colorado isn’t the center of fracking. There is a problem in the North Sea, with its declining supply of oil.
We could use some of the rain in the Atlanta area, right now. It has been a bit warmer than average, but with 25% humidity and very little rain. It didn’t feel terribly hot. The lack of rain is starting to affect the lawns.
Yes, It’s happening here too, have a once in 1000 year flood every few years now a days… infrastructure can’t cope..wasn’t built for it…seems it’s all over now…imagine that..why weren’t were aware?
Models built by engineers are often are not very good. Working in insurance many years ago, I remember many instances in which engineers underestimated snowfall, and flat commercial roofs fell in.
We all remember Fukushima, where engineers didn’t understand how high tsunamis could rise. There was a marker, much higher than where the nuclear power plants were built, that said, “Build nothing below this line. Danger of tsunami.”
And I remember visiting Europe, and seeing the many markers on many building that were hundreds of years old, showing how high floods had risen in the past.
The incentives are for architects and engineers to give the result the client wants. Those doing the designs very often underestimate risks. Models are often built on a very short experience period, and the assumption of something like a “normal” distribution. Normal distributions don’t occur in things like this–there is a fractal distribution. But using normal distribution produces results clients will like.
In ancient epics like Mahabharat, the amazing tech is only used by gods, or at least some manifestation of gods.
Not by the ordinary mortals, whose only destiny is to perish as cannon fodder.
All these amazing tech was supposed to be used only by the elites, the top 0.1%/1% , no more than 1% , and the rest walk barefoot.
That was the human destiny.
The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. – Edward O. Wilson.
But without the ‘paleolithic emotions’ we would never have been motivated to develop the ‘godlike technology’.
As we all know, ‘godlike technology’ is only sustained by the precious nectar of crude oil.
I am afraid you are correct:
“‘godlike technology’ is only sustained by the precious nectar of crude oil.”
I am not sure: there obviously is “mysthic thinking” and “logic thinking”. Since the 90s we noticed, that “mystic thinking” had been encouraged. The decision to destroy one’s owns germ cells and the lineage in order to avoid a harmless flu for sure was not logically calculated. We are heading on into similar decisions leading to war, financial crash and hunger.
But I cannot say, humans – or the majority – cannot think at all!
If the major issue in the minds of some with people with power was “We have too much population for resources,” then safety was not a great concern.
“That was the human destiny.”
human destiny was everything humans actually did throughout history and all the way to today.
your alternate histories were never human destiny.
everything that humans actually do tomorrow will be 100% real human destiny.
que sera sera.
USA/ NATO need to send whatever they have left to the materiel blackhole of UKR.
After all, what is the point of NATO having materiel if Russia does not get to blow it all up?
USA tax payers exist for a reason!
An excuse for more debt to pump up the US economy!
I will be flying to the wedding of one of my nieces in the Minneapolis area this weekend, leaving Friday and returning Sunday, so I might not be around as much. I will be back by Sunday evening.
I have read in the newspaper that tomorrow is a peak travel day for airports. Next Thursday (July 4) is Independence Day. Many people take the whole week off to visit relatives or vacation spots. I am hoping that this doesn’t cause too much of a slowdown at the airport and that other things don’t go wrong.
I also hope not.
Enjoy this time with your family!
Hopefully you are not flying Boeing!?
My plane is a Airbus 321, so it is not a Boeing airplane. I likely have a similar plane on the way back. The plane is a Delta plane with free Wifi.
Aaand… yet another youtube account terminated. what account was this one Mirror?
I notice that one of the lead posts in the WSJ is
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/home-prices-overvalued-housing-market-4f8be55b?mod=hp_lead_pos2
You Might Be Buying Your House at the Top of the Market
Between high prices and mortgage rates, getting wealthy off your home is about to get a lot harder
Housing prices can’t keep going up much more. Wolf Richter recently reported:
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/06/21/home-sales-sag-further-hit-by-mortgage-rates-price-reductions-active-listings-surge-median-price-skewed-higher-by-surge-in-high-end-sales/
Home Sales Sag Further, Hit by Mortgage Rates. Price Cuts & Active Listings Surge. Median Price Skewed by Surge in High-End Sales
Sales in the mid- and lower range swoon as many people who need a mortgage seem to be waiting for lower rates.
Today, Wolf Richter is reporting:
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/06/27/demand-for-homes-drops-to-near-record-low-as-inventory-rises-now-come-the-stabilizing-home-prices-nar/
Demand for Homes Drops to (Near) Record Low as Inventory Rises. Now Come the “Stabilizing Home Prices”: NAR
“The market is at an interesting point with rising inventory and lower demand”: National Association of Realtors”
The article ends with:
.. Now Come the “Stabilizing Home Prices”: ”
Crap . The issue is not ‘volatility ” in prices but ” affordability ” . But then what can we expect from NAR ?
Fanny & Freddy cannot divorce, where would they place their many children? Maybe…. they could wrap the females in rainbow flags and float them down the Mississippi?
The US government somehow has to stand behind Fanny and Freddy. Otherwise, there is a huge problem.
Also, the many banks with problem loans.
The cleanest dirty shirt wasn’t very convincing in its latest presidential debate.
He sounded like an overaged reserve currency.
US total stock market capitalization is close to 50% of world stock market capitalization, according to this comparison. Given how much the US manufactures of the world’s stuff, this doesn’t seem right to me.
https://x.com/MohannadYaqout/status/1805499279252795517
One of the things that seems to be holding down worldwide demand for oil, copper, and many other things is low growth in China’s M1 money supply. China has been the world’s largest importer of many things, including oil and copper. These are some threads I found.
https://x.com/steveanastasiou/status/1675831121995792384
This is more recent:
https://x.com/VrntPerception/status/1803052724449120721
This is a chart that seems to say that growth in China’s M2 Money supply has also trending down.
https://x.com/ArdmoreResearch/status/1801547814834487805
To advance to the next level, a thorough disenfranchisement of the ‘working class’ should have been implemented.
Democracy, from the beginning, was only for those with properties. Not for those without a stake in civilization.
Universal suffrage was a bone thrown to the masses but now it has become a plague, and the ‘democratically elected’ ‘leaders’ are now proving to be unable to deal with the complexities of the present while authocratic societies tend to be more efficient on dealing with it.
Restricting the votes to the top 1% of pop, instead of going thru the current system of wasteful campaigns, would be needed.
What you seem unable to understand is that when you wage war you have to throw them bones. It is baked in the cake, if they are not happy they will not fight. The enemy will make them promises. The Muslims captured Egypt almost without firing a shot. They just promised the locals no taxes. The masters of civilization (the Eastern Empire, which lasted much long than the Western Empire) were too addicted to their tributes to see that coming. You will never get a job as master of civ because you are a one trick pony.
After the war you have to start the process you are talking about, but surreptitiously at first because they are back home and quite capable of using arms in defense of their interests. By the time you can dispossess them there is another war coming down the pike. You have no grounds in reality.
Actually such system was the norm for most of human existence
The hapless denizens of Egypt realized, only after it was too late, that to avoid paying taxes they had to convert to Islam.
It’s worth it. who wants taxes?
“SITREP 6/26/24: Things Heat Up With Reports of North Korean Troops to Donbass
SIMPLICIUS
JUN 27, 2024”?
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-62624-things-heat-up-with?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=146022910&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=nm2q&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The article gives lots of theories regarding what really happened.
According to the article:
Maybe this is the message planned!
Update on Lebanon and sorroundings
It seems that an Israeli offensive is about to start anytime.
5 Countries asked their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately.
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/5-countries-urge-nationals-to-leave-lebanon-amid-tensions-with-israel
And Russia and Iran are signing a big cooperation plan.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2024/06/26/russia-s-putin-iran-s-mokhber-discuss-energy-infrastructure-projects-kremlin
I’m not sure Israel is following right decisions to have peace around itself….
At the same time, MSN is reporting:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/it-s-all-catching-up-to-bibi-netanyahu/ar-BB1oREOb
According to the article, Netanyahu is unpopular, and may be voted out before the end of his term. The religious right is very unhappy with him. One section of the above link (which is hard to copy) says that Netanyahu needed to include the far right in its coalition, after the last election, to have adequate support. It says:
“Netanyahu’s interest lies in continuing the fighting because the far-right leaders he has empowered, Itmar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have threatened to topple his government if the war ends.”
Needless to say, the far right does not want the military draft to extend to their followers, but Israel seems to be running short of soldiers, if this isn’t done.
Many other articles reporting that Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, is saying publicly that the army is already conspiring to orchestrate a military coup.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/netanyahus-wife-warns-idf-is-orchestrating-a-coup/ar-BB1oSlXy
It is really paradoxical, to say the least, that the religious right faction wants to wage war against Palestinians (Gaza, West Bank or anything), but it doesn’t want to do it in person…
From Moon Of Alabama .
Have we witnessed the first early shots of an upcoming Israeli Civil War?
A harbinger of a war decades or years away?
21 June 2024
|The Collapse of Zionism|
A first indicator is the fracturing of Israeli Jewish society. At present it is composed of two rival camps which are unable to find common ground. The rift stems from the anomalies of defining Judaism as nationalism. While Jewish identity in Israel has sometimes seemed little more than a subject of theoretical debate between religious and secular factions, it has now become a struggle over the character of the public sphere and the state itself. This is being fought not only in the media but also in the streets.
One camp can be termed the ‘State of Israel’. It comprises more secular, liberal and mostly but not exclusively middle-class European Jews and their descendants, who were instrumental in establishing the state in 1948 and remained hegemonic within it until the end of the last century. Make no mistake, their advocacy of ‘liberal democratic values’ does not affect their commitment to the apartheid system which is imposed, in various ways, on all Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Their basic wish is for Jewish citizens to live in a democratic and pluralist society from which Arabs are excluded.
The other camp is the ‘State of Judea’, which developed among the settlers of the occupied West Bank. It enjoys increasing levels of support within the country and constitutes the electoral base that secured Netanyahu’s victory in the November 2022 elections. Its influence in the upper echelons of the Israeli army and security services is growing exponentially. The State of Judea wants Israel to become a theocracy that stretches over the entirety of historical Palestine. To achieve this, it is determined to reduce the number of Palestinians to a bare minimum, and it is contemplating the construction of a Third Temple in place of al-Aqsa. Its members believe this will enable them to renew the golden era of the Biblical Kingdoms. For them, secular Jews are as heretical as the Palestinians if they refuse to join in this endeavour.
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/the-collapse-of-zionism
[other source links provided upon request]
Two camps in the fracturing Israeli society. Above the two camps are labeled ‘State of Israel’ and ‘State of Judea’.
Will Israel turn it’s militancy inwards before or only after it has subdued all external enemies?
The ‘State of Judea’ camp wants to rule Israel as a theocracy by its own version of Jewish Law. A vision and theocracy that demands it control all of historical Palestine.
October 7th was a Jewish holiday and also the Sabbath, the observant and also the Religious Zionists — the ‘State of Judea’ camp —
would choose to be in synagogues that day. Thousands of hedonists from the ‘State of Israel’ camp would head to a ‘free love’, Brazilian-style, trance rave party located within earshot of Gaza.
Israel had Hamas’ detailed plan for its prison break. The plan indicated that it would take place on a Jewish holiday or the Sabbath, October 7th was both.
The Rave Party was relocated just two days before October 7th and situated between Gaza and the Re’im military base on Route 232.
The Re’im military base was a target specifically named in the Hamas plan that Israel had captured. Hamas, traveling along Route 232
towards the military base, would have to pass by the Rave party.
Haaretz (Israel’s paper of record):
“In private conversations, some officers in the Gaza Division told of irregular conduct and pressure surrounding the approval of the party [Rave]”.
The officer normally charged with approving/disapproving events such as the party had disapproved it as, “an unnecessary security risk”.But, in an unusual move, he was overruled by higher ups at division headquarters.
Half the IDF forces around Gaza were on leave because of the Jewish holiday. 100 commandos were moved away from around Gaza to the West Bank on the same day that the Rave party was relocated, October 5th.
In the weeks and months before October 7th there was much intelligence information had by the Israelis that said an attack from Gaza was imminent.
In the early morning hours of October 7th there was a top level command meeting because of concerning Hamas activity. No one thought to alert the Rave party revelers nor demand that they disperse.
After Hamas escaped Gaza the police blocked the exits to the Rave party and set up road blocks in both directions of Route 232.
This caused a massive traffic jam of revelers trying to flee. They became sitting ducks for Hamas and an Israeli Apache attack helicopter.
The casualties from Hamas and the Hannibal Directive enabled the goals that the ‘State of Judea’ camp sought – to cleanse Israel and rule over all of historical Palestine.
Have we witnessed a harbinger of a violent internal conflict to come?
—
—
Which camp takes the most one-way flights out of Israel via the Ben Gurion airport?
https://forward.com/news/581271/israelis-leaving-country-war-safety-abroad/
Interesting theory!
The link says:
“No one thought to alert the Rave party revelers nor demand that they disperse.
Or perhaps, since Israel knew the attack was coming, and wanted an excuse to attack the Palestinians, it chose not to alert those planning the Rave party. I can’t imagine the religious right really approved of the Rave party on the sabbath and a religious holiday. Certainly, members of the religious right wouldn’t be there–just non-religious jews.
I think Israel will have the same problem as in Ukraine viz manpower . This is the reason that the Gaza operation is being wound up to free resources for a battle against Hezbollah . Bibi does not have enough manpower to fight on both fronts ( Gaza and Lebanon) simultaneously . I think it was Yasser Arafat ( can be wrong) who said ” The womb of the Palestinian women will defeat Israel ” .
Both Israel and Palestine have high birth rates. That is part of the problem.
I think we can completely forget an Israeli civil war (and of course I do not wish that to them).
They surely argue internally, but they will not put at risk their State, because they are aware that they are in danger, either there or elsewhere.
So better to stay there…they know.
Second point, the fact the intellicence knew about the attack is not anymore a theory, but a fact expressed by Israeli people, as everybody can see if one reads Israeli newspapers, as for instance Haaretz, which let some things came out from secrets.
As it is also known by now that the kibbutz burnt or the cars burnt at the party were most of the time due to Israeli tanks and elicopters which in some occasions fired to everyone without dinstinctions, because they have this army rule to avoid the enemy taking prisoners and also if a dangerous enemy can’t be killed clearly.
In addition Hamas fighters didn’t have big guns or tanks, but rifles, so that kind of burnt was not possible for them, expecially at that scale.
(And I’m not saying that Hamas dind’t make an unprecetented and extremely serious terrorist attack).
But reading Israeli newspapers one can see that the government, for instance, stopped an internal enquiry on those facts..
We may blame Israeli people in general for what is happening now, because the war in Gaza has become a blood bath, but I really think that Israel must be a very difficult place to live in, expecially for those of them who have an open and free ‘western’ approach to life, as (I think) we all the people reading and writing in this blog.
The problem now is that, in my view, things have gone too far and the situation is almost irreparable.
There is no direct cost to the religious right.
What in the world? Saudi Arabia entering the LNG trading business.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Aramco-Set-to-Buy-25-in-US-LNG-Project.html
Saudi Aramco Set to Buy 25% in U.S. LNG Project
We have been reading about woes in this sector:
https://www.enr.com/articles/58703-zachry-details-big-texas-lng-project-woes-in-suit-against-owners-qatar-energy-exxonmobil
Zachry Details Big Texas LNG Project Woes in Suit Against Owners Qatar Energy, ExxonMobil May 23, 2024
Maybe Saudi Arabia’s experience will be better. Costs of building these terminals are of sight. Buyers around the world do not have unlimited funds for buying the LNG!
My impression is that LNG business is profitable till those European dumbs want to wage war against Russia and refuse its gas through comfortable pipelines.
Maybe they think that at the end they will have gas and oil at easy price, but I think that Russians are ready to blow up all their reserves than give them to others.
As the “Power of Siberia 2” project has stalled, Moscow and Tehran have agreed to explore pipeline gas supply options – to Iran 1/3
4:03 PM · Jun 26, 2024
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Anastasia Stognei
@NastyaStognei
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Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller signed a memorandum with the National Iranian Gas Company during his second trip to Iran this June. While details are unclear, top Russian officials previously mentioned it could involve a swap scheme 2/3
Anastasia Stognei
@NastyaStognei
·
22h
Russia will send gas to Iran via Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan for use in the densely populated northwestern regions of Iran. In return, Iranian gas will be piped to Turkey and Iraq, with potential extensions to Armenia and Afghanistan 3/3
Interesting swap of gas ,
Trying to keep the LNG price high enough for US producers and low enough for buyers in Europe is a major issue. Shipping burns quite a bit natural gas, so the cost of shipping goes up with the price of natural gas. (The higher the LNG price, the higher the shipping price.)
I expect that the high price of LNG will put a low cap on what can really be sold.
I previously put up a story about the major contractor trying to building the US LNG terminals filing for bankruptcy. The cost of the whole export system is incredibly high. Developers really need 20 year guarantees of customers to buy, and at a fairly high price. It is the true high cost of this shipping that makes it not feasible.
Gail , we have discussed the issue of gas transportation before . The only cost effective method is pipelines . LNG is a ‘ boutique ‘ trade . It is far too expensive even with all the support it gets thru ‘ exergy’ ( external energy) like oil , coal etc . It will die a natural death as it will become unaffordable as exergy diminishes . Matter of time .
Is it possible that they used this as an excuse to lose a chunk of US Treasury bonds?
When I look at the participants in the swap deals , all could do it willingly without using the USD .
I agree, but they have quite a pile of old bonds in need of being eliminated.
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Copy/paste from the blog of Quark in Spain , Interesting .
SAINTJune 26, 2024, 16:29
We must address the European situation above all. The divergence in rates between the Fed and the ECB marks a turning point in my opinion. With the maintenance of rates and the end of LIBOR in September, the USA is thereby destroying the Eurodollar and European banks as a whole.
I believe that the USA, hand in hand with those who support Trump, among them some of the largest banks in the country, is going to make a turn inward, a kind of isolationism distancing itself from the international path of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. We have to see how they handle the energy issue, but lowering military spending can be a great option to stabilize the budget
REPLY
framesJune 26, 2024, 18:01
If I see the United States isolating itself to survive, that is what happened until the Second World War.
REPLY
framesJune 26, 2024, 18:06
First, Europe will be sacrificed for its survival, 2030 and from then on I see Europe isolated, returning to the last century in the 40s and 50s.
The problem with this is that what their companies produce will only be for the US Cocacola hamburgers hot dogs their ideology their holidays that will be left behind Halloween, Santa Claus and all those holidays that they have exported to us.
My prediction: world war and the rise of fascism in the West
REPLY
SAINTJune 26, 2024, 6:49 p.m.
Europe killed itself. The European elites used the Bretton Woods program to their advantage for decades and in recent years they played at dominating the system together with the USA as the armed escort. The plan is going wrong, Europe has deindustrialized, integration in my opinion is an attempt at control and repression and the European debt, without energy as a backup, is unpayable. Now, between a rock and a hard place, rates are being lowered with the USA maintaining it. Only a war such as the two world wars were can revive the economy and unify the populations. I don’t see that working, for me that play doesn’t work either.
The US has been trying for the highest target interest rate of the advanced economies in a “king of the mountain” move. When other countries lower their interest rates, their currencies tend to fall relative to the US$. Now this is happening. It will make the cost of imported goods higher for the countries with the lower interest rates. The hope is that investment dollars will be drawn to the US.
But it does, indeed make European countries worse off, especially since they have to import nearly all of their energy supply, particularly oil. The US is isolating itself from Europe, I agree.
If the US is clearly doing better than Europe, I can see why it might try this strategy. Quark speaks of world war. We can hope Quark is wrong.
All the Western countries, perhaps all countries, have approved a medically doubtful substance and imposed mandatory injections. They have suspended human rights, closed hotels (right of property), implemented travel restrictions (right of free movement) and forced medical treatment (right of physical integrity), forbidden demonstrations (right of assemby) and stopped court trials without cause (right of fair trial). As we know meanwhile, the platform has never been safe, the jabs never been effective (Pfizer in front of EU-parliament), the controls were fake (PEI hold a selected vial against the light) and there has never been any state of emergency (German RKI-files).
The state of justice has failed, the lawful, cause based administration has been hacked and the Western societies have imploded. Who can, shall withdraw his money and run to another country, neither life nor property nor dignity will be protected in Europe. The law system fell down, people have committed murder with no interrogation, and they are valued as noteable members of society. Investments have been stolen from you, your work, body, children have been stolen, raped and murdered with public consent. Mafia is able to tax you with 50% without giving back anything, not a single right, slaves have been treated better.
Anyone who wants to invest and open a sausage stand should know they will take away your investment unlawfully tomorrow, inject gasoline into your body and castrate your kids.
The jabs jump into the genome. It will take a generation until people understand what had happend.
Democracy and state of justice have failed. There is no turning back to democracy after WW3. There is no turning back to a constitutional monarchy after the state of justice has failed. The contrat social have been cancelled, in the future, when a teacher approaches a child the father will slay the teacher with the words: You will not rip her out her gonads!
It has happend already. Alea iacta est.
One day, Jill will feel obligated to press the Red Button, because her husband cannot find the toilet much less make any decision. Our societies have also failed in this. Peakoil is not the only unsolved subject.
There will be nothing to die for on the killing fields. The jab has gone into the germline. There is no future, no family, no offspring! God’s creation has ended. People are begging for another hour of TicToc before mom takes away the smartphone. This is the state we are in.
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, pc and AI have failed to protect us. We cannot build pyramids anymore, because when we allow to be taxed, we dont know if it is not used to kill us and the lineage. If we look someone into the eye and establish trust, we dont know if he or his ancestors have been vaxxed and if he brings in destroyed germs. And then there are the nuclear ponds. We have to clean them up before we can let go the suicide bombers.
The American Experiment failed.
It would have been better if the CSA was allowed to exist.
Yesterday the US ambassador to Russia was called into the Foreign Office because of the latest attack on Crimea using US supplied and aimed ATACMs that killed several civilians and injured ~150 including babies and small children.
Our Ambassador was told that a state of Peace no longer exists between the US and Russia. This is not a casual description of current events but a formal legal diplomatic message that we are on the precipice of War with the one country in the world that can kill every American. There are rumors that the Russians have already shot down a US global hawk drone over the Balck Sea, and a promise that Russia will be suppling weapons and maybe training and funding for anyone who wants to kill American soldiers. Given the 800 bases the US has all over the world the Russians have plenty of targets.
And of course, none of this is being reported in the West.
The Doomsday Clock should be reset to 15 second to midnight.
Per Copilot:
Including development costs, the unit cost rises to US$218 million4.
This is for a Global Hawk.
The remainder of the post saddens me. No matter what, if someone walks down the street shooting at squirrels and kills/maims humans there are issues.
Dennis L.
I looked up mentions of war on google trends. I was surprised to see that in the US, the mentions are not up particularly.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=war&hl=en
That seems to be true worldwide, also.
Sorry , I can’t remember the source but it was a ME blog or something . It said that the Taliban was willing to send all the weaponry that the US left behind and also fighters to help Hezbollah . Afghanistan and Iran share a common border , so logistics is not an issue .
Yawn 🥱….. has Russia supplied enemies of the USA in the past? Are they better? Innocent people? You might not like it but this is what happens when resources get scarce
This post shows lots of charts that have been redone, based on the inflation estimates of Shadow Stats, rather than the official inflation factors (or no inflation factor at all). The author of the charts seems to be an economist named EJ Antoni. The post refers to this person as “EJ,” something I found confusing at first.
Trends look much, much worse with Shadow Stats types of adjustments. In fact, the higher interest rate seems to be part of inflation, in this way of thinking, too.
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-the-global-inflationary-depression-already-here/
https://brownstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/img_667a99303fa29.png
https://brownstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/img_667a9930e20a3.png
People are less happy now:
https://brownstone.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/img_667a99317fdbd.png
Old wine ( decayed) in an old bottle .
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-06-25/eu-commission-president-von-der-leyen-wins-another-term-faz-dpa-say
We will have to see whether the planned change actually goes through:
She is not even vinegar.
The alternative were 2:
– Go on with burned-in puppet von der Leyen, that is a medium-high level of danger for people inside EU and outside EU.
– Change to Mario Draghi, high-extremely-high level of danger for people inside EU (see next mandatory mRNA vaccinations, as they one he promulgated with killing pleasure in Italy for Covid) and for people outside EU (that is, going on heads down with war against Russia, as he was and he is one of first supporter)
The behind the scenes story . Stoltenberg ( current NATO chief ) was actually to retire about an year back . Problem was there was no European candidate pliable to Washington . Stoltenberg’s term was extended till a suitable candidate was found . The front runner was Ursula ,but then Rutte lost the elections in NL . Washington had then a choice Rutte or Ursula , a candidate who was not pro France but pro Washington and that is where Rutte won . He will be the new head of NATO . So now what about Ursula ? Ursula and the EU , EC are scandal rife in the purchase of the Covid vaccines and many other rif raf money skimming schemes . They are now circling the wagons and have to extend Ursula’s tenure . TINA .
P.S ; Some facts , the Covid deal with Pfizer was done via private messages between Ursula and Pfizer . She and Pfizer claim that the exchange got deleted by mistake ( a la Hitlary Clinton ) .
I’m happy that Ursula will be confirmed, because she is completely unsuitable to be appreciated by people.
The sooner European Union collapses and the previous European Community (made by States) comes back the better will be for Europeans and the rest of the world.
There are no states anymore.
Let’s say it like this: In the year 33 the Roman senate disposed, that every free man should be injected with a substance to destroy his germline. All laws and rights will be suspended for this!
How long, students, do you think the republic has existed afterwards?
It has already happend. Perhaps, you think, it can be repaired and made undone? It cannot.
We don’t know yet the amount of damage, some say 10%, same talk about 17 mio killed. Fertility rates are going down and miscarriages going up, which might be a result of a genome that produces crap proteins. We don’t see the full picture yet. We dont see the damages in the next generation yet. Theory says, they must be there.
People dont have the idea in the moment that it should never happen again. They were happily injecting and opposing means to others. The backlash will come. So what is the consequence out of “never again”, if any authority kills the people? To get the right people on the bus? Or to destroy that authority forever?
sounds like you are expecting the right people under the bus
not on it
(Financial Times 26.06.2024)
“The great geoengineering gamble”
Excerpt:
“Climate experiments rightly raise hackles but we need to find out whether these fixes could work.
Amid rising global temperatures and widespread heatwaves, metaphorical storm clouds are gathering. Last month, a city council in California voted unanimously to halt an experiment into a potential climate-fixing technology.
The trial, which university researchers had already begun, involved spraying sea salt particles into the clouds above San Francisco Bay. The experiment was meant to test whether making clouds brighter could reflect more sunlight back into space, and thereby cool the local climate. The clampdown by Alameda City Council follows the scrapping earlier this year of a Harvard University project to release sulphur particles into the stratosphere above Sweden.
There are good reasons why geoengineering experiments like these raise hackles: the climate is complex and there could be unintended consequences; the prospect of quick and dirty fixes distracts from cutting emissions; public opinion is rarely courted; governance and accountability appears opaque.”
(…)
But we do have a duty to at least think about geoengineering, including on a regional scale, and to put together a governance framework — as well as prepare for the possibility that a nation, or a zealous individual, might covertly deploy the tech for their own interests.”
(…)
https://archive.ph/9yEg1
https://www.ft.com/content/710259b4-6a16-4755-939a-14f05d18c821
Why didn’t we just leave the smog in place? Then, there would be no need to replace it with something else.
Gail, I may be wrong, but I think that it is the same attitude we saw with Covid and experimental vaccines:
“how can we make money out of a crisis, making some experiments, demonstrating in a narcissistic and prevaricating way that our intellects can overcome any obstacle and even be smarter than mother nature ?”
In the past we had maybe Religion, maybe Ethics to put some brakes to our arrogance, now I’m afraid we don’t have anything.
I am afraid you are right. Profits are now first, around the world, along with a “We can do anything” attitude.
More ways to burn irreplaceable jet fuel without any good results.
“Let us hope that our leaders make wise choices and keep us away from severe problems for as long as possible.”
Geez, did you want to throw a bone to the unawake Gail?
The West’s leaders (sic) are clearly devotees of a deranged ideology that is leading their countries to economic and cultural ruin. Add to them the oligarchical forces that want (a) ever more money and (b) the useless eaters culled.
Best case, the West may just lapse into third world-style poverty or worst, go into various Mad Max scenarios, but probably on a regional basis, not wholesale.
Every initiative they take is based on propaganda and delusion and reliably creates the exact opposite outcome to what was intended and trumpeted.
Russia, China, BRICS et al don’t have to do anything spectacular to win, just take commonsense decisions, plus resist the provocations that the Zionist-Neocon-Global-Bankers/Oligarchs are using to try and start WWIII full on.
Historically the answer to an economic crisis was war, so that’s what they’re trying to provoke. Fortunately, they’re unable to fight and win a conventional war – time and technology has passed them by e.g. the Houthis defeating the US/NATO navy.
Hopefully they have enough sanity left to understand that they get fried in a nuclear war too and a bunker in NZ won’t help them.
You make three excellent points:
1. Russia, China, BRICS et al don’t have to do anything spectacular to win, just take commonsense decisions, plus resist the provocations that the Zionist-Neocon-Global-Bankers/Oligarchs are using to try and start WWIII full on.
2. Historically the answer to an economic crisis was war, so that’s what they’re trying to provoke. Fortunately, they’re unable to fight and win a conventional war – time and technology has passed them by e.g. the Houthis defeating the US/NATO navy.
3. Hopefully they have enough sanity left to understand that they get fried in a nuclear war too and a bunker in NZ won’t help them.
Russia and China do not trust each other 😂….China would turn on Russia in a heartbeat and economically it’s caving in. Russia has a lot of problems of its own just as much as the west.
Sam , you are correct , but at this moment ” My enemy’s enemy is my friend ” will prevail .
Have you ever seen game of thrones? Just because you want the bad guy to get his justice doesn’t mean it will happen. You have to look at it from a realistic viewpoint. What we see and what is really happening are two different things. When you parse it down every country needs every country but weather they will realize that is to be seen
When there is not enough to go around, a lot of countries have problems.
Very well and solidly argued article!
As the oil market shifts from a consumer market to a seller’s market, the ressource countries decide to use their oil for their own development. They organize within the BRICS and abandon the dollar. This means, the West have to import goods in order to buy oil. Which goods are the BRICS unable to produce? They have great engineers, too.
To compensate this development, the West has decided on replacing oil by electricity through wind and solar. This involves huge investments as shown by the German EEG, the law that forces energy users to add a surplus as investment into wind nd solar. With this investment Germany was able to ramp up electricity production to about 18% of the countries energy consumption. In other words, another four times of that investment is needed to reach 100%. This investment does not provide any efficiencies but is needed to replace what has been there in the past. What is more, wind and solar seem not to work properly and become a food competition to humans. Cities were historically build close to fertile lands and to keep transmission lines short, are now concreted over for energy harvesting. This means, food must be produced in less fertile areas using more petrochemical fertilizers and being transported longer distances.
As the economy shrinks so does the population. It becomes more and more difficult to maintain the complex infrastructure.
In the moment an external shock occurs, likely a financial crash as a consequence to the rejection of the dollar by the BRICS, it will be difficult to keep up supply lines. People will be bound to the food and goods they can prepare locally.
Western politics seem to aim for a world war in which ressources can be redistributed. This means, they take away ressources of others to feed themselves. It is already a fight humans against humans to struggle over the left over meal. The formation of the BRICS, in which most of the ressource and reserve countries are organized, is nothing else.
This means, sooner or later humans will have to rely on products produced without any additional energy, like in Bronze age or in the Middle ages. They are not in any way prepared to that. Being significantly less efficient, such a structure cannot be build up within capitalism. As it produces much less output it will be able to feed just a fraction of todays population and living standards will sink. Noone is looking forward to such a scenario. Therefore it cannot be properly addressed by politics.
This means an external shock will have much harder consequences than it had to be with focus on the carrying capacity alone. There is nothing we can do against it. The only preparation we can start is to gather knowledge and to build up gardening, following Orlov’s analysis, and to keep small and robust livestock as a hobbyist – as if efficiently converts grasses into fat.
You make very good points. I want to focus on your last two paragraphs:
Instead of “without energy,” I would say, with only human energy and whatever wood and other locally produced energy products can be produced. Even wind turbines may be out of reach. Ancient civilizations used a lot of charcoal, made from partially burned hard woods, but the supply of this is very limited. The higher temperature from charcoal is needed for smelting metals.
At least in the transition period, we will have some things we already have on hand, such as metal hand tools. Tools out of wood don’t work. We also will have the materials that can be harvested from previously used buildings and roads.
Gardening and livestock raising will be a very different activity, without fossil fuels. People aiming for this approach need to be aware of its limitations. They will likely need to work as a group, to share expertise and to trade output. Even at that, without transport that works, and without fertilizer and pesticides, yields will be much lower. Year to year variability will be a big issue.
Any new such system has historically been built up from the bottom. I am not sure that people today can work the other direction. How do they pay property taxes, if they are trying to raise crops with only non-fossil fuel inputs, for example.
“How do they pay property taxes, if they are trying to raise crops with only non-fossil fuel inputs, for example.”
Yup and if the powers that be confiscate the land, how do they get money out of it? Feudalism.
How does one make feudalism work? Biology, Not a very pleasant way to live.
Dennis L.
It is really hard to see how a transition takes place, unless it takes place in somewhere (like Africa) where some of those living there already know how to farm without fossil fuel inputs.
A few in other countries also get the message and are aware of some of the possibilities.
In my case it’s Australia.
Working the land requires the energy removed by taking the raised crops be replaced and was well known in earlier times and can soon be learned now.
Fertiliser can be obtained locally via animal manure, rotting vegetation, deceased animals etc as well as ‘resting’ land to let Nature do the recovery.
Pests can be countered locally in various ways, e.g. not overusing one patch of ground.
I have never bought pesticides in twelve years of gardening.
Taxes and other ‘big brother’ effects?
Well, that remains to be seen but I wonder how these thieves are going to get at me considering it’s likely that they are having food problems, no oil, probably no electricity for communications or transport, and no local agents to use either.
(The farm needs to be away from town e.g. at least 100km.)
And why would they bother? To take a few bags of potatoes and throw me off the land or kill me so they can do what?
Do we assume that they would have a group of fit, knowledgeable workers ready to act as slaves for them to farm the land, then be able to grow enough food for themselves and somehow transport a surplus back to their ‘masters’?
My main concern would be locals ready to take food or try to enslave other locals in some way.
They will have to be handled locally, virtually one on one.
Ah, well, gonna be interesting although possibly a short experience.
There are a limited number of people who have the skills and strength to do the gardening needed to support a family. My problem has been with bigger critters, like deer and rabbits and birds. But fruit trees that are not sprayed do not necessarily do well.
We take metal tools for granted, and many other things that may not be around for the long run. There may be some people who can continue gardening/farming, if they have enough tools, and if they have good luck with weather and their health. Digging wells and having enough water are part of the problem, too.
the Bronze Age was called the Bronze Age because 10% tin was added to copper to make a harder metal
can you explain how this ”didn’t use additional energy?”
I am more mystified than usual
Smelting metal ore uses a lot of ”additional energy”
Bronze use morphed into iron use, and iron formed the basis of our current mode of existence. Throughout the Middle Ages, iron trades formed the core business of society.—you can’t build castles and cathedrals without iron
For the past six months plus my slow read has been Hudson’s Collapse of Antiquity, slow because I’ve been reading and rereading a considerable number of works he references, from Plato to Caesar, Plutarch to Shakespeare, to mention a few. It seems I’ve become moored for the present in the first century BC, the Roman revolution. A fascinating time with considerable parallel to our present, and one which led to an almost complete restructure of society, while yet playing musical chairs with the oligarchs and no sign of wealth redistribution down to lower orders. For we plebs, not very encouraging … but maybe some here will bubble on.
A few very worthwhile authors new to me that I’ve come across include Ronald Syme a mid-twentieth century classicist and William Batstone the contemporary translator of and commentator upon Caesar’s works and the civil war history. The following is from Sallust’s Histories (trans. Batstone, Oxford), being part of a letter seeking alliance against the Romans from King Mithridates VI of Pontus (132 – 63BC) and dated ca69 – 67, who is trying to persuade King Arsaces of Parthia to join his cause after the defeat of King Tigranes II. Tigranes has entrusted Mithridates with a new army and they are trying to create a larger coalition to drive the Romans from the east.
In closing, the king asks:
Now, I ask you, consider this: do you think that our defeat will make your resistance stronger or that there will be an end of war? I know that you have great resources in men, weapons, and gold.
This is the reason that I pursue you as allies, and they pursue you as booty. But my advice is this. Fight this war far from home, with little effort, using the bodies of our men. Tigranes’ kingdom is intact and my soldiers are experienced in war. The fact is we cannot conquer or be conquered without danger to you. Or don’t you know that the Romans have turned their armies here only after the Ocean brought an end to their expansion to the west? That since their beginning they have possessed nothing except what they stole: their homes, their wives, their fields, their empire? Once they were immigrants without a country or parents; they have been established as a plague upon the whole world; nothing human or divine prevents them from robbing and exterminating allies and friends, people far away and nearby, the impoverished and the powerful. All that is not their slave they consider their enemy, especially monarchies.
Few men want liberty; a great part want a fair master. They are suspicious of us: we could be rivals and in time avengers. But you, who have Seleucea, the greatest of cities, and the kingdom of Perses, known for its wealth, what do you expect from them except treachery now and war later? The Romans turn their weapons against everyone, most fiercely against those whose defeat means the greatest spoils.
They have become great by daring and deception, and by sowing war upon war. Following this custom they will destroy everything or they will die. And this is not difficult. So far their army is safe because of their good fortune or our mistakes, but they have no grain and no reinforcements. You can cut off their army from Mesopotamia and we from Armenia. It will be to your glory that you came forward to help great kings and crushed the plunderers of the world.
To me, the lesson of history is that in the long run everything happens, and happens again; war, revolution, starvation, rapine … We might propose that what the future holds causes “confusion”, well, ask your friendly insurance company agent to sell you a product to allay one’s fear.
Mithradites lists a litany of prosperous countries left in ruins in the true manner of a twentieth century hegemon, ascribing the “single enduring reason for making war with all other nations, peoples, kings: a profound craving for power and wealth.” After milennia it appears logical that this lust is an inherent part of the genetic psychology of sports the two legged creatures of the devil, and what we fear today consuming our civilization be not a single erradicable mistake of hers.
It’s certainly a fascinating subject. Thanks very much for introducing Hudson’s work here.
I don’t wish to trivialize the important role of genes in shaping human psychology. But at the same time, I doubt that there is a genetic disposition that by itself drives people to war or even to lust after power and wealth. I may be wrong, but I think there is a strong cultural/social component to these things. Children in certain societies and certain classes get trained in certain ways, regardless of what their original genetic “default” settings may be.
Dogs can be trained to attack and hold intruders, fetch their owner’s slippers and newspapers, run after balls and bring them back, sit, stand, shake hands, and play dead.
I suspect humans can be trained in a similar way to do all sorts of things that are not encoded for in their genes and even things that may go against their genetic imperatives. Two examples that come quickly into my mind are Catholic priest and Kamikaze pilot. I doubt whether there are specific genes that make their owners desire to pursue those particular careers. Also, advertising is training people to lust for all sorts of things in the modern world. There would probably be a lot less lust for power and wealth in people’s minds if it wasn’t being programmed into us.
My impression is that all living things, through adaptive evolution, have a preprogrammed instinct and a hard wired behavior to assure a supply of food and energy. Sometimes animals can avoid actual physical conflict through ritualized displays and bluster. “But some times you just have to fight” as Brandon Smith of http://www.alt-market.us wrote @10 years ago for the Birch Group in an article about the Russian-Finnish Winter War of 1939 entitled “Violence in the Face of Tyranny Is Often Necessary.” Voting this November 3 will make little if any difference. We’ve already made our bed.
As a former scuba diver on world’s coral reefs and a former small stony polyp coral reef aquarium hobbyist, I would marvel how fierce the competition for space and sunlight was between the corals. They are the most primitive (hundreds of millions of years?) multicellular organisms who had evolved long stinger tentacles to reach out and sting neighboring corals so as to defend their spot. And that is with the most basic organized life forms. (Terrestrial plants later would compete, e.g., vines.) Fish, crabs, shrimps invertebrates would engage in furious battles to defend territories on the reef. Then came the vertebrates, where amphibians, reptiles, birds, then mammals- lions, wolves, chimpanzees, and humans now all expend energy to defend their territory. Herbivores were so successful in their passivity as grazers that they were spared the energy drain of territorial conflict, but alas, instead had to divert that energy to evasion from predators. Nature never gives anyone a break.
I watched a Nature Program on the chimpanzee tribe of Ngogo, Uganda. Even within the tribe, certain Beta males were trying to solicit support from other members within the tribe to wrest control from the alpha male. David Rogers Webb in his book/video “The Great Taking” mentioned this.
What is the evolutionary advantage of this internal subterfuge within a tribe of 50-100 members ? Webb remarked that the benefits of a small society were that when males had to go on a raiding party to defend their territory from neighboring tribes, they knew which members to take with them, i.e., those who were good warriors, and which members not to entrust their offspring with back at the base while they were away. This was the benefit of a small tribe. Everyone knew everyone else’s strengths and weaknesses.
In contrast, when you have a huge population run by a centralized government , you do not know whom you can trust or if any will be looking out for your interests. In short, the very people who should NEVER be left in charge wind up in politics.
This situation has been enabled by good times, easy energy, plenty of food, world reserve currency, the ability to print money (issue debt) to pay for promises the politicians make. This drives a quest for more votes; The 19th amendment giving the women the right to vote, the abandonment of a Representative Constitutional Republic into a pure Democracy of mob rule where parasites out vote the producers and now even illegal immigrants getting to vote.
A certain degree of conflict within a tribe to establish dominance was beneficial in my view. Such internal physical conflict hardened the members, i.e., trained them, to be better warriors to defend the whole tribe against outsiders.
When resources, food, and energy are plentiful, the drive to take territory or eliminate rival tribes is not as intense.
In the opposite, I’ve seen a video where a hyena and a leopard were eating the same kill. The hyena at the rump and the leopard at the shoulder. They were suddenly so weak from hunger that they both realized it was in their mutual interest to eat rather than to expend more energy fighting over the kill. This is what politicians should be thinking, knowing that logistically the US and NATO do not have the energy/diesel fuel, armaments, manufacturing base, raw materials , and trained personnel to wage a land war against either Russia or China when they can’t even handle the Houthis.
Good points:
Thanks, Tim. I meant genetic in a somewhat metaphoric sense of ingrained as I haven’t studied sufficient psychology or whatever to be able to say whether such impulses as this or cultural nurturing or Jung’s collective unconscious become encoded within animals genetically. However, this lust in humans, far beyond any material improvement of procreative capacity, seems a recurring pattern.
From this, all kinds of issues arise; how ‘sustainable’ (as they say these days) societies should accommodate such sports and particularly what the individual can do when they run amok.
Looking back now, my own lusts have often been counterproductive over the years.
When I hear or read about how some idiot has ruined his future or that of some victim or other, I reflect that I wasn’t so far away from doing something similar myself back before God granted me my current levels of chastity and continence.
I sometimes wish I could go back in time and give my younger self a good talking too, but I don’t think for a minute that the young fool would have listened to an old fool like me.
lol tim
its not your lusts that are the problem—its always the insistence of somebody else’s.
It is a lesson best learned early—men are not the ones in control—the opposite sex just allow them to think they are.
i could always resist anything except temptation.
in my misspent youth, there was never any shortage of that
if ”stuff” is running short for you or your tribe, someone will rise up to persuade you that it is ”thier” fault.
and tell you to go ”over there” and fight to rectify matters.
and get it back.
(MAGA anyone?—liebensraum anyone?)
We can see it happening right now. Jan 6th was a perfect example.
how is irrelevant, genes are irrelevant.
gullibity is relevant, perceived privation is relevant.
““single enduring reason for making war with all other nations, peoples, kings: a profound craving for power and wealth.”
Consistent, we seem to have politicians who would destroy our nation in search of power. Why? Well, biology, they get the best women assuming a man. No procreation, death of a civilization. It is happening now.
Dennis L.
I would point out that chickens have a “pecking order,” and dogs do, too. Having a pecking order seems to be part of the way an economy organizes itself. If there is not enough to go around, those high on the pecking order seem to win out. In fact, in the everyday world, there is a huge difference in life expectancy, based on educational status in the US.
This chart is of “Adult” life expectancies, so I expect that a person has to add something like 21 years to them , to get life expectancies at birth. They are from this paper.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/1_Case-Deaton_unembargoed.pdf
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Brookings-Adult-Life-Expectancy-with-and-without-four-year-college-degree.png
I hadn’t thought of two of the lower level groups getting together and plotting against a higher level group. War and more is the result, when populations outgrow their resources.
lobsters also have a pecking order. All animals di.
If all animals have a pecking order, why is it that when I peck Norman, he pecks me back?
got to keep your pecker up somehow
think of it as an act of social charity
Norman is a survivor. He has been up near the top of the pecking order of the folks born in his birth year. He also takes care of himself.
Also, online, physical fighting back isn’t possible.
yup
found out only last week another school chum had snuffed it,
not many of us left now
and i can arm rassle people twice my age
“i can arm rassle people twice my age”
Methuselah used to be a good friend of yours!
gail
do i get an award for being the oldest OFW’er?
I think we have had a few people older than you comment very briefly. But of the current group of regular commenters, you are the oldest.
Jan Steinman says:
Except that, when Saudi Arabia finally is the world’s sole “energy reserve,” they will mercilessly control output to maximize income. (Art Berman’s latest indicates that US output will begin irrevocable decline this year.)
Let’s hope they are as smart as the average parasite, who takes only as much as they can from the host without killing it.
Kulm answers:
If KSA becomes the world’s sole energy reserve, do you think the West will tolerate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia playing the Caliph in Arabian Nights any more?
I doubt it.
Something like this will take place
https://youtu.be/wffa_7ekU_M?si=JRAn-12GmDCugwTC
They will get rid of the Crown Prince and his entire entourage. Many years later, after the last of the many descendants of Ibn Saud dies in some slum at Paris or so, the IUS president (if there is a USA by that point of time) will issue an empty word of apology.
well, there will be Russian and Chinese bases there soon enough.
The history of middle east is full of rulers asking help from some foreign body and get screwed by them.
The Caliphate at Baghdad lost power, so it invited the Turks, the Persians, the Syrians, etc whenever they needed help and got screwed quite often.
The last Caliph was pressured by the ruler of Khwarezm, and invited the Mongols, who stomped him to death and finally put an end to the Caliph shit.
I think a final outcome where the Russians cede Arabia to China, in exchange for peace, is quite acceptable.
You think they will cede Manchuria / whatever region was taken circa 1860?
That’s the deal. You do what you want with the rest of the world, we keep Siberia.
An excerpt from Seppo A Korpela’s “Fossil Fuels and our Future”:
There are two views that emerge from the study of human history. Into the first group belongs the teleological concept of history, for it posit for life to have some purpose. Similarly is the eschatology of the Christian tradition, that sees the end of the world culminating in the second coming of Christ. Both have the view of history coming to an end. Marxism clearly also falls into this category, for as soon as the workers supposedly acquire the means of production all will be well. More recently, Francis Fukuyama thought that the conquest of various nations by the Western liberal traditions will lead to an end of history.
The second view is that history is cyclical, as Oswald Spengler has argued in his The Decline of the West. Although the evidence for this is ample, modern humans have the blind spot owing to the rise of our civilization in which technology is so dominant that it is difficult to compare it to previous civilizations. But civilizations have collapsed in the past and so will this one. Joseph A. Tainter argues that societies collapse once they become too complex, for then any increase in complexity will no longer bring any benefits, but only harm. The steps by which our present predicament was reached were analyses by William R. Catton Jr. in his book Overshoot.
Harrison Brown in The Challenge of Man’s future brings out the thermodynamic argument that once the technological civilization collapses, it will never rise again, for after the high density fuels have been consumed, we are back into the pre-industrial conditions. When I read this book some forty years ago, I immediately saw that this is how things will be, for the human society can be considered as a thermodynamic system that can be maintained at its present metastable equilibrium state only as long as it can be fed low entropy energy and material resources.
Optimists still hope for some deus ex machina to extricate us from the predicament to which we have arrived. On the issue of energy, these are breeder reactors and those based on atomic fusion. Having followed their development over the last 50 years, my conclusion is that we have run out of time.
There seems to be a definite direction to what is happening. This a link to an Eric Chaisson image I have shown previously. The whole universe is moving toward greater energy/rate/density (erg/s/g).
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/13-chaisson-trend-is-toward-more-complex-energy-intense-form.png
Eric Chaisson wrote the 2001 book, Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature.
There may be up and down waves, as overshoot and collapse occurs, but there is a definite direction to it.
At this point, human society (economy) has the highest energy rate density.
It seems to me that there has to be an end coming, which may or may not have any resemblance to the second coming described the Bible. The God who created the Universe will oversee the end of our civilization, and at some point, the Universe.
Thank you Gail. Greetings all.
Plenty of chickens and eggs in this one! Did cheap surplus energy enable unprecedented expansion of debt or did debt growth fuel expanded energy extraction?
Clearly, though, there’s a very close and undeniable correlation.
Correlation, however, does not equal causation
Alternative narratives for the major factor in the downward trend in GDP growth could similarly explain for this observed relationship between oil supply growth and GDP growth. A particularly cogent candidate, in my opinion, is the outsourcing of industrial activity and commodity supply (which does not generate domestic GDP growth, that’s in the exporting economy) and a seemingly related growth of extraction of financial rent instead from debt not applied to economically productive assets ie financialisation. Or maybe it’s all caused by insufficient application of hedonics.
I do wonder whether MPP explains much more than BAU – the unlucky get trodden upon? Or eaten. Yeah, it does sound plausible though, until the singularity. Then, it’s duck and cover.
No one knows the future
I made this image years ago.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/38-debt-with-its-time-shifting-ability.png
At the top, it says, “Debt with its time shifting ability helps to move the economy forward. But it only works, if the economy is moving fast enough.
It also shows a bicycle with the various parts marked.
I might also add that it only works if the interest rate is low enough, relative to what investments in the economy are actually earning.
You may remember that in Debt: The First 5,000 years by David Graeber, the author pointed out that in at least some cases, debt preceded money. Goods were brought to a central market to be exchanged (generally at a temple). Goods for sale were marked in “bushels of wheat equivalent.” Those bringing goods received credit (on a clay tablet) for the amount of goods brought to the market. The seller could purchase goods, even before his goods had been sold! It was an early form of credit. I am sure the middle man got a cut of the proceeds, too.
I have said that in a way, credit started when hunters and gatherers started using division of labor: some hunted, some gathered, and some worked on flints and firewood. There needed to be a way to agree to wait until later to share the fruits of their labor.
Your bicycle, Gail, has brakes! The analogy of a bicycle to the time shifting ability of debt surely becomes inapplicable once debt no longer continues to expand exponentially. Bicycles don’t go backwards, nor clocks.
It is my recollection of Graeber that he explained “money” as originally a measure of indebtedness or obligation, and that it was later that silver and then coins became tangible symbols of the measurement.
Right, this fuels discussion. The US provide 30% of the world demand mainly by fracking. Fracking will come to an end by 2030 according to the Saudi prince. This is above all we can compensate by productivity or efficiency growth or alternative energy, Germany increased production to probably 18% after years of huge investment. To double nuclear production means to go from 4% to 8%. It is above all efficiency hedonistic livestyles might contain.
There are some great ideas to replace energy production by drilling 15kms deep (Thomas Gold) or by turning space into energy (needs wheels than turn at fractions of lightspeed). We should invest into adequate research. But 2030 is in six years and we still don’t have any technology nor deployment. What is more, the BRICS are preparing to use their ressources for themselves.
Interest rates seem to be a minor problem but they exist.
I recently ran across recent articles by Ken Rogoff. You will remember he was one of the authors of the book, “This Time Is Different,” talking about the history of government debt defaults. He is now warning of the danger again. You can read a little free, but you need to set up a free account for access.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/kenneth-rogoff
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/developed-countries-public-borrowing-spree-bill-comes-due-by-kenneth-rogoff-2024-04
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-the-us-stock-market-rally-cannot-last-by-kenneth-rogoff-2024-03
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/biggest-risks-facing-world-economy-in-2024-by-kenneth-rogoff-2024-02
Very nice.
Dennis L.
They will just inflate the debt away, and the world’s central banks will sail along. They cannot risk to be blamed as the bank which brought the world down.
“when you have the Israeli Defense Force now
17:14
coming out and saying straight up we can’t beat Hamas we’re losing against
17:19
Hamas um maybe that’s a reality that you you you need to uh it’s time for Israel to recognize the riding on the wall”?
Scott Ritter is pointing out that the military strength of NATO is no match for Russia. In fact, NATO has no purpose any more. But the leaders cannot acknowledge this fact. They have to give the impression that there is no problem. Russia only attacked after provocation by NATO.
This is probably a well kept secret, we hardly can verify. A major war, though, requires production capacities and these need cheap energy. And here the BRICS have a large advantage. What is more, India, China and Brasil own more manpower than NATO. If they send 2% of their populations on the fields, before people start a rebellion, they are much more than 2% of NATO. It means, that NATO has to win quick and dirty new ressources. If they take them from Russia, like Aserbajdshan and the Caspian Sea, the Russian people can’t use them. The choice is to die on the fields or to die by a lack of energy. That makes peace arrangements so difficult.
I notice that now, instead of Scott Ritter’s video, there is a black box with a notice:
Video unavailable
This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.
This is not a good sign!
“it changes everything you know one of the things that plagued North Korea going into this was food
1:37
shortages they had a major problem with their uh agricultural sector and a significant part of their labor force
1:43
was diverted to very inefficient um agricultural practices that oftentimes
1:49
failed and led to starvation which also led to you know a um reduction and
1:54
efficiency of the workforce North Koreans will never go hungry again Russia will guarantee Food Supplies
. . .
Vladimir Putin committed to was turning over technology
3:17
and weapon systems that’ll strengthen North Korea and one of the things you’re going to see is that North Korea’s nuclear deterrent is going to become um
3:25
of a nature that prohibits any American preemption “?
” Russia has
26:30
taken down the Ukrainian energy uh producing infrastructure down to 23% by the time winter comes it may be in
26:37
single digits Ukraine will not survive the winter “?
Ritter starts out saying that Russia that at one time, Russia was interesting in partnering with the West. Now he feels betrayed. Originally, he was against North Korea having all of these weapons. But if the US is betraying him, then his attitude changes.
Russia has plenty of ressources and people have money but a lot of products are not available, especially in Northern and very cold cities, producing these ressources. A Union with West-Europe seems logical. This was stopped by British and US-interests. Now Russia decided to develop markets together with China in East-Asia and Africa, India and Latin-America. The Western strategy is to let Russian states with ressources join the EU within their right of self-determination: Ukraine, Georgia and Aserbajdshan, the later owning production rights in the Caspian Sea, the preceeding needed for transport security, are in advanced negotiations to join EU. A glance at the map shows that this is not to be expected at first thought. Putin sees the deterioration of his ressources as a threat to Russian security. If New York decided to become a Brasilian state the US would probably also consider that impossible.
Colonialization took ressources but returned technology and living standard, that was a benefit for all. Meanwhile, ressource countries would be able to produce their needed products at home. There are plenty of capable engineers available, who can be attracted.
This is already a fight humans against humans about ressources, first oil, later food.
Russia needs a market to sell ressources to generate the financial needs to keep oil production going. With the sanctions of the West, China jumps in, who is loosing its cheap coal ressources. Europe is not needed.
We could say, Western leadership has failed. Politicians were incapable and made false decisions. On the other hand, if not the West, China would go down. There are also humans living there.
Germany has the highest rate of bankrupcies in the last ten years now.
This is not really a surprise:
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Soaring-Costs-Put-New-US-LNG-Export-Projects-at-Risk-of-Delays.html
I am guessing that a lot of the expected LNG export capacity will never be finished. If it is, the US will be exporting too much natural gas for export markets, and US natural gas prices will be too high.
No life is less valued than that of a working class male.
In the old days, when they got sick, they were simply disposed off, like the guy who turned into a bug in Metamorphosis of Kafka, who was an insurance adjuster. When the guy dies the family was happy that he was gone.
They had been overvalued thanks to Chucky and his 200/400 Worcestershires, but it is going back to its normal value.
As everyone falls into gig jobs, everyone, not the company, will be held responsible for the damages they cause. Unions should be broken up and destroyed, and in any case there are no room for unions when someone is not really employed but is their own boss.
That alone will simply eliminate many ‘working class’ people since their lives will be so fragile that they will be further marginalized and not be able to do anything.
Two legged animals were given too much privileges and luxuries they perhaps did not deserve but now they are just going back to their natural state of Hobbsean misery,
I think you may be on to something, men are sacrificed. Those who make it, well they have their pick of the females. Make sufficient funds and see the videos of the babes getting out of expensive cars in Monaco.
Problem is, with enough wealth, men rent or at best a short term lease, they do not own. The women age rather quickly and once >30, well, they move to a second tier.
We are basically biology, not a good fact, not a bad fact. Biology is amoral.
You see life going backwards, I see it going forwards. The future is competitive as hell.
I do see some working class people making a good life, so far. There is something to a man and woman growing into each other. Many bumps however.
Dennis L.
Be honest, are you and kulm the same person? In any case you two are doing a great Jekyll/Hyde impression. The same secular Calvinism but with different spins.
I guess if you are an unmarried over 28 female in China, you are described as a “leftover woman.”
I have heard that before.
Even in this country, customs on when women marry have changed dramatically.
I found this page showing a graph of US median age at first marriage, for men and women.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf
The median age in the US for women at first marriage is now close to 28, but it was barely over 20 in the late 1950s.
Humorous women:
“Does a woman lose her value as she ages, even if she’s accomplished?” – woman #1
“My requirements aren’t particularly high. I prefer someone over 1.8 meters tall (over 5’11”), good looking, fair skinned, with big eyes, humorous who likes to have fun with me” – a very average looking woman #2, 38 years old
Without bothering to watch the video, the overall idea that there are lots of “leftover women” in China is strange because of the demographics of that country.
In 2023, there were around 720 million male inhabitants and 689 million female inhabitants living in China, meaning there should be around 30 million “leftover” men.
Divided into 5-year age groups, males outnumber females by between 10 and 20% in almost all age groups!
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1244036/population-distribution-by-five-year-age-group-and-gender-in-china/
These “leftovers” should have all been picked up long ago in a country where lots of men are so desperate for a wife that they turn to importing brides from abroad.
Incidentally, back in the 1980s when most Japanese were marrying and having kids in their early 20s, a woman who remained single after her 25th birthday was colloquially referred to as “Christmas Cake” based on the presumption that at twenty-five, she was past her “sell-by” date. These days, by comparison, the average age of women who marry for the first time is about 29.5, and for men it’s 31.
If the Trumpistas lose, a reprisal, with a huge R, will be conducted upon the ‘working class’ population of red states.
The global elites have had enough of them, and will destroy that class as a political class once for all, so they never rise again.
They have a huge disdain over civilization, and they are , whether they like or not, perceived as a threat by those who run the world.
And they are beyond correctable.
So they will be marginalized, and never will be relevant again.
I would expect a major uprising, if the big businesses and their executives try to put down the poor of the world–especially the religious poor. Biden by himself can’t do much.
If one does not have the masses, to whom does one sell?
Wasn’t this part of the problem during the depression? People had no money to spend, my guess is it is a problem of velocity as the amount of money available during a given time period is a function of both quantity and velocity. Wars are high velocity. People get more money in a shorter time period, increased velocity.
Dennis L.
That is a good point. Too much wage disparity is what leads to collapses. Governments cannot collect enough taxes, for one thing. Businesses cannot sell their goods at a profit.
https://greyenlightenment.com/2015/06/27/sorry-middle-class-youre-just-not-that-important-anymore/
https://greyenlightenment.com/2021/09/06/the-class-structure-of-america/
The real economy in the old days was all upper class. Only the top 2% or so consumed, the rest just got by, and the world exploded faster.
This is the world which will be there after your God obtains his cubic mile of PT. Unbelievable wealth, power and all that to the top few. Nothing whatsoever for those not descended from the winners.
What do you mean by “reprisal”. Working class people in red states don’t have any real political power, in voting for trump they are voting against their own economic interest.
Trump or Biden can only disagree about things within the “Overton window” and not outside it. On some level the republicans and democrats both serve the interest of capital, republican just serve the interest of capital with more religious zealotry.
The elite in America would most certainly be served by a second Trump term, they might like not that he would want to make peace with russians, but I think he is much more likely than Biden to go to war with Iran, which the Neocon have wanted since GWB was president.
Namely, the end of the working class as a political group once for all.
China needs Iran’s oil and Russia is now Iran’s ally, of sorts. They wouldn’t let Iran go down, which means a direct confrontation would result. USA cannot beat China, Russia, and Iran at the same time and the economic effects of sky-high oil prices would be enough to cripple us. My view is that if our military planners thought we would succeed, we would have already started that war.
This popped up:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/scientists-are-preparing-for-a-major-weather-transition-this-summer-that-could-bring-drought-and-floods-to-the-us/ss-BB1oScSX?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=fa27d990c6ed477698cd43f9371783bc&ei=29
Of course there is no climate change, we are having a transition. Now, why didn’t I think of that?
For what it is worth, two years ago I made a WAG and started a major change in land use patterns. This summer has been a nightmare for seeding, sunshine was forecast for today, it is cloudy and we seem to have thundershowers every evening. One would think this were Atlanta.
There are those who curse government services, FSA and NRCS are very helpful, I like them greatly and appreciate their expertise.
Dennis L.
The transition between El Nino, Neutral, and La Ninja happens very often. La Ninja, which is what the authors are saying might start in September, is the weather condition that normally gives more hurricanes, if I understood what one actuary was saying in the conference I recently attended. (Or perhaps, it was more storms in general.)
We are not there yet. This report seems to say we are neutral now.
My country:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/a-super-old-dam-in-minnesota-is-about-to-collapse/ar-BB1oSc3q?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=90a9e118ef9d4dbfbcdaea38257c42e2&ei=12
It has been known since 2002 that the dam was in poor condition.
We need to spend money at home, we need to mend our nation materially and socially. These are generational projects. The rest of the world is going to need to solve its own problems. The first half of the twentieth century suggests this will be a challenge for it.
This dam produced electricity, so a given number of EV’s will not have juice to run.
A quote by the public works director.
“Blue Earth County Public Works Director Ryan Thilges doesn’t sound particularly worried about a catastrophic failure of the county-owned hydroelectric dam, but that doesn’t mean Thilges and others haven’t considered the possibility. “It would require a very massive flood, I think, for that to happen or some very extenuating circumstances,” Thilges said. The dam’s condition is monitored by the county, by the private power company that operates the dam, and by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.”
We have enormous incompetence; we need STEM trained people who have an ability to think realistically. We can solve our problems but first we must recognize them. No small thing. This needs to extend to all citizens through out our educational system.
Thought: We may be seeing the beginning of climate change. I have accepted this is a possibility and partnered with NRCS, a very useful agency, most helpful, I follow their recommendations; it is not cheap and more profitable to mine the dirt than be a conservator of same. We do not own our world, it passes through our hands from one generation to the next.
Dennis L.
The Grand Forks Herald is taking the opposite view, but the article is behind a paywall.
https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/minnesota/authorities-now-believe-southern-minnesota-dam-unlikely-to-suffer-catastrophic-collapse
But even if the most of the dam makes it through this time, the problem is that this dam, and many other very old dams, may fail in the future. Cement doesn’t hold forever.
Laughing quietly.
If in an accident only the right half of one’s car is completely damaged, gone, it is not a catastrophe. It is a good story, something an insurance adjuster might come up with to justify only paying for the half of the auto which is damaged.
Additionally, perhaps set up a camp below the remaining dam and have those authorities camp out a few nights to demonstrate their narrative. We need accountability, personal accountability of our officials. A simple test, no more no less. Were the dam to fail it would open a few positions for new blood.
Dennis L.
(Tutto Trasporti)
“The invasion of Chinese cars: European ports and logistics struggling.
Imports from China exceed the amount absorbed by the market, but demand for eastern cars in Europe is set to grow. Zeebrugge is becoming a big “parking lot,” even Livorno has to handle congestion related to the many arrivals”
This is interesting, because no one is talking about it.
Someone must have ordered these cars….
So what happened?
I have the impression that they are slowing the introduction to the market, because the power grid can’t absorb all those cars….
I have a friend who ordered a EV as company car, which will receive it in November…
But it is probably already there…
https://www.uominietrasporti.it/professione/logistica/linvasione-delle-auto-cinesi-porti-e-logistica-in-affanno/
Is it possible that there was a flurry of orders before sanctions take place?
Yes, it is possible.
In that case they keep them on those industrial yards because resellers don’t have rooms enough to store them, but it is strange that normal people have long lead time to receive EVs.
Anyway, looking for intepretations, this article says that – as public incentives are already over – people have stopped buying them, because they are too expensive in comparison to ‘normal’ cars.
https://www.nicolaporro.it/il-tracollo-delle-elettriche-migliaia-di-auto-abbandonate-nei-parcheggi/
In the UK, the cost of electricity at public charging points tends to be higher than the cost of diesel or petrol (in £ per km driven). This is seldom obvious …
* diesel and petrol are sold in litres
* electricity is sold in kilowatt-hours
* the energy consumption of liquid-fuelled cars is quoted in miles per gallon in the UK (litres per 100 km in most other European countries)
* the energy consumption of electric cars is expressed in miles per kWh in the UK (a ludicrous unit which combines metric and Imperial); no idea what other Euripean countries do.
Drivers of battery cars not only pay more to buy the car, they may pay slightly more to drive it from A to B than a diesel car would cost.
Once governments figure out that the cost of road maintenance needs to be wrapped into the cost of electricity sold at the pump, the price of electricity will be even higher.
Also, the UK, and pretty much anywhere else in the Advanced Economies, doesn’t really have adequate electricity supplies to provide electricity for EVs, besides for heat pumps, for AI, and for today’s uses. The narrative we hear is crazy!
This 18 year old figured it out…this isn’t sustainable…
Martin Van Buren’s life began to unravel the day he ran a red light in the suburbs of Orlando, though he didn’t know it yet. A police officer pulled him over and left him with a hefty $262 ticket, a sum the 18-year-old could not afford on his $12-per-hour call center salary.
Soon Van Buren was subjected to a series of tasks: driving school, for which he also had to pay out of pocket, finding time in his work day to appear in court, and starting a payment plan, because he couldn’t pay the ticket in full and make rent at the same time. Though his situation began as a routine traffic ticket, the penalties he faced were steep. When he missed a few of his payments, the court had his driver’s license suspended.
Van Buren was left scrambling: He had to get to work in order to pay the original ticket, the added fines, and a license reinstatement fee on top of all his living expenses, but he could no longer drive there. He started siphoning money away for Ubers, sometimes the bus, once even a taxi. But he was still falling behind; he estimated that he probably spent about $500 on transportation in four months, more than he would ever have spent on gas.
“It took about four months before I realized this is not sustainable,” Van Buren, now 27, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Something’s gotta give if I’m gonna get back to where I need to be.”
Unfortunately, the road ahead will be a bumpy one for these working poor …
As Gail once consoled , “It’s not your fault…” ..try to enjoy the moments you can ..
Without a car, that is…
I doubt he doesn’t even know that there was a president of the same name, just after Andrew Jackson.
People like that chap are on the way out. No life is worth less than that of a working class male.
Do you grasp that people in general,…..from dirt poor to super rich are “on the way out”?
Money may delay the demise of some and it may hasten the demise of others. I derive from a leviathan war family in the middle ages….today only historians and amour enthusiasts know we existed.
The world has gotten awfully dependent on cars. With all of today’s Ubers, and the existence of bicycles and grocery delivery, it is possible to work around this issue, in many cases.
The full cost of owning a car is very high today, even apart from the ticket. There aren’t many part-time student jobs that will support having a car. Adding a speeding ticket makes the combination totally unaffordable.
Once life evolves, it tends to cover it tracks.”
-John DeLaney
Nice photos.
Hey Greta!: “Fossil Fuel, CO2 Emissions Hit Record High In 2023”
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/fossil-fuel-co2-emissions-hit-record-high-2023
Nice article. Of course, the Energy Institute is touting the great progress made by renewables.
It is not possible to move away from fossil fuels.
ivanislav says:
Can we have a war if no one shows up? Western societies will not be conscripted en masse; I believe they will refuse.
Kulm replies
That almost occurred during the Christmas Truce of 1914 when both sides celebrated Christmas and dropped down their arms
The Brits, seeing that everything might melt down, ordered the 10th INDIAN division to attack, and the Indian division, mostly containing Sikhs and Sinds (aka Pakistanis), not giving a shit about Western tradition, ended the Christmas truce
Which is why it was very important to exclude Asians from civilization, since Asians will never lose any opportunity to hurt the West.
If there is a world war and only Asians (including white Asians in Russia, India and Middle East) perished, and the West sitting out, that is acceptable. Let the Asians kill each other off and the West gets the spoils.
Suggest a way to do this in Ukraine. The Poles? The Baltics? Because i do not see other candidates this time around.
I’m not sure whether people can be talked into fighting a war. There seem to be a lot of people convinced we can win. The added debt would add stimulus to the economy. Wars become popular when there are a lot of unemployed people who would get at least as high pay, or higher, if they sign up for military services. It doesn’t seem like we are there yet, but we could get there in a couple of years.
‘What nuclear annihilation could look like
“The survivors would envy the dead.” by Sean Illing Jun 23, 2024,’?
https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/356044/nuclear-annihilation-annie-jacobsen
People like to write articles about how bad things could be. But we don’t really know. The self-organizing system acts strangely.
Yes, rumor has man once was down to 1k breeding pairs or there abouts depending upon who one reads.
We are a few orders of magnitude over that now.
Dennis L.
(Comedonchisciotte)
This newspaper has just published today an article about a document which apparently belongs to Air Force.
“Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025”
https://comedonchisciotte.org/il-meteo-come-moltiplicatore-di-forza-possedere-il-tempo-nel-2025/
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA333462
“The authors of the study wrote in 1996:
Current technologies, which will mature over the next 30 years, will offer anyone with the necessary resources the ability to modify weather conditions . . . it could involve the creation of entirely new weather conditions, the mitigation or control of severe storms, . . . ”
Still to be ‘perfected’?
This technology is definitely 30 years away. Honest.
As you know, this technology is already the past, as it is being used every day in various part of the world.
Maybe if not intentionally driven to hurt others, but our general climate is already modified by what every nation is doing with cloud seeding activities.
And this kind of modification is besides what we call the ‘normal’ current climate change (caused by humans with their life activities or not).
In other words, probably we are not ready to modify someone climate change (and keep ‘our’ climate in good conditions), but we have already created a mess…
See just an example:
(Manila Bulletin)
“Negros Occidental halts cloud seeding due to threat of lahar
Jun 14, 2024 12:02 PM
BACOLOD CITY – Cloud seeding operations in Negros Occidental have been temporarily put on hold amid the threat of lahar or mudflow in La Castellana town due to the Kanlaon Volcano eruption.
In a media interview, Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson said they were ready to start the cloud seeding to induce more rain as many planters still wanted more rain, but after what happened to Mount Kanlaon, they decided to postpone it in the meantime.”
https://mb.com.ph/2024/6/14/negros-occidental-halts-cloud-seeding-due-to-threat-of-lahar
I would point out that a change that would seem to have a huge impact on climate is smog reduction. Smog can come through sulfur compounds in the atmosphere, or from coal dust in the atmosphere (or both). We have been doing a lot to reduce those. Reducing smog increases the amount of the suns rays that hit the earth. The likely impact would be higher temperatures. The “scientific models” seem to leave this issue out.
This change has especially taken place recently. Reducing industry in 2020 helped a lot. The EPA has been reducing sulfur in diesel fuel in steps since 1997.
https://www.epa.gov/diesel-fuel-standards/diesel-fuel-standards-and-rulemakings
I am not sure we have good information on what has been going on around the world. The people in China were complaining badly about smog levels. I would expect their smog levels are now lower too.
The “mitigation and control of severe storms” is not available and it won’t be. Same for the ability to inflict damage to adversaries through the creation of severe weather events.
It’s not nice to play with mother nature.
Or, the powers that be who run the universe will not appreciate this meddling.
Dennis L.
Good Morning and today a ray of hope . Julian Assange is freed .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/assange-be-freed-doj-agrees-time-served-plea-deal-wikileaks-founder
Trying to win votes, otherwise they would have done this earlier in the presidency.
Agree.
you found a cord! BAU continues!
I hope his huge sacrifice made a difference.
Dennis L.
It did not. No extra hydrocarbons were produced due to his long incarceration.
True, bummer.
Dennis L.