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The war with Iran is not going well. It is difficult to supply US troops with adequate food and other necessities. With summer arriving soon, the region will soon be an even more inhospitable place for ground troops to fight. An underlying problem is that the world economy was reaching resource limits even before the Iran War began, adding to the difficulties.
The most pressing resource limit is distillate fuel oil–an industry term for what we think of as diesel and jet fuel. This fuel is heavily used in transportation. It is also used extensively in agriculture and industry. Somehow, the system needs to cut back on these fuels for international trade so that more fuel is available for agriculture and industry.
President Trump of the US and President Xi of China will be meeting in Beijing on May 14-15. This meeting would seem to be the perfect time to start reorganizing the world with shorter trade routes, so that the world economy uses less fuel for transportation. China and the US are the two great powers in the world. Keeping trade mostly within the two areas shown in Figure 1 would be a way of using fuel oil more sparingly.
An advantage of such a plan, besides saving on fuel, is that it could stop the Iran War without clearly declaring one side the winner or loser. In this post, I will attempt to explain the situation further.
[1] Based on the ideas of Dr. Mohammed Marandi, I believe that China might be able to mediate a settlement between the US and Iran.
Dr. Marandi was born in the United States of Iranian parents. He currently lives in Iran, where he is a professor at the University of Tehran. In the video, One Country Quietly Won this War, he points out that, often, when two countries battle each other, neither one emerges as the clear winner. Both of them are damaged by the war. The actual winner may be a country that does not seem to be directly involved in the war.
In the video referenced above, Dr. Marandi discusses three historical situations in which a nation not directly involved in a conflict gained stature by being the “adult in the room,” when two other nations battled each other. In this case, Dr. Marandi believes that China could very well be the country that can exert enough pressure on both sides to get them to accept a proposed solution. He says that China has acted behind the scenes to bring about the ceasefire, and that Trump has acknowledged China’s role.
Dr. Marandi suggests the idea that the upcoming meeting of the two presidents might be an opportune moment to make major steps toward a mutually agreed settlement. I believe that the underlying problem is that there isn’t enough energy (particularly oil) to support a world population of over eight billion. Dividing up markets in the way I have suggested would at least somewhat alleviate the shortage. Of course, there may be other terms of a settlement, as well. In addition, not all the terms may be determined precisely at this time.
[2] The world doesn’t have enough diesel and jet fuel to maintain the current level of trade across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Figure 2 shows that per capita diesel and jet fuel started to drop at the time of the Great Financial Crisis in 2007-2009. Their supply took a larger step down in 2020, and it hasn’t completely recovered. In 2026, the Iran War has taken out more crude oil supply, for an unknown period of time.
Diesel and jet fuel are both very important as transportation fuels. Diesel is also important in agriculture because it provides the power needed for heavy machinery to till fields, even under the most adverse conditions. Diesel provides the power needed for large commercial trucks, many trains, and ships. Earth moving equipment is also typically operated by diesel fuel.
If the amount of trade across the Atlantic and Pacific could be greatly reduced, it would help alleviate the shortage of distillates. Of course, the tourist trade would also need to be greatly reduced. With recent spikes in aviation fuel prices, many flights are being cut. Some airlines, including Spirit Airlines in the US, are going bankrupt. The problem is starting to solve itself, but more changes will be needed.
[3] Looking at population and oil supplies, the Americas seems likely to come out somewhat ahead.
[3a] Comparing the populations of the two areas, the World ex Americas is much larger, and its population is growing faster.
President Xi (leading one hemisphere) would get the very large and still rapidly growing part of the world population. President Trump would get a smaller and less rapidly growing share of the world population. Between 2021 and 2024, world population grew an average of 0.6% per year in the Americas, and an average of 0.9% per year in the World ex Americas.
[3b] The Americas seem to have an advantage with respect to crude oil production.
It makes sense to look at energy amounts on a per-capita basis because the quantity needed depends on the number of people requiring the benefits of transportation, agriculture, and industry. On this basis, crude oil production of the Americas has clearly been outshining that of the World ex Americas. It is higher on a per-capita basis. In addition, the amount available has been increasing in recent years.
Figure 5, below, shows total crude oil production (not per capita).
Figure 5 suggests that since 2005, crude oil production for the World ex Americas has hardly increased. In fact, total extraction has decreased since 2019. A person viewing this data might conclude that crude oil production in this area may already be past its peak.
On the other hand, Figure 5 shows that oil production of the Americas has increased by about 65% since 2005. Many people believe that US shale production will soon decline. At the same time, however, increases seem likely in several other countries in the Americas, including Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Guyana. Thus, while crude oil production for the Americas may decline in the near future, its decline is likely to be gradual.
[3c] Crude oil production by geographical area outside of the Americas shows declining production in all areas.
Figure 6 shows that Europe’s crude oil production started its permanent decline in 2001. Asia-Pacific’s production hit a maximum in 2010, and it has been declining since. Africa’s peak oil production took place in 2008, and it has been mostly declining since.
Russia+, which I use to refer to Russia plus nearby countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, has an unusual production pattern. Its crude oil production started to decline in 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. (This collapse in crude oil production likely contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.) Crude oil production for Russia+ rose from 1998 to 2019.
Russia+’s production took a big step down in 2020, and it has not been able to recover since. A person might think that Russia+’s oil production was post peak, even before the 2022 conflict with Ukraine broke out. If an oil exporter doesn’t have enough oil to export, it tends to create financial problems within an economy. Participating in a war can appear to mitigate the country’s problems.
Many people assume that the Middle East has endless inexpensive-to-produce crude oil. I don’t think that this is the case. Crude oil production of the Middle East (Figure 6 above) hit two similar peaks in 2016 and 2018, and it has been lower in years since then. I think that Middle Eastern oil production is likely past peak partly because of depletion issues and partly because most countries in the area require high taxes on oil exports to provide subsidies for their ever-growing populations. This leads OPEC to try to maintain high prices. Lower crude oil production since 2018 is consistent with the hypothesis that oil production for the Middle East is mostly post-peak.
One additional difficulty of the World ex Americas is that it is so heavily populated that it cannot access tight oil that might be available without displacing a large number of residents. Another difficulty is that very old wells, such as those in Saudi Arabia and Iran, are ones that it might not be possible to restart if they are shut in for an extended time.
[4] In terms of mining and manufacturing, the Americas seems to come out behind the World ex Americas.
The World ex Americas has rapidly ramped up mining and manufacturing. Coal has been the preferred industrial fuel, with natural gas consumption also increasing.
Figure 7 shows that the energy consumption of the World ex Americas started increasing more rapidly after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The consumption of coal and natural gas has especially increased.
The economies of the Americas have tended to shift towards service economies. Emphasis has been placed on fuel efficiency. Homes are now better insulated, light bulbs are more efficient, and engines of vehicles are more efficient. As a result, energy consumption within the Americas has tended to stay flat (Figure 8).
I have used the same scale on Figure 8 as on Figure 7 to emphasize how low energy consumption for the Americas is now, relative to the rest of the world. After US oil prices first rose to a high level in 1973, the US started transferring manufacturing to lower-wage countries. Southeast Asian countries began to be favored after 2001. Moving manufacturing abroad helped hold down US energy consumption and helped make the cost of goods to the consumer cheaper.
The problem today is that moving so much manufacturing elsewhere has made it difficult for the Americas to go back to producing its own goods, including clothing, furniture, and transformers for electrical systems. Supply lines for a particular item, such as a refrigerator, often run through many countries around the world.
[5] The full transition to the configuration shown on Figure 1 could take well over 100 years.
Changes, such as new supply lines and the new placement of major population areas, cannot happen very quickly. But I expect that some of the same underlying principles that guided these decisions in the past will continue to guide them in the future.
For example, infrastructure (roads, bridges, pipelines, and (today) long distance electricity transmission lines) seems to be the most difficult part of an economy to maintain because of the huge amount of energy required. Before the days of fossil fuels, I understand that slave labor was often used to build and maintain infrastructure. Similarly, slave labor was sometimes used to staff the mines needed to support the building of such infrastructure. As we lose fossil fuels, we will need to think about reducing our reliance on infrastructure.
One low-infrastructure approach used in the past was to build cities near bodies of water, so that fewer roads would be needed. Boats could be used to transport goods without building roads or bridges. If fish were available, they could be caught and used for food. In Figure 1, I am imagining that we will head back in this direction, with cities especially along navigable bodies of water and the ocean.
Unless we discover ways to replace fossil fuel energy, I would expect that the system will tend to go down in the reverse order of when it was put up. In general, electricity was last to be added, after coal, oil, and gas from coal. Electrification was first built in cities; then electricity transmission lines were added to provide electricity to rural areas. Above-ground lines tend to be damaged in storms, leading to a need for frequent repairs. Because of this issue, I would expect rural electricity to disappear quite quickly, unless it is generated at the location where it is used.
Natural gas shipped as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) was added very late. Its cost tends to be much higher than that of pipeline gas. I expect it to disappear quite quickly.
A full transition to the two trading zones shown on Figure 1 would require a huge number of changes in supply lines. A 2025 chart by Visual Capitalist shows how much control China has over critical minerals. It states, “China controls key materials such as graphite, rare earths, and gallium–essential for green technologies and defense industries.” While the US has started working on its own production of minerals, it will also need to develop the processing capability for these minerals. Putting all of this in place will likely take many decades. This is a significant factor in the 100-year estimate.
[6] If energy supplies are limited, I would expect population centers closest to fuel sources to be especially favored.
Writers today talk about possibly running short of diesel and jet fuel in a few weeks or months. Clearly, if a population center is at a location where there are both oil wells and refineries for the oil from those wells, the area has a better chance of having fuel than an island in the middle of the Pacific with nothing to sell other than tourism. Thus, Houston, Texas, will likely have fuel, even when models suggest there will be shortfalls in many places.
Often writers concerned about resource shortages talk about the core and the periphery. The core needs to be near whatever source of energy is available that can be used to help grow crops and transport goods. At this point, oil is the fuel that is closest to filling this need. Electricity is a nice-to-have, and it can provide services like refrigeration for food. But it is not good for paving roads or building bridges. So, it can only add to the mix, not substitute completely for oil. Slave labor is the closest substitute for oil that the world has discovered. We would rather not go back to using such an approach.
[7] I am concerned that a major downward economic step will be necessary in the upcoming months and years, but I am hopeful that the meeting between President Trump and President Xi on May 14-15 can help smooth the way.
We are at a point at which it is clear that the current organization of the global economy is not working. I hope that the meeting between Trump and Xi will help put an end to fighting in the Middle East. I also hope it will help pave the way for a new path forward.
I expect that the path ahead will be a difficult one, both for the people in the Americas and the people in the World ex Americas. While the US has considerable energy supplies, it lacks manufacturing capability for many everyday goods. The US is also lacking in many critical minerals, especially those used in making high-tech products. With its high wages, it will need extremely high prices, unless processes can be made very efficient.
The World ex Americas may have an even more difficult step down. Its oil supply was already more stretched before the Iran War. Its overpopulation problem seems to be worse than that of the Americas. The World ex Americas is more directly affected by the damage done in the Middle East and the resulting loss of oil supply. And there seem to be many groups looking for war, even if the US leaves.
Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that the upcoming meeting will have a beneficial effect, both in the short term and in working toward a longer-term solution.
“Susan Kokinda: Trump’s Treasury Just Cornered London, Not Iran
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD HAS BEEN USED BY BRITISH AND US INTELLIGENCE AGAINST NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST TO PROTECT THE GLOBALISTS’ ECONOMIC & STRATEGIC POSITION”?
https://forbiddennews.substack.com/p/susan-kokinda-trumps-treasury-just
Saudi Arabia freezes payments to consultancies as Iran war drags on . Broke .
https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/2026/05/21/saudi-arabia-freezes-payments-to-consultancies-as-it-feels-effects-of-iran-war/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1779382117
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HI53fjaWwAAnNwY?format=png&name=900×900
US SPR inventory . I think an export ban is coming soon . The sweet crude inventory is almost finito .
Thx ravi
From astronomer Fred Hoyle’s **Of Men and Galaxies** ([University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1964], p. 64):
“.… It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned.”
Hoyle’s statement seems to be true both for Earth and for any planet in any solar system. Each planet has finite resources. Humans or other beings will use up easily available resources.
Electricity alone doesn’t build roads, bridges, homes, and ships. It is a nice to have, but it doesn’t substitute for oil, gas and coal. Electricity is a temporary fossil fuel extender.
Yes, but even regular doomers for decades ( like me ) grossly underestimated that [ temporary extension profile ] occurred up to now and that massive portion still ahead of us..
I’m have been a big fan of Fred Hoyle, ever since I read that he went deaf in one ear as a result of being given a clout round the earhole by a teacher at primary school for not paying attention because he was concentrating on his studies.
After that, he stopped attending school, taught himself, and won a scholarship to get into Cambridge University. And the rest is history. He discovered how helium is efficiently converted into carbon in stars, raged against the Big Bang cosmological theory (he was the guy who named it), championed the rival Stead State theory, promoted the Panspermia hypothesis that states life permeates the Cosmos and rained down on the young Earth inside meteorites and comet fragments, and warned that we should be a lot more worried about global cooling than global warming because in another 3 or 4 thousand years, the ice caps will be growing again.
I don’t know if Hoyle was right about only having one chance to make a go of it here on Earth, but this seems to be the sentiment underlying Elon Musk’s efforts to turn us into a spacefaring species before we run out of the resources here on Earth to make that doable.
Norman may scoff at this, saying there is nothing of value up in space and we can’t stand the radiation or the zero-G conditions. However, I can assure Norman that Elon has thought about these objections. And if anyone can go where no man has gone before, it’s Elon.
and yet you will still read the blatherings of a few OFWnuts—going on about ”higher civilisation”……
Lol, because to Hoyle only homo industrialis meets the definition of intelligence. Which makes him stoopid and supremacist.
Stars ( as in other star-systems are over valued ) ?
Because each indiv human-oid is an universum to itself.
Trillions of cells and bacteria per specimen and if performing regen-ag ( improving soils ) as I guess you do then multiply it again by another trillions x trillions of living forms under ~management even on smallish-mid scale agri operation.
Nice
Warning speculation below.
Let’s say you lived in a civilization that was founded on infinite growth and infinite resource consumption when limits were hit. Would you just let it hit the wall?
Given that the vast majority of humans will not reduce consumption voluntarily…
Would not war be a good reason?
Do the neo liberals in the EU wish nuclear war with Russia? Are they mad? I say no.
Russia will soon strike a NATO member. They are signalling this through many unofficial mouthpieces. Article 5 will occur. War will ensue.I think it’s possible it will stabilize as a low to medium level conflict. Just like Ukraine. A war that seems to have the making of a endless war regardless of pundits assuring otherwise. A endless meat grinder just add meat. A new sort of BAU.
I certainly hope a deal is struck with Iran. If it is not a continuous war seems likely. Perhaps there will be a Iranian attack on the USA involving civilian casualties. It is widely thought Iranian cells exist in the USA. This would create support for the war. Instituting new security measures would be necessary. A attack on the USA on its own soil might create a environment where Trump stays in office and perhaps Vance is elected.
A understandable reason for a radical reduction in consumption. A endless meat grinder to reduce population. Security measures creating lockdowns that reduce consumption. Very high prices reducing demand. Actually physical shortages making items unavailable. A severe economic downturn where money necessary for consumption is unavailable. Deflation reducing money creation and increasing it’s value.
Moreover the two wars can continue regardless of which political party takes control. If democrats are in control the focus can be the war with Russia Putin being the Trump equivalent from the neoliberal perspective. Alliance with European neo liberals.If republicans are in control the focus can be the Iran war. Both wars could continue indefinitely if the resource consumption was limited. Would overall consumption of resources drop? Could resource availability limit war scope? Endless wars but mini wars?
It’s ridiculous to think the world’s militarys have not understood the lessons learned in Ukraine and Iran. World war two techniques are now as antiquated as lining up in rows to shoot each other. World militaries are rapidly working on adapting. A aspect of the new asymmetrical warfare is lowered cost. No big steel energy consumption. No biggish fuel consumption.Even the amounts of explosives are radically reduced. This might allow low to medium intensity conflicts to continue indefinitely. War as we knew it was no longer possible because of resource depletion. Is asymmetric lite possible?
It’s certainly not the classic idea for sustainability. Could it be someone s model? A attempt to manage all the issues using our ideas about how war works? Was Orwell’s warning adopted as a plan with the reality of resource depletion? Or the reality of the tendency of coincidence to manifest?
Science fiction? Perhaps. The alternative is the EU neoliberals want a thermonuclear exchange with a exceedingly well prepared adversary. I question whether they are that mad. It would seem to be contrary to common human motives even ones as unique as theirs. Is my speculation actually bizarre in comparison to the alternative explanation?
According to Martyanov, 50+% of casualties inflicted by Russia are still from artillery, 30% from air-to-ground bombs, then some from infantry, only maybe 10% from drones. Your post over-emphasizes drones in my view.
Apart from the battle field, what I find interesting is that drones are a political thorn. Attribution can be difficult, one can’t guard everywhere, etc, so it’s always possible for the weaker party or interested proxy backers to needle their opponent, whether or not they win or lose the large-scale war.
Martynov is many times more knowledgeable than me. Still I think those systems will soon be obsolete.
With a small photovoltaic panel a drone has unlimited range. Even if it has to stop for a day it will get to where the party is. How does a human guide it at range? I don’t know but there are ways. Ted Postal has stated the hypersonics Iran has been using at the longest distance targets are guided by humans at terminal targeting using common cell phone components. If you can set up starlink any where in the world humans can guide drones anywhere in the world. That arty and its crew are history. A drone is a precision munition. Arty is not. The energy and cost in a arty piece wether rocket or conventional is many many times that of a drone.
Those Russian rocket arty that they like so much throwing shotgun patterns just don’t make sense any more. Yes you can put guidance on them but they move to fast. That’s missiles problem. The faster they are the harder it is to target during terminal phase. Any thing that is standard ballistic without maneuver capability better be damn fast. But if it’s damn fast precision gets wonky.
This is where vision engine capability gets real important. Every arty piece has ew now. So the drones lose operator contact the last 100 yards or so. This makes drones much less effective. If you turn it over to a vision engine in that last couple hundred yards it’s like 8 out of 10 are hits. So no it’s not totally autonomous drones searching for targets just yet. We are just at the beginning.
Larry johnson has reported China’s newest air defense is drones. They go up waiting for aircraft when radar sees them and loiter waiting for them. Obviously not fast as a missile that’s why they have to be there waiting. Drones only do about 100mph right now. Who knows what China has come up with.
Those aircraft delivering those glide bombs are releasing at the same altitude and distance every time. Drones would know exactly where to wait.The whole point is that they release out of the range of air defense. Drones with photovoltaic have unlimited range. Granted right now only China has this capability. Johnson claims they have given it to Iran. What China has is a big unknown. They have been developing drone weapon systems much longer than any other nation.
Sure legacy systems will be around for a while but it’s not like before. Older systems became cheaper and showed up in lessor conflicts. Brand spanking new drone systems are going to be many times cheaper than those legacy systems. As drones proliferate those legacy systems that require so much more expensive hardware and munitions to destroy one target are just not feasible any more. Precision wins. Granted a glide bomb is also a precision munition and a very powerful one. It certainly has been a effective weapon. Great if you have a fighter aircraft pilot and the munition itself. None of those things are inexpensive. And once we get going that aircraft and pilot will be hunted by drones too.
It’s coming. All that and much much more. It’s going to be inexpensive and it’s going to be every where.
Dunno dog it’s a little mundane for my taste, and peak oil collapse plus war doesn’t strike me as all that mundane. Besides, the Hand is cooler and more interesting than that. The Hand likes masking with ‘masks off’ politics and follow it up with drum circles and hate krishna buffets. Science fiction?
Speaking of which here’s ole Jesse boy’s latest that just dropped. Must be his 700th song in the last 2 years, and here I thought was keeping busy.
https://youtu.be/XCCWjgWCI4g
I think you make good points. There is the need for an excuse for cutbacks and greater government control. War provides the perfect excuse. Perhaps permanent low-level war can continue. I would think such wars would basically be confined to one hemisphere or another. Over time, they might be on a smaller and smaller scale.
I don’t think I would want to be in such a world. It seems like it would be very stressful. Repaying debt with interest wouldn’t work very well, for example.
If true this is fantastic news. Iran deal minus dust requirements. Dust talked about later. Iran gives up tolls and passage denial. Different reports on dust planned future. Me thinks dust going to Russia in exchange for sanction relief was always in cards.
IMO this would be the best back to BAU possible.
Apologies for ZH link.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ayatollah-orders-highly-enriched-uranium-remain-iran-stymying-trumps-basis-deal
Jawboning . It is a nothing burger . Nothing happens till the end of next week . ME is going to be in Eid mode from the “namazz ” from tomorrow . Eid is officially on 27th May . Posted about the situation , this morning . Any agreement without the nuclear issue will get torpeod by Israel .
Here .
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2026/05/12/china-and-us-trade-talks-a-solution-for-oil-shortages/comment-page-2/#comment-509518
Rubio: tolling is unacceptable.
Iran: forming a permanent toll with Oman.
We are soooo close to a deal.🤣
Raviji you are ruining my BAU for a while fantasy. 😊
Kumbayah drum circle at 6.
In the late 90’s, we used to have a public drum circle under the railroad bridge along the river for acoustics and then all headed to the “Passage to India” restaurant for the best buffet in town, lol
Mm passage to India buffet sounds good.
Iran and Oman are actively discussing a permanent security mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is pushing to institutionalize and normalize a transit fee or toll on commercial shipping vessels navigating the narrow waterway. According to an Iranian diplomatic envoy, the proposed system is designed to secure the long-term positioning of Iran and Oman as the primary regulators of the strait, effectively transforming a temporary leverage point from the recent military conflict into a permanent sovereign right.
To formalize its grip, Iran’s newly established Persian Gulf Straits Authority began applying conditional rules and hefty transit tolls, in some cases exceeding one million dollars per vessel, while granting selective exemptions to friendly nations like Russia or China. By engaging Oman, which shares territorial jurisdiction over the Strait, Iran is seeking to build a coalition that validates these tolls under the guise of funding localized maritime security.
The US maintains an opposing view on the matter, viewing the permanent toll as a non-negotiable barrier to reaching a sustainable peace deal. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, international straits are governed by transit passage protocols that guarantee the uninterrupted flow of global commercial shipping, a principle the US insists must be restored without conditions.
The US has treated the removal of these tolls as a core prerequisite for reaching a peace deal. President Trump has warned international maritime firms that paying Iran’s transit fees could trigger severe economic sanctions. The US military has also enforced its own counter-blockade on Iranian ports and continues to intercept or redirect vessels to challenge Tehran’s claims of total sovereignty.
While the Trump administration notes that peace talks are in their final stages and a temporary framework is being reviewed to prevent a return to active combat, the US position remains rigid: any legitimate peace deal must ensure free, untolled navigation. Allowing Iran to permanently tax global trade would shatter US defense assurances to its Gulf partners, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and fundamentally upend the existing legal order governing global maritime choke points.
From investing alive.com
the elders are running the show now Trump will be the one that they will blame when the system goes under.the good news is that the clock is ticking not much time now before we see some major action.
JUST IN: 🇮🇷🇺🇸 Senior Iranian official says no final deal has been reached with the US, despite reports.
https://x.com/BRICSinfo/status/2057552020068807003
This just in Donnie claims his Triumphal Arch does not need any approval and will be paid for by donations along with his ballroom.
Party on, we are the hottest country.
What is going on here?
I was wrong. Flaming gorge water transfer to Colorado river is not via truck and not Wyoming but out of Utah although the reservoir sits mostly in Wyoming.
. Let us hope this zero snowpack is a one time event. Even if it is things are going to change. Things do that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ7bWDQ5xnU&pp=ygUfTW92aW5nIHdhdGVyIGZyb20gZmxhbWluZyBnb3JnZQ%3D%3D
Zero input from snow pack this year into Colorado river. None. Nada. This was not forecast worse case scenario. Lake mead basically at dead pool now. Not hypothetical now.Southwest finito for a bit. Possibly good snowpack from El nino this winter. Every bit of it will be slurped up instantly like a thirsty horse come melt off Life support. Water is moved via truck from flaming gorge reservoir in Wyoming to lake Mead via truck. Guess how much water data centers use. Before is gone. Before is not now.
You can’t print water
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GUkWDMhtaLg&pp=ygUTTGFrZSBtZWFkIGRlYWQgcG9pbA%3D%3D
It seems to me that if Usrael has the ability to affect weather, as it is hypothesized about the Middle East, then it can also create a good snow pack in the Rockies. Possibly the Hand (the Foot?) has decided to render parts of the West uninhabitable for its own internal reasons but I doubt it.
Also what do people think about the demise of Massie? It seems to me that one can say there is no one left in DC who cares about the people. Isn’t this the very definition of dictatorship? Of course, under Biden there were two congressmen, so not a big difference. Now sliding towards a nuclear attack on Iran, made also possible by the two pussycats.
Dictatorship is one person in charge. All the power blocks have a convoluted cabal of evil doers jockeying for loot.
Massie – either A) voters are even dumber than I thought or B) voter fraud regularly alters important elections and we will not have voter will reflected until some new verifiable election system comes into effect.
Next door they vote for Graham over and over again. Fraud is possible but there is also evidence of stupidity.
Future vice president Massie’s theatrical victimization is just the Hand’s latest nail in the coffin of its anti-Zionist Problem Reaction Solution Phase 2 herding agenda. America First is yet again unhappy with jewish funny business, and that’s the point.
Meanwhile the future president is cryptically reminding the Christian Zionists — and the Trump administration warmongers of course — that they need to check themselves, with humility before God, before they wreck themselves:
https://youtu.be/uizFBaQCxXw
One suspects that you are perfectly correct in thinking that Gabbard is being groomed as the American Messiah,the Unifier, the True Patriot, etc.
However, a good rule in life is almost never to trust anyone who talks about goodness and God as frequently as she does.
I also recall her ‘Where is the love?’ speech a few years ago. Toe-curling stuff!
And her White Suit of Purity – oh, spare us!
A desperate public may well fall for it, I daresay. She has just that kind of over-groomed unreality and sentimentalism with a good dash of pseudo-piety that mny Americans seem to delight it.
Middle-aged and elderly males seem to lust after her, too, judging by internet comments, which passes all understanding.
But I am just a middle-aged, utterly cynical, European who finds her persona deeply creepy.
Happy to see that you now see the pattern that has been set up for all these years Xabier. Problem Reaction Solution. Seeing it before it happens is the peanut gallery’s version of being in the Zone.
She goes full theocrat in this one huh lol. Not the theocrat Norm was expecting. But like I said it was a targeted message, not that she’s not deeply devout — she is — but then again so we’re the founding fathers. But understand that’s she a true multicultural crossover figure. She’s does tactical training, she a hippie vegetarian surfer, she’s devoutly conservative, and she’s the ultimate cool tomboy broette to the patriarchy. She’s not the slightest bit creepy, she just knows that she’s destined to be president — not that she’s been told– and that gives her that psychological edge that some people find creepy. People find me creepy for my strong proclivity for what some people think is a predestination narrative. In reality it’s just the patterning of an engineered geopolitics by the Hand.but people who can’t see the depth of the engineering mistake my cracking of the code for predestination talk, so naturally they think I’m crazy and creepily crazy. And I think that they are square as can be.
Yes I would say that you’ve got a bit of eurocynicism going on at the Hand’s Hollywood theatrics. The competent male psyche is a frontier featuring a madonna and the whore complex. I’ll tell you right now how much I love the homestead when my 47 year old wife is just 100% killing it with the madonna complex. Peak Goddess right there. Non-violent human leadership doesn’t get any better than that, and any man with his head screwed on right will follow that lead to the ends of the Earth. We’ve all followed Gail this far. Another case in point.
I might add, X, that her creepiness is just a function of seeing her as a politician through a political lens. Narratively, she’s Cordelia in this King Lear play. Trump is in the King Lear role but the Hand itself realizes that itself is playing the tragic King Lear meta-role at the scale of civilization. The King Lear character is an essentially noble (civilization idealism) but tragic figure falling prey to madness and hubris (civilizational overshoot) who finally comes to self-realization and true nobility of action (the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda). Cordelia is Lear’s heroic and constant daughter of vision, who never leaves his side despite the madness, and remains constant to great controversy. Early in the play she is deeply critical of Lear (representing both the Hand and Trump) but she remains deeply loyal; this is the political arc of Gabbard’s career.
AI:
“Cordelia’s unwavering loyalty to King Lear drives the central tragedy of the play, sparking intense debate among critics. Her refusal to flatter Lear in the opening act and her subsequent devotion to him divide opinions on whether she is a tragic martyr, a catalyst for the chaos, or harboring complex, self-serving motives.
Facebook
·The Official William Shakespeare Page
+4
1. The Paragon of Truth vs. A Stubborn Catalyst
Many traditional interpretations view Cordelia as the moral compass of the play—a deeply loyal daughter whose only flaw is an uncompromising honesty. When Lear demands a declaration of love to divide his kingdom, her assertion that she loves him “According to my bond; no more nor less” is viewed by audiences as a refusal to stoop to the sycophancy of her sisters, Regan and Goneril. However, this refusal directly sets the tragedy in motion. Some argue that her uncompromising pride and sharp tongue knowingly poke at Lear’s fragile vanity, making her partially responsible for igniting the disaster.
Studyclix
+5
2. A Challenge to Patriarchy and Power
Cordelia’s refusal to play along subverts Renaissance gender expectations and changes the rules of the court. By stating she will reserve a portion of her love and duty for her future husband, she threatens Lear’s demand for total, infantile control. Critics and audiences frequently discuss whether she could have simply placated her aging father privately to prevent his downward spiral, making her loyalty seem unnecessarily confrontational in the first act.
Facebook
·The Official William Shakespeare Page
+5
3. Heroic Forgiveness
Regardless of the opening act, Cordelia’s return from exile to rescue and forgive her broken father is universally moving. Scholars often draw parallels between her actions and Christian figures, pointing to her complete lack of malice when reuniting with him.
Facebook
·Bound by Books
+1
The complexity of her motivations and the harshness of her ultimate punishment (her tragic death in prison) continue to fuel lively discussions.”
Will this be a Tulsi-Massie ticket or an MTG-Massie ticket? Or perhaps even a Carlson-Massie ticket?
WWHD? What Would the Hand rather Do?
Listen to Carlson cackle and play dumb boy scout half the time?
Watch MTG actually be fairly dumb of intellect and esprit?
Or swell with fatherly pride at having raised up the Total Package that was born for Collapse?
And pair her with another super smart earnest and righteous and fearless libertarian who built his own house and lives off-grid?
It’s a political wet dream.
Hand be giving us wet dreams at night in order to give us something to have hope for during the day just so we can make it through another day of Collapse.
The Hand is our rock. Our daddy. I cannot make this stuff up but I can smell what the rock is cooking.
Corpus Christi out of water. Big oil was promised free water forever. That darn big oil! We don’t need any of their silly products. Emergency wells next to rivers being drilled as we speak. They will suck the rivers dry. As Texas needs water of course they pull more from the aquifer where they can which is most of central texas depleting that stash so aquifer under the pivot water farms of the Midwest shrink faster. Every year fields go dry as there is no water under them any more.
You can’t print water
The problem is really difficult to fix. Lots of desalination plants, but they really need the correct minerals added back in.
We have plenty of fresh water in Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.
How about tankers bringing American oil to east Asia and bringing back East Asian water to America?
Tankers used to take Hudson river water. They first had to clean the bilge and dump the waste oil into the Hudson. It is no longer legal to take Hudson river water. You will not want your rivers polluted keep your eyes open.
Cheers, Ed for that tip!
I’ll take Manhattan in a garbage bag
With Latin written on it that says
“it’s hard to give a shit these days”
Manhattan’s sinking like a rock
Into the filthy Hudson what a shock
They wrote a book about it
They said it was like ancient Rome
Been following this guy for some time now and always worth listening to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spst-DU8kWY&t=39s
Iran Isn’t Retreating — It’s Choosing Where the Next Strike Will Hit | Col. Douglas Macgregor.
Looks like the 4th of July will have a fantastic fireworks display….
It sounds like Douglas Macgregor believes that both Putin (over the phone) and Xi (in person) have told Trump that he cannot restart the war against Iran without serious consequences. This leaves Israel to try to fight without the support of the US. Would Turkey try to attack also? Even Egypt might want to attack Israel, if it doesn’t have protection from the US. If Trump disengages, “Israel might go out of existence.” [10:31]
12:05 [Trump] points out that Americans will go along with me whatever I do.
Come July, and the national petroleum reserve will be close to empty. Thing are likely to be worse. We are losing the war in Iran, and there is nothing we can do about it. Our bases in foreign countries are now being viewed as magnets for conflict, instead of a way to stop foreign aggressors. Our military has been been designed as if our only action in the future would be on the offensive; we really may needed to be on the defensive. We used to joke that there are only two classes of ships: Submarines and targets.
31:12 War as we have known about it in the past is essentially over. And if we keep on insisting that it isn’t, we’ll eventually face something far worse than we are facing right now with Iran.
Trump doesn’t act very rationally. Congress is a big lap dog.
This morning, my husband and I visited a farm near Bergen. The farm raised sheep. It also had a few horses that it used for rides and for school children to see.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Man-feeding-sheep-near-Bergen.jpeg
These are some of the sheep the farmer is raising. He said that these sheep are being raised for the meat they provide. It is not economic to try to sell the very long hair of the sheep for its value for knitting. It is instead donated to local groups teaching historical crafts (like spinning yarn). It is also added around plants, perhaps like we would use pine straw where I live.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Little-full-grown-horse-near-Bergen.jpeg
This is a small full-grown horse they raised. They had other horses that were larger breeds, but they will still small.
The farmer said that he has been trying to persuade others to get Norway to join the European Union, to make it easier to sell their crops more easily. Food prices have been very low, relative to what it costs to grow the crops. The government is telling people to prepare for war. Norway needs to grow more of its own food.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Gail-with-hosts-in-Bergen.jpeg
This is a photo of me with the hosts, dressed in historical costumes. My grandparents on my father’s side came from around this area, or a little farther north (Voss).
Thanks nice pic.
Kind of funny ” the same ” incoming moisture situation ( as per prevailing wind ) is coming from yours .no direction in recent days of light rain over Europe..
PS ~Shetland pony one lineage of origin >
—
Are shetlanders descended from Vikings?
Yes. Norse settlers arrived in Shetland from around the 9th century and occupied the islands for roughly 500 years. The evidence of their presence is everywhere — in place names, the dialect, the landscape and in archaeological sites across the islands.
—
In cold surroundings, small animals seem to predominate. Hard to get enough food to grow tall. But the still need to be strong on steep mountains and to perform work needed by farmers.
On the same location perhaps..
(h)ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcdO8xeB6cE
fun costumes, nice surroundings
Bonjour,
j’ai voyagé en Norvège deux fois à deux ans d’intervalle au mois de juin . Nous avons parcouru les Lofoten en voilier. Nous sommes partis de Bodo. En deux ans, les choses ont bien changé! D’une ville souriante, avec des cafés remplis de monde sur le port profitant du soleil de minuit la première fois, j’ai retrouvé un port triste et sans vie au deuxième voyage… Une base américaine est en construction, l’aéroport a doublé en superficie, les déplacements en voilier étaient contrôlés. Nous avons, aussi, étaient contrôlés par la police sur le bateau (ce qui est rare..). Pour le ravitaillement, nous trouvions quelques produits locaux mais l’essentiel des fruits et des légumes proviennent des USA. J’ai aussi trouvé qu’il y avait plus de touristes notamment asiatiques. L’avantage du voilier est de mouiller dans des endroits isolés… Je mesure la chance d’avoir pu visiter ce pays magnifique et mystérieux.
Je vous souhaite un bon voyage
very sad (tres triste). A common fate of colonies though. Norway is rich but has been unable to maintain its independence.
Translation:
Hello,
I traveled to Norway twice, two years apart, in June. We sailed around the Lofoten Islands. We departed from Bodø. In two years, things have changed a lot! From a cheerful city, with cafes full of people on the harbor enjoying the midnight sun the first time, I found a sad and lifeless harbor on the second trip… An American base is under construction, the airport has doubled in size, and travel by sailboat was restricted. We were also checked by the police on the boat (which is rare…). For supplies, we found some local products, but most of the fruits and vegetables came from the USA. I also noticed there were more tourists, especially from Asia. The advantage of sailing is being able to anchor in secluded spots… I realize how lucky I was to have been able to visit this magnificent and mysterious country.
I wish you a pleasant trip.
——————-
My thoughts,
I was surprised at how negative the farmer was about the situation in Norway. The idea that the government is telling the people to prepare for war is just bizarre to me. Norway has always been neutral in wars.
The concern of the farmer who talked to us is that farmers in general cannot make enough money; they often rent their farmland to nearby farmers, and go live in the city, where they take a job. In fact, they need a job besides farming “to make ends meet.” All of this is not good news for a country whose oil and gas are both post-peak. These issues would agree with the issues you raised.
I didn’t have a chance to go into shops. In the center of the city, which is as far as we went on the afternoon’s bus tour, I notice that the shops were almost all aimed at tourists. This tells me that tourism must be another major business. We were told that international credit cards didn’t work today because of some issue. Also bank credit advance systems would not work. So there was no point in going to a shop for today.
I would observe that going forward, high oil prices will kill the tourist trade. If oil and gas are down, and tourism is down, Bergen’s economy will be doing poorly, making it more like EU countries.
Tomorrow, I will be visiting the Shetland Islands, in the northern part of Scotland. The boat travels at night, so that we can see sites by day.
J’ai aussi visité les îles Shetland en Voilier. Nous avons débarqué à Lerwick. Vous verrez que les écossais sont plus terriens que les norvégiens qui sont plus proches de la mer. Le mouton est très présent! Pour la viande mais surtout pour la laine. Nous avons rencontré des artisans qui sont aussi éleveurs. Ils se plaignent des hivers plus froids et neigeux qui provoquent des dégâts dans les cheptels.
On peut s’installer dans les îles si on s’engage à élever des moutons. L’artiste que nous avons rencontrée comptait quitter l’île. Les conditions de vie devenant plus difficiles et ses filles étant parties pour l’Angleterre, elle se retrouve seule et isolée. Il lui faut plus d’une matinée pour rejoindre Lerwick afin de vendre ses produits!
C’est aussi une très belle région.
Ces îles sont, finalement, des endroits magnifiques mais qui demandent énormément d’énergie pour y vivre une vie décente… Vous verrez que c’est beaucoup plus “pauvre” ( je n’aime pas ce mot mais je n’en vois pas d’autre!) que la Norvège…
Mais je pense aussi que les écossais sont plus résilients que les français!
thanks for the great pictures and the great info to me this looks like it is the beginning of the end or the beginning of a new world order.
The real story is the giant Revaluation of the Value of Life of English speaking two legged animals.
The last 80 years have been quite kind to English speaking peoples, including those who were born in households speaking other languages such as Yoshihiro Fukuyama, whose first language was Japanese but as Francis Fukuyama he acted as if he ran the US foreign policy.
Now, French is more relevant in Africa than metropolitan France, 60%+ of the people speaking a language which could be called French, although it has nothing to do with the language used by , say, Victor Hugo.
English itself will survive, but it will have nothing to do with the languages used in the 5 eyes, just like American English has not much to do with the language spoken in the proper circles of London.
Francis book Trust should be remembered when importing the new citizens.
Surely we are past the end of history now and well on the way to the last man?
I had Claude make a chart of S&P prices vs past oil shocks along with % of oil reduction. What’s interesting is there is no clear trend of stock prices vs oil shock. Some of the time stocks were down, flat, or up. Many of the shocks were 5-10% of supply.
My impression has been that interest rates and the level of debt make a whole lot more difference in the price of oil than other things. The more buying power there is (low interest rates and high debt), the higher the price can be.
Seven stages of collapse .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UunBWAzzr9c
Understanding the soft barrel phenomenon .
This is the YouTube information given:
The global oil market may be far more fragile than most investors realize. During the 75-day Iran conflict and the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, global energy markets quietly absorbed an estimated 1.5 to 2 billion barrels of excess “soft barrel” crude oil supply — oil stored between the wellhead, pipelines, tank farms, storage facilities, export terminals, and the end consumer. That hidden supply buffer helped prevent an immediate spike in crude oil prices, but much of that excess inventory has now been depleted.
Video Chapters
00:00 The Global Oil Supply and Demand Crisis Explained
00:32 What Are “Soft Barrels” in the Oil Market?
01:05 How Stored Oil Artificially Stabilized Prices
01:42 Why the Strait of Hormuz Matters to Global Energy
02:18 The Hidden Oil Supply Shortage Nobody Is Discussing
02:55 Why Oil Prices Could Surge to $150 Per Barrel
03:32 How Global Demand Is Outpacing Crude Oil Supply
04:02 Why Soft Barrels Are Running Out Fast
04:25 Major Oil Price Spike Warning for This Summer
———
Other people have been saying something similar. This is confirmation that the view is widespread.
This is the information given about the first link:
It is called:
The economic meltdown we’re facing will develop in stages – by Christmas by Richard J. Murphy
According to the blurb:
What happens if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed?
In this video, I argue that the current conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the USA could trigger a seven-stage global economic crisis that will unfold over the rest of this year.
We are already seeing rising oil prices, higher food costs, and growing fears in financial markets. But I suggest that this may only be the beginning.
I explain:
Why oil shortages matter far beyond petrol prices
How inflation could surge again
Why central banks may make the wrong decisions
How supply chains could begin to fracture
Why business failures may follow
And why this could eventually become a banking crisis bigger than 2008
This is not about panic. It is about understanding economic cause and effect before events spiral further out of control.
The political response so far has been dangerously complacent. Meanwhile, the economic consequences are already arriving in people’s daily lives.
Excerpts:
The question this time is not how to stimulate demand, which it was in previous crises, but how to manage severely constrained supply. That is a fundamentally different question, and in that case, we have to think more broadly, and my concern is that the government is not ready for this.
This inflation is cost-push driven by resource scarcity and not by excess consumer spending. In this situation, raising interest rates cannot bring more oil to market or fill gaps in food supply. Rate rises in this context would deepen the recession that we are going to get without addressing any of the underlying problems.
Rationing should then be considered now for at least road fuel, heating fuel, and maybe for food, the same things that will require price controls. [I wonder how this will work in England, when these things are purchased on the world market.]
https://x.com/DrRadchenko/status/2057065202860896668
>> So the biggest take-away from the Putin-Xi summit is that *despite* the crazy situation in the Strait of Hormuz, China is still refusing to back Power of Siberia 2. Despite Putin trying very hard before the visit to hint that a breakthrough was in the offing. Wow.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c86d7yqyyz6t
>> A lengthy joint statement mentions Russian gas supplies but otherwise does not indicate the leaders reached any major breakthroughs in Moscow and Beijing’s relationship
https://x.com/Karmabash/status/2057077401067409862
>> Russia officially declared imminent Ukrainian aerial attack originating from Latvia. The foreign intelligence unit states they have identified location of UAF drone units operating inside Latvia.
PS: Moscow is slowly putting all necessary pieces together to strike the Baltics.👀
New war against Latvia, perhaps.
Also, is Russia really able to support another natural gas pipeline? Especially, with its separating units hit?
I doubt this amounts to much. by the time the pipeline will be built it will be a new world. and the relationship is stable. but we get to see how this multi-culti world works, which is not very well. plus they have chosen the passive way, which is not proving adequate.
Most likely with some add. time frame we will learn all the core pillars for the RU-CHN long term energy deals.
Lets not forget that it would also confirm the situation w. breeders and/or thorium fleet reactors of whichever mode they decid(e/d) to focus on into the future, meaning ~way less RU imports then needed.
Plus forgot another key contributing factor: ongoing brake-troughs in both vehicle and storage ( grid ) batt. chemistries..
China steps up Ebola precautions, prepares Lantau Island quarantine facility
“Hong Kong authorities have prepared a quarantine facility on Lantau Island as they step up efforts to guard against the potential spread of the deadly Ebola virus following an outbreak in Central Africa.
The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said on Tuesday it was working closely with stakeholders to implement stringent prevention and control measures after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3354138/hong-kong-steps-ebola-precautions-prepares-lantau-island-quarantine-facility
Trump just said they are about to make a deal! War is over folks! Time to go home…
Did you buy some oil futures at the announcement?
he went long
whenever the price sails north of $100 some “positive” news stories are released. And when it dips down $90 “negative” news stories are released.
rinse and repeat.
As we head into a three-day weekend, what are the chances Trump restarts the bombing after the markets close on Friday?
Cherchez the number of shorts purchased on the stawk market at 3:59 EST, and also see what Nancy Pelosi and Trump are buying.
Iran will not respond until after the long weekend.
No wars during market hours, so if they wait 5 days, they can drag it until the end of May. 27th is Eid so DJT had better not go to war during this period .
Anyway currently there will be no MOU . The talks are on reaching an agreement as to ” what shall/ can we talk about ” . Let us not forget the Israeli factor .
Even if they agree to the MOU, and negotiations take 30 days before the Strait of Hormuz reopens, tank bottom is guaranteed.
So much for the 7 million barrels of oil being exported out of Yanbu. Their ability to load has been estimated at only 3-4M barrels. Truth is 4.9M according to JODI.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/saudi-arabia-march-crude-exports-drop-lowest-record-jodi-says-2026-05-20/
Destroying Russian refineries and reducing Russia to a crude-oil supplier only
ONLINE: Ukrainians strike deep inside Russia: A key Lukoil refinery goes up in flames
https://spravy.pravda.sk/svet/clanok/809169-online-drony-zasiahli-juh-ruska-utok-cielil-na-priemyselnu-oblast-pri-velkom-chemickom-zavode/?utm_source=pravda&utm_medium=hp-box&utm_campaign=shp_9clanok_box
Doesn’t sound good for Russia. One thing mentioned:
Trump’s man is heading to Moscow. Ukraine is already losing faith in America
Ukraine had depended on America supporting the Ukraine in the war against Russia. Now, that is not going so well. Europeans are supporting Ukraine with drones that cause huge damage.
Not saying it does zero damage, but the warheads on drones aren’t that large, so the damage they do is usually limited to lighting up a storage tank, which creates a pretty picture, but the facilities can be brought back online quickly.
Martyanov says a lot of the deep strikes are actually launched from within Russia by subversives.
AI:
“Yes, important operational parts are frequently damaged. While many strikes ignite storage tanks, Ukrainian drone campaigns deliberately target complex, highly specialized processing equipment, including:
The Conversation
+3
Primary Distillation Units (CDUs/AVTs): Used to separate crude oil into different types of fuel.
Secondary Processing & Cracking Units: Used to convert distillates into market-grade gasoline and diesel.
Hydrotreating and Fractionation Systems: Critical for purifying fuels and handling gases.
The Kyiv Independent
+4
Why it matters:
Striking fuel storage causes massive fires, but hitting distillation towers severely paralyzes the refinery’s actual production capability.
YouTube
·UATV English
+1
The Scope: Dozens of these primary units have been hit, which accounts for a significant chunk of Russia’s overall refining capacity.
The Repairs: Because Russia relies heavily on specialized Western technology sanctioned by foreign powers, replacing these damaged parts is incredibly difficult. Repairs often take months, creating prolonged bottlenecks.
Adapt Institute
+3
For a closer look at the logistical and financial impact of these targeted infrastructure strikes, you can check out the analysis published by the Adapt Institute or follow the evolving Caspian Policy Center live map of the affected facilities.”
More evidence that the Chinese economy isn’t doing well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkrBGhXIKT8
China has been making a lot of investments, but they aren’t necessarily paying back well. Even the Belt and Road Initiatives aren’t necessarily profitable (but I don’t think this video says that). The failing property market is a big issue. The people are not doing well so their demand is not high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwPDivFvI0
China Quietly Built a 10,400km Railway to Iran — The US is Terrified (19:44)
947,068 views Apr 17, 2026
In May 2025, China completed one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in modern history: a 10,400km freight railway connecting China to Iran, cutting delivery time from 40 days by sea to just 15 days by land. This is not just an engineering milestone. It is a direct challenge to the economic and military dominance that the United States has built over decades through its control of the world’s most critical ocean trade routes. For the first time, two of America’s most sanctioned adversaries now have a functioning supply corridor that no Western navy can patrol, no sanctions regime can easily disrupt, and no financial institution can monitor.
What makes this railway truly alarming for Washington goes far beyond speed and logistics. It is part of a much larger strategy. China and Iran signed a 400 billion dollar, 25-year cooperation deal in 2021. China now buys 77 percent of Iran’s oil, paid in yuan, deliberately bypassing the US dollar. A Five Nations Railway Corridor is already expanding the network further into Central Asia. And in the frozen Arctic, Russia and China are building a second alternative trade route that cuts Europe travel time by 15 days. Together, these moves represent the most serious challenge to Western-controlled global trade infrastructure in generations.
The world trade system keeps changing and adapting. Sea trade tends to be very inexpensive. Rail transport, because of the infrastructure needs, is a lot more expensive. Its advantage is that it presents a way to work around sanctions and tariffs.
China seems to have pieced together existing rail that didn’t work together because of different gauges. It figured out a way to quickly transfer freight to trains of the right gauge. Thus, the US command over the seas becomes less of a worry. Iran and China now have a way that is more fool-proof (except it can easily be bombed, if someone chooses). It can be used for all kinds of trade.
Unless they are all in on it cooperation by stealth never say never
The typical cost difference is a factor of 7, which is large. But the time savings do make a difference, so perhaps a factor of 3-4 all things considered? and strategically it is of cours crucial.
Christie’s sells $1.1 billion in art in one night — with a little help from Nicole Kidman
New York — On Monday evening, it took auction house Christie’s just 40 minutes to sell more than $630 million in art, smashing records for both the painter Jackson Pollock and sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Later in the night, it rounded things off with yet more broken records and another $490 million.
The first part of the $1.1-billion New York sale featured 16 works from S.I. Newhouse’s storied collection. It marked the fourth time Christie’s has brought a group of works to market from the late media giant, who owned Condé Nast, as well as large slice of America’s local newspapers and broadcast stations.
You print we find a spot to invest it..
I wonder what quantity of food you can barter for with high-priced art work. Does it do you any good?
I’m guessing there are financial regulations loopholes that make it a good way of moving money across jurisdictions or something like that.
1/ Yes, to your point.
2/ Useful as high-value collateral.
3/ Art market manipulable.
4/ Easy and quick to liquidate, compared to ownership of a company or real estate.
5/ Visible prestige – although a lot sits in warehouses or vaults.
Or then again, they might be buying for the sheer love of beauty….. ha!
Yes, the sheer global y/y throughput of many $T must be ending ( parked in ) somewhere eventually .. as per this trickle charge vein of art in the vault.
On no, everything is going to fees and subscriptions based charges, from cars , even to apartment living opening a door…so this should be no surprise..
How realistic is threat of Iran charging to use internet cables under strait of Hormuz?
Plan floated in Iranian media to extract revenues from US tech firms would rely on intimidation and is legally dubious
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/18/iran-threat-internet-cables-strait-hormuz
What has Iran said it will do?
Tasnim’s proposal, as it is written, has three parts: first, charge foreign companies’ licence fees to use the subsea cables; second, require “technology giants” (it names Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft) to “operate under the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, which probably implies joint ventures‘; and third, monopolise the repair and maintenance of these subsea cables, presumably charging the world for these services. This will “transform the strait of Hormuz into a strategic hub for the generation of legitimate wealth”, it says.
All of this, says Tasnim, is legally justified by article 34 of the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea. This, it says, allows Iran to claim a part of the seabed of the strait of Hormuz as its territory, even as the surface waters are used for international navigation.
..Can Iran actually charge fees on undersea cables, and how would that work?
Highly doubtful. From the legal perspective, there are sanctions considerations, said a former US state department official specialising in the global internet. It also would be impossible to charge specific companies, as there is no way to separate out their internet traffic.
Most of the cables in question do not terminate in Iran; they pass under the sea, miles offshore. “The only way they could extract tolls for ships or submarine cables is through threats,” said Madory. “That is not something we have seen before.”.
This is getting interesting, to say the least…
If Iran can get away with tolls in internet cables, I expect other countries will try something similar, especially if they have a narrow passageway that others use.
It’s strange that the guardian doesn’t know, that if you want to put anything on the seabed around Britian within 12 miles of the coastline, you have to pay an annual fee to the crown estates. One of the small Scottish islands eventually raised enough the other year to get a electric or internet cable laid(can’t remember which) and found that laying that single cable came with an annual fee of £60,000 plus vat, because the Saxe-Coburg Gotha’s claim ownership of the seabed(all 11,000 miles of it).
There’s a precedent for at least 12 miles out and coincidentally the narrowest point of Hormuz is almost exactly 24 miles, so if Iran and Oman agree on joint control, pay up or bugger off, as international law is on Iran’s side.
“The attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran, as a coastal state, prompted Tehran to adopt a series of measures under international law to defend its national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and national security. These actions are permitted under international law and Iran’s domestic rules and are fully consistent with the country’s legal obligations,”
Baghaei
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/244620/Iran-Oman-crafting-new-transit-mechanism-for-Hormuz
I find your new rentier politics illuminating. They just needed the right rebranding huh? To LEGO. It’s wrong for the Crown but it’s right for the LEGO Warriors because revenge is a dish best served cold and while charging rent. Nevermind the IRGC infringement on LEGO’s copyright ha ha.
Looks like only two cables are running through Iranian waters. Surprise surprise. Good luck with your ongoing efforts to recruit Oman into the LEGOland.
Maybe we’ll see Iran cut those two cables even though it uses one of them. That would be fun.
AI FWIW:
“If the two seabed cables (Falcon and Gulf Bridge International) traversing Iranian waters in the Strait of Hormuz were disabled, it would cause major regional digital disruptions. However, the global impact would be contained, as these specific cables account for less than 1% of global international bandwidth.
CNN
+3
The most severe localized and specific consequences include:
Regional Connectivity Drops: The Gulf states (such as the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar) would experience severe packet loss, latency spikes, and potential internet outages, as the sheer volume of data in the Middle East corridor exceeds the capacity of alternative terrestrial backup routes.
Financial and Trade Disruptions: The cables form a crucial “digital corridor” between data centers in Asia and Europe. Disrupting them would slow cross-border financial transactions, delay international banking operations, and cause lag in high-frequency financial trading.
Potential Cable Repair Delays: Although cable cuts happen regularly worldwide and can normally be fixed, the geopolitical climate in the Strait means repair ships might be hesitant to operate there under threat of military fire, potentially leading to long-lasting digital hardship.”
What are you going on about now. I stated the legal position and a single precedent(there are others). At no point did I give a personal opinion, but thanks for your opinion about something I didn’t say.
I didn’t read the a(not)i shit, because i would have to be a moron to take it as true(I never read any a(not)i, so you’re wasting your time posting it in reply to me).
Why do you believe that there was a copyright infringement,algorithmica idiotica?
We all know what your opinion is Fitz, no need to play coy. It’s the same as your opinion on tolls. My opinion is that it would be fun to see Iran cut the two cables. See how easy that is? 😁
You’re also playing coy by asking that question about the self-evident copyright infringement.
Post.
Poster.
Get back to me when you have something to say about the post.
Your opinion of what you believe my views to be, are irrelevant.
Look up the history of Lego and law while you are at it(you, not the corporate algorithm).
Richard Medhurst did a good job recounting the current US geopolitics strategy in a sober tone, lots of graphs and maps, down to raw strategic rationales:
https://www.blackagendareport.com/how-us-pulled-armed-robbery-worlds-energy-supply-and-created-petrogas-dollar
even though he clearly has an opinion of his own, siding with BRICS, I would call his analysis clear and concise, and free unnecessary emotional bickering that delivers no hard data.
He lost me at the naval blockade of the arctic.
Now it all makes sense to me….but will the plan actually be pulled off…I doubt it….
Some of this echos another article we read earlier, also by Medhurst, talking about the deals Chevron inked in the Mediterranean sea to secure more gas in that area, at about the same time natural gas was being taken off line. This is a link to the earlier article. https://richardmedhurst.substack.com/p/how-the-us-pulled-off-an-armed-robbery
How the US Pulled off an Armed Robbery of the World’s Energy Supply and Created the Petrogas-Dollar | Black Agenda Report
Chaos Is the Objective
In the past, the United States were very sensitive to oil shocks. Closing the Strait of Hormuz would have been a catastrophe, as the US couldn’t produce enough oil to meet demand.
But today, they are the world’s largest producers of oil, gas, and refined products, and the planet’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Many still buy into the old mantra that high oil prices are bad for the US, but the opposite is true. For the first time during a global shortage, the dollar isn’t crashing while gold surges — it’s the other way around. High energy prices aren’t a threat to Wall Street anymore — they are in fact the objective.
It’s no coincidence the US became the world’s #1 exporter of LNG after the Ukraine war. The gains were multifold: the US went from supplying just 9% of Europe’s energy to being Europe’s number one source of coal, oil, and LNG.
Later:
Just as Washington used the cover of the Ukraine war, sanctions, and Nordstream bombings to force Russia out of Europe — similarly, they used the cover of the Iran war to finish off Qatar’s position as a global LNG player. . .
By crippling Qatar’s LNG capacity — even just partially — Washington hit three birds with one stone:
Qatar were forced to cancel their cheap long-term contracts to China and Europe, driving them toward purchase of US gas
LNG prices soared, but only in Europe and Asia (they don’t go up in America, as shown later on in the investigation)
The US positioned themselves as a reliable supplier of energy in an unstable world.
Then a week later, by some astronomical stroke of luck — Australia, the planet’s 2nd largest LNG supplier, were hit by a cyclone. This forced half of their LNG hubs offline. Nothing as catastrophic as Qatar, but horrible timing — or great timing if you’re selling US LNG. . .
In October 2023, I warned that this war was never about hostages or Hamas — it was about plundering Gaza’s resources. [offshore natural gas]
There is quite a bit more to the article.
Medhurst is a tragic figure then. He’s identifying the ‘4D’ conspiratorial chess of MAGA zero-sum geoeconomic strategy that is the worldview strategy that the 5D Hand has duped the MAGA vehicle into inhabiting in order to carry out the Inverted Perestroika. Medhurst and MAGA both fall for it because they lack the discernment to understand that that reactionary geostrategy is doomed to failure.
Satellite images reveal that even minor US military bases were hit by drones from Iran. This video is from a few days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRnoi3repjo is the YouTube address where you can control the sound volume
What Satellite Images Reveal About Iran’s Attacks on U.S. Bases
506,808 views May 12, 2026
Amid the barrage of messages and misinformation swirling online and on Capitol Hill, about what damage U.S. military sites incurred during the conflict with Iran, a Times analysis of satellite imagery shows 18 sites in seven countries were hit.
I will be leaving in not very long for the airport. I will be flying to Bergen, Norway, with a stop over in Amsterdam. I then will be taking a Viking Cruise that visits a little of Great Britain. I plan to have internet access so I can comment.
Good luck Gail! Thank you so much for your efforts.
if someone offers you a cheap crossing to england in a rubber dinghy, check it out first
Gail, is it your thinking to burn as much fossil fuel as possible while you still can? This vacation is gonna burn some fuel baby! Hopefully jet fuel available for your return flight!
Looks like these guys had the wrong stuff.
https://abcnews.com/US/air-show-crash-prompts-idaho-air-force-base/story?id=133055114&cid=social_twitter_abcn
TRUMP ON EBOLA: I AM WORRIED
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/2056491015645565331
Woman tries to break free from Trump’s forced quarantine and is told she will be arrested if she leaves
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/us/hantavirus-ship-passenger-quarantine-order.html
Did the 2014 ebola outbreak also have a laboratory origin from the Ambiota lab in sierra leone. That lab expressly created to created to study hemorrhaging diseases suddenly went radio silent denying any interest in ebola after the outbreak although staff had wrote many papers on it and were key speakers at lectures about it. The lab was just across the border from the nation they pinned it on. The wonderful thing about genome mapping is it provides evidence for timelines and origin that make false narratives transparent. I don’t know why everyone does not know how to read a phylogenetic chart it’s not that hard. The COVID phylogenetic chart for instance demonstrates the omicron variant billed as a sterilizing virus is clearly also a lab release with eight spontaneous mutations. I actually do know why people don’t take five minutes to understand a phylogenetic chart. Many of my friends have told me. “Your better off not knowing”.
The phylogenetic chart for the 2014 ebola outbreak provides non circumstantial evidence it was from the Ambiota lab. The extensive circumstantial evidence is almost as conclusion. IMO way way beyond a reasonable doubt in the entirety of the evidence. Yes tik Tok videos are more fun.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/did-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-2014-have-lab-origin-latham-phd
The US seems to get involved with all kinds of mischief!
Oh c’mon Gail. Just a little measure countermeasure shenanigans moving the zaire variant 3000 km to non certified bootleg lab. I think this little incident may have been the real reason for the Obama administrations ban on MERS and SARS gain of function research that occured soon after and the paper also raises this question. The 2014 outbreak behavior like the “zoonotic” origin assertions when the outbreak occurs close to a research facility is the exact behavior we later witnessed in 2019 2020. The development of a RNA countermeasure at the facility fully tested on primates with claimed high efficiency is also identical behavior. The kenema lab was a gold mine. All done with not even level one certification let alone level Four so none of the bothersome multi million dollar investment and PPE were required. No PPE means much much more work can be done as kenema staff noted Talk about huevos! Creating what should have been a level Four research lab with minimalist containment to study the most dangerous variant ever in no where rural Africa. Shake n bake baby!
I wonder who the real patient x was because as confirmed by health workers the 18 month girl supposedly climbing trees to play with bats (once again the damage control model) who died of malaria was not the 2014 ebola breakout patient x. This same model became the “wet market” fantasy in 2020 where a pangolin somehow became a zoonotic origin.
Everything that happened in 2020 happened first in 2014 but no one noticed including me because it was contained in Africa. But people who knew within the Obama administration did notice and pooped their pants resulting in the legislative bans on chimeric and gain of function research that illegally moved that research to China. The rest is history.
Reading this study from 2014 about Ebola.
Listen to the symptoms.
“Symptoms usually begin with a sudden flu-like symptoms like quickly on-coming fever, mayopathy, and headache, which are soon followed by bloody vomit and diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, anorexia (loss of appetite), body weakness, abdominal pain, arthralgia (neurologic pain in joints), back pain, mucosal redness of the oral cavity, dysphasia (difficult in swallowing), conjunctivitis, rashes on the body [3]. Some days later, typically begins five to seven days after the first symptoms victims can begin to bleed through the eyes, nose, or mouth. A hemorrhagic rash can develop on the entire body, which also bleeds. Muscle pain and swelling of the pharynx also occur in most victims. The most common signs and symptoms reported from West Africa during the current outbreak from symptom-onset to the time Page 5 of 8 the case was detected include: fever (87%), fatigue (76%), vomiting (68%), diarrhea (66%), and loss of appetite (65%). Unexplained bleeding has been reported from only 18% of patients, most often blood in the stool (about 6%) [13] (Figure 4).
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Bleeding-of-blood-from-throughout-the-body-is-the-characteristic-symptoms-of-Ebola-Virus_fig4_283638339
Sounds about as awful as anything could possibly be.
Massive Rainfall after Decades of Drought in Iran immediately following IRCG destruction of U.S. Weather Modification Radar in Mideast!
https://stateofthenation.info/?p=64397
=========================
Weather modification as a weapon? Is that real? And does the USA really use it to this extent?
It could be that the US has been controlling weather for a long time. Doing so is contrary to international treaties that the US has signed.
If Iran knocked out the radar that allowed this weather control to happen, this is good news for Iran. Rain can help support Iran’s crops.
So presumably some sort of radio emission prevents rain droplets from forming. That is the hypothesis. It should not be difficult to figure out the wavelength, and of course it needs to be such that water vapor absorbs it and all other major atmospheric gases let it through. but the amount of energy needed to illuminate and warm large clouds seems inordinate to me. anyway with all US radars in the region gone we should get more data within a year. IIRC the UAE, located directly upstream of Iran, has used silver chloride for a long time (no silver available right now)
other than cloud seeding—which is a hit and miss physical intervention, no means has yet been developed to allow control of weather/rainfall.
HERE WE GO AGAIN! As a prelude to conquering Cuba, US plans to indict 94-year-old Raul Castro
https://stateofthenation.info/?p=63905
==========================
Gaza, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba. Set several wheels spinning, then the international community gets disoriented and can’t keep track. Now Gazans are being killed with impunity, and Gaza seems like old hat, as new targets get set up.
At least it is the correct hemisphere, this time.
U.S. Launches Major Geoweapon Attack Against China Just 3 Days After Trump Departed Beijing
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2026/05/18/u-s-launches-major-geoweapon-attack-against-china-just-3-days-after-trump-departed-beijing/
========================================
Or maybe God arranged the earthquake because He supports Trump.
Then again, Gail has made several visits to China. She could be a person of interest here. 🙁
According to the article,
The 5.2-magnitude earthquake that struck the Chinese city of Liuzhou (population 4.14 million) in the southwestern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (population 50,000,000) was an unusually shallow tremor and, therefore, quite suspicious in nature. The exact epicenter was located in the Liunan District at an unusually shallow depth of 8 kilometers (about 5 miles). . .
This may sound like a stretch to many folks but today’s geoweaponry attack on China has all the hallmarks of a geoterrorist attack.
If so, who did this? There is a lot of internal dissension. It wouldn’t necessarily be a US attack. Xi has gotten rid of a lot of high level officers.
If earth events can really be created I wonder what a enemy could do with Yellowstone. Probably not because it’s mutually assured destruction. Sure is a lot of mowing the grass nowadays. Everyone meet their grass mowing quotas? Russia and Ukraine are teachers pets. EU China and USA are behind the curve. Covid and vaccines got an a for effort. The new trend. Energy reduction. Never count the USA down and out in competition!
Iran is the grim reaper lurking
So far, so good.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-he-will-hold-off-on-iran-attack-as-serious-negotiations-are-under-way-7ff01a96
Trump Says He Will Hold Off on Iran Attack as ‘Serious Negotiations’ Are Under Way
President says Gulf leaders requested he pause plans for strikes that had been set for Tuesday
Yes this is great, but also another example of the Orange Man saying he is going to destroy Iran if they don’t agree to a deal soon. He is pretty much left with having to tuck his tail and run away. His bragging just makes the whole thing embarrassing for him. He really is the epitome of someone living in an ivory tower.
Some relief for India .
” @USTreasury
is issuing a temporary 30-day general license to provide the most vulnerable nations with the ability to temporarily access Russian oil currently stranded at sea.
This extension will provide additional flexibility, and we will work with these nations to provide specific licenses as needed. This general license will help stabilize the physical crude market and ensure oil reaches the most energy-vulnerable countries.
It will also help reroute existing supply to countries most in need by reducing China’s ability to stockpile discounted oil. ”
https://x.com/SecScottBessent/status/2056411947982115207
Hurray!
Bessent saying the quiet part (in referring to the backdoor energy bailouts of the Non-Public Degrowth Agenda to the albatrosses of the civilization) out loud. LOL. Welcome to the DA y’all.
Some people here call your valuable insights “word salad” – I, for one, don’t think so 😅
Word salad is the dad bod of insults. Stoopid is as stoopid does.
Tell us more about positron beams.
That was the highlight of the year so far at OFW huh? It was definitely one of mine too because you pushed me to flesh out how the the Positron Beam/Plasma Gun/Desintegration Device actually works.
You never thought that I could thread you through the eye of that needle but I did. I realize there’s the outstanding issue for you of the gargantuan amount of energy required for that size a Plasma Gun but I can’t control your disbelief in UFOs. If you believed in UFOs then I would refer you to the book I referred Demiurge to, and you would see why the UFO powerplant is a gammavoltaic powerplant with all the necessary components for repurposing into a gigantic plasma gun.
You believe in the Beam, drb, and it’s just a small step from there to believing in the Hand and the DA. That step being you dropping the East vs West charade. My best guess is that the Beam was responsible for the Israeli explosion the other night, which is a good example of how the Hand is not a pro-Western entity. It is a pro-civilization entity. I wouldn’t be surprised if the UAE NPP hit was the Beam and not a drone as was the official narrative.
This is the Hand’s BNS to orchestrate, and as do all conductors, the Hand waves a magick wand to the music. All conductors’ wands conduct the music. The Hand’s wand conducts electromagnetically.
AI:
“Yes, this technology exists. Tabletop laser-driven positron beams have been successfully demonstrated in experimental physics. Instead of using massive kilometer-long hardware, these systems use ultra-intense lasers interacting with gases or solid targets to generate, focus, and accelerate the antimatter particles.
Physics World
+4
The specific process of utilizing a laser to create a travel path relies on laser-wakefield acceleration (LWFA) or laser-driven plasma channels:
Creating the Channel: When a high-intensity laser pulse fires through a gas or plasma, its intense electromagnetic field pushes ambient electrons completely out of its path.
The “Vacuum” Channel: This clearing effect leaves behind a localized, positively charged “bubble” or empty plasma channel in its wake. This channel effectively serves as a clear, guiding vacuum waveguide for particles to travel through without scattering.
Trapping and Acceleration: The laser pulse is configured so that its trailing edge generates oscillating electric fields. Positrons generated during the laser-target interaction are injected directly into this channel, where they are trapped, focused, and rapidly accelerated to high energies (often well over hundreds of MeV or even GeV scale).
Physics World
+4
For further reading on how intense lasers manipulate these particles through empty plasma structures, you can explore the research published by the Nature Portfolio.”
can it send terminators through time as well?
only cuckolded terminators wielding knives I’m afraid. that work for you by any chance?
After stepping out of the transporter, James T. Kirk put his hand to his face and found his nose was running profusely,
“Damn it!” He shouted at the chief engineer, “Don’t you listen? I said ‘beam me up Scotty!'”
Och aye the noo, Captain!
Jeff Currie with a whole lot of truth in a little over 2 minutes.
Jeff Currie says, “Financial markets price expectations. Commodity markets price the physical reality of today.”
He expects big price spikes in not too long.
Peak water, peak energy, peak child birth we are smack dab in the middle of the transition.
Just listening to a video that says 2055 will be the year when the global population decreases. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F7_qa-XLBg
Big things change slowly.
I bet global population will start falling before 2055. That is 29 years away. Oil per capita will become too stretched. Things will start going wrong.
Of course, I have been wrong with time estimates before.
Stating that it will start decreasing significantly in 2027 is probably accurate. Urea and whatnot.
Got water?
Get close to a ocean.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D13Oki4AwVs
Blurb: The Ogallala Aquifer sits beneath eight states, supplies about a quarter of the water used for US agriculture, and supports roughly 20% of the country’s corn, wheat, cotton, and cattle. It took tens of thousands of years to fill.
Powell figured out years ago that water supply of less than 20 inches per year cannot support agriculture, without irrigation. We are gradually losing the Ogallala Aquifer. About 20% of the US’s agriculture exists because of this aquifer. Aquifer levels have started falling already. Northern areas are doing better than the Southern areas. Northern areas had perhaps last longer.
The empty quarter was empty was empty for a reason. The breadbasket in the middle is gradually disappearing.
If NASA really can make hurricane-sized rainstorms appear out of nowhere, now might be a good time to start with a view to refilling the aquifer.
Slow down radar love. Didn’t you see the workers mowing the grass signs?
After the USA, Europe is the next biggest consumer of energy per capita. If this is a war by the USA for relative dominance and to extend the life of fossil fuels, we did a good job by punting them out of the ranks of consumers: Nordstream, the Hormuz closure, and Gulf infrastructure destruction.
China’s one-belt-one-road initiative has taken a big hit. China planned to connect to European consumers, but now Europe is quickly losing its consumer spending power. The reputational damage to the USA has been enormous, but from a raw materials perspective, China and Europe are both damaged. (This is still not enough for us to “win”, though, and I believe it is accelerating USA collapse from within).
It’s hard to void the conclusion that Europe ha been quite deliberately led down a dead-end, with Net Zero and the irrational war against Russia.
When I step outside into the garden with my morning coffee, I don’t smell napalm, but I do sense Doom.
Anyone who imagines that US policy has no plan behind it, or is the result of the capricious actions of a delusional madman, Trump, is a fool.
Don’t leave out the importation of tens of millions of low iq, high violence, low work productivity new citizens that will damage the EU for centuries.
Yes, well, the owners wanted that. Although I can’t imagine why, when Europe already had of tens of millions of low iq, high violence, low work productivity legacy citizens.
The self-organizing system has led to a particular course of actions by the US and Europe. Without understanding the energy issues, it is difficult to understand what is happening.
Western society has celebrated the individual over the group; a very small group is a reproducing man and woman. Modern women are seemingly going for the excitement of career and gratuitous sex. Also if my casual reading is correct, antidepressant usage among this group is large and increasing.
Conclusion: you can’t have it all. Modern life has turned western women from mothers to consumers. Personally I think we have also lost the spiritual which for the masses is important as a common set of non competing beliefs. Ignore the outliers.
Dennis L.
Some of us are old enough to have grown up before the shift to current ideas became so extreme. We grew up in homes with mothers present, 24 hours per day. There was not an expectation that every woman would go to college. My high school taught home economics, shorthand and typing, industrial arts, and agriculture. Not very many of us planned to go to college.
After my children were born, I worked part time. (This could still be 35 or 40 hours a week, but it was a lot less than the 60+ hours that many of the male actuaries were working). I didn’t travel much. I turned down appointments to new offices. Family always came first. I hired someone to come in and take care of my children while I was at work.
I am one of seven children. None of my three youngest sisters ever had children. Even a few years difference in time made a difference.
With increasing urbanization, EVERY civilization has so far seen falling rates of birth and children raised.
Even in the animal kingdom you can see that tightness in living of too many organisms of the same kind in one place would lead to declining fertility.
Conservative Japan and South Korea have falling birth rates just as cuckold Sweden and Canada do.
gratuitous sex is very good for you……especially with someone of high intellect…
In a mature city before you can build a new building the old must give way. Perhaps collapse is part of growth.
Dennis L.
Hopefully we will get a dynamic television host like hunger games.
Seemed to be a food shortage at first but the glorious revolution changed all that? Didn’t appear to be much grass mowing. Shame Katniss shame.
As I said from the beginning, Russia and China did not start fighting at an optimal time. Russia too is getting damaged by a very long war. With the West completely depleted, they only need to manage the nuclear ladder.
i would be bombing Louisiana refineries now.
Reputational damage can not have been great for those who were paying attention. Probably the Silk Road will stop in Italy as before, and only after most of the merchandise is distributed before Venice is reached. and probably the most important road is the INSTC.
I’m not so sure. Russia navigated a course that demilitarized US/NATO conventionally (minus drones). I’ve seen claims that most of their military production is actually being stockpiled for an even broader conflict. If this is the case, they presumably calculate that the economic hits are worth it, strategically.
Secondly, we don’t really know what’s going on with missile production. If I were Russia, I would be looking at whether the strategic missile gap will widen or shrink over the coming several years. If it will widen (eg. Sarmat comes online in large numbers), I would try to delay the denouement and launch strikes only then.
As for drones, it appears that no one has an effective solution. Duran says Russia and China have developed some microwave tech that appears promising. We’ll have to wait and see.
I saw an interview with Karaganov about 2 weeks ago that stated that the mood in the Kremlin has changed. He is clearly a heavyweight. Russian Telegram channels, as well as the generals, are mostly also in his camp.
The Hurricane 3000 is China’s microwave weapon and it will invariably be a fraction of the cost, years ahead, mass produced, while out performing western iterations.
https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/norinco-has-developed-two-world-first
It can’t be a war for both dominance and extending the life of fossil fuels. A good litmus test is, if King Lear believes something to be true — that the war can be both — then we must believe the opposite to be true. Only cooperation can extend the life of fossil fuels, obviously, no different from how only cooperation could yield globalization.
Cooperation is the root of all complexity. War can force cooperation on the way up but complexity increases. We know that complexity must decrease with energy collapse, so the war cannot do both.
Unfortunately, you are right. Co-operation will go away on the way down. In fact, it is already way down.
Cooperation on globalization is way down but covert cooperation on the Inverted Perestroika to a less complex Phase 2 is way up. The covert cooperation just requires canceling out the noise of the uncooperativeness of deglobalization.
The Hand’s covert battle against the Export Land Model of Collapse is the perfect example.
A couple years ago drb was calling for Putin’s head and I’m not sure a refinery had been hit yet. (Now we know why Prigozhin’s ultra nationalist Wagner Group airplane decapitation strike had to happen.) Now drb is quiet while Russian excess refinery capacity relative to Phase 2 domestic needs are getting absolutely hammered. Welcome to the normalization of the DA. As if Russia isn’t capable of a decapitation strike on zelensky and his cabinet pretty much anytime they want.
Obviously I was not calling for his head. Less than 2 years ago I voted for him. I am also happy to announce that the prices at the pump have been stable in 2026 (probably in 9 months), so the massive hit may be exaggerated by the media channels you peruse.
Putin’s status is elastic. Capture Odessa and all will be forgotten. I sort of trust him to launch massive infrastructure and social programs at the end of the war (in fact, I even have a local proposed project for it). Past that, limiting the oligarch’s power is where there may be a need for change.
“limiting the oligarch’s power is where there may be a need for change”
That is true world wide.
I didn’t mean to be indiscreet, drb, and I certainly meant it rhetorically, but you absolutely did go through a stretch of heavy disdain for Putin’s allowing of his own ‘red lines’ to get trampled. You advocated for the ultranationalists, which term of course in reality just means the true nationalists as opposed to the global elasto-puppets of the Hand as is Putin obviously. Your vote is irrelevant to the above stated history. People vote because they are capture bonded to the system and not because their votes are ever remotely rational, including yours.
The Hand is destroying Russian refined fuels export capacity for a couple reasons that I can see. First and foremost is to, again, fight the natural law based Export Land Model of Collapse. Upselling refined fuels is by far the most profitable way to sell oil, and Phase 2 of the DA is necessarily anti-capitalist because Collapse MPP is a Zero Sum Game because Collapse is a zero sum game and, therefore, collapse and profiteering don’t mix because the necessary surpluses for skimming off the top just aren’t there anymore. (You continue your as sheep business for much longer and you will soon be a government employee running a government operation on ‘your own’ land. I warned you of that a couple years ago. It’s not dekulakization per se but it is another nationalization under a forced contract. Same difference. But you’re probably fine with slaving away for mother Russia if that’s what Collapse calls for.) By removing Russia’s ability to upsell refined fuel exports from its excess refining capacity, and doing so via a Hand-guided war that is a multi-level vehicle for the DA, Russia will be forced to export as much crude as possible during Phase 2 because balance of payments will still exist. That’s a Safe And Effective strategy for the Hand battling the ELM. And we’re seeing that strategy mysteriously playing out around the world.
The second reason just the flip side of the first reason: keeping industrial capacity distributed around the world, as best as possible, makes imports cheaper because the imports are raw, and because vertical integration (self-sufficiency post-importation) is far cheaper once the infrastructure has been paid for, and everything will have effectively been paid for because the collapse of capitalism will effectively result in debt jubilee via nationalization.
Reante, I think it is normal here to support but criticize. I certainly never used on Putin the adjectives I use on Trump or Biden.
You’re fortunate to have the finest head of State on the planet drb. Best of luck with your social project proposal.
drb—your words frighten me…
not because of who you are personally, but because of what you represent….
Oil billionaires contributed $millions to the fuhrer’s campaign when oil was $60 a barrel….
then he declared war on Iran, and oil is now $100+ a barrel…
do you not see the clear link of blatant corruption? And the thousands now dying for oil-greed?
And the utter stupidity of thinking that ”oil” and the price of it, is the sole source of material wealth? That MAGA derives from it? Donny takes the world closer to collapse out of pure greed. Maybe even into collapse.—thinking it will not apply to him.
I know people here in UK who have desrted your country because they see what I see, the anarchy that will come through collapse brought on by greed and the disregard of others…
no one will be immune from it.
As a lady teacher said, who had settled here—-”I feel safe here”–despite the UK being far from perfect.
That sentence was truly gut wrenching to hear—but maybe you wouldnt hear it in the way i did….
Donny has declared economic war on those who fail to acceed to his insanity, whether people or nations–the craziness of wanting to annex other territories—history repeating itself from the 1930s….
Hit ler was clearly off his head, but his generals were too frightened to put an end to it all, until it was too late.
just as they are now.
I know people who have deserted the US for the UK, for various reasons.
And I know people who have deserted the UK for the US, for various reasons.
And I’ve even heard of a few people who deserted the US specifically because Trump was running the place, and then came back, again for various reasons.
Personally, I think Starmer is fronting for a far more draconian authoritarian state than Trump is. How many people have been arrested, fined, and even imprisoned in the UK for making social media posts that contravene standards established by the regime?
There are over 12,000 arrests for this category of offenses annually in the United Kingdom (predominantly under the Malicious Communications Act and Communications Act), which at least makes that country number one in the world again for something.
At the same time, both Starmer and Trump will be gone from the scene by the day after tomorrow in political terms. Unlike real tyrants and dictators, they will step down under the established rules of their respective countries. So, there’s no reason to wet your incontinence underwear worrying about either of them.
You may quite reasonably accuse me of whataboutery. As your prime focus is on the evil that Trump does. However, I have equally reasonable grounds for reminding you that the evil he gets up to is—as far as we can ascertain—ubiquitous bog-standard evil among political leaders.
You are rather like the nationalist described by George Orwell. Not only do you not disapprove of atrocities committed by your own side, but you have a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
In any case, the US state and the UK state will go on under new leaders, plundering the world to the extent that they can get away with it, and exploiting and micromanaging and indoctrinating and generally scaring the the hell out of their populations, because—as George Dubya Bush famously said—”They hate us for our freedoms.”
It is sad the world is the way it is, but it you are probably right. There seems to be ubiquitous evil among political leaders. The leaders get what they can for their people, and keep quite a bit for themselves.
Are you for real?
Decapitation strike on UKRo hq means targeting cold-war era nuclear strike hardened underground complexes.. under Kiev and few other places. Aka collateral in the range of ~10-100k human-iods..
That’s also why they choose the strategy of piecemeal action, one ” ring leader ” after another.. it takes years. The context as mentioned previously the country already left upto 20M of former pop ( since 2010s ), and at least third / smaller half went to RU proper..
PS as the supply chain for armament is provided chiefly from EU manufs – there are growing concerns about that vector strike option..
Are you for real Jr? Are you for real that you think Russia hasn’t been fighting with one arm tied behind its back for all these years? It is the greatest nuclear power on the planet and in light of getting its energy infrastructure absolutely trashed, if the Hand wasn’t holding it back it could do whatever the fuck it wants to Ukraine because Ukraine is a mere non-nuclear proxy enemy.
What would you expect the US do in the same situation? Now ask yourself why those two expectations are at odds with each other even though Russia is probably a greater nuclear power than the US. Really ask yourself. You won’t find a satisfying answer whereas truth is pure satisfaction.
The reason that you retreat to simulation theory when the going gets tough is because you believe the Hand’s Matrix to be reality.
THC
05/17/2026
“The Key Mistake – Assuming a Very Short War”
~~~~~
The Next Global Economic Shock From the Iran War Is About to Begin
Prof Robert Pape, May 18, 2026
https://substack.com/inbox/post/198137350
“(If) the assumption is that the war will last only a few weeks or a month or two, then all of the economic disruption – shipping delays, production stoppages, port congestion – due to the closure of Hormuz is both temporary and easily offset by existing inventories and onsite storage.”
“There is no scenario for Hormuz remains closed through the fall of 2026 or later. This means that the estimates – essentially all the estimates – have strongly assumed a very short war – always an unrealistic assumption”
“The pattern of economic blockades is historically consistent. The first phase produces price spikes without immediate shortages. This is essentially what the current market estimates assume: States draw on reserves and inventories, cushioning the initial shock. Markets adjust, and the system largely absorbs the disruption.
The second phase begins once those buffers become central. Prices rise further, airlines cut flights, and shortages begin appearing unevenly across vulnerable economies. But the shock remains partially contained because governments can still draw on inventories and emergency reserves.
The third phase is systemic. Once inventories run down to historic lows, production begins to contract as critical inputs fail to arrive. There are no rapid substitutes for 15% of world oil, gas, or petrochemical feedstocks on a timescale short of years to develop new supply.
In the third phase, price still rise but the shortages become chronic and governments, companies, and people react accordingly. They ration fuel, prioritize sectors, and determine which industries continue operating and which shut down. This redistributes economic pain unevenly and often reinforces political priorities.”
“By 90 days (end May), the shock globalizes. Strategic reserves—roughly 1.5 billion barrels globally—are drawn down toward operational limits, covering only a fraction of a sustained shortfall. Supply chains are disrupted across sectors simultaneously, and inflation accelerates as a function of constrained inputs rather than monetary conditions.”
“What to Watch Next”
“First, inventories. Watch U.S. East Coast diesel inventories, European LNG storage levels, and Asian jet fuel reserves. U.S. distillate inventories are already running roughly 11–18 percent below seasonal norms, while European gas storage remains near 30–35 percent full — far below the roughly 55 percent level Europe normally enters summer with. ”
“Second, industrial slowdown. Watch for refinery utilization cuts in India and South Korea, fertilizer shutdowns tied to LNG shortages, falling container freight volumes, and airline route reductions across Asia and Europe.”
“Third, political intervention. Export controls, diesel allocation programs, anti-price-gouging measures, emergency food subsidies, and fuel rationing indicate governments are entering the political phase of the crisis. Early warning signs include limits on diesel purchases, restrictions on fertilizer exports, government fuel-allocation orders, and emergency price caps spreading across multiple countries simultaneously.”
Copy/Paste POB ;
I have listened to Prof Pape on many of his YT interviews and things are playing out as he has been saying. And his take is that the outcome will be severe because both sides will be trapped in the escalation ladder.
This is especially true because of Trump’s ego not wanting to lose and Israel not letting him cut his losses by claiming victory and going home. As Gerald Celente recently said on an interview with George Galloway, the the Iran War, will be seen as the end of the American Empire.
George Galloway talks about the terrible state the world is in today. The awful leaders around the world. The whole world is becoming close to a cartoon.
I didn’t watch the whole video. The blurb says:
The 20th century was the American century, says analyst Gerald Celente, the 21st century is going to be the Chinese century, because the business of America is war and the business of China is business.
Both the US and China are affected by resource limits. Maybe China will do better because of its built infrastructure, but it still needs inexpensive resources, particularly oil, to succeed.
I agree that the effects of the supply disruption take place in steps. We in the US have hardly seen the effects yet. Even countries in Asia are doing surprisingly well.
I am doubtful that very much of the supply loss will ever be recovered because of loss of insurance coverage and continued fighting by one group or another.
The steps listed above seem like reasonable descriptions of what happens. From the point of view of consumers, the result may look like higher prices, empty shelves in stores, and perhaps, limits on what can be purchased. The more that price caps are used, the more likely that products will become unavailable.
Inflation is up close to 3% since the start of the war. Fertilizer is nearly double the price as well. At my Home Depot a bag of Scott’s Bonus S before the war cost less than $30 and now it’s double that at $59.97
About a week ago you said fertilizer was normal at your store so the jump just happened.
Correct!
Regardless of the time frame it’s now double.
Consumer fertilizer prolly gonna be unobtainium before consumer diesel.
“Consumer fertilizer prolly gonna be unobtainium before consumer diesel.”
I’ve been telling customers, buy now because if they think the price is high now, it could go much higher or may not be available at all.
Rod you finna get fired for them loose lips you might scare the children.
Plenty of cow poop compost products at home Depot and Walmart in the states. Things take time.
Yes, and we are also floating on the previous surpluses ( partially past energy stream induced ), e.g. as mentioned earlier there was bumper crop of grape wines ( globally ), and over-supply of milk and derivatives in the EU, sold bellow market prices – given away for ~free essentially! So, lets continue to gorge on these two segments* ( and others ) and then on frosty evenings of the lean future tell grand kinds how was it like to live and eat in the age of such excess from ” eye-witness / direct participant ” account, hah.
—
* ~cooking +5dayz per week non stop from it..
Overall, French consumption of petroleum products stands at 60 million tonnes, a decrease of 25.9% since 2005, resulting in a forced energy transition. This is all the more significant given that the population has continued to grow.
In 1973, 127 million tonnes were consumed ; in 2015, 76 million tonnes – the trend is clear. The drop has been dramatic since 2000 (96 million tonnes).
The majority of consumption is road fuel, mainly diesel, which is consumed in transport (61%), a proportion that has increased sharply since 2005 (50%), indicating that the adjustment has been made, essentially, on heating and industrial uses.
Jet fuels, on the other hand, constitute 8% of consumption.
The concentration of consumption in transportation indicates that it will be difficult to do much better at current levels. Barely 15% of consumption is allocated to the service and residential sectors. That’s negligible.
In April 2026, consumption had fallen by 6.5% compared to March, and by 9.1% compared to 2025. In May, we don’t do what we like, and over the first 10 days, the decline is 30%, which indicates that the economy is sinking fast.
Energy consumption per capita is decreasing, but much more slowly than oil consumption, proving that we are not actively addressing consumption, the greatest lever we have, and that we are either very timid or very subservient to energy companies, particularly the largest one, EDF. 7738 kWh per capita in 2010, 6415 in 2023.
Regarding renewables, although there was a lot of dragging, production has increased from 200 TWh (1990s) to almost 400 in 2024. Here too, little effort has been made to address potential energy savings, and solar thermal energy is entirely negligible, undoubtedly due to its efficiency, which would have caused EDF (the French electricity company) considerable trouble. When Jean-François Copé suggested making it mandatory for new construction, as in Spain, he retorted that we weren’t in the USSR. Personally, I wasn’t aware that Spain had been part of the Soviet Union.
For gas, there was a significant decrease from 42 million tonnes (2010) to 35 million (2015). Local production has ceased; only a small amount of biomethane is produced, but this represents only 1/9 of what the Lacq gas field produced.
Globally, we are seeing a decrease in stocks of 4 million barrels per day, coupled with a 12% drop in deliveries. Therefore, what has absorbed a large part of the production decline is the imposed frugality.
Patrick Raymond .
Ravi, thanks for the post. I was not aware how poor France has become.
It is indeed a sad situation in France.
I can see why China’s Belt and Road initiative to Europe might not be all that helpful.
Peter Thiel in Argentina now. It really is the new host. I’m just spreading the word.
https://x.com/BowTiedMara/status/2056056046695686383
@BowTiedMara
Peter Thiel ended up at a chess club in Abasto and participated in a tournament. He finished third.
Dude is one of the most important and richest people in the world and is living a quiet life in Argentina 🇦🇷, love to see it.
Good luck controlling it’s Spanish speaking apes.
South America is good spot for post collapse
MJ mentions FerFal below – SA will not be a good spot post-collapse.
Peter thiel is one of the elders that is why he had trump try to steal Greenland perfect spot to survive the end of days
Years ago a expatriate of Argentina going by the name “Ferfal” had a very useful blog, website title “Surviving in Argentina” and still available today
https://ferfal.blogspot.com/
He even wrote two books, available on Amazon. One of which, I purchased and found it helpful, but thank God have not needed in a collapse setting
The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse Paperback – September 11, 2009
by Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre (Author)
I believe he may have a channel on YouTube. If I remember correctly he left Argentina because it was very unstable and life dangerous. Moved to Europe and kinda lost touch with his current communications.
If anyone here does please post. Very nice gentlemen and hope he’s doing well.
Looking at the site, one title I see is “Learning to Live with Violence.” There is also something (an ad?) about water filters. I remember hearing about the survival manual when it came out. It is interesting that the author moved to Europe to escape the situation.
Hey Gail, happy to report Fernando is alive and well on Youtube…
https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernSurvivalist/videos
The website I provided is old and that article was from back in 2020, but the index is still there for other subjects that might be of help to others preparing for what appears to ge knocking at our door.
In any case, I need to catch up to what Ferfal is discussing nowadays..
Another resource from Balkan wars which for citizens were pretty much collapse scenario. Energy collapse will make these look like pin pricks.
Because the oil age was characterized by abundant and affordable energy, high standards of living, and incredible technology collapse will consist of people salvaging pockets remaining from that era for a long time. A problem is humans have evolved like all species do to use the best energy sources. Evolving to use a energy source with high energy density is easy . Evolving from high density energy sources to low is not easy. The skill sets, physical evolution, and perception of the world becomes based on the high density energy source. Obviously younger humans will do better in this environment for a variety of reasons. Those that are actually able to embrace the new physicality.
If I remember this guy leveraged family extensively in the balkans. Neighborhood also but it was a wary alliance only instituted when “strangers” were present. Barter occured. Batteries were the most desired barter item. Radios provided emotional support that there was a functional world outside of the nations effected. This is from memory and mine seems to be less accurate with age.
https://www.shtfschool.com/
Send this to the 22,000 Zuckerberg is firing this week .
” during my last year at meta there were probably 4-5 layoffs, but this one on 5/20 is huuuge
my friends still there are either just waiting hoping to get laid off or extremely anxious because the job is their lifeline
i remember the very first big layoff the night before was almost like doomsday, people were stuffing their bags with free snacks and drinks and chargers
very weird time to be in big tech .
https://x.com/adelwu_/status/2055494530829516804?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2055494530829516804%7Ctwgr%5Eaa8e21029952ffaaf1449804e1dab1c42986d59a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Fd-day-huuuge-meta-layoffs-next-week-ai-job-apocalypse-accelerates
“golden handcuffs”
Commentary on Irans strike on UAE nuclear power plant.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q6uuDA59ZkQ
Nice. BNS creeping under cover of the ceasefire.
This is related to Agememnon’s post below.
Of course, the previous attack was on a site that stored nuclear war heads in Israel.
Or the first comment to the video says, “It is false flag by israel to bring USA back to hot war on Iran.”
We don’t know with all of these things. The drones can be made to change direction. Has Iran claimed to hit UAE?
Otherwise, the point is that Iran can hit anything it wants to in UAE. The backup emergency diesel-powered generator is essential.
“Has Iran claimed to hit UAE?”
Not as far as I’ve seen and there is little reporting in Iranian media(or Lebanese and Yemeni media). In fact there is more reporting about the fire in Japan’s Diahoji temple(sad news, but the Iranians are thinking of you Tim).
Saudi, who also claim to have been attacked, say that the drones came from Iraq and it was revealed last week that the non Semite squatters have two hidden bases in Iraq. Iraq has just announced that no outsiders are allowed to use its territory for attack. Probably all just a coincidence.
If the child raping squatters explosion happened first, the other two were just convenient cover for their own self inflicted boom boom.
Unfortunately for the white squatters, UAE and Saudi, no one likes them, so they’ll only get sympathy from each other and the few other fake nations that love kiddie killing. Everyone else just shrugs and smiles.
No denial either though, hm, but somehow that’s not worth mentioning or weighting. The only thing worth weighting is Iranian propaganda.
One thing I disagreed with Malcolm on is that diesel backup power at NPPs is decentralized and with redundancies, for obvious reasons. So the backup power has not been eliminated at that plant like he implies. The proof of that is in the fact that the plant hasn’t been put into cold shutdown. If the plant had no backup power, it would have to shut down.
That doesn’t make the strike any less of a warning shot, it makes it a warning shot. Taking out backup power is not a warning shot, it’s a technical disabling.
Somebody said history does not repeat but it does rhyme.
Warren Buffett mentioned the Guns of Sarajevo. I cannot find the quote, but if history rhymes with the Great War, we might see Pax Indica.
A Shashi Tharoor did mention Pax Indica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Indica:_India_and_the_World_of_the_Twenty-first_Century
If history rhymes, USA would be the British Empire at that time, Japan will play the role of France, South Korea will play the role of Italy, EU plays the role of Russia, China plays the role of Germany, Russian Federation plays the role of Austria, Iran plays the role of Turkey, and North Korea the role of Bulgaria.
After the US-Japan-SK-EU faction and the China-Russia-Iran-NK factions exhaust themselves, India jumps on the side of USA, etc.
Since India can supply an unlimited amount of soldiers, the strategic balance shifts and the Entente wins.
Whoever would be the leader of India by that time will travel to Tokyo to draft the Treaty of Imperial Palace, and India gets to lead the world.
Of course that means the peak of the world will be India, and whatever will succeed the UN will be headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
https://youtu.be/5mn6jjYiCM8?si=_9fq1tCaxfYGDyx6
The Mumbai the tourists won’t see
That’s how the world seems to be heading to.
The sky is a whole lot clearer than when I visited Mumbai. Maybe today’s smog will be gone.
Ants avoid processed sugar. This is news to me.
https://www.trenpa.in/blogs/traditional-sugars/ants-and-refined-white-sugar-what-makes-them-wary
Interesting. I set out my hummingbird feeder today with refreshed pure cane sugar solution. 1 part sugar, 3 parts water. Now a ruby throated male is defending it. Very territorial when it comes to a huge energy source. Sound familiar?
Unrefined sugar has iron in it and it will poison the hummers with iron.
I understand that there are some microbes that live off of electricity.
It seems the gulf countries are more concerned about selling oil rather than conserving it. In other news:
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/component/content/article/very-large-explosion-rocks-israel?catid=17&Itemid=101
Selling it is conserving it. Money makes energy surpluses useable.
Big explosion in Israel!
“Additional Information coming in at this hour is that fully functional rockets AND NUCLEAR WARHEADS are stored to that location.”
“Iran has notified regional countries, primarily the UAE and Saudi Arabia, that if war resumes, Iran will launch devastating, crushing strikes on oil wells and energy facilities.”
As the energy crisis worsens, the automotive industry already faces the threat of a global collapse.
If we view private car use as a global socio-technical system, this means that, from a broad perspective, the passenger car mobility accounts for approximately 150 EJ of the world’s annual energy consumption of 600 EJ. (The aviation sector requires 16 EJ annually.)
In other words, private car use consumes a quarter of humanity’s energy resources.
Driving a car isn’t a basic human need; food is.
What might an energy-efficient passenger transport system look like in the future?
Or, to be more precise: What mobility services can an energy-poor (European) economy afford in 5 to 15 years?
Yes, interesting approach.
But as everything this glorified personal bubble aka indiv. passenger car usage evolved as MPP forcing from the gargantuan energy inrush, while other more sane and energy eff. options were/are available.
Namely, combo of (foldable) e-bicycle and public e-transport via trolley buses-trams ( on top of core subways network ), which can be ~cheaply deployed throughout huge megalopolies should we had to keep this living arrangement in the first place. But such sys does exist only sporadically at few places though. I guess more ants-y and longer-termish type of civilization would be arranged like that not these human-oids..
They have produced a lot of electric cars so the rich countries will be fine
Yes, these gigantic fleets of hybrids and EVs ( already produced ) will be kept in motion on self-cannibalized spare parts ( and trickle charged ) several decades into the future. The more pressing issue will be the over-all in-security and low/none upkeep of the roads though.
It will be indeed interesting sight, various legacy holders to the car concept on the same road with caravans of beggars etc. Basically, ~3rd world d/d inferno conditions like coming to your area ( and lurking into your very own personal space ).
” Yes, these gigantic fleets of hybrids and EVs ( already produced ) will be kept in motion on self-cannibalized spare parts ( and trickle charged ) several decades into the future. ”
No chance . Without the special diagonistic equipment ( proprietry) and special tooling cannot be done . Repairs with standard tooling died with the death of the carburater and distributor electric system The switch over to the ECU ( Electronic Control Unit ) was the death knell of the independent repair shops . There is no going back .
? The idea simply based on the observable fact as long as the spare parts last ( cannibalizing the stock of pre-existing vehicle parts and general electronics diag toolz out there ) it will be maintained. Perhaps only for + 1-2decades w. out outside intervention / trade after ” the collapse event “..
There is no ” proprietary ” we are talking already hacked stuff as of NOW.. Tinkering people always disassembled and re-arrange other’s contraptions to their own enjoyment / benefit.
My friend’s son (13) is making all kinds of doodlebugs and franken-steerers from old farm machinery and rusted out vehicles on their farm.
Interesting point! The cars used in Cuba are very old US cars. These old cars can be repaired with off-the-shelf parts, or from cannibalizing other cars. No fancy electronics to diagnose what is wrong is needed.
The first long-distance mail flights used to be manned by a pilot and a mechanic, who had a little kit of spare parts and tools.
Amusing stories of forced landings, and the mechanic working feverishly to do the repairs before nasty natives closed in, or they died of hunger and thirst.
I can’t really see this model applying to current motor vehicles. Wishful thinking.
Yup, will be fueled by solar power.(/sarc)
THE LAST YEARS OF
THE OIL AGE
Physics kills Oil and Cars
https://www.peakoil.ch/media/files/the_end_of_oil_covered_230920.pdf
This is an impressive 2023 book by someone who understands physics and briefly worked in the oil industry. He is arguing that a corrected version of the calculation by the Hills Group is needed. The maximum supportable oil price tends to drop after peak oil.
Berndt Warm ist posting here:
https://www.wallstreet-online.de/diskussion/1157619-1/peak-oil-und-die-folgen
the original passenger transport system used to pass my door exactly 200 years ago
it required 150 horses, 15 drivers, 50+ handlers to move maybe a dozen people 155 miles in 16 hours…. And there was never more than a 10 minute time leeway in the schedule..
to ride on it cost 2 months average working man’s wages—hence only the very rich went anywhere.
it was, in 1825, the fastest stagecoach in the world..
then somebody invented railways…..oops.
this is why there will be no long distance travel (on our modern scale) in the future.
Well, I get you focused only on the very top stagecoach segment, so you exaggerated the over-all societal non-mobility a bit.
But, realistically, people moved a lot anytime, but it was very slow, chiefly on foot and sometime ( if ~prioritized ) got even seat at mule/cattle driven wagon caravan’s cargo area, be it for these weekly/monthly/seasonally events as in produce-market access and or moving to another job for another master to diff. location etc.
Obviously, lower nobility, some trades people, even priests individually rode horses and on longer routes they switched them at known travel points around (~pubs/sleepover)..
That’s why in hist. record they tend to make such a deal about describing perceived security at roads in general, especially during local or over-all state apparatus periods of decay. It’s ~comparable like today evening news reporting about hw robbery at fuel station, lol.
I remember a long while ago here someone wrote, it may have even been you, Norm,
“For the commoner, there will be little reason to travel further from the field crop/ garden to the dung, compost, outhouse, back again from the roof over ones head….” or something similar.
I agree with that myself…especially when shoes or sandals are luxury items
Again, not all commoners were confined to their locale. They had to verge out [ regularly ] to the market in nearest larger village or city. We can only debate how large % / %% of them per given historical period were taken part in such activity.
You can just look at older maps and read a bit of accounts of these times. City markets were served for weekly from say upto ~15-25km distance, that’s basic veggies, eggs – poultry reachable by foot etc. The bi/weekly or monthly trade – market venues featured longer distances with more expensive cargo: wine, garments-wardrobe etc. as these merchants could afford to sleep-over INSIDE the city limits, otherwise lowly peasants had to swiftly run home in the late afternoon before the ” police hour “.. and city gates shutting down.
To deny these simple facts is atrocious posture to our recent history of few K-yrs. Perhaps Norm is more into mossy-foggy bottom villages and witch hunting caves of old England; while this described system encompassed ~99% of continental Europe, I’m appalled you don’t know about it.
PS and they wore wooden ~clogs..
I don’t know about that, especially if the so called “roads” or dirt paths are unsafe and the only safe place is in the Dukes castle within the walls maybe 30 minutes away from the field ..
But you can surmise all you wish..time will reveal it all eventually.
In Late Roman Empire times a popular design on the coins was a “Camp Gate” that provided a measure of safe haven
For English farmers going to, and returning from, the local market town on Saturdays, just look at the paintings of Gainsborough from the second half of the 18th c – they had farm carts and donkeys.
Others with things to do could hitch a lift with them or the local carrier – even to London.
Coal miners loaded their coals on pack horses in some districts.
an average wage for—say–an agricultural worker, was one shilling (12 old English pennies) per day.
distances varied, but right here, where i live, all roads carried a toll—a distance of, about 20 miles, might have 4 toll stations… a penny if you were walking, two pennies if riding a horse—and so on.
villlages were pretty self contained, so poor people tended not to go anywhere distant.—a penny was a lot of money back then.
this is why, in uk there’s a distinct change of accent every 10 miles or so.—people move around, though of course we are losing that now,
people ‘didnt’ move around—my typo
I have heard that in Norway, every valley had its own dialect.
” lower nobility, some trades people, even priests individually rode horses and on longer routes they switched them at known travel points around (~pubs/sleepover)”
Even today, travel is something still associated with wealth and affluence.
the term ”strange bedfellows”—alludes to the fact that as a traveller you were expected to share a bed—not just a room—with a stranger unless you paid extra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-responsive_transport
This is a chart that I found on my facebook feed. It is from a recent video interview by Nate Hagen of Art Berman. This chart is a chart of Art’s that I have not seen before.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Art-Berman-Chart-adding-togher-steel-cement-fertilizer-and-plastic.png
I am not sure how Art added together the various amounts. Perhaps by weight. The 1972 LTG analysis added together items by weight.
The conclusion seems to be that peak “stuff” (not per capita) occurred in 2021.
Thanks, Gail, for the peak stuff chart.
New car sales peaked in 2018 in Finland, which is one of the countries with the highest car density in the world.
Fifty years ago, public bus transportation worked perfectly; that has not for the stagflation decades been the case.
In five years, I hope we’ll have the Turkish dolmuş minibus concept working. The origin of the concept is in the Great Depression and could be seen as an example of Demand-responsive transport.
In this video Chris Martenson evaluates data center feasibility and energy consumption. It is outrageously dysfunctional. The unfeasability is of a scale that it actually makes Keith’s power satellites seem a reasonable proposition. As I watched I was stunned at the scale of the issues both in quantity and in the severity of the unfeasability. Among other things I can’t understand why any CEO or board would not immediately cancel any project with even a tiny percentage of these issues. There is something very wrong with this data center thing. Chris speaks to that also. What exactly do these things do that turn 9 GIGAwatts of LNG into waste heat for a single data center?
One data center.
“Waste heat equal to 24 nuclear weapon detonations daily”
We’re doing this as we encounter a reduction in oil equal to 25 percent reduction of global supply and widespread reduction in resulting agricultural products for food production? Chris also asks a question that I have wondered for years? Why change energy into money? Does it make sense to change a finite resource into money?
The world has silmataneously gone mad and become exponentially incompetent.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hMK9blAZ4l0&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D
Money makes energy surpluses useable. That’s why money is the proxy for energy surpluses.
The AI bubble is just a GDP generator. It’s the new bubble with room to run debtwise. All the other bubbles are saturated. And the US has a glut of natural gas. It’s a bridge to nowhere just like the civilization as a whole. A waste-based economy as Steve Ludlum always called it.
Where are you getting the 25pc figure you keep mentioning?
Re 25. Repeating various pundits. All are from 22 to 25.
That must not be taking into account the diverted Saudi and UAE oil.
That could well be what’s the correct number?
10-15 I think
I think you are correct. Will adjust any ongoing reference . If the overall 25 percent is correct the east west Pipeline is 35 to 40 of that it would yield 15 percent world energy reduction certainly not as bad as 25 percent.
Nothing is leaving Fujaira. UAE is possibly regarded as less of a “friend” than Saudi though that’s hard to imagine.
Trumps decision to enter this war is absaloutly catastrophic. To ignore the Sunni Shia competition for dominance of Islam is silly. Saudi had wised up after the Aramco attack and realized Iran had some serious capabilities and their infrastructure was soft. Hence the normalizing of relations.. That was superficial but it certainly could have grown real allowing more tolerance between the two branches of Islam. The war has ended all that and the undercurrent of hostility has grown many fold.
That’s the reality behind iIran friend status. Certainly there is real cause not to be friends but there is also a religious conflict that is a fever pitch. Iran as the underdog with low self esteem is not going to just let things slide. This is yet another reason why killing the moderates was incredibly stupid. Why would Iran let the monarchs move oil through the strait when they are religious and political enemies? As Iran has clearly stated only “friends” allowed. That’s what people don’t get. Certainly Iran detests the USA but it’s not a religious rival. In many ways the Gulf monarchs are less “friends”than the USA. Local beef. Personal.
Will Iran return to a uneasy co existence with its Sunni neighbors allowing the energy transit we saw before the war? It’s possible. Some guidance from China will help. The Gulf monarchs have more or less held dominance. Now Iran holds dominance. It’s their time in the sun. The moderates are dead.
It will take time if it happens. Years. The world doesn’t have years.
USA should walk. That would remove one barrier to oil strait. Telling Iran they must open the strait. Everytime that is done Iran decided to keep it closed longer.
Then the Gulf Monarchs have to face the new reality. They are not the boss anymore. Kind of hard for a monarch. As long as they dis Iran strait stays closed. It would start with what we call diplomacy. Practicing respect. Skills grow through practice.
Diplomacy is a long long way away and would just be the beginning.
Gail is right. China is the only possible mediator. Their non religious basis is a huge asset. That doesn’t mean this catastrophic mess will get solved soon. We can hope China will be accepted as a objective mediator. Prosperity is the carrot. There is enough prosperity in the black goo to attenuate the religious animosity that is reality now. But make no mistake. Religious animosity is the reality now.
The uneasy coexistence of before is far from a given. Iran is in a position to finish the job. Remove the monarchs. I think this is likely Irans decision. Why? Their behavior. All they have to do is sit tight. Their preconditions for negotiations are deal killers and they know it. Every day their leverage resulting from strait closure grows. I said it before I said it again. Time. Iran is using time. They use the geo physical. They use time.
China has to convince Iran not to finish the job before they get back to business. I think Iran would prefer to finish the job first. The world economy is collateral damage. Allowing some traffick through the strait is attempting to create selectivity in their weapon. Selectivity reduces but does not eliminate collateral damage.
All of which China understands. China is not exactly unprepared for a longer strait closure than what’s penciled in from hopium now. China understands time also. China could blow smoke too. China is finishing its own job too. IMO they are lot less radical than Iran in their techniques.i certainly appreciate that. China also is capable of making hard decisions. They are ust not bold. Bold equals stupid. Bold equals moronic. Luck runs out.
The 25% may include the Russian oil off line.
Thanks yeah that’s a great point. That’s ‘
2mbpd. Another, what, 2.5%?
It seems like maybe 25% of world exports might be offline which means dog and all of us could use the 25% in that context. It’s a hell of a number that’s for sure.
The 10% low end of my range was ridiculous, sorry.
not quite correct….
energy surplus makes money viable…
and when you have energy surplus, you are only using money as tokens of energy exchange—therefore you can only print money to the level of the surplus energy available…..
if you do not have an energy surplus, then you can print as much money as you like—it will not create more energy…
this is where hyper-inflation comes from….
political leaders start to run out of energy, so they print money to make up the shortfall….
in no time at all, you need a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.
What if you went to build a god and no energy came?
Wars and God building. Such great uses of surplus energy. That’s only surplus now not in the future because of depletion. Why not leave it in the ground until you need it rather than burn it off as heat God building in the desert. What if the god you build desires the energy consumed by humans also? Species do compete for energy.
You see the plan is quite simple replace the majority of oil guzzling passenger journeys with AI workers which will not need to commute to work so that will be a big saving in energy this will have the effect of more competition for the remaining jobs.
The heat dump from that Utah data center is going to make Saudi look like the north pole. It will not be survivable for humans without air conditioning. Those condensors are going to have fun trying to dump heat into air that’s already 125. The heat will kill most life in the environment. Air does not have much capacity to hold heat. As heat gets dumped into temperature rises radically as a result. Certainly a nice thing in cold climates. As Martenson says a toaster oven. Human workers and the data center are the toast. More like a space heater placed in a aquarium. Yes air temperature will rise when you drop 9 gigawatts of waste heat into it.
There won’t be a cold season per se. The normal soil temperature where the yearly mean of air temperature at 30 feet depth will get hotter and hotter as the soil adapts the mean air temperature.
Underground housing will have to be deep for the workers. But eventually the soil will reach mean air temperature. They will emerge from their tunnels to service their AI God the environment around them baked from the heat.
And this is being done because?
It’s already been said that a lot of “global warming” is just the heat island effect in cities that burn lots of fossil fuels. Data centers, if they are ever built will exacerbate that because machines will not replace humans by using less overall energy. The efficiency rhetoric is a pack of lies. Machines do more work, work more quickly, etc. than humans by using more energy.
Don throttles down (again) Taiwan’s mil ambitions..
(as hinted before the CHN trip)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-comment-about-negotiations-on-taiwan-heightens-concerns-over-china
PS while ~securing $500BLN tech/chip investments from them..
Talk is there was a trade. China saves the dons buttocks in Iran. Don backs way off on Taiwan. Speculation.
And US keeps Venezuela. Probably not stated now, but it is likely where this is going. Venezuela owes debt to China to be repaid in oil. Trump has come in and taken over. China hasn’t objected too much so far.
Politics of it aside, functionally it sounds an awful lot like the HTOE (Horsetrading Theory of Everything) in action, excepting Iran. Excepting Iran is fine because I don’t believe that China has any say on Iranian decision making. That really is a silly idea to me. Iran War is the BNS which certainly concerns the HTOE but not exclusively as it serves its own function.
The HTOE featured/s a primary three way trade with the third one being Russia taking all of Ukraine, which is soon to come, but has been a long time coming.
so the USA really gave away nothing and the Chinese are idiots?
The US scaled back its Taiwan ambitions.
they signed jcpoa, minsk and minsk2 too.
Yes, but this one is different.
Taiwan wants large oem mil. gear and installments as deterrent, while the UKR thing was about quite secretly training the cadre in the west and also clandestinely building underground fortresses on the E. border within city limits. That’s why they have been slowly fighting there about each km, kind of WWI trench war effort past ~4yrs.
It simply took years before new production lines on drones, smaller midsized cruise missiles and ~smart shells came online. Hence only now with delay the coming sheer wave of destruction ( a thousand strikes per day, every day/week/month/..), so by this Q3 or Q1 next year there won’t be any undisturbed block of concrete left in many hundreds km lines of these former ~fortresses.. Only then the regular army rolls in and stays put.
In Europe they hope to stall this advancement by venturing into massive arms production ( tweaked for such type of conflict ) themselves as well, but this effort seems too late as of now, perhaps they will ~secure / deny just 1/4 – 1/5th of the former place longterm in the end.
So The USA promised to give Taiwan weapons they do not have.
To “NOT” give Taiwan weapons they do not have.
This whole thing boils down to the US not sticking their oar in when it comes to Taiwan. That’s it, as shown by Trump when he called the Taiwanese leader “that guy, you know who”. He did this exact same thing to the Ukrainian dwarf.
Arming Taiwan can not be done without China’s approval and as the rare earths ban made clear, no more.
This is basically the agreement
“the bottom line is that both sides must abide by the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, respect each other’s social systems and development paths, respect each other’s core interests and major concerns, and respect each other’s right to development”
Wang Yi
How long do you think the yanks can keep their word?
Do they even understand the word respect.
https://english.news.cn/20260516/d4287f7cdf4842db90dee55f811093bb/c.html
For those still clinging to China bailing out the US where Iran is concerned, take note of the wording(down the bottom of the article).
The only concern, is the hint of opening the door further.
Personalized news for NP:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/canadas-assisted-suicide-program-could-include-teens-and-infants#comment-stream
I think we saw this link recently. NP doesn’t need it. He keeps himself active and healthy at age 90.
It is unfortunate that assisted suicide has the stigma it does. In the US, the system spends an absurd amount of money keeping people in terrible health alive.
If the economy needs to shrink in size, healthcare is almost certainly in need of downsizing. I can understand why Canada might consider the direction it is going.
As with so many things, the human element is problematic. We can build beautiful systems to try to minimize suffering and help suffering people who need help, and these systems work well much of the time. But the systems won’t work as planned if the people organizing and administering the systems are corrupt and they are not properly audited and policed because their overseers are corrupt too.
There have been cases, notably in Canada, in which people who were not in need of suicide or desirous of suicide have been coerced into “voluntary euthanasia” because at some level the system in Canada is incentivizing this practice.
When I’ve brought this up, I have been met with bland objections from people who should know better but who don’t want to. These people seem quite content for institutional murder to take place even if it’s systematic or on an industrial scale, and they would rather not have to think about it. They are not troubled by it as long as they can look away, like the people passing by on the other side of the street in the parable of the Good Samaritan. And not being troubled by the pain or injustice suffered by others is cool in today’s world. It’s the current conventional wisdom. Compassion and concern are for bleeding hearts.
I’m not asking for anyone to get up and protest about things they are not interested in protesting about. But I do ask that everyone honestly acknowledge the abuses that are going on and not try to pretend that they don’t go on. I know people try top pretend because they have a conscience that tells them if they become aware of abuse, they have a duty to oppose it, so pretending it doesn’t go on is a way of soothing their own conscience about being too busy, too tired, or too apathetic to get involved.
There was a story today in the Japanese Asahi Shimbun. An old man aged 93, living alone and in fairly good health in Tokyo, had a medical emergency and was sent to hospital. Once inside, the doctors signed off on documentation that he had a level of dementia that prevented him from handling his own finances.
If an individual’s cognitive function declines beyond a certain level, in Japan, they are legally deemed unable to perform contractual acts, and so a guardian can be appointed to handle and protect their assets. This is a wonderful system to help guard old people against unscrupulous or heartless thieves or conmen.
But in this case, the old man was perfectly mentally competent, but was not performing at his intellectual peak due to being ill enough to require hospitalization at the time. However, the system, including doctors, lawyers, administrators, and appointed guardians, conspired to deprive this man of his freedom and his right to exercise control over his assets. He was kept in “care” for several years against his will, but eventually regained his freedom after filing a lawsuit. Currently he is suing a number of individuals within the system with a view to obtaining compensation—something he would be unable to do if he really was as cognitively challenged as the doctors and others had claimed he was.
Welcome to civilization. Welcome to institutionalism. Welcome to Ilich’s Medical Nemesis. If all of these nested entity’s aren’t killing people all the time then they’re not doing their job. So they do kill all the time. And people expect them to continue because there are pros and cons to everything political.
Ah, but they were not killing people 20 years ago with quite as much gusto that they are killing people now—as rising death rates and falling life expectancy statistics attest.
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse!
And they are not killing people as enthusiastically in Japan, at least as far as I know, perhaps out of lingering Confucian filial piety?
Two women from my village who became bedridden and comatose after having strokes just after the turn of the century were both kept “alive” through mechanical means for almost 20 years in our local hospital, without ever regaining consciousness. Then both were reported as having died in 2020. A cousin of my wife’s who developed ALS an was similarly bedridden and unable to move, although he seems to have remained conscious to some extent, also died finally in 2021.
Beyond respect for the aged, I assume there was some kind of financial incentive for the hospitals to keep them alive for all those years despite them having no realistic chance of recovering and a very poor quality of life. Comatose patients that only need to be moved two or three times a day are a lot less trouble to deal with than active and potentially cantankerous bedridden patients, so if the health system is paying the same rate per patient, I know which kind I’d prefer to take care of.
Respect for the Aged Day (敬老の日, Keirō no Hi), which falls on September 15, is a public holiday in Japan celebrated annually to honor elderly citizens. Do Americans or Europeans get a paid holiday once a year to honor their elders?
I know the Chinese and Koreans are also very big on honoring and showing respect for their elders. Euthanasia in both its active and passive forms remains illegal in all three countries. I’m not saying it doesn’t go on behind closed doors, but it is generally frowned upon.
Incidentally, Japanese people often refer to strangers who are their seniors using the Japanese equivalents of elder brother/sister, uncle/aunt, father/mother, or grandfather/grandmother.
For instance, when I was negotiating to buy a new smartphone a few month’s ago, the young lady at the phone shop several times called me otosan (father) and my wife okaasan (mother). It made me realize my age, I can tell you.
These “generic” names indicate a certain degree of respect without the intimacy that comes with using a person’s actual name, together with an acknowledgement of the difference in age between the speaker and listener. Next time I change my phone, the even younger lady, or possibly the gynoid by then, may well refer to me as ojiisan (grandfather).
your life belongs to you alone, to do with as you wish, once you reach the age of maturity, interfering busybodies try to inflict their opinions on that, which they have no right to do.
Canadians seem very civilised about the whole idea—idiots misrepresent it all—nobody is forcing anyone to die. The Zerohedge piece was their usual BS.
our current system of sustaining life at any cost is crazy—but we have painted ourselves into that corner—and doctors love to ‘practice’…
my time can’t be far off. (I know that (some) OFW’ers will miss me), when it arrives I hope I can bow out quickly and gracefully, with as little trouble as possible to anyone…no doubt my kids will divvy up the loot and spend it…
…my ideal would be to be shot by a jealous husband on my 99th birthday.
You’re like Hemingway meets Jerry Springer. Norm’s tombstone epitaph:
“your life belongs to you alone, to do with as you wish, once you reach the age of maturity, interfering busybodies try to inflict their opinions on that, which they have no right to do.…my ideal would be to be shot by a jealous husband on my 99th birthday.”
well reante—point out where i’m wrong….but thank you for the literary crossreference….
if i suddenly fail to post on ofw in 9 year time—you will know my wish has been fulfilled.
You’re welcome I’ve always thought highly of Springer’s monologues.
Oh you’re not wrong per se. Outside of timeless values, values largely vary according to the variable conditions of the local ecology, like Gail says. For you that’ll probably mean getting stabbed though instead of shot, because knifings are the conditional values of your local ecology. Which is even cooler!
i’m ok with that as long as my assassin knows what he’s doing, and doesnt mess it up.—though of course i would try to point out that his wife would be very unhappy at my demise…
LOL. Think of your wife!!! That’s good stuff Norm.
dont worry
i am just a wordweaver—-stories can work magic
The think of your wife exclamation (to the husband) was me quoting your last words on this earth as you were getting savaged. 😄
dont worry
i suspect she’s taken out an insurance policy on such an eventuality—as she’s only 23, she will live well on the payout, and will be able to afford a gigolo for occasional diversions.
That makes you a sugar daddy. All or nothing baby. Only way she takes a life insurance policy out on you is if you gave her a credit card and a matching EV and the husband’s “down to catch a body instead.”
Gangstarr song:
https://youtu.be/qAjAdM25KHE
she’s always telling me how sweet i am, and has done since she proposed to me—i’m suspicious that she only wants to get her hands on my book royalties though
You only get that feeling post coitally though right? No worries that’s just the biochemical trough.
Indeed – despite not agreeing with you in many places, your voice will be missed here also by my person.
If you think that degrowth is an option watch this video which as far as I can tell is from the early 1970’s in Ireland. My wife knows how to spin and her daughter has a spinning wheel. We live in the middle of nowhere in Down East Maine and I don’t think I have ever seen sheep. Pretty discouraging.
I remember hearing that the reason unmarried ladies are called spinsters is because, at one time, they spent nearly all their time spinning wool. A huge amount of hand work went into sweaters and socks before machines took over this role. Clothes were very expensive for most people.
While she sat spinning, he was working on someone else’s land because he was just starting out and had none of his own. Here’s a note on the origin of bachelor, from someone smarter than me writing at Reddit seven years ago:
In Latin, “bachelor” is baccalaureus (or baccalarius). Flattering themselves, medieval scholars thought it came from the phrase bacca lauri, which means “laurel berry,” since the bachelor’s degree was a mark of honor, just like the laurel wreath that crowned ancient athletes and poets, as in “poet laureate.” But the true etymology of the word is pretty much unknown; it may have something to do with cows (vacca in Latin, where that “v” can sound like “b” in some Romance languages) but that’s very suspect.
More probably it’s related to a land measure in the early Middle Ages called a baccalaria, so the peasants who assisted in working it were baccalarius/ia. In later medieval use, “bachelor” meant, first, a young knight without land, then later a junior member of a guild. Its sense of “unmarried person” came from the notion that a bachelor was young and inexperienced, just starting out and not yet established, and therefore not apt to be married. In Latin, universitas and collegium simply meant any organized group; a guild of wool merchants or a guild of bakers could be called a collegium or universitas, which is why modern colleges and universities are names such; in fact, we still use the word for something like the US electoral college.
So the medieval university was essentially a guild of master scholars and their apprentices. In the medieval university, those who gained the bachelor’s degree–a term first appearing in Paris in the 13th-C–were well enough educated to be apprentice teachers but not yet masters. But the origin of the word and its evolution are pretty hazy.
Really nice video. Hilarious in the first minute when they’re pulling sheep out of the trunk/boot of the car. Great way to handle them out in the open by tying them together in bunches. My wife is half Irish by descent and skirts, washes, picks, cards, spins, and weaves our easiest wool from the Icelandics, and felts other wool. She enters a piece at the county fair every year and spins with the ladies there in the demo group.
Lucky Man
“I bear a charmed life which must not yield to one of woman born.” Macbeth. Also in response to houtskool telling me to watch my back.
Gotta keep the sheep grazing!
Around the same time USA had the Foxfire series, based in northern Georgia, just a couple hrs drive from Atlanta
https://youtu.be/1Bdj8YbzTFw?si=zSfzS-80_xgy97Vg
Same peoples different place. Great video!
Anyone noticed that a blockchain based society brings the physical and monetary plane on an equal level? Equal, that is, in functional. Being implemented as we speak. Book a flight? It comes with tokenized carbon credits connected to your digital ID. Pro-active degrowth through tech.
Carbon credits are so last decade. There is zero function for market credits when the market itself is structurally failing in the form of conservation by other means.
Tokenized it becomes a better tool. As we are. Watch your back.
In a world running out of oil, luxuries like air travel would be reserved for the wealthiest 0.01% of society, while anything electronic would be limited to the upper classes. You’re still thinking too high-tech.
you cannot reserve .001% of jet fuel—or anything else.
oil in the context we use it, must be produced in quantity, or effectively not at all.
in any event the same rule applies to any form of transport—all a product of quantity, irrespective of end use.
and wealth will cease to exist, post collapse, because wealth requires something to buy—if nothing is being produced, then the billionaire becomes a pauper like the rest of us…
“and wealth will cease to exist, post collapse, because wealth requires something to buy—if nothing is being produced, then the billionaire becomes a pauper like the rest of us…” – yes, when there are no buyers, there is no value of things. Many things today require a lot of energy to maintain. If that energy disappears, those things become useless..
Maintaining food production is the top priority. And valuable food needs a lot of energy. E. g. growing blackberries is easier than growing blueberries: you need some trellises in case of blackberries, but netting protection for blueberries.
Yeah, you’re probably right.
Classic mistake. You need everyone from janitor to engineers and everyone in between to make the modern conveniences work. That includes flying, iphones and everything else technology provide. Rare earth, iron, plastics, etc requires a full line of supply chain ……
“Complexity Theory argues that any species that is dependent on any non-renewable resource must grow or it will collapse, because as a resource depletes the quality of its reserves declines, which requires increasing complexity and energy for extraction to maintain the flow of supply, and increasing complexity requires a growing population, because each brain can manage a finite level of complexity, which requires a growing supply of resources to support the growing population, and because recycling non-renewable minerals without losses is impossible, and since the energy that supply chains depend on is mostly non-renewable, a point is eventually reached where the complexity of supply chains must break down, and the species returns to a state that is not dependent on non-renewable resources, which for humans is a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. “?
https://un-denial.com/2025/07/12/by-hideaway-eroei/
I don’t thing that going back to hunter-gathering is the solution.
I think that the problem of human overpopulation started with cooked food, over one million years ago. (It allowed brains to improve, at the same time that teeth, chewing apparatus, and digestive apparatus shrank in size.) Hunter gatherers used various means to start fires, one of them by using flints. Flints are of finite supply.
Controlled fire could be put to many uses, including scaring away harmful animals, and keeping warm in cold climates. These uses helped contribute to population growth.
Cooking food seems to be what separates humans from other animals. Once this started, the overpopulation problem got its roots. There was need for ever-more complexity to keep up.
So we need to collapse back to being like other animals–not cooking our food. This is below hunter-gatherers.
Gail going Pure Doom on humans lol.
I haven’t seen Pure Doom like that since the all-time great IM Nobody of The Automatic Earth and Economic Undertow (briefly) departed social media. I was grateful to have had a limited private correspondence with him.
I would argue that animism is natural ontological state of the hominid brain on cooked food that we call the human brain. Cooking food is ecological MPP because Dunbar’s Number still keeps a low and heavy lid on our hunter gatherer population size. Overshoot is limited to the same population dynamics all species are subject to.
Agriculture is the problem. One might correctly argue that big brains from cooking food is what enabled agriculture but I would counter that animism is what enabled our big brains to refuse agriculture for 99pc of our history and big brains freely refusing the MPP is what primal human spirituality is all about.
With big-brained freedom (to enslave the planet) comes big-brained responsibility. Behavioral adaptation to the big brain.
Cultural anthropology has objectively charted how a maladapted variant just took over. That’s not a human failing on the whole, and we were born into the Age of Consequences. I think we should make the most of that opportunity.
How do households without electricity use blockchain?
that’s where free Solar comes in and it lasts forevercharges up your batteries and you have free electricity
Oh my. Where to start…
Perhaps block chain purchased should include photovoltaic equipment? Where exactly do you get those “forever” batteries? I’d like some of those.
ndia is on a road to a fast collapse . Today they banned the import of silver . Huge pressure on currency , CAD and oil inventory .
https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/05-16-2026-precious-metals-india-imposes-new-restrictions-on-silver-imports-323791982677665
If Madagascar , NZ crash would anybody notice ? We are talking about 1400 million people out of these 800 million already on free food . Just in — Starbucks to fire 300 at its outlets in India plus now planning to fire the “back office” in Bangalore— excuse — AI — we don’t need you no more .
US does not extend authorisation to buy Russian oil .
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/05/16/8034980/
Oh, dear!
I used to read pravda.com.ua publications since the ~2004 “1st Maidan” events. They are reasonably reputable (the news portal itself was started and run by the disappeared and later found tortured&beheaded journalist Gongadze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Gongadze)
Rav, good BBC article about India… you’re right looks bad
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c775v7dlndyo
Why Modi wants Indians to buy less gold and take fewer foreign holidays
Soutik Biswas and Nikhil Inamdar
The country imports roughly 90% of its crude oil and half its gas needs. With the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow Gulf chokepoint through which much of the world’s oil flows – shut for more than two months amid the war, India’s import bill has ballooned by billions of dollars.
…..Oil, gas, fertiliser and gold imports are pushing up demand for dollars just as foreign investment inflows weaken, exports slow down and geopolitical uncertainty rattles markets. India’s forex reserves have fallen by $38bn since the Iran war began – one of the sharpest declines in the region.
…..Foreign investors have pulled about $22bn from Indian equities in recent months, driven by concerns over slowing global trade, US tariff threats and India’s ability to compete in emerging industries such as AI, batteries and electric vehicles.
“Since India hasn’t done much in AI or renewable energy or semi conductors, there are not many industries generating the kind of excitement or long-term returns investors now see elsewhere in Asia,” says Sengupta.
Oh my, and the worse is yet to come….
I did not expect any better from the civilizationaly corrupt MainLand Slovakians…
This is really getting tiresome, quite likely more ” Roma peoplez ” have been living within Romania, Hungary, and various Balkans.. than Slovakia proper.
Also lot of them relocated to UK/CAN/.. in the 90s an 00s..
Do they still have ” ~20kids ” as in previous generations, that post WWII lift-up bonanza of state support ended. So I doubt it, they had been curbed by the civ pressure in the end as well as other ethnic groups but with a delay..
It is really difficult to prosper if a country needs to import the majority of its fossil fuel energy supplies. Look at Japan, with its high government debt level. Family sizes have become very small, and population is dropping.
Looking at historical data, at one time, India did have oil, gas, and coal, but
–Oil production hit a peak in 2011, and has been mostly declining since
–Natural gas hit a peak in 2010, and production since then has been lower since
–Coal has been India’s primary fuel source. Its production rose up until 2024.
Regarding India’s 2025 coal supply, the IEA says:
https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2025/executive-summary
“In India, amid weak demand and challenging working conditions due to heavy rains, the growth in coal production seen in recent years came to a halt in 2025.”
This most likely is part of India’s problem, besides the problems with oil and natural gas imports.
So, diligently and lovingly minted by reante StableCoins for Rajendra, Narendra and Pooja, as the final solution?
Silver prices have been bouncing around.
https://silverprice.org/silver-price-chart.html
People assume that silver will hold its value in the future. Maybe and maybe not. Higher interest rates discourage holding silver. So do laws banning the import of silver. If food is scarce, it may be rationed without reference to the amount of silver and other wealth a person seems to have.
In some cultures they have to save up for dowry and or posh funeral, that’s multi decade effort in d/d frugal living – people try to avoid inflation and other govs/biz expropriation schemes deemed to endanger their savings.
Prior to the wall falling India exchange rate didn’t float. Exchange rate was strictly controlled. So Indian people have had a lot of experience with the sometimes arbitrary value of the rupee. Culturally gold and silver are seen as real wealth. I believe the rupee is having some issues. People are probably moving to silver and naya delhi not pleased.
” Prior to the wall falling India exchange rate didn’t float. Exchange rate was strictly controlled. So Indian people have had a lot of experience with the sometimes arbitrary value of the rupee. ”
I have lived under the fixed exchange rate regime in India . The rupee was floated in 1992 which is 34 years ago . So mathematically speaking only those who are now 55 + would have a memory of that period . The GenZ would be at sea if it comes back .
I’m sure your right. I’m old. Been a long long time since I walked that dirt. Seems like last week. One thing we do know is Indians appetite for silver and gold is insatiable.Civilizational? Or am I deluded?
India is a huge silver market. I believe the government itself was buying silver trying to stabilize the rupee or something.. citizens are very fond of silverThis will not be good for silver price.A lot of the silver rise was because of Toyota and Samsung buying silver for the new silver anode batteries. They provide radically better performance in evs cause of the way silver interacts with lithium. Specifically silver prevents dendrite formation in lithium batteries. I question whether their roll out curve remain accurate in the energy reduction environment.
IMO silver is facing some headwinds as is gold. Part of golds appeal has been low bond yields. Ditto for stocks Gold has become a risk asset. I believe this is a risk off environment. Especially if we continue to see bond yields rise. Silver is of course historically very volatile. Silver has grown intertwined with tech. That sword cuts two ways
IMO silver will get clobbered on Monday but as all things who knows.
This is why. Rupee is plunging. People moving to silver accelerating plunge. Delhi trying to stop them.
http://www.thehindu.com/incoming/rupee-falls-to-record-low-of-9563-against-us-dollar/article70969738.ece/amp/
Not to make light of India’s problems, but, as the British who ruled and administered the Raj used to say, “India’s full of grief, old boy!”
When austerity really starts to bite, losing access to Starbucks will be the least of people’s worries. Starbucks isn’t just a coffee shop; it’s really conspicuous consumption for the middle classes. For the price of a Toasted Coconut Latte, I can brew the equivalent of 50 cups of delicious high-quality Espresso at home.
Both India and China experienced famine in the early post-WWII period, but for over half a century they have enjoyed basic food security. Now two of the foundations of that security, namely oil and fertilizer, are under threat, although more in India’s case than China’s, as the latter has a better organized and more robust economy.
If and when it comes, this will be an entirely manmade catastrophe. We could see famine in many parts of the world, and not necessarily the parts that suffer from the highest levels of food insecurity today.
I fond myself wondering whether this Gulf of Hormuz conflict has been planned for the purpose of collapsing the global economy, or if it is just a massive clusterf**k born of incompetence and inability to communicate.
When the coup comes and the interim president is identified, you will wonder no more and you will distract me with small talk while Replenish grabs the cooler of Gatorade. Hindsight is always 20/20 but 20/30 foresight also exists in rare cases.