Recent World News Links and Blog Entries
Recent US News Links and Blog Entries
Selection of rants:
Generalized debt vs. energy
Understanding history deeply can take a long time
Will they get away with it?
Approaching a turning point
Every war starts with a false flag slash LIHOP
Nobel travesty is a slap in the face to hundreds of millions injured and 10-20 million killed
Why spike gain-of-function and leak/release obscure our 2 real problems
Same old horror breaks my heart
Spike is bad, but accidental IV injection of LNP's is the real general problem
Descending into madness pretending everything is OK
It's not like we didn't try to warn you
Are they actually *trying* to kill more vaccinated?
It *did* have to turn out this way
Tide may be turning on the little health Eichmanns
Updated summary of the covid 'vaccine' clusterf$ck
(last update: Sep 2023)
No longer calm: storm
Tin foil body suit
Calm before the storm?
Controlled demolition - part 2
Little scientific Eichmanns - time to wake up!
Most so-called 'left' academics have turned into contemptible fascists
Genetic therapy to make tick bites itchy
Eyes Wide Shut, democratized
Overcoming the zombie apocalyse
Health doesn't come from the barrels of a thousand syringes
Yes, Fauci and Collins should be in jail - but what happens next?
Vaccine clusterf$ck
Understanding and dismantling psyops in real time
Latest UK Delta variant data divided by age
You will own nothing *and* you will be injected monthly to maintain your 'health'
FDA undermines public confidence in health care
Keep our eyes on the prize
Friday the 13th
Is the covid operation finally foundering?
Latest UK data suggests covid vaccines may be causing ADE (update: Jul 31)
Afghanistan, Iran, and oil
Pregnancy: no safety signals? - updated
Pharma gone wild
An unnecessarily steep net energy cliff may be here soon
New properties of the spike protein - it strongly binds hemoglobin
Fauci 'outed' by Bezos' WAPO? . . . riiiight :-}
So now China has infiltrated Fort Detrick . . . riiiight :-}
Crimes against humanity
My comment on the Nass/Kennedy petition to the FDA
You'll wear a mask forever if you don't get vaccinated
Fauci agonistes: "I did not have scientific relations with that lab"
'COVID' after vac - the bare spike protein is toxic
The corona-panic (last update
here)
How to prevent the nightmare scenario
Sledgehammer science and medicine
Biomedical apartheid
The main mechanisms of the covid coup one year later
1984 and Idiocracy got together and had a child
The real Matrix
We can win
GameStop psyop
Keeping your head screwed on
Purge vs. crash
New Brown Lockdown
They Showed Their Faces
It's Not Normal
Six critical considerations for vaccine safety (last update: Mar 03, 2021)
We must fight the descent into 'covid world'
Happy SnitchGiving
'At the doorstep', trying to keep a clear head
Ruptured reality
Look behind the curtain
Fear, science, and policy
The covid coup, seven months out
Totalitarian lockdown, reign of terror, or just a whimper?
Resist now! else we are no longer human beings, but merely permanent biosecurity risks
The covid coup - six months out
It's over!
Will we ever regain perspective so we can focus on bigger problems?
Backfire
Are you brave, guilty, and smart enough?
Letter to a friend
Masks, bellies, statues, and peak net energy
Wile E. Coyote Economy
The covid coup - four months out
Modern biology goes all particle physics
Creepy crawly
Blacks and the police
Color revolution riots, contact tracing, and the second wave
We are *not* in this together
The fake science narrative
Controlled demolition of industrial civilization: the covid coup and peak
net energy
Corona forever: the loss of nerve, and the light at the end of the tunnel
Now what? the corona-panic fallout (a US perspective)
Beware untested vaccines
Another 'New Pearl Harbor'
The Guardian boldly humiliates a salami
The greatest asset price bubble ever
The law [last update: Jan 15, 2020]
The only fix is 'less'
Older can be better when it comes to studies of diet and human health
Schizo!
Not A Rant
Enhanced summon: 'easier' is the downfall of humans
The "father of the sand flea" and the Fed [last update: Jan 27, 2020]
Jared Diamond was (partly) wrong on agriculture
What happened to the Tuscan solar roof?
Stop artificial muscles!
Negative interest rates
Irrational exuberance always continues longer that you expect
Medical research and development is detrimental to health
Smell-o-metric analysis of the human microbiome
Graceful powerdown: no fun (but there are worse alternatives)
Shite science
The Unfortunate, Harsh Reality of Energy Decline
Fossil fuel energy and the Boeing 737 MAX crashes
5G for the serfs
Scientists and nurses
Your scientific credit score
Never ignore the first principal component
The New Green Deal is Hope and Change 2.0
You can't beat photosynthesis
Bitcoin and bunker oil
The PPI disaster
Just say no to brain-penetrating nanoparticles
Poppy
Gag me with an exoskeleton
Bubble, bubble, oil and trouble
'Finite' delusions
The gig economy
The Ides of April
There is only one future
Alternate reality [incl. take on Russiagate, Apr 2018]
Aneuploidy
'Finite' delusions
Money 'printing'
Just because it goes on longer than you expect doesn't mean 'forever'
Futurism
What, no energy?
Alternate reality
How to eat right before you get too old to care
Save qui peut
An evolutionary approach to diet
Whole foods plant-based works as advertised
Would you like a vaccine with that?
Peak oil update/summary
Grid storage
Good sh*t
How not to die cycling
Older and wiser 1
Older and wiser 2
'Health' care induction
Trump climate hoax
Energy slaves
iPhone-i-fication
Reverse repos
The internet
Life's work
[begin Ukraine/Maidan 2014
Neural dust
Charles Sereno obit
Imprelis
One barrel of oil equals one year of hard labor
[Jan25,'00] The US
killed
3-5,000,000 people in Vietnam and surrounding countries
(mostly civilians) and created over
5,000,000 refugees (about
a third of the population of South Vietnam at the time) because
'we had no choice but to finish the job we started'. This was a
heinous, terrorist war crime many orders
of magnitude greater than anything that has happened since--almost
1,000 times (!) as many civilians as were tragically killed in the
WTC. [update: see Nick Turse's 2013 book on this]. It barely
seeps into the consciousness of the newly hawkish 'baby bombers' who
witnessed it in the 60's from college campuses. Reasoning by analogy
with the recent US military action, perhaps Vietnamese air strikes on
US student unions, radio stations, and hospitals could have stopped it.
It would have been a small price to pay to avoid the needless slaughter
of 3-4,000,000 other living humans and the mutilation and burning of
that many more--along with 60,000 American deaths and 60,000 subsequent
suicides of Vietnam vets who fought there. The US carpet bombing of
Cambodia from 1969 to 1975 is estimated to have killed over half a million
Cambodians--mostly civilians. Obscene US war crimes were perpetrated in
Laos in the same years. What rationale is there for putting those deeds
into a different category than the 'killing fields' (or the recent events)
engineered by the other bad guys? Because we killed them from a distance
as opposed to using knives? (
letter to NPR).
The Kerrey (not Kerry!) revelations suggest that knives were used, too.
Which level of the civilian and military hierarchy is most at fault
for his particular deed can be disputed. But let's cut the crap about
'war is hell'. Much of the 'American war' as the Vietnamese call it
involved US servicemen slaughtering unarmed women, children, and old
men in their home towns during a protracted invasion of their country
halfway across the world. Kerrey's unit was likely part of the infamous
Phoenix program. What he did was a
war
crime, period. If a Serb or an Iraqi did something like Kerrey did,
wouldn't he be a war criminal? Milosevic and Saddam are small-time
next to the likes of Kissinger and McNamara. Then to top it off,
the US, through its IMF economic hit men, forced through a
neoliberal
'reform' program in the mid-80's that caused a dramatic drop in real
salaries, demanded repayment of debts incurred by the US-supported puppet
government, increased malaria, left all the Agent Orange on the ground,
and preempted any liability for it. Disgusting. Someday in the future,
the world may savor the 'favor' being returned.
The US killed 3,000,000 civilians in Korea (out of a population of
30 million). That's about 700 WTC's in terms of people or 7,000 WTC's
as a percentage of the population.
The main scene of the Nazis' defeat wasn't Normandy or anywhere else
Americans fought, but rather the Eastern Front, where the conflict was
the most terrible war fought in human history. It claimed perhaps as
many as 50 million Soviet civilian deaths and almost 30 million Soviet
military casualties (the actual numbers, amazingly, are not known to
within plus or minus 10 or 15 million people). But more to the point,
Americans should recall that about 88% of all German casualties fell in
the war with Russia. (Benjamin Schwarz in the LA Times)
The death of one million children in Iraq as a result of US-imposed
sanctions (on top of the 130,000 civilians the Red Cross estimates to
have been killed in the initial bombing) and the
starvation
of an entire
people hardly rates a comment these days. This unbelievable genocidal
violence against an innocent civilian population didn't resulted in
getting Saddam Hussein, our former handsomely paid ally, to step down.
When the history of the end of the twentieth century is written 100 years
from now, I'm afraid the 'good Americans' who let this happen with a
slightly uncomfortable yawn, will be remembered for who we really are.
The US State Dept had the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein from
power in 1991, following the Gulf War, and chose not to. The Bush
administration explained that it did not want Iraq to become fragmented
and that it felt the Baath party was the only group that could hold it
together. They continue to want the current regime to be strong
internally and weak externally. They want to keep Saddam Hussein in
power, crippled, but as a convenient excuse to maintain the economic
sanctions and US dominance in the region. This is their policy, but
they don't want to verbalize it. This is what they've achieved, but
they've achieved it at a terrible price for Iraqi children.
--Kathy Kelly, Voices in the Wilderness
The Russian Defense Budget is $4 Billion, the American--$284 Billion"
(New York Times 1/16/2000). We should transfer at least a billion of
that to the study of the brain!
More than $1 billion in military aid has made its way to Columbia. Not a
peep out of the press sheep following the candidates. In my dreams, I
imagine Clinton and his advisors being banished to rural Columbia for
a few months next year. In reality, Clinton needed 5000 (!) soldiers
and police, and 6 helicopter gunships overhead to survive an 8 hour stay.
He was too afraid to even spend one night. And so soon after 'feeling
the pain' of the victims of our previous adventure in Guatemala...
What a sickly, gutless, cowardly thing you are (now, were), Bill.
Americans now spend $120 billion a year on fast food, more than on
higher education, PCs, computer software or new cars, or on magazines,
going to see films, recorded music, newspapers, videos and books
combined. --Fast Food Nation
Half of the people in the world survive on $2 a day.
In the past year, 90% of Iraqi oil output has been bought by the US.
The current military budget is $344 billion--8 times as much as what we
spend for education ($42 billion).
2.5 million people have died in the past 3 years as a result of an
ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The carnage has barely
registered on the world's stage. The WTC disaster was evil, but not
the greatest evil of our time, by far.
95% of people living with AIDS reside in developing countries; 95 percent
of AIDS prevention money is spent in industrial countries.
My
speech at the Feb 15, 2003 downtown
San Diego anti-war demonstration.
Life in the US
[quotes from 2000/2001 - chronological blog entries from 2002 onward
begin a few pages down]
The incarceration rate at the end of the Clinton administration was 476
per 100,000 citizens (the highest in the world), versus 332 per 100,000
at the end of Bush1's term and 247 per 100,000 at the end of Reagan's
administration. The incarceration rate for black males is an amazing 3,620
per 100,000 (3.6%). An additional 1% of the entire population is on
probation or parole. The current incarceration rate is over
5 times
what it was in every year between 1920 to 1980.
--from a study by the Justice Policy Institute
"What we're seeing in California is price manipulation by the handful
of power producers who exert total market control over the wholesale
market. This manipulation is clear: The amount utilities paid for
wholesale power in November and December 2000 exceeded by 28 percent
the amount the utilities paid for wholesale power during all 12 months
of 1999.... The seven biggest unregulated energy companies operating in
California posted $4.6 billion in after-tax profit since the May 2000
price spikes - a 57 percent increase from the same period in '99....
George W. Bush has said that the crisis is a state, not a federal,
issue. He couldn't be more wrong. The federal government, through the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has the authority to set
cost-based rates on California power producers."
Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen, more info
here
"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly
who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was.
Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."
--George W Bush, January 21, 2000 Iowa Western Community College
"I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."
--Dick Cheney commenting on his four regular deferments and a fifth for
expectant fatherhood during the US/Vietnam war. Actually war is a very
important priority, one too important to be left to regular
people--only generals and war secretaries should be allowed to
fight.
When people tell me that I'm wrecking the Democratic Party, I ask
them, 'What's left to wreck?' - Ralph Nader
The number of Americans in prison for drug offenses has multiplied by
10 since 1980, from 41,000 to 458,000. The 458,000 men and women now
in U.S. prisons on drug charges are 100,000 more than all prisoners in
the European Union, whose population is 100 million more than ours.
The annual cost of incarcerating them is $9 billion.
The great irony of the growth in imprisoned drug users--much of it
occurring under Democratic administrations, is that it probably
cost the Democrats the Presidency and the Congress.
Texas ranks first among states, not only in executions, but also in
the number of uninsured children.
"Our children will gaze back aghast upon our own time, a period of
waste and abandon on a scale so vast it knocked the planet out of whack
for a thousand years." --Kalle Lasn, www.addbusters.org
There were about one million personal bankruptcies in 1999 in the
US. One half of these (half a million) are due to the crushing burden
of medical expenses. Most of the others are due to loss of a job
(which usually leads to loss of medical benefits). Seniors, women, and
families headed by single women are the groups hardest hit by medical
expenses. One main cause is that medical expenses now have a much
larger dynamic range then they had 30 years ago. For example, it is now
easily possible to run up a $500,000 bill in one week.
In March 2001, the Senate passed a 'get tough' Bankruptcy bill. As
in 1999, the main reasons for bankruptcy are medical bills, divorce,
and job loss.
AOL Mind Filter
America Online provides "youth filters" that are supposed to keep kids
out of dangerous Web sites--but they seem designed to eliminate
creeping liberalism. For example, if you've set up AOL to restrict
your children to "Kids Only" Web sites: Your children can easily view
the site of the Republican National Committee, but the Democratic
National Committee is blocked. Children can call up the conservative
Constitution Party and Libertarian Party, both of which are promoting
their own U.S. presidential candidates. But if they attempt to view
Ralph Nader's Green Party or Ross Perot's Reform Party, they see only a
"not appropriate for children" error. AOL's "Young Teens" filter,
designed for older children, allows a few more Web sites to be viewed.
The apparent political bias, however, remains the same: Sites
promoting gun use are available, including Colt, Browning and the
National Rifle Association. But prominent gun safety organizations are
blocked, including the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Safer Guns Now
and the Million Mom March. Common Dreams NewsCenter is blocked for
teens by AOL while the rightwing gossiper Matt Drudge is not.
Brian
Livingston (!), at cnet mirrored by www.commondreams.org
A spectator at the arraignment of several hundred activists [arrested
at the April 16 anti-IMF demonstrations], heard the presiding commissioner
Ringelle imply that if activists did not cooperate he would place them
with the general jail population, where they they would be raped. "He
told us 'For a day or a week or a month [Jail] is not a pleasant place.
People get sodomized. The inmates run the D.C. Prison. In the prison,
the weak are preyed upon". Another group of activists was also threatened
with incarceration with the general population, and told "they love to
kill white boys over there, you pussy-faggot protesters." Nearly 1,300
people were arrested.
commondreams,
www.a16.org
[cf. US complaints about other countries like China]
"The [Orange County] Register reports that a typical [organ] donor
produces $14,000 to $16,000 in sales for the nonprofit agency, but
yields can be far greater. Skin, tendons, heart valves, veins and
corneas are listed at about $110,000. Add the bones, and one cadaver
can be worth $220,000. Good grief - if they're going to use your
body, the proceeds should go to your estate or your favorite charity.
No one signs up as an organ donor so some jerk can make $533,000 a year
[the salary of a top official at an LA tissue bank]". --Molly Ivins,
Forth Worth Star Telegram.
Less than 1% of the of the world's assets are held in the name of
women. From 1993 to 1996, 1.6 percent of the venture capital raised in
the United States ($33 billion) was invested in businesses led by
women.
If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote, They Would Have Given Us Candidates
(title of a book by Jim Hightower)
16,000 gun murders last year in the US:
-15,500 killed by someone they knew (husband, boyfriend, neighbor, at work)
-500 killed by stranger who broke into home (300 of which killed by
own gun)
It's more dangerous to be a fisherman or a convenience store clerk and
esp. a taxi driver than to be a police officer (a higher percentage get
killed). Somehow, tho, I don't see virtual
state funerals
for those poor Seven-Eleven guys...
A $1 change in Microsoft's stock price leads to a market capitalization
change of $6 billion since there are 5.2 billion shares plus almost
a billion employee options out there.
Gross annual sales are
only $20 billion. A large amount of teacher pension funds are
invested in Microsoft. Bubble. Eeek. [written in 2000...]
From 1980 to 1999, the
average CEO compensation went from 42
times the average worker in the company to over 400 times the average
worker--a yearly wage paid every day including weekends (it's even
more extreme now). Michael Eisner's bonus in 1999 was half a billion
dollars (again!). We need a maximum wage, not a minimum wage. Time to
'out-source' some of those over-priced CEO's. In the most recent figures
out in 1999, the ratio has risen once again, to 475. As Holly Sklar
has said, "How big a gap will we tolerate?"
Since 1990, more than 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower
than a decade ago. Average world per capita income has increased 3.0%
per year, but the great majority of this wealth increase was in already
rich countries. Increased free trade since 1990 has generated more
wealth for rich people and less for poor people. Time to change the
rules. Wealth doesn't trickle down by itself.
The UN Developing Nations Program reported that in 1998, the world's
225 richest people had a combined wealth of $1 trillion--equal to the
combined annual income of the world's 2.5 billion poorest people.
That's not right (more stats
here).
According to Gallup polls, about 44 percent of Americans believe in a
strict biblical creationist view. But at the same time, genetically
engineered food has come to be considered harmful to pets:
"Even Iams Co., the Ohio-based pet food maker, recently told its grain
suppliers it would no longer accept genetically engineered corn for use
in its premium dog and cat chows unless the corn varieties were among
the few approved by the European Union." [Rick Weiss, WashPost]
-------------------
The irony is immense. Monsanto's molecular biologists, who have a
spectacularly intimate knowledge of the low level details of evolution,
are driven back by the the same suspicious public that believes in
creationism. Wrong reason, positive outcome.
Bill Gates now owns more wealth than the combined wealth of the
bottom 40% of the US population (and he probably doesn't believe
in creationism).
Two years ago, Disney's Michael Eisner made $575M, or $250,000
per hour.
Ralph Nader had a ticket to the first debate and was also invited by
several news organizations to appear on their broadcasts, but upon
arriving (via the Boston subway system, not a limo) he was met by a
representative of the Commission on Presidential Debates as well as the
state police. He was informed that despite his ticket and invitations,
the commission would not allow him on the premises. He was also
threatened with arrest by the state police on two occasions during the
evening for simply being there. Now that's democracy for you.
Whites in high school are seven times more likely than blacks to have
used cocaine, eight times more likely to have smoked crack, and there
are more white high schoolers who have used crystal methamphetamine
than black students who smoke cigarettes --Tim Wise, St Louis Post
Dispatch
If the whole world consumed oil as does America, the
Earth's oil reserves would be gone in 10 years.
America's farm animals consume roughly 10 times as much antibiotics as
the human population.
Microsoft donated about 5 million dollars to the last campaign cycle
to many people, such as Dianne Feinstein ($8,000), John Ashcroft ($9,000),
Edward Kennedy ($6,000), and Trent Lott ($5,000). That was cool.
The Internet was invented as a highly dependable, high-speed,
distributed, secure, and powerful network so that in the event of a
nuclear crisis, military officials would always have access to
pornography.
"Newly arrived in New York City, I puzzled, 'Where are the Americans?'
for I met only Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans." --John Ashcroft, our
Attorney General
"Negroes, Asians and Orientals (is Japan the exception?), Hispanics,
Latins and Eastern Europeans; have no temperament for democracy, never
had, and probably never will..." --John Ashcroft, our Attorney
General
The CIA knows that polygraphs don't work. Aldrich Ames sailed
through his tests, for example. Polygraph tests are used mainly
for intimidation.
If you get to an emergency room on foot (or by crawling), they have
to take you eventually, whereas an ambulance can be diverted, esp. if
you are poor. Reminds me of Chicago police policy in the 80's. If you
called 911 from the South Side saying you had been shot, they would send
a paddy wagon, not an ambulance-- and people died this way. To get an
ambulance, you needed to call the fire dept. Using a similar logic:
"Do you think you could you just drop me off about half a block away from
that emergency entrance, I think I should be able to crawl the rest of
the way..."
So-called "internet worms" and "email viruses" not named properly.
They are virtually all *Microsoft* bugs--poor, sloppy, insecure program
design.
Bush says: I had no relationship with that man, Mr. Lay before I
became governor in 1995. Tee hee.
"That's when I first got to know Ken and worked with Ken and he supported
my candidacy for -- and -- but this is what -- what anybody's going to find
if -- is that this Administration will fully investigate issues such as
the Enron bankruptcy".
"To the layman on the street, it will look like we recognized funds flow
of $800 million from merchant asset sales in 1999 by selling to a vehicle
(Condor) that we capitalized with a promise of Enron stock in later years.
Is that really funds flow or is it cash from equity issuance?" -- a
quote from an internal Enron memo as things began to collapse. Man on
the street, indeed!
"Enron was able to play fast and loose in a financial boom and Clintonian
moral climate" -- the Wall Street Journal.
So Enron is actually Clinton's fault! And you can't have unions in the
Justice Department because they represent a security risk. Class war,
man.
"Companies come and go. It's part of the genius of capitalism." --
secretary of the treasury, Paul O'Neill on Enron. The pension-less 10,000
must realize now realize they were lesser geniuses than the executives
who walked off with $1 billion.
Enron has 2,832 subsidiaries, of which 874 are registered in the Cayman
Islands or other tax and bank secrecy havens.
"How did Enron lose so much money? That question has dumbfounded
investors and experts in recent months. But the basic answer is now
apparent: Enron was a derivatives trading firm; it made billions trading
derivatives, but it lost billions on virtually everything else it
did, including projects in fiber-optic bandwidth, retail gas and power,
water systems, and even technology stocks. Enron used its expertise in
derivatives to hide these losses." --Frank Partnoy
What with all the talk about maybe we might have to resort to torture
in the homeland to protect the homeland (as opposed to torture out in
the marches to protect the homeland) (Dershowitz, etc), just think how
much stuff Kenny Boy would tell us if the Congress threatened to attach
electrodes to his privates. Some people had problems with us torturing
people here, so maybe we should send him to another country--say
Columbia--and have them do it. We spent enough cash training them,
eh?
"Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient
capital to form a corporation." --Clarence Darrow
Many years ago there was a TV show called the Prisoner where these guys
on a see-saw looked into monitors while a bald intelligence guy with
glasses intoned "orange alert" into a phone, and called up Rover to chase
down escapees. Today (3/12/02) we are on 'yellow alert' according to our
Home Security guy, Tom Rigid. Only one more notch to orange (!)
Microsoft Word dumps Windows runtime data structures directly to disk
with block writes -- which makes it virtually impossible to write a
program not on Windows that can *write* the format. Even Microsoft can't
do it! An operating system patch that affects runtime data structures
might end up getting written out to a Word file, making it unreadable
by an unpatched system that reads the Word file directly into memory.
It's easier for a second party program to *read* the format because you
can pick and choose from among the sewage in the file, and not crash.
This is the real Microsoft monopoly--disguised as bad programming
practice, 101.
"We have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6 per cent
of its population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object
of envy and resentment. Our real task is to maintain this position
of disparity without detriment to our national security. To do so,
we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming.
"We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as
human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization.
The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight
power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the
better...." -- George F. Kennan, 1948.
CEO compensation rose 571% from 1990 to 2000. That's *108* times the
rate of gain for workers.
"The government took music out of the schools, and kids have no way
to learn an instrument or theory and harmony. So they have to resort
to sampling. If music were taught in the schools, kids would learn how
to create on their own" -- Rick James.
"At least the original Caesar could speak his own native language" -- Josef
Stromberg.
Americans, about 4% of the world's population, consume 50% of the
worlds illegal drugs.
############################################################################
Chronological "Life in the US" Blog Entries -- 2002 until present
############################################################################
[Jul06'02] In 1990, the collective value of all homes was about $6.7
trillion. It increased to only $7.6 trillion by 1995, and then shot
up to $10 trillion by 1999 and now stands at more than $12 trillion.
In some real sense, it is clear that 2002 houses and property couldn't
possibly be worth twice what they were in just 1995. The deflation of the
dotcom bubble resulted in the loss of over $4-5 trillion in stock value.
The housing bubble--perhaps the largest bubble in human history--may be
in for a similar popping.
[Jul14'02] Guess crony capitalism's got the herd a'fearin'.
[Aug20'02] Attempts to make un-copy-able files/CDs/etc have not been that
successful. But even if better digital copy protection becomes available,
the high quality data still has to come out of a wire and go into a
speaker at some point so you can listen to it legally. There, it is
vulnerable to re-digitization. If Microsoft's Palladium (encrypting your
own files with a key that you don't get to see) is a clue, this suggests
that someone right now is trying to figure out how to take over the
speaker market with speakers that only accept encrypted inputs.
[Aug25'02] Have you heard about the new product that guarantees firmer
thighs while putting an end to war? It's called a protest march. --
Carol Schiffler
[Sep10'02] Well, it finally had to happen. We're at 'Orange Alert', like
the evil guy with glasses would say in 'The Prisoner'. I just hope that
'Rover' isn't soon on the way, too.
[Nov16'02] "With $345 million worth of U.S. Air Force contracts, MIT
received a larger amount of Air Force contracts than did IBM or General
Dynamics in 1999. And in 2000, MIT's $339 million worth of U.S. Air Force
contracts was a larger amount of Air Force contracts than either Rockwell,
Littleton, Carlyle or Textron received in 2000." -- Bob Feldman
[Dec20'02] When it costs 5% more to buy a share of a company than it did
yesterday, that is considered growth -- good economic news. When wages
rise 5% a year (as opposed to a 5% a day), that is considered inflation
-- bad for the economy. The only problem with this is that when people
have more money, they buy more things, which means that companies
can sell more things.
[Mar22'03] This February, the US budget deficit increased by 90 billion
dollars -- that is, a deficit *increase* equal to almost 1/6 of the yearly
federal budget in one month of spending. The stock market soars now.
But the human mind is an wondrous thing. You can implant the idea
that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis into half of the infantile brains
in this country, getting them mad enough to punch out a peacenik, but
then 6 months later, they turn on you in favor of someone whose smirk
is less disgusting.
[May18'03] Test animals cannot distinguish between the effects of cocaine
and Ritalin.
[Jul19'03] The federal deficit is currently estimated at 450 billion This
does *not* (!) include Iraq and Afghanistan and various other "black"
expenditures. If we include those, the deficit probably approaches the
size of the budget itself. Instead of worrying about that, the focus of
the White House is on how to placate the yahoos who suppported the war
and who are not happy now that we appear to be 'pulling our punches'
while one soldier a day gets killed. This reminds me of pro-war talk
during Vietnam where we 'pulled our punches' and still killed 2-3 million
civilians (I hate to think of what not pulling our punches would have
meant); likewise, we are killing a lot of non-Americans every day in Iraq
-- a lot more than one a day. The yahoos just want to nuke Iraq and they
don't really want to hear that the whole point of the war was to establish
a bases there, near the oil, and that we can't nuke the oil.
[Jul23'03] Yahoos are placated for this week (see above). Most observers
think it is unlikely to reduce the lethality of the daily attacks,
and in fact, two more Americans were killed today.
[Jul26'03] Basic facts about the re-distribution of wealth:
--US income tax from corporations: 1952, 1960, 1970, 1985 => 32%, 23%, 17%, 9%
--number of billionaires: 1983 - 1990: => 15, 12, 13, 26, 49, 68, 82, 99
--richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90% (US record)
--next richest 9% also own more wealth than the bottom 90% (US record)
[Sep24'03] "Ironically, Microsoft's efforts to deny interoperability of
Windows with legitimate non-Microsoft applications have created an
environment in which Microsoft's programs interoperate efficiently only
with Internet viruses" [commenting on the virus-driven shutdown today
of government computers involved in issuing visas] -- Dan Geer [he was
fired/resigned from the Boston company he founded the next day]
[Sep25'03] The latest suggestion to deal with music file copying (see
Charles Haddad below) is to try to mimic the Monsanto 'terminator'
gene in seeds. With farm plants, the idea is to prevent plants from
generating fertile seeds. This is 'normally' done in the US [but not
Europe] by selling hybrids, whose main advantage is not imaginary 'hyrid
vigor', but the fact that they generate sterile seeds. This superseded
the practice of farmers over the millenia of saving a portion of their
crops as seed in order to sow it the next year. With songs, the idea
would be that you would have to repeatedly pay to download a song.
The license to listen to it would rapidly expire, making it worthless
to copy. Just think of the possibilities. Books could be printed
with disappearing ink, special vinyl- and mylar-eating bacteria and
mp3-ablating viruses could be released to deal with any pesky remaining
records, tapes, and computer files. Hey, maybe you should get your brain
erased ever so often! You never know what sort of revenue-denying stuff
might accumulate in there.
[Sep28'03] Whiny American yahoos make me sick. First they get whipped
into idiotic patriotic fervor by a bunch of transparent lies. Then the
lies get outed -- by the chimp, himself! (but the lies, amazingly, still
continue to gain in the polls after that). That leaves going over and
stealing/hording/securing/dog-in-the-manger-ing the oil and the land
around it as the only real reason for the war. Deep down, they know it:
people in the government government (or at least rich people worried
about their businesses' future) are trying to plan for the all-too-soon
future of scarce oil (while sopping up a ten billion here and a ten
billion there in tax receipts for a job not very well done). So why all
the sudden cold feet about it costing $1 billion a week? Grow up, guys!
Either stop complaining about the so far relatively moderate cost in money
and (American) lives of stealing the oil, or stop trying to steal it.
Stop your sobbing.
[Oct12'03] Listening to the CBS world (!) news yesterday (LA's KNX on AM).
The top headlines, in total, were: (1) Kobe Bryant's trial (this year's
Gary Condit), (2) the preparation for surgery to separate third-world
twins joined at the head (this year's third-world conjoined twins)
(3) a report that supposed letters from different troops saying how
well things were going turned out to all have the exact same wording,
and (4) a jokey tag story. Not even any sewage from Mark Knoller! And,
of course, nothing about 1,500 people having been ethnically cleaned out
of their homes this day in Rafah with (US-made-and-paid-for) helicopters
and bulldozers. It made me feel like I was an American.
[Oct27'03] "I knew it was wrong, but it was accepted practice"
-- that is, cutting off baby's heads to get jewelry, using
slaughtered women's scalps to decorate your rifle, etc. -- see
new report of Vietnam era atrocities by the 'Tiger Force'
here. However, this was hardly an isolated incident, as implied
by the authors of the report, given that two to three *million*
civilians were killed by the US in the American war on Vietnam -- it
was the *official* policy. Like the kid soldier said, "it was accepted
practice".
[Nov13'03] The brave American Congress decides to stand up to Israel and
demand that they move the exact position of some of its Wall so that that
only 97,000 people have to apply for permits to their own homes instead
of 100,000 people -- or else they will trim the 9 billion dollar 'loan'
package to 8.95 billion. Sometimes you just have to stand up for what
you believe. After all, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing
to fear.
[Nov30'03] The unseen third party at the grocery store strike is Walmart.
Their *only* 'innovation' is that they pay their employees less and
they give them less health benefits, mainly because they have no unions.
As Walmart advances like a fast-growing cancer across the US with intent
to deeply penetrate food marketing, they want you to think that their
attempt to turn the US into a third-world country is inevitable and
good. We should play more like they do! The world is hurtling toward
a precipice as hydrocarbon resource extraction peaks, yet business
gallops on faster and faster without the slightest embarrassment.
So should we. Join a union, live a little, and position yourself better
for deglobalization. Party will soon be over, man.
[Dec04'03] Bush's poll numbers are starting to rise again in the wake of
him carrying a camera-ready turkey (not an edible one, it turns out).
I guess there is no way that you can ever really get around the turkey
brain that lies deep at the center of every American brain. Sometimes,
the turkey genes just win out, despite our best intentions.
[Dec10'03] In an average flu epidemic year, the flu virus kills 36,000
people. That's 100 people a day, mostly older people. This year may
be average. From the coverage, though, you'd think that the flu was
as common as a shark attack. 100 people a day in North America have
continued to die from non-treatable viral pneumonia (comparable to the
total number of people that died of SARS -- but every day). Luckily,
though, the threat of SARS has passed.
[Dec13'03] Current 'news' reporting is *so* dismal and ahistorical and
unobjective and ascientific that I've lost the will to even yell back.
If there ever was a unusally severe flu epidemic (like the one right
after WWI), the flu shots wouldn't work and the anchors would be soiling
their shorts on screen (which we would no doubt, have the opportunity to
view in close-up: "Peter, you seem to have water running down your leg...
are you OK?). Perhaps the reality of the situation is simply way over
the heads of concerned parents, since almost half of them don't even
believe in evolution (flu vaccines are made by infecting chickens months
in advance, using existing viruses, not the slightly mutated versions
of the virus that herald the start of the flu season; the reason they
work at all is that the mutations are *usually* small enough that the
antibodies that are generated still bind to the newly mutated virus
coat protein).
[Jan01'04] "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will
do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications
for you and the state of Minnesota." -- Dick Cheney to Paul Wellstone,
one month before Wellstone died in a plane crash.
[Jan09'04] The new Bush plans to put people back on the moon and possibly
on Mars -- in the year that oil may have peaked -- just goes to show
you how hard it is to predict the future.
[Jan14'04] Sadly, Bush is not the problem. Except for cosmetic differences
on abortion, gay marriage, and stem cells, the positions of Kerry are
barely distinguishable from those of Bush. After Kerry's unique input
(and that of his near-billionaire wife) have been filtered through
the power structures of US government and global finance, it is not
clear that 'anybody but Bush' will make a bit of practical difference
(he will sound less stupid, but that's not an advantage). Sure Kerry is
now sort of against the Iraq war (the one he voted for only a few months
back), but there is no way he will withdraw if he were to be elected.
Complaining about the pre-war intelligence is *totally* beside the point.
We didn't invade Iraq because of WMDs. We *knew* they had none (which was
why it was safe to invade!). When the first big oil shocks hit in a few
years, and we try to steal China's or Europe's or Japan's (not to mention,
Iraq's) oil, and the Iraqi resistance continues resisting, and we have
to send more troops, and the dollar collapses, and northern Europe starts
to glaciate again, Bush versus Kerry will sure seem like small potatoes.
Rome is starting to burn. Electing Kerry is just fiddling.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." --
Keynes.
Nature bats last [bumper sticker]
"There will be cars, they just won't be running" -- Jan Lundberg
[Industrial civilization] is a one shot affair.... there will be one
chance, and one chance only." -- cosmologist Fred Hoyle, in 1964, on
human evolution and course of energy use on Earth.
The vehicle you deserve: the Ford "Extinction" -- from Phil Rockstroh
[Mar17'04] "The chief problem with this movie wasn't so much the content,
but the title. It was too drab, too serious, too liturgical. So I spent
a long time trying to come up with alternatives. There was Bravechrist,
Die Really Hard, The Golgotha Chainsaw Massacre, Starsky and Christ...
-- Matt Taibbi
[Mar18'04] "No blood for oil" is a crock! Once the shortages hit, every
US-ian will line up obediently behind "lot's o' blood for oil" in a
split second.
[May28'04] 1 out of 75 US men are now in prison, a world record. The prison
population is disproportionately poor and non-white: 12% of black men in
their 20's are in jail versus 1.6% of young white men. There are twice
as many *male* victims of rape as there are female victims of rape in
the US because of the record male prison population.
[May31'04] 33% of homeless men are veterans. I'm sure that 'war work' had
nothing to do with this, and this is why it's not worth mentioning on
Memorial Day. Or if it is, then the PC solution is to hire counselors
to help feel their pain. That's what the problem is: not enough military
social workers!
[Jun05'04] Walmart's warehouse on wheels must be quaking in its enormous
boots as the increased cost of oil starts to draw blood. However, I
worry that those are the same trucks that bring me my food. Luckily,
Reagan's death today provides a kernel around which our fine 'liberal'
press has already built a huge, valium-filled pacifier for Americans to
suck on for the next month (seasoned lightly with an armored bulldozer
rampage, except that it slightly reminds one of a certain squished
American who went up against an armored bulldozer with a megaphone).
Meanwhile, yesterday, the Pope religously told George Bush to get out
of Iraq while George's minions were guarding the nuclear 'football' --
the briefcase containing the codes required to destroy the non-US world
-- in a Vatican antechamber. This shows why we're better than animals:
because language gives us the ability to commit such ineffable situations
to the page.
[Jun06'04] Next weekend, there is a first-400-in-get-free-beer dance party
on the USS Midway for San Diego postdocs funded by Invitrogen, Fisher
Scientific, as well as Scripps, the Salk Institute, and UCSD. I hear they
know some cool party games, so bring your hood and dress sexy!
[Jun09'04] "In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch
FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest
of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect
viciousness" .... "Spending time watching Sean Hannity is enough for your
average American white male to feel less cowardly than he really is.
The left won't accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast
that they believe they can fix 'if only the people knew the Truth.'" --
Mark Ames
[Jun13'04] There are reports that the Abu Ghraib scandal is about to blow
up again this week. I sure didn't expect that! The 'immune system'
of world business seems to have turned on Bush as 'non-self'.
[Jun18'04] Well, the reports mentioned in the UK press didn't materialize,
Iraq's oil is now completely turned off this week, the new US-appointed
'coalition' government is about to declare marshall law (it's a natural
step on the way to democracy), Iran denies reports that it's massing
troops on the Iraq border (shades of the faked photos used to get Saudi
to approve and pay for the first Iraq war), the UN/IAEA says time is
running out again for Iranian compliance (compliance sure helped Iraq,
didn't it...). Sheesh, it's like a re-run, and I don't even watch the
damn TV.
[Jun20'04] We've spent $200 billion in Iraq in the past year mainly to
get military bases around the oil, and maybe $500 billion/year on
the military and the black budget agencies. During the same time,
we've spent a teeny, tiny fraction of that total on alternative energy
source research (much less alternative energy source developement).
On Easter Island, when all the trees got cut down (their only energy
source since they were 1000 miles away from any other speck of land),
the end came so fast that there were stone axes dropped in place around
partly finished statues). It's kinda creepy watching the huge lumbering
social organism of all of us market-savvy humans Easter-islanding our
whole damn selves in slo mo.
[Jun25'04] The amount of oil needed to *make* a new car is about equivalent
to the amount it will use during the lifetime of the car. Thus, from
the perspective of running the oil down and adding to greenhouse gases,
it's probably worse to get rid of a currently running, less-fuel-efficient
car (provided it's not a super-size SUV), and replace it with a hybrid,
than it is to just drive your less efficient car into the ground.
[Jul01'04] We walked by the carrier Midway parked in SD harbor last week to
get dinner. It's so big that it looks like a computer-generated animation
as you walk past it. There was a party on board with a live band --
including horns -- playing "She's a Brick House". This is the ship
that among other things, launched some of the planes that lead to 2 to
3 million civilian deaths during our 1963-1973 war on Southeast Asia.
Party on, dude, at our very own floating holocaust museum! Sick.
Of course, the whole decade of our half-a-holocaust of atrocities can
be explained by 'the fog of war'. That's some pretty nasty fog.
[Jul03'04] Only 16 months late, the LA Times comes through with a report about the
faked/psyop
'civilians toppling the statue of Saddam' operation.
A little late guys, esp. given that
this info was available *at the time* of the fake toppling. Also,
the new report came straight out of an internal Army report -- true
bravery in reporting! If this is a 'liberal' media, I'd sure hate to see
what a 'convervative' one would look like. Few people will read this
'retraction' of the press participation in psyops, and just like the
faked psyops 'incubator babies massacre' story which solidified public
support at a key point for the first Gulf war/massacre, most people
will still believe it years later. Shame on the press for 'getting in
bed the with fascist insect' -- *esp.* now when finding out what really
happened is easier than before.
[Jul11'04] The yearly world oil usage is about 1 cubic mile. This is easier
to remember than 30 gigabarrels.
[Jul20'04] A car is a 100,000 watt device (1 horsepower is about 750
watts). When you press the accelerator, it is the same as turning on
a *1,000* hundred watt light bulbs. Cruising smoothly uses less energy
(e.g., 20,000 watts). For comparison, a 1000 sq foot roof covered with
photocells generates about 1000 watts (about 1 horsepower). Powering one
modern car for an hour, including stop and go driving would approximately
require an hour of bright sun on 50 such roofs, or a fifty hours of sun
on one such roof (one hour of driving equals 5 days of sunlight on your
house photocells), and that's assuming no transmission or storage losses.
For reference, converting electricity to hydrogen and back involves a
loss of more than 50% of the energy.
[Jul24'04] Current (2002) US inputs and outputs (http://eed.llnl.gov.flow)
give some idea of what level of losses (well over half of energy input) are
currently achievable by the US. The number are in quads (10^15 BTU's).
Since the total input is 97 quads, the numbers are also close to percent
of total energy inputs.
Inputs: (97 quads):
-- imported oil and liquid-gas (24.3)
-- US coal (22.6)
-- US oil and liquid-gas (14.9)
-- US natural gas (19.6)
-- US nuclear (8.1)
-- imported natural gas (3.6)
-- US wood/waste/alcohols/geothermal/solar/wind (3.2)
-- US hydro (2.6)
Outputs, lost energy: (56.2 quads)
-- electrical system losses (26.3) (power plant efficiency less than 40%)
-- transportation losses (21.2)
-- residential losses (4.9)
-- industrial losses (3.8)
Outputs, useful energy (35.2 quads):
-- industrial (15.2)
-- residential (14.7)
-- transportation (5.3)
[Jul26'04] "You want an American Empire -- the safety, anyway, of being
able to impose our will on any possible opponents? Then don't be upset
when the old goals invoke the old means, but modernized: with drugs and
electrodes and sexual humiliation replacing the crudities of whip and
cross." -- Richard Erlich. Our fine ABB
Kerry knows about Project Phoenix first hand, and wants to send
40,000 more troops to Iraq.
[Jul28'04] Be careful of what you ask for, ABB's: do we really want to have
a kinder-gentler-Bush-Democrat in office (probably with a Republican
congress) if the economy contracts sharply in 2005? Home mortgage
debt for Americans has risen almost 100% since 1997. This rate of debt
growth is not sustainable. The rate of increase in housing prices has
increased in the last year, looking ominously like the NASDAQ before
the pop. When the rate of new debt acquisition slows, the effects of
less spending will ripple powerfully through the world economy with
unpredictable effects, and an almost certain change in the party in
office at that time. Strategically, it might be better to wait until
after the pop, when a real non-Bush-like candidate might be competitive.
This would be risky, too, though depending on the size of the pop.
People make poor choices under extreme, sustained economic stress
(cf. 20th century European history).
[Aug09'04] Ann Veneman, the current Secretary of Agriculture came from the
board of directors of Calgene, a part of Monsanto, which is the world's
largest GM seed producer. No doubt, she has our interests in a safe food
supply near the top of her list. Besides, "safety" and profitability
are, no doubt, the same thing. African food aid is being tied to the
acceptance of GM crops. This shows that "concern for the less fortunate"
and profitability are the same thing. It would seem that promoting
expensive, energy-intensive GM foods is a very poor way to plan for
less energy-intensive food production likely to be necessary when the
"great economic contraction" sets in permanently in a decade or two,
as we run down our finite fossil fuel energy supply to virtually nothing
(which is the way it will stay for all future generations) in the next
30 years. This in turn will make it impossible to drive long distances
to buy food and stuff, and more importantly, to grow that food and make
that stuff on the other side of the globe and transport it all the way
back here, but hey, who asked me. I'm just hoping that "starvation"
and profitability don't turn out to be the same thing.
[Aug11'04] "[Kansas] watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the
coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for
revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers
when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange
a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams
for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling
place -- and Kansas cuts those rock stars taxes" -- Thomas Frank
[Aug21'04] The brains of more than half of all American continue to believe
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a program to develop them
before the United States invaded last year. This is a stupefying fact.
Modern society is about using some of the most complex and rarified fruits
of human thought -- mathematics, physics, and engineering of computers,
broadcasting, receiving, internet, displays; art, design, writing,
and acting of media content -- to stuff a hundred million brains, each
several orders of magnitude more powerful than the best computer, straight
down the toilet. What's so great about 'natural computation', emotion,
and human language? Sometimes, the object of study seems beautiful;
sometimes it positively disgusts me.
[Aug23'04] Insider energy investors warn us that alternative energy sources
are still years away from being commercially viable (NYT, yesterday).
These insider investors are showing us the genius of the market --
wait until we are well on the downward slope of oil extraction before
even bothering to start research and development of alternative energy
sources (hydrogen is not an energy *source*). Genius! The market is
smarter than geology and physics combined because it takes not only
them but also the stinky butt cracks of moneybag investors optimally
into consideration. Over the past two years, the worldwide market value
of companies developing renewable energy technology dropped from $13
billion to $10.7 billion. Genius!
[Aug30'04] Recent raw oil production numbers for 1995 to 2003 in
this pdf
(from Petroleum Review, based on numbers originally from British Petroleum
that were converted to thousands of barrels per day) show that the US
still produces a lot of oil -- almost as much as Saudi Arabia -- even
though the US peaked in 1970 and has began steadily dropping every year
after 1985. There was an unusual spike in world production this year
(+3.6%) compared to the previous rate of increase (actually, there was
a small drop last year from 2 years ago). Given that a little over
1/3 of the total production this year came from countries that are
already in permanent decline (past their peak and past the start of
an every-year decline like the US), it meant that countries that are
still increasing had to increase even more than they were already
increasing in order to achieve this. The increases were remarkable
in the Mideast, where Iran, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and
Saudi Arabia all increased their production from 10-20% in one year.
Obviously, this can't be sustained. In fact, it may have already
stopped; Saudi production appears to have leveled off this quarter.
The other big-producer increasers were Russia (+10%, but it's already
past its peak, on a small secondary bump that won't reach the 1980 peak;
the secondary peak was caused by the recovery from Yeltsin, not from
recovery of oil out of the granitic basement rocks, a la Joe Vialls),
Libya (+8%), and Mexico (+5.7%). These 10% year-to-year increases aren't
going to hold for very long. A real danger is that when the inevitable
dropoffs come in Mexico, the Mideast, and Russia, they may be much more
catastrophic than the nice smooth US dropoff (1-2% per year), because
of the different technologies involved. In the US, "primary production"
(first let it ooze out and then just pump) was allowed to run its course
before progressing to "secondary production" (pump water or nitrogen or
natural gas down to rejuvenate wellhead pressure, drill horizontal holes,
etc). In both Mexico and the Mideast, they are doing simultaneous primary
and secondary production to maximize output now. This can result in a
more sudden decline when peak production is reached (unexpected 5-10%
drops in a year; 50% drops in 10 years; cf. the North Sea). This may
very well happen to some of the big remaining increasers in the context
of the whole rest of the world permanently on the downslope. But why
conserve now? That might cause market 'distortion' and deprivation of
incentive, right? We will probably only get one chance at an advanced
civilization on this planet. Too bad it just might flame out with a huge
loss of life later this century because of the fleeting (in terms of the
100,000 year history of modern humans) political and social dominance
of a short-term-greed-based economic system that plans no more than 6
months into the future. I think we blew it.
[Sep13'04] Kerry is wobbling downward right now near the 270 electoral
votes needed to win (see
pollkatz,
who runs the polls through the winner-take-all-by-state electoral college
-- why don't the idiotic media just do this routinely? If the overall
popular vote isn't the thing that legally determines the outcome, why
report *only* that? Sheesh.). Bush's numbers on his handling of the war
are going up, in the midst of the deadliest battles of the entire war!
Could Kerry's dismal numbers be because of Kerry's positions? -- (1)
he voted for the Iraq war, (2) he said he would have voted for it even
if he had known in advance there were no WMDs there, (3) he initially
said he planned to commit *even more* troops to Iraq, for 4 more years,
but then recently talked about reductions during his 'first term' (tchya,
right), (4) he plans to try to involve the UN and a world coalition in
Iraq, despite the fact that everybody knows neither would touch Iraq
with a ten foot pole now, (5) he voted for, and even wrote (!) part of
the Patriot Act, (6) he has no plans to substantially increase taxes on
rich people like himself and his billionaire wife (how could any sane
person *not* regard being very rich coupled with the ability to set tax
policy on rich people as a conflict of interest?), (7) he plans to end
our dependence on foreign oil by finding more here (one tiny problem with
this plan: US oil production peaked in 1970 and has been dropping ever
since and geology always wins over campaign promises). Nah, that can't
be why he's flailing. It must be because of the way his face and hair
look, which is, admittedly, something that distinguishes him from Bush.
The bootlicking spaniel press -- who dutifully stopped reporting on the
war in Iraq when Bush told them that it was really over now that Iraqis
were 'sovereign' -- should be added to the list above.
[Sep15'04] There is something darkly humorous about the oil price gyrations
this week (down, after back up, after drop from record highs [though
not record yet when inflation factored in]). At the current moment,
the oil markets are actually somewhat *over*-supplied because OPEC has
jacked up its output to record levels (2 million b/d more than their
official limit of 26 million b/d). Despite all this, the stinky butt
cracks of the oil moneybag people got sweaty earlier in the week because
of bombed Iraqi pipelines and a big hurricane. But then, the price went
*down* again, because the shutdown of refineries (also caused by the
hurricane) reduced demand for oil. Genius. The bombed Iraqi pipelines
will continue to be bombed (no change, that is), and the hurricane'd
rigs and pipelines and terminals will be quickly repaired (unlike Iraq).
What can't be easily fixed, and what still, sadly, is having virtually no
effect on the market compared to these idiotic day-to-day gyrations is the
long term (well, if you think of one decade as 'long term'...) picture.
Amazingly, almost 3/4 of the total oil on our planet will have been
used up during the span of my life. I guess I just don't feel that
the lives of us boomers are so much more valuable than the lives of all
future humans on this planet.
[Sep23'04] Two tons of 'oil sands' must be dug and processed (using a lot of
water) to get one barrel of oil (that is, the oilsand-to-oil weight-ratio
is 14:1). Because of this, the energy required to get the oil out of
the sands is pretty close to the amount of energy you get from burning
the oil. The daily US gulp of oil would therefore require about one
hundred thousand *tons* of these sands (200 million pounds) to be
processed be *per day*.
[Oct04'04] Unintentional black humor: "I think we need to get off this
planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it." -- Washington
State physicist Kelvin Lynn, who works on storing antimatter for the
defense department so that they can make extra super-duper-powerful
'clean' matter-antimatter bombs (which just emit gamma rays, allowing
soldiers to storm immediately into obliterated target zones) -- but it
could also possibly be useful for space propulsion.
[Oct07'04] US oil production went down to 5 million barrels a day this week.
The US peak production happened in 1970 (10 million barrels a day).
Since 1970, US production has declined gradually to about 7 million
barrels a day last year (this is still a lot -- almost as much as Saudi
Arabia, which produces about 10 million barrels a day). Only about 10%
of US production normally comes out of the Gulf of Mexico (the hurricanes
caused a drop of 30% in that 10% which is only 3% of total US production).
The storms also caused Mexico's oil production (usually 1.7 million
barrels a day) to drop 25%. However, together, these drops are small
compared to the world production of about 80 million barrels a day.
Therefore, the recent price spikes sugggests that the world oil market
is quite tight -- surplus production production capacity is essentially
gone. This can lead to extreme price spikes since the demand for oil
is pretty inelastic. Of course, a situation like this is also the
perfect breeding ground for parasitic businesses like Enron, and no
doubt, part of the recent run-up in prices ($53 a barrel today -- high,
but still below inflation-adjusted $80 peak in the 1970s) reflects the
careful efforts of Enron's bold successors. But just because there are
Enron-like bedbugs feeding on our carcass doesn't mean we won't run out
of oil. The fact that oil companies are going to get very rich off of
peak oil -- aided by the hordes of oil company businessmen that infest
our government and regulatory agencies -- is unfortunate. Left-ish peak
oil doomsayers like Michael Ruppert are getting moderately rich, too.
But even if we were able to impose more sensible limits on oil profits,
it wouldn't save us from the ugliness coming our way on the downslope,
and it won't cause depleted oil fields to refill with 'abiotic oil'.
"Peak oil" is a scam -- and, unfortunately, it's also true.
[Oct08'04] Kerry says we will wean ourselves from reliance on Saudi oil
in ten years. He's right -- in ten years we will all be on the roller
coaster that always goes down.
[Oct11'04] Commenting on the reduction in spending over the past 5 years by
the world's biggest for new oil exploration, Robert Plummer, a corporate
analyst at Wood Mackenzie said: "a number of constraints will continue
to act on exploration performance, the most important of which is being
access to material opportunities". This takes a little explaining.
The background is that the results of recent exploration have not
been profitable. Twice as much was spent exploring for new oil as
the value of the new oil that was found. This means that oil would
have to be over $100 dollars a barrel for any new oil exploration to
be profitable. There *is* a place where exploration is profitable --
that is what is referred to as "material opportunities" -- namely, the
Mideast and Venezuela. The only fly in the ointment is "access".
Got blood?
[Oct15'04] "Taking a leaf from his record on sustainable energy, John Kerry
now wants to make the war in Iraq sustainable" -- Greg Bates.
[Oct16'04] Jon Stewart's performance on Crossfire (wmv below) was amazingly
masterful. It gives me a ray of, what do call it, hope?
[Oct31'04] Many conspiracy sites were mistakenly expecting a more expensive,
elaborate, and splashy 'October surprise'. They (and I) failed to notice
that since the election has remained nearly a tie, only a small well-timed
nudge would be needed. The video may be just the ticket, esp. if the
spaniel media spins the terror side of it (how could they fail to rise
to the occasion...). Once again, I bow to the genius of Rove (even
*Cronkite* fingered him!). And if a resuscitated Osama doesn't work,
a few lost ballots and hacked machines here, a few blacks blocked from
voting by 'faulty' lists there, will.
[Nov03'04] The day after the election. Eeesh. Two days before the election,
the price of oil started to drop, in expectation of a Kerry victory.
Then, ominously, at the start of election day, and continuing even
after the exit polls began showing Kerry ahead, oil started to rise
again. Somehow the oil-money-heads figured it out before it happened.
As Stalin said: "it's not who votes that counts, but who counts the
votes". The impossible-to-audit nature of the partial electronic vote
will make a challenge virtually impossible. Situation looks bleak,
but remember that only *one year* after Nixon won every state but
Massachusetts (against McGovern in 1972), he was booted out of there
to quickly become a bad memory. And then his temp replacement, Ford,
even lost the following (1976) election.
[Nov04'04] Gay marriage became the Nader of 2004. Now all the week-kneed
SUV-driving Kerrycrat security moms and dads in NY and SF are wringing
their hands about Kerry not having been rightwing enough (et tu, Juan
Cole?!), and how we *must* fix that next time. Why couldn't Kerry have
campaigned on nuking Mecca? Why didn't the Dems nominate Jeb instead
of Kerry? (Jeb would have played better in the South since he's from
from a good suthern family, right? -- not!). But why all the sobbing,
you cowardly right-o-phile 'Dems'? You should be *thanking* all the
Red State trash that we got Bush back because he *is* rightwing enough.
If you can't stand up and be counted like Robert Byrd (!), then just
step and fetch it. The 'Dems' lost the election more clearly than last
time despite (1) a 50% presidential disapproval rating, (2) massive jobs
losses, (3) massive debt increases, (4) unprecedented oil price increase,
(5) continuing disaster in Iraq, (6) a win in all three debates, (7) and
a billion campaign dollars to spend (what a waste!). What do these guys
need? The loser 'Dem' strategy of out-righting the right is hereby fired.
[Nov05'04] Many people have worried about the effects of higher oil prices on
the economy. However, it seems more likely that rising oil prices will
initially be coupled with strong economic *growth*. And oil is still
not that expensive at all, even at $50/barrel -- the cost of housing has
tripled over the past thirty years but the cost of domestically produced
US oil has stayed the same (at about $30/barrel) until just this year.
All good things must come to an end, and the expected spurt in economic
growth and oil usage accompanying $80-$100/barrel oil will deplete oil
reserves even more rapidly, eventually leading to an even steeper decline
when geology finally rises up and grinds the market under its stony heel.
Then you will tell your kids: "no one told us it was going to happen,
so it's not our fault that we used 75% of the world's energy and fresh
water reserves in the span of one boomer (human?) lifetime".
[Nov05'04] Policing who you have sex with in private is an American "moral
value". Slaughtering 100,000 humans in Iraq in order to establish
military bases in order steal Mideastern oil on the basis of obvious
lies is a war crime, but hopefully not immoral, right?
[Nov06'04 -- commentary submitted to NPR Morning Edition and rejected because
'mailbox full' -- presumably because I had sent one previous commentary,
which was not run] "On Saturday morning (Nov 6, 2004), there was a report
by Anne Garrels about the impending assault on the 50,000 to 100,000
people that remain in Fallujah after 200,000 women and children were
allowed to flee the daily US bombing. Most of these are men, since all
men under 45 were not allowed to leave. Having reporters embedded with
our storm troopers doesn't give NPR listeners a full picture of what
is going on. Garrels carefully explains how the US troops are going
to have a difficult time because they are being extremely careful not
to kill civilians. Without context, you would hardly know that the
last time we tried to subdue Fallujah, we were forced to withdraw
when the rest of the world responded with outrage to the criminal
slaughter of more than 500 civilians there -- 20% as many civilians
as died in 9-11. A short internet scan is sufficient to reveal the
extremely biased nature of these kinds of reports. For example, on
the same day, the BBC reported that a Fallujah hospital was razed
to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids yet on Fallujah
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3988433.stm). There were no
reports whether or not people were inside. Likely there were, given that
the BBC and many other more objective news outlets have reported daily
civilian casualties from months of continuous bombardment. Even if the
Harvard-educated Garrels knew about the US having demolished a hospital
(a war crime by standard definitions), her embedded status would have
prevented her from reporting it. NPR manages a facade of objectivity
-- worrying, for example, whether it should be associated with Slate
since most of Slate's staff said they supported Kerry -- yet it serves
as a propaganda mouthpiece for the war crimes of the administration.
The press was braver during Vietnam. I think history will not look
kindly upon media outlets such as yourselves who serve as cheerleaders
of imperial war." -- Martin Sereno
[Nov18'04] In the past two years, we have tossed an *additional* $250
billion into our already amazingly huge military so it could trash an
essentially defenseless Iraq (I hate to think of what a war against a
worthy foe would cost). That $250 billion should have been put toward a
crash research, development, and manufacturing program for photovoltaic
cells and solar heat concentrating devices instead of trying to site
military bases around somebody else's oil. The current best guess is
that peak extraction of oil will happen within 5 years, natural gas in
about 10 years, and coal (which is responsible for all that mercury in
fish) in about 15 or 20 years. The downside of those curves is likely
to be very rough, with disruptions of world trade, Walmart (yeah!),
food production, car transportation, suburbs, and with the probability
of (more!) resource wars. It takes a lot of energy to make factories
where solar-energy-generating devices are manufactured, a lot of energy
to make the devices themselves, and a lot of energy to distribute and
install the devices. *All* of that needed energy will have to come
in the near future from fossil fuels (current solar energy provides a
tiny fraction of 1% of our energy). Instead of trying to exert even a
tiny bit of rational control over the slavering, greed-based market,
we worship it. The wonderful intelligence of greed has led to a 30%
*reduction* of investment in alternative energy in the past few years!
And our gropinator governor just floated a proposal this week to tax gas
by miles driven instead of by the gallon, because more fuel-efficient
vehicles will reduce gasoline usage and gas tax revenues. This will
remove part of the economic incentive to buy fuel-efficient vehicles.
There are other more subtle problems with the impending fossil fuel peaks.
It is little mentioned that helium is a byproduct of oil and gas wells,
that it escapes into space when exhausted into the atmosphere, that it
cannot be manufactured, and that it is currently required for things like
MRI machines and magnetic containment coils for fusion reactors. Bummer.
Because, as Richard Heinberg has said, peak oil will finally put some
real teeth into that namby-pamby, green-washed word, "sustainability".
Also, don't forget that our military is about 70% hydrocarbon fuel
by weight, when it's out and about, doing its dirty deeds.
[Nov19'04] The Pentagon reports that it is now spending $5.8 billion a
month in Iraq (not counting Afghanistan). That's a burn rate of $70
billion dollars per year up from $48 billion a year. At that rate,
we're spending more money each year destroying Iraqi cities and people
(so that the survivors will be able to vote, of course) than we spend
on all scientific research in this country. That's so insane that even
the *market* would do better of allocating this money :-}
[Nov23'04] Each *day*, the US imports $2.6 billion in cash -- 80% of the
world's savings -- while the dollar is falling. This finances our current
account deficit with the world. The scene where Slim Pickens rides
the bomb down comes to mind. But, who knows -- as a lefty doomsayer,
I always seem to be crying wolf and nothing happens. Maybe this will
just be inflated away slowly without any catastrophic effects because
there is no other credible place for savings to go to. Maybe.
[Nov26'04] The tremendous irony of the election follies is that the
red states as a whole actually get *more* tax dollars back from the
Federal government (up to 2 times the amount that they collect) than
blue states, which, by contrast, actually subsidize the red states.
Meanwhile, the red states complain about taxes, which if they were all
ended, would actually result in a net dollar *loss* for the reddies.
The red states are actually the 'welfare queens'. This is by design and
supported by blue-ies (summary
here
). Most of the paid-out money is redistribution of wealth from the
blue states to not-the-lowest-income strata of the red states, by
way of social security to old people, education, science, technology,
and transportation, military bases, medicare to old people, interest
payments on the debt. Only about 15% of the total redistribution goes
to poor people in the red states (so you red-state yahoos who want to
kill the poor should know that we blue-ies are doing our best...).
When I'm feeling esp. misanthropic, I look forward to the collision
of peak oil with "our lifestyle is not negotiable". Our lifestyle is
not only negotiable, it's going to be dictated. But it's not clear if
the reddies or the blue-ies are going to come out worse here in the US.
The reddies rely heavily on oil, which is going to go up and up. However,
the blue-ies rely heavily on oil, too, for, among other things, food.
Hard to say which way people of both colors will be running when the s***
hits the fan.
[Dec03'04] Tar sand oil production accounted for 1.2% of world oil production
this year (about 1 million barrels/day). Tar sand supporters predict
that they should be able to double that to 2 million barrels/day by 2010.
The world oil production (usage) is currently 83 million barrels a day.
Go, tar sands. Just think where they could get to by 2030 (maybe 4%
of daily world usage). Tar sands won't save us. The best always comes
first. This is the rising part of the tar sands production curve. Then
there's the falling part -- when the EROEI (energy return on investment)
gets close to 1.0 (that is, it takes the same amount of energy to get
the oil out that you get back out of it when you burn it).
[Dec03'04] "Be studious, stay in school, and stay away from the military. I
mean it." -- an Iraqi marine's advice to his son, shortly before he was
killed last month.
[Dec06,04] Coal and gas prices (the other red meats) have tripled in the last
year and a half. Oil actually increased the least. Peak coal and peak
gas are supposed to be a little further out than peak oil (about 20 years)
so it's probably just the genius of the market causing the increases.
If we start replacing oil with coal and gas, however, it might bring the
coal and gas peaks closer to the oil one. That will probably make for
a particularly nasty 'triple witching hour' -- one that lasts forever.
For some interesting background on peak oilers (that however does not
refute the basic discovery vs. production facts), see this 2003
article,
by the late sociologist Walt Contreras Sheasby who died of West Nile
virus in June 2004.
[Dec08'04] Veterans of the second Iraq war are already arriving at homeless
shelters. A majority of homeless are war veterans (almost half of the
homeless are Vietnam veterans). Yups pass them thinking "get a job".
The appropriate response is, "you and *your* kids should fight your own
damn wars".
[Dec08'04] Before the election was decided, Alex Pelosi caught a slightly
drunk
Peter
King on film saying: "It's already over. The Election's over. We
Won." Nancy Pelosi asks, "How do you know that?" King replies, "It's all
over but the counting. And we'll take care of the counting."
[Dec09'04] The return of veterans from Vietnam in the late 1960's and early
1970's was associated with an all time peak in the murder rate in the US
(and a recession).
[Dec11'04] "We shouldn't be here. There was no reason for invading this
country in the first place... I don't enjoy killing women and children.
It's not my thing." -- marine infantryman to the Christian Science
Monitor. Probably wasn't their thing either. Probably wouldn't be
the thing of a hypothetical Iraqi soldier machine-gunning your sister
or mother in their car or your home. That this can be printed without
comment shows that Iraqis are un-people -- it's at most a bit inconvenient
to have to casually slaughter them. People in the US think they are
the master-race. Do onto others, man, because sooner or later, they
are going to do onto you.
[Dec13'04] Oil is amazingly localized. Today, the world produces 82.5
million barrels of oil a day. A full 11% of that comes from just 4
oil fields: Ghawar (Saudi), Cantarell (Mexico), Burgan (Kuwait), and
Da Qing (China). Oil is not localized because people haven't looked in
enough places. It's just localized. 'The market' isn't going to make
it less so because it's running out. First, it will just get more and
more expensive. That will of course help stimulate increased exploration
for the remaining needles in a haystack. But then a critical rubicon
will be crossed at more and more oil fields, where it takes a lot more
energy to get it out than you get back out of it by burning it. This can
happen, for example, when the level of the 'water table' being injected
underneath the remaining oil (to keep up the wellhead pressure up so
production doesn't slow down) reaches the extraction pipes, and suddenly,
you are just pumping out the water you pumped in. When the water hits
the pipes at Ghawar, no amount of economic mumbo jumbo will turn the
remaining oil in that field back into an energy *source*. When the first
huge oil price spike finally arrives (it hasn't happened yet -- oil at
$50/barrel is still well under its all-time inflation-adjusted peak of
$80/barrel, hit in the 70's), it will hopefully cause people to step back
and begin to think about 'negotiating our lifestyle'. And perhaps it
will put a spike into the number of operating Abrams tanks (gas mileage:
0.5 miles/gallon). I suppose another possibility would be for our fine
body politic to demand that we gas up the tanks and dust off the nukes and
eliminate all 'lesser races' because they're using up 'our' oil too fast.
This is probably why the 'lesser races' want their own nukes.
[Dec16'04] Michael Neumann says it right. 'Collateral damage' is
expected, not accidental. If you shoot at your cheating wife at a party
and accidentally kill a bystander, it's still murder, because you were
shooting at a party. Collateral damage is purposeful, pre-meditated
killing of civilians. Just because we tear off the skin of children
using remote-control bombs doesn't make it different from tearing off
the skin of a child tied down to a torture table. It just makes it
easier on the torturer.
[Dec18'04] Don't fight a rich man's war; they'd never fight one for
you.
[Dec21'04] In the 'free election' about to take place in Iraq -- which
has cost US taxpayers a mere $200 billion (at $2.5 billion, our recent
election/whatever was a steal!) -- only candidates'
feet and torsos
are shown in campaign ads, for fear they will be identified. Why can't
we have that kind of respect for candidates here?
[Dec21'04] So it looks like Rumsfart is going to get booted -- not
for slaughtering 100,000 civilians, but instead, he will fall down
the Earl-Butz/James-Watt toilet chute because he rubber stamped US
soldier death condolences instead of signing them. He should be strung
up for ordering the flaying of kids, the burning of mothers, and the
disemboweling of aunties with high-tech people-shredders -- as well as
for the much smaller number of equally horrible casualties among the
attacking US soldiers. But good Americans *approve* of all that, while
being horrified by the rubber stamps. What is wrong with you people?
Of course, everything is dual purpose, and perhaps the flesh-eating
ghouls running our fine country want him booted because he didn't agree
to shred *enough* low-value people. He probably had an illegal nanny,
too, omigod.
[Dec26'04] "And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind
of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul,
or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked
the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania
and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on
television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is
just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people
be something other than that which they want to be." -- Donald Rumsfeld,
Iraq visit speech, Dec 24. Who shot down what plane where??!
[Dec26'04] "US soldiers took my fingerprints and checked my eyes, and then
asked for more than one document". Welcome to newly democratic Fallujah.
I'm glad our tax dollars are being put to good use for iris scanners
in Fallujah. Probably, if we invested instead in alternative energy,
it would only distort the genius of the market.
[Dec30'04] With all the breathless disaster porn on the teevee, they never
give you key numbers (whatreallyhappened.com): the US will generously
send $35 million to help the survivors of the tsunami that killed 125,000
people (about how many civilians we killed in Iraq war II). This compares
unfavorably with the $45 million that is being spent for the inaugural
of our chimp, and even more unfavorably with the $177 million we spend
*each day* to keep up the Iraq war. What an expert performance, with
your flying logos and empathic shots of non-white women with pierced
noses, you media types. May you rot in hell, etc.
[Dec30'04] Unintended humor dept: while searching for information on
the web about lemur brains, I got to a site that had auto-inserted some
"Ads by Google", which presented me with a helpful link entitled "Discount
Spider Monkeys". More specifically, "New & used Spider Monkeys -- Check
out the huge selection now!" at eBay. I suppose it will be a loss when
AI finally does semantics.
[Jan03'05] So now, perhaps out of embarrassment, the US is upping its
diaster relief to $350 million -- about what we spend in Iraq *two days*
($177 million/day). Also, they will be taking up a collection of private
donations. Fine. But why don't they take up a frigging collection for
the whole damn war? That way, the reddies could give till it hurts.
Put your money where your yellow ribbons are. The problem is not the
bat guano Congress (can't be fixed -- it's bat guano by definition),
but the fact that the war has no immediate effect on the great majority
of people; they can't see blown-off limbs and squished babies, there is
no draft, and the bad economic effects are delayed. There needs to be
a more immediate emotional and financial cost (just like the economists
always say!).
[Jan06'05] Reinventing doctors. According to Dr. David Mengele, I mean,
Tornberg, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs,
when a doctor participates in interrogation, "he's not functioning as a
physician," and the Hippocratic ethic of commitment to patient welfare
does not apply (from today's New England Journal of Medicine). Kewl.
I suppose there will be a lot of other professions that need to be
reinvented, too.
[Jan11'05] "Imagine a world where such ferocious attacks [like those on
Fallujah's hospitals and water supply] become common [they left out the
implied "here"]. Imagine the Puget Sound region's hospitals and clinics
as targets, our water supply fouled. Imagine our outrage. Let's not
walk any farther down that path." -- Jim McDermott, M.D., and Richard
Rapport, M.D.
[Jan17'05] It's been *months* since the last story on conjoined
third-world twins. C'mon media guys, get to work! They're not paying
you to sit around! Shouldn't you guys at least *check* if Michael
Jackson had a conjoined twin over for tea?
[Jan18'05] The US peak in natural gas production was 1994, at 55
Bcfd (billion cubic feet per day). Today, production is at 50 Bcfd.
Because gas is hard to transport (it must be liquified for long-distance
transport), gas prices have spiked to triple the average of the 1990's,
despite the fact that many other gas producers have not yet peaked.
We use gas for electricity, heating, and making fertilizer.
[Jan18'05] My peak oil/energy presentation is now online in both
powerpoint
and
pdf
format.
[Jan23'05]
World oil production/usage increased by 2.5 million barrels
a day from Dec03 to Dec04 (over 3%). This *increase* is more than the
current output of Iraq (1.5 million barrels a day, which as a result of
sabotage and infrastructure decay is substantially less than Iraq's peak
output of 3.5 million barrels a day in the early 80's). This didn't
make the evening Matrix-news for American putty-brains. Even if you
know nothing about geology, you probably have a sneaking suspicion
that we're not finding an Iraq's worth of new oil production each year.
Party on, dude.
[Jan27'05]
What *really* worries me is the possibility of a peak-oil/global-warming
double-whammy exacerbated, paradoxically, by the peak-energy-caused end
of particulates. The atmospheric heating effects of increased CO2 seem
to have been partly offset by increased particulates in the atmosphere,
mostly as a result of increased fossil fuel (esp. coal) use. Last year,
for example, there was an unusual 'darkness at noon' from particulate
fog across all of China, which shut down flights across the country. When
fossil fuel (and wood!) use finally winds down, however, the particulates
will precipitate (cf. the Pinatubo eruption -- which cleared in a few
years). The extra CO2, however will take 50 to 100 years to clear.
So then, right in the middle of chaotic energy/food shortages, we may
also have to endure a really nasty heating session like the one at the
end of the Permian, when life almost ended. 90-95% of all species went
extinct and the oceans were almost sterilized. Hopefully, a few initial
scares (the end of Ghawar, a big Antarctic melt) will bang some long-term
sense into people before then. Currently, we're running around like a
bunch of economists in an airtight room -- "breathe harder guys! -- the
genius of the market can't work unless we increase demand..."
link
[Jan31'05]
The survey of 112,003 high school students finds that 36% believe
newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing;
51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Kewl. Government censors rawk. I wonder what they think about blogs?
link
[Feb01'05]
Quote of the day: "We now are told, according to my sources, that the
administration has been reaching out to Mr. Chalabi, to offer him
expressions of cooperation and support and according to one report
he was even offered a chance to be an interior minister in the new
government." -- Judith Miller from the NYT explaining how the US makes
appointments in the new government just elected by the Iraqi people.
There were a few "wake up! time for your insurgent ass to be electrified
in Abu Ghraib, oh, I mean sorry lady, time to vote!" and "vote or we
cut off your food rations", but overall, it was a smashing success,
which included daily bombing of Iraqi cities like Ramadi, and their
not-worth-counting, low-market-value untermenschen.
[Feb14'05]
The value of the oil in the ground discovered by the major oil
companies was *exceeded* by the costs of exploration for the past 3
years, because the finds were smaller, and harder to find and verify.
Economists are correct that this is 'merely' a problem of oil prices,
which are not high enough yet (at $50/barrel, which is still under
the late 70's inflation-adjusted alltime peak of $80). This is an ROI
(return on investment) ratio of less than 1.0 -- more money spent on
exploration than money expected for the sale of the entire discovery.
This imbalance would normally have the effect of increasing oil prices or
reducing oil exploration. Currently, both oil prices *and* exploration
seem to be increasing (probably because oil companies realize that oil
prices will soon go much higher). At some point in the not-too-distant
future (probably around 2025), however, the EROEI (amount of *energy*,
at whatever cost -- cost is immaterial -- returned on *energy* investment)
will go below 1.0. No increase in the price of oil can fix an EROEI ratio
below 1.0. It will no longer make sense to extract oil for the purpose
of providing energy, period. That doesn't mean that drilling will stop.
For example, some rich slob hiding on a South Sea island might want to
to pay for his own private oil supply (probably along with a private
army from DynCorp to protect it). But when that point comes, humans as
a whole will begin to stop using oil as an energy *source*.
link
[Feb15'05]
The problem with outsourced US jobs is annoyingly obvious. With no
controls on capital movement and lots of controls on low-income people
movement, it's trivial to see that the best business strategy is to
move capital overseas where wages are less. Duh. The only way to
stop this is to raise the minimum wage in poorer countries by threat
of capital control, or by threats of a multi-country strike. This was
obvious to many workers in 1910! (IWW, etc). Instead, the carefully
curried knee jerk reaction among the reddies now is the fervent
desire to completely seal the borders to people while at the same
time removing any small remaining contraints on the flow of capital --
exactly what multinational corporations need to make their operations
even more lucrative. We have massively regressed, maybe because iPod
is a better religion than religion itself. This basic analysis is
now utterly beyond today's working Americans. On the positive side, I
suppose it shows that human nature really is nice and trusting at heart,
very much *unlike* what evolutionary psychologists say! (you're trusting
the wrong guys, people...).
link
[Feb16'05] While reading an article about tasers for the home (which
worried in a peecee way about 'off label' use of tasers for child
discipline, whatever) -- it dawned on me that tasers are going to
become the perfect politically-correct gun! No self-respecting pwog
house will soon be without one! Of course, they'll be of little use in
keeping the barbarian hordes out of the organic victory garden when the
SHTF....
[Feb17'05] Maureen Dowd quote: "I was rejected for a White House press
pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias,
a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the
"Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second
term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?"
[Feb17'05] James Howard Kunstler quote: "Globalism was never an 'ism,'
by the way. It was not a belief system. It was a manifestation of the
20-year-final-blowout of cheap oil. Like all economic distortions, it
produced economic perversions. It allowed gigantic, predatory organisms
like WalMart to spawn and reproduce at the expense of more cellular
fine-grained economic communities.
[Feb17'05] Akeel quote (Christian Parenti's Baghdad translator): "Ah,
the freedom. Look, we have the gas-line freedom, the looting freedom,
the killing freedom, the rape freedom, the hash-smoking freedom. I don't
know what to do with all this freedom."
[Feb18'05] "Radio frequency identification (RFID) and satellite tags
allowed the Department of Defense (DoD) to transform its patchy,
paper-based logistics system -- in which troops were forced to go
"container diving" through thousands of unlabeled "mystery containers"
-- to one where they had total asset visibility of every item in every
container as it moved across the world to Iraq." -- William Eggers
in Public CIO explaining how the attack on Iraq went so fast.
Seems like RFID is ready to go domestically. It will surely be a great
impediment to terrorism when every citizen and employee is protected by
"total asset visibility". RFID only works at very short distances. But I
wonder what those "satellite tags" are? They sound kinda longer range.
Probably tags will be needed for both assets and liabilites. Just think
of it like Santa, who knows whether you've been bad or good.
[Feb19'05] 5 years ago, a
survey of what was floating in the North Pacific Gyre found that
the mass of small floating plastic fragments was *6* times the mass of
floating plankton there. Plankton are probably comparably weighty to
plastic elsewhere, however, since the ocean currents probably concentrate
the 'plas-ton' there, and plankton productivity is higher elsewhere.
[Feb21'05] "I feel like [Fallujah] was the pinnacle of my existence --
that nothing I will ever do will be like what I have done," says the
religious marine from Spotsylvania, Virginia. "I'm pretty sure there
will be times just as good ... just as awesome -- and I'll appreciate
it in a different way". -- Cpl. Christopher DeBlanc to Scott Peterson
of the Christian Science Monitor. Dude, that's a pretty scary religion
you've got there. It's awfully hard on the women and children.
[Feb22'05]
There was an interesting and detailed comment in Monday Feb 21's
urbansurvival.com -- purportedly from an oil exploration company
executive. After whining about not enough rigs and personnel because
of the heartbreak and fear of a repeat of 1980's low oil prices
(it's just the genius of the market, man -- stop your sobbing; plus,
there's no danger of that any more, as you yourself say!), and then
whining about not being able to make the east and west coast shoreline
both look like Gulf of Mexico (be patient, my friend), he makes a
key point about the economics of drilling as oil prices increase.
At first, you might think higher oil prices would drive more drilling.
But as oil prices rise, they drive up the prices of a lot of the things
required for oil drilling, including plastics, steel, transportation,
and chemicals. Thus, fields that have been bypassed previously as
uneconomic to drill because the traps are too small may remain that
way forever, even as oil prices increase to astronomical levels.
I'm glad to see that the more fundamental EROEI (energy return on
energy investment) ratio is seeping into the subconscious of the
focus-only-on-money crowd. Extracting hard-to-get oil is expensive
precisely because it takes more and more energy to do it. This oil guy
expects the s*** will hit the fan in less than ten years. He concludes:
"Just wanted to get that off my chest. I have been maligned and spit on
by too many people who drive cars and use electricity, and then bitch
about prices or claim some kind of 'Big Oil Conspiracy'. I can tell
you that the collective consensus within my business will be 'let the
bastards freeze in the dark' when the big wail arises." Or as another
anonymous petroleum geologist said upon seeing recent 3D seismic data
from Ghawar: "It's over! Kiss your lifestyle goodbye!".
link
[Feb28,05] Whatever you think about what should be done with/to the
'feeding tube woman', the idea of killing a brain-damaged person by
removing the tube so that the person dies slowly over several weeks
from dehydration does seem pretty sick. According to hospice nurses
and doctors, non-brain-damaged patients who have lived through it
(well until the last bit) report that death by dehydration/starvation
is actually less unpleasant than it sounds (though note that this
is compared to whatever horrible disease was actually killing them,
and probably, this was assessed by them while they were on an opiate
drip...). Such conscious terminally ill patients often refuse food
and water on their own, except to keep their mucous membranes wet,
because they say that they actually feel more comfortable (note
here that opiates can induce nausea). In any case, it is common
enough of a practice that there are many hospice-supplied
descriptions).
What irks me is that if euthanasia by removal of a feeding tube is
allowed, why not also allow a sensible overdose of Nembutal? For
reference, you wouldn't generally be allowed to kill an unanesthetized
animal by dehydration/starvation for a research project, even if it
had a severely damaged neocortex. It's important to keep in mind that
there are rare but well documented and terrifying cases of 'locked in'
syndrome, the result of damage to the lower brainstem interrupting spinal
motor output pathways but leaving the thalamus, midbrain, and forebrain
intact, where patients have reported awakening from a coma but finding
themselves paralyzed (except for eye movements), but fully conscious.
Patients sometimes recover to some extent, but many remain paralyzed
and conscious for many years, like Julia Tavalaro. It seems extremely
unlikely that this is the case here, given the massive cortical damage
sustained (apparently after cardiac arrest apparently brought on by a
potassium imbalance possibly triggered by chronic bulimia), and lack of
paralysis. At any one time, there are perhaps 35,000 people in a similar
vegetative state after massive cortical damage in the US, so there is
quite of bit of medical experience out there. It's also good to remember
that ideas about what is 'natural' and 'moral' have changed markedly
over the years. For example, in the 19th century, some doctors argued
against painkillers and anesthesia, because it used to be thought that
deep wounds couldn't heal properly without the experience of severe pain.
Anesthesia by isoflurane is not any more 'natural' than driving a car is,
but I doubt anybody wants to go back to 'natural' (unanesthetized) surgery
(we will eventually have to give up driving cars, though :-} ). Also,
before the infection process was well understood, there was the medical
idea that the (formerly inevitable) infection that accompanied a deep
wound was actually good; it used to be called 'laudatory pus'!
[Mar01,05] "One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning
was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars
I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my
confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom
if we are afraid to follow our conscience?" -- Camilo Meija, imprisoned
for refusing to return to Iraq.
[Mar14'05]
In the year 2004, total world discovery of oil was 7 Gb (3 months
world supply). 2 Gb of that was deep-water finds for which the cost
of exploration (*not* including development and production!) exceeded
the value, at current prices, of the oil found. The world consumed
around 30 Gb of oil in 2004, a 2.5% increase over 2003. This was
caused by an all-around demand increase (e.g., US petroleum demand
grew at its strongest rate in five years). ANWR is optimistically
estimated to contain a total of 10 Gb, somewhat more than a year of
US usage, though a more realistic estimate of practically recoverable
oil is more like 4 Gb (about 6 months US usage). Note, however, that
oil can only be pumped out of an oil field at a finite rate. Thus,
at top speed, ANWR might be able to provide 1 million barrels a day
(0.37 Gb/year), which is only 5% of current US usage. For comparison,
the top producing field in the world produces 5 million barrels a
day (Ghawar, Saudi), and the second produces 2 million barrels a day
(Cantarell, Mexico). Both of these fields are much bigger than ANWR.
The unreality of the idiotic discussion about 'the market' somehow
'fixing' these frightening facts reminds me of a quote from the Feral
Metallurgist: "Economics is the game of tiddly-winks that we can afford
to play only in the midst of easy, abundant energy." We are currently
spending about $2.5 billion a week on the Iraq occupation. The current
value of Iraq's total current oil output (1.5 million barrels/day * 7 days
* $55/barrel) is $0.58 billion a week. Just to recoup our 'investment'
without any profit, (assuming we eventually end up stealing Iraq's entire
output), oil 'only' has to go up to $240/barrel. It will probably get
there sooner than anyone is expecting. Of course, the part about stealing
all their oil is still going to take some 'work'. As one of the soldiers
whose heavy-metal Iraqi snuff videos turned out to be a bit shocking to
their wives said: "This isn't some jolly freakin' peacekeeping mission."
link
[Mar18,05] "The bottom line is were were very concerned about the
*perceptions* that somehow we were doing this to steal the oil"
[my emphasis] -- Amy Jaffee, James Baker Institute, interviewed
by Greg Palast, commenting on why big oil companies opposed
selling off Iraq's oil (to big oil companies, but maybe not
US big oil). (quote from BBC Newsnight video linked on
this
page). Palast seems to imply that if we had just taken over the oil
fields like the neocons wanted, oil prices could have been kept down,
but that oil companies stopped the neocons. Aside from the fact that
they hardly seem 'stopped', I don't see how running Iraq back up to
its maximum ever output of 3.5 million barrels a day from its current
1.5 million barrels a day (which would have taken years anyway) would
have dealt with year after year increases of world consumption of 2.5
million barrels a day. True, it might have worked for 6 months. Do the
numbers, man. The other thing is, do you, Palast, have the slightest
idea where the proceeds of Iraq's oil (currently, $0.58 billion a week)
are actually going today? Who are you going to ask?
[Mar20,05] The Fed and the commercial banks have great jobs. When banks
come to the Fed's "discount window" for a loan, computers create money
out of nothing, and the banks pay the Fed interest for the newly created
money using already existing money (previously created in similar fashion;
when the banks pay back the loan, the money disappears into the same
hole from which it was created). Then the banks that have borrowed
this money into existence (now called "cash reserves") can lend out 10
times the amount that they have borrowed/created, in effect, creating
even more money. This means if a bank gets $1,000 of created money
from the Fed, they can actually lend out $10,000 ($1,000 + $9,000).
Another way of looking at it is that out of the $1,000, they only need
to keep $100 as true "reserves", and so $900 is "excess reserves". Now,
the key part. When anyone deposits money into the bank, the same thing
happens to it (only 10% of it needs to be kept as reserves). After many
cycles of converting 90% of each deposit into "excess reserves", 9x as
much money has been generated as was originally 'injected' into the bank
by the Fed. This 'second generation' money (beyond the initial creation
by the Fed) is much more interesting to banks than the standard kind of
money they get from deposits, because they don't have to pay interest on
it like they do with deposits (or borrowings from the Fed). Also, banks
typically loan out the created money at a higher rate of interest than
the Fed (compare the Fed's interest rate to the interest on a mortgage).
Cool 'jobs' these guys do, eh? And you thought post-modern critical
theory was a hard job?
[Mar21,05] GM market capitalization (value of all its stock) is now
$16 billion, after a loss this week of around $3 billion. Its debt is
$300 billion. Its main money making business is loans, not cars (how
Enron-y). If it goes bankrupt, its bondholders will own a company worth
much less than $300 billion. That would be a loss bigger than than the
losses of Enron, Global Crossing, Long Term Capital Management, K-Mart,
and the Iraq war put together. Hey, that's getting close to the size
of the yearly military budget. Eeeeeww. Definitely time for the plunge
protection people!
[Mar22,05] The wealth of the world's billionaires reached $2.2 trillion,
which was a 57% increase over 2 years ago. At that rate, the entire
world will be owned by billionaires in a few decades (world GDP is about
$40 trillion). Meanwhile, 2.7 billion people live on less than $2 a
day (this is almost half of all humans alive today), and the bottom
1 billion of those live on less than $1 a day. This polarizing trend
is not due to a sudden increase in the intelligence of billionaires,
or a sudden decrease in the intelligence of poor people, but is largely
the result of legislative trends in the past two decades of reducing
taxes on rich people, increasing burdens on poor people, and allowing
rich people to skim off the often tax-supported efforts of scientists
and artists and hide away offshore, without paying anything back
to the society that helped create that knowledge and art. It's all
a matter of boundary conditions. We can set them however we want.
As industrial society reaches peak energy and begins to head down the
'slope that always goes down' over the next 30 years or so, perhaps
this discussion will be seriously opened. Right now, it's completely
off the table. We are buzzing along like yeast cells reaching their
peak population in a fermenting vat -- just before the resources start
to run out and everybody starts getting killed off by waste products.
But we're intelligent yeasts, right? In theory, that means that we have
brains that can figure out how to stop self-destructive greedy behavior
in time. Hopefully, reining in greed will be on the table 10 years from
now.
[Apr02,05] The continuing religious faith that the 'the market' will
somehow trump oil geology and physics and save our behinds continues to
amaze me. The discovery of oil is basically uncoupled from market forces.
The peak in world discovery occurred in the 1960's. Sure there was demand
back then. But there's a lot more now, and the supply is shorter. The
world discovery peak occurred back then because that was when we finished
finding the easier-to-find stuff. After that, despite spending *a lot*
more time and more energy and using more tech, we've found a little less
each few years for the past 40 years. The insanity of thinking that
'the market' will somehow change this is like believing in creationism
and your cell phone at the same time. The second physical/geological
fact that the market can't fix is the rate at which oil can be pumped
out of small holes drilled several miles down into the earth. It doesn't
matter if demand spikes relative to supply. The oil has to be pumped out
through those tiny holes and it's time-consuming and energy intensive to
drill them (imagine drilling a 3 mile deep hole in solid rock by hand)
and to pump them. Demand all you want, suckers. The third false tenet
of economic faith is that higher oil prices will directly lead scientists
to discover new or more efficient forms of energy. Maybe, maybe not.
No matter how much 'the market' wails, it's not going to change Maxwell's
equations or the energy density of sunlight. Hopefully, scientists will
come up with a efficient, easier-to-fabricate photovoltaic cells that
don't use as much silver (according to one calculation, the world's silver
would be entirely consumed if we made enough current-model photovoltaic
cells to replace just 1/3 of the world's electric power). I'll relax
when someone actually demos a photovoltaic-cell-powered photovoltaic
cell manufacturing plant. We've still got a good 20 years to do this.
Not like it's an emergency or anything.
[Apr06,05] Norman Church makes the point that the just-in-time, globalized
features of modern living have only existed for a few decades. Virtually
every aspect of our life and food and water is now highly dependent on
long-distance, oil-powered transport lines and the fossil-fueled internet
and computers on which we type and bank. This modern system has not
yet been tested as to its robustness to perturbation. As oil peaks in
the next decade or so, the system is going to be strongly perturbed.
As Norman Church says, "The division of labor is at risk. It means our
civilization is at risk". There is little historical precedent as to
what might happen. In a few decades, globalization may end up being
generally seen as a much greater evil and much more fundamental failure
of human society than WWII, communism, or capitalism. Scientists,
engineers, and businessmen have a lot of experience making individual
system components (disk drives, power plants, satellites) that perform
robustly. The problem is that in every case, these system components
rely on immediate (seconds, minutes, days) external inputs completely
beyond local control (the electrical grid, the internet, phone lines,
long-distance trucking and rail and shipping, food production, water
pumping and distribution). And many of these 'outside' systems rely on
each other. If one of those 'outside' systems fails, as they very well
might in the event of an interruption in our daily gulp of fossil fuels
-- even if it was (initially) an interruption of just a week or two --
it is quite possible that it could lead to a rapid, cascading failure of
industrial society analogous to the one that recently brought down the
Eastern US grid. Such a breakdown would have to be rapidly repaired to
prevent further permanent damage (dehydration, looting, nobody showing
up to work). Industrial civilization is becoming more and more like
an enormous integrated living organism. This in itself is not a new
phenomenon. All human cultures have these qualities. Like individual
cells in a multicellular organism, individual humans have always relied
on each other. And this is not just a human feature; individual dogs in
dog packs are similar. A female dog will risk her life for the offspring
of another dog that is genetically unrelated to her (this doesn't occur
in non-human primates). The main new thing about globalized industrial
civilization is the scale of this integration, and ever-increasing
speed of the long-distance interconnections. In a tightly integrated
multi-cellular organism like a mammal, the system that runs the heart
can *never* 'crash' for the entire life of the organism. If the heart
goes down for even a minute or two, irreparable damage to the brain and
heart occurs. Major body systems are permanently damaged after a few
more minutes of stoppage, and the rest of the body then begins to die.
Animal bodies are as reliable as they are because they have been tested
trillions of times by natural selection. This is our very first run of
the networked world organism. It's too complicated to model. Could be
a rough ride.
[Apr08,05] Custer Battles (yep, that's the name -- the two last names
of the founders of a security company with contracts in Iraq) has been
accused of setting up a shell company in the Cayman islands to bill
US taxpayers during the time of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
The company and the Bush admin argue that since CPA was an 'international
organization', US fraud laws don't apply. This is just a little spatter
of slop out of the huge trough in which our 'captains of industry' are
feeding. It's simple business logic. First the US government collects
a small donation from each taxpayer (say $20 a week). Together, our
donations add up into a giant gushing money pipe ($2.5 billion a week).
The pipe ends up in Iraq, where the fraud laws (and water and sewage and
electricity and hospitals and security) have all been going downhill
since Saddam (who could have known Saddam was a tough act to follow,
eh?). Even small taps into this high pressure money pipeline siphon
off lots of loot in no time. Meanwhile, back at home, we're removing
evolution from textbooks (and from the standardized tests our more and
more de-skilled students constantly take). Mad Max 'business ethics'
for those in the know, while the rubes watch what's left of the Pope
(and Michael Jackson's nose) on teevee (don't you think we need more
closeups on what feeding tubes actually look like?). The problem with
history is that it moves just slowly enough that people don't notice if
they're not paying close attention.
[Apr20'05] Well, after a respite of a few days, the "bull market" in
oil is back. I could rail on about the complete lunacy of calling the
beginning of the end of high industrial civilization a "bull market in
commodities", but whatever. I am afraid it's only a few years until we
get to the "s***-in-your-pants market" for commodities (perhaps after
a brief world recession, which will temporarily moderate demand), when
businessmen with their fine quarterly (3 month) look-ahead finally get
their first good glimpse of the roller-coaster drop off ahead. Using the
fruits of our fine human brains -- human language, human civilization,
and human science -- it is trivial to step back and look at the whole
damn roller coaster track at once. But the chimps are in control now,
and these chimps command a pretty mean military machine. If you know
anything about common chimpanzees, you'd probably would think twice
before putting one in charge of 12 aircraft carriers. Who knows what
they might do to the chimpanzee troop the next valley over.
[Apr27'05] The supposed 'liberal press' doesn't even utter one
peep about the fact that Gannon checked in but he didn't check
out, or that he was there on press conference videotapes, but
hadn't checked in. He could have stayed overnight multiple
times at the White House. Somebody there probably knows in
which room. Instead of investigating the possibility that a
high class male prostitute may have stayed overnight in the White
House, the 'liberal press' says things like "Sometimes the [checkout]
machine doesn't go beep, and you leave anyway" (that doesn't explain
being at a press conference without having checked in), and "The
most plausible thing is that these aren't complete records" (both,
Dana Milbank). You can say that again, Dana. We want webcams and
stained cloth. And who actually does (normally) stay in the White House
overnight anyway? ...
[May01'05] The US now has 7 times as many people per
capita in jail as Russia and China do -- an all-time
high that is approaching 1% of the population (much higher rate
for poor people). The US incarceration rate per 100,000 population
is 726, compared to 142 for Britain, 118 for China, 91 for France,
and 58 for Japan (at that rate, why can't they dump Phil Spector's a**
in there, too). The new bankruptcy legislation doesn't yet include jail
time for being poor, but Republicans can always hope. Just think how
much safer the streets would be! It *would* make it more difficult
for Matthew Perry, who just purchased a $2.5 million 2 BR condo in
Hollywood with "a service entrance" (according to the LA Times real
estate section).
[May10'05] It appears that, even with all the news about having a larger
reserve than last year (the largest in 20 years, though still well
under a year of US oil usage), oil is still flopping around, and can't
manage to stay under $50. But this is all just the market j*rking off.
Today, for example, oil prices leaped $3 to $53 because of a problem
with a *refinery* (something that takes oil as *input*; that makes a
lot of market sense, right?). In the next recession, the price of oil
may even crash for a year or two. Then we will have to grit our teeth
as the 2-week-look-ahead press waahhh-s about how the "bear market in
commodities" is leading us to ruin, and how we should all save GM's butt
by patriotically buying more we're-not-going-to-negotiate-our-lifestyle
SUV's again. None of this market self-pleasuring is going to change
the basic facts. Oil discovery peaked in the 1960's and there is
no obvious replacement on the horizon, except for a temporary spurt
of coal synfuels. If we hit synfuels hard in a decade or two when
the final oil crisis kicks in (it *will* happen -- the market will
demand it!), we will generate an even bigger belch of greenhouse gas,
because the coal-to-liquid-fuel process is very energy-inefficient.
Then, as industrial civilization begins to wind down because somebody
(who us?) yanked the power cord, there will be a great many earnest
prayers from cargo cult economists for 'scientists to please come up
with something', and then our grandchildren and their kids (and a lot
of other species) will begin to fry as big-time global warming hits.
Serves 'em right, those profligate generation Z losers, because they
forgot to deposit oil into their individual retirement accounts to run
full-city air conditioners. Capitalism would be a great system if we
had an extra backup planet or two. Since we don't, it will probably
turn out to be the biggest disaster in all of human history.
[May10'05] "It just doesn't look good to the public" said Seattle's
Sgt. Donald Davis, of the case where a Seattle police officer tasered an
8 months pregnant women in the thigh, neck, and arm, leaving electrical
burn marks, while trying to drag her out of her car after she refused to
sign a traffic ticket. She was rushing her son to school at the time when
she was caught speeding. But Sgt. Davis also worried about *not* being
able to taser pregnant women, kids, and old people in the future: "If in
your policy you deliberately exclude a segment of the population, then you
have potentially closed off a tool that could have ended a confrontation."
Great, sarge. Wonder what you'd say if someone tasered *your* granny,
your pregnant wife, or your little 'Jessica'. There was another story
last week about police coming into a class room and handcuffing a grade
school girl for crying and acting up. I'm getting that creeping police
state, boiling frog kind of feeling. It happens slowly enough that people
don't notice how big the changes are from year to year. They just agree,
'well, I guess it's OK as long as you had to do it to keep us safe'
(from pregnant women and grade school kids).
[May12'05] Today, Larry Flynt outs Bolton with allegations that Bolton
forced his former wife to engage in group sex at Plato's retreat.
I guess Bolton could argue that it was all part of his job at the
State department (vetting new interrogation techniques?). In the end,
I agree with one of the commentatators, Wonkster, at rawstory.com:
"Bolton's ex wife, Larry Flynt and sex stories, another Bush pr*ck lies,
SO THE F WHAT? Where's the outrage over Peak Oil?" :-}
[May15'05] With 55% of the public disapproving of Bush's handling of the
Iraq crisis, the planaria-like 'Democrats' can't bring themselves to utter
even a timorous little peep against the war. What disgusting cowards.
Meanwhile on so-called pwog radio, Al Franken is still fighting Nader!
(last week on the Oy Oy Oy show). His antiwar comments about the American
invasion and occupation of Iraq are about as enlighting as those of
Kerry, who "would have done *eveything* different" -- by using even more
troops, equipment, and bombs. And don't forget, the biggest problem is
our cultural sensitivity. Kerry and Franken would no doubt make sure
that home invasion, strip searches, and firing randomly into passenger
cars were carried out in a more culturally sensitive way. This is what
now passes for left?? Oy! And Air America filters out all calls asking
that the US withdraw from Iraq. During the US invasion of South Vietnam,
I would often hear, "how can we possibly withdraw from Vietnam *now*?".
Back then, the correct answer was: "with ships and planes." Works great
today, too.
[May16'05] Yesterday, Condoleeza Rice showed that like Laura, she can
do comedy too, when she told the Iraqi government that US forces would
remain until Iraq can defend itself. I can see that the Iraqis *have*
been getting better at defending themselves. The dust-up about flushing
holy books is its own dark comedy. Slaughtering 100,000 civilians
and torturing mostly innocent civilians swept up in Gestapo-style home
invasions doesn't rate a comment on the nightly news or cause changes in
policy, but now Newsweek is forced into piously eating its own words --
which were nothing more than a re-tread/re-publication of something that
originally came out last year! Of course, talking about getting more
peecee with books takes the focus off of the daily torture and slaughter.
The idiotic, vicious unreality of it all almost makes me want to see us
stupid humans get banged over the head by the reality of energy depletion.
It's the same urge that drives you to pinch a denervated patch of skin
in order to get *some* kind of sensation out of it.
[May17'05] According the the US Treasury dept, international investments
in U.S. securities dropped to $46 billion/month in March from $84
billion/month in February, a larger drop than expected. About 75% of the
US economy's borrowing is met by foreign central banks buying dollars.
If this keeps up for a few months, a guy could get a little nervous
(phrasing from "How to Speak Minnesotan" -- I was raised in Illinois).
On a much more positive note, George Galloway's performance in the US
Congress today blasting lickspittle Norm Coleman who replaced Paul
Wellstone when Wellstone was killed in a suspicious plane accident)
*totally* rocked! (see link below). I only found out that Galloway had
also used the fine English word, "lickspittle", himself when I read the
apathetic account of the Senate hearing in the LA Times :-}
[May20'05] Rob Kirby (Pirates reprise below), alerted by Willem
Middelkoop, has noticed that the Treasury Dept silently altered their
months records of the total holdings of US Treasury bills by (in order of
holdings) Japan, China, Caribbean Banking Centers (natch!), and the UK,
by 20 to 60 billion each (which sounds like awfully big errors -- around
10% -- for presumably well-monitored transactions...). The new figures
suggest that China and Japan suddenly stopped accumulating US debt since
the beginning of the year. This would seem like big financial news,
but it isn't.
[Jun03'05] In the story below by Mitchell E. Potts, a religious, now
antiwar, Iraq war I Navy veteran, are reports of his conversations with
currently deployed injured teenagers outside Walter Reed hospital.
One of them described how he felt bad about raiding schools (because
that's where insurgents hide -- e.g., the US military still occupies
all the schools in Fallujah, and any classes taking place there now
happen in tents). The same veteran said he felt the worst about the US
military "routinely round[ing] up the kids [to] use them as human shields"
because "the Muslims would not shoot their own children". Most people,
illogically to my mind, find this more repugnant than dispensing high
tech death to children from a safe distance in a plane, helicopter,
navy ship, or artillery piece, without seeing the resulting little blown
up bodies. At least the human shields thing has a personal touch --
and the number of kids killed and injured this way is no doubt *much*
smaller than the number shredded by our electronic Darth Vader weaponry.
Furthemore, it has an evolutionary foundation! Of course, that argument
won't mean much to most of the country. A NYT poll last year showed
that the 55% of Americans believed that "God created us in our present
form," while 13% believed that "we evolved from less-advanced life-forms
over millions of years, and God did not directly guide this process"
(referenced in Matt Taibbi article below). But piffles aside, monkeys
with certain social structures (e.g., baboons), where male-male agression
is common under circumstances where infants are present will routinely
grab infants to use them as a 'baboon shields'. It works well; the
attacker will typically back down, and the infants are rarely injured.
I certainly don't like high tech soldiers grabbing kids and strapping them
to humvees to save their own butts but if I had to rank things, I think
tearing up children's bodies with electronically guided antipersonnel
bomblets launched from from a safe distance is worse.
[Jun09'05] "Wow. You guys are breeding yourselves
some *good* Good Germans over there."
Comment by Derek in response to previous comments about police in
Taserland (for now, esp. Florida -- 17 Taser fatalities there since
2000, kids tasered in ER's, female bartenders who called police for
help tasered instead, etc). I agree with Lanya at Banality of Evil
-- it pretty much ruined my day. Welcome to tortureland (pace Daniel
Hopsicker). Also remember that policing isn't even close to being the
most dangerous profession. Maybe I need to get a taser for stopping
students from from using cell phones, mouthing off, and of course,
sleeping in my classes...
[Jun10'05] Here are the latest confidence ratings for different
professions: the military (74%), police (63%), organized religion (53%),
Preznit (44%), US Supreme Court (41%), newspapers (28%), TV news (28%),
Congress (22%), big business (22%), HMO's (17%).
[Jun14'05] Here is something both the left and the right don't like to
acknowledge: the Iraqi resistance, through daily bombings against US
military convoys using whatever they had lying around, has forced the
American public (including red state guys) to begin to favor pulling out
of Iraq. The reason is that it shows that the most powerful, high tech,
and expensive army in the world (by a long shot), is still not able
to completely dominate another country -- and even one weakened by a
previous war in which its power generation, electric grid, and sewage
facilities were heavily damaged, which was then followed by a decade
of sanctions and more bombings, following by another high tech war
against which they had even less defense. All that, and we still are
not decisively winning. A hard pill to swallow, which is why both the
left and the right can barely utter the words. I suppose there is even a
little dread about whether Americans would be able to similary rise the
the challenge of a similarly technologically dominant foreign invader.
The US losing world military dominance certainly can't happen overnight,
but remember: the US military on the move is 70% fossil fuel by weight,
and there will never be battery-operated tanks, aircraft carriers,
or fighter jets.
[Jun22'05] The popularity of Bush continues to
plummet, now approaching the lowest-ever numbers which were
reached before the election during the first disastrous invasion
of Fallujah in April 2004. The war in Iraq is also more
unpopular than ever, much lower than in April 2004. Even the
"Freedom Fries" guy recanted! The number of troops killed by
IED attacks reached an all-time high this June (700 IED attacks
in June). Meanwhile, the trade deficit continues to balloon at a record
rate, and the Fed continues to pump huge amounts on cash into M3, even
while continuing to raise interest rates. All told, this seems like
a very dangerous time for the Bush administration, and therefore, for
you and me. They will stop at nothing to retain power. One blogger
has suggested that Bush will change tack and begin to continously
announce an Iraq pull-out for the next two years, but not actually
pull out (shades of the Gaza 'pullout' that is always about to happen,
but somehow never does). This will allow another neo-con-controlled
Republican drone to take over. The polyp-like Democrats -- who have just
about screwed up their enormous courage to the sticking point of starting
to think about getting ready to make a few feeble whispers under their
breath about the general concept of a pullout (did they say pullout? I
think they meant reconfiguration and right-sizing and doing *everything*
completely different...) -- will be deprived of their main issue, even
before they manage to utter a single word about it out loud. Maybe.
But things could continue to go downhill in Iraq -- and in Afghanistan,
where the per capita troop fatalities have been higher than in Iraq this
year. Continuing deterioration of the Iraq and Afghanistan situations
during two years of withdrawal talk may fight its way through an expected
media black-out, forcing more drastic action by the Bushies -- which is
frightening to contemplate.
[Jun24'05] I wrote a
letter to Boxer and
Feinstein against the new war on Iran.
[Jun30'05] The US has shown no sign of intent to abandon the
huge permanent military bases Halliburton is constructing in Iraq.
The insurgency will therefore continue. My guess is that -- barring
some kind of terror stunt in an American city -- things will go as they
have, with another 1,000 American deaths and maybe another 25,000 Iraqi
deaths by this month next year, and an escalation of the US war on Iran.
The beginning of the Iran war will probably pump Bush's popularity back
to 50% for a year and probably reduce the number of people (now over 40%)
that agree that Bush should be impeached "if it can be shown that he
lied about the reasons for the Iraq war" (you gotta give these pollsters
credit for for their hallucinatory questions). However, we will be one
year closer to Peak Oil (probably in 2008). Because Americans have
such finely tuned minds, they will take all this in stride, and then
elect Frist to 'stay the course'. That will allow us to stay in Iraq
and Iran for another several thousand American deaths and another hundred
thousand Iraqi and Iranian deaths. Peak oil will hit in the first year
of Preznit Frist's term. Just then, it might be 'head for the hills'
time in an old jalopy (well, maybe a 1989 Honda Civic :-} ).
[Jul03'05] I just saw a remarkable graph on urbansurvival.com showing
the percentage of program trading on the NYSE. In 1999 and 2000, it
was running around 20%, if you exclude spikes. From 2000 to 2005, it
increased to about to about 60% of all trades (with spikes, like last
week, at over 75%!) -- a slightly more than linear rate of increase.
At this rate, trading will be entirely done by computer programs in a
few years.
[Jul07'05] The Plame case has turned out strangely indeed. One idea is
that Judith Miller (who previously was responsible for a long series of
NYT scare articles that built support for the war using information now
uniformly shown to be faked or false) actually told the administration
about Plame, not the other way around. Then Rove told Novak, the one who
actually released the information to the public, and who has strangely
somehow avoided any fallout.
[Jul11'05] Well great, Supersize-Me Morgan Spurlock has been serialized
and now has a show in which he does other things for 30 days, like going
off the grid. How lame. Living off the grid is going to be more like
a plot where you have to live in a house with Gary Coleman, Ron Jeremy,
and Tammy Faye for 30 years, and there are no cameras...
[Jul12'05] I've posted my (oversize) response to comments on my energy
presentation
here. The main point is
that the reason why renewable energy is expensive, is that it takes a
lot of energy to make renewable energy-generating devices because they
include things like steel, high quality silicon crystals, rare metals,
glass, precise machining, transporting heavy things over long distances,
and so on. Economists often say that increasing fossil fuel prices
will help renewables, because then renewables will become more price
competitive. This ignores the fundamental fact that renewable energy
devices are currently made exclusively using oil, gas, and coal energy
as inputs! As fossil fuel prices increase, the price of renewables is
likely to increase in parallel with them. Of course, if it is actually
possible to make a solar-cell-powered solar-cell-manufacturing plant
(including the steel and silicon furnaces, the machine tools, the
silver mining, etc), then the day is saved. This is not to deny that
actually constructing such a plant would depend on getting a sufficient
return on money investment, or a government subsidy, or both. I'm not
against money. But whether it is ultimately worth making solar cells
depends more fundamentally on *energy* return on *energy* investment.
If it takes more *energy* to make a solar cells (counting everything
needed including getting the raw input materials) than you can get out
of the resulting photocells over a reasonable period of time, then no
amount of money/price or greed or self-interest or altruism or fear
will make such energy a *renewable source* -- it will instead just
be another way of spending non-renewable oil, gas, and coal energy.
I hope the answer to this question is "yes".
[Jul13'05] Economists, unfortunately, find the concept of EROEI as
"meaningless" as "mass return on mass invested" (econobrowser, today).
As one poster quipped, there is no reason economists shouldn't also rev
up their perpetual motion machines while they're at it...
[Jul25'05] The US
defies a judge's order to release torture pictures because "they
could result in harm to individuals" tortured in the pictures (girls
and boys who were raped and sodomized in front of other prisoners
to coerce them, etc, as leaked almost a year back by Seymour Hersh).
Sounds more like protection for our "boys" who did the sodomizing (and
the administrators who ordered them to do it). 2,000 vets have
called for the release of the information.
[Jul30'05] [rant follows] Just returned from an excellent talk in SD
by Dahr Jamail. He, along with David Enders, is one of the two total
currently unembedded US reporters in Iraq. All the rest stay inside the
Green Zone, never leave their hotels in Baghdad (not sure I would be brave
enough to venture out myself), or go on patrols with the US military and
submit censored reports. Even at a left/peace meeting, though, it was
hard to put the two main points on the table. First, the only reason
there is *any* public opinion against the war is because the Iraqis have
fought back. If we had been able to invade their oil patch and set up
our 14 permanent military bases along with the largest US embassy in the
world, and the locals just got McDonald-ified without a whimper, even
at more than $100 billion in tax money a year, good Americans wouldn't
be 50-50 against the war now. The peace movement (of which I am a part)
has had virtually no responsibility for this change of opinion, and the
'peace movement' basically collapsed to 'regulars' immediately after the
start of the war. And we *are* building the bases and embassy anyway.
Second, at the current moment, 95% of the population has not even heard
of peak oil, sitting right here on the peak! It was the main reason for
the occupation of Iraq. Instead, oil demand in the US so far this year,
even with the higher prices, even before the middle of the travel season,
is already *up* 2.5% (0.5 additional million barrels a day on top of
the usual 20 million barrels a day of US demand compared to last year).
When the population finally does hear of and understand just how dire the
situation with respect to energy is, it will only take a small event to
bring most of them back into line, to goosestep our way into Iran. Just
because the US bases, even in the south ('mortaritaville'), are mortared
every day, and the US supply lines are often cut, forcing helicopter
supply, and US forces are a long way from the coast doesn't mean that
the US can't bomb and partly invade Iran. An Iran bombing/invasion
would be a self-tightening noose that will bring out a patriotic burst.
So party on, dudes. Burn through the last of the easy oil. Plan to burn
through twice as much coal as now when the oil runs out and inefficient
synfuel production (cf. Germany in WWII) begins in earnest.
Roast the whole damn planet while you're at it -- you're worth it.
And your grandkids can build character by rising from the ash heap at
the end of the century.
[Aug01'05] Apologies for ranting. Over the weekend, I began getting spam
about oil. At this rate, by fall, there will be an oil reality show.
This is beginning to remind me of an old science fiction story I read
in high school about an advanced culture that had lost the ability
to do actually do anything but rather just vicariously experienced
other people doing violent and sexy things (but they never said what
their energy sources would be then... :-} ). Things *have* turned
out a bit blade-runnery. My guitar effects processor imitates the
distorted sound of a Marshall tube amp head, and then that output put
through a particular speaker cabinet, and finally, the transformation
due to having a dynamic microphone put in front of the speaker --
either centered or off-center (which goes to the big PA).
Sounds
pretty good (1 guitar track, direct to disk), and I didn't even turn it
up to 11.
[Aug10'05] Hundreds of truckers have blocked the road in South Florida
today to protest high gas prices. I'm sure this will help cause all
those depleted oil fields to begin refilling. A similar, but more
concerted blockade in the UK in 2000 brought the economy to a virtual halt
for a few days. Unfortunately, it had little effect on North Sea wells,
which peaked in 1999.
[Aug11'05] Oil spiked to $66 a barrel today, and once again, the media
explained this as partly due to outages in *refineries*. Refineries
take oil as *input*. I fail to understand why a slowdown in a business
that *buys* oil would cause oil price to go up. Whatever. I suppose
it makes about as much sense as Google hiding Cindy Sheehan's comments
behind a 'only for adults' shield (probably because she made a mention
of Israel). Swift-boaters are no doubt soon on the way.
[Aug12'05] James Hamilton, here at UCSD, argues that Peak Oil people are
naive about how demand affects price. He thinks that as oil depletes,
prices will rise, causing oil usage to be restrained (since "demand"
is defined as equivalent to what is supplied). This will delay the
peak and give more time (e.g., than the Hirsch study has suggested)
for alternatives to be researched, engineered, and implemented. I hope
he's right. I see four main outstanding problems. First, oil prices
are quite volatile, as he himself admits. Right now, oil prices may be
in a bit of a speculative bubble (broke $67 today). But there may very
well come a dip, and then people/businessmen/gov't will be lulled again.
Second, the alternatives all take time to ramp up. Even well-understood
ones like nuclear fission won't be back for at least a decade. Third,
the alternatives to liquid fuel for transport (fission for electrical
generation is not currently a viable replacement for transport) all seem
like they might have considerably worse EROEI ratios (these are hard to
determine and controversial, but almost certainly much worse than late
s`20th century oil). Finally, as the cost of fossil fuel inflates, it will
likely *raise* the cost of renewables, since they are all currently made
exclusively using non-renewable fossil fuel energy sources. Hopefully,
as non-renewables start to come online, they may be able to counteract
this trend. Hopefully.
[Aug15'05] An AP-AOL News
poll on public attitudes about rising gasoline prices showed that
the public thought the following things were responsible, in order: too
much oil company profit (30%), foreign countries (22%), politicians (21%),
environmentalists (9%), SUV owners (7%), other (3%). That the demand for
oil might be running up against limited geological resources didn't make
the named list! And environmentalists are thought worse bad guys than
SUV owners. We do live in a flat-earth country, just like Thomas Friedman
says; and unfortunately, we're about to fall off its edge. Meanwhile,
Cindy has Bush hunkered down on his latest, record-breaking vacation. He
had to take a
helicopter to a little league game 20 miles away from Crawford
to avoid her. His handlers are terrified of what he might say in an
unscripted encounter. The swift-boaters haven't been able to take her
out yet because she's turning into a Natalee Holloway. Google put her
comments behind an 'adult' shield, probably because she took a certain
country's name in vain. Meanwhile, sensing the mood of the country,
top Democratic lawmakers demanded that *more* troops be sent to Iraq
(Biden and McCain). Like Kerry in 2004, they no doubt "would have
done *everthing* different in Iraq". Too bad they can't both go
over there themselves and help out -- I think they're short of help.
We should be OK here, though, thanks to eagle-eyed, large-brained
airport security people who are busy protecting us from terr'ist
babies! I think the proper word is "de-skilling" -- the turning off
of whatever small amount of brain was still independently functioning in
order to more closely follow instructions. I'm sure not looking foward
to the time when these automatons get issued the latest, new and improved
tasers... Could take a bite out of the travel business ("We decided
not to fly after grandma messed her pants after being tasered for mouthing
off to the security guard who was feeling her up...").
[Aug17'05] Just for scale, a medium-sized oil tanker holds around a
million barrels of oil. That means that our daily gulp of oil here in the
US (about 20 million barrels a day) sucks 20 such oil tankers dry every
single day. The strategic petroleum reserve holds enough oil for about
a month, or around 600 oil tanker's worth.
[Aug18'05] "I am not a hero. Guys like me are just a necessary part
of things. To maintain this way of life in a fine community like this,
you need psychos like us to go and drop a bomb on somebody's house." --
the response of a marine who just returned from Iraq to a request to
speak to a wealthy community, as told to Evan Wright. On a completely
different, sad note, I just read that Michael Brecker is very sick
with bone marrow cancer. He is looking for a bone marrow donor of a
rare type, not matched by his brother or other family, and has had to
stop performing. And yet different again, the Aug 17 San Diego City
Beat published my
response to a clueless July 27 column on Iraq by MsBeak.
[Aug20'05] Lately, I've been watching daily oil prices on theoildrum
and 321energy. For something as tangible and slowly changing as oil
production and global oil usage, the wild flopping around in price
amuses me. Somebody farts in a refinery causing the secretaries to
leave early for lunch, and the price shoots up, despite the fact that
refineries *use* oil, meaning that refinery problems should *reduce*
demand. A few hours later, some dufus who knows nothing about geology
writes a bumbling puff piece about 'reserves building up' and the price
plummets. The last upward jump came after three small, inaccurate
rockets missed a US warship and hit a taxi (the occupants survived).
I don't look forward to what a bunch of self-pleasuring 'geniuses of the
market' will do to oil prices when they finally wake up and realize the
true gravity of the situation. They should be forced to go to college
and learn something. It's embarrassing -- like football players that
supposedly got a degree but never went to class. Meanwhile the price of
photoelectric (solar) cells has been *increasing*. This was explained
in a NYT article by Chris Dixon as a textbook supply/demand curve
(more people buying them, leading to a shortage of silicon crystals),
but it is more complicated. Photoelectric cells currently use waste
silicon crystals from the semiconductor industry. As demand sops up the
throwaways, the price will go up permanently, because the throwaways are
being sold for less than they cost to make. They are expensive because
it requires a lot of energy to make them. The energy comes from fossil
fuels. As fossil fuel prices rise, it is likely that photoelectric
cell prices will increase even more. The Onion had an article about
"Intelligent falling" -- a new religious theory of gravity. Sometimes,
the way economists talk about oil, energy, and the markets makes them
sound awfully religious. They're like the priests on Easter Island who
said, "don't worry, nothing bad will happen if you cut down all the trees
-- the guys with the doomsday scenarios are only tree huggers who don't
know anything about the genius of the moai..." They act like "Intelligent
energy" can detect that we need it, and so will therefore virtually
invent itself into existence. There *are* some positive developments
on the horizon. Solar heat-concentrating devices are probably better
long-term solutions than photoelectric cells, at least for sunny places.
They don't work at all when it's cloudy. And there is a lot of research
and development going on with thin film copper/indium/gallium/selenium
photoelectric cells. These may be cheaper to manufacture than current
silicon crystal cells.
[Aug24'05] For better or worse, I posted several times in response to
an amazingly clueless article by one of the Freakonomics authors in
his blog. My posts in that endless discussion are here: (
post1,
post2,
post3 ).
[Aug25'05] The
credit derivatives market more than doubled last year to $8.4
trillion dollars (yep, that's about the same size as the GDP of the
US, and this is just a particular subset of derivatives). Kewl rate of
growth. Thank god the "The Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group"
is in control. These are the people that helped 'fix' the 4 billion
dollar mistake made in 1998 by Long Term Capital Management, a company
run partly by the Nobel laureate who invented a derivative pricing
equation, and which, somewhat counter to its name, made huge short
bets that went bad when things went the 'wrong' way with the ruble,
of all things. They got a $4 billion dollar bail out and nobody went
to jail. The only punishment was that a few people lost their jobs
(I wonder where they doing their genius thing, now?). Bankruptcy no
problem, as long as you're down more than a billion. The "Counterparty"
guys have 'explained' that now "urgent effort is needed to tackle the
serious accumulation of trade confirmations". If you can understand
what this means, then maybe you could tell me whether I should take what
little money I have out of the bank now :-}
[Aug28'05] Bye-bye LA Times. With opposition to the war approaching the
levels only seen late in the Vietnam war, Doyle McManus' front page column
today explains, "War critics have backing but not much of a following".
The Opinion section has been bizarrely modified and neutered, with its
front page containing an article by Leila Beckwith explaining why the
State legislature needs to add an amendment prohibiting professors
from supporting the Palestinians. Probably needs to also have a rider
prohibiting discussion of how huge amount of our taxes were first used
to bulldoze houses and illegally settle people, and then huge additional
amounts of aid is then sent to remove them ($2 billion in new aid for
the removal alone). Bush's numbers have fallen to scary, stunt-inducing
levels. Besides the war, part of the reason for his low ratings is the
high price of oil. Americans are in a pissy mood. The war is going
badly, they know deep down it was in part about oil, but oil price is
waaay up, anyway. They're mad, but they can't really come out and say
why -- it's because the Iraqis are successfully fighting off our Death
Star Darth Vader empire. They intuitively know that this looks bad to
the rest of the world (the people who were getting their oil from Iraq
before we blew in there). The rest of the world has not been weakened
by two wars, ten years of sanctions, and thousands of tons of 'depleted'
nuclear waste. The US would have a much less easy time taking on the
rest of the world than destroying Iraq. This is a sensitive point
in history. With respect to oil, things will probably get much worse
on Monday, when the enormous category 5 hurricane, Katrina, slams into
New Orleans, some Gulf of Mexico oil platforms and oil terminals, and
the Port of South Louisiana. This will likely cause a spike in oil
prices and disrupt manufactured imports and exports, all bad for
Bush (and us!). But all the breathless CNN babe coverage will greatly
help Bush, taking the focus off the war. Bad weather is a little like
a terrorist event, and it may temporarily decrease the chance of him
doing something extremely destabilizing. I'm not looking forward to
the aftermath, though, in late September, when the situation is likely
to get critical again.
[Aug30'05] Eeesh, things look bad in New Orleans. The entire city is
being evacuated. Floating dead bodies are being ignored as they try to
rescue many people who are still trapped. There are thousands of dead,
maybe even 10,000. Bad timing for Bush to have sent 4,000 Louisiana
National Guard people to Iraq, and to have instituted the
steepest cut ever in funding for levee strengthening and repair in
Feb 05 in order to spend it on the Iraq disaster instead. There are
reports that a recent Iraq line item was $75 million to try to bribe
Sunnis to sign their new Constitution (written in English!); it didn't
work. There is widespread looting but not enough National Guard to shoot
looters because they're too busy shooting Iraqis. MSM won't touch these
things yet ("confirmed dead now over 50"), of course, except to bemoan
the fact that not enough looters have been shot -- if we could only
have shot more looters, that would have fixed things, right? All of
New Orleans is slowly flooding now, long after the hurricane has passed.
If the levee breaches can be repaired, this will just stop the rise in the
water level. It still all has to be pumped out. That will take months.
This hurricane essentially created 1 million US refugees (a little more
than the original 1948 Palestinian diaspora). They're not going to be
going home for a long time, if ever. It looks like the biggest natural
disaster in US history, yet the media feel like they are getting ready
to move on to the next Scott Peterson; they just don't quite know what
to do with a story that is 100,000 times as big as Aruba. The latest
Pew poll of our populace shows that 42% believe that "living things
have existed in their present form since the beginning of time", 38%
think that creationism should be taught instead of evolution in school,
and 64% are open to teaching both creationism and evolution. I wonder
if half of these lemmings also think that God is punishing the South
for voting for Bush? (Trent Lott's house was knocked down). I think
that people who believe in creationism should have their cell phones
confiscated, their teevees darkened, their internet pr0n disconnected,
and their OnStar service cancelled, because the Maxwell equations are not
consistent with the Bible, either. Put your money where your mouth is.
The cowardly, doddering Todd Gitlin warns antiwar protestors to be civil.
Thanks for all your help, Todd.
[Sep01'05] $250,000 of US tax receipts for each 'settler' to leave their
stolen land last month, but black Americans in New Orleans don't deserve
anything because they didn't have the 'personal responsibility' (e.g.,
cars) to run away. Red state libertarian whiteys should watch their
backs, though, because the blue state whiteys that are subsidizing them
could decide at some point to demand even more 'personal responsibility'
(e.g., when the power goes out in Phoenix and Phoenix starts to feel like
a holiday in Fallujah). Louisiana was a red state in 2000 and 2004, but
they're still getting screwed by Mr. Red. For *1.5 days* worth of Iraq
tax receipt spending (a quarter of a billion dollars), the levees could
have been strengthened and most of the damage averted. Ethnicity and
its interaction with and exploitation by the media is a complete disaster
for humans. And you can bet, we're going to see a lot more race-baiting
(whites 'finding', blacks 'looting'), which is basically 'poor-baiting'
as the long emergency starts to slowly get underway.
[Sep02'05] Hearing some of the voices of 'the people' is sure scary, eh?
I'll put words into the people's mouths, if I may. San Diego gets
around 10% of its water from local sources. When people nearer the
source of the other 90% decide they need more of it, stupid San Diegans
will probably riot. Shoot 'em. Big earthquake in San Fransicso has
people looting sushi restaurants? Stupid for living there -- shoot
'em. Fossil water from the giant Ogallala aquifer in the middle of the
country is being pumped at many times its replenishment rate. Illinois
is now having the worst drought in 50 years. Stupid midwesterners --
they couldn't think ahead, even with all those agricultural subsidies.
When a 200 year drought comes, they may not be too happy. Shoot 'em
if they get out of hand. New Yorkers have a lot of buildings that
are virtually uninhabitable without air conditioning in the summer.
There may be grid problems again in a few years, and they may last for
more than a day this time. Tough luck, stupid New Yorkers. Shoot 'em if
they misbehave. Tornados are more common in the middle of the country.
Only stupid people live near tornados. Serves 'em right (no need to
shoot 'em). The reason poor people and old people don't have cars is
that they are stupid and lazy. Because of this, they can't get away,
and therefore, they shouldn't be helped if they get into trouble,
and they should be shot if they straggle into your town. This isn't
the 'reptilian brain' -- a total crock perpetrated by Paul MacLean and
popularized by Carl Sagan -- but rather the characteristically linguistic
human brain running with only teevee input (it's all about language
and naming and culture, which turtles and snakes distinctly lack!).
There are already a chunk of people in this country who think that what
we really need is to have a national quick response police force that can
immediately step in anywhere and shoot people as soon as trouble breaks
out (Wired has an article today about how the military is taking sound
weapons to LA for testing on poor people, oh I mean, to help broadcast
'instructions' over long distances). It's hard to know what percentage
currently harbors these fascist sentiments, which predictably bubble
up in times of crisis, because pollsters are too 'civil' to ask real
questions (political polling is like s*x research in this respect).
This is similar to the support for the Iraq war -- people have no trouble
'supporting' having other people's teenagers kill other people's kids.
Well, at least September is "National Preparedness Month".
[Sep04'05] Yesterday, the Red Cross was
stopped by
'Homeland Security' from bringing food and water into New Orleans. Bush
must be so desperate to avoid Labor Day pictures of even one of the 10,000
(or even 30,000) dead, that he is willing to kill more low-market-value
people. Katrina will have a death toll *at least* several times that of
9-11, but because the dead are mostly poor and black (old ladies trapped
in their apartment blocks knocking on the ceiling until the water went
to the next higher floor), they hardly count. The official propaganda
death toll for New Orleans is 59. This is completely ridiculous (compare
9-11 when the initial estimates were 5,000 dead). There won't be a
months-long nightly empathetic story about a personal tragedy because
the victims have the wrong skin color for empathy. Not that swat teams
are clearing everybody out that is not dead or dying, we may never know
the real death toll. The federal government gets most of the $5 billion
in yearly royalties from oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico, but it
couldn't even cough up a 1/20 of that for one year to fix the levees.
Instead, the disgusting puke mainstream media subtly whips up race hatred
with a shrouded comment about looting and shooting -- Katrina's 'incubator
babies' -- at the end of every crucial initial report on the disaster.
Then, later, they 'correct' the record (e.g., yesterday and today's
LA Times, with multiple admissions that initial reports of lawlessness
were exaggerated). Too late, media scumbags. Your swill is permanently
installed in the brain puppets of good Americans. Everyone will remember
black looting and no one will remember the actual gist of what happened:
like 30 poor black old people drowned in their beds in an unevacuated
old folks home -- times a thousand.
[Sep05'05] Dianne Foster makes an interesting point (in Xymphora
comments) on putting people in the Superdome. I thought about this
at the time, but forgot the uncertainty after events played out.
When people were being put into the Superdome, the storm was still
Category 5 with some remaining uncertainty in landfall longitude.
If it hadn't weakened as much as it did, or if it had hit a mere
50 miles to the west so that the characteristically stronger east
side of the eyewall had hit NO (instead of the west side), or both,
then the Superdome may well have collapsed on all those people.
The decision was taken anyway (versus emergency bussing). The jamming
of various emergency frequencies as well as Citizens Band (CB)
continues around New Orleans (heard by truckers on Interstate 10 --
update: NOAA claims solar X-ray flare may have been disrupting Gulf
emergency communications). Aaron Broussard's well-publicized
interview told that FEMA cut emergency telephone lines to
his community after denying him the food and water he requested
for the peole still there. Broussard had the lines hooked back
up and he posted an armed guard to stop FEMA from doing it again.
Mayor Nagin (Bush-contributor, lifelong Republican until just
before his election in Democratic N.O.) has sent away the local
police. The hapless remaining peole say they are being treated
like Al Queda, hearded out of their non-flooded homes, and
stripped of their possessions. Imagine doing that to white New
Yorker professors after 9-11. Wouldn't fly.
[Sep06'05] The US is slowly turning into a third world country --
a banana police state, as some have quipped. If the current trends
in manufacturing/engineering/software outsourcing, loss of health
insurance, wealth inequality, debt, and homeland militarization
continue unabated -- even assuming an unlimited supply of oil --
in another 20 years, the place will be a complete wreck. Add in a
long-term peak-oil-caused contraction and it *really* looks ugly.
This is fine for the estate tax crowd (this week, Bush is working on
making sure this top 1% get 95% of this latest giveaway). The richies
can move their booty somewhere else and find another host to parasitize,
or come back and buy cheap after a collapse. Not such a good outlook
for the great majority of us, though. It's slow-motion class war.
Don't get fooled by the slow part. As Michael Ruppert has
warned, all the reasonable calls to expand and un-gut the disaster
relief part of FEMA (and get rid of the incompentent patronage-appointed
director who was fired from his previous decade-long job as, uhh, head
lawyer for the International Arabian Horse [show] Association!) will
result not in better disaster relief (what reasonable people want),
but rather better Continuity of Government (COG) operations -- that is,
SWAT teams to cut emergency lines, shoot starving looters, drive around
in armored personnel carriers, crowd-control you with microwave and
sonic weapons, cancel the Bill of Rights, stick you in temporary prison
camps without trial, and of course, rescue pets -- when the next big bad
something happens. I think what most reasonable people want instead is
a government response analogous to what Cuba delivered last year when
it evacuated a million and a half people from the path of a Category 5
landfall hurricane (Hugo) with virtually no loss of life (but without
other repressive parts of the Cuban government). All the yahoo sheep
who were calling for black blood last week may have a surprise in store
one day when they run into the wrong side of the Continuity of Government
police in their home town.
[Sep07'05] In the days before Katrina hit, I was assuming (stupidly
as usual) that the disaster would result in a big uptick in popularity
for Bush and would take the focus off Iraq. I think he somehow flubbed
this 'opportunity'. After leaving Crawford to come to San Diego af few
days after the disaster (where his tottering public appearance
forced the cancellation of a raft of chemotherapy patients'
treatment, but then he was too unsteady to actually appear at the place
where the treatment cancellation occurred), Bush got into high gear.
He went to New Orleans, where his appearance forced the suspension of
all ongoing aquatic and aerial rescues. His Goebbels team set up a
fake levee-fixing scene and a fake food distribution center. Both were
disassembled as soon as he left, and then real rescue operations could
resume. Given the
many stories of apparently premeditated interference with
rescue teams, it seems like the plan was to respond slowly or even
hinder the first responders, let things get out of hand, whip up some
always-dependable race hatred, bring in troops and seal things off,
evacuate everybody at gunpoint, and then when all the locals were gone,
give all the reconstruction contracts to out-of-town Halliburton buddies
in order to reconstruct a New Orleans Lite, with a jazz theme, but a lot
less black people (no right of return for Americans, if they have the
wrong ethnicity). Most of this seems to have gone through, but a good
chunk of the general public seems to have become a little bit revolted by
the spectacle (after their race hatred ebbed a little), and the complete
control of the media seems to have suffered a temporary lapse. Also,
Mayor Nagin's (remember: a 'Democratic' Bush contributor) recent order
to forcibly evict all the remaining residents (maybe 10,000) is being
disobeyed by people in the army, esp. those from the region. However,
I've been wrong so many times about how things look to the 'common man',
that I will wait until I see the real numbers on pollkatz next month. It
it still possible that despite disapproving of Bush's handling of Katrina,
they may not increase their disapproval of him. If there is a big dip,
then I might get worried, seeing as there was this weird early August
firing of U.S. Army General Kevin P. Byrnes, just before his retirement,
over an extra-marital affair (?!) (his divorce has now gone through),
with many different speculations as to what the real reason was, including
something about a middle August Northcom nuclear terror exercise based
in Charleston, S.C. that may or may not have been cancelled.
[Sep14'05] Things grind depressingly along. Bush's poll numbers
are down a little, but not that big of a drop. Despite all the
blowhard press on this, not one of those endless, breathless,
useless reports *ever* shows you a decent graph like
pollkatz, even for their own polls. How can you possibly
understand what polls mean without looking at them this way? Shame
on you 'reporters'. If businessmen can understand a powerpoint
graph of one variable as a function of time, then so can the
unwashed masses. In Houston, Katrina evacuees are being serviced
by a huge amount of volunteer work. I don't know about you, but I
would *sure* like to see Cheney 'volunteering' (at gunpoint would
work) to clean toilets and disimpact a few bowels. Bush allows
'Brownie' to 'resign' instead of firing him. Privatized Blackwater
mercenaries blow into New Orleans to eject people from their homes
(where are the damn libertarians when you need them...). FEMA
outsources the body cleanup and counting for about $1 million/week
to an 'outstanding' firm, SCI, one of whose subsidiaries was recently
convicted of piling up hundreds bodies in sheds and in the woods in
instead of cremating them (SCI settled by paying the relatives $100
million). But you can't photograph the bodies, or the 82nd airborne will
stomp your camera, a**hole. The libertarian yahoos started squealing at
the idea of a windfall oil profits tax (like the one announced in France
that immediately dropped fuel prices a notch there). They should put
their whiny money where their whiny mouths are and not only privative
all our trains and busses but all our roads and road repair and traffic
lights, too -- get our highways off our backs and off the dole, right?
(actually, it would probably reduce the amount of driving we do --
a good thing). And finally, the 'Brownie' replacement is the pathetic
'duct tape' guy! In Iraq, most reconstruction projects (e.g., electrical,
water and sanitation) have been shut down and the money diverted to
private security companies who are guarding the people who are no
longer doing these projects. We're still spending almost $2 billion
a week in Iraq and Afghanistan -- money which we should obviously
be spending on renewable energy, instead of trying to hopelessly
encircle the paltry 20 or so years worth of oil that remains there.
The don't-talk-about-the-elephant-in-the-room aspect of it leaves
me speechless and depressed. It's all part of our one shot at high
civilization on this planet courtesy of fossil fuels -- the product of
solar energy collected over hundreds of millions of years and turned
into highly-energy-dense oil, gas, and coal, and which is about half
used up now. The second half will be mostly gone before the midpoint
of the century, leaving us to stew in our global-warming-heated juices.
The University just repaved all the still-in-good-condition roads around
my office and built three new buildings, all with fossil fuels. Tons and
tons of the stuff was used. Elixir of the gods. Makes me proud to have
the power of language and be a human, I suppose.
[Sep15'05] Dang. Karl Rover is now in charge of a $200 billion dollar
fund for reconstruction. I'm sure he will use this discretion wisely.
This is class war, plain and simple. It's time for the villagers to
turn off Big Brother, get out the torches, and smoke out the Frankenstein
monster. It's alive and gaining power every day.
[Sep17'05] Are Americans truly 'getting it'? As a result of higher
gasoline prices, SUV's have been depreciating more rapidly (as discounts
on new ones are offered), and car shoppers have elevated fuel efficiency
all the way up to 23rd-most-important factor in what kind of car they will
buy (the usual position of fuel efficiency is about 35th-most-important).
Who knows, in a decade or two, fuel efficiency might make it into the
top three -- right around the time the grid starts to get intermittent
as result of chronic natural gas shortages...
[Sep21'05] Rita has ballooned up to a category 5, and more intense (though
currently slightly smaller) than Katrina -- Rita is currently the 3rd
most intense recorded hurricane in American history (behind Gilbert,
1988 and Labor Day, 1935). Unfortunately the predicted path runs way
close to my sister's house near Houston. Perhaps God is talking to
Bush and Cheney in the only language they understand -- oil and money.
As searchers recover bodies from Katrina, they are finding mostly old
people and children. Though our putrid scumbag media will never say it,
shooting more looters wouldn't have helped old people and kids to leave
when they had no means to do so, and when no one came to help them.
[Sep25'05]
Yesterday I went marching with the about 2,000 people -- the largest
antiwar demo in two and a half years -- through the deserted streets of
downtown San Diego, ending in Balboa Park. There were 2 or 3 pro-war
protestors. We didn't even know they were there until KSWB gave one
of them equal time to our 2,000 on the nightly newspeak. Whatever.
Today, Phoney Tony Bliar officially withdrew from global warming
treaties by putting his faith in "science and technology". The price
of oil has continued to drop as self-pleasuring oil traders wrap their
you-know-what's in dollar bills and get themselves off. The price drop
is presumably because some refineries have been temporarily disabled,
temporarily lowering demand for oil. The idea that something like this
should radically change the price of oil seems insane to me. A barrel of
oil contains 42 gallons. It can be made into about 20 gallons of gasoline
(more or less -- this varies a little depending on the grade of the oil).
A gallon of gasoline contains about 36 kW-hours of chemical energy.
An internal combustion engine turns about 9 kW-hours of this energy into
useful work (the rest is lost as heat). One horsepower is equivalent to
about 3/4 of a kW. However, a human working hard continuously can only
put out about 1/10 to 1/5 of a kilowatt (compare the power output of a
human to a one-horsepower horse). So, the 20 gallons of gasoline from one
barrel of oil contains about 180 useful kilowatt-hours, divided by say,
1/8 of a kilowatt per person, which gives about 1400 hours of hard human
work. Divide this by 6 hours of continuous hard work per day (no breaks),
and you get about 230 days, or approximately one year of 5-days-a-week
hard labor by a human. This boils down conveniently to: ONE BARREL of oil
= ONE YEAR of hard human work. This makes sense when comparing digging a
foundation or grading a road by hand (Roman-style) to doing the same thing
with an oil-powered bulldozer and a backhoe. A barrel of oil currently
costs $64. Clearly, this price *waaaay* underestimates its true worth
to us humans (how much do you have to pay a human to do one year of hard
labor?). I could give two hoots what the economists say about how money
is more important. I look forward to discussions about the true worth
of oil while doing hard labor alongside an economist when scientists
fail to come up with a replacement. Watching the newspeak people read
their teleprompters had gotten me depressed (I don't normally watch
teevee), but then I got back on the web and came across this
gem. As many as 36 trained Navy dolphins may have been freed
by hurricane Katrina. The Navy has trained dolphins for many years to
attack divers (humans in wetsuits) using small electrodes implanted under
the skin for reinforcement. This works because dolphins are naturally
aggressive. But the recently freed/escaped dolphins are apparently armed
with 'toxic dart' gun harnesses. You divers and windsurfers in the Gulf
and Caribbean should watch out, because a bunch of 007 Flippers are coming
to getcha. No details/confirmation are available because, natch, they're
classified. There is not too much to see or eat down there, however,
since there are huge dead zones where fertilizer-laden runoff has led to
anaerobic conditions, killing virtually everything in huge swaths of the
Gulf coast (John Coleman, retired to San Diego 'weather' teevee, has even
suggested that the dead zones might partly explain why Rita weakened
just before landfall). So the 'Flippers' will probably head out to
resort islands in the south Atlantic in search of fish and enemy divers.
Perhaps the yacht-people and their concubines will match close enough...
link
[Sep26'05] It would seem to be the case that higher gas prices will soon
be on the way, given that 100% (!) of Gulf of Mexico oil production is
currently "shut in" (1.5 million barrels a day, with average total US
consumption around 20 million barrels a day), up from about 60% shut in
from Katrina, just before Rita hit. US Natural gas consumption is about
62 billion cubic feet per day, and maybe 10-15% is currently shut in as
well (since the Henry hub where a lot of the pipelines come together may
have been damaged). High gasoline and gas prices will make Bush much more
unpopular than the disaster in Iraq. The ironic thing is that it's not
really Bush's fault that oil demand finally starting to bump up against
all-out production capacity this year (well, other than not preparing
for the inevitable). Rather, it's just the predictable consequences
of industrial civilization. No matter how mad the people get, the
remaining oil in the ground isn't going to listen; it won't come out
of well bores any faster because people are mad. Let the anger of the
people increase and seethe. Meanwhile, the Fed has been creating money
this year at the rate of about $20 billion dollars a week, and credit
(which is created from the money that the fed creates, and which works
just like money, and which comes in too many varieties for me to remember)
is being created at an even faster rate (fractional reserve banking
eventually multiplies fed-created money by a factor of at least 10).
Other currencies somehow even seem to be inflating in tandem with the
dollar (?). In this light, who could bother about a mere 2 billion a week
down Halliburton's maw in Iraq and Afghanistan? It doesn't seem possible
that this rampant creation of money can continue forever; but it's worth
nothing that it's been running like this non-stop since 1996. I really
don't understand how it works well enough to guess what will happen
next. At least Bush and Chertoff are back from their scary
visit the past few days to Peterson Air Force Base (underground
nuclear war central -- headquarters of US Northern Command) in Colorado
Springs. They went there just before Rita hit the coast/oil.
[Sep27'05] The story below says that Rita damaged more oil rigs than any
previous storm in history. You would think that would be a bad thing
(AKA "bullish for oil" by the money people). Also, it appears that
virtually all oil from the Gulf of Mexico remains "shut in", along with
much of the natural gas (the Henry Hub may have sustained some damage).
Again "bullish". In the past, oil prices have shot up even after a
small refinery fire. Here, with production equal to 7% (!) of total
US oil consumption turned off, prices are going down or just wavering.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
[Oct03'05] Imagine the media firestorm that would have erupted if Al
Sharpton hypothetically suggested aborting every white baby or every
Jewish baby. By contrast, Bennett's genocidal suggestion however
hypothetical that aborting every black baby would cut crime sadly won't
even slightly bite into that swine's opulent speaker fees. The objective
scientific reality of races -- that 80% of the variation within the
average human gene is *within* 'races' as opposed to *between* 'races'
(or the fact that Israelis and Palestinians in the mideast are genetically
indistinguishable) -- are irrelevant. This is about a *socially*
defined concept of race, AKA class war. On *completely* different
note, a small car efficiently tooling down the interstate burns about 1
gallon of gasoline per hour, while a large jet plane burns about 1 gallon
kerosine per second at takeoff and about 1/3 gallon per sec when cruising.
However, the plane goes a lot faster and carries a lot more people,
and this basically cancels this difference. The fact that planes and
cars are roughly equally efficient demonstrates how fundamental liquid
fuels are to modern life. The main outlier is rail, which is a major win
over cars and planes -- 5 to 10 times as efficient -- for long distance
because of the markedly lower friction and wind resistance (wheel flexing
and drag in cars/trucks, large aerodynamic drag in fast flying planes).
Find out
here
how trains go around curves (on a good day) without a differential.
However, largely as a result of our current pavement/airport subsidy
structure, long distance rail is currently *more* expensive to the
enduser than planes and cars. On the positive side, people have been
buying a lot more bicycles recently, which is excellent news.
[Oct06'05] Reading the lastest Gulf of
Mexico oil/gas DOE situation report (
pdf ) while looking at a picture of
rigs and
hurricane paths, and then looking at the price of oil continue to
*drop* really emphasizes just how short the outlook of the markets is.
On page 2 of the report you can see that the cumulative shut-in loss
("bbls" confusingly means "barrels") over the last month and a half
has been 48 million barrels of oil. This should be compared to our
daily gulp of 20 million barrels as well as the 5 month cumulative
loss from Ivan of 44 million barrels. Since Katria+Rita was *much*
more severe than Ivan (111 oil platforms destroyed vs. only 7 by Ivan),
the total loss from Katrina and Rita may approach several percent of
our yearly usage. The fact that oil prices remain low reflects demand
reduction, Saudi selling oil to us below world price, refineries using
less because they're still broken, backed up tankers because ports
are broken, European donations, and strategic reserves withdrawals.
From a three-day point of view, given those facts, it is logical that oil
should drop. But *someone* should be talking about the longer picture,
because it could mean life and death. The mainstream media yammers on
in a drug-induced haze. It is as if a person jumped out a window and
then half way down, noted that things so far were going quite well.
Think about conducting other parts of life -- e.g., agriculture --
with a 3 day look-ahead. Agriculture is not possible with a 3 day
look-ahead. We shouldn't worship such extreme short-sightedness.
It's going to be extremely dangerous to our health. Meanwhile
scientists have reconstructed viable, approximate copies (
pdf) of
the original 1918 flu virus that killed 50 million people worldwide in
1918 (more than WWI, and the worst pandemic in human history), and have
killed mice with it, showing that it is much more virulent than current
flu strains. This same week, Bush announces that martial law will be
imposed if there is a flu outbreak. Given that the anthrax mailed to
Senator Leahy was a strain developed in US biowarfare labs, a guy could
get a little nervous, and hope that it was a joke instead of the real
thing in a Biosafety Level 3 lab in Georgia.
[Oct09'05] The Senate unanimously approved a defense spending bill
containing another $50 billion for part of the coming year in Iraq and
Afghanistan. For scale, this is more that we spend on all biomedical
research every year. And all to kill extremely low-tech poor Iraqis
and make a complete shambles of their country and government, halfway
around the globe.
[Oct11'05] Gulf of Mexico oil production is recovering slowly. Currently,
about 1 million barrels a day is shut-in (about 70% of total). From Sept
26 to now, the cumulative shut-in is 55 million barrels, or about 1% of
total yearly US usage. The total loss may end up around 2% of yearly US
usage (0.5% of global usage). Projected percentage loss of natural gas
is similar. This is significant, but so far, we may just miss actual
shortages and pipeline shutdowns this winter, in part because of other
other countries helping us out. I don't know if this will be enough of
a stimulus to get the general public to face up to the long continuous
downslope that we will be facing in the next decade.
[Oct16'05] In Alex Cockburn's Counterpunch
diary today,
among other things, he proposes that global warming is not CO2-caused but
rather 'natural variation', that ethanol would be a plausible replacement
for oil, and that anyway, peak oil is not true because oil is abiotic.
What a howling non-sequitur that last one is! Even if oil was abiotic,
which it's not (Ghawar, for example, is almost pure plankton dung,
and plankton never lived underground the last time I checked), how
would that help with observed depletion? Alex is a cultured writer who
effortlessly draws on many historical references, doesn't like too many
commas, and writes in a refreshing, fun-to-read style. Fine. But it's
pretty weak writing and thinking to ignore the views of the overwhelming
majority of climate scientists and geologists without giving any reason.
That's worse, even, than, say, using way, way too many commas. Alex
would get equally upset if someone completely mangled recent history.
I have nothing against a contrarian. But many times, science has found
reasonably good answers were before here were arguments and uncertainty.
Then we have to move on, and the contrarians concede; you can't go
back to the old way of thinking (unless, I suppose, we first run out
of oil...).
[Oct18'05] Recent spygate revelations that Cheney aide Hannah will
snitch, and rumors that Cheney might be replaced with Condi suggest that
the administration is in desperate straits. This may push forward the
upcoming war with Iran. It makes sense (from their perspective) to act
now to avoid a Republican wipe-out in the midterm Congressional elections.
I fear we are getting close to a turning point. You would hardly know
anything was amiss from the mainstream media (see, for example, Google
news). And what a continuing disaster for industrial civilization this
will be! Right now, we should be intensely planning and testing and
designing and manufacturing and optimizing alternative energy sources
and alternative transportation and manufacturing methods to cushion the
great contraction. Intead, we are flushing ourselves and our children
and grandchildren right down the toilet. What a shame. Sometimes,
I feel I should be more sad about it. Probably, when the fourth reich
gets really cranked up, I will regret not having done more to stop it.
As the avian flu scare gets cranked up on the eve of the war on Iran,
I think back to the SARS pneumonia scare, which occurred right after
the start of the second US invasion of Iraq in early 2003 (aided and
abetted by none other than Judith Miller). Every year, 36,000 North
Americans die of regular pneumonia (about 100 a day). And every year,
another 40,000 North Americans die of the regular flu (mostly older and
immune-compromised people). So far, less than 100 people have died of
avian flu *across the planet* -- that is, a whole year of the dreaded
avian flu (or SARS) is less than one *day* of regular flu or regular
pneumonia in North America. What a strange and fishy replay of SARS.
Why aren't we worried about SARS or Ebola now? Where did *they* go?
What will the Asians come up with next? Why do we need martial law for
avian flu but not SARS? It is true that I am a little worried about the
possibility that the recently reconstructed and reconstituted *1918*
flu could get out -- no doubt during a 'well-meaning' attempt to make
a vaccine to it.
[Oct21'05] Economists often claim that we can deal with oil shocks
better now because we have gotten more efficient with fuel use since
the 1970's oil shock, and remain so, even with SUV's. However, to
deal with another oil shock, we will have to replace current vehicles
with even more efficient ones. There are about 130 million cars and
80 million light trucks on the road in the US (210 million vehicles).
The US produces about 5 million cars and 7 million trucks annually (12
million vehicles, about 6% to total on the road). From these numbers, it
is not obvious that we (or the rest of the world) will be able to respond
quickly enough to an oil shock, esp. when you consider that it takes a
lot of energy to manufacture a car (a substantial portion of the energy
it uses in its lifetime). Finally, you can't wring more efficiency out
of a standard 80,000 pound payload truck without reducing its payload.
Trucks got about 5 miles per gallon in 1970. Trucks get about 5 miles
per gallon today. Suggestions that the auto makers are withholding 100
or 200 mile per gallon cars are utter cargo cult fantasies -- if by a
'car', you mean something that encloses at least 4 people sitting upright
plus some of their stuff and that can cruise at 65 miles per hour. Now,
if a 'car' includes something about 2 feet off the ground that you lie
down in, with thin bicycle tires pumped up to 120 psi, that cruises at
30 miles an hour, then 150 miles per gallon is no prob.
[Oct22'05] "It does no good to ask the weakling's pointless question,
'Is America a fascist state?' We must ask instead, in a major rather
than a minor key, 'Can we make America the best damned fascist state
the world has ever seen'". -- Lewis H. Lapham.
[Oct23'05] From all the saber-rattling accompanying the lapdog UN
report on the Hariri assassination, it is looking more like the US
may attack Syria first, instead of Iran. Hersh and Ritter originally
suggested Iran in June 2005. By the end of August, Tarpley was still
suggesting
Iran on Nov 1 or Dec 1, which is still vaguely possible. However, the
hurricanes and the momentum of the bizarro leak investigation were not
predictable in early or mid-2005, and this may have somewhat interfered
with war planning. Hersh's and Ritter's articles -- possibly motivated
by leaks from military people opposed to another invasion -- also may
have slowed things down (or they may have merely been smokescreens).
It is worth noting that Syria is a much weaker target than Iran. The US
military is only confident of attacking extremely weak opponents such as
Iraq, which had been economically starved and bombed for over a decade,
and which was known before the attack to have no air defenses, no air
force, virtually no helicopters, and of course, no WMDs. It has been
suggested that perhaps the US will use small nuclear bombs on Iran and
then just run away, but that would likely have very negative impacts
on US troops who only remain in Iraq largely on the good graces of the
Iran-sympathetic Shi'ites. If the entirety of Iraq was united against
the US occupation, US troop concentrations, which are in bases a long
distance from the southern ports, could be starved of fuel and supplies
and seriously endangered. Of course, the US could 'win' by carpet-bombing
or even nuclear bombing Iraqi cities. At first I was going to write
that this would be impractical because of world opinion, but maybe
that's wrong. Look what the US did to Fallujah without any significant
reprisals from any other country. It is not clear that a small nuclear
bomb would have been worse. But I think the most likely scenario is
not an invasion of Iran, but rather a half a year of partial invasions
and provocations of Syria (already begun), which will continue to
be studiously ignored by the mainstream media, and then an outright
confrontation only be mid-2006. We are now where we were with respect
to Iraq in mid 2002. I distinctly remember thinking then "it sure looks
like they are planning a war, but I don't see how they will be able to
drag everyone along". It took about 9 months of continuous propaganda
to whip the American mind into shape. Also, average Americans never
get mad when they have been fooled/taken/chumped.
[Oct24'05] The US prison population has continued its inexorable
growth -- up almost 2%, which is in line with a 3.2% annual
growth rate over the past decade. We now have 1 out of 128 people in
prison (2.3 million people). This compares with China's 1 out of 866
(1.5 million people). We have more total people in prison than China
because we imprison almost 7 times as many people in jail per capita.
But there is still room for growth. If we work hard, we can make
this the best damn prison country in the world! In a recent
poll, a majority of Americans rejected the theory of evolution
(just 15% believe in God-free evolution). They should also poll
people on quantum mechanics, which people understand about as well
as evolutionary biology. I wonder what the response would be to:
"Do you believe that measurements taken at a distance can be correlated
without the invention of God?" Also, they should probably find out how
many people think it would be OK to put people who believe in evolution
in jail. Hopefully still under 10-15% of the 80-85% of people who
think that God is responsible for evolution.
[Oct27'05] While the synthetic bird flu scare continues, 106,000 people
died of adverse drug reactions and 115,000 people died this year from
*bedsores*. Bedsores and drug reactions are not as good for scaring
our non-numerate populace -- but they kill a quarter of a million
North Americans *a year*. How many US-ians killed so far by bird flu?
None.
[Oct28'05] Just like the case of Nixon getting booted for a
two-bit burglary instead of for killing 1-2 million South East
Asian civilians, the press is now slavering over the outing of an
already-outed-by-Aldrich-Ames (!) spy instead of over the lies that led
our bin Laden'd populace to war and the killing of 100,00 to 200,000
civilians. For shame, guys, since you damn well know better -- just as
you knew better when Clinton's support of the Iraq sanctions that killed
a lot more Iraqis than Bush so far did.
[Oct31'05] The current hot topic on the UCSD campus is whether the
student-run television station piped into dorms should be allowed
to air pr0n, home-grown or otherwise. This fine example of student
activism comes courtesy the right-wing Koala student newspaper.
There is not a peep from the left about the war (or energy) on campus.
Complete silence. I admit I am a little disconcerted by the thought of
pr0n free speech coming to my classroom. So far, my students have only
been getting upset if the lectures aren't delivered on PowerPoint...
(yes, they specifically want Microsoft, whose profits rose 30% this one
year, keeping pace with those of oil companies).
[Nov11'05] Finally, the odd softness in oil and gasoline prices is
explained! Petroleum imports have increased 60% (YTD) over last year (!).
Demand (a ridiculous name for actual usage) has recovered from the effects
of the hurricanes and is now up once again. But the enormous increase
in imports has increased the supply even more, leading to lower prices.
The huge import increase has already started to tail off. It will take a
while for that bolus to work its way through the digestive tract. I will
be surprised if oil prices don't resume their upward trend in another
few months once it does. The latest data from the UK and Norway suggests
that production is down almost 20% from last year (ouch!). Before long,
we will be in the situation were we are in Prudoe Bay (US 1980's Alaska
oil) where the 'whatever reserves' keep increasing (see Prudoe graph in
my oil
presentation
) but the actual oil production and water cut keep getting worse
(so much water gets pumped down in depleting fields like Prudoe that
the water-to-oil ratio coming back up can be as high as 10 or 20-to-1).
Oil fields never recover from downslopes like those; rather, more oil
is found elsewhere. But at some point, there is not enough elsewhere.
When Alaska/Prudoe was found, it helped US oil production to not decline
faster; it *didn't* reverse the decline that started in 1970.
[Nov18'05] Recent reports suggest that the US has
snatched with no trial or public charge
83,000 people, transporting some of them in unmarked planes
to secret detention and torture centers in other countries and possibly
in the US itself. That's a lot of people. 108 of those snatched
are known to have died in US custody, some probably tortured to
death about the location of non-existent WMD's. Although Cheney knew
there weren't any, the torturers probably didn't know. I've worried
about getting on the Kafkesque always-search or no-fly lists because
nothing you can do will get you off of them (there was a baby on
one of the lists, and the airport drones dutifully searched it).
But this other list is much worse. Good Americans should be wary of
the creeping police state they are implicitly approving. Many
approve of torture: 15% say it is often justified, 31% say
sometimes, 17% say rarely, and only 32% unconditionally oppose it.
This is worrisome, esp. since the going hasn't gotten tough yet --
such as an energy shortage, another synthetic terror event, a housing
bubble burst, a dollar crisis, another war or two, and so on. On a wry
positive note, it is a bit fun to watch the Sony PR dept scrambling
to disassociate in consumers little minds the following two things:
(1) the recent Sony rootkit DRM (that came on 2 million movies Sony
disks sold this year), the 'fix' for which opens up people's computers
to cloaked viruses courtesy of the DRM cloaking functions, and, (2)
the unclean spyware and viruses themselves. Also Sony got caught
using freeware (LAME) in their distros without attribution. At least
the freeware they stole ran without bugs while Sony's dufus rootkit
used a few percent of a 3 GHz CPU continuously. Sheesh, programming
standards sure have fallen. For another laugh, check out this
GE ad from a few months back with sexy models mining coal (!?) in
tank tops flexing their glistening muscles in almost non-existent US shaft
mines (virtually all US coal is strip mined). You can't make this stuff
up. Meanwhile, in China where they still *do* have dangerous shaft mines,
4000 people have so far died mining coal this year.
[Nov28'05] After 3 years in secret detention with no charges, Padilla
is finally indicted for conspiring "to commit at any place outside the
United States acts that would constitute murder". No scary dirty bomb,
but just that he conspired to try to kill an unspecified person in an
unspecified place? I suppose that's still pretty scary, boys and girls.
If they told us any more, they'd have to kill us.
[Dec05'05] Maybe Rumsfart and his ghoul generals should go back and read
Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published in 1486 and written
by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger (go
here
or
here for extracts). They could brush up on technique (e.g., the
one where you repeatedly break a woman's shin bone using a special metal
boot). Works almost every time (well except when the woman dies on you
before you get a chance to burn her). One small problem that emerged
was that there weren't any witches. Estimates of the female death toll
range into the millions. *Lots* of women confessed to being witches,
and were then burned to death if the torture hadn't already killed them
(though 'kinder gentler' executioners would often strangle them before
the flames rose up). Given that only 32% of Americans unconditionally
oppose torture now, a guy could could get a little nervous that one of
the new Ayatollah Asscroft a**holes they've been hiring lately might
have a new 'Hammer' up his sleeve. This will come to tears and worse
at home if you don't run 'em out now, Good Americans.
[Dec12'05] A recent USDA report ERS-ERR-11 "Household Food Security
in the United States 2004" reports that hunger increased almost 15%
in one year (2004) in the US, during the 'recovery' from a recession.
13.5 million households are currently "food insecure". That's a pretty
hefty growth rate. Meanwhile, about the torture thing again (just
saw Syriana). Torture has always been a part of US foreign policy, and
people who piously say how torture is ruining our image need to read a
little history. The difference is that before, we used to officially say
that torture was bad, while still using/funding/teaching it. Now, at a
time when we are probably torturing less people than we did in Vietnam,
we are starting to say it's OK (e.g., 82 percent of FOX News Channel
viewers said torture is acceptable in "a wide range" of situations).
That's an ominous development given that things have yet to get really
tight with respect to energy. The recent execution of Alpizar was almost
a carbon copy of the tube execution in London with respect to brainwashing
the populace. The 'I have a bomb' disinfo planted after agents shot
Alpizar dead after he was surrounded in the jetway is collapsing (report
in Time!), but as usual, it already did its job. The story is being
reported as showing that homeland security works -- because an innocent
person was gunned down (!). No passenger confirmed the bomb story
despite hours of prodding, after having to sit terrorized in their
seats with their hands over their heads at gunpoint for an hour while
they cleaned up the blood in the jetway. Instead, passengers reported
that Alpizar's wife had run after him saying "My husband's sick. He's
sick. He's bipolar. He didn't take his medicine. It was my fault. I made
him get on the plane. You know, we just came from a medical mission. Oh,
my God! They've killed my husband!" (quote from Orlando architect
Jorge Borrelli). Soon after the fact, we had the execrable 'Lionel' on
supposedly left Air America (not!) riffing on how Alpizar sounds like a
Muslim name. How cute. But maybe you should get a little skin bleach the
next time you fly, Li, eh? Sheep Americans, you shouldn't keep your heads
down and go along with this! Sheep eventually get slaughtered.
[Dec14'05] "How can you support the troops and not support the war?
What is it that the troops were doing, except waging that war?! Those
soldiers who should be supported are those who are resisting -- or seeking
the means to resist -- the war." -- Bob Avakian, on Vietnam. Right now,
the US military is escalating bombing raids across Iraq, and the press
has barely reported it. This an escalation from about 2 *million* 500
pound bombs dropped last year (Hersh). This has been killing mainly
civilians (see the Lancet study). I don't support that order or the
people carrying it out. The arguments about 'supporting the troops'
are carbon copies of the arguments about Vietnam. We killed perhaps
2 million southeast asian civilians and perhaps 2 million soldiers in
our lost war on Vietnam (both numbers plus or minus 1 million). It was
more than half a Holocaust. It was a horrible wrong against humanity.
It happened because people supported our troops and the troops followed
their orders. It only stopped when our troops *stopped* following orders
and the military hierarchy started losing control of the army (e.g.,
'fragging' -- killing of superior officers by troops). The mental toll
on the troops that survived was substantial -- as many committed suicide
after the war as were killed in the war (about 60,000). It is likely
that the Iraq war will continue until something similar to the late
stages of Vietnam occurs. Democratic hawk Murtha's recent turn against
the war suggests to me that this may be a little closer than most people
think. That probably explains why the US is escalating the bombing now.
As Dahr Jamail has commented, it is interesting to see that the military
propaganda machine (sorry, the mainstream media) hasn't highlighted
this latest 'shock and awe' campaign. The whole war is now completely
politically radioactive. It surprised me that Bush's poll numbers
popped back up to 40% this week. Perhaps lower gas prices and various
republican scandals have temporarily focussed people's attention away from
the war. Meanwhile, after their huge success in gunning down a panicked
bipolar missionary (!) off his meds, Air Marshals are being
deployed to "counter potential
criminal terrorist activity in all modes of transportation". Sheesh.
'Running while Brazilian' is now a capital crime in London, but at least
I'm not Brazilian (well, I'm part Portuguese). But at this rate, it won't
be too long before 'running while looking like someone not from a red
state' becomes a capital crime here. I may soon have to curtail my own
'running around campus' habits. Then I'll be really tardy marty.
[Dec15'05] With all the discussion lately of hypothetical scenarios about
whether it's nobler to torture an about-to-be terrorist who might have
information about a ticking nuclear fission bomb capable of killing,
say 100,000 people in New York, than to not do it, how about let's
consider for a change things that actually happened. About 100,000
civilians similarly innocent to those in a hypothetical New York attack
actually *were* killed in Iraq (Lancet study) after an invasion which
the Bush and Blair administrations orchestrated on the basis of lies.
Let't forget about the primary reason (oil) and just admit that 100,000
people were killed in a pre-meditated way for a lie. Shock and awe and
cluster bombs and laser guided bombs and artillery shells are known to
kill mostly civilians, whether or not the high-tech attacking country
deigns to count the shredded and burned dead people. Given that many
people in the US knew before the start of the war that there was a
possibility that Bush and Blair might be planning to kill 100,000 people,
and that they were probably lying, it looks a lot like a ticking time
bomb scenario to me. Hypothetically, could we could have prevented
the loss of those 100,000 innocent lives by torturing Bush and Blair?
Probably no need to rip out fingernails. Merely enhanced interrogation --
in Syria, for example.
[Dec16'05] As the public begins to turn against the Iraq
war, but still without a conscious realization of the
original reason for it -- namely, oil, staring them right
in the face -- it's blackly hilarious to read stuff like
this or
this from the
supposed 'left', carefully dancing around the elephant in the room.
With our half-a-trillion dollar a year military sitting right on top of
the Iraqi oil patch and awfully close to the Saudi and Iran oil patches
(which are actually all part of the largest oil-producing region in the
world), how on earth could oil *not* rate a mention? Shameful. This is
the kind of stuff historians dig up years later to ogle at.
[Dec18'05] As mentioned above in several posts, the 'only' reason we are
losing the war in Iraq is that we haven't actually pulled out the big
guns -- like indiscriminate carpet bombing of cities, neutron fission
bombs, chemical weapons, or even hydrogen bombs. I have often heard
hawks bemoaning the fact that it's not politically correct to simply do
the modern version of Carthage on 'them' (cf. Gary Brecher). My worry
is that the only thing that has so far stopped the General Turgidsons
from doing a country-sized Carthage -- a 10x Vietnam -- is that the US's
dominant position has not previously been at risk. However, as a result
of the ongoing Iraq disaster, there is a new $100 billion/year drain on
the economy, and we still don't have a stranglehold on their oil. Some of
this giant firehose of tax money is of course being recycled into the
maws of the principal shareholders of the Halliburtons and siphoned off
to the Caymans. But much of it is just being spent. As this flesh wound
continues to drain blood, the organism will eventually have to bandage it
(and not because the populace demands it -- e.g., the most recent NBC
poll just after Bush's speeches showed that only 27% of USians were in
favor of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq). A weaker and slightly dizzy
US is a much more dangerous US. If the situation deteriorates further,
the restraints on the General Turgidsons will gradually be loosened.
Then the mindless hawks may get what they've been lusting after all
these years. And unfortunately for more humane humans, it will probably
initially 'work'. Several small mini-nuke fission bombs exploded in
a ciy of dark-skinned people will not be horrible enough to make the
entire world immediately rise up against us. A small fission bomb
(we now have mini-nukes much smaller than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
bombs) might kill 'only' a 500 or 1,000 people -- many less than
the 100,000 we've killed using conventional explosives and bullets
(and cluster bombs and phosphorus and land mines and depleted uranium
rounds, etc etc) in just the past few years of the current Iraq war.
And even the 100,000 was only perhaps 1/5 the number killed by the
pre-war Iraq sanctions, which were approved year after year by the UN!
A small fission bomb would only destroy a portion of a medium-sized city
(a city like LA could 'laugh off' a small fission bomb). But once the
'gloves come off' of a weakened, slightly staggered US, a worldwide
reaction would eventually develop (uhh, continue to develop). If the
rest of the world decides to economically cut us off, bombing them
probably won't make them start trading with us again. And our piddly
army is way too small to 'invade the world'. But though we have only
moderate amounts of natural gas and even less oil left, we still have
a lot of coal and iron, and the best farmland in the world and lots
water, so even hated and cut off from the rest of the world, we will
make a pretty good Gilligan's island (probably more like 'KKK island')
for a while, until the battery runs down. As Jorge Hirsch
recommends,
we should discuss these things -- unpalatable as they may be -- more
frankly, out in the open. Do we want to live on KKK Island or do we want
to behave like grownups? Though there is a certain black pleasure in
imagining the desparate yahoos here clamoring to find somebody who still
actually knows something to help them pick of the pieces of industrial
civilization after a partial collapse, I would rather have it not collapse
in the first place. And anyway, the yahoos won't just be "clamoring"
-- they'll have us all at gunpoint. Here's hoping we can get through
March 2006 without a nuclear attack by the US.
[Dec24'05] In just two days this week (Tues and Wed), the Fed
Repo-injected a total of $38 billion dollars into the US money
'supply'. That's about as much as we spend in 5 months in Iraq or
more than the entire NIH budget for a year -- or in other words,
a lot of money creation in just 2 days (I know, probably not the
units that normal people use to judge amounts of money). Those are
close to 9-11-sized injections. M3 (of which repos are just a part)
normally grows at a rate of 'only' $1.4 billion a day. Hopefully,
it was just a temporary cash-flow problem and not a sign of something
bad about to happen. Meanwhile, the average USian mind appears
to be not worrying (see the always amazing-to-me graph at
pollkatz);
a few utterly generic propaganda speeches to hand-picked audiences about
how we will actually eventually win the war in Iraq and the approval
polls jump discontinuously upward like clockwork -- and this during the
week that Iranian fundamentalists won the Iraq elections. Almost 60%
of USians now think we are *already* winning. Utterly depressing how
propaganda just works. On the positive side, by stopping the continuous
approval decline, the need for more extraordinary measures is perhaps
temporarily postponed.
[Jan02'06] Here is
where
we are importing our oil from these days (in Gb, where yearly US
usage is a little over 7 Gb, with over half imported): Canada--1.6,
Mexico--1.5, Saudi--1.4, Venezuela--1.3, Nigeria--1.0, Iraq--0.5,
Angola--0.4 (note that we don't really get any oil from Iran; China
is a main buyer of Iranian oil). Thus, we get about 7% of our yearly
oil from Iraq (this constitutes around 1/3 of Iraq's total output).
Embezzeler Chalabi was just made permanent oil minister of Iraq a
few days ago, ousting the existing minister, who had balked at rapid
IMF-mandated increases in fuel prices, in what was described as a
coup.
It is true that Chalabi got 1% of the vote in the most recent election,
so it stands to reason that he should control the oil -- the main
cash-generating business in Iraq.
[Jan03'06] The evidence is now in that the US has increased bombing raids
across Iraq by more than a factor of 5 since the summer (500% increase),
slaughtering hundreds of civilians in each 'campaign'. Meanwhile,
back at home, merry little US war criminals sport their yellow ribbons.
I only wish there was a God ("But Mr. God, sir, everybody else was
supporting the troops, too!").
[Jan04'06] Demand for oil shows no sign of letting up, either in the
US, EU, or in developing countries. The only place where real demand
destruction has occurred as a result of recently increased oil prices is
in places like Eritrea, where high oil prices have cleared the streets
of cars. Meanwhile, improved recovery methods such as horizontal well
terminations have increased the extraction rate of existing well and kept
up production. As Simmons and others have been warning for a few years,
better extraction technology results in faster fall-off rates when the
peak for such a field finally does come. For example, horizontally
drilled UK North Sea oil has been declining at an astounding 10% per
year -- far faster than the shallow post-US-peak post-1970 decline in
older-style US oil production at that time. There is still about half
of the oil left in the world, so we are not about to run out next year.
However, you'd have to be an economist not to get a shiver down your
spine at the thought of 10% per year decline rates running into 10%
per year demand increases in the near future. It is true that people
slowed down their buying of SUVs with the recent hurricane related gas
price increases, but it's going to take a lot more than not buying a few
SUVs to fix 10% per year declines. As much as I respect the market as
an efficient short-term optimization method, I'm worried.
[Jan13'06] This
picture, which shows Jose
Padilla, says a lot. You can see that, in contrast to the ubiquitous
Photoshop-darkened perp photos, he is almost as light skinned as his
guards. Dressed in an orange terr'ist suit, he is so dangerous, even
handcuffed and ankle-chained -- after all he is accused, literally,
of 'conspiring to do something to somebody in some other country'
(pretty scary boys and girls) -- that both guards have to have headsets
on and... kneepads?! Maybe it's a recruitment photo for other wannabe
stormtroopers. After all, stormtroopin' for the man is one of the
last things to get outsourced, and all that math just hurts your brain
anyway...
[Jan21,'06]
I've assembled some
graphs from Bud
Conrad and the St. Louis Fed. They show the cumulative current account
deficit and the M3 money supply (the most inclusive) on the same
vertical and horizontal scale. The graphs do not look stable in the
long term. It should be noted, however, that M3 has been inflating
at this same rate this since 1996 (starting before the end of term
one of Clinton). And except for a brief respite during the early
1990's (end of Bush1, most of Clinton's first term), M3 was inflating
(albeit at a somewhat slower rate) since the 1970's, well *before* the
current account deficit ballooned. The M3 graph shows surprisingly
little effect of the Clinton-to-Bush transition or 9-11. Also, the
cumulative current account deficit took a steep downward turn *before*
the end of Clinton's second term and then substantially increased its
negative slope with Bush. This resulted in M3 growth and cumulative
current account deficit being virtual mirror images of each other.
So for the past 10 years, we have been 'printing' electronic money to
send over the internet to foreigners' computers, and then, amazingly,
they ship actual physical stuff to us in return. I don't see how things
can go on like this for too many more years, but it sure is good 'work'
when you can get it! :-} However, the Economist has recently
'explained'
this by citing a paper by Hausmann and Struzenegger (pdf
here),
who develop a theory of economic 'dark matter'
(hehe -- see critique of that paper
here).
Is economic dark matter something like
naked shorting?
Maybe I've underestimated the relation between economics and physics.
Physicists have a theory of 'vaccuum energy' whereby complete emptiness
is in fact filled with a seething background energy of particles coming
into existence out of nothing and disappearing back into the empty void
in times so short that energy conservation is not violated. This is a
little like money borrowed/created by the Fed -- these dollars are emitted
from a vaccuum, you pay interest on them, and then they disappear back
into the void when you pay them back. Well, except for the interest.
I guess the Fed is more like a black hole where one of the pair of a
created-out-of-nothing particles can escape if the pair is created on
the event horizon.
[Jan24'06] Out of curiosity I just googled Roger Boisjoly (cv
here), the
Morton Thiokol solid booster engineer who tried to stop the launch of the
Challenger in 1986 because he thought the rubber O-rings would fail (even
more severely than previously) because of the extreme cold. The O-rings
were supposed to keep the joints in the solid rocket booster air-tight
during their slight flexing during firing (fire resistant putty inside of
the O-rings actually took the heat). On the cold day of the explosion,
the cold rigid rubber failed to seal, allowing hot gases to burn through
the O-rings, the booster support, and eventually the adjoining liquid
oxygen fuel tank, which caused it to explode. Boisjoly had refused to
sign the launch papers that day because of his reasoned assessment of
this risk, despite extreme pressure on him. But he was overruled by a
supervisor who was advised 'to take off his engineering hat and put on
his management hat' -- which the supervisor had already done. It was
rumored that some of the pressure for take-off was that Reagan wanted
to talk to the Christa McAuliffe, the "teacher in space" live at his
upcoming state of the union address. But no hard evidence of that emerged
(Feynman went looking for telephone records but didn't get anything).
Boisjoly explained what happened at a Congressional hearing on the
diaster. The result was that he was promptly and permanently black-balled
from industry. He remade his career as a lecturer on professionalism
and organizational behavior -- and on explaining to other people how
to recover after your professional career has been ended by doing the
right thing. People like this make me proud to be a human.
[Jan25'06] "Doug [Douglas Barber] was in a traffic jam one day, feeling
very vulnerable, and the US units dismounted to clear the traffic jam --
angry and afraid and waving weapons at the civilians -- when a woman in a
bus held up her baby for them to see... like that window-sign we see in
cars on American highways: 'Baby on Board'. Only she wasn't cautioning
other drivers to be careful. She was trying to prevent an armed attack
that could kill her child." -- Stan Goff. Classic primate behavior!
This is exactly how macaques defuse a tense situation when males are
about to fight -- they grab a kid and hold it up. Unfortunately,
this only works up close and personal. It's hard for our boys to see
the kids when they're on a bombing run for da man, esp. at night.
When they *do* see them (sometimes they do get up close and personal),
they often end up like Doug. It's intrinsic to the nature of any war and
the people who implement it. An equal number of Vietnam vets committed
suicide after the war as were actually killed in the war (about 50,000).
Unfortunately, a majority of American's still think 'it' is worth the
price -- or at least they are willing to let it go on. I think that's
mainly because they can't see 'it'.
[Jan26'06] It's blackly hilarious watching the oil, gasoline, and natural
gas prices wobble around in synchrony on theoildrum.com. Gasoline is
refined out of some kinds of oil, but it takes time. Natural gas
comes out of some oil wells, but is largely decoupled in place, time
of extraction, and transport methods. The chance that coupled intraday
movements in price of these three commodities reflects something 'real'
about production, transport, refinement, or demand seems remote to
me.
[Jan28'06] The polls published in the LA Times and elsewhere suggesting
that a majority of Americans support an attack on Iran leave me
stunned. As usual, I poorly gauge the man on the street whose pliable
sponge-like brain soaks up the nightly newspeak which I don't watch
(I should). How did we get here so soon? The stunning irreality of
it all! Attacking a country supplying a couple of percent of of the
world's yearly oil production to every other industrialized country
except the US? While the occupied territories of Iraq are in chaos?
While things are so bad on the ground that the US military has doubled
its per capita fuel used (by avoiding ground transport) since last year?
No prob! Just do Iran! I had been worrying that people are too much like
yeast, living in the huge beer barrel of Earth without understanding or
having the time to investigate how the purchasing choices they make every
day are affecting the entire barrel/Earth. But I was secretly hopeful
that the same mind that sometimes makes beautiful words and pictures and
music and science might still shine through. No way, baby! Human minds
are so weak! The Blitzer puppet injects a handful of words every day:
"must. attack. Iran". They don't even have to be in the right order.
Stick in a random satellite photo. It doesn't have to be the right one
(sometimes it wasn't). Over half the peeps are already convinced and they
haven't even brought out the big propaganda guns! People don't even know
where Iran is. Doesn't matter. It's enough to fire up the mini-nukes
and get the battle-plan drones to do their dirty deeds. The AIDS virus
has less than ten genes but it takes over a certain kind of cell and
eventually can bring down the whole Leviathan. The 'attack Iran now' meme
is only 3 friggin' words! That's like a virus containing 9 base pairs.
Maybe
language would have been better off it had been comprehension-only,
like DNA/RNA/protein. For something completely different, here is
Richard Rainwater, a 5 billionaire talking about peak oil: "This is
a nonrecurring event. The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was
one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and
now there's the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of
natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just
stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than
making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the
survivability of mankind. I don't want the world to wake up one day and
say, 'How come some doofus billionaire in Texas made all this money by
being aware of this, and why didn't someone tell us?'" I hate it when
the richies start going all soft and guilty on you. Are they worried
about an undersupply of trained servants? An oversupply of villagers
with torches? Whatever it is, it's not good.
[Feb02'06] Isn't there *one* reporter out there that got through
high school physics?? Can't *any* of them calculate simple ratios??
The reporting on the state of the union address was worse than what a
fifth grader could have done. This isn't rocket science. The US uses
about 20 million barrels of oil a day. About 12 million barrels of
that (60%) is imported and 2.4 million barrels (20% of imports, 3% of
total use) comes from the mideast (mostly Saudi). Reducing our mideast
imports by 75% (state of the union speech) therefore means reducing our
total oil usage by 1.8 million barrels (2.2%). Then, hilariously, the
idea of reducing Saudi imports was withdrawn the day after the speech.
Let's put aside oil and batteries and ethanol for a minute to consider
the most critical shortage on the horizon -- natural gas. It wasn't
even mentioned in the speech. Despite the fact that oil is more depleted
worldwide than natural gas, natural gas will be the first truly generally
visible fossil fuel problem in North America because it is much harder to
transport than oil. When the gas pipeline pressure goes down, increasing
the price won't make it go back up if there is not enough gas to put in
the other end. That is, it's not like when the Russians recently turned
down the pressure in the pipeline to Ukraine to get them to pay more.
When shortages come to North America (because of depleting US and
Canadian production) it will be a massive shock. Natural gas wells
deplete much faster than oil wells (2-4 years), and require constant
drilling to keep production up -- that is, until there is no more
to drill. To use an odd analogy between energy use and anesthetia,
oil is more like barbiturates and natural gas is like isoflurane;
it takes a long time to groggily awake from barbiturate anesthesia;
but when they turn off the gas, you're awake in less than a minute.
Turning back to batteries, hydrogen, and ethanol, the speech contained
the usual non sequiturs. C'mon reporters -- call him on it! Better
batteries and hydrogen are merely lossy energy storage media -- they do
nothing to increase energy *supply*. Finally, there was ethanol, which is
potentially a new source of energy. Missouri has mandated that fuel there
contain 10% ethanol and it plans to produce even more ethanol from corn
than it is already. They are currently producing 0.31 million gallons
of ethanol a day using 11% of the state's entire corn crop (info
here
). Ethanol has comparable energy density to gasoline (actually 70% the
energy density of gasoline but let's say it's the same). We get about 20
gallons of gasoline out of a 42 gallon barrel of oil. Ignoring the other
energy-producing stuff we get out of a barrel of oil to be favorable to
ethanol, the current Missouri ethanol output is therefore equivalent
to 0.015 million barrels a day of oil, or 0.075% (1/1330) of our 20
million barrels of oil daily usage. When the newest Missouri ethanol
plants go online, it is prediced that they will use 25% of Missouri's
corn crop to produce 0.71 million gallons of ethanol a day or 0.18% of
our daily oil gulp. Let's assume that this planned increase in ethanol
production (0.4 million gallons a day) goes directly into replacing the
called-for-then-retracted-the-next-day 75% reduction in mideast imports.
That ethanol, made from 14% of Missouri's corn, would account for only 1%
of the planned mideast oil reduction! If 100% of the corn of Missouri
was used, it would generate only 8% of the now-retracted mideast reduction
suggestion, which is only 0.71% -- less than 1% -- of our total daily oil.
A high school student could see some problems here in expanding this to
other states, not the least having to do with, uhh, food. Also, none
of this takes into account the fact that corn is grown using gasoline-
and diesel-powered farm machinery, and fertilizers and pesticides
made from oil and natural gas (as opposed to Roman Empire style);
and it is turned into ethanol in plants powered by natural gas, and
more recently by coal (because natural gas prices recently quintupled).
The energy return on energy investment (EROEI) of the state subsidized
ethanol from corn process is disputed and hard to calculate, but it is
near 1.0 (that is, break even). It could even be negative (Pimentel)
-- that is, you use more fossil fuel to produce ethanol from corn it
that you get back from it, making burning the fossil fuel directly
more efficient. Now, one could complain that a hypothetical
switchgrass
biodigester using processed cow manure fertilizer (switchgrass typically
needs 100 pounds of nitrogen per acre per crop) would have a better
EROEI than corn. Perhaps, if you don't believe Pimentel. But it's
still way hypothetical. And though switchgrass is better than corn,
switchgrass is still basically a photosynthetic plant collecting
solar radiation, which has a fixed, low density. Some plants do this
a little bit better than others. But we are not going to get 10x
corn, or probably even 2x corn. And it's going to be a decade before
currently nonexistent switchgrass ethanol plants are scaled up to even
the current trivial-with-respect-to-oil size of ethanol-from-corn.
And scaled up real big, it would still compete in a big way with food.
Not doom and gloom -- just straightforward, sensible-shoes worries about
our continued existence. Actions speak louder than words: $0.3 billion
promised for alternative energy vs. $100 billion a year actually spent for
Iraq occupation -- that's a ratio of 330 to 1. I think the priorities
are clear: we have decided to occupy the land around the remaining oil
with a trivial token investment in alternative energy.
[Feb04'06] I was surprised to read in a report on a
talk
by Steven Jones that even half of that audience -- definitely not a
cross section of the population -- had not seen the WTC7 collapse video.
I guess that's why MSNBC Tucker Carlson at MSNBC was so adamant about
not showing it when he interviewed Jones a few months back.
[Feb06'06]
There was a confusing ethanol
puff piece published in Science last week out of Dan Kammen's group at
Berkeley that has gotten a lot of publicity (with a front-of-the-magazine
'scientific editorial' by Steve Koonin from BP). The most bizarre graph
is in Fig. 2, where it is shown that gasoline has a negative net energy of
0.2 MJ/L (!) while current ethanol production has a net positive energy
of around 4 MJ/L (positive, but not that much more than Pimentel's
slightly negative net energy value). They arrived at this bizarre
'conclusion' by including the total energy of the input petroleum into
the energy 'cost' of gasoline. This totally ignores the fact that we
drill for oil so we can make gasoline and get a lot of energy out of it!
It *is* true that a small percentage of the retrieved energy is lost
in refining. But a huge amount is left! (over 34 MJ/L for gasoline).
Subtracting out that huge majority of the remaining energy in the
gasoline is just perverse. This is all a matter of deciding where
to set the boundaries of the system. Shouldn't the real net energy of
gasoline be 34 MJ/L minus the fossil fuels that were used in drilling for
oil and producing gasoline from it??? That's definitely not negative
(yet!). Then if you want to show that using oil and natural gas and
coal to make ethanol is better than using the fossil fuels directly,
you would get a net energy calculation that would show something like
30 MJ/L for gasoline (34 minus refining, discovery, and transport)
and something similar for natural gas and coal (after conversion into
equivalent liquid energy units), and then this would be compared to
something like 38 MJ/L for ethanol (that is, the 34 MJ/L previously
subtracted out plus the 4 MJ/L net gain). That would put the actual
percent net energy gain -- from using oil and coal and natural gas to
capture energy from the sun via photosynthsis -- in better perspective.
Assuming you believe the positive 4 MJ/L net, then this would be a 1.26x
gain in energy over burning the fossil fuels directly. That sounds good,
but cost would be huge. To actually retrieve this 1.26 times gain using
current methods, we would have to convert all productive agricultural
land to ethanol production. As outlined in a previous post, using 100%
of the corn in Missouri to generate ethanol would cover only 0.71% of
our daily gasoline needs. Thus, to replace all our daily oil with more
efficient ethanol, we would need to use the complete corn output of 140
Missouri's). Even with some as yet completely hypothetical switchgrass
process that was more efficient in fertilizer, water, land space, soil
degradation, planting, harvesting, and processing, I don't think we will
ever get close to this coverage since the density of solar radiation,
water, and arable land are hard limiting factors -- and we still have to
use a lot of water and arable land to grow food (unless you want to just
eat the ethanol production leftovers...). So a practical magnification
of our energy sources by passing oil, natural gas, and coal through
current ethanol production methods is probably more like 1.1 or 1.05
times gain -- again, assuming the positive net gain they calculate for
ethanol is correct (almost all of it comes from energy credits for the
co-products: dried distiller grains, corn gluten feed, and corn oil).
That would cover a few years of current growth in US energy usage.
And all of this *completely* depends on having fossil fuels on the input
side -- unless you want to plant, water, fertilize, harvest, crush,
and cook the corn or switchgrass by hand. Publishing something like
this in Science in this form is a political statement, similar to the
"don't you scientists worry your little heads about peak oil" article
by Leonardo Maugeri last year (disclosure: I knew Dan Kammen when he
was a post-doc with Christof Koch when I was at Caltech).
link
[Feb06'06] Here is an example of how the confusing statements in
the Kammen article lead to a garbled public translation. A
news
report describing the Kammen study says: "Producing a gallon
of ethanol 'gas' from corn requires 95 percent less petroleum than
producing a gallon from fossil fuels, a new study finds." Well, duh.
That's because the fossil fuels used to produce ethanol are mostly
natural gas and coal, not oil. The Kammen study states that 1.1 units
of petroleum are used to produce 1.0 unit of gasoline, while 0.75 units
of fossil fuels (0.05 oil, 0.4 coal, and 0.3 natural gas) are used
to produce 1.0 unit of ethanol (which is how they got "95% less").
Ethanol could still be a good thing, if you buy the current positive
4 MJ/L net energy calculation (mostly from energy credits for the
ethanol coproducts since the energy of the output ethanol is basically
equivalent to the energy of the fossil fuel inputs). But the headline
is way misleading, esp. when you don't mention that this 4 MJ/L net
is riding on top of 30 MJ/L available from both gasoline and ethanol
(ethanol is less energy-dense than gasoline but it can be made to burn a
little more efficiently). Also, the article fails to point out that you
get a similar amount of CO2 from burning ethanol and gasoline; and this
end-use CO2 is much more than production-related CO2 (else there would
be no point in burning fossil fuels to extract and refine fossil fuels,
since the CO2 basically indexes how many energy-releasing bonds have
been broken). It's all a matter of establishing the overall picture
before snowing people with irrelevant and misleading details.
[Feb09'06] A soldier, who was forced to pay for his body armour
because a medic threw it out because it was a 'biohazard'
(because it was soaked with the soldier's blood), said: "I still
love the Army, loved being a soldier and loved my unit". He was
refunded
after Senator Byrd questioned Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker about it.
The former soldier has had seven operations on his arm and still has
movement problems and pain. Can you imagine an intrepeneurial corporate
CEO making these statements? Me neither. That's why we need more CEO's
on the front lines. Our wars would be 'right-sized' in a jiffy.
[Feb11'06]
Here
is a list of Bush's proposed program cuts. The AP didn't give
a total, but I added it up and it comes out to about 14 billion
dollars. All these programs would be cut in order to allow us
to continue spending almost $100 billion tax dollars a year for
the occupation and bombing of Iraq under false pretenses. C'mon
press guys! You need to mention the names of the programs for $14
billion, $100 billion for Iraq (for giant, permanent bases like
al-Asad),
and "lies" in the same damn article for once. All we have is Helen
Thomas, and not one of her wimpy colleagues ever utters a peep in
support of this fine old lady for fear of losing their jobs as what? --
court jesters? Is it such a great job?
[Feb15'06] A Ford Explorer with three people in it is better than three
Priuses with one person each. Why should single-person Priuses be able
to use the car pool lane?
[Feb16'06] The military is a major user of fossil fuels. Each of our 11
nuclear-powered aircraft carriers needs to be filled up every three months
with 3 million gallons of jet fuel for the planes it hauls around.
[Feb21'06] The power goes down in Denver and upstate New York probably
because of natural gas shortages, catching Kunstler of all people with
his grid down (!); he was heating his house with his stove because
his electric furnace igniters didn't work, and none of his phones were
usable without electricity. Also, all hell breaks loose in Nigeria's
oil patch over the weekend. None of it makes the mainstream media news.
Move along, nothing to see.
[Feb23'06] The money guys have lately been worrying about the "yen carry
trade unwinding". This has to do with a very abstract way to 'make' money
(indeed!). You borrow Japanese yen at almost zero percent interest and
then invest them in US treasuries at about a 3% interest rate gain net.
Since Japan's economy has perked up, it is considering raising interest
rates, which would make this "carry trade" less lucrative. It's hard
for me to wrap my mind around such disparate activities as this, and,
say, trying to localize food production. Yet the money guys' "unwinding"
could very much affect my food supply, so I try to listen up.
[Feb28'06]
Almost 90% of US
troops in Iraq think the war they are implementing is a retaliation
for Saddam's role in 9/11. Only about 30% of their loyal 'supporters'
back at home think this. The troops also think the war should end.
Wrong on both counts.
[Mar02'06] This year, we used about 30 Gb of oil and discovered 4.5 Gb.
That's about 6.5 used to 1 discovered. I've updated my
peak oil intro to include
more info on global temperature changes.
[Mar05'06] Our Guantanamo gulag is partly powered by renewable
energy (25% of electricity from windmills in windy months). Great.
Green torture.
[Mar06'06] "Making ethanol from corn is a process by which a certain
amount of energy in the forms of natural gas and diesel fuel are used to
create an equivalent amount of energy in the form of ethanol, with the
primary output being money from government subsidies." -- Bob Hirsch.
[Mar16'06] Bush's approval
polls
are looking pretty dire; and 43% are currently in favor of
outright
impeachment. But the last time the approval polls got this low
(just after Katrina), all it took was 5 or so speeches to hand-picked
audiences (this makes me think of the speech Bush recently had to give in
an Indian zoo to avoid the demonstrators...). The 5 or so speeches were
then amplified and re-re-re-re-broadcast by the scumbag media to bring
Bush back to just over 40% in a few weeks. The lapdog press has now even
taken to 'pre-announcing' the next set of Bush speeches about preemption,
even before he reads the stupid things. Good show, guys! Worms!
The largest airstrikes since the 2003 Iraq invasion are underway today
(probably what some of the AC-130's were for), and the speeches/media
in the pipeline will probably get robotic North Americans to rise to
the occasion. What's all the to-do about 'man the thinking animal'?
It makes them so much less cute.
[Mar18'06] I don't don't know what to think about the Operation Swarmer
psyop/photo-op/assault. It is true the US stormed and blew up few houses
and killed a few women and children, or rather "collateral", elsewhere
(Tikrit), and they dragged off a bunch of men, I mean, "terrorists",
from Samarra to the torture prisons, but it is an open question of how
widespread the airstrikes were/are. Some Iraqi sites say it's real.
The level of mainstream disinfo/BS is so high (the Time article suggesting
it was a photo-op/disinfo operation could easily itself be disinfo),
trying to be objective makes you feel just a little bit schizo. There are
essentially no non-embedded independent Western reporters in the area,
so we won't know what really happened for a month or two.
[Mar20'06] Oil prices had their biggest drop today in 7 months as
stockpiles of oil rose to a 7-year high. Those supplies jumped 4.8
million barrels to 340 million barrels. That sounds like a lot. However,
we use 20 million barrels a day, so our current supplies are equivalent
to 17 days of US usage. That sounds like a much smaller cushion (just
in time, man). Of course, it is unlikely that all domestic supply
and all imports would be shut down simultaneously, so supplies are no
doubt safe for at least a few months. Another thing to consider about
the price drop is that the second quarter of each year is normally a
quiet time for oil since winter demand fades and summer demand has not
yet started. So that's what oil prices are fundamentally driven by:
a few months look-ahead. You'd have to be a rabid anti-capitalist to
think -- living here on our finite blue sphere -- that it's worthwhile
trying to look/plan any further into the future, right?
[Mar24'06] The flow of idiotic bird flu propaganda continues without
stop -- from the regular media as well as the blogs, left and right.
Politics and mind control is fundamentally based on the fact that many
people can't remember anything but television shows for more than two
years. The reason they *can* remember television shows (often used in
tests of long-term memory) is partly because they practice with them more.
Unfortunately, there are no nightly 're-runs' of recent history -- where
an explicit piece of recent history is re-run with a title indicating
that this actually happened. Remember SARS? It killed a tiny handful of
people, like the currently 'dreaded' bird flu. Then and now, thousands of
humans are dying every day from diarrhea and regular old incurable viral
and somewhat more curable bacterial pneumonia, and of course, regular
non-bird flu. Never a peep about those diseases in the daily effluent --
or anything about SARS. Where did SARS go? Isn't SARS still out there
waiting to getcha?? (or West Nile!) Well, maybe they are after all! --
in about 2 more years. Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia, indeed.
[Mar27'06] The commentator Westexas had an interesting
comment
about peak college enrollment at theoildrum.com. The massive building
out of the physical plant is sure visible here at UCSD! The peak of
US college graduates will probably hit in a few years, right about the
time that natural gas really starts spiking in price (natural gas will
probably ding us in the US before oil, even though there is more of it
left in the world because it's hard to transport). In 5 or 10 years,
young academic people are going to be very mad at us (I'm 50). They will
have some justification. We should probably should have been trying
to control our academic reproduction -- esp. at the graduate level --
for the past few years -- right as the undergraduate boom was occurring.
But that wouldn't have made anybody happy (parents, applicants, current
undergraduates, current graduate students, campuses, journals, granting
agencies), even though it was probably the right thing to do. Currently,
things are pretty quite in energyland. But we just had one of the mildest
winters on record. Oil has been wobbling around just above $60 for the
last few months. When it gets hot in summer, it could really take off
(along with natural gas). Right during the stupid election contest
between two equally execrable parties. The democrats will be trying
to outflank, out-war, out-surveillance, out-Israel, and out-rightwing
their republican opponents who will instead be setting up to fix voting
machines in key races -- all right when oil and/or natural gas prices hits
them both in the face. Great stategies, both of you bozos. Of course,
the oil companies *will* be making out like (even fatter) gangbusters
when oil goes above $100. Yet, trying to hold their muzzles away from
the ever-growing trough of money will unfortunately not make any more
oil appear underground or make it take less energy to get the remaining
harder-to-get second half out. Also, capitalists and politicians and
consumers won't budge on large-scale alternative energy until fossil fuel
prices get painful. Higher energy prices will cause many other prices to
increase, and may very well increase the price of alternative energy, too.
One can hope that those prices won't go up faster than fossil fuel prices.
Peak oil *is* a big oil scam; but it's also true. But I always like
to end on the positive side. Light rail is being built in *Dallas*.
If they can build more light rail in Dallas (and use it to sell houses),
they can build a more across the rest of the country, too.
[Apr11'06] The price of steel, aluminum, nickel, zinc, and copper (and
silver and gold) are all going up along with oil (which went above $69
today). All of these have doubled or tripled over the past few years.
The cost of energy certainly factors into the cost of other things that
require energy to get them (e.g., copper), but it seems hard to believe
that all the increased cost of copper comes from the increased cost of
energy. So the parallel price runs also probably have to be explained
by us starting to run out of copper and other things.
[Apr13'06] I am worried about the combination of a tepid public
response to the Iran nuke leaks/disinfo and upcoming oil supply problems.
Though catatonic US-ians have finally begun to dislike the Iraq war (they
forgot that they started off perhaps 5 to 1 in favor of it) because it
has continued to kill a few of our boy stormtroopers (and thousands of
Iraqis every month, but that doesn't matter), dazed slack-jaw CNN-ified
US-ians currently support an attack on Iran 48% to 40%. The numbers
supporting an attack on Iran are distressingly identical in the UK.
In general, people didn't want to send troops (and certainly not their own
precious Camerons and Williams), just remote control bombs. How nuanced.
With continued saturation coverage of 'Iranian nuke within 16 days'
no doubt soon to be followed by 'Iranian nuke here in 15 minutes'
(how quickly the sheep forget) by our disgusting state/corporate
media/sewer that never even whispers a word about the permanent bases
being constructed across Iraq, these numbers will slowly 'improve'.
But there is also oil (and gas) trouble on the horizon. Canterell in
Mexico (2% of current world oil production) is about to fall off a
40%-decline-per-year cliff; Saudi intimates that it may have peaked;
Kuwait calmly announces it has only 5% of total world oil reserves instead
of 10% (and nobody burps); the former Soviet Union is near peak; 2006
is shaping up to be another nasty hurricane season; and the rest of
the world is already in 'depletion'. The problem I see is that if a
plurality of US-ians and UK-ian *already* support an attack on Iran,
just think what will happen when they get a little economic shock to
their shorts. Things could get Reich-y here in a hurry! The 'whatever'
response to torture and imprisonment without trial of darkies is small
potatoes compared to what Good Americans might approve under serious
economic duress. Intelligent people are beginning to think about
getting out ahead of the game, like many did in Germany in the late 30's.
But where to go? The UK has an even better surveillance state underway.
And the world is a lot more filled up then it was then...
[Apr15'06] I think that the market is a fine optimizer when the boundary
conditions are set right. I don't think they currently are, since
environmental costs are not included. But let's set that aside. The main
hope is that correct boundary conditions or not, as fossil fuel prices
increase, businesses will surely 'innovate'. With respect to fossil fuels
and their replacements, however, there are two giant question marks.
The first is that as fossil fuel prices go up, they will also drive up
the prices of renewables, since renewables are currently exclusively
made with fossil fuels (for steel, copper mining, silicon smelting, etc).
This may keep the cost of renewables higher than the cost of fossil fuels
for a long time. It is also likely to drive up the price of lower EROEI
fossil fuel sources like tar sands. Second, as total energy peaks and
starts to slowly run down, it will slow down the replacement of fuel
inefficient cars, buildings, power plants without carbon sequestration,
and more generally, fuel-inefficient city designs. This will make
it harder to avoid running down the remaining fossil fuel supplies.
A tax on fossil fuels that could be used to develop alternatives before
the market gets to them would seem like a good idea. But we are far
away politically from being able to implement something like this given
how politicians are funded; and there is no political change in sight
(Democrats in Congress would not be a political change in this respect).
Also, it is obvious that this strategy has led to distortions in the past.
Take the case of corn-based ethanol, where a process with a dubious
energy-return-on-energy-investment (0.8 to 1.25) exists mainly because of
subsidies (N.B.: a lot of energy used in making ethanol goes into boiling
the ethanol out of the ethanol-water mixture that is initially generated
by fermentation; all the other non-corn processes also first generate
an ethanol-water mixture). So it's more new iPods for the time being.
Peak oil-ists often talk about all the oil we could save with more
efficient cars. But the main way to use less energy is to simply have
less people in the world! There is no reason populations can't contract
gracefully. Just a few percent a year for a few decades would make a
huge difference. It's amazing to me that people don't discuss this more.
Instead, they have idiotic discussions about going to live in the woods
when most of them have barely been hiking. It all gets hopelessly bogged
down when they find out about ticks and Lyme disease (hilarious comments
on Anthropik). Why not just try to get everyone to have less babies?
It's all good.
[Apr18'06] Several days ago, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed
9 Israeli civilians and injured more, which rightfully made
the mainstream news and was rightfully condemned. But over
the last three weeks, when Israel rained hundreds of shells
a day on civilian Gaza neigborhoods last week (2,000 artillery
shells on civilian neighborhoods since the beginning of April),
killing
27 Palestinian civilians and injuring more (a college student lost one
of her eyes to an Israeli sniper), it wasn't mainstream news. How is an
artillery shell more moral than a suicide bomb? Because it's fired out
of a computer-aimed gun? Palestinian civilians don't count -- after all,
there are no Palestinian civilians by definition: they're all terrorists,
even the kids (because they were thinking about becoming terrorists
when the shells landed in their house). And besides, the kids have
terrorist uncles, so tough luck, for sleeping in a house on the same
block, untermenschen -- you don't exist, you're not news.
[Apr19'06] All but one or two of our Democratic worms are in
Congress are digging deep into the soil to avoid mentioning
anything about Iran. When you can get them to say
anything,
they all say they are leaving all Iran options 'on the table', including
the US use of nuclear weapons! Disgusting worms. What are they
scared of? Cheney? With an approval rating lower than OJ (and even
lower than Congress itself)? I wonder what would it take for them to
crawl out into the light? There was a peace march sign: "Would someone
please give the President a blow job so we can impeach him?" Funny as
this is, it wouldn't work! The Democrats would still be hiding under
the soil, since it could be anti-gay to denigrate blow jobs. And anyway,
Gannon-gate came and went, and Bush is still here...
[Apr20'06] The US is a TP Nation! The US has about 5% of the
world's population, uses about 25% of the world's oil, but 50%
of the world's toilet paper (from Amanda Kovattana). The US
is Mr. Clean. In other news, two men from Houston were
arrested
after setting off alarms at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
They were carrying $500K in small bills in a bag from Chicago
(which they hadn't opened, Big Lebowski style), and dogs detected
drugs in their vehicle. They were released without charges. Huh?
Finally, a few days ago, Michael Alan "Savage" Weiner said
this on Talk Radio
Network about Muslims: "They say, 'Oh, there's a billion of them.'
I said, 'So, kill 100 million of them, then there'll be 900 million
of them.' I mean, would you rather die -- would you rather us die than
them?" Hey, that's only 16 holocausts worth. You can go to jail for
holocaust denial, but calling for 16 new holocausts is no prob, as long
as you are careful to only call for the genocide of Muslims (and despite
that fact that Arab Muslims are Semites, it's not even anti-sem itic).
This is the same Michael Weiner who once was a beatnik, frolicking nude
on the beach with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti. Why not go back to the
beach, guy? It's easier on the women and children (though perhaps not
on the eyes at this point).
[Apr21'06] The Washington Post today had an interestingly titled article
by Rick Weiss on climate change: "Climate Change Will Be Significant
but Not Extreme, Study Predicts". He explains that the most extreme of
the climate change predictions (more than 11 deg F increase this century)
have only a 5% chance of being correct and that the most likely outcome is
about 5 deg F. This is not news. This has, in fact, been the mainstream
scientific consensus for the past decade (not counting the musings of that
famous 'climate researcher' and sometime presidential science advisor,
novelist Michael Crichton). The story, however, coyly fails to mention
that a 5 deg F change is close to the difference between no glaciation
(where we are now) and glaciation, except that it will be added onto
no glaciation, making the globe hotter than it has been in millions of
years. Half full or half empty, I guess. This reminds me of oil prices,
which are constantly 'easing' but somehow always end up higher than a few
months ago. Today, they 'eased' their way up to $75 (from $73 yesterday).
Yergin was hauled out of storage; and the Economist put out its yearly
'there is plenty of oil article'. Finally, I was a bit worried to read
an article by John Dean suggesting that there might be a synthetic terror
event to win elections or justify an attack Iran. My worry was tempered
by his mention of the possibility of a bin Laden capture October surprise.
That would be a smelly surprise indeed, since OBL's probably been dead
since 2001 (it is true they could capture a lookalike, and how would we
ever know?). Sniffing the web for the last few days, there seems to
have been a slight pull back with respect to an Iran attack. Dean is
correct that a new synthetic terror would change that in a hurry.
[Apr26'06] There was a sort of article in Newsweek by Michael Hirsh
introducing the sheep to the idea of permanent Iraq bases, though these
were only 10-years-permanent, and then only for attacking other places as
opposed to mere occupation -- how comforting. On a completely different
note, a while back I read and linked an article by Rob Kirby called
"Pirates of the Caribbean" about debt buying. I don't think I really
explicitly understood what he was saying. I think the idea is that the
Fed creates money and then somehow transports it to 'offshore' Caribbean
banks, who then use the created money to buy American debt. I think the
problem I had was understanding the meaning of "using created money to buy
debt" -- the first time you read it, it's just nonsensical. Recently, it
appears that
UK has taken over from the 'pirates' who have not even been keeping up
with Saudi, much less China and Japan. Here is the clearest, shortest
article I've ever seen
on the Fed, repos, and fractional reserve banking.
[May02'06] Bush's
popularity
is at its lowest ever (about 33%) and yet the spineless Democratic worms
can't even vote against the ridiculous Iran resolution. What unbelievable
cowards! What would it take for them to vote against Bush? If a crowd
of villagers stormed the White house, d'ya think they might finally
'revolt'? It's stuff like this that makes me thing the boat really is
going down. As Michael Donnelly writes below, this is not a new thing:
The Democrats only finally voted to end funding for the Vietnam war in
1975, several years after the generals had already ended it! The main
reason the peace movement consists largely of a bunch of fossilized
anybody-but-Bush oldies is that there is so far no draft (not mentioned
by Donnelly, despite the fact he was a Vietnam conscientious objector).
That might change with a few more back-to-back wars, though.
[May07'06] James Hamilton (econbrowser.com) presents the case for possibly
lower oil prices (new fields coming online, price-driven reduction in
demand). Some small price drops are not out of the question. I just
wonder what will happen to child-like Americans when the price inevitably
starts to go back up. With Cantarell going off a cliff and Ghawar soon to
follow, Venezuela having to buy oil from Russia (!?), the use-to-discovery
ratio running at 6:1, a price rise seems likely by years end -- even
if the lunatics in currently charge decide not to attack Iran. Then,
who will tell Americans, that even after getting rid of the porker from
Exxon, oil prices may still not go down because there just isn't enough
oil left given how many people are using it? Certainly not the Republican
here's-a-hundred-dollars rats or the Democrat let's-drop-gas-taxes mice.
This will require an adult discussion of how to negotiate our lifestyles,
which is *completely* out of the question given our current system.
Unfortunately, not discussing it won't make the problem go away.
[May09'06] Kyle has some great
tidbits
on biodiesel at the oildrum today. Dynoil is planning to build a 1.5
billion gallons a year biodiesel refinery in Houston. The main type of
input oil is soybean oil. The current US production of soybean oil is 2.5
billion gallons/year, so this plant will consume 60% (!) of that total.
For comparison, our yearly use of gasoline is about 150 billion gallons
a year (10 million barrels a day refined from 20 million barrels of
oil a day). So... 60% of our total soybean oil will generate, uuh, 1%
of our daily liquid fuel gulp? Well, I never really did like tofu or
veggie burgers that much... A ways down, Robert Rapier points out that
the price of ethanol -- even subsidized, as ethanol has always been --
moves in lockstep with oil (and always higher than oil). This is because
the EROEI of ethanol is close to 1.0 (mainly because you have to distill
a water/ethanol mixture to get the ethanol out), and is an excellent
illustration of my repeatedly expressed worries above about the problem
that all 'renewables' are currently made with fossil fuels.
[May12'06] Well now it looks like Rove might go down for some stupid
Watergate-like Plame-related idiocy. This would be like getting
rid of Nixon for a two-bit break-in instead of getting rid of him for
slaughtering an extra million or so South east asians. But the worst part
is that as all the pukes still left in the current administration start
to get a little fidgety, they might consider doing something really rash.
As much fun as it is to look at Pollkatz and see Bush's numbers going
below 30%, the latest dip is making me a little queasy. Where are those
life-style-non-negotiating, richie-loving, gas-guzzling, anti-evolutionist
glass-half-full backwash kinda guys when you need them?
[May21'06] The predicted Rove indictment didn't happen, which was obvious
by May 15 when Rove went on conspicuous parade instead of hiding.
Initially, it seemed like it might be a classic Rove stunt (leak
disinfo, then out it), but other people have speculated that Gonzales
was involved in actually stopping Fitzgerald or that Rove has turned
state's evidence. It certainly is strange that Joe Wilson might have
have been Jason Leopold's source for the indictment story. It's bad
to ever underestimate these guys. Also, bad to overestimate US-ians.
Though Bush's approval numbers are low (around 30%), Kerry, Gore, and
Hillary's number are *all* slightly lower (!). One wonders what Bush
would have to do for US-ians not to prefer him.
[Jun14'06] The DOD has instituted a de facto ban on all new wind power
installations in the because they might affect nearby radar bases.
Really bright.
[Jun19'06] The pollkatz
graph
never ceases to amaze. The sizeable Zarqawi uptick is now visible.
The sudden upticks were, in order of size: 9-11, invade Iraq, capture
Saddam, post-Katrina road show, and Zarqawi (the 2004 election campaign
was the only slow upslope of 5 percentage points total; it was expensive
and the whole thing was smaller than Zarqawi). In the absence of a
stunt, the downward slope is relatively constant at 2 percentage points
loss per month. That would put him at zero in a year and a half.
A new stunt will be needed before the year is out.
[Jun30'06] I laugh when I see the latest
'bin
Laden' tape talking about 'Zarqawi', but sometimes I think the joke's
on me, because nobody else seems to be laughing.
[Jul03'06] Jokes on me again (second 'bin Laden' tape). Polls have now
recovered to near post-Katrina-road-show levels.
[Jul09'06] The cost of producing oil from oil sands has
sextupled
in about 6 years. A little more of this and making oil from oil sand will
become uneconomic, even with high oil prices (currently about $74/barrel).
The likely cause of this is that higher energy costs have increased
the cost of obtaining energy from a low EROEI (energy return on energy
investment) resource. The point at which oil sands reach EROEI = 1.0
(i.e., no longer be an energy source) may be closer than some think.
It is likely to occur long before the 'reserves' are depleted. It is a
cruel joke to call EROEI-less-than-1.0 things 'reserves', though I suppose
they are the best kind -- ones that you can never deplete...
[Jul17'06] A senior State department official
said
today: "I don't expect there's going to be any requirement for the
United States forces" in Lebanon to defend Israel. I wonder exactly what
forces he had in mind? This is beginning to sound a little draft-y.
Of course, we could just rubble-ize whatever hasn't been rubble-ized
yet, and this wouldn't require additional non-existent ground troops.
Also, it wouldn't be terrorism because countries with air forces are
by definition incapable of terrorism and only carry out strikes with
"surgical precision" -- which translates to "strikes requiring surgery
without anesthetic or electrical power".
[Jul26'06] When I was younger, I read a lot of history in addition
to science. I always found it incredibly depressing. Sure there were
uplifting bits about nice buildings, but it was impossible to ignore
the constant wars, genocides, tortures, enslavements, and the towering,
ubiquitous inequality (I have no problem with having 5 or 10 times as
much, but having 1000 times as much is simply obscene to me, and it will
always be). Back then, I still had a feeling that despite all that,
an alternate human social organization might be possible where things
could be better -- less violent, more equitable. And I still get a
tear in my eye when I see a wonderful musical performance or read a
finely written-down idea. At moments like those, I am briefly proud to
be a human. But taking the whole human picture into consideration --
on the threshold of peak energy and impending irreversible, catastrophic
climate change -- humans and language have been a disaster for the
planet and for themselves. Here at the acme of civilization, overweight
humans take an SUV to the exercise place to watch Wolf Blitzer talk
to some minister of propaganda on a flat screen in a not very stylish
building. This is this high point of language and the primate brain!
I am not proud to be human. When human animals first accidentally
acquired the increased power of language and linguistic thought, which
led eventually to dominion over other animals, plants, minerals, rivers,
shoreline, and oceans, there was no requirement that things work out in
the end. If history is a guide, the hotter, drier, lower-energy road
ahead is likely to be pretty rough. It might work out, or it might not.
If it doesn't, it won't be a tragedy.
[Jul27'06] Well, now that Floyd Landis has tested positive
for doping (testosterone), I should probably revise
my
calculation on theoildrum (based on his measured wattage) of how
much human power there is in a barrel of oil... :-}
[Aug09'06] Creepy Palast goes on his usual bait and switch on the
Alaskan pipeline shutdown and peak oil. Sure, the pipeline inspectors
were a little lax in their inspections and some repairs were postponed.
But the widespread problem appears to have been caused by a complicated,
unexpected turn of events. Insiders suggest that increased acetate from
water in the oil and lower flows interacted to lead to the development
of sulfide-generating metal-corroding bacteria (see theoildrum.com).
Acetate feeds the bacteria and lower flows of lower grade (more viscous)
oil allow them to stick to the pipe and then build up a protective
coating so they can do their anaerobic work. This doesn't prove that
peak oil is an oil company scam. In fact, the problem was *due* to
depletion! The acetate is from sea water injected to fix declining well
head pressure and the lower flows and lower grades are because the oil
field is past its peak. Of course the companies were trying to get away
with as little maintenance as possible. But I highly doubt a complete
pipeline shutdown was planned, even if the expected result would be a
temporary few percent bump in oil prices. And it is not clear whether it
would have been more efficient (in terms of not disturbing oil prices)
to shutdown the pipeline multiple times for smaller repairs. Finally,
spilling all that ink over a temporary interruption in 0.5% of world
oil production (Prudoe) distracts attention from the much more serious
permanent problems at Ghawar (~5% of world total oil plus more in 'gas
liquids') and Cantarell (~2% of world total oil plus more in gas liquids),
which never make the news (or appear in Palast's articles).
[Aug12'06] Given (1) all the lies about previous terror scams (e.g.,
random Brazilian guy executed by UK secret police in the tube, Florida
dummies, fake NY tunnel bomb), (2) the biggest lies of all that convinced
John Q Idiot to donate half a trillion of his hard-earned dollars to
occupying and destroying Iraq, and (3) the obvious boost to the sociopaths
in charge, why would anyone with half a brain believe any of the load
of cr*p that is being shoveled out at us about 'liquid explosives'?
That said, it truly was genius to do it in the UK, where the population
is slightly less out of it than here and Blair is floundering with
internal party desertions, but then still use it to make all Americans
dump out their orange juice, lipstick, toothpaste, and laptops. Genius.
If people keep uncritically swallowing all this bullsh*t without making
fun of it or asking hard questions, another real event could lead us
down the slippery slope real quick. The purpose of these events and the
coordinated media Blitzer is to train people to become subservient slaves.
Use it or lose it (your mind).
[Aug13'06] Liquid explosives and Hezbollah have been linked -- by being
used in the same sentence by Bush. C'mon you human monkeys! Use the
gift of language. Are we not men? Because some were deceived last time
is an excellent reason to think ahead this time.
[Aug17'06] The terror alerts are getting more cartoonish, but
I'm worried that not enough people are laughing. Two days ago,
a woman on a London-to-D.C. flight was so dangerous (she was said
to be carrying a screwdriver, matches, a note from al Qaeda, and a
jar of Vaseline), that her London-to-D.C. flight had to be escorted
by two fighter jets to Boston. Fox said she was Middle Eastern.
Then yesterday, she was a woman from Vermont having a panic
attack (the screwdriver, matches, and al Qaeda note had
disappeared). One wonders
who that stuff in the story in the first place? Could it be... Satan?
Today, she turned out to be a 59 year old mentally ill woman who urinated
on the floor when the flight attendants made her use a different bathroom
(terr'ist training is sure going down the tubes these days). I suppose we
should be grateful she wasn't shot to death. Also yesterday, women were
warned not to wear gel bras when they fly (in addition to not urinating
on the floor, I suppose). Sounds funny, but read some of the
comments on the bra story. Half the people are just about
ready to bring on cavity searches. Perhaps we need these
lie detector
sunglasses (this company can detect "love" too) or this
lie-detector booth. Since these are at least 85% accurate according
to the companies, that should only have the airport goons working over
a couple of hundred thousand hapless non-white travelers a day. All to
make the the rest of us safer (I guess the fact that Aldrich Ames passed
all his lie dectector tests is irrelevant). What is wrong with you,
Americans? Can't you see where this is going? Several people in the bra
story comments mentioned the possibility of explosive breast implants.
Clearly, this means that only men and extremely flat-chested women
should be allowed to fly since "it will make us safer". Well, penile
implants are actually extremely common (one of the most common operations,
up there with by appendectomies). OK, so maybe just castrated, thin,
senile, naked old men that made it out of the Israeli-made Cogito1002
lie-detector booth without cracking a sweat because they couldn't remember
the questions... (and since the bathrooms will be locked, everybody gets
adult diapers).
[Aug22'06] Today, there is a terr'ism drill on campus with helicopters
circling even lower than they would in a bad neigborhood (normally we
only hear fighter jets taking off from the nearby military airfield).
This was presumably so they could better see the terr'ists under every
bed. In the UK, Blair is so unpopular, and Labor so pusillanimous, that
the moribund Tories are finally ahead of Labor in the polls. In Israel,
Netanyahu is about to come back after the IDF, which had gone soft in
their daily job of humiliating and terrorizing Palestinians, actually
ran into somebody who could fight back. Netanyahu could be stopped if
Olmert manages to start another bombing campaign. In the US, the Iraq
war is the most unpopular it has ever been, but the daily bogus terror
follies has actually given Bush's polls an uptick (vs. in the UK, where
Reid's and Labour's fake terror gambit seems to have penalized Labour).
Life sucks all around.
[Aug25'06] I get tired of reading about 100 mpg 'cars'. The amount of
force it takes to push a car through still air at 60 mph is not going
to change because the price of oil goes up or Vinod Khosla decides
to skim off some tax subsidies by investing in almost-energy-neutral
ethanol plants. Sure, you can make a 'car' that has racing bike tires
pumped up to 150 psi that looks like a giant roach standing two feet
off the ground that can get 100 mpg. But there will never be a real
car that will get 100 mpg -- if by a 'car' you mean something that is
big enough to hold 4-5 people sitting up, plus some cargo. Of course,
we *already* have vehicles that get *200* mpg per passenger -- trains
(this is because of less wind resistance and steel-on-steel wheels).
The practical limit for a real, affordable 4-person capable car is
around 50 mpg (which is about what the aerodynamic, lightweight,
high-tire-pressure, small-engine Prius gets in real life).
[Aug30'06] After having the JonBenet guy shoved down our throats
for weeks, it turns out he didn't do it, so forget that, and on to an
unsightly polygamist. Teevee -- an open corporate sewer that pours right
into your brain. Forget about peak oil, forget about climate change,
forget about WWIII, lookie here at this Mormon. While the rubes are
are catatonic and drooling, the federally funded Dr. Strangeloves are
hard at work on the 'Terminator' gene technology. Monsanto
just
bought the seed company, Delta & Pine Land, that has been working
on this technology with the USDA for several decades. The basic idea is
to create a biotech version of a hybrid -- that is, a viable plant that
produces edible seeds, but seeds that won't germinate -- so you have to
buy new seeds every year. In Europe, instead of using hybrids to keep
people from saving seeds, there are laws to protect breeder's rights (US
'hybrid vigor' is a PR crock). People have saved seeds since the dawn
of agriculture (it's nature's way after all), and they still do so in
most countries of the world (e.g., India, Europe). The Terminator gene
is nothing more than a (potentially) more general way of making any plant
produce non-germinating seed -- a peculiarly American obsession. It would
be a bad idea, even if the world *wasn't* on the threshold of world food
problems, with climate-change-induced droughts killing off Midwest crops
(dust-bowl-like conditions in Nebraska this month), grain surplusses at
twenty year lows, and depleted aquifers and reduced snowmelt threatening
future water shortages and conflicts. There could be a world of pain
on the horizon as oil- and natural-gas-fueled industrial agriculture
(fertilizer, cultivation, processing, transport) begins its slow and
potentially catastrophic descent. Instead of doing something useful,
we've got a bunch of evil nincompoops spending our tax dollars for several
decades trying to figure out how to put 'copy-protection' into the plants
that we eat, so that Monsanto, Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta, and DuPont's
Pioneer Hi-Bred International can spread the joy of sterile food crops
to the rest of the world (i.e., China or India or Brazil) and protect
the investments of these wonderful companies (who also just happen to
make the Roundup that 'goes well together with' Roundup-Ready genetically
modified food crops). The whole scheme is revealed as a scam because the
performance of GM food crops is actually no better or slightly worse than
non-genetically-hacked crops. It's like a bad sci-fi movie -- except that
these sickening suicidal sociopathic drones currently control the world.
Ignore all the crap about the genius of capitalism. This is the genius
of class war, pure and simple -- their going right for your food.
[Sep14'06] The capital expenditure per barrel of oil
produced per day from deep water wells (like the new 'Jack'
discovery in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico) is about
*thirty
times* that of the shallow water wells that include almost
every every other well in the Gulf of Mexico. The reason is
the distance from the shore (175 miles -- right in the middle of
where hurricanes are the biggest), the deep water (7,000 feet),
and then the deep hole into the seabed: the Jack #2 hit oil at
20,000
feet below the seabed. This is below the usual 'oil window' which
is 7,500-15,000 feet below the earth's surface; as a result of the
depth, the oil is very hot (390 degrees, Fahrenheit) and at very
high pressure (20,000 psi). Dealing with all this is expensive.
For example, Chevron has invested an estimated $1 billion in its
'Blind Faith' project (cool name, eh?) that is expected to yield
30,000 barrels per day. The fact that companies are willing to go
after such expensive oil is perhaps the best evidence that oil has
indeed peaked. Meanwhile, take a look at these remarkable statements by
Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne, who wants to test
non-lethal
crowd control weapons on American crowds. The incredible reason given
is so that there won't be an outcry from peecee whiners in the 'world
press' when we start using them on the untermenschen (we haven't been?).
Together with a recent pictorial in Vogue Italia showing us
police
state as fashion statement, I'm, like, thinking, first they came
for the super-models, but I didn't say anything because I wasn't, like,
a super-model (pace Pastor Niemoller).
[Sep17'06] Only one out of ten people on the planet currently drive cars.
That number will begin to be *reduced* as oil passes its bumpy peak in
the next ten years. Despite all the squawking in the business press over
the temporary drop in oil prices last week, a one-week or one-month or
one-year drop in oil price is going to do precious little to change the
amount of oil remaining in the ground that is easy enough to get to that
more energy is released from burning it than you use up getting it out.
Even Econobrowser thinks the recent price drop is partly due to a demand
reduction indicating economic distress, not a result of an increase in
supply. 50 years from now, it will be patently obvious how ridiculous
it is to *drive* to the *exercise* place.
[Sep20'06] Well,
pollkatz'
poll collection has spoken. By confiscating lipstick, coffee, and hand
lotion, by making a new fake bin Laden tape (he's dead, Jim), and by
pasting the public with endless idiotic 9-11 festivities, Bush's polls
numbers have experienced a definitive uptick -- of almost the same
amplitude as the one from Zarqawi. Sometimes I just hate our stupid
animal brains, despite all my efforts to study them. Looking over
what I wrote above just before both of these upticks, I predicted there
would have to be some kind of stunt to keep Bush from going below 30%.
As always, I failed to appreciate just how *cheap* effective stunts
can be. I hate to think of what would happen if there was (another)
expensive one! (it's not facism when we do it).
[Sep23'06] Sure seems like an attack on Iran may be moving forward
once again. If Bush moves to attack, there will be little opposition
from mostly pro-Israel Democrats, just as was the case with Iraq.
There isn't a peep of antiwar protest here. I agree with
JoAnn Wypijewski that the
9-11 black t-shirt people have functioned to some extent as a distraction
(esp. the Pentagon no-plane people), but not with the idea that the topic
is unimportant -- after all, 9-11 is being re-used for the third time
-- Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran. Who benefits? The truly Reich-y
feeling I got here during the original Iraq invasion will come back with
a vengence if Iran is bombed. Right now, instead, I just feel like
people are tired and worried about the economy and housing prices (as
we are!). But that could change. An Iran strike would almost surely
be a big hit to the economy, and the resulting fear and loathing could
easily be used to power more rapid moves toward a police state here and
in the UK. I like Alexander Cockburn with his snappy writing style
and all. He doesn't think an attack on Iran will happen. But then,
he doesn't believe in global warming and thinks that peak oil is just an
oil company plot. Sure it's an oil company plot; but the fact that we
used up about half of the world's oil and that our current rate of usage
is the highest ever is also *really* important -- much more important --
for the future of industrial civilization than a few fatted oil company
executives (read some damn geology and www.realclimate.org, Alexander)
or some professional traders getting rich (or losing their investor's
shirts) on preposterously rapid swings (relative to the underlying
geology) in commodity prices.
[Sep30'06] The Congress' latest legislation about secret detention and
torture without trial defines an "enemy combatant" as anyone who has
"purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United
States." That's awfully general. A lot of what I have written above
could be construed as hostile to some Americans in the United States --
like the ones that have spent 500 billion of our tax dollars to slaughter
people in Iraq. All joking aside, this is an extremely dangerous law that
sets aside habeas corpus and makes it possible to detain and 'disappear'
anybody without public due process. It is somewhat stupefying to think
that Bush's success in ramming this through will benefit the Republicans
and Bush because it returns the emotional focus to fear and submission.
The current polls suggest that only 20% of Americans approve of the way
the current Iraq war is being run, but an additional 33% approve of it
'if a new strategy were used' (if it were Kerry-ified). So that means
that a majority approve; Less than half disapprove. This is quite
amazing, considering the actual 'facts on the ground' and is omninous
with respect to a possible attack on Iran, which in older polls cited
above was even more popular than the Iraq war.
[Oct04'06] Foley says he wrote the dirty love emails (and had cyber sex
while voting on the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriation for
Iraq in 2003) because he was molested by clergy. So to fix this, he
resigned and checked himself into an alcohol rehab run by Scientologists
(better clergy?). Sounds like Frank Zappa. And how do we know that
he's not lying to cover up the fact that he was actually molested
by conjoined Amish twins? (oh, mercy). The great majority of child
molesters are heterosexual but this isn't useful Repug spin. Teehee.
While this hallucinogenic circus goes on, out of view of the news,
17 US soldiers were killed in Iraq from Saturday to Tuesday, and
263 other
humans were killed in Iraq Tuesday -- all in just one day. Amazingly,
Bush's poll numbers have continued their rise from his all time
low
in May 2006, which was partly due to a
spike in gas prices, which
are now easing. Unlike gas prices, sex scandals have no affect on an
already-made-up Republican mind. In fact, I fear that Republicans
may not lose control of either house of Congress if enough media
chaff is blown into the air in the next few weeks. For example,
alert viewers noticed that on Tuesday, Foley was repeatedly
listed as a
Democrat on Fox 'News' O'Reilly Factor. Kewl Rove effect. Americans
sure are cheap dates -- the 'laughing terrorist' tape released last
week was already in US possession at the end of 2001 as explained (!) by
expert
Evan
Coleman on NBC "Ladies and gentlemen -- this is a psyop; do not
attempt to adjust the controls; we control the vertical". Of course,
depending on how pesky those daily polls look, some stronger medicine
may be required, but I doubt it will be needed. I suppose the thing
that depresses me the most is the leisurely mechanical way in which
policy works. For example, the "Salvador option" for Iraq was announced
by John 'Death Squad' Negroponte almost two years ago (see above).
Now we see its full expression.
[Oct05'06] Drudge explains today that the "naughty emails" were just a
prank. Works for me. An 'insider' responding to Drudge said it couldn't
be a prank but insisted on anonymity. It worked for him/her, too!
[Oct07'06] There is a useful book "Where There is No Doctor". But that's
a little premature. First we need "Where There is no iPod" (yes, I own
an early model). It is insane to be spending $100 billion a year to make
a shambles of Iraq instead of spending $100 billion a year on upgrading
non-car transport, given predictions about near future oil production.
Why do people look at you dirty for trying to plan ahead? Why is it
considered immoral and anti-business to even think about planning more
than 1 year into the future?
[Oct09'06] Bush's polls took about a 5% hit from PageGate. But I think
the NK test may reverse that and resume the upward trend stimulated
by low gas prices over the past few months. We will have to wait for
another week to see. The aircraft carrier Eisenhower and its escort
set sail for Iran a week ago and will get there around October 21.
That's seems a little small for an Iran attack. Perhaps the attack has
been put off until after the election.
[Oct20'06] What's up? The continuing Pagegate dribbles suggest some kind
of internal squabble amongst the ruling junta. I had expected that
the neocon Republicans would have been pushed out years ago in favor
of equally pliant Clinton-style 'Demopublicans', but I was mistaken.
But now that it looks looks like they may finally be on the ropes, I'm
not sure I am looking forward to the alternative. The 'I can't believe
it's not torture' Military Commissions Act sailed through with hardly
a comment. Most Democrats voted against it, but Hillary voted for it.
It is worth noting that the people who are probably doing the pushing
in Pagegate are the same people who book rendition flights to Syria.
The Foley follies may have served a dual purpose as both house-cleaning
as well as a smokescreen for the creeping police state.
[Oct25'06] The news that ethanol producers are being hurt by the
recent drop in oil prices fills my brain with a weird feeling that
combines ennui and disgust. Ethanol from corn is a pretty stupid idea
since currently you have to put in about 4-5 units of fossil fuel to
get 4-5 units of ethanol plus 1 energy unit worth of brewers grains
(fermentation leftovers -- yum). This is mostly because it takes a lot
of energy to distill the ethanol-water mixture generated by fermentation.
It's obviously not practical to scale up an EROEI = 1.2 to 1.25 process
that much, even ignoring the cost to soil fertility and water supplies.
And as soon as the market for brewer's grains saturates, you'd end up with
an energy break-even (EROEI = 1.0) process. But the news that ethanol
is taking a beating because of a few weeks dip in oil prices strikes
me as absurd -- even given that ethanol from corn is a very bad idea.
This is how we plan to power our fine civilization? Changing our plans
on the roll of an oil hedge fund's dice? What insanity! Even Vinod
Khosla -- so recently a major ethanol booster -- has suddenly turned
against it this week. Imagine if people treated infrastructure like
roads this way. Luckily, roads are harder to tear up that quickly.
Besides, they will eventually make fine bicycle paths if we can get a
hold of them before road maintenance goes away :-}
[Oct29'06] The elections are almost upon
us. The Democrats have graciously
promised
to continue the war in case they 'win' (gee thanks, you disgusting
worms). But it has been apparent for over a month that a
pre-election Saddam
surprise was being planned. It is a testament to the power of
government-corporate media that things like this can be planned in
advance, basically in public, *but they work anyway* -- even with the
internet. The 'bin Laden' tape shown a few days before Nov 2004 election
(plus a little vote machine fraud) was all that was needed back then. It
is true that Bush himself couldn't win now because he is about
13
points below when he was at breakeven in Nov 2004. But the
Republiworms still might survive the midterms with a little help
from the Saddam verdict, the ongoing counter-barrage of sex dirt,
and another 'bin Laden' tape. From an anonymous comment by "w" at
informationclearinghouse: "Oh, how I love the smell of human nature in
the morning"...
[Nov02'06] Boy, the rats are really leaving the sinking
ship! Bechtel, Halliburton and Kroll are exiting Iraq after prying
their mouths loose from the money spigot. And redundant
scumbags Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens get on Paula
Zahn and say they oppose Bush and the war without mentioning how,
when it counted in the run-up to war, they supported it all the way.
It's skin-crawlingly embarrassing to watch. The likely bill for the Iraq
war will come in at at least 1 trillion dollars. That would have paid
for about 3 years of total US oil imports (15 billion barrels of oil at
75 dollars a barrel). We certainly have not managed to steal anywhere
near that much oil. Total Iraq production numbers are unreliable, but
is likely to have been less than 2 billion barrels of oil total since
the war started. I have always suspected that the chaos was part of the
plan to keep the oil in the ground for when the crunch really starts to
hit in a few years. Conventionally, Iraq's reserves are thought to be
around 100 billion barrels, though this is after the mid-80's doubling
of reserves when oil prices crashed. If the real reserves are closer to
50 billion barrels, then we could have just bought everything remaining
for 3 trillion, and nobody would have gotten hurt. The permanent bases
and the biggest embassy in the world are still under construction, so
it is hard to believe the war is over yet. I'll believe that the US is
leaving when *those* construction projects (as opposed to electricity
and sewage for Iraqis) end. If we stay for a while longer, the total
cost easily get up to 3 trillion.
[Nov08'06] Well, the most expensive midterm election in history ($2.8
billion dollars) is over and looks the Democrats have taken the House,
partly because opposition to the war is growing and partly out of disgust.
The news sites all mention the war, but not the fact that a number of
the gained seats are occupied by pro-war Democrats, courtesy of Democrat
master planner, Rahm Emanuel (though his pro-war war-injury wheelchair
candidate lost). So the war will go on for the foreseeable future.
Phased redeployments will occur. That means staying. The Democrats
may end up devoting *even more* resources and troops to the war, to 'do
it right'. I'm sure that the Iraqis would have liked us *so* much better
and would have been happy to have us steal their oil if only our troops
had had better body armour, and if we had only used more robot drones
to sneakily blow them up at night instead of shooting them in their
beds up close and personal, and if all our troops got counseling for
PTSD not only after but also *before* slaughtering families. Riiight.
The Democrats do have a problem, though -- if they don't make *some*
kind of antiwar noise, they may be back out the door soon. It should
be interesting seeing the centrist neocon-like core of the Democratic
party trying to weasel their way around this one. They will have to
repeatedly explain their votes to pay for the continued occupation --
since we can't leave all that oil just sitting there 'unprotected',
can we? -- yet they will have to explain every time that the war it
is just about to end, any minute now, and that it's all Bush's fault.
Iran fired a large number of surface-to-air missiles in a test and the
US armada in the Persian gulf seems to have temporarily backed off.
Perhaps that Iran tests had something to do with the back down.
[Nov11'06] The U.S. armed services have requested a
staggering
$160 billion supplemental appropriation to fund the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan just for the second half of fiscal year 2007. For context,
this half-a-year request is roughly 10 times what we spend in half a
year on all biomedical research in this country. This request is on
top of the half a trillion or so appropriated for 'defense' each year.
Way to go, America. Thank god we no longer have to fight this war
'on the cheap', Rumsfeld-style, since he's gone, right?
[Nov13'06] I have begun to curb the misanthropy that can sometimes well
up when I read that the best way to fix finite energy, water, soil,
and food resources in the face of growing human population and growing
human demands is to keep on buying *even more* things in order to help
creative businessmen innovate. If only *even more* plasma screens could
be bought on credit, our cunning businessmen would be able to make *even
more* money, which would help them to solve the peak oil problem for us
(we don't have to do anything ourselves -- just buy), because that's why
we pay them the big bucks. Instead of letting my brain react to this
crap as if it had smelt something bad, I am learning in my old age that
it's better to take complete control of my mind, sit back, and watch the
river flow. One or two billion people are just starting to slowly and
desperately creep northward in search of water and food. In a decade or
two, more will moving faster. The northerners will try to keep them out.
Eventually, cars and roads and chip fabs will begin to be abandoned.
Some humans may embrace earlier patterns of living. It's neither bad or
good, beautiful or ugly. They don't call us Baby Doomers (from Jas
Jain) for nothing!
[Nov17'06] Hoyer (pro-Israel, liberal, hawk) crushes Murtha (conservative,
ABSCAM-swift-boated, antiwar, former Marine) for House Democratic majority
leader in a secret vote. Standard labels sure are strange these days.
Matt Barganier wrote on antiwar.com a few days ago, "Here's a plan:
leave". But now that the election is safely over, the
mainstream media
blitz against withdrawal has reached a new screeching crescendo to
make it clear why now we have to spend more than twice as much on Iraq
(the latest *half-year* extra-for-Iraq request will be for $125 to 160
billion!) and send 20,000 more troops on top of the 150,000 already there.
As usual, I'm amazed by how pliable the public is. While Al Franken
is distracting the proles with his stupid victory dance on Colbert,
the war is *escalating* (in order to end it, of course). The rats are
boarding the new ship. A great election victory! How Orwellian.
[Nov22'06] The 'I can't believe it's not apartheid' Dems
have jumped over themselves to rebut the title of
Jimmy
Carter's new book. The destruction of the two-state solution has
left only the one-state solution (or the final solution for Palestinians,
a la Avigdor Lieberman). The eventual one-state solution will simply
be a public recognition of the 'facts on the ground' -- the shelled
bombed walled Bantustan prisons of Gaza and the West Bank will never be
a Palestinian state. A (even bloodier) assault on Gaza is likely to
occur soon under cover of Thanksgiving and the Gemayel assassination
in Lebanon It will probably look something like this
accidental attack on BBC reporters in Iraq in 2003.
It will be on teevee everywhere but here in the US [update:
Nov29 -- more killings on Sat, none on Sun, more on Monday].
And as Nancy Pelosi has explained, the original and
ongoing seizure of Palestinian land has *absolutely nothing* to do
with the conflict.
[Nov29'06] It is difficult to curb the tendency of the human mind
toward black and white. Sometimes, things *are* basically black and
white. In the case of the Iraq war before it started in late 2002, I
was virtually positive (see above) that there were no WMDs. This was
based on all the faked propaganda as well as the fact that the US
was preparing to invade without any obvious fear of WMD retaliation.
Anyone with a scientific attitude and an internet connection could have
come to the same conclusion before the war started. Not 100% positive,
but 99.9% positive. With respect to the current situation in Iraq,
it's important keep similar probabilities in mind. I think that there
is no question that a divide-and-conquer strategy of encouraging Shi'a
vs. Sunni vs. Kurd sectarian violence was an explicit strategy of the
US and UK -- e.g., see the "El Salvador option" comment of Negroponte,
or UK soldiers caught by Iraqis dressed as Arabs carrying car bombs.
Over the past 6 months, however, it looks like things have gotten slightly
more out of control than even the Rumsfelds and Negropontes planned.
The Negropontes et al. have their own probability estimates, but they
are hardly perfect either. The US and the UK appear to be somewhat less
in control of the oil than they were initially planning to be. But the
problem comes in estimating just how out of control things actually are.
This is currently very difficult, since there is virtually no independent
non-propaganda information coming out of Iraq and virtually nothing
is known about what is really going on with their oil industry, aside
from reports of pipeline attacks and repairs. Patrick Cockburn took
a dangerous drive along the Iranian border and talked to a few people
on the way this week. He said it was too dangerous to go into many
towns. That's as good as it has gotten for the past few months. So,
I maintain a high level of uncertainty with respect to what is currently
happening and what will happen next. It is possible that the US could
have its Vietnam evacuation moment in the next year as a result of
an interruption of the main supply line north from Kuwait and Basra,
should the US significantly attack their Shi'a death squad allies.
Or the Green Zone could suffer a major Ba'athist attack on the Shi'a
death squad administrators housed there. Currently, it seems somewhat
more likely to me that the US military will hang on without a major
disaster, and retreat somewhat into its permanent bases and into the
Green Zone to cut casualties. I am virtually certain that the US will
not voluntarily leave all that oil behind. They will only go if they
are forced out militarily. Oil prices appear to be on the way back up.
If prices get up to $100 next year, it probably won't be difficult to
convince the proles to start changing their mind about the occupation.
The oil card has already been floated by Bush.
[Dec01'06] Natural gas prices have jumped up
because it got cold for a few weeks. Just the warm
(cold?) feeling of the invisible hand at work. This
graph
of conventional and non-conventional gas production in the US is not
comforting (notice how non-conventional is not compensating for the
drop in conventional). Natural gas is also the feedstock for making
fertilizer. I'm not looking forward to when the invisible hand starts
grabbing my food.
[Dec03'06] The world is getting pretty weird. Perhaps Rumsfeld was fired
partly because he was planning an Iraq drawdown!? As expected (by me
and others), the 'commission' doesn't suggest withdrawal, Bush ignores
it anyway, and the Orwellian press explains it all to the proles. Bush's
numbers are down but still haven't breached the post-Katrina low.
[Dec12'06] World 'oil' production is holding steady as larger and larger
amounts of 'condensate' or 'natural gas liquids' are substituting for
traditional crude oil. In the depleted US, only a quarter of our 6
million barrels of a day of 'oil' production comes from *crude oil*.
The rest is 'condensate', which is slightly shorter chain hydrocarbons
that condense from a gas to liquid (e.g., pentane) when they come up
the well bore and are cooled to surface temperatures (don't get these
'natural gas liquids' mixed up with 'liquified natural gas', which is
cooled, compressed methane). The earth is hotter and hotter with depth.
For example, it can be 180 deg centigrade -- well above the boiling
point of water -- in a deep gas well. Natural gas liquids come out
of gas wells, which are generally deeper than oil wells. They mostly
produce gas (methane) and 'natural gas liquids' because the higher
heat at greater depths 'cracks' the oil to shorter chain hydrocarbons.
The lastest way to make oil production look like it's not dropping is to
not only include condensates (natural gas liquids) but also ethanol (!).
This total number, which is available for liquid fuels for cars, trucks,
and planes, is called 'all liquids'. The problem is that ethanol is
made using a lot of natural gas and coal, and is mainly a conversion
product of fossil fuels, not a big energy source (energy returned on
energy invested, EROEI, is only 1.2-1.3 for corn ethanol in the US, and
this is only after including spent brewers grains as an energy output).
The rest of the oil-producing world is inexorably headed to where the US
is now. Gas wells also deplete much faster than oil wells, because the
gas comes out of porous rocks more quickly. Thus, the production from
a typical US gas begins to drop off markedly after only 5 or 6 years.
Move along, nothing to see here.
[Dec19'06] Stuart Staniford returned to posting on The Oil Drum after
an absence and had a few recent posts on how we are spending too much
money on public transit and should instead count on smaller, better gas
mileage vehicles. Ooooh! Don't get the scary American consumers mad!
Ooooh! Don't anger the godlike venture capitalists! (Stuart do you
really think that that dufus Vinod Khosla is godlike in anything else
than the ability to line his pockets with the money of stupid people?).
Stuart didn't include all of the subsidies given to cars and highways,
or the costs associated with the fact that there are 750,000 maimings a
year on US highways (defined as the loss of at least an arm, a leg, or
an eye), but he is probably right that better mileage will give us the
biggest bang for the buck in the next few years. Also, Stuart had it
right about scary Americans, but for the wrong reason. Sure they won't
support a large tax on fossil energy. But down the line, I'm worried
about what they might support when the sh** really starts to hit the
fan as the world arrives at the endgame of peak 'all fossil energy'
(coal+oil+gas+nuclear). That's still a ways off (2030 by the sensible
estimates I know). My worry is that then, the US will still have the
world's best WMD's, but will likely have continued its ongoing contraction
in percent of the world gross national product (currently, about 22%
down from 60% in the middle of the 20th century and will probably have
lost its ability to outbid other major powers for energy resources.
Scary indeed. Of course, Stuart can't imagine planning that far ahead
because that's not how capitalism works, currently, in the US and UK.
Too bad. Another thing that irks me about The Oil Drum is the studied
avoidance of the elephant-in-the-room topic of the ongoing occupation
of the country containing 12% of the world's remaining oil. Sheesh!
It's the *oil* drum. It's embarrassing to see otherwise smart people with
all their graphs (I like graphs!) skirting around the issue. This doesn't
mean that the Iraq oil steal is a slam dunk -- though the operation has
not
yet failed and we are now
getting
a lot of oil from Iraq (again), it's not completely out
of the question that the US military could actually
lose.
[Dec20'06] Bush announces that
70,000 more troops are going to Iraq along with an extra $100 billion
(on top of the regular half-a-trillion Bloat-a-gon budget), the Democratic
worms hide in their own night soil (that's what we elected them for,
right?), and for a distraction, Wolf Blitzer interviews David Duke, who
accuses Wolf of still working for AIPAC and of having him on to try to
spin 'Iran' (he probably meant Iraq). Good Americans yawn uncomfortably
as they prepare to pay for the holocaust of another half a million Iraqis
because underneath it all, they know they value their SUV's more than
other human lives. Why protest? Good Americans.
[Dec21'06] In a talk at Berkeley last month,
Peter
Dale Scott made the point that by 9:59 AM on 9-11, the time of the
second collapse, the FBI already had a list of the alleged hijackers
(Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, pp. 13-14). But according to the
9-11 Report, NORAD only became aware that Flight 93 was hijacked 9 minutes
later at 10:08, after it had already crashed (the 9-11 Report says it
crashed at 10:03). Those FBI guys sure got that list out quick.
[Dec28'06] "Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist.
That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming" -- Supreme
Court Justice Scalia, 2006. Don't worry, Tony, you won't have to deal
with global warming. Your 9 kids and their grandkids will deal with it
(whether or not they're scientists...).
[Jan04'07] The virtual silence of the antiwar movement is dreadful. Just
about the only visible resistance is Cindy Sheehan (go Cindy!) closing
down an Orwellian Rahm Emanuel event with a moment of clarity.
Nancy Pelosi flexes her biceps for the camera, which is fine, but the
upcoming escalation of the Iraq war merits hardly a peep from her.
The only thing she will say about Iraq in her acceptance speech is: "It
is the responsibility of the President to articulate a new plan ... that
allows us to responsibly redeploy American forces". What complete trash!
I'm sure the preznit is articulating a new plan for redeploying troops.
The 2006 election was completely irrelevant! Bush will propose a troop
increase, the Democratic worms and roaches will bravely force him to
increase a tiny bit less, and then they will vote to pay for it all,
which will be an increase over current funding, without ever bringing
up the elephant-in-the-room fact that the whole multi-trillion dollar war
was based on outright lies (WMDs and Iraq/9-11). The only way to end the
war quicker is to vote *against* appropriations, not to increase them!
That's exactly how the Vietnam war ended. The Democratic guy with
the blown arteriovenous malformation will be replaced by a Republican
worm, and the Democratic worms will just wriggle a bit. Oil is actually
dropping. It went down $5 over the past two days (over 8%, $61 -> $56).
So life is good. And blowing that trillion or two to demolish Iraq and
continuously terrorize all of its inhabitants is, oh well, it's impolite
to bring it up during the shopping season. Bush's numbers
numbers
*are* almost down to his post-Katrina all-time low (which was,
averaging across polls about, 34% approval). If they go down
another 10% into the twenties -- which would be quite possible if
there were to be an oil price spike -- there might be some actual
unease in Washington. Since the largest two currently producing
oil fields are crashing (Ghawar at 5% and Cantarell at 2% of current
world production), and since crude oil stocks are rapidly
dropping,
the spike may be just around the corner. However, it's good to remember
that Congress routinely polls in the twenties and even below, and that
doesn't mean people care enough to do anything about it. Just drive
the SUV to the exercise place.
[Jan10'07]
This
article by Robert Parry is profoundly depressing. Among other
things, it confirms the notion I suggested above that Rumsfeld was fired
because he had 'gone wobbly' on the Iraq war (!). And the disgusting
vicious Negroponte -- originally associated with the Vietnam CIA Phoenix
assassination program, and after that, architect of the Central American
death squads in the 80's -- may have been demoted from intelligence czar
to Condi's helper because he argued that intelligence suggested that Iran
was still many years away from bomb-grade uranium enrichment. As Chalmers
Johnson (former CIA) and others have written, as empires start to decay
as a result of the run-down of energy, food, metals, soil, and climate
change, they often find it impossible to avoid over-allocating resources
to foreign and domestic militarization. This diverts resources -- at the
most critical point in time -- from constructive efforts to reorganize
the empire to avoid collapse. As an example, the enormous drain of tax
money into Iraq (3-5 times the entire budget for biomedical research,
a comparable amount of money to what is spent to import oil!) has
resulted in the freezing of science budgets, esp. in the physical
sciences (e.g., better renewable energy, better batteries, etc.).
When per capita energy begins to decline in a decade or two (it has
been flat since 1980), it will be more and more difficult to undo the
infrastructure decisions -- such as low density spread-out suburbs --
made in a time of higher per capita energy consumption, because undoing
them requires so much energy. Society will likely get less complex.
The reduction in complexity of societies has happened very many times
in human history. Sometimes it was fast and disorderly; other times it
was slower and more dignified. Many people think that the development
of modern technology and science in the twentieth century has moved us
beyond the possibility of complexity reduction. Certainly, there are more
smart, technologically capable people alive today than there were at any
point in human history; and smart humans are more fully interconnected
than they have ever been in history. But that interconnection relies
primarily on late nineteenth to mid twentieth century energy supplies --
coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium -- that are running out (humans now
use oil at a rate of 150 tons per second, every second). As someone
recently pointed out, an avatar in Second Life uses as much energy as a
real Brazilian. I don't think that complexity reduction is unavoidable.
And there is still a lot of 'slack' in the system (e.g., cars that are way
too big). But watching the Democrats cave on increases in militarization
(Pelosi is 'against the war' but will not cut funding for it -- WTF?),
and seeing the late-Roman-empire-like imperial overstretch overseas and
the militarization of domestic life (daily innundation with images of
SWAT teams and hazmat suits; the latest '24' is about domestic internment
camps), it seems clear that at this point, we are still moving in the
wrong direction.
[Jan15'07] Today was the Orwellian "Martin Luther King" parade. Over the
years in San Diego, it has gradually attracted larger and larger numbers
of the military and prison industrial complex, which finally this year
prompted the peace community to withdraw (King opposed the Vietnam war
early on, in 1967 -- the war ended in 1973). The US now has 5 to 10
times as many people in jail per capita as any other Western country
-- the highest percentage in the entire world (3x China, 2x Russia).
The US was more or less like other Western countries from 1920 to 1980.
Since then, the number of people in jail per capita has gone up over
500%, a lot of it, the result of the war on pot. In California, prison
guards make more money than University full professors. In 1980, we
used to spend twice as much tax money on the Universities as we did
on prisons. Now we spend more than twice tax money on prisons as we
spend on Universities. In this light, it was perhaps not surprising to
see the a prison transport bus, decorated as a float, with people waving
happily through barred windows -- in the "Martin Luther King" parade?
How sad. War is peace. Imprisonment is freedom.
[Jan16'07] Every day is a decision. The problem with ballots is that
they just have stupid face contests and bozo propositions on them
instead of issues. There should be votes in which you have to choose
between health insurance and invading a foreign country to make sure we
get the oil and someone else doesn't. Or, 'do you want to change over
to coal-to-liquids as regular oil depletes thereby ruining the Earth
for your grandchildren, or do you want everybody to buy smaller cars'?
Decisions, decisions.
[Jan21'07] Here is my
annotation
of Stuart Eugene Thiel's (Pollkatz') Bush approval poll
compilation
for today, showing the Mighty Wurlitzer in action over the past
6 years. By my calculations, it looks like the uptick from the 'war
on shampoo' was almost exactly nullified by the downtick from the
Abramoff/Page-gate/Republicans-feeding-in-the-money-trough scandals.
The graph sure looks like is ripe for another uptick to me...
[Jan22'07] Global carbon emissions are currently about 1 ton per person
per year on average. But we Americans put out and average of 10 tons
each per year once indirect output (CO2 generated when stuff is made
elsewhere and transported here) is included. We could reduce global
carbon outputs in a fair way by having Americans reduce a lot and
having other people not increase too much. Unfortunately, I think
this is very unlikely to happen voluntarily on either end. However,
looking on the bright side :-}, oil+gas will peak soon, which will
start to force a slow decline in CO2 output from oil+gas, perhaps as
soon as by the end of this decade (ASPO). What happens *then* with
respect to coal will be critical for the quality of human (and other)
life on the planet after the middle of this century. If we burn all the
remaining EROEI>1.0 coal or convert most of it to liquids in an attempt
to keep our current lifestyle going for another few decades, our kids
probably won't forgive us for ruining the Earth, and why should they?
That is exactly what we are currently setting up to do! Large numbers of
coal plants without CO2 sequestration are being planned and built, and
coal-to-liquids is the next big thing, in America and elsewhere (e.g.,
see Stern report, or the fact that a new coal power station is coming
online every 5 days in China). This winter has been very warm (December
2006 average as much as 10 degrees higher than previous averages)
in
northern
America and northern Europe, and this has spooked some people there
a little; but it was also unusually pleasant (I grew up in Chicago).
But I am afraid it is not scary and not nearly unpleasant enough.
Given that weather has some chaotic features, the best I can 'hope' for
is a really shocking event -- a once-in-a-millenium storm that causes a
dam to fail or a freak once-in-a-millenium winter that causes a worldwide
crop failure. It won't be directly attributable to global warming, but
people will think it is a sign from the gods, and might start to wake
from their daily walking (I mean driving...) dreams and do something to
avoid leaving their grandchildren a fried earth. Alternatively, peak
oil+gas could cause an economic collapse that prevents the immediate
atmosphere-i-fication of all the remaining coal. Hmmm... I'm not sure
which I would prefer (an act of god or an act of economics). But I
think both are preferable to business as usual for the simple reason that
the bad effects of CO2 additions take many decades to kick in (this is
what the climate scientists really mean when they say that the system
is now 'not in equilibrium with current forcings'). Business as usual
is likely to result in a terrible coming together of global warming,
sea level rise, increased storminess, crop failure, water shortages,
and energy starvation in the second half of this century.
[Jan24'07] SWAT teams are called out
40,000 times
annually -- over 100 times a day. There have been essentially
no terrorist incidents for years, and so most of the time, the SWAT
teams are serving warrants, often drug-related. The great majority
of the drug-related late night home invasions are based on tips
from snitches (people trying to cop a plea), and many have resulted
in mistakes and murders (next old lady door neigbor, the address
provided the snitch was drawn at random). Here is a map
map of where the SWAT teams murdered
innocent people (e.g., after being startled by their own flash bang
grenades) and where they broke into the wrong house. Sometimes, a snitch
might sell a small amount of pot to a person to create a suspect (and
some income). At its height, the East German Stasi turned a substantial
portion of the population into snitches and had enormous paper files on
just about everybody. The real problem is providing 'market incentives'
to people to become snitches. There are various kinds of incentives.
In the bad old days of El Salvador, death squads would torture each
suspect they kidnapped until they came up with a few names. Then they
would kidnap those people and torture them. We really don't want to
(continue to) go there, people.
[Jan24'07] Well, so much for the hydrogen economy (that was a few
state-of-the-unions ago). Hydrogen is *soooo* 2004, man! This year,
it's corn ethanol. The energy return on energy invested for ethanol is at
best 1.3, after counting dried distiller grains as output (the market for
them as cow food is already saturated). If you just the count fossil fuel
input, the EROEI for corn ethanol is more like 1.1 (from the pro-ethanol
Kammen lab study in Science), so you need 10 units of fossil fuel to make
one unit of ethanol. This is so you can replace one unit of fossil fuel.
This idiocy of it all is stunning. By contrast, Brazilian ethanol is
more energy positive because they harvest a lot of the sugar cane by
hand, and then they burn the bagasse leftovers (instead of fossil fuel)
to distill the ethanol. Scaling this up would result in at least 2x the
CO2 output of fossil fuels (cane bagasse burnt for distilling, then the
ethanol itself burnt as fuel). To scale this up much at all would cut
deeply into soil fertility, cropland, and water supply. But who needs
food and water as long as you can *drive*?
[Jan25'07] No reasonably well-to-do middle-class US- or UK-ian would
think of *not* driving a kid around in a giant SUV with a special car
seat to 'make them safe'. They're doing it for the children! At the
same time, not one of these people thinks twice about destroying the
earth for those very same kids by moving to a huge house in the suburbs
and driving them around in a giant SUV. In *that* case: "it's not our
problem; somebody will figure something out; everybody else is doing it;
it's child abuse to discuss such a scary topic with a child; it won't
happen for a while anyway; it's too inconvenient to not do it; public
transportation is for poor people and therefore unsafe; blah, blah".
When our kids grow up, they will find us disgusting.
[Jan26'07] Chomsky is always babbling on about how the world is getting
so much more civilized (smaller and smaller holocausts). It is true
there is nothing to compare with the biggest holocaust of all time --
the reduction of the population of the New World from 80 million to
about 10 million in the first 100 years of the occupation by Spaniards,
Italians, Portuguese, and British in the 16th century. But sometimes
things decisively turn around, for the worse. It looks like the vulcans
in the US and Israel are slavering over themselves once again as they
contemplate using small nuclear bombs on a non-nuclear-bomb-possessing
country, Iran -- a place where in a poll this month, 70% of the
population has a favorable view of the US (that seems higher than here!).
A fear that I voiced a few years ago is that this just might 'work'.
It will be unbelievably horrible. But then, somewhere upwards of
2/3 of a million Iraqis have already perished horribly -- and nobody
here cares. There would probably be similar level of casualities
in a small nuclear attack. Will Good Americans care? I doubt it.
However, Iran will survive such a nuclear attack if large hydrogen bombs
are not used. Just as our oil-reserves-driven attack on a starved,
defenseless Iraq made us look weak, a nuclear attack on a
non-nuclear
Iran will make us look even more weak (
Scott Horton
interview with Gordon Prather mp3). Contrary to the brayings of
hypercapitalists, maintaining the position of the US requires a huge
amount of good will from other people -- i.e., altruism. A nuclear
attack will use up what is left of that. Stupid chess move, vulcans
(not to mention, it's *wrong*). 'Give us your oil and food, or we'll
hydrogen bomb you' is not a plausible negotiating strategy for a teetering
empire.
[Jan27'07] I just read a story linked to from Rawstory. A toddler
reached for an electrical cord and the parents gave the kid a swat on its
diapered bottom. Their grandmother in law was there and threatened to
file a child abuse report. She was asked to leave. She wouldn't. So the
father tasered her. The whole sequence starting with the grandmother's
threat just puts my mind off balance. What will happen to us when we
start facing real problems? Where is common sense? I feel like people's
minds are losing their coherence under the onslaught of media, marketing,
and modern life and are becoming brittle and drone-like. I see this in
my classes. My students in undergraduate and graduate classes come in
knowing less and less about basic biology, much less evolution. Some of
them haven't even heard of the idea of evolution! This is in part because
textbook manufacturers -- bottom-line people they are -- were scared
by the creationists wanting front cover stickers saying evolution was
just a theory, blah, blah. That's bad for sales. So instead of adding
creationism to the biology texts, they simply took out evolution, along
with a lot of the biology. Understanding biology without evolution is like
trying to understand electricity and magnetism while carefully avoiding
any reference to the Maxwell equations. A similar thing is starting to
happen with global warming. After an evangelical who works as a "computer
consultant" complained in Washington state, a local school board
sent
out a ban on showing 'controversial' films about global warming in
science classes for 22,000 students in the district. The stupefying
reason for the complaint wasn't that the parent disagreed that the earth
was heating up! He was just ticked off because he believed that the
warming wasn't caused by lefty carbon dioxide, but rather that it was
"one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.
I'm thinking we should try to postpone it (judgment day) for a bit.
Probably even that guy's 7 kids would appreciate it when they grow
up.
[Jan27'07] The richies in Davos fattened up by globalization are
getting worried about global warming. Something must be done.
De-globalization and boiling a little of their own fat off? I don't
think so. These parasites will be coming after the small amount of fat
remaining on their hosts.
[Jan29'07] An article today in the Wall Street Journal has a shocking
graph showing that Cantarell -- the super giant oil field in the Yucatan
that accounts for more than half of Mexico's oil output -- peaked in
2004 and is now rapidly declining (it's output was boosted by nitrogen
injection starting in 2000). The output of Cantarell declined a stunning
25% in 2006 (though partly due to scheduled maintenance -- the expected
continuing decline rate is 'only' 15%). Cantarell accounts for 2% of
total world oil production and like the North Sea, began its decline
unexpectedly. Not worthy of the US teevee news, of course (after all,
Mexico is just one of our largest oil import sources, whatever). Here is
a
graph from a Pemex report (now
taken down) from 2005, showing the rapid increase between 2000 and 2004
(as a result of the initiation of nitrogen injection -- 'secondary
production'). Here is the
sorry
tale of what happened after 2004. In June 2005 (see my recently
updated
peak oil talk), based on that Pemex
report, I expected Cantarell to start declining in 2008. Little did
I know that Cantarell was already past peak at that time! US peak
oil in 1970 was like that; and it peaked despite a huge (more than 10
times) increase in the number of wells drilled in Texas as well as the
discovery of a super giant field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Omninously,
Saudi Arabia has been on a drilling binge. World peak will likely sneak
up on us in a similar fashion. Hopefully, it's still a few years off
(I guessed 2008 a few years ago; most of the curve fitters at theOilDrum
are currently guessing 2010-2012).
[Feb02'07] Dang, another
Robert Parry article,
combined with the chimp grabbing extra executive powers earlier this week
is sure starting to move me from being incredulous about an Iran attack to
being resigned. It seems we're at the stage of November or December 2002
with respect to Iraq. But seriously, screw the resigned B.S. people,
we *really* shouldn't let this happen! We're getting near peak oil.
We need to start planning ahead constructively, not trying to squat on
other people's oil halfway around the globe. From a strictly military
perspective, that's a *mighty* long supply line to defend when the rest
of the world finally begins to take action against us. Note that they
are still with us now; a recent poll in Iran of all places showed that
70% of the people there had a favorable view of the US! One of our
Darth Vader attack flotillas just sailed unmolested through the Suez
canal toward the oil, I mean, toward Iran. I wouldn't bet on something
like that happening without a hitch in 2015 once real oil shortages have
begun to bite -- or that tankers will be able to leave from there to come
here unmolested. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the plan is to spend $170 billion
this year (not counting money used from the gigantic 'defense' budget).
That means that each year, Iraq alone is sucking up more than 5 times
what we spend on all biomedical research every year. Really, really,
really stupid.
[Feb04'07] Zbignew Brzezinski said this last Thursday in the Senate:
"A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves
Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of
Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in
Iraq, or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a
'defensive' U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely
America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging
across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A mythical historical
narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially
expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by
false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as
the 'decisive ideological struggle' of our time, reminiscent of the
earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist
extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat
posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent
of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement
in World War II." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senate Foreign relations
testimony, February 1, 2007 (transcript from senate.gov
here).
Zbig's not your average conspiracy theorist but the very guy that set
up al-Qaida against the Soviets in Afghanistan -- he's a conspiracy
construction worker. That's the funny thing about the US. You can
softly explain how things work ahead of time, but they will still work
their magic anyway, because the big media will voluntarily keep a tight
lid on the key wink wink, nudge nudges.
[Feb05'07] It's absurd that Bostonians should be rewarded with $2 million
dollars because the police and the people acted like complete idiots
lacking all common sense, while more sensible police and people elsewhere
(e.g., Chicago) used common sense and they got nothing. Don't reward
those mental midgets! Penalize them! Bostonians should have been sent
a *bill* for ninny-ism, not a check!
[Feb06'07] The disconnect between global warming physics and policy
is both amusing and terrifying. We have already added an amount of
CO2 that distinguishes warm periods from glacial periods -- on top
of a warm period. The warming effects of that extra CO2 have mostly
not been felt yet, but are on the way this century and next no matter
what we do. The climate scientists therefore say we should stop adding
CO2 immediately. So how about hybrids? Well, as Alan Zarembo in the
LA Times notes, if *all* 245 million cars in the US were instantly
replaced by Priuses, that would get us less than 3% of the way there
(to not adding any more CO2), and assuming growth in car buying stopped
cold -- that is, we would still be adding more than 97% of what we are
now adding each year. I guess we can always hope that that maverick
'climate scientist' Michael Crichton is right about global warming being
a hoax, and that the other 99% of climate scientists who actually study
climate science are all wrong. And besides, we're 'well on the way': 1%
of vehicle sales are hybrids now. So this year, we will be reducing
our CO2 output by just under 0.03 percent or 1/3500 of our total,
well on the way to reaching zero by 5506. It is true that most of
those savings from hybrids will be eaten up as soon as General Motors
'responds to the green challenge' and introduces large-engine hybrid
SUVs, but hey, look on the bright side of life, or lookie here instead at
something more important -- like an 'astronaut gone wild'. Seriously,
on the bright side, methane seems to have stopped increasing for now
(it's 21 times worse a greenhouse gas as CO2, but there is a lot less
of it), for unknown reasons, perhaps because Russia fixed some of its
leaking gas pipelines and garbage is being burned instead of being put
into methane-emitting landfills (though that makes CO2 instead).
[Feb07'07] As much as I find Joe Lieberman's warmongering disgusting,
I'm actually in favor of a big war-on-terr'ism tax, but only if it
was from a separate tax table so you could see how much it was.
Since the war on terr'ism seems to involve a lot of
probing,
including making sure old man terr'ists aren't hiding things in their
fistulas, perhaps proctologists should be able to get deductions for
making us all safer. But the whole probing thing..., hmmm, d'ya think the
TSA guys are actually aliens posing as TSA guys? A new angle for Rense?
:-}
[Feb09'07] The Pentagon
explains
that killing half a million people in Iraq (so far) based on faked
intelligence was "inappropriate" but not "illegal". Woohoo. I'd hate
to see how many people the Pentagon has to kill before it becomes
"wrong". The US killed 2-4 million people in Vietnam. They never said
that was "illegal" or "wrong" either. Maybe if they killed 10 million
people, that would actually be "wrong". We should probably have have
a ten-million-strikes law -- if you dare go over that, bub, yer in jail
for a real long time.
[Feb15'07] While huge piles of military hardware are being hoisted over
to the Persian Gulf towards Iran, Pelosi bravely 'restricts' Iraq war
funding -- oooh, the drama! -- by making sure that it is 'spent properly
for training and equipment' in a non-binding (!) resolution. What utter
worms these people are! But thank god she supports the troops. Because,
instead of 'never again', it's oops, we did it again. The killings
unleashed in Iraq (3/4 of a million people) by our 'well-supported'
Universal Soldiers have reached a level worse than the Rwandan genocide.
Some day, the rest of the world may get around to holding us responsible
for the rape of Iraq. Perhaps for a change, some of the people who gave
the orders will get their due, too.
[Feb26'07] The vicious, blood-stained Negroponte is rumored (Hersh) to
be leaving his National Intelligence directorship to accept a sub-Cabinet
position of Deputy Secretary of State because he is worried about 'off the
books' operations with 'no finding' like the ones he directed in central
America (death-squad-Negroponte worried about 'off the books'?! WTF?).
When scum of the earth like that start jumping ship, things must really
be out of control. I suppose this should be taken as a good sign.
The problem is the giant nest of cockroaches that remain.
[Mar02'07] There are real headlines buried alongside Anna Nicole:
"House
Democrats seek more war funds than
Bush". Karen Kwiatkowski's recent interview
interview cuts through the crap: we're staying there. The
Republicans, Democrats, and the American people all support staying, once
you strip away the window dressing. The number of US troop fatalities
and injuries is tiny in the greater scheme of things. *Hundreds of times*
more limbs and eyes are lost in domestic car accidents every year than in
Iraq. The almost one million dead Iraqis don't matter to US-ians at all.
The US will retreat to the giant self-contained concrete air bases and
the troop deaths will subside. They will continue bombing the natives.
The Iraqi resistance can't effectively attack the giant bases. The US
can attack Iran from Iraq and still seems likely to do so this month or
next month, on a new moon.
[Mar06'07] The Department of Transportation
has wisely decided to place
an
indefinite moratorium on the installation of Windows Vista on any of
their machines. From Peter Guttmann: "Driver revocation is a lose/lose
situation for Microsoft, they're in for some serious pain whether they
do or they don't. Their lawyers must have been asleep when they let
themselves get painted into this particular corner -- the first time
some 'feature' of Vista's content protection inadvertently takes out
a hospital, foreign government department, air traffic control system,
or whatever, they've guaranteed themselves a front-row seat in court for
the rest of their natural lives." -- Peter Guttmann from his
cost
analysis of Windows Vista content protection.
[Mar13'07] Worried about its possible impact on Israel,
Democrats
removed a requirement that Bush gain approval from Congress to
attack Iran. This is the beauty of the controlled media. Such a
non sequitur can be printed and broadcast across the land without
evoking any official comment. A more accurate headline (and what
historians will write 50 years from now) would be, in order to protect
the financing of their political campaigns, the US Congress turned over
its constitutional duty to declare war to a dangerous, barely mentally
competent, lame duck president and his vicious puppeteers. I guess the
whole checks and balances things was only really meant to be applied to
things like the minumum wage and not little trifles like declaring war.
Bush should be able to handle another war since the last one worked out
so well, right? (for his bidness cronies). Thank god we sent a message
by electing Democrats, right?
[Mar23'07] The 'liberal' democratic worms completely caved on Iraq
funding. The logic for surrender expressed by David Sirota in support
of the Iraq war spending bill is Orwellian: lawmakers should accept
the congressional world as it is right now and not insist on the
world as they wish it to be. Huh? That'll teach 'em! War is peace!
We'll stop the war by funding it *even more* ($124 billion) than they
originally asked for. After all, that's what the people voted for.
How disgusting and criminal. Almost one million people were killed by
worms like this. The US has created an Iraqi holocaust. Maybe one
day, we'll see these limp cowards in the war crimes dock. The whole
charade is blackly humorous to watch. The US has no intention of ever
(voluntarily) evacuating the huge military bases it has built in Iraq,
but these disgusting lumps of flesh in Congress have to stand there on
the teevee studiously avoiding ever mentioning this reality, day after
day after day.
[Apr03'07] Moved to London.
[Apr09'07] The UK also is
not
planning to leave Iraq anytime soon. The UK's North Sea oil
peaked unexpectedly in 1999 and output has been dropping at 10-15% *per
year*. The UK has begun to import oil. By tagging along on the US's
coattails, the hope has presumably been to get some of the spoils, too.
The danger is the unknown rate of decline as the entire world hits peak
oil+condensate in the near future. If the decline rate is steep enough,
the US may not be in a mood to share the spoils.
[Apr10'07] When Walter F. Murphy, an emeritus Constitutional scholar
from Princeton (and a Korean war verteran) who has been critical of
Bush, asked an airline clerk why he had apparently been
put
on the no-fly list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any
peace marches. "We ban a lot of people from flying because of that",
the clerk said. He eventually got on his plane, but the clerk said his
luggage would be "ransacked". It ended up 'lost'. For now, it's just
petty harrassment for criticising the fuhrer (as long as you're not
a Muslim). People are not putting up enough objections to each slide
down the slippery slope. There is extreme danger ahead.
[Apr15'07] Wolfowitz. He engineers a policy to slaughter nearly a
million people, and the press has no problem with the morals of that.
But when he arranges to pay his girlie a few extra thousand dollars,
the press nincompoops go ballistic. Give her the money, I don't care.
Then put Mr. Creep in jail for arranging to murder that many people.
He can serve the 1 million sentences concurrently.
[May16'07] Gareth Porter (if you can believe him) reports that the more
aggressive policy toward Iran (3 carriers in the Gulf) was tempered
by Admiral William Fallon, head of CENTCOM, in February 2007. The
'tempering' consisted of keeping the number of carriers there at two, so
that when the Nimitz arrived, another one would leave. Any progress away
from an attack -- however small -- is good news. It is a truly sad day
when Admirals are the only thing standing in the way of disaster.
[May19'07] Money talks. With all the DemoRepublocrap hand-wringing,
the war is still fully funded -- in fact, with the highest budget ever.
The Senate is planning to hold war funding talks in private. What a
charade. The US is like the monkey grabbing onto the oil treat in
the jar. It can't/won't let go of it, no matter what the consequence.
If Chalmers Johnson is right, it may end up turning the US into a
dictatorship.
[Jun12'07] The Iraq occupation and base-building has continued on
schedule. US military spending in Iraq is at record levels. The death
rates for US soldiers and Iraqi civilians are up. The second number is
usually 50x the first, which reflects the reality of all modern hi tech
wars -- extra tech makes it possible for a small number of soldiers to
kill a larger number of civilians with only small losses of their own.
The antiwar left (e.g., Kos) is now 'disillusioned' with the Democrats,
who actually managed to *raise* the amount of money appropriated for
the war over what the Repubs asked for. Wow, disillusion should sure
make those Dems sit up and take notice, right? Meanwhile, left foggers
like Cockburn write nonsense about global warming ("since aerosols
cause temperature to drop, and bad coal companies generate aerosols and
want to generate more, the science of global warming must be false").
Great logic Alex. Ever consider that A and B do not imply C? Did you
forget that the idea that aerosols cause a temperature drop is actually
part of global warming science? Alex also doesn't believe there is
any oil problem. I don't have a good feeling generally about how
things will begin to play out in a decade or two as total fossil
fuel usage (oil+gas+coal) starts to go flat. The trends of the last
three decades have pointed toward more polarization of rich and poor.
Despite suggestions from the left that flattening energy supplies will
somehow cause people to cooperate better, it seems more likely to me
that fossil fuel constraints may further increase wealth polarization
to levels never seen before in the history of civilization. However,
we are entering a new era not exactly like anything that came before.
We have have better tech. Getting rid of one 100,000 watt car makes it
possible to run a whole lot of 50 watt laptops. If we start reducing
consumption now, we might be able to keep the computers.
[Jun27'07] The National Academy of Sciences report on coal includes the
following important statement: "Present estimates of coal reserves
are based upon methods that have not been reviewed or revised since
their inception in 1974, and much of the input data were compiled in
the early 1970s. Recent programs to assess reserves in limited areas
using updated methods indicate that only a small fraction of previously
estimated reserves are actually minable reserves." As conventional
oil continues its decline (the probable peak was 2005), and natural
gas liquids (e.g., pentane) and natural gas (methane) peak in the
near future, the focus will be on coal and mine-able oil (tar sands --
not oil shale, which will likely never be touched because of it's poor
energy-return-on-energy-investment ratio). There is a lot less coal left
than people usually assume. China is currently bringing online one new
coal electric plant per week. Peak fossil fuel energy and peak energy,
period, are closer than people realize. Now is the time to act to reduce
energy usage voluntarily before geology does it for us. To quote the
title of my
peak
oil presentation: Mother nature bats last.
[Jul01'07] Bankers have made huge amounts of money from "collateralised
debt obligations" (pdf defining some terms and tricks of the
trade in English for dealing with financial 'toxic waste'
here)
where they have bought subprime mortgages but somehow still maintained
high credit ratings. The reason they bought these risky mortgages
was that the interest rate was higher because the people taking out
the mortgages were poor (relative to the size of the mortgages).
Saski Scholtes notes in the Financial Times that it is "ironic"
that "many of these new-fangled instruments" of the uber-capitalists
"have never been priced through market trading." Ironic? Normally,
if you go into a store and grab some cash, they don't call it 'ironic'.
The only difference here is that the scale of cash-grabbing so enormous,
these guys are hauling away semi-trailers of cash -- and there are never
any police sirens.
[Jul08'07] The focus on Libby is utterly idiotic. We are killing 10,000
Iraqis every month. That should be the focus. Who cares if Libby gets
out? Give him a bonus bigger than Wolfowitz's girlie. Libby's pardon
is about as newsworthy as Paris Hilton. I could care less.
[Jul17'07] The 'new' bin Laden video is a laughably bad composite of tapes
previously released more than four years ago (one from 2001) -- though I
didn't hear much laughing. The problem is that I usually underestimate
how effective these stupid fart stunts are. They are not disinfo
but more like movie music, creating a mood, not consciously perceived.
It is amazing how *cheap* these things are to make. Who needs real fake
events when this ultra-low-budget crap just works? Maybe they could pull
out all the stops and have Robert Fisk interview him again next time.
(wouldn't cost much more). It would be like that old Second City skit
where the crime photographer says "Work with me, work with me" to the
corpse he is posing. Bush's numbers are already starting to jog up a
bit from the stupid London stunt (which was barely perceptible here
in London). This will keep up the momentum and keep him from going
below 30%. It's quite amazing that after all that has happened, 30%
of Americans still view Bush favorably, and enthusiastically approve of
killing 10,000 Iraqis a month -- more deaths than ever. Another maybe
30-40% only disapprove of the killing because it seems not to be 'going
well' and has not 'delivered the goods'. I'm not sure how killing 10,000
a people a month could ever 'go well', and we still seem to have our
bloody mitts around 'the goods', but whatever. The peace movement has
virtually collapsed in embarrassment and cowardice after supporting the
Democrats, who immediately turned around and gave Bush even more funding
for the war than he asked for, just like many of us warned. I shudder
to think what would happen if there was another one or two 9-11 sized
events (9-11, bad as it was, was only equivalent to several weeks of US
automobile accident deaths). Overnight, good Americans would be ready
to send their neighbors off to the camps. Unfortunately, a small number
of camps (so far) have already been constructed by Cheney's military
contractor companies, supposedly for unruly immigrants. Nothing to see
here, Americans, move along.
[Jul20'07] The US is still a major oil producer with a output almost
as large as Saudi Arabia, despite being long past (almost half down
from) its 1970 peak. It's interesting to see where it currently
comes from. There are about 880,000 producing wells in the world,
but a full 520,000 of them are in the US. 502,000 (most) of the
US wells use mechanical pumps (e.g., the rocker arms on 'stripper
wells'), which indicate that the wells are depressurized (normal live
wellhead pressure is 2000 to 3500 pounds per square inch -- real wells
don't need a pump, but rather a series of very large stoppers or BOPs
[blowout protectors]). Stripper well produce a mere 1 or 2 barrels
a day. The US also drilled 36,000 new wells last year. The average
per-well output of all US wells was therefore a tiny 100 barrels a day.
Contrast this with Saudi Arabia which drilled 300 new wells and has
a total of only 3,000 wells (see map of Ghawar wells in my peak oil
pdf
here).
The well numbers are from an article by Alex Lightman
here. But that
writer then assumes incorrectly that Saudi's 260 Gb reserves (which were
doubled arbitrarily in the 1980's and not decremented since) are vastly
underestimated and will balloon when they start doing a lot more drilling.
He fails to cite what happened when oil peaked in the US in the 1970's.
There was a massive increase in US drilling -- a 10x increase. That
together with the discovery of the super giant Prudhoe Bay oil field in
Alaska, however, failed to reverse the US peak, which didn't look like
smooth Gaussian but rather a sharp peak followed by an almost linear
decline. Ominously, Saudi has begun a massive new drilling program (for
them) in the past two years, quintupling its oil drilling rig count (graph
here
from Stuart Staniford). It is unlikely that a massive increase in Saudi
drilling will fix the Saudi peak either. To his credit, Lightman does
also suggest that we start conserving now, before we slam into the wall.
He sells a meeting badge for large conferences that records who it
comes in contact with and lights up when two people pass each other
with similar interests (to alert them that they might want to strike
up a conversation). I attend several large yearly meetings myself.
Though they are enjoyable and intellectually stimulating, I think there
will be less of them in the future (because I think the true Saudi
reserves are less than they say).
[Jul23'07] Like friggin' clockwork, as I predicted, the Beavis and
Butthead London stunt and the Osama-sings-the-classics greatest-hits
tape have caused an uptick in Bush's ratings, visible
here.
If this low budget crap can arrest Bush's decline, imagine what another
*real* stunt could do! Some left writers say things in the US are
about the blow and people there are finally mad. I just don't see it
at all. Besides, what would people do if somebody told them the truth?
If somebody said, "yeah, we lied to you, there's actually less oil, there
is nothing obvious with which to replace it, your SUV and large house and
new spread-out suburbs are a bad idea, you have to start driving less,
riding your bike more, taking public transportation, living in closer to
where you work, and in a smaller house", it wouldn't play well in Peoria.
It's true that most US-ians want the Iraq war to go away (though they
have probably forgotten how enthusiastically they supported it at one
time), but they certainly aren't about to get onto a damn bicycle (I
just rode mine home through a light rain, which was actually refreshing,
and my clothes are now dry). They won't get on their bikes en masse
until it is clear that oil price spikes will never go away. And that
is not going to happen until we've had continuous oil price spikes
every year or so for a decade, and oil costs $200 or $300 a barrel
(its true absolute minimum value, since one barrel of oil is
equivalent
to about one year of human work; for comparison, the US yearly
minimum wage is over $10,000). And after a few more oil wars.
This won't happen until maybe 2020 or thereabouts (the current oil
war is already four and a half years old). And even then, there
will still be a reasonable amount of (expensive) oil around for
another decade (though less than there is today). So there will
be no revolution until maybe 2030 when peak all-energy begins to
bite and oil production is down a lot. By then, the revolution may
very well not be televised (esp. if we get a few more of
these).
[Jul24'07] Today, 50 activists including Cindy Sheehan (out of 400
present) were arrested for not leaving John Conyers office after he
so much as told them that he can't support impeachment because 'it was
more important to get a Democrat in office in 2008 than to end the war
in Iraq'. Accurately said, John Conyers, limp lifetime member of the
Oceania party.
[Aug05'07] It looks like US
M3(b) *growth* has
flattened out (at 13% a year!) over the past few months. I think M3
(total money) growth is a truer measure of inflation than the ridiculously
named 'core rate of inflation' or the consumer price index, which seem to
have had all the things that inflate like food, energy, and housing taken
out of them (after all, who actually *uses* food, energy, and housing?).
This temporary pause in the increase in the *rate of growth* seems to have
been associated with and/or caused by a slowing down of credit creation
(sub-prime/prime mortgages, commercial, leveraged buy-outs) and serious
heartburn in the the stock/money/hedge markets over the past few weeks.
I can feel that something a little different is starting to happen, but
I don't really know what it is. It just makes me nervous when people
like
Doug Noland
seem more nervous than their usual industrious, tut-tutting selves.
Since cash only makes 5% per year when the currency is inflating at 10
or 12% per year, it's obvious that smart money only stays in cash when it
gets really scared. It seems to be getting a little scared now. However,
the Euro and pound are inflating at about the same rate as the dollar,
so the between-currency fluctuations must be due to slight inter-country
delays (e.g., housing already topped in the US vs. housing still going
up -- for now! -- in the UK). And most of the money guys have hardly
heard of peak oil and climate change since they involves thinking more
than 6 months (or 2 weeks) ahead. I suppose it's better not to get them
too upset.
[Aug07'07] There is a lot of talk about the recent FISA revisions with
respect to warrantless tapping of overseas phone calls (see
Scott Horton
in Harpers). But sometimes I feel like I am in a house of mirrors.
The NSA has long monitored all foreign phone calls without warrant --
probably for decades. The significance of this change is that they can
now do it 'officially'. For many years, the US supported oppressive
governments abroad (Central American death squads, South Vietnam,
Afghanistan). It looks like similar methods are slowly being re-imported
to the homeland (US and UK), and people are being slowly introduced to
accepting it as normal. The significance of this development is not that
the NSA is doing some new bad thing, but rather that they are brazenly
advertising their exploits.
[Aug08'07] US troops in Iraq have reached an all-time high. This has
been supported by both Republicans and Democrats. Ignore the propaganda
miasma. The numbers talk.
[Aug12'07] Looking out the window in London at all the cars going
by gets me down. I really don't see how the ships of state and
industry can possibly be turned around quickly enough. It takes a
long time to make large scale wind, solar, and nuclear power plants.
North Sea oil just north of here is depleting at almost 10% per year.
I am really afraid there won't be enough time for people to react in
a sensible way. Take bicycles. Sure, London car drivers hate them.
As a daily cyclist, I, too, hate the cyclists that dangerously
totter through red lights. But what would London look like if you
100-tupled the number of bicycles, and added bicycles with trailers
and a zillion mopeds and small electric carts? People aren't planning
ahead. The household-debt-to-personal-income ratio in the UK is
even
larger (1.62) than in the US (1.42). Not that this really applies to
central London, where 80% of purchases don't even use mortgages...
[Aug14'07] Glad to see Rove gone. I didn't expect it. I can't imagine
that he left voluntarily. But that leaves open the question of who
forced him out. Above, I had speculated that Rumsfeld might have been
forced out for not being hawkish enough on Iraq. I find it difficult
to believe that Rove was not enthusiatic enough, but maybe it's true.
The latest
world
oil production figures show that we are now at, or perhaps even
slightly past (!) peak "all liquids" (i.e., crude oil + lease condensate
+ natural gas liquids + other liquids [e.g., ethanol]). In 2004, I had
expected that this wouldn't happen until 2008. Things now seem to be
precariously in balance. We are only one event -- e.g., a hurricane
in the Gulf of Mexico, a war in another oil country, an unusually cold
winter -- away from chaotic price oil price fluctuations. The only 'good'
news is that the US seems to on the verge of a recession, which should
slightly lower the US's 25% demand on total world oil production.
[Aug19'07] John Mauldin has a table of
adjustable mortgage resets by the month
here
that suggests that the peak in resets won't occur until March 2008,
at a peak rate of $110 billion/month. Compare this with the average
rate of resets from Jan-Aug 2007 of $37 billion/month. This suggests
that the forces that have seem to have precipitated the recent turmoil
will be more than twice as strong 5-10 months from now, as the the
presidential election gets into high gear -- normally a time when
the economy is pumped. Feb-May 2008 sounds like an awfully dangerous
time to me, with enormous whipsawing forces, political and economic.
The Fed does have some room to drop interest rates, though that could
have bad effects on the dollar. Perhaps this is overestimated,
though, since the pound seems to be coming down relative to the
dollar despite the fact that US interest rates were dropped and UK
interest rates are still being increased. Note that both the dollar
and pound *have* dropped relative to the yen. For comic relief,
look
here
for feats of squirrel cognition. And don't forget about
US patent 6,970,105 granted in 2005 to a certain Valletta for a
passenger control system to prevent hijackments (yup) by putting a
neckband on every passenger with sensors to determine each of their
"emotional conditions" and if necessary, inject "sedatives, narcotics or
strong tranquilizers" by "pelvic contact" into the "evil-minded persons".
The joke is, it's not a joke.
[Aug23'07] Despite the fact that nothing fundamental has changed (US
mortgage resets are still a long ways from their March 2008 peak, peak oil
is still here, the Iraq war into its fifth year, the Democratic worms are
just as cowardly as before), the fear so palpable a week ago is subsiding.
Nothing to see here. Wouldn't it be great if fossil fuel reserves *did*
go up an down as a function of how good people felt about them?
[Aug29'07] The bump upward in the polls predicted
above (from the London stunts and the nightly Fox news
'minute of hate') is now even more clearly visible
here.
When you read the internet on on your own and don't watch teevee, you
expect these things, but they are still amazing and amazingly depressing
to see in the flesh as it were. There was a good article on
capitalism
in Iraq in the Rolling Stone, though it shamefully fails to mention
the fact that we've killed more than a million people of the non-US
persuasion there, and the fact that 4 million people have been run
out of their homes. You might get the idea reading the thing that it
would have all been OK, if we had only done it more efficiently and
with less corruption. It wouldn't have been OK. The people in the
US should be ostracized for decades for overseeing the holocaust of
a million people. Skimming tax money in the process and charging the
cannon fodder to repair their own shredded limbs is unfortunate, but
not what will be remembered as the main point in the fullness of time.
Today, hardly anybody remembers the fact that 1-2 million German men
were marched and starved to death in US-run concentration camps after
they lost WWII.
[Sep01'07] With the new $50 billion dollar Iraq war supplement Bush
just requested, the US is spending over 1 billion dollars every 2 days
to occupy/destroy Iraq. Americans are not up in arms about it at all,
and won't be until we start to actually get driven out. That's a
contribution of several thousand dollars a year from every adult in
the US. For the cost of the Iraq war, those tax receipts could have paid
for a halfway decent solar power setup for most families in the US --
an eleventh hour rescue for the grid problems that will be on the way.
But like the Archdruid says :-}, unfortunately it's already the
*twelfth hour*. While
this
article about wind turbine problems in Germany is a little FUD'y,
it does accurately point out how many years it takes to wring faults
out of even relatively old technology. And wind turbines currently
generate only a tiny fraction of energy in the EU (less than 0.5%).
Even that tiny contribution is a lot more than solar, however, which
is so tiny it's irrelevant. And in the spirit of the twelfth hour,
there is currently a silicon panel shortage (in the process of being
remedied), so we could hardly have paneled everybody's roof this year.
But one can always dream.
[Sep03'07] The anti-Iran propaganda is definitely on the increase again
over the last month, though still not quite at the level of anti-Iraq
propaganda in late 2002. Enough carriers are still probably in place
(I'm not aware of any recent news about where they currently are). Bush's
numbers are still drifting upwards (amazing, innit?). There is an endless
drumbeat of predictions of another 9/11 from the *mainstream media*. The
usu. disinfo sources are catapulting the propaganda, too (e.g.,
DisinfoKos)
-- and I don't particularly trust the motives of
Dan Plesch (next door!) or Robert Baer or
Sarah
Baxter or Todd Gitlin (ehh), who have all recently announced
that attacks are coming. I think this September is too soon, still.
The movement of (additional) men and materiel is always an unexpectedly
leisurely affair. I remain most worried most about what might happen in
the run-up to the election early next year when mortgage resets will be
at their peak as the elections get seriously under way. The key question
is how to sustain the patriotic idiot juice long enough after an attack
so that it colors the election. A quick several day blitzkieg in a few
weeks doesn't seem like it would do that. Certainly, Bush doesn't need
majority support to start another war, maybe just another 5 or 10 more
points (cf. Mr. Hilter). Reading online comments suggests that there
is already a solid chunk of support or at least a green light for an
attack, unbelievable as this may seem given the events of the past 5
years, and also because all these people have access to the internet.
And hard as it is to believe, maybe Rove really did resign because he
thought it was a bridge too far. Last time (Sept 2002), I remember the
big but absolutely ineffectual anti-war movement (of which I was a
small part)
just sitting there watching the armaments and people being put on ships
and sailing over there. I see nothing to stop something similar from
happening again. The only way it could be stopped (if they decide
to to it), would be a long general strike, and that seems unlikely.
In any case, the consolidation of US Iraqi bases into 6 megabases is
continuing at full speed, consuming half of the money spent in Iraq.
The Balad/Anaconda base is the second most busy airport in the world
after Heathrow, and is guarded by 20,000 troops. The US is planning to
stay, period.
[Sep09'07] Yet another fake Osama dead Laden reappears, this time with
a curly Grecian formula beard (an actor or maybe just very old tapes).
Reading the LA Times article on it reminds me of how they wrote about
Reagan -- when his Alzheimer's had gotten bad, but the newspaper whores
picked through the crap he said, and pretended like his brain was
still there.
[Sep13'07] I'm feeling ill at ease this week (Barksdale joyride, Libor
way up, 'withdrawn' UK Basra troops head instead to Iranian border,
partial air force standdown on Sept 14), but hopefully nothing will
happen. The rhetoric on the Iraq war is absolutely dismal. The air
war has been increased in size by a factor of 5 since the beginning
of the year (!). There is effectively bipartisan support for the war.
Any Democrat capable of getting into office 2008 will by definition be
incapable of making the slightest difference to the conduct of the war,
given how the election and Democratic party is funded. Despite the fact
that the midterm elections were in large part a vote against the war,
Rahm Emmanuel among others made sure that Democratic candidates available
were 'realists' -- that is, Democrats who 'opposed the war' as window
dressing, and then turned around and voted *even more* money for the war
than preznit chimp asked for! All the viable Democrats have tripped over
themselves rushing to say they will be the first to nuke Iran. And the
elephant in the room that no one talks about (as stated many times above)
is that the only reason that Good Americans are a bit sour about the
Iraq war now is that it is going somewhat badly. They could care less
how many Iraqis they have annihilated or driven out of their homes.
They could care less about how much it costs (most hardly know the
difference between million, billion, and trillion). Some of our troops
have been killed and maimed, but the total numbers so far are small --
equivalent to only a month's worth of car accidents in the US (people who
survive car accidents also end up with hideous injuries). Most Americans
don't care at all that the war is wrong. Finally, and most importantly
for thinking about how things will play out, most Americans have no idea
how close we are to the beginning of permanent declines in oil, gas,
coal, uranium, copper, indium, gallium, soil, water, fish, forests,
food, helium (boo hoo, eventually bye-bye fMRI!), etc. etc. Many of
them, left and right, think high oil prices are a conspiracy to enrich
piggish oil company executives. High oil prices *do* enrich piggish
oil company executives. So what? That has absolutely no relevance to
the prospects for maintaining industrial civilization as fossil fuels
production starts to go over to the downward part of the curve. It has
no relevance to geology. As I have said many times, if Americans actually
knew how dire the energy/soil/food/metals problem actually was, they would
get in line behind our present (and future) resource wars in a snap.
They would be happy to nuke the whole rest of the world if push came
to shove. In retrospect, it's amazing that the Iraq war has been able
to be waged for more than 4 years without any official mention of oil.
That may finally have to change in 2008.
[Sep14'07] I hear lots of left talk about Americans finally getting fed
up enough with the current administration to 'not take it anymore'.
What exactly would 'it' be? An oversized portion of the world's
resources? Do Americans *really* want to leave all that oil behind?
I'm relieved nothing happened today.
[Sep19'07] Nothing to see, so far. The Fed is has been injecting a
little more money than it normally does. It also just cut the discount
window interest rate by 0.5% to 4.75%. But the peak in mortgage resets
(which involve multiple-percent upticks in interest rates that only
very roughly follow the discount window interest rate) is still not
until Mar 2008. And long term bonds actually went *down* -- i.e.,
long-term interest rates went *up* -- in response to the fed cut, which
will actually hurt mortgage rates. Oil production is continuing to
decline (slightly down from the 85 million barrels/day 2006 all-liquids
all-time peak) while oil prices continue to rise. Perhaps "probable"
and "possible" reserves aren't as tasty as "proven" reserves, after all.
Or maybe there is still one more several-year production increase left
after the current plateau. That would be great, but even if it happens,
society will likely only use it to party on, instead of bowing down in
thanks for a few extra years to prepare. The exact moment of the peak
doesn't really matter. We are at or very close to the beginning of a
permanent, grinding decline. The only concrete societal response in the
US so far has been to invade and occupy Iraq and to commission
235 new
corn ethanol plants on top of the 111 already operating. By 2008,
those plants will (literally) be eating half of the entire US corn
harvest, but supplying only five percent of the energy in our liquid
fuel use. Tax subsidies for this 1.25x energy-return-on-energy-investment
process is absolute insanity as we approach the energy/food/soil/water
precipice of industrial civilization. Reading the
summaries of introductory
presentations at latest ASPO conference in Cork Ireland gave me the
willies -- what happened to these people? What are they smoking?
OPEC is supposed to go to 50 million barrels/day by 2020 (Mike Rogers)
given that it seems to have trouble keeping production at 30 million
barrels/day, much of it from 40-year-old fields? And after 12 more
years of depletion from now? Sheesh. A.M. Samsam Bakhtiari
bowed
out of ASPO events after some unexplained altercation in Florence
in 2007. William Engdahl has discovered abiotic oil (huh?!). I know,
I should just be watching the river flow. It's impossible to reason
with an over-sexed deer herd on an island heading for a food crash
by explaining the mathematics of population biology to them. People,
businessmen, and bankers aren't any different. We must all party on.
As a footnote, the vote to restore habaeus corpus (the idea that the
government can't hold people without a formal public hearing) just failed
in the Senate (not enough Repubicans supported it).
[Sep24'07] Alan Greenspan says Iraq was about oil, and that he
lobbied for the Iraq war. I wonder what the current fed governor is
lobbying for now? Off-shoring the majority of productive US industry
as supported by Greenspan was merely wage arbitrage for the short-term
gain of the super-rich. It has gutted the productive ability country.
Apple now designs the outer half-a-millimeter of a laptop (and a fine
half millimeter it is!) and then ships off the substantive design of this
advertising 'skin' (like the one I'm currently typing on!) to Taiwan
where the working guts of it are designed to fit inside the skin and
the circuit boards and other working parts are then manufactured and
assembled, in Taiwan, China, and Thailand. This is *not* a sustainable
course for the US empire; it looks more like the endgame of empire.
I imagine that the growth of private police forces to guard rich people
and their estates is going to explode in the decade ahead.
[Oct02'07] Tad Patzek has a long-winded paper on
biofuels, "Can we outlive our way of life? (
pdf
here). One critical fact that was new to me is that the cellulosic
ethanol process (at least currently) only gives a 'beer' that is about
4% alcohol while the corn ethanol process gives one that is 12% to 16%
ethanol. Since distillation is a major energy loser (actually using
up more energy than the energy in the resulting ethanol when applied
to a 4% alcohol-water mixture) cellulosic ethanol only gets barely
net-energy-positive by getting a credit for all the heating value of the
lignin (wheat straw). Since a 1:1 replacement of fossil fuels by biofuels
is utterly impossible for more than a few years if we want to still live
on the planet in addition to just driving on it, and since we are now
at peak oil, he suggests that Europe aim to ramp up to a reduction in
fossil fuel usage of 6% per year (over 8 years) and then stay there,
every year after that. Having just bicycled home right alongside
a bunch of yahoos in cars gunning their engines to madly accelerate
their ugly heaps for one block at a time so that they have to slam on
the brakes half a block later (using alomost 100,000 watts every time
the numbskulls step on the accelerator), I say, it's not a moment too
soon to start that reduction! (and yes, I stopped at every light, too).
Given that Londoners have passed extreme laws requiring every hallway
in new buildings to be made wide enough for *2* wheelchairs to pass each
other (resulting in ridiculous office buildings that have as much as
60% of their area as hallways), you'd think it might be possible pass a
practical law to really start reducing fossil fuel usage, too, before
we run our stupid monkey heads right into the wall. If we *can* think.
Reading about users finally finally finally revolting against Microsoft
and downgrading from Vista to XP gives me hope.
[Oct05'07] The rate of stock trading seems to go up with no end in sight.
The entire issue of stocks like Google and Apple now turns over 5 to 10
times a year. Stocks are being held on *average* for only a few days.
This is not "investment".
[Oct07'07] Gordon Brown is now behind
a joint UK/US/(French?) attack on Iran, but
only
if Iran was proved to be behind a big militant attack or another
stunt similar to the kidnapping in March of British sailors. But,
uhhh, the 'kidnapped' British sailors were halfway around the world
from Britain and admitted they were trespassing on Iranian coastal
waters (for an analogy, imagine Iranians in gunboats picked up by
the British Navy in the North Sea). Gordon is finding his inner
poodle! What's got him so excited? The French poodle's recent dog
tricks? Jealousy of the French for not having helped to
cause
Darfur? Feeling not manly enough in comparison to those incomparably
manly Blackwater storm troopers who have the true grit needed to boldly
shoot up women and children in passenger cars? Or maybe it's just that
recurrent itch to 'bring Democracy' to another country? Given that the
last time Democracy was brought, a million Iraqis were murdered, I do
sympathize that you might need an even bigger army to deliver it this
time, in case the natives decide they don't want it just yet...
[Oct10'07]
Here
is a hopeful article about photovoltaic power. Photovoltaic power is
increasing in popularity. However, it is still a tiny fraction of our
total power (0.05% or 1/2000 of total world electrical generation, which
itself is about one third of total fossil fuel power). In fact, it is
currently increasing at a tiny fraction of our *increased yearly usage*
of fossil fuels. It is currently accounting for only 0.5% (1/200) of
newly installed capacity. It's rate of increase *is* increasing some.
But at current rates, it is hard to see how in 20 years it could
account for a substantial fraction of the energy currently gotten
from fossil fuel -- right around the time oil and gas will be a lot
scarcer than now. Here's hoping the rate of increase itself increases
-- a lot, starting very soon. There are a lot of possibly cool ideas.
For example, V2G (vehicle to grid), where electric vehicle batteries are
used for distributed storage of extra power for the grid (pdf
here)
Most people don't realize that the amount of power used each day by cars
is several times the amount of electrical power used out of outlets and
the grid (a car can generate a 100,000 watt burst of power and uses 10,000
to 20,000 watts on average [=13-26 hp]). Huge numbers of electric vehicle
batteries plugged into the grid could store and buffer intermittent wind
and solar power, which are harder than fossil fuels to turn on at will.
However, this would require a fundamental re-orientation of people's
attitude toward their vehicles. Rather than being something you (just)
tear through the wilderness with, they would also be part of the shared
grid on which their community relies. This also implies that people would
be allowing their expensive vehicle batteries to be cycled (i.e., some
of the batteries' available life used up) by other people on the grid.
It would take a lot of experimentation -- physical and social -- to figure
out if something like this could every be practical. I fear that such
'commie' ideas will be laughed out of court until it is too late and the
grid has already been Iraq-i-fied, and it's every man for himself.
[Oct11'07] As someone very poorly schooled in economics,
this graph
(of 3-month US Treasury Bills yield and the Fed funds rate) is perhaps
the most amazing money graph I have ever seen. The Fed seems completely
passive, slavishly following short-term interest rates with a very
short delay! It sure looks like the Fed will have to continue lowering.
What the global effect of that will be is hard for me to guess.
[Oct14'07] I'm feeling blue, watching
the river flow. Big banks are
colluding
to 'fix' their greed market so that they don't accidentally shoot each
other in the face by denying each other credit. I thought the market
fixed all, without the need for any interference? Their solution won't
be in our interest ("our" means people like you and me that don't own or
run banks). It reminds me of an old scene from The Tall Blond Man with
One Black Shoe where the assassins all accidentally end up in one room:
"we're all professionals here...". In the midst of various economic
indigestion, the severity of the oil problem will finally come into
view back in the US because, paradoxically, low gasoline taxes couple
oil price signals more directly to gasoline price signals (the large,
fixed-size gas taxes in Europe mean that oil price increases are damped
for the enduser). People in the US will not be in a constructive
mood when they finally realize what the situation is. And when
oil prices finally break through the European tax damper, I doubt
the response here will be much more charitable (in the UK at least,
think back to 2000, when the lorry drivers shut down the the economy
for a week over fuel prices). And for something completely different,
the pharmeceutical companies have turned in a big way toward the
nasal
epithelium, targetting it with anti-obesity, diabetes, and even
anti-autism drugs (oxytocin work-alikes). Before long, there will be
hundreds of companies fighting for membrane space inside your nose.
I wish I could instead get that positive emotion that brings a tear
to my eye and makes me proud to be a human when I see a remarkable
musical performance or come to finally understand a remarkable
turn of scientific thought. Instead, I'm dejectedly thinking
about the other, equally notable technologically-enabled,
violent
side of my fellow man-apes. I feel sad for us -- apes with language
and immensely more powerful minds -- having worked ourselves into the same
situation as deer herd on the threshold of overwhelming the resources
on a small island, all just munching away, all just barely aware of the
terrible cull that is almost surely on the way.
[Oct20'07] Bush took an unexpected, discontinuous
plummet
in the polls from an average of about 34% to an average of 26% in
two recent polls (Zogby, Harris) -- the lowest number ever -- after a
slow sustained rise from May to October of 30% to about 34%. It must
be housing+oil. It could also be red-state faithful getting hammered by
the "Exceptional" drought (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, and Idaho) visible
here (the scale is:
abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought, and
finally, exceptional drought). But a desperate Bush and Cheney could take
desperate measures. The fact that such a large number of people
(70)
were punished for the supposedly 'minor' mistake (leaked first to
The Military Times) of flying nukes arounds the country suggests that
it wasn't a minor mistake. Several people have noted that for the
leak to come out in The Military Times, it had to pass several high
level military censors. Perhaps this was a sign of internal conflict.
Bush's poll numbers worry me. On the positive side, things have been
thankfully completely quiet during the dirtie balm exercises in Portland
and Guam.
[Oct21'07]
Here
is another article pointing out that for the past two decades, the
Fed funds rate has *followed* the short term credit market rates with
a small delay. These graphs are completely contrary to the generally
accepted view that the Fed rate somehow controls/throttles the economy.
Maybe it does by other actions that affect the short term credit markets
that I don't fully understand (perhaps involve 'repos', whatever they
are, and/or the banks of the 'Caribbean', heh). And I don't really
understand the recent 'master liquidity enabler conduit garbage collector
structured investment vehicle'... But returning to the Fed funds rate,
why this strange fiction??
[Oct28'07] The torture methods of the US have hardly changed for 40
years. And they were in turn largely adapted from methods originally
developed by the Nazis. Here is an excellent article by
Fred
Morris about his experiences in Brazil in the 1970's, face to face
with American-trained Brazilian interrogators. Torture has long been
a major American export. Instead of outsourcing it, however, it looks
like a domestic market is finally being developed. Tasers are just
good old electric shock torture, now in the hands of every police dept
in the country, and in widespread use -- so much so that 300 people
have already been killed in the US with tasers (here is an
example
from last year where police tasered a handcuffed epileptic man 5 times
until he passed out and died -- and then got off without the grand
jury even viewing the video). Perhaps some of my buddies in machine
learning are already working on auto-targetting tasers for the genitals
to make Tasers exactly equivalent to what was already being taught at the
School of the Americas thirty years ago. And maybe the police need to
hire some doctors like the professionally trained torturers
often do,
so that their poor victims can be tortured again and again.
[Oct29'07] "Be green. Drive green." says the Prius ad now running on
The Oildrum. Then, top it off with the "carbon-neutral car insurance"
that they sell on the teevee, and we're all set to consume this year's
cubic mile of oil in style (there are about 30 cubic miles left).
The market is fixing everything, getting everybody to agree on a fair
price (which hit $93/barrel today). Of course, since the market value of
'our' people is a little higher than 'yours', we might have to grab your
oil because we have a much bigger military than you (merely a background
fact for the market, like when the market determines prices after the
harbor has been fired upon in the olden days). The US+UK have so far
killed a million people building permanent military bases to control
(steal) Iraqi oil. And that atrocity got started even before peak oil
hit (happening about now). Imagine what the oh-so-greens will want
to do to the world when the pressure really goes up. We have just now
reached an equilibrium where oil demand is starting to bump into maximum
oil production. Maxmimum oil production is set to go down from here,
relentlessly, permanently, and demand is set to go up. If *I* were the
rest of the world, I'd be thinking about getting me some atomic fire
of my own before furious Mr. Green arrives at the door threatening to
kill my kids and atomize my house. Even if the world tanks the dollar,
it won't do anything to US+UK (and FR) big guns and bombs. Tanking the
dollar or the pound is like beating the schoolyard bully at Scrabble.
He'll just knock the pieces off the board unless you've got a big stick.
It's the only language he understands. If Iran already had the big
stick, we wouldn't be threatening them. Without it, the 4 million
barrels a day coming from the Iranian oil strip (in Khuzestan on the
western edge of the country, bordering Iraq) are a mighty inviting target.
After all, perhaps we could dismember their country in a fashion similar
to the way the men with the shriveled little thingees in the US Senate
are now planning to do to Iraq (after their heartfelt attempt to
rebuild
Iraq using the 1994 Lonely Planet guide failed). Little thingees
on little Eichmanns.
[Oct30'07] The
idiocy
and criminality of a slight majority of my fellow Americans who
support a strike on Iran is breathtaking. Their minds are open sewers
down which teevee propaganda is flushed, even as the source only rates a
25% approval by the very same people. But it doesn't matter! Hard to
believe, but unfortunately, accurate to plus or minus a few percent.
Flush the whole country down the toilet, fools, in order to
get your war
on. Doesn't mean it will happen. I still think it probably it
won't happen. Also, maybe this reflects the beginning of a mostly
unconscious realization, alluded to many times above, by the
pissed
off zombies that there actually *is* an oil problem, and that it's
not going to go away. Trying to also steal Iran's oil will not work.
$100 a barrel oil is not a stopping point. We have to use less.
[Oct31'07] Today Warren Buffett says he wants to pay more tax. Richies
only say stuff like this when they are scared that something is about
to blow. When they get scared, I get scared.
[Nov08'07] I am extremely worried about what will happen as the python
continues to digest the pig of (1) rarely traded investment vehicles
of still-not-yet-known value, but getting lower all the time, (2)
still yet-to-peak mortgage resets, and (3) continued oil volatility.
There is perhaps $500 billion (or more) of risky junk on bank balance
sheets, potentially bigger than the 1980's savings and loan disaster,
where $125 billion in tax money was used to bail out a bunch of crooks
who had sold off mortgages in order to reinvest the money in more exotic
instruments. Given that half of Americans support an attack on Iran,
it's clear they're not afraid of any of this. Amazing!
[Nov14'07] As the dollar falls, it is just beginning to stimulate
reverse globalization. Just think, Americans, too, will soon have the
pleasure of talking to people that have just spent 10 minutes fuming
on a phone menu. But seriously, the worldwide energy crunch is going
to impact poorer nations more severely than rich western countries (we
haven't had fuel riots like the ones in Myanmar or Iran). I think it it
likely that right when the rest of the world is really down and hungry,
the rich west will be itself a little pinched and less likely to help out.
That is, reverse globalization is unlikely to go very far.
[Nov17'07] The decomposition of trees damaged as a result of Katrina and
Rita will generate as much CO2 as all of the living trees in the US take
out of the atmosphere in one year (~1 billion tons). -- James Cummins,
Wildlife Mississippi
[Nov23'07] There have been about 300 deaths from Tasers. Since they
usually don't kill people, police must be Tasering people constantly.
The distraught Polish guy in the Vancouver airport recently
killed by a Taser was unconscious within 20 secs of the police
arriving. At this rate, everyone is going to need a Taser to defend
themselves against sadistic cops. Tasers for everyone! Of course,
it wouldn't have helped the guy the UK cops Tasered for
having fallen into a
diabetic coma.
[Nov26'07] Things are sure looking shakey! Maybe
that's why Taser will soon be bringing out
taser
flying saucers. This is what machine learning is getting used for.
We pay taxes to fund people to understand how visual perception and the
brain works and then it gets applied to crap like this. Surveillance and
now torture from the sky. Lovely. Sometimes makes me wonder whether
the end of fossil fuels might actually be a good thing that will save
us from ourselves.
[Nov27'07] Rig count figures from Baker Hughes show that 1762 out of 3124
rigs drilling in October 2007 were drilling in America -- that is, over
56% of all rigs in the world were drilling in US. But I thought peak oil
is happening because environmentalists are not allowing oil exploration,
blah, blah. The US is the most well-drilled place on the planet (which is
why the production curve up, to 1971 peak, and down is so smooth).
[Nov29'07] "We are not your problem. We are Israelis.
Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians
are your problem" -- an explanation from the
'dancing
Israelis' from 'Urban Moving Systems' for why they were laughing,
high-fiving, posing for photos with a cigarette lighter in front of the
ruins as if lighting them, while videoing. "Our purpose was to document
the event." Many people would like to see how this confiscated but
never-made-public video document begins.
[Nov30'07] Once again, I was wrong about the Bush approval
polls. In October, I thought they had experienced an
almost discontinuous drop. But in fact, that was just 3
outliers. Instead, Bush's numbers have actually, amazingly,
drifted
up a bit, to about 34%, from a steady diet of 'news' about the surge
'working' (despite 2007 resulting in the most US casualties of any year!),
Iran war talk, and worries about the economy. I would guess that now a
majority of Americans approve of torture, both Repug-worms and Demo-worms.
This is frightening, given that the recession has not yet happened in a
big way. Under serious economic duress, I imagine that Americans would
be willing to go a lot further.
[Dec02'07] It's worth summing up 2006 and 2007. Supporting Democrats
did absolutely nothing to stop or even slow down the war. In fact,
Democrats actually helped *increase* funding for the war as well as
the number of troops on the ground. Despite an actual Congressional
majority, the Democrats didn't once even threaten to filibuster a war
funding bill, much less actually do it. They only need 41 solid votes to
sustain a filibuster. They tabled impeachment. That's just the facts.
The US -- and the UK -- antiwar movements were co-opted into supporting
the official 'left' (Democrats, Labour) in the 1960's sense of the word.
The utter failure of this strategy to even slightly slow down the war(s)
has completely enervated the antiwar movement. There are less people
on the street than ever before. What's next? Support the Democrats
again? They didn't deliver the goods. Facts on the ground are more
important than the spin in the air. Supporting the Democrats was
a mistake. Sometimes people make mistakes. This one just happened
to occur at a particularly crucial time in history. At this point,
the main ongoing resistance to an attack on Iran is coming from
the
military, of all places! The constant Goebbels-like propaganda from
the mainstream media already has over half of the American sheeple in
favor of it, which is quite amazing given their generally unfavorable
view of the ongoing Iraq disaster.
[Dec05'07] The organ donor thing sure creeps me out. Whether it's getting
organs from the third world or grandparents asking their grandkid for a
kidney, it's just sicko. In about 20 years, the average boomer (like me)
is going to be 70. I'm sure by then, there will be web courses about how
to conduct these negotiations in a politically correct way. If things
continue along the path they're currently on in America, in another 5
years, maybe there will be enough terr'ists in jail to keep a bunch of
ugly boomers alive as their organs begin to fail. Why can't they (we)
just die normally?
[Dec06'07] The
NIE
report sure had the Bush decider-idiot more fumble-mouthed than
usual. It seems like a clear strike back from the military to slow
the push toward the Iran war. Ah, my antiwar friends -- the military
industrial and surveillance complex. Sheesh. I hope they do stop the
(next) war. However, given that there were more than 5 words in the
NIE report, and given that it only takes something like 2 or 3 words
for effective propaganda (e.g., "9/11" + "WMD" + "Iraq"), all the
verbiage in this report may end up being easily bypassed, for example,
by "nuclear" + "Iran" + "wiped-off-the-face-of-the-map". And yes,
wiped-off-the-face-of-the-map counts as one word because the media has
defined it, through incessant repetition of this mistranslation, as a
fixed idiomatic expression.
[Dec07'07] Features of fascism (Mussolini, Franco, Suharto,
Pinochet) according to Lawrence Britt: increased patriotism,
racial/religious/minority demonization together with homeland
racial/religious supremacy, glamourization and increased funding of
military, increased emphasis on punishment, decreased emphasis on human
rights legitimizing torture and extra-judicial imprisonment and execution,
increased sexism, deemphasis of academia and arts, government control
and censorship of media, national security obsession, protection
of corporate power, cronyism between government and security/war
businesses. Recent changes in the US and UK are currently all going
pretty much in the direction of fascism. As an example, there is
currently a debate in the UK as to whether the already-lengthened limit
for holding somebody without charges (1 month) should be extended
to almost 2 months. But why stop at 2 months? Wouldn't a year, or
ten, help keep 'us' even safer? And it wouldn't inconvenience 'real'
Brits, right? Check out this excerpt from a 2006 Popular Mechanics
article on NYPD routinely deploying SWAT team storm troopers onto city
streets where there is nothing to SWAT at, just in order
to scare people and then see how they
react (you looking suspicious? you videotaping?). This is how sheep
are trained to live in a police state (original putrid article
here).
[Dec08'07] The latest
USA
today poll shows a just-statistically-significant loss of support
for attacking Iran, probably because of the unexpected release of the
National Intelligence Estimate report a week ago. And CNN hilariously
had to re-schedule and re-purpose footage from its planned 2 hours of
sewage/propaganda
about a future nuclear Iran this weekend because of the
report (they are no doubt furiously shuffling video cuts as we
speak). Israel is upset that, as Uri Avnery writes,
"they stole
the bomb from us". Ehud Barak called the report a "blow
to the groin", while the Shas party minister Yitzhak Cohen
pulled out all the anti-semitism stops, saying that Americans'
attitude to the National Intelligence Estimate was
reminiscent
of Auschwitz. Yeah, yeah. But the polls are still uncomfortably
close to 50% of Americans supporting an Iran attack -- and
that's without any real stunt having occurred. It's possible
that the neo-crazies might strike back in the next month or two.
They (e.g., Podhoretz/Abrams/Ledeen/Kristol/Bolton/Murdoch-WSJ)
are currently all spluttering in unison about the CIA
plot against Bush. And Wolfowitz is back in town (at the
International Security Advisory Board); and now France has
Sarkozy
and Bernard Kouchner. I think there is a small chance of another
false flag. The pressure will really be on around March 2008.
[Dec09'07] If Ron Paul were to become a third party candidate,
we might end up with a Ross-Perot-1992-like situation.
He wouldn't win but he might actually draw away more
disaffected
Democratic than Republican votes. The dismal
performance of the Democrats (yet another
pusillanimous sell-out on war funding this week) has begun to
sour even the most faithful. The failure of the Republican attempt in
California to have (only!) Democratic California proportionally allocate
its electoral college votes (instead of winner-take-all) has failed (this
would be a good idea, of course, if all states did it). Also this week,
the Senate 'blocked' a House bill that included such commie provisions
as requirements for better fuel economy -- 35 mpg by 2020 -- which is
sensible, practical, uncontroversial, etc, etc. To be fair, it did also
contain an utterly ridiculous and impractical plan to 7-tuple the amount
of ethanol production by 2022 that would use most of our farmland for
cars, doesn't have a chance of happening given that world grain stockpiles
have already fallen to record lows, and that was in any case not the
reason the bill was blocked. There were also reasonable incentives for
wind turbines and solar power. There were 53 yes votes, but it needed
60/100 to overcome a Bush veto. You go, lemmings. Stop those commies.
Don't dangerously distort the market with incentives. Let it creatively
destroy the entire planet. *Something's* bound to survive.
[Dec11'07] Wow. The NIE report even has the Guiliani-worm-thing
back-sliming
on attacking Iran! Go spooks. I'm hoping this all sticks, despite the
shrieking from the neocrazies.
[Dec13'07] The complete lack of an effect of the Fed having
tightened
from 1% in 2004 to over 5% on
M3 total
money (note that the graph at the top that page is money M3 *growth*,
not M3 itself!) suggests that the Fed has considerably less control over
the creation of money -- at least via the Fed rate -- than is usually
portrayed. Also, as mentioned above, the Fed rate seems to actually
*follow*, not lead changes in interest rate of short-term treasuries,
which are set by the market and probably influenced by non-public Fed
actions other than Fed interest rate changes. One of those new "liquidity
injection methods" was introduced by the Fed this week, possibly to be
a "permanent addition" to its "monetary policy toolkit". The Fed now
generates money from the void (as it always does), but instead of a bank
just borrowing the money for a short term to cover withdrawals with a
public record of the loan, the Fed directly buys toxic financial waste
that nobody wants (because it's almost worthless), and does it secretly.
That kind of counterfeiting seems hazardous.
[Dec15'07] The third pic down (
discount rate
spread) clearly shows two sudden events in August and just now.
The response of the money people has been to increase trading
of derivatives by 27% in the third quarter to a record
681
trillion. For reference, the yearly US GDP is around 13 trillion.
The derivatives traded in one quarter amounted to almost one quadrillion
(as in 681,000,000,000,000 dollars in one quarter).
[Dec16'07] "The larger problem here, I think, is
that this kind of stuff [torture] just makes people feel
better, even if it doesn't work." -- CIA officer quoted
here.
Don't support torture to make a bunch of fake he-men producers and fake
he-men writers for tripe like "24" 'feel better'. Make them feel bad
by not hiring their pitiful asses.
[Dec17'07] As noted above, the smart money seems to have piled into
derivatives after fleeing the toxic waste that the Fed is now secretly
buying. What a scheme! What a complete rip-off of people who actually
work, make things, help people, or do music, art, and science! Why do
we let these turds skim off all the proceeds? What they do is selfish,
dangerous (to us, not them!), and shouldn't be rewarded. We need
to make it more dangerous *to them*. When they screw up, we should
seize their yachts, cars, estates, and bank accounts, just like they do
with petty criminals and drug lords, and make them do some real work.
The rough sequence of events since 2000 seems to have been: (1) stock
market tanks, (2) Fed drops interest rates to the floor, (3) hot money
flows into housing, (4) as the growth of normal mortgages starts to flag,
the subprime carcass is constructed and then fed upon by more exotic
blood suckers, (5) housing finally crashes (now including commercial
real estate), (6) the parasites drop off the 'exotic' carcasses and flee
into derivatives (!), leaving the Fed to clean up (i.e., by devaluing
everybody else's money by buying the drained carcasses in secret for
10 times what they are currently worth). Who would have guessed that
derivatives would be considered 'safe' at this point in time? (well, not
me, which is why I'm always one step behind). Derivatives a safe haven!
But they don't have to be safe (and won't be safe) for very long. They just
have to be stable enough for a year or two to allow the parasites to suck
another few hundred billion out of the body politic. Given the massive
increases in money creation (M3 *growth* is running at 15% per year,
which is a doubling of money in 5 years), real growth has already stopped.
Real growth stopping is actually a good thing. But I remain very worried
about 2008 (my original prediction of peak oil). By early 2008, prime
ARMs (along with yet more subprimes) are going to be in trouble, raising
economic pressure even further. Even some fixed rate mortgages are
under water. 2008 is shaping up to be a truly a dangerous year of slow
motion economic hangover. I doubt if the destruction will be creative.
But I have been wrong more often than right w.r.t. economics.
[Dec19'07] Throw the
torturers
out, now. If Latin American mothers of the disappeared can do it, then so
can cowardly American men. If Americans don't rise up soon, even men and
blondes
are going to be in deep doodoo.
[Dec27'07] Consumer confidence rose unexpectedly in December.
[Dec28'07] Peak oil humor: JD, who is a peak oil debunker, complained
that TheOilDrum has turned into "Disasterpedia"... :-}
[Dec30'07] There is a very good article by Richard K. Moore (rkm)
here about,
among other things, (Northern) energy and (Southern) food. It reiterates
a point I have made many times that once US-ians (and UK-ians) finally
read the peak oil writing on the wall, they will support policies that
lead to the holocaust of the South. It's only matter of finding a
politically correct way in which it can be Blitzer'd. At an enormous
human cost, the North will keep its (slightly smaller) motors running
for another 20 years, all while 'fighting global warming' and 'becoming
energy independent' and making a zillion more iPods out of Chinese coal.
Unless something changes drastically in our economic system, our way
of life will not be negotiated, but rather fully prosecuted over giant
piles of dead bodies, until geology has the last word with us. If (when)
oil prices double or triple (again), it will cause people in the North
to drive less and to finally prefer better mileage cars (as in Europe,
where oil prices are already 2-3x those in the US because of taxes);
but in the South, doubling or tripling real oil prices (again) will
cause riots (e.g., see Myanmar, 2007) and the beginnings of widespread
starvation. But I don't see a way that oil prices can get high enough
(e.g., 10x or 50x as high as now) to motivate people in the North to
fundamentally retool their ways and their economic system without at
the same time killing huge numbers of people in the South.
[Jan02'08] To start off the new year on a good foot, here
is a positive article about how solar could help
save the day.
[Jan05'08] "National security isn't going to mean much if
we have a generation of kids so physically incapacitated [by
obesity] they can't go to war." -- Mike Hukabee. But McDonald's
is free enterprise! Is Huckabee a closet librul? I don't
usually read Kunstler, but he made a good point in a recent
column
about the final suburban phase of US history: "40 percent of all new
jobs after the year 2000 were created in the final burst of suburban
expansion". I saw it in San Diego. I moved there in the late 80's and
left last year. During that time, all the mostly empty space between
the 5 and the 15 freeways north of the city was filled in -- an amazing
expansion into an area much larger than the original footprint of the
city (it's not just San Diego -- the same thing happened just outside
the 'green belt' around London). Perhaps it will all work out, even as
transportation becomes more expensive. The price of oil doubled in 2007.
It *might* temporarily dip because of demand destruction during a serious
world recession, but even if that happens, it soon afterwards has nowhere
to go but up -- even if the recession never ends.
[Jan07'08] The Persian Gulf of Tonkin-y thingee, plus two F-18's crash in
mid-air over the Gulf, plus a major fire in the largest Iraqi oil refinery
-- and oil goes down (!?). The oil traders must have some inside info
on a serious near-term economic contraction (very near term is all they
can see).
Here
is a more quantitative look at how the current exponential growth
corn ethanol and other biofuels are well set up to starve the South
(as noted a few posts back). The key point out of all of Stuart
Staniford's too-many graphs is that gasoline proice elasticiy in the US
is -0.05 while price elasticity for food consumption by poor consumers
is -0.7. The -0.05 means that large price increases don't affect how
much people buy very much, while -0.7 means that large price increases
strongly reduce the amount people will buy. Growing corn for ethanol
competes directly with growing corn, wheat, and rice for food. It's
already happening.
Americans have and will continue to easily outbid (for biofuels) what
poor people can bid (for food). Americans are burning up the food of the
world to move their oversize butts around in their stupid oversize cars.
It's truly sick.
[Jan10'08] The (Rupert-Murdock-owned!) Times Sibel Edmonds article is
getting remarkably little play in the US, given that is is supposedly
about 'nuclear al-Queda in Pakistan'. There was also: "We need to
get them out of the U.S. because we can't afford for them to spill the
beans." -- as told to Marc Grossman (former number 3 at the State dept)
by spy handlers for people in Turkey, Israel, and Pakistan. "Them"
was a bunch of people arrested by the FBI in connection with 9/11, then
released from jail and sent out of the country after this call from spy
handlers came in (now, if you were a random taxi driver grabbed for cash
in Afghanistan, tough luck). The timing and location of this partial
and extremely confusing release of information make it a major play,
like the National Intelligence Estimate. But I can't really figure out
what it means (or why it is not being played up in the US, given how
well it would fit with in with Drool-iani or Obama calling for an attack
on Pakistan). Some have suggested that she was (maybe unknowingly)
a part of a counterintelligence operation to sell defective plans (the
Pakistani A-tests *were* very small).
[Jan11'08] The Pentagon-assisted (cf. CIA-assisted NIE) unwinding of the
shoddy Tonkin-lite (ironically, or not-so-ironically coinciding with
a report admitting the original fake!) does look like Bush is losing
his grip. With a lot more bank funny business still to unwind/unload,
2008 could be a doozy. On the bright side, a world recession could
temporarily bring down oil prices -- right at Peak Oil!
[Jan13'08] Unfortunately, I noticed a hit from somebody that was
previously at hzzp:||sviolett.com (don't go there if you have a Windows
machine -- it will install a trojan in the form a codec, even if you try
to cancel and close the browser), which means my page may have been linked
from there. Google drops links on known Trojan-installing sites.
[Jan14'08] Americans are now worried more about the economy than about the
war, as if the two weren't related (almost a billion a day in American
tax dollars go to support our daily genocide in Iraq). Americans want
'leaders' who will 'fix the economy' and go after oil companies who are
driving up the cost of oil. It's positively embarrassing.
[Jan21'08] It sure looks like there is about to be some more violent
price whipsawing in the world's stock markets (a lot of downs, but also
some sharp ups) after the 5% one-day drops on Monday (the US markets
were closed). The much greater suddenness of these worldwide changes
compared to changes in the underlying fundamentals (sure oil is running
down and grain supplies are dropping, but they can't possibly have
fallen off a cliff in 3 days -- and as before the drops took oil along
with them!) re-emphasizes what a complete casino (at the rest of our
expenses) the stock market is. It's not about investing but rather
in taking advantage of panics with time courses of hours or days --
petty little greed and fear cycles of the psychopaths running things
that have nothing much to do with what I like to think of as reality.
The world is not decoupled at all -- the greed oscillations of the
psychopaths resonate across the entire world now like an epileptic
fit. Unfortunately, those greed cycles actually *are* our reality.
Stuart Staniford's tedious piece in the oildrum today explaining how
industrial agriculture will actually profit from rising oil prices must
have required wearing holes in his tongue licking the boots of the
greedy psychopaths (don't mention the subsidies, the soil, or water,
Stuart... you mentioned them once but I think you got away with it).
Maybe his religion made him do it. The rest of the world can eat cake.
A little Eichmann-y for my taste. Good for his CV, tho.
[Jan22'08] A sharp up it was indeed for the Dow, after the
more-than-expected Fed cut, which cancelled the opening-bell
(overnight) downward spike (though leaving the previous week of US
losses intact).
[Jan27'08] First Obama girls, now, uhhh, peak oil girls (?!) on
youtube!
Even the Rupert Street Journal is
getting in on the
peak oil bandwagon. I think they thought the survivalist bit showed some
skin. Anything to distract attention from FED graphs like
this
one and
this
one and
this
one, which suggest that business is seriously 'not as usual'.
These sudden spikes don't look like anything that has happened
in the past 50 years. They look like the first expression of
the kind of kind of instabilities I had been worrying about for
years above. By contrast, the set of energy graphs in my
peak oil pdf are on a much
longer time scale than those wild Fed graphs. Smoothing the feathers of
the poor little jittery financial wizards so they won't shoot each other
in the legs is one thing; dealing with the crushing long-term downtrends
in the peak oil/energy graphs is another. Like the peak oil girl says,
I suppose.
[Feb02'08] US banks are now basically out of reserves and are borrowing
from the Fed to pay for withdrawals. They are technically insolvent.
Since 'innovations' like 'sweeps' have already lowered effective bank
reserve requirements to maybe 3%, perhaps this is no big thing, just a few
percent difference. Just a flesh wound. My main worry is that as bank
reserve requirements have declined (or been worked around), a singularity
is approached. Bank reserve requirements effectively define the factor
by which banks can multiply the money supply (10% reserve requirement
means banks will multiply the amount of money borrowed into existence
from the Fed by 10 after multiple cycles of deposit and withdrawal).
At zero reserves, banks can multiply money infinitely. There are big
differences between 3%, 2%, and 1% reserves (money multipliers of 33, 50,
and 100). It does seem that something like this has started to happen
in derivatives, where their nominal 'values' of $500 trillion are many
times larger then the world's GDP or world M3 equivalent.
[Feb03'08] From Chalmers Johnson: By 1990, production for the Department
of Defense amounted to 83 percent of the value of all manufacturing
plants and equipment in the US -- that is, 17 percent of the US
manufacturing base made products not meant to kill. The US is in the
late stages of pissing away its unique intellectual, artistic, mineral,
and agrarian resources. It won't get them back. It's sad. And all to
fill the pockets and pay for hookers for a small number of stinky old
hair-transplant men who are already drafting plans for their offshore
concubines and vacation/retirement castles. But there is one unfortunate
difference from the Roman empire (or the former British empire).
The US has nukes. When the barbarians finally came to the gates of Rome
demanding all of Rome's treasure, the cashiered Romans didn't have any
serious doomsday firepower. If they *had* had them, everything might
have turned out differently. This time, even the richies' tropical safe
havens might 'get their hair mussed'.
[Feb09'08] I have a feeling that articles like
this by Matthew
Rothschild in the Progressive and films like V is for Vendetta, either
knowingly or unknowingly, serve as psychological acceptance training
for a police state. The great majority of people that read them don't
get mad, but scared and helpless. No fear, as they used to say.
[Feb10'08] Sheryl Crow's (!) sorta kinda peak oil song (third line:
"And oil was way beyond its peak") written by Ben Harper, incongruously
hooked
"Gasoline
will be free" (I like the bluesy 1970 feel, even if the concept
is dorky).
[Feb15'08] I graduated from NIU with a degree in geology and good
grades and I play guitar. However, I think it would be premature
at this point in time to tar all NIU graduates with a label of
NIU-white-guy-slamofascism.
[Feb17'08] This graph of
non-borrowed
bank reserves (was 40 billion, now zero!) and this graph of
total
borrowings by depository institutions from the Federal
Reserve (now at 45 billion -- a giant spike 11 times the
9/11 and 1987 spikes, and 5 times the 1984 spike) suggests that
'regular' banks are now all truly insolvent (both from
here). They have no reserves other than those borrowed into existence
last week from the Fed. And this emergency borrowing has recently been
made secret, so normal people can no longer identify which banks are going
bankrupt (all of them?). In contrast with the LEAP 2020 people, I think
the situation in Europe and the UK is virtually identical (if anything,
the UK and EU central banks have created even more money via this route
than the US has so far). It looks like a giant freeway pileup, but in
slow mo, with no sound. I suppose people will object that the numbers
here ($40 billion of US small people and family business bank deposits)
are trivial compared to trillions of real estate equity, $3.5 trillion
in money market funds, the US or world GDP ($10-ish trillion, $40-ish
trillion) or derivatives ($400-ish trillion) or interest rate swaps
($600 trillion-ish). It still creeps me out. And peak oil hasn't even
started to bite. What will happen when there is real pressure on the
system? I have no clear idea whether to expect inflation or deflation.
Creating money is generally inflationary, but problems obtaining credit
mean deflation. I suppose I still feel deflationary, like
Genesis at Market Ticker. It's true US/UK/EU central banks are
creating huge amounts of credit/money to buy distressed things of zero
value rather than wringing them out of the system. But I don't agree
with the gold idiots (like the tedbits guy who posted the graphs above)
who ridiculously group gold and oil together as 'commodities' and then
see inflation relative to them. I don't think gold matters much at all
now (in the long run you can't eat it or power a truck with it), and oil
is going up because of simple supply and demand (we are near peak oil),
not because of money games. Housing still has a huge way to fall to get
back into historical alignment with salaries. People can no longer spend
extra by taking out home equity loans (consumers are 70% of the GDP and
home equity withdrawals maybe 10% of that). Municipalities are having
to pay 20% interest on loans (NY Port Authority this week), which will
lead to municipal bankruptcies (only banking richies can get secret low
interest 'loans' from the Fed printing presses because they are such good
people and have invested money so wisely; working people by contrast have
to pay 20% interest to the banks because working people are 'risky').
None of these huge deflationary 'meals' are even close to having made
it through the python yet (we haven't even reached the peak of 'funny'
mortgage resets yet, much less the consequences of them). Meanwhile,
back in Washington, yet more war and defense spending bills are being
prepared and will be passed. As Elaine Meinel Supkis says, the entire
Congress and Bush and Greenspan/Bernanke should be arrested for fraud
for cutting taxes and lowering interest rates to almost zero, all while
launching *two* wars. Eat the rich before they eat us.
[Feb25'08] Sad to see that the violent, pointless piece-'o-crap movie,
no country for old men was given a bunch of awards. For what? It's the
emperor with no clothes! I'm very sorry to have paid them money to see
it without finding out about it first. Complete trash. I loved the Big
Lebowski. This one sucked. As one imdb commenter suggested, it seemed
like a joke -- they make a vile movie that abuses the audience and then
they watch as the self-flagellating idiots explain to themselves how deep
Tommy Lee Jones stupid lines are. It's Federico Krueger, chumps. I can't
wait for the sequel -- Anton Chigurh vs. Predator *and* Alien.
[Feb27'08] As expected last year by anybody who could fog a laptop
screen (e.g., me, above) the number of foreclosures is skyrocketing.
The number of mortgage resets is about to hit its peak -- but the
people who suddenly can't pay now aren't the ones foreclosing now! --
the current interest rate resets won't foreclose until this Fall. Banks
have already been completely drained (and more!) of their non-borrowed
reserves over the past two months. The worst could still be yet to come.
The weird complacency I get when talking to people about this sets
me on edge. I really wish we could get the next 6 months out of the
way quickly. And I especially don't like it when the richies
announce
to you that you're about to be f***ed (but of course, they still
get to keep theirs).
[Mar03'08] Scott Horton wrote an insightful
piece on the
embrace of torture by Americans, noting that Fox's "24" gave Americans
67 torture scenes in its first five seasons (up from virtually no torture
scenes on teevee in the 90's). Widespread torture was given up (at least
in the homeland of western countries) because: (1) it doesn't work, (2)
once rooted it spreads like kudzu, (3) there are no ticking time bombs,
and (4) it doesn't fit well with a free society. Many Americans now
shamefully think otherwise. Unfortunately, these tastes have a nasty
way of bubbling into a craze like the witch trials. It doesn't help
media broadcasting identical copies of these memes into everybody's
bedroom at the same time.
[Mar05'08] Interesting stats on the costs of using a car
here.
43,000 deaths a year and several times that many serious injuries a
year costing each big city person about $1000/year and each smaller city
person over $2000/year. At $164 billion/year, crashes are a visible chunk
of the GDP. For comparison, prisons -- another big component of state
budgets that has far outstripped what is spent on higher education and
put the US on the world map as the country with the highest percentage
of its population in jail -- cost a mere $50 billion/year.
[Mar08'08] Things certainly do look
shaky
when the regular press starts echoing whacko blogs like mine. But things
have looked shaky before -- e.g., late 1970's, 1987, 1998. In all those
cases, financial people got whipsawing psychological oscillations back
under control and life went on. Things seem hugely more precarious
then they were back then (esp. oil, food, unprecedented global size of
housing inflation and hedge fund leverage, the fact that at the *top*
of a huge housing bubble people have ended up with a record *low*
percent equity, the $200 billion Fed action this week, people
squatting in their multimillion dollar
seaside mansions because there is a year delay for the bank to get a court
date) but who knows? Maybe still not the big one? The fundamentals
of oil, food, and housing are all slow moving. The slopes either
side of their peaks are very shallow (even though the slopes from
unwinding huge leverage on them can be violent). A glance at
this
chart shows the largest recorded swing in summer/winter ice coverage
change in 2007/2008, coincident with extremely rough weather in China
(which destroyed 10% of its forests) and the northern US. If the rough
weather continues into summer, it could be a real doozy of a hurricane
season. Global warming means more precipitation in addition to warming.
Like I said above, I wish we could just get through the next 6 months
real quick...
[Mar08'08] Now that there is a peak oil video game (KAOS
Studios in New York just spent $15 million making Frontlines:
Fuel of War) my job is done: I guess there is no need to update my
peak oil pdf anymore :-}
[Mar10'08] A recent meme is that since the move to ethanol was prompted
by concerns about global warming, and since ethanol is bad and competes
with food, global warming must be a scam. Ethanol is certainly very bad.
But it's hardly being done because of concerns about global warming.
It would be better from a CO2 point of view to just burn the fossil fuels
used to make it directly, since burning ethanol of course generates CO2
(and the EROEI is almost 1:1). This is a little like claiming that peak
oil must be wrong because oil companies are run by pigmen. The second is
true but is completely unrelated to the first, which depends on geology
and maximum flow rates, not greed.
[Mar12'08] Admiral Fallon has resigned, perhaps, because like Rumsfeld,
he didn't feel it was strategically optimal to 'crush the ants'
at this particular point in time (Fallon's own words from the recent
bootlicking article written about him in Esquire). In Rumsfeld's case,
what happened after was the surge (more of the same). In this case,
it could be worse. This is just a few days after a US navy attack
group arrived in the mideast. The recent jump of oil to $110 may
be related. Most senior military officers seem to oppose a strike,
so getting rid of Fallon doesn't mean a strike is imminent. It also
indicates that there is dissension at the top. But on balance, I
don't think it's a good sign. A successful attack on an American ship
(false flag or otherwise) could rapidly change the situation (
this
came close to working). The threat of fast water-skimming cruise missiles
has been well rehearsed. Because of this, some have suggested that an
attack on Iran will only come when all the US ships in the Gulf *leave*
:-}
[Mar15'08] The poor wittle freemarket pigmen at Bear Stearns are
getting bailed out by the gubmint, just a few days after the $200
billion announcement. These are the same guys who say, "tough luck
bucko, the free market won't allow us to pay your health insurance".
Socialism is only for pigmen. The reason they are failing is because
their equally flush New York hedge fund rat-friends (e.g., Renaissance
'Technologies' [heh] Corp.) ratted them out to save their own a$$es,
last Wednesday and Thursday. Toss them in jail! Take all the away all
the huge bonuses they paid themselves just before the sh** hit the fan!
Don't bail them out by effectively taxing everybody else by devaluing
our money! Take their bonuses! Why should we pay more for food so these
scumbags can keep their 7th house? The irony of it all is that the recent
crisis seems to have been caused by various players in these
complex
ponzi schemes turning on each other. On a somewhat positive
note, many commentators seem to agree that Fallon's resignation
doesn't indicate an imminent Iran attack (e.g.,
Robert Parry).
Hope they're right. But Parry also says that this may just be (another)
postponement.
[Mar19'08] Supposedly, 2/3 of Americans oppose the war. But at the
same time, stay-in-Iraq-for-100-years McCain leads both Democrats in the
polls (46% to 40%)! Americans don't seems to think that the Iraq war has
anything to do with the plummetting economy. It's positively stupefying.
Maybe people realize that voting Democratic won't end the war. Plus,
I'm sure they feel that the rich have not been given enough tax cuts
and bailouts, and they feel that their own standards of living are
still too high and that it's unfair that more rich people don't have
yachts like they really don't deserve health care and that the
thiss.
[Mar22'08] The rates on three-month treasury bills yesterday went to 0.387
percent, the lowest level since 1954, and for the first time since 1993,
lower than in Japan. This means that some people are scared. Oil has
'plunged' to $101 as a result of speculators (probably using some of
the funny money recently doled out to them by central banks) having
to take profits to make margin calls (for other risky investments).
This shows, of course, that peak oil is wrong. And since I saw a few
flecks of snow riding my bike this morning in London, it means that
global warming is wrong, too. Whew, those two things had me scared
there for a while.
[Mar23'08] The New York State Teacher's Retirement System owns almost
half a million shares of Bear Stearns stock. They will lose over $50
million if J. Pirate Morgan (from Elaine Meinel Supkis) pockets the
remaining loot for $2 a share ($300 million). Their NYC building alone
is thought to be worth $1.5 billion. Where's Eliot Spitzer when you
*really* need him? Indirectly, taxes are being used to bail out the
guys with the yachts while stiffing the teachers. If socialism isn't
good enough for us, the bankers shouldn't get it either! The gov should
seize the yachts and the bonuses and sell them off for the teachers!
Just like they do will ill-gotten drug money. Ignore the suits and see
the reeking pirates underneath. The Amurrican people might even start
to get mad after they have funded another 10 or 20 of these.
[Mar25'08] I went
here
to see a video of the beginnings of what might be the sudden breakup of
the largest Antarctic ice shelf yet (the Wilkins Ice shelf, the size of
Northern Ireland) but first I had to sit through a commercial... for a
Land Rover SUV like thing. OK, I know I'm just being an old fogey who
doesn't get google gen humor.
[Mar30'08] On Monday, Henry Paulson will announce that the US government
is essentially planning to hand over the control of its banking system to
a the very private pigmen owners of the Fed that got us into our present
state, reducing the power of the SEC bank regulators in the process.
There will be no vote. This is like the beginning of the Iraq war.
Anybody whose mind was clear enough to think straight could see that
it was a very bad idea. A record number of us even got out onto the
streets, unprecedentedly, before the war had even started. Most of
the rest now admit privately it was a mistake (but won't, of course,
give us any credit for foresight, or remember or take responsibility
for what they thought back then). In any case, the demonstrations had
absolutely no effect because they immediately went away (mainly because
there was no draft). People now seem even more passive than back then.
Is it because there is about to be a huge explosion of discontent and I'm
just not hearing what people are actually thinking? One can always hope.
That the polls put McCain ahead (not that I think that the other two
would make much difference) suggests that the American mind remains more
seriously dazed and confused than ever. If people can even think about
voting for McCain, how could they possibly come to grips with the concept
of the peaking of world per capita energy use? Or the coming collision
between that and an economic and money system based on the concept of
continuous growth? Support for McCain is probably partly support for
a strongman in uncertain times. It's embarrassing that *he's* the best
strongman available! (not that I would have preferred a better
strongman).
[Apr01'08] In addition to stiffing each other and the New York Port
Authority, banks have suddenly stopped lending to students. And these
are the kind of ultra secure loans where they come after your parents and
kids if you die! (but they are not as profitable as credit cards with 25%
interest, and so out the door they go). The ripple effects of this are
likely to hit universities hard. The cost of a university education has
increased at several times the rate of inflation over the past 15 years.
Expensive as they are, universities are truly one of the few great things
that are really still 'made in the US', and long admired the world over.
The time has come to outsource them, too, I suppose. This is getting
awfully tunicate-like. Tunicates are animals whose larvae have certain
similarities to early vertebrates. One difference from vertebrates,
is that when the tunicate larva finally settles down and attaches
itself to a surface to become an adult sea squirt, the first thing it
does is jettison its brain. Americans can't you see that spending huge
amounts of money killing Iraqis -- not to mention it being a war crime
-- is wiping out the country and your retirement? You can't
pay
for your war crimes and your universities, too (graph by
RandomViolence).
[Apr05'08] We are now close to the peak of mortgage interest rate resets.
House prices in the US/UK/EU are still way (two to three times) over
3x yearly income, the historical rate at which it is possible to pay a
mortgage (plus or minus variations in interest rate). Mortgages are
getting harder and harder to get. At the same time, people are much
less enthusiastic about buying in a falling market. Foreclosures have
ballooned and are now as common as sales in many places in the US.
Personal saving rates have dropped below zero (a 20% down payment is hard
to amass with a negative savings rate). Banks would seem to have major
problems on their hands given how mortgage credit was used to spin out
huge amounts of additional debt/money creation. The recent moves to allow
banks to not declare all of these losses or to 'sell' them to taxpayers
hardly seem to be long term solutions. By any measure, we would seem to
be at a Wile-E.-Coyote suspended-in-air moment. The amount of unwinding
that has to happen to get things back to historical averages is truly
breathtaking. Yet, the general mood seems not *that* dark. And this is
all assuming that growth will resume once all the bad debt gets destroyed.
It's not clear to me that rapid growth can resume after the great unwind
is done. In another decade, we will be hitting the beginning of the
plateau of peak all-energy. This will constrain growth potential.
On positive side, at least peak all energy and peak per capita energy
is a gentle peak (compared to pigmen fear-greed oscillations).
[Apr12'08] Interesting numbers from a long (naturally :-} ) H.C.K. Liu
article
"Between 1925 and 1929 the total amount of outstanding installment credit
more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion while the GDP
rose from $91 billion to $104 billion. Today, outstanding consumer credit
besides home mortgages adds up to about $14 trillion, about the same as
the annual GDP". That is, in 1929, outstanding installment credit was 3%
of GDP in 1929, while outstanding consumer credit is now 100% of GDP.
Americans need a raise, not another loan. As Mike Whitney says, power
has to be taken from the financial pirates that put us in this mess or
they will continue to increase their share of the loot until they have to
abandon our sinking ship on private lifeboats overloaded with booty. Just
because the teevee doesn't call it class war doesn't mean the
lampreys
will voluntarily detach themselves from the body politic. They have to
be forcibly knocked off.
[Apr20'08] Despite the continuing moral, not to mention fiscal, drain of
the US/UK-directed Iraq genocide (over 1 million dead), Americans still
can't bring themselves to demand a withdrawal. I've read that people
are afraid to complain because they might 'get on a list'. This will be
looked upon unkindly in the fullness of time. I wonder what would have
to happen before Americans (and Britons) will speak out? House prices
halved? Weekly bank collapses? Things that really count? (as compared
to the mere lives of a million low-market-value human beings). At the
current rate, Americans and Britons will never demand a withdrawal.
The war occupation will end only when their economies collapses so far
it can't be maintained (or the troops revolt).
[Apr22'08]
This
remarkably Orwellian article about the death of Riad Hamad reads:
"Activist under FBI investigation found dead in lake, hands and legs
bound, eyes covered with duct tape -- police leaning toward suicide
ruling". War is peace.
[Apr23'08] Recently, the Bakken formation in North Dakota and Montana
has been hyped. It is not a new find. The oil bearing beds are mostly
rather 'tight' rock (i.e., not very porous and therefore hard to get
oil out of). So far 110 million barrels of oil have been produced from
Bakken over the last 50 years. Sounds like a lot, but don't mix up your
millions and billions. The *total* production so far is equivalent to
just 5 *days* of current US usage (about 20.7 million barrels a day),
or just 1.3 days of current world usage. Of course, there is a lot more
oil in there, but little of it is recoverable at a reasonable energy
return on energy investment ratio. The USGS estimates that there is
3.6 recoverable billion barrels left in Bakken (180 days of US usage).
This is similar to other highly inflated USGS numbers that have turned out
to be inconsistent with flat world production in the face of skyrocketing
oil prices over the past 4 years. A more realistic estimate
here is that the ultimate
recovery from Bakken will be around 500 million barrels (i.e., 390 million
new barrels past the 110 gotten over the past 50 years, or about 20 more
*days* of current US usage). It's criminal to have these glowing reports
without even the most basic context (US usage of 20 million barrels a
day, Bakken a well-known oil bearing formation that has produced 110
million barrels total, etc). Simple grade-school-level division shows
that the wolf is at the door, and even 30 more Bakkens wouldn't make
him go away.
[May16'08] The parallel reality in which
this
article exists is amazing to me. I link to Evans-Pritchard sometimes,
but the unbelievable ignorance about oil reserves and possible oil
production rates on display here (which includes most of the comments)
is dizzying. For Evans-Pritchard, I guess it's just an occupational
hazard of being an economist. For the rest, study some physics,
chemistry, geology, and agriculture!
[Jun03'08] I'd have a tough time making up stuff
like this:
Halliburton sells $1.2 million worth of toasters to the government for
$2,000 each, after stealing them (!) from a discount appliance warehouse,
under the cover of an FBI consumer protection raid. To justify the
price, they have 4 Pentagon generals inspect one, eventually resulting in
database programmers inventing over 200 components, all priced separately,
some of which contain expensive "heat resistant platinum alloys".
Fearing for her life, the attempted whistle-blower on this scheme flees
to Canada.
[Jun04'08] There are currently 18.5 million empty houses in the US.
Young people need about 1.85 million new houses a year. About 0.5
million homes are demolished per year to build something new on the
lot. About 1.1 million homes are vacated per year by old people.
Even in recession, home builders are still adding about 1 million
homes per year. Add all these together and you get 0.35 million net
empty houses occupied. That's an awful lot of inventory still to
clear (it would take 50 years at current rates!) (stats from
here).
It is a relief to be (just) past the peak in mortgage resets mentioned
in previous posts. But the numbers in this post suggest that the housing
market will remain distressed for a long time.
[Jun08'08] As pension funds and other speculators (heh!) pile into oil
and food, even going as far as buying actually food, not just futures
(the Enron-i-zation of wheat!), oil and food prices have bumped up a
little faster than they would have otherwise. The main source of the
long term rise, though, is simply that demand is bumping up against
max supply. Oil and food may slump back a little ("oil plunges to
$110! we're saved! the commie hippies were wrong!"). This will take a
little pressure off of countries that subsidize gasoline. Those subsidies
effectively increase taxes there, however, and as oil prices increase,
they effectively increase the cost of labor. This is beginning to
finally put the brakes on the global labor arbitrage that has gutted the
industrial economies of the US (and UK). A temporary oil price pullback
in a few months (if this even happens!) will not change the long term
contours of the drawdown of oil reserves. Despite the constant drone of
tabloid puff pieces about "a fantastic new oil discovery has just been
discovered" and "hippies have prevented us from drilling giant reserves
in ANWR/Californa/whatever", total world oil reserves numbers are *very*
slowly moving (well except when OPEC doubled its reserves during the
1980's oil glut). That means yearly discoveries (now running at best at
1/5 of yearly usage) are never going to make it safe to buy SUV's again;
but it also means that the falloff will be gradual, too (at first...).
Note that all this is about *oil* prices, not gasoline/petrol prices.
There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil. It is possible to make about
20 gallons of gasoline/petrol out of a barrel of crude oil. Dividing a
$130 barrel of crude by 20 gallons gives $6.50/gallon -- before refining
and transportation costs, taxes, etc. Gasoline/petrol made from oil
delivered today is going to cost well over $4/gallon.
[Jun13'08] It mkes me laugh to see
comparison
between the dot com run-up and rising oil prices. Sure, both computers
and oil are useful. But computers as we know them are not possible
without oil and other fossil fuels. Oil is the lifeblood of industrial
civilization, which now, includes computers. I hope we can find a
replacement for this lifeblood. In Portugal, Spain, the Philippines,
and Thailand, angry truckers blocked roads and set fire to the truck
of a scab. As oil gets more scarce, the price will fitfully go up,
eventually dwarfing taxes, subsidies, until it gets beyond the means of
most of the world to pay for it. That is the real meaning of demand
destruction -- not piddly 2% reductions in North American miles per
capita. These riots have already happened with only tiny reductions in
overall demand. It's tempting to make fun of people who would seem to be
threatening geological formations (and I confess I have done so above).
But that's not really their target -- the true target is other people
(like me) who are using the same dwindling resource.
[Jun22'08] Watching things turn out like I feared 5 years ago is
sure depressing. Mere price increases can't increase the *rate of
flow* of oil. The rate of flow of oil from tar sands will never
reach above a few percent of daily usage. Economics isn't physics.
I'm still hoping the attack on Iran will be foiled by conservative
elements of the military. It certainly isn't going to be stopped
by the public or by the civilian government; the Democratic worms
just bent over again and continued their unbroken record of fully
funding the war, and followed that up with support for a
naval
blockage of Iran. Election? What election? There is only one
ruling party.
[Jun27'08] Oil at $142 implies gasoline at $7 or $8/gallon (~20 gallons
of gasoline can be made from a 42 gallon barrel of oil). I
predicted a number of
years ago that peak oil would really begin to hit in 2008. I'm not at all
happy to probably be right. I don't care that everybody said I was too
much of an alarmist. If the crazies can be prevented from attacking Iran,
oil should fall back a little. But the main reason for its high price
is that we have reached maximum flow rates. Unless demand goes down,
prices won't go down either (they will go higher even if demand stays flat
because flow rates may soon begin to slowly go down). Sure there are
a bunch of useless parasites sucking money-for-nothing out of oil price
volatility. It's unlikely the rabble will treat them kindly at the end
of the day. As much as this parasitic occupation disgusts me, it is not
the primary driver for oil prices. It's merely high rollers at the craps
tables on the Titanic, right before the tables got really wet...
[Jul03'08] It's pathetic to see all the talk about the 'inflation'
threat from high oil prices. High oil prices aren't inflation -- they
simply mean oil demand is bumping up against oil peak flow rates, period.
As I've said many times before, oil isn't an optional purchase, but the
lifeforce (literally) of industrial society. As oil prices increase,
businesses will close. Wages will *fall* as unemployment increases.
Banks will fail because unemployed people will get (further) behind on
their mortgages. The supply of credit (AKA money) is constricting.
Banks are rushing to find some way of making sure rich people don't
lose any of their tax-free, ill-gotten gains. In the face of all this,
the central European bank is warning of the danger of a (poor people)
wage spiral. To show that they got the message, EU truckers should
picket and blockade the banks instead of the ports.
[Jul10'08] Cantarell in Mexico, (formerly!) the world's
second-largest-producing oil field after Ghawar, is now
declining
at an average annual rate of 14%. Eeesh. I was worrying about --
and writing about -- this almost 4 years ago. Now Cantarell really is
"falling off a cliff". That's a *nasty* lot of depletion to make up
for, esp. when you consider that it has to come from a large number
of new wells that are tiny cousins of a super giant like Cantarell.
I wish I hadn't been right. This is not because 'the Mexicans don't
use up-to-date 'murrican technology'. In fact, the rapid decline rate
is precisely because Mexicans *did* use up-to-date technology -- like
horizontal wells and early nitrogen injection. And that's why many
of us could see the cliff coming 4 years ago. In another few years,
the same thing will start to happen to Ghawar. Just great. The lower
overall decline rate of existing wells (around 4-5% per year) means we
have to find the equivalent of a new Ghawar -- the largest oil field
ever found in the world -- every two years, forever. Somehow, I think
this won't happen, eh? How on earth can the 'planning' nincompoops
*possibly* think about building new runways now? What are they smoking?
Their ignorance of basic geology is just stunning. At these rates, we're
looking at the possibility of serious social unrest in five or ten years.
Now I know, that's the far distant future. Whew, I was worried there
for a while.
[Jul13'08] Meanwhile, back with the money geniuses, IndyMac gets
bailed out, taking out 10-20% of the total capitalization of FDIC.
Not bad! The FDIC maintains reserves of a little over 1% of the value
of the deposits that it insures. So that means that it is currently
insuring about 350 IndyMac-equivalents with 5 or 10 IndyMac-equivalents
of reserves. That won't cause anyone else to panic I'm sure. We're all
professionals here, you know...
[Jul15'08] One thing I didn't forsee above was the advent of the Peak Oil
self help book (can a Suze Orman book on Women and Oil be far behind?).
I always knew I was terrible at business (tho the internet helps).
Speaking of the internet, I recently found out from it that Martha Farah
was at the 2008 Bilderberg meeting. Now that's different! And also
that vision researcher Joe Atick is now at L-1 -- the company behind
airport retinal scans -- from Fallujah to Heathrow.
[Jul19'08] A recent estimate from Bridgewater Associates is that bank
losses may reach $1,600 billion (earlier estimates were in the range of
$500 billion). For comparison, the Savings and Loan disaster from the
80's was $125 billion, largely paid by taxpayers. Even after inflation
adjustment, the current disaster could turn out to be 5-10 times as big.
If banks and bank-like thingees are bailed out by taxpayer money, it
could turn in one of the largest transfers of wealth from poor and middle
income to rich in the history of the US (similiar slow motion poor->rich
bailouts will likely occur in the UK and EU). Just because it's slow
doesn't mean the bankers aren't rifling through your wallet every day.
National health care? No chance. National bank share-holder care? *Now*
you're talking. Socialism only for rich people. Even though truckers
blocking deliveries to protest high oil prices is aimed at the wrong
target, any actual action trumps words (like mine, I suppose).
[Jul22'08] Roubini now estimates $2-3 trillion in losses and no
housing bottom until 2010. On the bright side, he says it won't be
as bad as the Depression. The UK and the EU have similar problems.
Germany -- the head of the pack -- actually contracted in the
second quarter. The global game of chicken is on. Last Sunday,
Evans-Pritchard said "If we are lucky, America will start to stabilise
before Asia goes down. Should our leaders mismanage affairs, almost
every part of the global system will go down together. Then we are in
trouble." I would say we are in trouble when the major way of
making
money today is to bet that another company will fail (particularly
profitable when you haven't even bought the shares that you are selling
short, i.e., 'naked shorting'). It has such a decline of the Roman
empire feeling to it. Don't do anything that might slow the decline of
industrial civilization -- instead we have a bunch of decadent fatties
reclining and stuffing their faces and betting from the sidelines on who
will crash and burn, between trips to the vomitorium. But the really
sad thing about this whole mess is that it is happening *before* peak oil
or peak natural gas has really begun to bite! Significant year-on-year
production *declines* in oil probably won't start in earnest until
2012.
[Jul28'08] When I went to college in the 1970's at a state supported
university in Illinois. I was able to make enough money at a
just-over-minimum-wage summer job to pay for both tuition and room
and board for the year (about $2,000/year). I stayed an extra year
as an undergraduate (no longer allowed there) and learned a lot from
excellent teachers who had more teaching experience than many teachers
at better-rated universities. Thirty years later, the minimum wage is
only 50% higher but the cost for tuition and room and board at that same
university is *1000%* higher (over $20,000/year), in part because the
states including Illinois have withdrawn funding for Universities and
diverted it to things like prisons (California used to spend twice as
much on universities as prisons; now it's more than the other way around).
Professors' salaries have more or less kept pace with inflation (too bad
they didn't go up 1000%, too :-} ) but permanent 'temporary' non-tenure
track workers have fallen considerably behind. Meanwhile, the students
emerge from college massively in debt with 30 year loans with usurious
rates (some ballooning to 11% after a few years). Like the situation
with housing, where house prices doubled or tripled while salaries
stayed the same, this is *not* a sustainable situation and will have to
unwind at some point. Too bad universities can't charge 10% interest per
year on ideas generated there like banks do on the money they generate.
It's certainly more mental work generating ideas than generating money
(the automatic consequence of fractional reserve lending). And it doesn't
take much mental effort to borrow money at 3 or 5% and then charge some
poor student 11%. I learned that kind of math back in the third grade.
With current trends, universities will be once again turned back into
the luxuries for the rich they were a hundred years ago.
[Jul28'08] There was an interesting report
here about
how funds for repairing roads are being impacted by people driving less
(3.7% fewer miles than this time last year). Trucks do a great majority
of damage to roads (over 99%), because road damage goes up as a high power
of axle load, but they are not taxed proportionately. So car drivers
are subsidizing the trucking industry through gas taxes and road-repair
taxes (you never hear libertarians complaining about this compared to
the way they complain about taxes for railroad maintenance). This is
an excellent example of the unrecognized mechanics of peak oil -- and
it already became obvious after only a tiny drop in driving! I hate to
imagine what the roads will look like when oil prices reach $400/barrel.
It's such a shame. Instead of leaving us great, big, beautiful bicycle
lanes, industrial civilization might end up instead pounding unmaintained
roads into big dusty, cracked up messes and then leaving us to pick our
way around zillions of potholes (a lot harder in a bike than an SUV).
Instead of addressing any of this, the Pentagon (=government) has
unveiled a 2009 military budget of over half a trillion -- the highest
ever, even after adjusting for inflation. Note that this huge tax bill
*doesn't* include funds for the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the CIA,
the surveillance agencies, the spy satellites, etc, etc, much of it now
privately
contracted, and not even overseen by the government (most signals
intelligence is collected by SAIC not the NSA). As I've said before,
Americans are pouring their country down the toilet, without a whimper.
It should be pretty obvious to even a ten year old that all that military
spending isn't helping the country. Once the country's been flushed,
it's going to be awfully hard to put all that sh*t back together.
In virtually all historical cases, it never came back out of the sewer
in one piece.
[Jul30'08] Here is one of America's finest
slowing down
a bicyclist. Before this video came to light, the cop filed a
report that the bicyclist had assaulted him. How about mister fat guy
gets to ride a bicycle for a year as community service! It's the same
idea as requiring people getting a driving license to ride a bicycle
in traffic. If there had been a similar video for the following raid,
perhaps we could have avoided the travesty of 8 Minneapolis police
SWAT team members being awarded bravery medals (WTF?) for
shooting
up the wrong home. 'Bravery medals' for cowardly
storm troopers. Disgusting. Don't these guys have
any shame? Just remember, make sure a friend gets a
video,
else you're toast (
this guy, for
example, tasered 19 times *after* he broke his back, unfortunately lacks
a video).
[Aug01'08] The temporary oil drop may be a good sign that the Iran
war lunatics are in temporarily in retreat, as evidenced by various
recent leaks: signs of informal negotiation with Iran, Admiral
Mullen (a strong supporter of Israel) going to Israel and
warning
against a second USS Liberty, the
Hersh
leak of Cheney's shooting-at-SEALs-dressed-like-Iranians
plan. Let's hope it sticks as the housing/credit bubble
continues to unwind, racheting up the pressure. Looks like there's
still
a ways to go in that process...
[Aug06'08] Alt-A mortgages (e.g., pay option adjustable rate mortgages)
have started to implode in the US, keeping default rates up, even as
subprime defaults have started to fall. Pay option ARMs have insane
schedules where you pay less than just the interest until the principal
gets to say, 125% of the original loan, then suddenly you have to pay
full interest plus principal. I remember when these came out. From the
beginning, it was clear that they were time bombs. US house prices
are already down over 30%. Many commentators worry that prime mortgages
are next. To get mortgages back into historical alignment with salaries,
prices must continue down. Ouch. Of course, salaries could be raised.
That, of course, is completely off the table -- socialism is only for
rich people (corporations have begun raiding their own pension funds to
pay extra dividends to the smelly pirates that run them).
[Aug20'08] A brilliant member of the proud, the few, the TSA ("thousands
standing around") decided to perform an impromptu overnight
'security
check' to see if someone could break into parked aircraft. Or perhaps
he was was on a mission to plant something on a plane (that he himself
was guarding, of course) to see if pilots would find it, which would
generate a fine if the pilots missed it (makes sense if you think that
finding things hidden by TSA numbskulls is one of a pilot's main jobs...).
Anyway, back to to TSA idiot. He climbed up onto the cockpits of a bunch
of planes using delicate flight control sensors as a ladder, damaging the
sensors on 9 of the planes, grounding them, and creating havoc at O'Hare.
The pilots were furious, saying that the TSA was endangering air safety.
Why can't these fine Americans just stick to keeping us safe from our
suntan lotion and bottled water and little girl's snow globes?
[Aug20'08] Now that Obama has picked
"I am
a Zionist" Biden as VP, I suppose McCain can go for Lieberman.
I don't see how Biden could posssibly rescue the votes of Democrats
who have problems with Obama's skin color. Amazingly, it looks like
the doddering and dangerous McCain could win. If it's any consolation,
Biden is probably worse than McCain on the Iraq holocaust (1.5 million
people dead).
[Aug24'08] The new NIST explanation of the 5 PM collapse of 47-story
WTC7 (a building not hit by a place) now gets rid of diesel fires (the
original FEMA explanation) and damage from the earlier WTC1 collapse
(many other reports) as explanations of the collapse, and attributes it
instead to stresses (changes in length) caused by thermal expansion,
caused by office fires. A collapse from office fires due to thermal
expansion stress is unprecedented for a steel framed building (steel is an
excellent conductor of heat). The NIST explanation also doesn't explain
reports of molten steel (slag mixed with melted concrete, extremely high
surface temperatures weeks after the collapse, and iron-rich microspheres
in dust collected immediately after event) in WTC7 debris, none of which
could have resulted from office fires.
[Aug30'08] Here is an
amazingly clueless
Will Greider article in the Nation about McCain's choice of Sarah
Palin as vice-president, calling it a desperation move. As some of
the commenters pointed out, it's naive to call it 'desperation' when
McCain is tied or even ahead in some polls. I think it will probably
be the thing that clinches the election for McCain. Of course,
I completely failed to predict something like this in my comment
above, not having a working political strategist's bone in my body.
But I'm good at recognizing the fruits of that expertise. A
genius
move. It will be hard to pick on her obvious lack of experience
from the 'left' and because she is a woman and not the presidential
candidate. She has the strong support of AIPAC. Unbelievable that
that a doddering scumbag carpet bomber baby killer war criminal
will probably win. Hurricane Gustav bearing down on the Gulf coast
offshore rigs and pipelines creates some uncertainty. But even
there, a (semi-)natural aspects of a disaster will distract attention
from the underlying cause of high oil prices (we're running out).
It remains beyond me why anyone would want to be president of any
country given the economic s-storm bearing down, laid on top of
the real start of Peak Oil. I know, think of the bright side of
life -- all things must pass, but they will pass at a more
stately
rate than anyone expects (I'm hoping).
[Sep01'08] Well, OK, the McCain-thing wasn't looking too bouncy
here,
but maybe he forgot to take his pills.
[Sep02'08] By any objective measure, the scenes from St. Paul show that
the US is slowly turning into a police state. Almost 1000 people were
arrested. The creeping militarization will be difficult to turn back,
esp. as conditions get hotter as we begin a long slow energy descent.
Not looking good. And as the California continues without a budget,
several *billion* a week is still being spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars/holocausts (more than 1.5 million killed so far). What wars?
You'd hardly know we were in two wars for longer than WWII from the
vile, supine press. Bringing that tax money back home could repair the
California budget in a few weeks, even with housing continuing to plummet.
Shame.
[Sep08'08] Well, sadly, as I had suspected above, Obama has for now fallen
decisively behind in the latest Gallup poll. McCain-Palin -- mostly
the result of Palin and the failure of leftish attacks on her! -- now
have a crushing 10% lead amongst likely voters. It makes me angry that
the left is so completely clueless -- even when it comes to seeing that
they have been knocked upside the head! The left's attacks completely
backfired, as even a political numbskull such as myself immediately
predicted they would. The bad thing is if the 'slightly left' loses,
I doubt they will learn a lesson. Americans deserve McCain and Palin.
They deserve creationism in the schools. They need to downsize all their
major universities. They need more prisons and more people in them.
Then need even more testing in schools because children are not far enough
behind. They need to stay in Iraq for 100 years. They need to protect
Israel because protecting Israel is a 'biblical imperative'. Americans
have a God-given right to run the country down the toilet.
[Sep14'08] Fingers crossed that everything doesn't go haywire with a bunch
of jittery money creeps all trying to suck each others blood on Monday.
Looks like the Barclays Lehman bid has been withdrawn.
[Sep17'08] The central European bank injected 30 billion euros (about
1/3 of what they injected in August 2007) on Monday to try to head off
interbank chaos caused by American problems (collapse of 158 year old
Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest US investment bank and the biggest
bankruptcy in history, and the fire sale of Merrill Lynch to BofA).
Today, $75 billion dollars were proposed to be injected by the Fed for
the same purpose. Sadly, my business-friendly friends who assured
me that derivatives were a safe way of milking billions of dollars
out of people who actually make things (Lehman paid out $5.7 billion
in ill-gotten bonuses in 2007) seem to have been wrong. Lehman had a
trillion or more in derivatives nominally worth a substantial fraction
of the US GDP, which are now in an 'uncertain' state. The US stock
market dropped 4.4% on Monday. The dollar, somewhat mysteriously,
remained strong relative to oil, the euro, and the pound, for now
at least. Meanwhile, the slaughter to control the oil in Iraq and
the opium in Afghanistan continues to the tune of a billion dollars
every 2 days (the Chimp Who Can Drive has it right
here
as does Chalmers Johnson
here).
At this rate, the endless war won't stop until the US and the UK
completely collapse economically. Despite all the central bank attempts
to inject money, it looks like money is currently being destroyed faster
than it can be made. Overnight interbank interest rates doubled to 6.4%
on Monday evening -- their highest since 2001 and then went over
10%
on Tuesday evening (normally, this number tracks the Fed, or vice
versa!, which is currently at 2%). European banks are being hit up
for dollars because there are so tight in the US. All of this makes
money scarcer and causes the value of money to increase relative to
things -- like oil, AKA deflation -- even despite things that would
normally be highly inflationary like the Fannie and Freddie takeover.
Others argue that it's not really deflation but only temporary efforts to
raise money (deleveraging) by selling profitable things like oil-related
investments. I suppose we'll know in a year or two for sure. Smells like
deflation.
[Sep18'08] It's worth noting that the total amount of money used
by the public-US-gov-slash-private-Fed to feed the slavering money
trolls ($1-2 trillion) is approaching the amount of public money
invested in the Iraq/Afghanistan holocaust/oilgrab ($1+ trillion,
including a massive $0.6 trillion dollar 'defense' bill
passed
this Wednesday!). It's has also, unfortunately, used up most of
the short term reserves available to the Fed. No tumbrils for money
trolls yet (the sh*t-carts symbolically used to haul the aristocracy to
the guillotine), but history has a nasty way of returning for a visit.
The yield of 3-month US treasury bills has fallen to 0.02 percent,
gold shot up almost $100 dollars, and oil went up $10, indicating that
all the trolls have run for cover at the same time. The
last
time short term interest rates were that low was 1940. Normally,
short term interest rate moves like this are quickly followed by the Fed
dropping interest rates to match. However, since the Fed is already at
only 2%, there is not much leeway. When the Fed interest rate reaches 0%,
then the money that it loans into existence out of nothingness truly *is*
being "printed". That's a bad thing. That trolls are willing to accept
zero interest for their ill-gotten stash is a bad sign for normal people.
Danger ahead. the housing market can't stabilize when people are being
fired. Transferring even more money from small people to the trolls
won't help. Things remain unstable. The vampire trolls can't control
themselves. As long as the bailouts continue, they will pick off weakened
companies one by one. They don't care if the entire country is destroyed.
They'll leave with the loot. It's pure, uncreative destruction.
[Sep20'08] If the wars continue, the US is in serious danger of a
major economic collapse. Voting in Obama won't help at all! -- he will
continue the two current wars and has said he is strongly behind starting
the next one in Pakistan. There aren't enough police to stop a true
public uprising like a general strike. At this point, that is the only
thing that would make the rulers stand up and listen. The problem is,
that can't happen until people are more desperate. Right now, they are
uselessly talking about Palin. She's completely irrelevant. It's a
delicate balance between collapse inspiring people to act to prevent
further collapse and mere galloping collapse. Historically, distracting
events have 'happened' at times like these to avoid public action.
[Sep22'08] "Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and
social." -- Gaetano Salvemini explaining fascism in 1936.
[Sep23'08] "It's the best game in town. Take a huge amount of risk, be
paid exceedingly well for it and if you screw up -- you have absolute
proof that the government will come in and bail you out at the expense
of the rest of the population (who did not share in your profits in the
first place). -- Daniel Amerman.
[Sep23'08] Unfortunately, US home prices, at least on the coasts, are
still way out of kilter with salaries. Either home prices come down
by another, say, 50% or salaries go up by 50%. There is little chance
of increased salaries happening if the small remains of US industry
continues to be offshored. The bailout won't increase salaries, so
I don't see how it can possibly help home prices. It will *cost* the
average family $10,000 to pay for the yachts of Goldman's executives (the
man behind the bailout of Goldman, Paulson, was formerly a Goldman exec)
-- without counting interest. Whatever was caused by the current drop in
home prices will continue to be caused, for at least another two years.
It seems we are perhaps halfway through at best. Congressmen will
publically complain about the bailout, but since the richies in need of
the bailout have them all by the b*lls, it will pass (just like last
week's record 'defense' spending bill -- passed in the midst of the
biggest crisis since the Depression). About the only thing that would
convince the congress worms to vote against it would be an insurrection.
This is disgusting bailout of the piggies, paid for by people making
$50,000 per year. And as I never tire of saying, all this stupidity is
occurrring before peak oil has even hit. We're fiddling while industrial
civilization burns. Even though it's yet more fiddling, I wouldn't
mind seeing a few bankers get their yachts seized. I don't care about
that constitutes a direct a economic attack on the rest of us normal
people (people for whom the FDIC limits were written). As things start
to unravel further, there is going to be an unstable competition between
(1) people grabbing for their 'pitchforks' (2) people getting in line
behind the next Mussolini (of course, eventually, the Italians took
'pitchforks' to Mussolini himself and hung him and his girlfriend from
meat hooks), and (3) people realizing that the continued powering of
industrial civilization is an even bigger problem than stupid money
games/cheating, because thermodynamics is the one place where cheating
and inflation truly isn't possible. You'd think now, with everything
poised to blow up, that military spending (at almost $1 trillion, about
equivalent per year to the proposed bailout) would be on the table.
No chance. The Congress worms (approval rating: 15%) just approved the
biggest military spending bill *ever*. Absolutely insane.
[Sep29'08] What I really meant to say in the last comment was, since large
banks demanded (and got) that their credit default swaps markets, etc.,
not be regulated or overseen, they should not derive the positive perks
of regulation -- a giant consumer-funded bailout. They should have to
figure out how to unwind all the problems privately as well. See? much
more temperate sounding :-} . Instead, as described fawningly in
this
article, the brave titans (e.g., Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman)
went directly to the gubmint once they faced a sure loss. Of course,
Blankfein "participated in the Fed discussions to safeguard the entire
financial system, not his firm's own interests." How do we know?
Well, we don't! -- since virtually all of the things the public is
going to be bailing out are secret, not publically traded! The deal
was conducted at night, under virtual martial law in Congress, with
dissident congressmen (bit of an oxymoron) being escorted by police out
of hearing rooms. It's hard even to imagine a petty criminal telling
crap like that to a judge. Here is the best I can do: "your honor,
I was only stealing this particular DVD player for the health of the
entire consumer electronics industry" (actually, it should be, 'I was
only stealing all the branches of this particular store chain' ...).
I suppose getting mad is one notch above generalized misanthropy.
[Sep29'08] The close (yes-205, no-228) House vote-down of the bailout
was came out like this: Democrats: yes-140 to no-95, and Republicans:
yes-65 to no-133. Pelosi and Reid look like two sycophantic sidekicks
for the rich people coup. They demanded no changes (even the tiniest
bit of oversight, actual ownership, legality!, etc). It is crystal
clear that having wall street billionaires (Paulson) bailing out other
rich wall street gambler/billionaires (from the same frigging firm!) is
not going to help average people with now-falling salaries to take out
normal loans to buy houses that are still at least 2 times the price
they were before the bubble (back when people took out normal loans).
The whole idea of gambling is that you can win *or* lose. Instead,
the bailout will take money from public health and Social Security --
just like Russia under Yeltsin. Immediately after the bill failed, the
Fed announced it was creating/pumping $630 billion into the financial
system anyway. Nya-nya, stupid peasants. Note that a lot of this
came from temporary swap lines of credit with Bank of Japan and Bank
of England contributing the most, but also Australia, Canada, Sweden,
Denmark, and Norway. These are short term (until Jan 2009, woohoo).
The fact that the US has to go to foreign banks to get dollars suggests
that dollars are still rapidly disappearing. After the deal failed, stock
in Goldman -- now supposedly a 'normal' bank -- sank 24%. That tells
you something about where insiders thought a chunk of the $700 billion
would go to. The real purpose of a good part of the money would have
been to prop up share prices so the that the lampreys who run them
could dump their shares at a good price and escape the burning country
in their private jets to their Costa Rica compounds. But the game's not
over yet. The people united behind the bill were -- if you can believe
it! -- Shrub, Pelosi, Barney Frank, Paulson, Obama, McCain (McBama),
and Warren Buffett. It was opposed by over 80% of the public. Amazing.
There is an excellent summary of Bush's speech by Craig Murray
here
[Sep30'08] Just because I was against the crony bailout doesn't mean I
think there isn't a danger of deflation. If a normal (i.e., smallish)
bank fails with $100 billion assets (assuming standard, conservative 10%
reserves), it potentially removes $1 billion dollars from the economy.
And some of the things concocted by off-duty physicists that are
now swirling around in the depths of the unconscious have effective
reserves ratios 5 or 10 times that. Depending on the ratio of money
destruction to money creation, even a $700 billion injection can end up
being deflationary. That may explain why the dollar just strangely went
up (they were getting rarer). How all this unfolds depends on how much
the monkeys trust each other. Since deflations are good for rich people,
they may even be looking forward to one. Deflations are not good at all
for normal people that don't have a lot of money. But for an unstable
system with very large opposing forces, hyperinflationary episodes are
equally possible, since they can be caused by small differences.
[Sep30'08] There was a lively discussion in dailykos about some fine
print in the bailout bill that would have allowed zero bank reserves
sooner (zero reserves were originally proposed to start 2011 in a 2006
bill I didn't know about, changed in the failed bailout bill to start
in a few days, Oct 1 2008). The standard 10% fractional reserves rule
for banks allows Fed generated-from-nothing money to be multiplied by
10 as it cycles in and out of the bank, which is argued to be good
when the economy is growing, since it matches money to more things.
Zero reserves increase the multiplier of Fed-injected money as high as
borrowers and lenders will allow. Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect
of all this stupid mess is that it is terribly destructive to the real
economy and distracts attention from it, *just* when we need to invest in
new real energy systems and new real transport systems. We don't need
more bankers -- we need small cars, more electric rail, solar electric
and heat, heat pumps, better windows, and wind power. We have plenty
enough bankers for that. Same for the UK. Americans have a relatively
short amount of time to prevent a Russian-like collapse from occurring
where a rapacious financial mafia harvest most of their assets.
[Oct01'08] The fact that the pound and the euro have continued to drop
relative to the dollar after the failure of the $700 billion bailout
bill should also be viewed in light of the strong foreign (British,
Chinese, German) component to the bailout given reports suggesting that
1/3 of the bailout would have ended up in British banks alone (the other
factor implied by the 'also' above is that dollars may be being destroyed
currently at a faster rate than pounds and euros). People have been
looking for reasons for the strong administration/Paulson support such
a large US-taxpayer-funded payout to foreign banks. One reason might
be threats of foreign retaliation/legal action for fraudulent sales.
It's funny the things that don't really make the news. Today, Ireland
performed a 400 *billion* euro bailout of its major banks. That's the
same size at the proposed US bailout -- even more remarkable given
Ireland's smaller size (24x as big as the US bailout!).
[Oct02'08] The second hack at the bailout (now 400 pages long) passes,
as expected. It contains such gems as "Sec. 308. Increase in limit on
cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands." and
"Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed
for use by children." That'll make this giant rich-person bailout OK.
Obama was behind it all the way. Pig Paulson now has the last laugh.
The overseas banks will get their hush money. As soon as it was passed,
the stock market went down -- a third of a trillion dollars.
[Oct08'08] Okie-dokie. Not a good week. Plus, there's serious
S about to HTF on Thursday [Oct09 update: that particular S (
the
settlement of Lehman credit-default-swaps) now isn't planned to HTF
until Friday]. Hopefully, next week will be better [well now, maybe not].
Several stock markets have been closed to stop crashes (which often occur
immediately on their reopening). It's hard to concentrate! People are
scared and broke, and have suddenly stopped spending, scaring exporters
like Japan, whose stock market dropped almost 10% today. Bailing out
rich people won't fix this. It could only be fixed by giving money
to the lower 70% of the population, who could then buy more things and
pay their mortgages. Rich people don't buy Priuses; and they buy their
houses with cash.
[Oct09'08] What a depressing mess. We've destroyed Iraq and killed a
million and a half people there. A horrible war crime approaching the
size of our Vietnam holocaust (3 million Vietnamese people killed).
Hardly a peep out of the candidates/media over the last two years
about this (except about protecting our 'boys' who followed the
orders to do it). OK, so utter moral depravity isn't newsworthy. But
amazingly, neither is utter fiscal depravity. Barely a peep out of the
candidates/media about the fact that we're *still* pouring 100+ billion
a year down the drain in Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan to destroy countries
and kill all those people, plus another 500+ billion visible and 150+
billion hidden to fund an insanely bloated military -- all in spending
bills passed the same damn week as the economy starts to fly apart!
The UK is doing exaclty the same thing on a somewhat smaller scale.
What is wrong with Anglos?
[Oct11'08] There is a rumor going around that much of the sudden market
drops of the past two weeks ($5-7 trillion lost in world shares last week
-- more than 10% of the world GDP) were due to forced selling of stocks
to raise cash to cover suddenly-changed margin requirements for broker
dealers (changed by large banks from 15% to 35%), rumored to peak this
Monday. To be honest, I don't really understand what these words mean in
a deep way. Who writes these rules? How have they varied over the past?
Are these rules even public? Then there is the more 0.4 *trillion*
dollar Lehman insurance claim. Well nobody has volunteered to pay yet --
all that happened at the vaunted 'auction' was that each exposed bank
bought its own offerings for 8% of their full value. The amount due
is about 1/30 of the GDP of the entire US, or 10 times as much as the
US spends yearly biomedical research every year, or almost as much as
the US spends yearly on its ridiculously bloated military. These super
bankers are worth it, though, since they perform such an important duty
of inventing things that are 10 or 100 times as expensive as all of the
stuff in entire the world, and by skimming off massive amounts of money
from people who actually make things. If they weren't helping us this
way, we might be wasting money on fixing and updating the infrastructure
so that industrial civilization stays going 20 years from now. 20 years,
however is almost an infinitely long amount of time into the future and
therefore impossible to visualize. There is no need to bail out people
losing their homes (one family every 10 seconds) because these people
don't count. Only mortgage *bonds* get bailed out -- not the mortgages
themselves.
[Oct13'08] The Nikkei went up 14% on Tuesday (canceling the equivalent
drop the previous Friday) so Europe and America will probably follow
later today. It seems that the waterfalls of central bank money have
finally stabilized things for a while. This won't fix underlying problems
(US and UK housing still insanely overpriced compared to salaries and
savings, number of people underwater on mortgages still increasing, a
US home is still being lost to foreclosure every 10 sec), but Newspeak
now says 'this week of fear has officially ended, back to work'. Not a
peep about the possibility of recapitalizing the economy by straightening
out the tax code. Why should capital gains taxes be much less for rich
people (15%) than taxes on the much smaller 'capital gains' (i.e. wages)
of poorer people? Unfortunately, the next 'week of fear' has already
probably already been scheduled to keep the bottom 3/4 of the population
from asking for this. Also, I think there is some danger of a military
action over the next month.
[Oct15'08] The Baltic dry goods index has crashed 82% down (!) since May,
reaching a 5-year low. This measures how many goods are being shipped.
This means that people are buying a lot less things and that producing
countries will have to start producing less things. This is actually a
good thing overall, given the upcoming energy crunch. However, the costs
of this shrinkage are distributed extremely unfairly. The richest 1% of
the world have almost doubled their piggish share in the last two years.
The laws have to be changed to rein in the pigs before the place turns
into Argentina (with even more guns).
[Oct16'08] The Democrats look like they might win (even after subtracting
a 7% race factor from the opinion polls). It's unlikely to make much
difference, though. Look at the UK. The 'Democrats' have been in power
continuously (Blair, Brown). I have great difficulty detecting much
difference between the US and the UK with regard to continuous support
and funding for the wars, support for torture, support for detention
without charges, support for 'rendition' flights, support for an all
encompassing surveillance/police state, corporatization of every part of
life, and basic style of bank bail outs. There *are* some differences
between the countries (e.g., more socialized medicine in the UK); but
Blair/Brown had nothing to do with them.
[Oct18'08] Banks are now borrowing (into existence) almost half a
trillion dollars every *day* from the Fed. At this rate, banks are
borrowing slightly more than the total US GDP -- *every month*.
These are supposed to be short term loans. However,
these
two
graphs are not reassuring. In order to properly compensate the wise
bankers for bringing us to this point, they are being given
pay
and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of the US government
bail-out package! London bankers absconded with a
similar
amount of loot. Of course, if they weren't paid such outrageous
salaries, we wouldn't have been able to retain their 'services', right?
That's some serious pitchfork material, banker guys. If this continues,
it could turn away from simple plunder of the rubes to real class war.
Put Paulson and all the Gollum Sachs pals he hired to hand out money
in jail -- now! Martial law won't work in the US. The country is too
big, people have too many guns, and there are simply too many people.
The US hasn't been able to control Iraq after utterly destroying its
infrastructure, cowardly bombing it daily since 1991, killing a million
and a half people since 2003, engineering Negroponte-style death squads,
and fomenting inter-religious wars. And that's only 27 million people.
If night raids, smart bombs, and scorched earth didn't work there, a few
crowd control 'ray' guns and some tear gas will be just a drop in the
bucket if a real insurrection starts at home. Don't let the right wing
free-markets-will-solve-everything guys off the hook -- the failure of
the market is obvious (even with all the behind-the-scenes cheating and
drug money laundering!). A number of the largest, meanest banks have been
nationalized/socialized with a fascist private corporation in full secret
control of public finances. The market has failed utterly by completely
seizing up. The 'toxic wastes' are not being traded at all. Their value
is therefore undefined. The wonderful new things the unregulated bankers
invented have brought the entire world to the precipice. Banks are
so scared of each other that they won't even lend each other money
for a day (and they wonder why people don't trust them?!). This is a
time when major social change is actually possible -- for the better,
or for the worse. In order for things to get better, the rot has to be
brought entirely into public view. The 'candidates' aren't going to do
it, since they are just worm-like vestigial appendices attached to the
colons of Goldman-Sachs and JPM. Their 'debate' was utterly laughable
given the current situation. People have to get really mad. Before
peak oil hits.
[traveling]
[Nov04'08] Election is today. There are surprisingly small policy
differences between McCain and Obama on some of big issues of the day --
'defense' spending, continuing the occupation of Iraq, bombing Pakistan
and/or Iran, position on the Palestinians, 'bank' (=rich person) bailout,
supporting big pharma over universal health insurance, supporting big Ag.
Of course the doddering, cancer-ridden McCain is a disgusting lump.
But Goldman-Sachs is Obama's largest contributor. Many of the bailed-out
banks spent a majority or even all of their public bailout cash (e.g.,
$10.7 *billion* at Morgan Stanley) paying bonuses to the greedy rich
pigs that have literally brought capitalism and world trade to its knees.
Obama is behind this overt class war all the way. It is true that Obama
is more friendly to science, which would benefit my kind, and arguably
humanity. But I don't look forward to almost the same policies as Bush,
but with a politically and EU-ally correct (Obama was polling 99-1 in
France) black Democratic face. In the UK, Brown was elected largely to
get out of Iraq. He completely ignored this charge once in office, as
will Obama. I *do* love the fact that redneck red states will probably
have a black man as preznit.
[Nov05'08] Obama wins by 4% percent in the popular vote -- closer
than the polls but thankfully a clear win. As Kent Ewing wrote
in Asia Times, "it is once again cool to be an American living
abroad". The giant election industrial complex slash morality play
finally ends, and the rest of the world breathes a sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, under the radar, over the past few pre-election weeks,
something brand new occurred with the US money supply, perhaps
the first example of real 'helicopter' money (from a comment a
few years ago by Bernanke). The following Fed graph shows that
bank
borrowing from the Fed erupted in November/December 2007
(after a small blip in August). The only other blip visible
at this scale is the tiny one around 9-11. This huge increase
in bank borrowing correlates with an equally large plunge of
net
free or borrowed bank reserves far into negative
territory (I find the whole concept of 'negative
reserves' blackly humorous) that started a month later in
January 2008. This was somewhat correlated with a
drop
in the dollar [e.g., Euro vs. dollar] that started in in September
2007 and picked up in early 2008. However, something completely new
occurred in the month before the election. The total amount of
US
cash dollars ("base money", which means notes and coins only, held
outside of the central bank and outside government, similar to M1)
made an unprecedented discontinuous upward jump from 0.87 trillion to
1.18 trillion -- a jump of 0.31 trillion, which should be compared with
a normal average smooth monthly increase of .000003 trillion (i.e., the
jump was 100,000 times larger than average). This increased the number
of paper dollars in circulation by a factor of 1.36. The only other
visble blips in base money are the (relatively) tiny ones for Y2K and
9-11 (easiest to see plotted on the same graph). This could be due to
panic withdrawals of 1/3 of a trillion dollars in cash (that would be
16 billion $20 dollar bills). Or it could include the first examples
of true 'helicopter' money. Unlike credit injected into banks to cover
paper losses, this would be actual printing of paper money. If so,
it would be quite inflationary for the dollar. The key question for me
is whether other central banks (e.g., UK, EU) might have done something
similar.
[Nov07'08] The appointment of Rahm Emmanuel is a very bad sign.
He is the Democratic master planner who among other things
engineered the Illinois pro-war legs-blown-off-in-Iraq female
wheelchair candidate at the midterms (who lost anyway!) and who is a
'realist' -- meaning, you tell people you are against the war, but
then you vote for a larger and larger amount of money for it each
year. It also concretizes an ultra-hard-right policy with respect
to Israel (he is an Israeli citizen). Other news reports
news
reports agree that the basic change in Obama foreign policy is going
to be style -- that is, no change from Bush! How's that for 2 days
after the election, suckers? (suckers includes the rest of the world).
Just because Obama can actually speak in coherent English sentences
*doesn't* make him the slightest bit better than Bush if his policies are
essentially the same (I have heard many people in America and outside
of it saying how thankful they are that they have somebody articulate
to replace the chimp). In fact, it's probably worse. With respect to
the domestic economy, as US carmakers sink into the muck, I sometimes
wish there was some way that all the SUV-people could be singled out for
having made the wrong decision on what they bought, so that only *their*
wages would be garnished to bail out GM/Ford etc. These things have to
be retroactive else how can people learn, right? The reason US carmakers
did what they did was that it was profitable (slap decorative crap around
a truck body and sell it with less pollution control and less hardware
for gas efficiency for an inflated price), but also -- and this is key
-- because a bunch of rubes fell for the stupid advertising and bought
zillions of them. The the Orwellian/corporate/surveillance/nanny state
has already started collecting the necessary database. Imagine what
additional profits could be made for the corporate/fascist state by taxing
the rubes for having fallen prey to its very own advertising. This
reminds me of the corporate state duking it out (fast food advertisers
versus big pharma anti-fat drugs) inside your very own brain.
[Nov08'08] The disgusting fact that most of the bailout/hostage/tax money
arranged by pig Paulson from Gollem Sachs is brazenly being used by his
capitalist banking slime buddies to pay themselves insanely large bonses
and to acquire other more solvent banks is a crime. It's the largest
financial theft in history! Paulson is an ugly criminal. The people
he's giving our money to are criminals. He's Tony Soprano auditing his
own books. He and they should be put in jail. Whatever shard remains of
the free press must not let this die. As I've repeatedly said, this is
class war, plain and simple. They're breaking into the bank, taking our
money, and running. We must not let this aggression stand, man!
[Nov09'08] I'm beginning to wonder whether the huge October jump in BASE
(St Louis Fed) mostly represents rich rat-people and drug money (C IA
and otherwise!) bailing soom of their loot out of the sinking ship into
paper cash (that would be 3 billion $100 dollar bills as opposed to 16
billion $20 dollar bills :-} ).
[Nov10'08] Here is a
report
that pension funds are set to flee equities for, uhhh, hedge funds and
commodities? That's so this year, guys! Didn't you hear that Warren
Buffett of "derivatives are weapons of mass destruction" and "advisor
to Obama" fame, just lost a billion or so of his own and Berkshire
Hathaway's money in derivatives last *month*? I was already planning
for my pension to be worth less, but do you scumbags have to toss the
whole damn thing into the sh*tter?
[Nov11'08]
US 2008 Federal Budget $3200 billion
-------------------------------------
Medicare/Medicaid: $624 billion
Social Security: $644 billion
Department of Defense: $515 billion
Intelligence, Energy: $101 billion
Iraq/Afghanistan etc: $294 billion
Dept Education: $59 billion
Dept Health Hum Serv: $68 billion
Interest on ext debt: $260 billion
Other: $1043 billion
Estimated deficit: $408 billion
-------------------------------------
[Nov20'08] Insightful comment from
Stoneleigh
at The Automatic Earth on perverse incentives in the derivatives
markets: "Allowing a third party to take out a credit default swap against
a company they do not own is analogous to allowing me to take out fire
insurance on your home, thereby giving me an incentive to burn it down
for profit. We have yet to see the 'burning down for profit' phase..."
[Nov22'08] GM is failing now not just because they make cars that no one
wants now, but because stupid people fell for the mind control and bought
stupid, oversized, cheaply constructed cars that *the very same people*
now no longer want to buy or are able to buy. I'm fine with bailing out
the carmakers (but only after firing the idiots currently charge and
taking their severance pay and private jets) and converting them into
manufacturers of electric cycles, carts, and small trucks, solar cells,
wind turbines, and a few small cars. But if we wanted to be fair, the SUV
buyers -- who intimately participated in creating the current disaster --
should have to pay more of their taxes for the bailout/conversion.
[Nov23'08] Obama looks like he will have crony capitalist Tim Geithner --
currently thickly involved with pig Paulson in shoveling huge piles of
tax money down the overstuffed gullets of his rich pig banker friends (oh
sorry, I meant to say he was expertly dealing with the recent difficulties
at Bear Stearns, Lehman, and AIG) -- as Treasury Secretary. Ugh.
Put them both in jail! Seize their money and their yachts! They're
criminal kinpins! The Obama white house, not unexpectedly,
is
looking a lot like Clinton's.
[Nov23'08] Trading in hedge funds has
suddenly
and massively slowed in September and October. The selling of
these kind of assets to get cash is what must explain the bizarre
and unprecedented 1.7x jump in BASE cash (as opposed to regular
people withdrawing cash from their bank accounts). Good riddance,
pirates.
[Nov24'08] The festering cancer of the Iraq war/genocide/oilsteal still
rages. Stop the Iraq war! Stop trying to steal Iraq's oil! Stop Israel
from strangling Gaza! Start fighting back in the class war! The richies
have already taken it to the streets (the media). Appeasement doesn't
work with them. They won't stop when they have 5 houses. They won't stop
when they have 30 houses and 5 boats and 2 planes and 50 billion dollars.
They've got a mental sickness that will destroy our world.
[Nov25'08] Reading
gobbledygook
like this makes me really mad. I'm a reasonably intelligent person,
and willing to suspend judgement and work hard for long enough to try
to understand how something like the Fourier transform works. But the
thought of these money pipsqueaks crashing the world around us make
me want to reach for a pitchfork. Today, Sh*ttygroup gets a third of a
trillion from the taxpayers and then thanks them by increasing interest on
credit cards to 29%. Seize their yachts! The bailout is now 10 times
as big as it was last month -- $7.7 trillion -- fully half the US GDP
released in two months to bail out a bunch of bank pigs. These pigs
should be in jail. Pouring tax money down these idiot's gullets won't
fund wind farms, solar energy, more light rail, and smaller cars.
It will merely allow these pigs to escape with the loot. Our loot.
Our pensions. Listen to those hedge fund sh*theads on the business
channel talking about how 'we' all have to give back our pensions.
Better watch it or you might have 50,000 auto workers coming to your
house asking about *your* 'pension', bucko.
[Nov27'08] Obama's cabinet picks suggest little change in economic
policy (more bailouts for the rich) and no change in foreign policy
(Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine; Gates is Mr. Afghan surge --
yet more killer drones to shoot up wedding parties, and 20,000
more troops to raid the homes of people who complain). With the
kleptocrats recently appointed to his cabinet, Michael Hudson
notes the more than
passing resemblance of Obama to Yeltsin -- Obama has actually appointed
some of the very same people who advised Yeltsin to hand over all the
valuables in Russia to the oligarchs! All my friends say they can now
breathe a sigh of relief, and stay in the country after all. This despite
the fact that the only change on the way seems to be a little itty bitty
trickle down -- a few billion (only promised) while 7 trillion today goes
down the Godzilla-sized maws of flailing investment bankers. The planned
trickle down -- if it even gets funded! -- is hardly a different than
the recent Bush tax rebate. Now if if we only could have had McCain,
he probably would have died in office from his metastasized melanoma,
and then we could have had Palin as preznit. That might have actually
led to more change.
[Nov30'08] One can make fun of the stupid greedy Americans trampling
a Walmart employee to death in search of bargains. But the richies
running the country should take note. Crowds are the same everywhere.
So far, we have only had moderate lack of affordability. In a real
crunch, dangerous crowds could become much more common. Just like the
richies mouth their threats on the teevee about taking our pensions,
we have to respond in kind.
[Dec01'08] Data center servers in the US and UK now use 5% of total
electrical demand. That doesn't include electrical costs of powering
the internet and the user computers needed to view the data. Centralized
server farms are currently set to grow. Ground was recently broken for a
new data center in Chicago that will draw 100 megawatts (the power output
capacity of the 83 coal-fueled electricity generating plants in Illinois
currently averages about 200 megawatts each). The plan is do disempower
everyone in a google-like manner by hosting everybody's desktop,
documents, schedules, applications, and life on centralized servers
beyond individual control -- a throwback to the original 'time-sharing'
systems of the 60's. People locally would only have a passive portal to
the central systems and will eventually have to continually pay to rent
applications. This will work fine until "the machine stops" or rather
'the machine hiccups', as electrical grids begin to fail more often
(they have less overhead than ever before). Watching the deer-like
computer consumers and sysadmins (I see it around here) going along with
this flow reminds me of watching real deer, or little fish in a stream.
Our linguistic overlay helps (I can hear and read about and vicariously
experience this without actually having to live in central server hell);
but the macroscopic result is just like little fish in a stream that is
too big for one fish to understand. And if DNA/RNA/protein is really
closely analogous to language, then perhaps it couldn't ever have been
any different: the creativity of the individual code-using systems is
bound to lead to the evolution macro systems that are too complex for
their component individuals to understand.
[Dec07'08]
Here
is a an explanation of the bizarrely discontinuous graph in BASE money
supply (the AMBSL graph Mauldin shows is virtually identical). His point
is that it includes bank reserves (I had missed this point). Recently,
bank reserves have been generated by the Fed by trading them for other
so-called non-cash 'assets' the banks had (which actually were of much
reduced value...). This, then, not hedge fund collapses (my second
guess), must explain the discontinuous jump. My original guess -- that
it was the first true helicopter money -- was basically correct.
[Dec13'08] The existence of a substantial
number of pay option loans (described here
here) that are set to
blow up in 2009 and 2010 suggests that the cresting subprime blowup
will be supported by a new wave of pay option blowups over the next
few years. If housing prices and job losses were to stabilize, these
booby traps would still be set to go off. The further drops in housing
and jobs expected in 2009 and 2010 will exacerbate that problem.
In 2007, I was hoping that we could begin to recover from the worst
of the subprime blowups after spring of 2008. Now, this doesn't
seem possible. This was *so* avoidable. In 2005, I made
this graph
of the deficit and M3. It was obvious back then that the oppositely
trending lines (cumulative debt and cumulative money) were completely
unstable and unsustainable, and I said that then. I worriedly showed
it to a lot of people and posted it on my office door. Unfortunately,
my worries were correct. In the 1960's, the financial sector was 2%
of US corporate profits. Now it is 40%. But like energy extracted from
the vacuum, it now has to go back there.
[Dec14'08] What should American car companies be doing? From even
a moderately rational perspective, it's pretty clear. It's also
totally impossible to do this right thing from a 3-6-month look-ahead
business perspective. This is why business didn't figure out molecular
biology. Government did -- because it was willing to invest further
into the future. When government scientists figured out how DNA and
proteins worked after many decades of work, then the companies piled
in to take profits. And they complain bitterly when they are called
on to pay taxes -- the very thing that made their existence possible.
Imagine raising a kid with a 3 month look ahead -- sorry kid, we have to
downsize, so you're going to be sleeping on the street and not getting
any health care. It's called child abuse. The only problem is that
business is in control, and people have gotten used to human abuse as
the norm. First, car companies should ignore current low oil prices.
We'll be lucky if they last a year -- until our one-cubic-mile-per-year
oil usage catches up with ongoing oil field depletion and the dollar
begins to gradually lose its world reserve currency status and its
status as the only currency in which oil is denominated. Second,
they should immediately stop what they are doing and begin to retool
to make all manner of tiny cars and trucks and carts, and busses,
and electic scooters and bicycles and bicycle taxis, light rail, wind
turbines, and solar cells. They are capable of this (cf. the car =>
tank+airplane+boat switch during WWII, which happened without the help
of all our fine new computer-aided tools). It's completely obvious that
if we don't do that *RIGHT NOW*, in about 15 years when oil falls to 50%
of its current production rate with continued population growth, that
we will be in *really* deep sh*t (of course, we should have started
30 years ago, when these problems first became apparent, but that's
water under the bridge). Why is this completely impossible, even now?
Because of our -- now failing -- economic system. If we don't change
it right now, it's going to take down industrial civilization, possibly
forever. There isn't much time left. Instead Republican business
types are slavering at the mouth at the opportunity to kill the auto
workers union, one of the few left. Great. Chop off the very legs that
could carry us back from the brink. All to perpetuate a failed system.
Why is business so against people getting health care and living indoors?
Sometimes you'd think they were anti-human, eh? Some of the humans are
finally starting to take offense.
[Dec17'08] Why crucify just Bernie Madoff? What did he do that was so
different than the rest of the 'innovative banking' crooks? His $50
billion dollar fraud was big, but not the biggest (cf. AIG bailout at
$500 billion and Sh*itigroup at maybe $1000 billion). He doesn't get
bailed out because he didn't steal enough? Are hedge funds that collapse
the minute people try to take out money different? And what about hedge
funds half invested in Madoff? Or 'insurers' (CDS's) that collapse on
their first partial payout? Meanwhile, the Fed has just cut its interest
rate to 'a range between 0.0 to 0.25%'. At 0.0% you get a loan without
paying any interest. The next logical step is negative interest --
you get paid interest when to borrow (created) money (this isn't very
different ahn 1% interest since it just means a small extra amount of
money had to be created at loan time). People may still not be persuaded
to borrow, however, if they are worried that they might not be able to pay
it back, or if the bank they deposit the zero interest loan in doesn't
pay any interest, or charges them more for keeping the money than they
got for borrowing it (the only way a bank would be able to make money in
a negative interest regime), or if the bank has a chance of collapsing
(because it wasn't charging depositors negative interest!).
[Dec20'08] Oh dear. The temporary respite in the growth of the
BASE money supply last month was welcome, but the resumption of 25%
growth per *month* (where the 50 year average is 3 percent per *year*
-- that is, money is growing 100x faster than normal) is a sign
that things remain insanely out of equilibrium. The Fed must have
resumed pumping money directly into (insolvent) banks. Another very
bad sign is that hedge funds can now borrow directly from the Fed --
for essentially zero interest! What absolute criminals! Peak oil?
Retooling cars, transportation, energy generation? Persistence of
industrial civilization? None of that matters. These guys shouldn't
get free money!!! They should be put in jail! Their remaining assets
should be seized, just like they do with drug dealers. These guys are
*much* worse than drug dealers. Clearly, the market has utterly failed.
The Fed should be disbanded. I want to hear people say -- esp. in the
mainstream main-sewer media -- that 'the market has failed'. Just like
I want to hear them say that 'the Iraq war was a bad idea' and that
those of us against the war were right. Of course, they never will --
not even on the day that angry crowds storm the studios.
[Dec23'08] There is a lot of talk of 'saving capitalism'. But why?
Why save a system that *right at the moment of peak oil* generates
prices (mostly via the unwinding of non-productive speculation/betting)
that cause *disinvestment* in real oil exploration and real alternative
energy companies? That's one seriously broken economic system! In the
fullness of time, the Darwinian evolution of non-linguistic living things
ruthlessly prunes out stupidly unstable systems that behave like this.
The problem is that we don't have millions of years to get it right.
We have at best another 5 or 10 years to utterly change course (i.e.,
course change done, not started, in 5 or 10 years!). In 30 years, most
of our 100 million year old fossil fuel inheritance will be used up.
In 30 years, there will no power source available to make a transition
to a sustainable industrial society. Industrial society will just end.
The capitalists will have won.
[Dec27'08] Jim Kunstler has recently argued that all the in-your-face
cheating may end up having an erosive effect on public morals, such as
they are. As long as rich people cheating is wink wink nudge nudge,
it's less likely to cause a social eruption. Seeing richies haul off
giant pillowcases of TARP money in public is more dangerous because
the common man might be led to conclude that anything goes. I'm less
convinced people will do anything until things are much, much worse than
they are now. And whipping out another 9-11 would put everybody back
on track in a jiffy.
[Dec30'08] Maybe this quote from a Louise Schiavoni report (on Lou
Dobbs) from several months ago relates to the Kunstler post above. "The
primary purpose of this force is to provide help to people in need in the
aftermath of a WMD-like event in the homeland." -- Col. Michael Boatner
from Northern Command explaining the relocation of the 5000-strong first
brigade combat team of the Army 3rd infantry division to the US after
it spent almost 3 years in Iraq. Colin Powell said there will likely
be a crisis/terror event on Jan 21-22 and mark-my-words Joe Biden said
there will surely be "an international crisis, a generated crisis"
within 6 months.
[Jan02'09] Plotting the BASE money supply against the M1 multiplier
(money_supply/monetary_base, or 'velocity of money' where money_supply is
'currency in circulation + demand deposits' and monetary_base is 'actual
reserves + currency in circulation') shows that they are almost perfectly
anti-correlated, including the tiny temporary reversal/blip last month.
This is a case of the sudden helicopter drop of money into banks
artifactually showing up as a sudden slowing of the velocity of money
(the denominator suddenly went up but the numerator stayed the same).
That is, the banks just kept all the extra money and the velocity
of what already existed went along at approximately the same speed.
Actually, the ratio went slightly below 1.0 because the banks increased
their rate of hoarding to slightly higher than the rate at which money
was/is being printed into them. The worrisome thing is that the BASE has
'only' been expanded by a little less than $1 trillion ($830 billion)
in a few months. Even though that was almost a doubling, it is still
only a tiny fraction of the losses in real estate, the stock market,
bonds, not to mention derivatives, which together get into the range
of $50-$100 trillion. Trying to guess what is going to happen now is a
bit like predicting global warming. It's impossible to predict monthly
weather, but given the easily measured forcings, it's not hard at all
to predict the overall trend.
[Jan15'09] Patrick McGoohan
died
in LA.
[Jan18'09] I hear lots of Americans whining about Bush and happy to
see him about to be flushed. Well, half of you voted for him *both
times*, give or take a few percent! But you can't win: the new guy
just hired virtually the same people. Rahm will ensure that
another
billion in US tax money is used to buy gasoline to send to Israel,
to fuel their militants (oh, I mean their army) and reinforce their sicko
apartheid system, and even after they publically brag about pushing the
US president around. After all, it's not like the Americans economy has
any problems now. Obama is also committed to re-re-re-winning the war in
Afghanistan, since the American public can't remember that we've already
killed half a million people in 'East Asia' already. Obama is hiring
the very same money pigmen (e.g., Rubin) that brought us to the precipice
so that the very same pigmen can continue to put your tax money directly
into their offshore back accounts, yachts, mansions, and gold bars. But,
thank god there's a Dem in charge now. Change me harder! It's the same
in the UK (which party was Tony the poodle from anyway?).
[Jan19'09] California cuts benefits to people on welfare, the blind, and
students, because those people don't deserve support but, by contrast,
it's crucial to bail out banks so that their banker pigmen leaders can
continue to receive their giant bonuses for bringing the economy to
its knees, so that they can keep their fairly earned private yachts,
mansions, and offshore fortunes, otherwise the economic system will
collapse. This is the basic narrative of the corporate news over the
last few months. It looks ridiculous if you write it out like this, but
that's exactly what's gets injected into peoples' heads as a sequence of
single sentence conclusions from a sequence of teevee pieces. It's amazing
that people accept this without rioting. Well, they've actually
started
rioting elsewhere and the acceptance may begin to come unglued in
America before long.
[Jan20'09] Here are five radical articles/videos from
wildly different political positions motivated by the
one-sided slaughter of civilians in Gaza -- by
John
Mearsheimer,
Ali Abunimah,
Yvonne
Ridley,
Alex
Whissons, and
Max Keiser [pt1],
[pt2]
-- that given their disparate sources, reflect a qualitative
mood shift beginning to occur across the world that is similar
to the one that eventually resulted in the de-legitimation
and dissolution of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and
the establishment of one person, one vote. Oh sorry, I left out
Bono.
:-} This mood shift is also likely to be destabilizing to the surrounding
repressive collaborating regimes in Egypt and Saudi. One can always
hope for change. Crazy man-of-non-sequitur Max Keiser sums up the Gaza
assault the best for me (in pt2 above): "it's not that I'm ashamed to be
American -- at this point, I'm more ashamed to be a human being".
[Jan21'09] Contrast Obama's weirdly staged contentless and boring
blather about defending the American lifestyle with
this speech, by
Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, given the day before.
The first was so disconnected from reality (I hardly ever watch the
teevee) that it made me feel a little schizophrenic. By contrast,
I could actually recognize the world the prince (!) was talking about.
I guess this is the way the world ends -- slow, unconscious recognition
by masses of people that things have changed, for the worse, every year,
until the human deer herd gets to the right size.
[Jan24'09] Merril Lynch got a $10 billion dollar bailout. They turned
around, and unbelievably, paid themselves $15 billion in bonuses --
after losing $21 billion in 2008. This was the bailout that was supposed
to stop the collapse of our financial system! Instead, as many of us
predicted, it turned into a simple transfer of a huge block of tax money
(about a third of what the US spends yearly on biomedical research) to
a bunch of undeserving corrupt dufus pigmen criminals (did I get enough
in there?). These guys should be sent to gladiator training school!
Wouldn't you like to see a thumbs-up thumbs-down battle to the death
between a few of these pasty bozos (Thain vs. Geithner)? I think many
Americans would pay good money for that.
[Jan26'09] Bring back
Solar
thermal! Our previous San Diego house was built in 1915 -- it came
at that time with a solar water (long gone by the time we got there).
We should be thinking about stuff like this instead of stupid bank
'industry' tricks. Banking is not an industry.
[Feb01'09] Perceptive first comment
on Elaine Meinel Supkis' blog entry
here:
"When 'Justice' finally comes to America it will be like that break in
the coal slurry dam and it will be very very ugly. Europeans know how
to riot but Americans don't. When Americans finally start rioting there
will be zero restraint."
[Feb03'09] Well I suppose it's a good sign that after more than
*doubling* the amount of money pumped directly into banks by the Fed
(BASE) from $0.85 trillion to $1.75 trillion in a few months, completely
unprecendented in US history), the rate of injection has stabilized
this week. Note that this also happened for a week at the end of 2008
(christmas bank holiday?).
[Feb10'09] The US taxpayer bailout of failed
rich-people gambling bets has reached $10 trillion.
This is closing in on the US GDP and is enough to
fully
pay off 90% of the home mortgages in the US! But rich people are sooo
much more important. I would call it class 'war', but that would be like
calling Israel slaughtering defenseless civilians in Gaza with US-made
remote control missiles and phosphorus bombs a 'war'. The proles aren't
fighting back even a little in the class 'war'! Consider pitchforks,
gentlemen, or these rich creeps are going to grab *another* $10 $trillion
(also known as 10,000 billion dollars). I wish my often stated fears
about the insane M3 + cumulative account deficit graph I taped to my
office door in 2005 were wrong. They weren't.
[Feb14'09] [update on Feb03 post] Looks like the catastrophic growth
in BASE Fed-injected bank reserves has decisively turned around for
the first time since Sept11'08. 'Velocity' hasn't turned around yet and
is still anomalously below 1.0. I suppose it's a good thing that the
growth rate of BASE is now only 100x what it's supposed to be...
[Feb21'09] Some criminal bankers need to get in jail pretty quick or
things could get ugly.
[Feb27'09] Never underestimate stupidity. In the midst
of the biggest economic crisis in 100 years,
almost 2/3
of Americans support the recent Obama decision to escalate the war in
Afghanistan by sending almost 20,000 new troops there! They have no idea
of why we're there, and don't even strongly agree that it's "essential
to win in Afghanistan to succeed in broader efforts against terrorism".
But they're strongly behind sending troops and spending money the country
doesn't have. It's breathtakingly stupid! If people figure out something
as dead simple as this, how can they *possibly* do the right thing when
it comes to making much more complex decisions involved in cooperatively
downsizing industrial civilization? Looks like the the BASE money supply
is shooting up again. Get your genocidal war escalated in Afghanistan,
stupidos.
[Mar05'09] The number of US adults now in prison is now up to a new world
record of
1 in 31 (1
in 11 for black adults). The US got rid of real industry and substituted
the banking 'industry' and the prison 'industry'. The greater depression,
however, may finally bring this insanity to an end.
[Mar06'09] Geithner has
refused
to identify who has been paid 1/6 of a trillion in tax money over the
last few months of the AIG bailout! This is outright robbery -- taking
tax money from working people and putting it directly into offshore
accounts of already insanely rich people in the midst of the greater
depression. Super rich people 'insured themselves against the bust of
Lehman' for pennies on the dollar (translated: having no investment in
Lehman, they took a bet for long odds (1-2% chance that Lehman would go
bust), they engineered the bust, and then they collected a payoff of $150
billion dollars on a tiny 'investment' -- *they were paid by taxpayers*!
Americans will have to rise up and break something or these criminal scams
aren't going to stop. This is exactly equivalent to fixing a horse race,
except that the amounts are a substantial fraction of the GDP. It is like
taking out fire insurance on someone else's house, arranging to have it
burned down, then when the insurer goes bust, you get taxpayers to pay
you instead. These people should be in jail. This is pure and simple
class war, except that one side is not fighting back yet. Fight back
now, or pensions, social security, and health care will be toast --
all poured into offshore compounds of a bunch of immoral creeps.
[Mar14'09] Watching the depression unfold in the time of peak oil is
sure depressing. The US is still spending hundreds of billions in Iraq.
The US is moving even more troops and materiel into Afghanistan. The US
is still manning 1000 overseas military bases. To fix this problem, a
few dribbles of money -- a small fraction of what was wasted annihilating
millions of Iraqis and Afghans -- is supposed to now be spent on railroads,
public transport, alternative energy, and road maintenance -- all while
the companies that are supposed to do this are going out of business.
Real money -- multiple trillions of it -- is instead going to failed
banks in order to rescue the dainty a$$es of gambling-addicted rich
people who invested in them. With some of the same very a$$holes --
Summers and Geithner -- in charge, nothing will change. The only way to
get those creeps out of there would be to have a general strike and blood
in the streets -- like the way the French turned back Sarkozy last year.
No chance of that in the US, because despite all their big gun talk,
Americans are actually more passive than Europeans. Dmitri Orlov has
it right. We don't need no steekin' energy efficient vehicles or houses
because we already have them -- 25 people standing in the back of a
pickup truck or 25 people living in a McMansion. Time to start sawing
holes in the SUV roof and buying some more refrigerators.
[Mar22'09] Plotting adjusted monetary base (BASE) and the (Fed) Board
of Governors Total Reserves (TRARR) together is awfully suggestive.
The jump in BASE looks like it is entirely explained by TRARR.
[Mar30'09]
Here,
finally, is a detailed summary by James Hamilton of what when into
creating the huge discontinuous jump in BASE (which is jumping back
up again this week -- see link above). I remember asking about this
very graph on Econbrowser, back in November 2008. A bunch of other
people must have asked, too. The crude summary is that the Fed almost
doubled bank reserves, essentially by creating money from nothingness
and putting it into bank vaults. But then, they also arranged to pay
the banks interest on their newly created/donated reserves equal or
better to what the banks could get by loaning it out (it's kewl to be
a central bank). That is the main reason why the banks haven't lent
it out. The conclusion of the article is that if banks *do* start
lending it out, it will be explosively inflationary. It's hard to see
the point of doing this in the first place if they don't lend, though.
Wasn't that the whole idea?! So in the end, after reading the article --
like most of the articles at Econbrowser -- I still have this nagging
'still hungry' feeling, like I'm missing something important.
[Apr09'09] "Nobody supports -- I mean, you can talk about a one-state
solution, if you want. I think a better solution is a no-state
solution. But this is pie in the sky. If you're really in favor of a
one-state solution, which in fact I've been all my life -- accept a
bi-national state, not one state -- you have to give a path to get from
here to there. Otherwise, it's just talk. Now, the only path anyone
has ever proposed is through two states as the first stage." -- Noam
Chomsky. I'm in favor of one state, too. But no need for the two-state
never-gonna-happen part. That's because it's *already* one state!
(recognize facts on the ground!) -- except that slightly over half of
the people can't vote. Let them vote.
[Apr10'09] The peak oil crunch is now within sight, even as the tide
of oil prices has gone out -- eerily just like the strange tide before
a tsunami. No point in warning people. They can't listen. It's very
similar to the housing bubble. Any moderately logical person could see
by 2002 or 2003 that it wasn't sustainable, with prices getting so far
out of whack with salaries that were staying approximately constant.
Of course, it was impossible at that time to say exactly how long it
would take before things crashed. It certainly went on a lot longer
than I expected -- so long that I began to doubt my own common sense
judgement. In the case of oil, things are much clearer. We draw it out
of the ground at the rate of 1 cubic mile a year give or take a percent
or two. There is less than 30 cubic miles of reasonable EROEI oil left
in the ground. Who cares about oil prices? The amount of remaining
EROEI-bigger-than-2-oil sure doesn't! Dropping demand by a few percent
won't solve the problem: 0.98 cubic miles is about the same as 1 cubic
mile. The remaining oil won't care if the silly human monkeys start
another world war. Stupid monkeys. And even that wouldn't slow down
the burn rate -- it would probably increase it.
[Apr14'09] The US military uses 350,000 barrels of oil a day, 56% of
that for jet fuel. That's a lot (the biggest single user in the world),
but still only about 2% of total US usage, so, unfortunately, it will
be able to be sustained for a long time.
[Apr28'09] The pure sadism of the latest torture
revelations is sure creepy. But just as creepy to me are
the people defending it in blog comments and on NPR. A
majority
of Americans now support torture. I guess this is what you expect
after a decade-long diet mind-control programs like 24. You are what
your mind eats.
[May20'09] Chris Whalen has a great article on derivatives
here.
The story is very simple. In spite of the fact that dealings in
derivatives and their kin have brought the economic system of the
entire world to its knees, the banks won't let them be reformed (e.g.,
by having derivative trades forced onto public exchanges) because that
would cause banks like JPMorgan to go bankrupt, because they would
not be able to charge the higher fees they can make with "over the
counter" (i.e., private/secret) derivative trades. JPMorgan has
more
than 40% of all the derivatives help by US banks. This is
what we are bailing out! Un-flipping-believable. Instead of
getting ready for power down, we've got a bunch of useless-eater
whinging banker dorks running the the entire human race into
the ground at warp speed, trying to preserve their record 40%
of all corporate profits -- for coming up with this
Nobel laureate
sh*t!
[May22'09] By a number of policy measures, it's sure getting hard
to distinguish Obama from Bush. Same bailout/ripoff/bankdorks
as Bush with same conflicts of interest, same war
policy/funding/surge as Bush, same ultra pro-Israel war-on-Iran
threats as Bush, and now Obama is looking for ways to
'legalize'
secret indefinite detention without public charges or trial, in order
to keep Guantanamo and many other less well known gulags (Bagram) open
permanently. How is this different from John Yoo or Alberto Gonzales?
Obama's proposal to increase gas-mileage requirements is OK as far as it
goes (35.5 mpg fleet average by 2016), but it only puts us a few frigging
mpg ahead of the original 1908 Model T (it got 25-30 mpg)! And by the
target date of 2016, oil production will be well onto its steep
post-peak-oil downslope (look
here at the
frightening decline of Cantarell, formerly, the second largest producing
oil field in the entire world after Ghawar in Saudi). The fact that
Obama is sometimes a more inspirational and liberal-sounding public
speaker and more physically attractive matters not a whit when his
policy is the same as that of Bush. The fantasy land in which people
live truly frightens me.
[May31'09] The
M3
reconstruction by shadowstats.com suggests that the rate of growth
of M3 peaked at the beginning of 2008, before all hell broke loose later
in the year, and has now returned to a 'normal' growth rate (well, since
Reagan) of 7% per year. The enormous injection into bank reserves that
started in Sept 2008 is visible as an upward bump in the shadowstats
M3 curve. However, the curve then resumes its downward trend around
Jan 2009, after just a few months. It sure looks like deflation is
continuing for now. The enormously inflationary stimulus packages,
which have resulted in a more than doubling of BASE bank reserves
in a few months (normal growth of BASE is a few percent per year),
were seemingly absorbed in just a few months. The much larger M3
measure (historically 10x larger than BASE, now still 7x larger than
it) seems to have brushed off the stimulus. Note, however, that
total M3
(as opposed to change in M3) is still *increasing* at 7% per year.
So I suppose a better description of where we are now would be 'still
heading in the direction of deflation', if you think of M3 as the broadest
inflation measure. Given how quickly the intense monetary stimulus was
brushed off, however, it wouldn't be surprising if we got to a flat M3 in
a year (and the BASE jump doesn't include the alphabet soup of TARP, PDCF,
MMIFF, CPFF, TSLFm, FHFA, AIG, TAF, SFP, which if you add all those others
together adds up to another 2x the BASE increase). The velocity of money
curve also plotted in the BASE Fed graph above looks like an exact mirror
image of BASE and the reserves injections (TRARR), which suggests that
the extra money was utterly and completely absorbed by the banks without
getting out anywhere into the economy where it could cause inflation.
The last time the growth of M3 flattened was from 1992 to 1995 during
the 'bond vigilante' period of Clinton 1, which is illustrated in
this deficit
and M3 graph which I made in 2005, when M3 was still an official
Fed statistic. Rumors are the bond vigilantes are back, but now in a
more deflationary context than the mid 90's.
[Jun02'09] It's time for Americans to start doing the wild thing and
letting out their inner French person (by going postal, like French
workers do) otherwise the richies are just going to claw back half of
our pensions to support their house/car/boat/art addictions. All the
people running the bailout have skin in the very game they are bailing
out -- they are bailing themselves out! They should be in jail -- now --
awaiting trial, to prevent them from further bank robberies!
[Jun03'09] Ilargi has an insightful comment on this
Clusterstock
graph at
Automatic
Earth: "In 2002, the Detroit Big 3 produced 80% of 12 million cars
[produced in the US], or *9.6 million vehicles*. In 2009, they will build
just over 50% of a total production of 5 million cars, or roughly *2.6
million vehicles*." I had no idea how recently US car production had
fallen behind "in-sourcing"! Ilargi overstates a little by including
pre-collapse and post-collapse, since if you go back to just before
the collapse in car-buying in mid-2007, the US car production was 63%
of a total production of 11 million cars, or still roughly 6.8 million
('only' a 30% drop from 2002). But after the recent collapse in
car-buying coupled with continued losses in Big 3 share of production,
Ilargi is correct that it's hard to see how the US companies can survive a
catastrophic *73% reduction* in output over just 7 years with no obvious
turn-around in sight. It's a shame with all the blather on the TV that
the main point never gets out. The other point that doesn't get out is
that reducing car production is actually a good thing! There was a great
article from the new editor at London Cyclist saying, 'we should stop the
crap about us not being anti-car: of *course* we're anti-car! How can you
be against smoking but be pro-cigarettes?'. Reducing car production now
will make things better when the world slams into the peak oil downslope
in a few years. The last thing we need is to get car production back up!
Finally, we need more reporting on how Americans are partly responsible
for this disaster because they swallowed the advertising and mindlessly
bought so many stupid giant SUVs (and voted for Bush a second time).
[Jun23'09] This simplified but very useful
oildrum post
by David Murphy makes an important point (look
here for more equations).
Peak oil is conventionally graphed in units of oil usage (currently about
85 million barrels/day). However, a more critical number is millions of
barrels/day production (usage) minus the amount of energy required to
obtain that oil. The effective downslope of peak oil is going to feel
steeper each additional year than a peak oil *usage* graph because of
the simple fact that humans have always gone for the easiest/cheapest to
extract oil first. The easiest to get oil is strongly correlated with
the oil that takes the *least energy* to extract. Over time, it takes
more and more energy to extract the same amount of oil energy. For oil,
the current energy cost has been estimated at approx 11:1 (one unit of
energy is being expended to get 11 units). This makes oil a practical
energy source unlike the absolute obscenity of American ethanol production
which is currently at an EROEI of around 1:1 -- that is, it returns
*no* net energy to the system. But remember that the energy return on
energy investment for oil used to be 100:1. In the case of the US, one
could very reasonably include the military expenditures for occupying
oil-rich countries in the costs of obtaining oil. It is not enough for
an energy source to have a positive energy return on energy investment.
As EROEI gets below approximately 3:1, another cliff comes into view.
This is easiest to see close to breakeven (EROEI = 1:1). For example,
for a source at 1.1:1 (one prominent estimate of US ethanol EROEI from
a supporter, no less!), in order to double the energy from that source,
you have to invest 10 times as much total energy. That other energy
has to come from somewhere. If it were to come from other ethanol,
the amount of corn that would have to be grown would spike exponentially
to many times any possible world as ethanol was ramped up. Even if the
energy were to come a high EROEI source, you would still need 10 times
as much of it. In simple terms: (1) low EROEI sources cannot replace
high EROEI sources, (2) the EROEI of all of our fossil fuels sources are
simultaneously getting lower, (3) all major fossil fuel sources are past
or near peak, and (4) this is a major problem for the continuation of
industrial civilization. The inability of the general public, teevee,
academics, and friends to see the energy elephant in the room makes me
feel like I'm mentally ill. But I'm not.
[Jun27'09] Read
this
to get an idea of just how hard it is to eek out a few extra miles per
gallon of fossil fuel. Engineering is hard and physics doesn't respond to
cash rewards. No matter how much money you offer, the engineers aren't
going to be able to build you a safe airliner that travels 500 miles per
hour and gets twice the gas mileage of a 737 from twenty years ago. Ever.
Some of the complexities described in that article were undertaken for
fuel efficiency gains in the range of 15% (around 5% from more efficient
engines, 5% from aerodynamic improvements, and 5% from better management
of compressed air). Some of those gains now have to be given back.
We also need to data about what happens when these composite-shelled
planes get hit by lightning (the lightning survivability regulations on
have already been adjusted downward for them; however, mother nature and
the laws of physics could care less about the regulations). We're halfway
through our cubic mile of oil for this year. About 28 cubic miles left.
Instead of speaking truthfully about the end of industrial civilization,
congress is debating pathetically trivial 2 miles per gallon here versus
4 miles per gallon there (the current US car fleet average is barely
better than a model T). Fiddling while Rome burns (the last of its oil).
It's morbidly fascinating, like watching somebody smoking through their
tracheotomy. Or what poor MJ did to his face. The suggestions
here
are sensible (try to have less of a die-off) but are not on the table.
A few more bangs into peak oil will hopefully get people talking more
sensibly in a few years. More battery-assisted bicycle trailers!
[Jun28'09] Two underreported statistics about the doubling in unemployment
from 7 million at the end of 2007 to 14 million now: *80%* of those
newly unemployed were men (the largest gender gap since WWII), and half
of newly unemployed were under 30.
[Jul13'09] A ways back, I speculated about the instability of computer
trading heading toward smaller and smaller timesteps. I guess
I wasn't creative enough in imagining the pure sociopathy of the
criminal financial mind. From the revelations surrounding the
Aleynikov
affair, it looks like trading companies have located their servers in
the same building at the NYSE or NASDAQ computers to minimize latencies.
This implies that trade latencies must be in the hundreds or even tens
of microseconds, in "dark pools" designed to minimize visibility to the
rest of the market (isn't that what capitalism is all about?). But the
dark pools smell really bad: there are also claims that some of the code
actually hacked ethernet switches to sniff other people's trading packets.
We have to get these parasites off the host! Rome is burning.
[Jul18'09] The ridiculous swine flu circus continues. Scary boys
and girls! A general swine flu vaccination program was advertised and
executed in 1976 after some recruits at an the Fort Dix army base base
got it and one died, after a long forced march. After vaccinating
40 million people, at least 400 people died from side effects of the
vaccine and thousands were severely injured. Though this is a very
low rate (minimally, the vaccine only killed 1 out of 100,000 people
vaccinated), it's wide application resulted in 50 times as many
deaths from the vaccine as there were from the thing it was trying
to prevent (Bayes rule). Almost 100 people a day in the US die from
the *non*-swine flu. Those people don't appear in the effuent oozing
out of the teevee. The planned swine flu shots contain squalene, an
adjuvant designed to boost immune responses so lower doses of swine flu
antigens can be used. It's OK to eat squalene (e.g., there is some
in olive oil) and it's found in human joints. But it's a
bad idea
to inject oils like squalene into the bloodstream along with other
antigens in order to trigger an immune response.
[Jul20'09] The opening Harry Potter scene of 4 dark gray smoke-colored
demons whizzing through the streets of London finally smashing a pub
and leaving people lying in the street was reminiscent of remote
controlled US drones raining down death in third world countries.
The rest of the movie was an indifferently patched together sequence
of nice looking special effects. You'd think somebody would be paying
attention to the overall plan with a budget approaching that of many
third world countries (like the one in which real drones explode real
people). The antiwar 'movement' has been utterly and disgustingly silent
under Obama -- all while he is substantially escalating wars (a
record
number of troops have been killed in this
not-yet-over month in Afghanistan) and
increasing
the size of the army. How is this different than Bush?
[Jul21'09] The state of California is
initiating
a 20% funding cut of its world class University system to 2.4 billion
a year, while maintaining its 11 billion dollar yearly funding of its
ridiculously bloated prison system, which supports a per capita prison
population that is 10-20 times as large as that in the UK, Europe,
Canada, Japan, etc. In the 1970's, California used to spend twice as
much on its wonderful public universities as its prisons (making it
possible for an average Californian to go to college without accruing an
enormous debt). The prison industry suddenly began to change in 1980
with Reagan and the war on drugs, all across the country. I noted
this years ago, but I didn't realize just *how* out of whack things
have gotten. Californians and US-ians want more prisons and have
gotten more prisons to keep their precious kiddies safe. They don't
complain when the budgets of universities are cut but prisons are not.
They only get mad about university salaries but not about prison industry
salaries, parrotting the Newspeak poured into their weakened minds.
More prisons are just what we need to solve the coming
world energy crisis, right?
These funding changes are slow structural things that have enormous
inertia and have similar slopes across decades. Kind of like the
coming inexorable decline in world oil production and soon, natural
gas production. Way to go, California.
[Jul22'09] The just-proposed state of California budget cuts 3 billion
from higher education (of which the 2.4 billion in University of
California funding discussed above is a part) but only cuts 1 billion
from prisons. The idiocy of cutting three times as much from higher
education as from prisons -- where the bloated prison budget is *already*
more than twice the higher education budget -- is stunningly stupid.
Cut off your brain California and put it in jail. Run the per capita
prison population up to 40 times that of Europe because 20 TIMES EUROPE
ISN'T ENOUGH! What absolute idiots. Why not cut all social services
and reinstate debtors prisons? In 1776, 60% of the people in British
prisons were debtors. Yes you can.
[Jul28'09] Monthly national new home sales have 'recovered'
-- to just less than one half of monthly foreclosure
activity in California. The disconnect from reality of
the mainstream media is pretty amazing. But I also read an
exchange between Simon Johnson and John Talbott reprinted
here
about what should be done. Despite their considerable expertise,
it really shocked me to see both of them talking about 'return to
normal growth'. What planet are they on? The thought of 'returning to
normal growth' just boggles my mind. These people are relatively smart
yet they seem happy with staying on a path that will turn the entire
earth into a big collection of completely deforested Haiti's filled
with people eating mud sandwiches, sprinkled with walled compounds
where the rich people hide. In 20 years, oil production will probably
be back to 1995 levels, but with a lot more people to feed. Growth is
going to stop whether we like it or not. Population will contract.
Political correctness can't be eaten.
[Aug04'09]
Here is an
analysis of the frightening high chance of 'rescission' (being cut off)
from your US health insurance policy if you actually get really sick
'Only' 0.5% of people are cut off. But if only 1% of the people get
really sick, then 50% of really sick people are being cut off, because
the insurance company certainly isn't going to cut off people who are
not very sick and who are paying their premiums.
[Aug11'09] By gradually removing state and federal support for students
going to college relative to when I went to college, an unbelievable
amount of debt has been created -- almost 3/4 of a trillion dollars,
equivalent to about 1/4 of all consumer debt not counting real estate.
The situation is so dire that the draconian anti-bankruptcy laws, which
are specific to student loans, haven't prevented a default rate much
higher than that for subprime mortgages. No fix in sight. Just continued
implementation of the policies that got us here -- continued defunding
of higher education and increased funding for prisons (or this year,
cutting higher education 3 times as much as prisons). In California,
state spending per student has fallen by 40% (inflation adjusted) since
just 1990. Even Dmitri Orlov is against going to college. Dang.
[Aug15'09] Income inequality in the US has surpassed
the previous record set just before the onset of
the (previous) Depression (Emmanuel Saez PDF
here.
The top 1% captured 2/3 of income growth from 2002 to 2007.
[Aug20'09] [external inaccessibility of cogsci.ucsd.edu over the
past month and a half (!) was due to the campus net police closing
outside access to the server, while looking to see if an opening had
been exploited.]
[Sep05'09] Landlord sold the flat to raise cash in the current UK
property uptick. We had to move.
[Sep13'09] "The war is not meant to be won, it is
meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only
possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance." --
George Orwell, 1984. The Afghanistan war is a good example.
It is part of the flow, helped along, by of all people,
Bruce
Cockburn who just sang Rocket Launcher for the
troops while visiting his brother (who just jointed the US
military). Trippy, man. Never liked the guy's voice and lyrics.
'Vibrant skin?' You suck, Bruce. Andrew Gavin Marshall's
most
recent article is good. It's easy for me to see certain trends --
like prisons and universities in California. There has been a virtually
linear increase in prison funding and decrease in university funding in
California since 1980 (as I have repeated blabbed on about). But the most
important point is that it shows no sign of abating; the university cuts
were 3x as deep as the prison cuts a few months ago. A few days ago,
there was an email to all staff at UCSD explaining that they can't take
their 'furlough' (pay cut days off) on days when they have face-to-face
contact with students. If you have graduate students, that would be every
day. Kewl, you can take your time off at night, when you're sleeping.
I can remember universities vs. prisons because I have verbalized it
and it's a blackly funny talking point. But other gradual changes,
like the continued, linear development and acceptance of the police
state -- tasers, crowd control devices (recently deployed at a public
meeting with Susan Davis in San Diego!), databases, surveillance -- and
the privatization of the same -- are harder to see because they are more
amorphous and less directly visible. Half of the US troops in Iraq are
contractors/mercenaries and the proportion is over half
in Afghanistan -- a total of a quarter of a million people,
almost half the size of the US military in Vietnam, and twice
the percentage of contractors in any previous US war. But these
things are linearly and inexorably changing just same -- in the
wrong direction. Extrapolate these changes forward a decade and it
doesn't look good, esp. when you put them in the context of similar
slow unidirectional decline in the underlying curve of oil production.
If unemployment continues to rise (currently actually at about 20% in
the US), however, the situation could get unstable. Not now, though.
The main thing Americans seem to be terrified of is guaranteed health
care! Imagine, if you have a pre-existing condition, you would
still be able to get insurance! Scary boys and girls! But while
all this ridiculous stage-managed nonsense mechanically unfolds
(superb summary prepared in record time by Matt Taibbi
here),
it's completely OK with Amurikans to blow monstrous wads of 'mandatorily'
collected tax money for 'death-listing' poor Afghans or Palestinians
by remote control halfway around the world. Maybe when unemployment
reaches 30%, they'll begin to wake out of their iPod soma and glimpse
the real terror on the horizon. But by then, it will be time to segue
into the next war (while keeping the current two going, of course).
And all at the moment of peak oil. The collective idiocy and cruelty of
humans is astonishing. These days it often makes me forget the things
I like about them.
[Sep20'09] "I'm glad all those teabaggers marched on Washington last
week. Because judging from the photos, it's the first exercise they've
gotten in years." -- Bill Maher.
[Sep21'09] "I have always contended that 'all significant scientific
advances have been financed by a budget intended for something else' or
'all real research is bootleg'." -- kly84g on theoildrum.
[Sep22'09] A few years back, I finally understood the basic idea
of how the modern money system is supposed to work: money is
created out of the void by the Federal Reserve (though banks have
to pay interest on this 'vaccuum energy' money) and then the banks
multiply the created money roughly by 10x because of roughly 10%
fractional reserve requirements via multiple cycles of deposits
and lending that only requires retaining 10% of what was deposited.
Recently, Steve Keen has made the point (citing studies as old as
20 years ago) that historically, creation of money by banks
*precedes*
creation of 'money from the void' as well as deposits. This is
an obvious possibility that I totally failed to envision, even though
there is nothing in the basic scenario outlined above that requires that
'money from the void' or deposit money actually precedes money created
by fractional reserves rules. Banks simply create money. And they get
*paid* (interest) for this. Nice line of work.
[Sep22'09] Alexander Cockburn just wrote a somewhat tedious column
about gossip. Searching for some myself, I found that Stephen Stills
auditioned to be a Monkee; and that Jimi Hendrix once opened for the
Monkees around the time he was living in Peter Tork's house in Laurel
Canyon (and was booed off stage). Now that's what *I* call
gossip!.
[Oct06'09] I ran across an amazing statistic about
California higher education in this Guardian
article:
"The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43%
to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded
for any developed world economy". That is so sad. A lot of the money
that would have helped people continue to go to college went instead to
prisons, which now house more prisoners per capita than any other country
in the world (10-20x the per capita prisoner count in EU countries).
Cut off your brain and put it in prison, California.
[Oct09'09] The monetary BASE just jumped to a new high, almost a
perfect inverse of the money multiplier (MULT) at the St Louis Fed.
This indicates the increase in BASE is having almost no effect on spending
and is simply sitting in banks, generating interest for the banks that
comes from the very same place that gave birth to the excess reserves --
the void). You can now see three big moves in BASE: the first was an
absolutely unprecedented doubling from Sept to Nov 2008, the second was
a top-up pulse in Jan/Feb/Mar 2008, and the third and current top-up
pulse started in July/Aug 2009.
[Oct16'09] The peace prez is planning this week to send 45,000 more
troops to Afghanistan. F-ing unbelievable. US-ians are fine with it
'because the economy is recovering'. On days like this, I feel like I
am completely losing touch with reality.
[Oct21'09]
M3
(reconstructed) has made an historic turn downward. Take a
look at the second chart at the link. The downturn is completely
unprecedented historically, especially in light of the massive
injection of created money into the system starting in Sept 2008.
The guy at the nowandfutures site (who has done us all the service
of reconstructing M3) says the downturn is temporary. Perhaps so,
but it truly looks like we are entering uncharted territory (cough).
The biggest wild card is peak oil. Conventional crude peaked in 2005.
"All liquids" -- which is a number about 1.15x as big as crude, and
which includes several other things (condensates, natural gas plant
liquids, tar sands) that the human monkeys began to extract when the
most attractive regular crude peaked -- themselves peaked in 2008.
It's almost certainly down from here on out. New, difficult territory.
Off-duty physicists playing around with money equations aren't going to
fix it. They should get back to real work.
[Nov01'09] In talking to people back in the states, I heard a lot of
FDR this and FDR that and what if Obama this and that. FDR presided
over the beginnings of an almost perfectly exponential rise in oil
production/consumption in the US that continued with hardly a single
out-of-place yearly data point until the 1973 oil shocks. This powered
the conversion of the US from an agrarian to an industrial civilization.
Exponentially increasing low-EROEI energy is an incomparable drug rush
that creates an exponential increase in everything else. With that as a
background, policy and party differences pale into insignificance. Sadly,
that rush is gone forever. The new regime of permanently decreasing
per capita energy will equally overwhelm puny differences in policy
and party and country. No party or country can publically state this
reality and none will, until industrial civilization has decayed to such
an extent that national parties and policies don't matter. Last month
Scientific American ran yet another puff piece from Leonardo Maugeri
(remember his don't-worry-be-happy 2004 article in Science?) about there
being plenty of oil left. That resulted in a lot of people writing in
to say: please cancel my subscription. This month, there was a piece
on how water, wind, and photoelectric will neatly be able to supply
to us an *increased* yearly energy budget by 2030 without the need
for any fossil fuels (just in case last month's Maugeri was wrong).
The article did worry a bit about not having enough minerals for that
many photocells and batteries (e.g., silver), but noted that this could
be solved by recycling (?!). They didn't mention mining and smelting
and steel-making and how we would triple the capacity of the grid.
They didn't mention the fact that recent high oil prices have caused
*dis*investment in wind and solar, but no doubt, they have a reason
why even higher oil prices will turn this around and spur reinvestment
in the future. They didn't mention much about food. The message was,
don't worry mr. consumer. We've got this one under control. Just keep
on driving your 100,000 watt car, and replacing your laptop every
other year. That same Scientific American issue did have an article on
how to grow food -- indoors, in skyscrapers. I particularly liked the
artist's touch of photocells on top of a 60 story hydroponic food tower.
Those photocells would probably be big enough to power and cool the CEO's
penthouse office... Just shameful. Instead of Maugeri's pablum, we
have the likely reality of Mexico ceasing all exports (much of which
go to the US) in 2 years, as its biggest oil fields fall off a cliff.
As I have mentioned for years, their cliff was steepened by the very same
improved oil extraction methods mentioned by Maugeri! Because of this,
the oil production downslope may not look at all like the almost linear
downslope of US production, which peaked in 1970 without the help of
advanced methods (horizontal drilling, water flood). In the short term,
it has the potential to eat up our current temporary surplus production
capacity in a year or two. Danger Will Robinson.
[Nov07'09] The military is having problems because a majority of
recruits are too fat or can't run or can't do one push up or pull
up or they used too many drugs or have police records. They need a
lot of new bodies since the current equivalent-to-Vietnam-era numbers
of troops and contractors in Afghanistan is NOT ENOUGH. So one hand
(big ag, video games, junk food) takes away from the other hand (the
computer-military-industrial complex)! This makes me think of the
recently revealed snafu that came up with the just-about-to-be-released
soft X-ray 'strip-search' airport scan machines (they call them milimeter
scans so you don't realize you're getting X-rayed) -- the possibility
that TSA ("thousands standing around") employees might be tempted to
collect child p orn after scanning kids. The utter nincompoopery of
all sides of both of these situations would be laughable if we weren't
talking about THE END OF FRIGGIN' INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION! And I never
realized that McDonalds was so anti-war, man...
[Nov15'09] Federal data say that 25% of homeless are veterans. Social
workers will tell you the true number is even higher. So now, the big
girlie man in California (the steroids must have shrunk it off entirely)
is getting set to make the 'hard decisions' to cut funding for homeless.
Girlie man.
[Nov24'09] It's morbidly interesting to sample some of the effluents
splattering out of ClimateGate. With all the hysteria, many people
don't even have the correct 'sign' about why Hans von Storch and Claire
Goodess resigned in 2003. The shallowness of thinking demonstrated
seems breathtaking, until you remember that language is just an overlay
on a primate brain, and science is just a temporary overlay on language.
The debate reminds me of a non sequitur I often heard during the 2008
oil price spike: oil companies and oil traders are making lots of money
from high oil prices, so therefore, peak oil isn't true. The whole
prurient email viewing episode provides a pleasant enough distraction
for inarticulate population while it continues to get fleeced (today
there was a trial balloon about installing Jamie Dimon as Minister
of Your Money -- fascism indeed!). World oil consumption bumped up
a bit over the path few months. Even if it was just from the Chinese
building empty cities, or building, tearing up, and rebuilding roads, or
buying unbelievable amounts of new aluminum making capacity, the uptick
likely brings us frighfully close to maximum daily production numbers,
and could lead once again to unpredictable explosive price increases.
Predicting these eruptions is really impossible in the near term.
For example, commercial real estate might crater, cratering some banks
just in time to bring usage a smidgen under maximum production, saving the
day (or month). But in 10 years, after 10 years of continued depletion,
things are going to be *extremely* rough, even if the depression deepens
considerably from now. We are now in a Wile E. Coyote moment where
economic contraction (the most recent one, no doubt caused in part by
bumping into production limits) can temporarily take the pressure off.
Further along the inexorable downslope, that won't be possible. We will
have to start to contract the whole world. Judging from the extraordinary
shallowness of thinking and the ease with which opinion is manipulated,
that contraction is likely to be very messy. No amount of writing is
going to convince people that one barrel of oil -- currently at $76 a
barrel -- is equal to one year of hard labor by a human (as explained
here).
Only a year of hard labor without oil will do that.
[Nov26'09] The swine flu scare is now mostly history. As an index of the
hysteria, recent investigative reports suggest that only a few percent
of suspected swine flu samples sent to the CDC actually turned out to
be H1N1 flu. The data further suggests that 'flu-like' symptoms are
only actually some kind of flu maybe 20% of the time. If we treated
all diseases this way, it would implode the medical care system.
[Dec01'09] If we can have the death penalty for people, we need the
possibility of the death penalty for corporations -- since they're
legally people, too. Excellent idea from the comments in zerohedge on
the Barclays Lehman shenanigans.
[Dec03'09] What distinguishes the Obama disaster from the Bush disaster
other than looks, and the fact that Obama can speak the language without
sounding like a complete dolt? Sure, it's only been a year, but that was
enough time for Bush to have started the disgusting war on Afghanistan
in 2001 (almost 9 friggin years ago!). Economic policies continue
to be designed by the same people Bush consulted (criminal bankers).
Secret prisons, rendition, and total information awareness surveillance
are unchanged, and still managed by Israeli companies. The wars are
escalated over the line held by, uhhh, Rumsfeld?! Middle east policy
and aid subsidies are unchanged. The lastest speech was filled with
the same pablum of Bin Laden (long dead) and vintage Bush 9/11 garbage.
Actually existing policies on energy use, car culture, and health care
are unchanged. Not looking too good. Where's the alternate universe?
I'm living in the same ugly one I was in last year.
[Dec13'09] Warlord Obama (quip from Le Point) picks up his peace prize.
As someone else quipped, he should have sent an unmanned drone to pick
it up for him. Or maybe, he should have sent a swarm of the
these
-- the latest sick DARPA fantasy -- real flying insects controlled by
electronics that are powered by tiny radioactive nickel sources. This is
what our best minds are doing as Ghawar dies and Rome begins to burn
to the ground. Truly pitiful. Meanwhile, there was an unintentionally
humorous post on the OilDrum -- a site about peak oil -- on why it's
too dangerous to raise
chickens in your back yard! It was posted by the same woman who assured
me in a comment response last year that it was too dangerous to consider
riding a bike in a city. Equally pitiful. She is perfectly intelligent
and has written very helpful non-technical but hard hitting summaries
of peak oil. Both of these are a reflection of our yeast-in-a-barrel
problem. Despite the towering internal complexity of each yeast, each
individual yeast is still not intelligent enough to stop reproducing, so
they all die after their last explosive division in their waste products
(alcohol). Similarly, modern industrial civilization is too complex for
any one person's brain -- even extremely intelligent and dedicated ones
-- to understand. Many single persons would each have to understand many
different scientific fields, politics, sociology, geography, engineering,
and economics (notice it wasn't in the science category...). Committees
of specialists won't help when our problem involves integration across all
the people and cultures across the entire world. It's looking more and
more like nothing is going to be able to stop us from seriously sh*tting
up our barrel -- except the spherical barrel walls themselves.
[Jan04'10] "Millimeter wave" body scanners from scumbag Michael Chertoff's
conflict-of-interest company that generate nude images of every traveler
are up and running at many airports. These are the closed booths that you
have to walk into. The millimeter wave scanners use very high frequency
microwaves (30-300 GHz). For comparison, WiFi/cellphones/bluetooth
use 1-3 GHz and MRI and FM radio use 0.1 GHz. Theoretical studies
have suggested that millimeter wave (terahertz) radiation can cause the
formation of
single stranded
bubbles in DNA, but this has not yet been experimentally tested.
A different body scanning technology deployed at other airports
uses backscattering of soft X-rays. These scanners use much higher
frequency, higher energy soft X-rays (30 million GHz). These scanners
are not booths but look instead like a flat panel that you stand against.
The ionizing radiation dose from a single backscatter image is relatively
small (less than 1/100 the dose from a 10-hour high-altitude flight,
but in the scanner case, delivered entirely to the skin); however,
plans have been mooted to put these into busses, trains, and even
surveillance
cameras, which could easily add up to substantial radiation
doses. The soft X-rays generate a more detailed body surface
image than the millimeter wave scans and penetrate tissure deeply
enough to image the teeth and hand bones. The entire radiation
dose is delivered mainly to the skin. Currently,
TSA
regulations state that both these scans are optional and that
"passengers who do not wish to utilize this screening receive an equal
level of screening and undergo a pat-down procedure". It is not clear
exactly what the first clause entails. The scans are read by a person
in a hidden room, not by the TSA drones in the line. This is supposed
to stop the "thousands standing around" goons from collecting (child)
po rn (!?). Since the line to the scan booth often gets backed up
(since it takes longer to go through than a standard metal detector),
your belongings (e.g., laptop) are typically screened before you get
scanned, and they may sit for a long time on the pickup conveyor belt,
increasing the chance of theft. Also, you can't see your belongings
while being scanned since you have to you face away from the exit
conveyor belt with your hands in the air. At the moment of peak oil,
instead of trying to retool industrial civilization to prevent it from
collapsing, we are devising yet new expensive ways to look up people's
butts, driven by complex psyops. It looks like the knicker-bomber/pasty
Abdulmutallab was so incoherent that he had to be escorted to the
gate by a "sharp-dressed" Indian man who asked that Abdulmutallab
bypass security without a passport because he was a Sudanese refugee,
according to Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell, who was sitting a few rows
away from Abdulmutallab. Holland's counter terrorism agency said that
Abdulmutallab did in fact have a valid Nigerian passport but did not
release any video they have. Smells bad.
[Jan10'10] Boiled down to bullet points, here are the three main
reasons why the transition to renewable energy is unlikely to happen.
(1) There is no possible positive spin on power down and the end of
growth. It's more fun to use more energy, period. Renewable energy
won't be able to support our current life style. No possible viable
conventional politician *or* revolutionary can propose power down and
economic contraction -- along with having less or no kids -- as a policy.
None will.
(2) The effects of climate change will be delayed.
The really bad effects of climate change (e.g., on food) won't start
killing huge numbers of people for 15 or 20 years.
(3) Fossil fuel
will get slowly tighter and tighter. This will prevent long term
infrastructure investments from being made in time. It will get harder
and harder to keep the fossil fueled machine going, but keeping things
going by stopgap measures will remain easier and cheaper than retooling
for a long time. When everybody finally agrees there is a problem, there
won't be enough fossil fuel energy left for transition. Since I don't
see (enough of) an effect of this knowledge on my very own behavior now,
when it could make a difference, I don't expect to see it in anybody
else's behavior.
[Jan31'10] As part of Obama's 'spending freeze', he proposed a
massive increase in military spending, which includes a
$5
billion increase in spending on nuclear weapons
the same week the Senate passed a bill containing
unilateral
sanctions to punish foreign companies that export gasoline
to Iran or help it develop refining facilities -- because of its
nuclear reactor program. When you just read the news without the
pictures, it makes you feel like you've taken drugs. Sometimes, I
feel like nuclear weapons really are being proposed as the solution
to peak oil. At David Michael Green writes, this was an
ugly week for humanity.
[Feb01'10] Some good energy news for a change!
Wind
capacity in the US increased by a large amount in 2009, led by Texas,
partly the result of stimulus spending.
[Mar05'10] The monetary BASE is going vertical again
[Mar13'10] Probably the best way to describe what banks have done
is an economic coup d'etat. The result will be to raise regressive
taxes at the low end of the income scale (after they were previously
lowered at the high end of the scale), and then at the same time, gut
pensions and social services (as promoted by Mish et al.). The result
will be incredible econonmic pressure on the low end, the young end,
the old end. It's not hard to see that eventually, this could lead
to a right-wing political coup to complete the transition to fascism
(banks + corporations + military). Even in these absolutely desperate
times, the military budget continues to grow. Another 10 years of that,
and the US will most of the way there.
[Mar23'10] Several people have pointed with alarm to this statement
in Bernanke's testimony on Feb 10: "The Federal Reserve believes it
is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow
the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose
costs and distortions on the banking system." (at end of
this
document). One sensible explanation of what went wrong over the
past 10 years was that leverage was too high, which roughly corresponds
to minimum reserve requirements being too low. The idea that there
should be *no* minimum reserve requirement means that instead of
banks multiplying money injected into them by the Fed by 10x (=1/10%
fractional reserves requirement), they could multiply it by 1/0% =
infinity! It's seems truly hallicinatory to me to have the head of
the Fed describing minimum reserves as "distortions", followed by no
comments from worthless hordes of finance commentators. Perhaps this
is because deposits that are components of M2 and M3 but *not* M1 (such
as non-individual savings accounts and term deposits) have no 10%-ish
reserves requirements -- and because M2 and M3 are much bigger than
M1. Still, this seems like a substantial change in policy.
Here
is one commentary on it that concludes that reserves are already
a fiction in the US and already officially not required in
several 6 OECD countries -- so this 'change' would in fact
only be officially recognizing what already exists. Sure is a
strange world down the economic rabbit hole! Perusing
these
charts from the Fed really makes it seem like the economy is still
falling off a cliff. The sharp turns are all correlated with huge
(and continuing) injection into the BASE money supply by the Fed.
Nothing seems to be resolved.
[Mar24'10] Jesse's Cafe Americain
makes
the point that the monetary base also expanded rapidly during
the Depression. However, what distinguishes the current increase is
its amazing rapidity, visible here by comparing graphs of the monetary
base (AMBNS) across two equivalently long time periods: from
1925-1955
and from
1980-2010.
Those two graphs are crudely superimposed
here using an image program.
There is about a factor of 40 difference in the y-axis scale because
of inflation. After removing that, the recent expansion of BASE can be
seen to be 3-4 times faster than during the depression; and it is still
in progress. Jesse goes on to call for reduced income disparities and a
return to growth. I think the first one is great idea, though difficult
to implement without pitchforks and torches. I think the second one
is impossible in the context of increasingly limited energy supplies
(mostly fossil fuels).
[Mar25'10] Complete mind control was prominently exhibited in the recent
'health care' debate, which involved sums of money that are trivial in
comparison to the never-discussed military budget. The problem could
begin to be solved if everybody just memorized the difference between
a million, a billion, and a trillion. It's just not that hard.
[Apr06'10] The top 6 American banks have assets equal to 63% of US GDP.
The body politic needs some serious de-worming. Note that this is not
different/worse than Europe. Deutsche Bank assests are 84% of German GDP
and RBS/Barclays/HSBC are 337% of UK GDP (according to zerohedge).
[Apr13'10] "The US government bailout and stimulus package to
respond to the financial crisis added up to $9.7 trillion, enough
to pay off more than 90% of the nation's home mortgages, [which
are ] calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve. Yet home
foreclosure rate continued to climb because only distressed financial
institutions were bailed out, but not distressed homeowners." --
Henry
C.K. Liu>. The next big target for the financial vultures will
be pensions (with the full support of commentators like Mish and
even Ilargi). Apparently, only extrememly rich people deserve them.
Boomers will lose them and younger people won't even be promised
them. The concept of retirement will go away. People will work
until they die. This is class war carried out under the cover of
fomenting intergenerational war between two non-rich groups. As Ruth
Sunderland says: "Debate about gap between public and private pensions
is a sideshow. The real apartheid is between top earners and everyone
else".
[Apr19'10] This weekend, Obama went golfing with the CEO of UBS, a big
contributor to Obama. A few weeks ago, UBS recently paid out an almost
$1 billion fine to the US treasury to settle an investigation of UBS
helping wealthy Americans hide their income in secret offshore accounts.
See above. The US savings rate seems to be going down again. It this
surprising given that banks are paying less than 0.1% interest while
raking in 4% on loans? At current US bank rates, a modest $20,000 yearly
payout would require a principal of $40 million dollars. It's good for
banks: the financial 'industry' is now wildly profitable again, despite
most banks being functionally insolvent. The financial 'industry'
(what a joke -- see how 'industrial' you bozos are when there is no
one to make you a new disk drive) is now is now approaching half of
the total US economy. Money for nothing (and for guys who are mostly
tone deaf).
[Apr20'10] The vampire squid makes money precisely because
they
*don't* operate in an open market, but in private, non-public markets
where they can fool people more easily. They are the exact opposite of
open market capitalists; their 'over the counter' trades are 'under the
counter' trades. And when they lose money, they get government welfare.
They don't need it or deserve it. We definitely don't need them.
We've got some serious problems maintaining industrial civilization
through the coming energy/water/grain/fish/soil/fertilizer plus continuing
population growth crunch, and we have got to get these imbecilic parasites
off our backs. They're not going to leave voluntarily. The weird lawsuit
against just Fabulous Fab for a relatively minor offense (in the greater
scheme of things), seems like it might be a convenient auto-da-fe to
sop up some of the building pressure in the defrauded and soon to be
depensioned populace. It seems highly unlikely it will have any lasting
effect on the parasites. Look what happend with Enron: after *their*
'public hanging', things literally got a hundred times worse/more
criminal!
[Apr23'10] Didja see what just happened in
total consumer credit
and
total
bank credit? It looks like Sept 2008 again!
The plot also includes total consumer credit (which is
less than 1/3 as big as commercial bank credit, and which
didn't get any helpful injections this time either). Here is a
closeup
(2 years of data) of the same data on total bank credit, now plotted
along with the BASE money supply, which shows the extreme abruptness of
the change. I can't particularly correlate the huge jump in bank credit
with anything in the news. Almost half a trillion dollars (AKA 460
billion dollars) in a few weeks is a really big move -- that's almost
as big as a full year of spending by the US department of 'defense'.
What's up?
[Apr23'10] A longer term picture of cash+bank reserves (BASE)
and total commercial bank credit graph from the last post is
here,
plotted on the same y-axis. What could account for a 1-week
half-a-trillion increase in bank credit in the last week of
March 2010? It has to be a central bank operation. But what?
Preparation for an Iran war doesn't seem more likely than at any other
time over the past few years. Perhaps, there has been some advance
knowledge of yet-to-be-released damning evidence in the so far just a
limited-hang-out/auto-da-fe by the SEC? That too, seems unlikely given
the dominance of the financial 'industry' in the government -- Summers,
Geithner, campaign donors, golf buddies, 6 big banks with assets equal
to 60% of US GDP, etc, etc -- and the power of the panopticon press.
However, I tend to be absolutely horrible at political prediction
(I'm only good at mechanical things like the 2008 oil peak, which
I predicted correctly in 2003). I only noticed a few (other? :-} )
wackos commenting on the credit spike, suggesting that big banks might
be ready to expose some new huge losses, or that the US financial elite
rats are finally getting ready to desert the sinking ship (seem unlikely
to me at this point). The only thing that really correlates with this
in the news are the problems in Greece, but, sheesh, that seems like
too much for just Greece (400 billion euros).
[May03'10] It's worth trying to state what is going on with banks in as
clear language as possible. Currently, banks take out huge loans from
the Fed, which creates money out of the void in return for interest.
The Fed opened this 'discount window' to investment banks only in March
2008, when Lehman failed. The current interest rate the banks have
to pay to the Fed's 'discount window' is at a record low, at around
0.75%. Then they take these 'excess reserves' (defined as reserves
above the mimimum 10%-ish rate required by law) and re-deposit them
into the Fed as 'Treasuries'. This explains why bank reserves (BASE)
have more than doubled since Sept 2008, which is completely explained by
'excess reserves' (EXCRESNS). The Fed then decided, for the first time
in history, to pay interest on excess bank reserves (the same Fed that
generated the money out of nothing in the first place). The interest
the banks get on this 'deposit' is 3.5%. Good 'work' if you can get
it, eh? The banks could also lend you money to buy a house at 4-5%
interest while paying less than 1% interest on their borrowing, but
that would be more risky. So they are reducing their lending to such an
extent that government-guaranteed loans through Fannie and Freddie now
account for 95% of lending. This utter insanity passes as brilliance,
to be rewarded with record bonuses. If people knew what was going on in
simple corn pone terms, they would probably vote in a Hitler right now
to clean up the mess. It's gotten to the point where it almost seems
better not to tell them -- like the way I now feel about peak oil.
[May09'10] The Deepwater horizon disaster will evoke calls to stop
deepwater drilling in much the same way that Chernobyl put people off
nuclear power, as Dmitri Orlov points out. Unfortunately, now that
we are past peak oil, much of the remaining second half of oil is in
deepwater places. Unlike Orlov, I doubt the bans will hold for long.
Despite their outrage, the spill will not induce people to conserve one
little bit. Only temporary oil price spikes can do that. But they will
respond with more consumption as soon as they abate. The bans will be
overturned soon enough, and people will get the rest of the oil out.
Then it will be too late to conserve.
[May16'10] Actions speak louder than words. Here we are, a year an a
half after the Obama election and *all* the US troops are still in Iraq.
The latest postponed withdrawal is supposed to be this August. Go ahead,
believe in that. The Afghanistan war is considerably *bigger* than it was
under Bush, and Obama is doing smirking Jack-the-Ripper/Bush imitations
about slaughtering wedding party guests. And then there are his huge
spending increases on nuclear weapons, far past what Bush had previously
ordered. And the same Bush-installed criminals (Geithner, Summers) are
currently in power, bailing out their filthy fraud friends. Just as
in the UK, the differences between the parties are merely Orwellian.
I hear many people shedding crocodile tears about the Gulf oil spill.
It's bad, certainly. But those people have no intentions of getting rid
of their cars, or of even driving a little less. They won't stop flying.
I'm guilty myself -- I have no car, but I certainly still fly, which is
approximately equivalent to driving the same distance in a car. So stop
your sobbing, humans (which I suppose includes me). The *only* thing
that will stop you/me is a fossil fuel energy shortage that will lead to
a food shortage. Exactly the same as with other animals. It won't happen
for a while yet (10-15 years) since the 'peak' of peak oil is quite flat.
But every day gets more and more schizophenic, juxtaposing energy facts
and 'normal' everyday banter. It's actually 3-way 'schizo' because
in addition to energy reality, and iPad/TV reality, there is financial
terr'ist reality. They dropped the market by 1000 points in 5 minutes
to scare non-numerate congressworms into voting the next day against
breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks, using high frequency trading (now
70% of all trades!). Then across the pond, they did the same thing to
Greece with CDS's to scare the EU into bailing out their own (the same)
super-richies' bad bets by making low income people pay for them. These
two stunts have set up (two more!) transfers of insane amounts of wealth
to already super-rich people, and positioned the rubes for additional
future stripping of pensions and jobs and assumption of rich people's risk
-- all with the acquiescence of the rubes, and in the US, even support!
The other 99% of us can only see echoes of this (e.g. the vertical
half a trillion dollar one week jumps in total bank credit
here).
The super-rich slime hold all the levers and are cashing out before
the peak oil sh*t really hits the fan. This economic shock and awe
campaign gives me the same feeling as in the 6 month lead-up to the
2003 Iraq invasion -- the leisureliness, the lack of embarrassment,
the inevitability.
[May29'10] Straight from the horses mouth (ass): "I would recommend you
panic" -- Hugh Hendry, hedge fund worm, speaking on the BBC. In the
previous depression, the US turned left and Europe turned right. So far,
things look they just might be reversed this time.
[May31'10] BP is in somewhat of a pickle after the 'top kill' failed
(injecting mud and 'junk' to try to slow the leak. The next plan will
be to try to saw off the bent riser and attach a tube over it to collect
the leaking oil. They could try to cap the well by installing another
blow out preventer above the partially shut one, but there are several
serious problems here. The topmost part of the casing (bore liner steel
pipe) of this well is 16 inches in diameter. Given the large reservoir
pressure of 13,000 psi at the bottom of the well (which BP unloaded by
withdrawing the heavy mud and replacing it with sea water, which was the
proximal cause of the blowout), which is still in the range of 9,000 psi
at the level of the blow out preventor, even if they were successful in
completely shutting it off the leak, the increased pressure might actually
rupture the 16 inch casing which has a rupture pressure under 10,000 psi,
leading to a completely unrestrained leak much worse than the current one.
If the latest plan to capture the leaking oil fails, capping the well
will probably have to wait until the relief wells are finished in a month
or two. From reports of people who survived the disaster, this is looking
more and more like a Chernobyl- or a Challenger-style disaster -- caused
in both cases by non-engineering management overriding engineers' best
guesses. In the case of Chernobyl, lifting out the moderator rods past
the physicists' never-go-higher-than-here marks in order to perform a
'safety' test (indeed!), and in the case of the Challenger, blasting
off probably to have a teacher in space for Reagan's state of the union
speech, even though the engineer who designed the solid fuel booster
(Boisjoly) refused to sign the blast off order because he knew it was too
cold for the O-rings to properly seal off the hot gasses from escaping
during the initial ignition. If history is a guide, no one will even
remember what the real cause of the disasters were -- management failure
rather than technological failure. And the management won't be properly
punished so this doesn't happen again after a few years (in the case of
the Challenger disaster, the guy who correctly refused to sign lost his
job and had to leave the industry because the higher management types
were more powerful than the truth).
[Jun06'10] I hadn't been practicing the guitar for while. After having
a few glasses of wine, I became inexplicably enraged at rhythm changes.
So I sat at my desk last night and perhaps inadvisedly recorded
this version of Sonny Rollins' Oleo, but in A instead of Bb, with
rock drum loops turned up fast to crudely simulate jazz drumming,
dominant 7th's and minor 3rd's, and the Garage Band "Texas Blues"
patch to complement a slightly drunken timing. It's called
A-glio> (olio
e aglio, get it?).
[Jun13'10] The official Gulf of Mexico spill rate used to be 5,000
barrels/day. However, the BP ship is now collecting 15,000 barrels/day
through a very leaky top hat on the cut-off riser. Together with the
possibility that the bore liner is ruptured below the sea bottom and
leaking there, too, it looks like the often-reviled initial scientific
estimates of around 50,000 barrels a day (1 barrel every 2 seconds)
is closer to the truth.
[Jun16'10] Now it's official that the leaking oil well flow rate is
much higher than previously reported -- currently about 1 barrel every
2 seconds (roughly 1 million gallons a day), according to scientists,
BP, and Heading Out at the oildrum :-} . The flow rate has probably
increased, probably the result of abrasive particle erosion of the
partially closed blow-out preventer and perhaps leaks to the outside of
the well casing and perhaps, because the higher pressures and flow during
the failed 'top kill' attempt (pumping heavy mud into the well through a
port *underneath* the blow-out protector to try to build up a heavy-mud
column inside the bore hole to counteract the oil and gas pressure).
Now 1 barrel every 2 seconds sounds like a lot of oil, and it is -- but
compare it to US daily oil *usage* of about *450* barrels every 2 seconds
(roughly 1 *billion* gallons a day) -- that is, about about 1,000 times
as much per day as the spill. World oil usage is almost 2,000 barrels
every 2 seconds. I certainly agree that BP sux, but so do all of the
rest of us. You can't make an omelette (i.e., an industrial society)
without breaking eggs. *Of course* there were some inadvisable BP
shortcuts in this particular case to save money and increase their
profits by increasing the risk of damaging other people's stuff.
But even when everything is done correctly, mistakes can still happen.
This is especially the case as the easier-to-get oil fields are exhausted.
It will be even harder and even more risky from now on, until we get to
the point where the energy required to reasonably safely get the oil is
greater than the energy returned by the produced oil. This unfortunate
catastrophe is part and parcel of peak oil, not the merely despicable
old news of corporate greed. The right lesson has not yet been learned.
Here in London, none of the stupid car drivers that I glare at at every
intersection accelerate even slightly less luxuriously than they did at
the beginning of the year (and even if they did, it wouldn't help much).
I'm so sick of hearing the words 'addicted to oil'. We're not 'addicted
to oil'. That's like saying that a person has an addiction to blood.
Oil the is current life blood of industrial civilization. Without it,
industrial civilization will quickly die out. Work on blood replacements
is waaaay behind, despite serious blood loss...
[Jun22'10] My response to Robert Jensen query about
intellectual and emotional reactions to collapse
here.
[Jul02'10] There is a worrying discussion of the possible
effects of the oil spill on the money economy as a result
of BP's huge derivatives positions by Gordon T. Long
here.
In the course of the late development of industrial society, scientists
and engineers have figured out how to deal with complex problems,
and they have figured out what level of corner-cutting can safely
be tolerated. Sometimes these very accurate estimates get overriden
by management to save money. Usually, management gets away with
it because most well-designed systems have layers of fail-safes.
Occasionally, the management overrides are disastrous (Challenger
explosion, Chernobyl meltdown, Deepwater Horizon blowout). In the
case of financial complexity, not only do I not trust the managers, but
I also have *absolutely* no faith in the skills of or respect for the
"money engineers" themselves. This is looking more and more like trench
warfare, where conservative British historians praised the British army
for proudly maintaining discipline as soldiers pointlessly marched out
of trenches into withering fire and certain death. Embarrassing lack
of style, you humans.
[Jul04'10] The $30 billion the Congress didn't want to spend on extending
unemployment benefits -- supposedly because it would increase the national
debt -- went a few days later to extend the longer-than-WWII war in
Afghanistan that Obama was supposedly elected to end. Pitchfork time
Americans! What more direct illustration could there be that this stupid,
bloody, criminal, pointless, counterproductive war is directly bankrupting
you? -- indeed the *very* people who are fighting it?!?
[Jul05'10] Clear summary of the main points on the blowout from
the oildrum
comments:
ROCKMAN: BP actually ran a wireline pressure gauge (an MDT) before
they ran csg. It measured about 11,900 psi [pounds per square inch]
in the reservoir. This is equivalent to a 12.6 ppg [pounds per gallon]
mud weight. They drilled it with around 14 ppg mud. And if you didn't
catch it earlier there's an easy way to covert pressure to MW: pressure
(psi) = MW (ppg) * 0.052 * mud column height (feet).
fdoleza: So they
drilled it way over-balanced, then they circulated the mud out before
they had a cement bond log and knew they had a good set of plugs? What
was the guy on? LSD?
ROCKMAN: At this point that's what it looks
like. Maybe when the official facts come out we may draw a different
conclusion. Even more difficult to understand is that the real time data
monitoring system appears to document there were clear signs of the well
kicking almost an hour before the explosion. They either didn't notice
or didn't believe what they were seeing. Everyone in the oil patch I've
discussed it with all find it equally unbelievable. Maybe we've got it
wrong but that's exactly what it looks like right now.
[Jul13'10] The Deepwater horizon spill (at 35 to 60 thousand barrels a
day for 72 days) is now probably the world's worst oil spill, surpassing
the Ixtoc 1979 spill, at least 10 times worse than the Exxon Valdez spill.
At best, the new capping stack will close off the flow. If that doesn't
hold or begins to cause further damage to the well, the first relief
well could penetrate the bore and stop the spill in a month. The first
or second relief well often fails, however, and there is a chance the
leak will continue for another 3 months or even longer. As Dahr Jamail
reports
from the scene, hell has already come to south Louisiana.
[Jul17'10] BP appears to have temporarily capped the well by installing
a new blow-out preventer stack on top of the 26" dia bore liner, and
has closed it temporarily for a test, stopping the oil leaking into the
Gulf for the first time. The pressure (about 2 tons per square inch at
the ocean floor well head after subtracting out water pressure at that
depth), however, did not build up to quite as high as expected (about
20% less than expected), which could indicate that some oil is still
escaping through an alternate channel. BP is doing seismic imaging
now, presumably to look for subsurface fractures around the borehole.
But very good news so far.
[Jul28'10] The main function of the wiki leaks (given several weeks
in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel by the
ostensibly antiwar Assange, who supposedly "enjoys crushing bastards",
take that, you bastards) so far seems to be to motivating an *enlarged*
war against Pakistan and -- of all things -- the resurrection of Bin
Laden! (who probably died of kidney disease in Dec 2001). Today, two
days after the official leak release, the House congressional worms just
tossed another $60 billion at the Afghan war today by a 308-114 vote,
described as a major win for Obama. The mind boggles at such pukedom.
The same pack of worms voted down a call for US troops to withdraw from
Pakistan by 38-372. Economic crisis whatever. At least real worms are
good for the soil. At this moment in history, most Americans don't care
about dead non-American civilians. The Iraqi/Afghanistan holocaust (well
over 1 million killed) doesn't even register with them, so piecemeal
text revelations of this wrongdoing won't move them. They won't pay
attention to the rest of the world until the American empire begins to
overtly collapse, and that's probably still two decades away. Bizarrely,
in an interview, without prompting, Assange defended the official
government theory of 9/11 (planes brought down the two towers and fire
imploded the third tower, WTC7). Why this at this time? To go with the
'latest intelligence' on the whereabouts of the long-dead bin Laden?!
Assange is maybe legit. But that would make him and even better conduit
of info+disinfo.
[Jul30'10] Gordon Duff makes the
excellent
point that there was a strange absence of anything in the wiki
leaks on the Afghan drug trade -- a major source of money for covert
operations dating back to Vietnam and before. The restablishment of the
drug trade was one of the first great 'achievements' of the US invasion
of Afghanistan. With respect to Assange as witting or unwitting, Gordon
Duff says: "I hate it when people are duped. I would rather he were
paid or being blackmailed. I always want the useless to be rewarded
in this life because, just in case there is another one after this,
they know what they can expect there."
[Aug01'10] The capped BP/Macondo/Gulf-of-Mexico well is holding for now.
They are trying to decide whether to make another attempt at a 'top kill'
(pump in some heavy mud, let it sink down, let out some pressure, repeat)
or to wait for the relief wells to arrive (relief wells usu. take several
attempts before they manage to get close enough to the hole). The reason
for being careful about the 'top kill' is that the current shut-in
pressure is equivalent to the burst rating of the 16-inch casing near the
top of the well but actually higher than the burst rating of the 22-inch
casing at the very top of the well (i.e., the well is probably currently
shut in as a result of the 22-inch casing holding back more pressure that
it is rated for). Hopefully, the relief well will arrive soon...
[Aug04'10] 'Top kill' described above seems to have worked without blowing
up the largest casing. The big pressure differential should now be gone.
[edit Aug11: the pressure differential is less, clearly better than
before] Whew.
[Aug11'10] Tens of *trillions* (AKA thousands of billions) of
out-of-the-void money is given to banks who then redeposit it in the Fed
to 'earn' interest, but no money for extending unemployment, paying for
food stamps, or investing in infrastructure? This is class war, pure and
simple. I read on many blogs average people, who are getting absolutely
reamed by this policy *defending* it! If average people don't wise up and
start fighting back, it's just going to be more of the same. The plan is
to slowly attack salaries, pensions, infrastructure maintenance, parks,
and so on, little by little, each year. At the same time, tax rates
for rich people and rich corporations will continue to be whittled away
(they already pay almost no tax compared to 20 or 30 years ago via
off shore scams). And for what? To preserve the ill-gotten assets
of a tiny fraction of super-rich people whose money 'works' for them?
So they can construct compounds on Caribbean islands protected by private
security forces? Because they came up with the great idea of outsourcing
everything to Chinese Foxconn slave labor factories where people literally
drop dead in their 30's from overwork making iPhones? Then pile on
top of all this usual 3000-year-old crap, declining energy supplies
and a bunch of nincompoops wanting to bomb Iran. The complete lack of
common sense boggles the mind and makes it hard to get anything done.
And money doesn't do work of the kind you can get from fossil fuels.
Ever. You off-duty physicists who knew better should be ashamed.
[Aug13'10] The blown-out BP well is currently being held at 4200 pounds
per square inch (2 tons per square inch), possibly by applying extra
pressure from pumps (the ambient ambient pressure of sea water at the
wellhead is about 2300 pounds per square inch) or perhaps from mud
still in the 5000 foot pipe to the surface. In either case, that is
not exactly what one would desribe as 'static' (meaning in equilibrium).
Until they bleed off that pressure and see what happens (e.g., see if oil
comes out), it not clear at this time how 'plugged' the well actually is.
Hopefully things will be clearer next week. BP may be trying to wriggle
out of finishing the relief well. The current estimate of the spill is
about 5 million barrels -- a record amount of oil spilled, but sadly,
only about 1/4 of a day of US usage.
[Aug14'10] A negative pressure test -- i.e. applying pressure less than
2300 pounds per square inch ambient water pressure -- did not result in
any obvious leaks. Good so far -- but given uncertainty due to previous
sloppily monitored cement jobs, not a slam dunk until the relief well
injects cement from the bottom.
[Aug15'10] Gordon Long has a reasonable diagnosis
of the what happened over the last ten years
here.
And I'm not complaining about his idea of bailing out college students
:-} instead of utterly worthless gambler/parasites like AIG and Goldman.
He points out that funding more students and teaching positions to
stem the tide of the rest of the world overtaking the US in research
would cost no more than a rounding error for the unbelievably gigantic
disgusting TARP bailout. And it's simple common sense that the US
should cut military spending for the US's vile overseas occupations and
operations in 130 other countries when there are 40 million Americans
on food stamps. But I think he doesn't realize that the situation is
about to take *another* unexpected turn as energy starts to get scarce.
All the sudden changes he described that were related to the internet are
going to be partially undermined by the *energy* cost of producing actual
things (what Gordon says is not important) jumping up. Where things are
made *will* suddenly begin to matter again, a whole lot more than it used
to. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obummer recently said about Iraq and
Afghanistan: "[We must] make sure that we've got a civilian expeditionary
force that when we go out into some village somewhere.... let's make
sure that we are giving them the support that they need in order for
us to be successful on our mission". I wonder where they would train
for the bashing down doors and terrorizing families in the middle of
the night part of their 'mission'? Maybe in fake Iraqi villages set
up by erstwhile movie producers in San Diego? Civilian expeditionary
force, eh? Maybe it would be a good idea to watch out for the domestic
civilian expeditionary pitchfork-and-torches force...
[Aug31'10] It seems that the US housing bubble (and the even bigger UK and
French housing bubbles) may take a very long time to disinflate (heh).
Fannie and Freddie -- originally purposed to make housing affordable
-- are now being used to *prop up* house prices at levels that are
becoming more and more unaffordable! On the other hand, if housing
prices drop further toward affordable levels, it could put a majority of
mortgage holders underwater, further reducing housing related spending.
If interest rates stay near zero to prevent even further housing losses,
pensions are further impacted, continuing the contraction. The only
way that housing prices can be propped up would be to increase wages.
But with unemployment high, that won't happen. Because nobody wants
to rock (blow up) the boat, it seems likely that things will drift
down slowly for a long time, Japan 1990's style (without the benefit
of a robust manufacturing base, but with a less unfavorable demographic
distribution).
[Sep12'10] "The real kill team, of course, is in the White House, under
the leadership of a Democratic president who, it's clear by now, is
covertly serving out George W. Bush's third term in office." --
Christopher Ketcham
On Sept 11, 2010, Obama announced yet another one year extension of
a State of National Emergency, first begun by George Bush on Sept 14,
2001. There are now 120,000 troops in Afghanistan, the most ever.
[Sep18'10] The relief well has finally intersected the bottom of the
blown-out and now sealed-from-the-top Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico,
four and a half months after the blowout, about the amount of time it
usually takes. The well can now be cemented in from the bottom to seal it
for good. They still have to be careful since the approximately 12,000
pounds per square inch pressure of the well down there is currently only
being held in place by the column of heavy drilling mud (the relief well
would flow at 50,000 barrels a day if this heavy mud wasn't there).
It won't be over until the cement is pumped down and cures [update:
successfully sealed -- now we just need 2 or 3 decades for the Gulf to
recover from the spill].
[Sep28'10] "Keynes vs Hayek? Friedman vs Krugman? Those are the wrong
intellectual debates. Its you vs. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, You vs. Lloyd
Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO. And you are losing..." --
Barry
Ritholtz.
[Oct12'10] Military manufacturing in the US has
more than doubled since 2000 while the rest of the
manufacturing sector has continued to shrink (graph
here).
The military now makes 8% of all durable goods in the US (as opposed
to 3% in 2000). At peak oil, instead of investing in electrified rail
and preparing for lower energy return on energy investment, the US is
expanding its military. Ironically, or perhaps ominously, the military is
the only organization taking peak oil seriously. Civilian organizations
are all officially and unofficially ignoring it as it happens right
in front of their eyes. In just 5 years -- minus a manufactured event
or another war, or both -- it is going to be impossible for anyone to
ignore peak oil. The Fed can not print oil.
[Oct24'10] Two views of community organizing from
Billy
Wimsatt and
Dmitri
Orlov. I like Billy's vision much better (and his father was my
PhD advisor!) but I'm having to work to convince myself that Dmitri
is wrong.
[Oct24'10] 70% of stock trades are held for an average of 11 seconds.
This means that the daily 'market' consists almost entirely of
computer programs, not people. The remaining humans are exiting this
'market'.
[Oct27'10] "Because of the connection of energy to problem solving,
we will not stop using fossil fuels until we are forced to". -- Joseph
Tainter, Barcelona 2010.
[Nov01'10] The TSA only-job-left-in-America guys will now feel your
testicles if you skip the d*ck-measuring X-ray machine -- because of
a ... package?! (I order all my toner cartidge packages from Yemen,
don't you?). Touch my package, duuude. The military guys sure have
got a sick fascination with genitals, sexual humiliation, and torture.
A little worse each year. After another 5 or 10 fake events, we'll be
flying in hospital gowns.
[Nov03'10] The idiotic Democrats have mostly lost to the strikingly
more idiotic Republicans. Sad to see good guy Russ Feingold go, but it
was great thing to see Meg Whitman pour $140 million of her ill gotten
gains down the toilet over the past 6 months in her losing governor bid
in California. I'm confident she will feel the loss -- of the money --
very acutely. California rocks. Wisconson sucks.
[Nov04'10] Easy come easy go. The USGS just reduced its estimate of
the undrilled reserves in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, NPRA
(which is just west of the much-disputed Alaska National Wildlife Refuge,
ANWR) from 10 billion barrels to less than 1 billion barrels, which might
not even be enough to make extracting it net energy positive (there is
a larger amount of natural gas there than oil, and the natural gas is
probably worth going after). The usual press drones can never bring
themselves to mention energy return on energy investment, but rather say
'not currently economically viable'. But the fact of the matter is that
oil prices have no effect on whether or not the deposit is net energy
positive, and therefore, an energy source as opposed to a sink.
[Nov05'10] Scary numbers
here on the current costs of
drilling for natural gas in the US. It looks like the current average
money return on money investment is running negative (!). Of course,
the costs for drilling a well is up front, and so you would have to
average over the length of production time to get a better estimate of
total money in vs. total money out. But given that gas wells deplete
very quickly and are depleting more and more quickly (now down to
just a few years), these are truly scary graphs to me. Currently,
natural gas costs 1/2 as much as oil on an equal energy content basis.
Given the predicament indicated by the rate of drilling for gas relative
to the rate of production of gas, its currently low price points to a
staggering mismatch between an insanely short-look-ahead financial system
and the production cliff we are about fall over in the next decade.
Natural gas is critical for heating, cooking, for managing short term
loads on the electric grid, and for extracting oil from tar sands.
Maybe people would understand better if you mentioned that TV and the
internet will be constantly interrupted or that the battery on the iPad
doesn't last as long when it's cold...
[Nov25'10] A majority of US-ians think that going through
the body scanner will stop them from touching your penis
or vulva. Wrong! Merely wearing a panty liner or tampon is
enough to get felt up. God help you if you've had a
urostomy.
It was dismal watching the brainless Stasi-like only-job-left-in-town
TSA drones in action recently. The lastest idiocy (observed in LAX in
Nov) was for them all to limply yell in unison to simultaneously shut
down all the lines for a few minutes as a 'practice run'. For what?
A mass groping? This is basically Abu Ghraib lite -- sexual humiliation
as a form of population mind control. TSA is a dead weight on airlines,
which are about to suffer additional calamities as oil demand bumps up
against max output next year, temporarily driving oil prices higher until
the economy is crashes again. Maybe the drones will then be assigned to
fondle each other, to keep their chops in shape, just in case a passenger
shows up...
[Nov29'10] As usual with anything that hits the news and gets blared
around the world, there are multiple threads behind the recent negative
stories about the TSA. One angle I hadn't thought about concerns the
fact that individual airports can opt out of having the TSA there.
This doesn't mean that you won't get fondled. But it could instead be
done by a private contractor (maybe already the case if the TSA contracts
out their workers). If I had to decide between (1) lightly X-raying
my peepee, (2) lightly microwaving it, (3) paying a $11,000 fine, (4)
having it fondled by a TSA drone, and (5) having it fondled by a private
contractor, I think I would choose number 4. The energy of the X-rays
used in the backscatter machines is comparable to those used in a standard
mammogram or dental X-ray (mammogram=20keV vs. TSA=30keV). This is just
the energy of the individual photons; for a complete comparison, you also
have to know how many photons are used (I don't know that comparison --
the TSA claims the flux is lower). The scanners work differently than
dental X-rays or mammograms in that a narrow intense beam is scanned
rapidly over the body. The fact that airport screeners may
not
even be allowed to wear radiation badges is not a good sign that
their intention is pure.
[Dec07'10] The release of the secret Fed documents only forced by a
lawsuit revealed that the $700 billion given out at the end of 2008 was
just chicken feed. The Fed gave out $12 trillion (17 times the size of
the 'official bailout', which was 'debated' and passed despite the fact
that most people opposed it) in virtually zero-interest-rate loans to
the very people whose fraud crashed the system. Those people were able
to use this money to buy things that normal people could not (such as
'bank accounts' that had a decent rate of interest), because normal
people would have to pay a minumum of 5% on a *much* smaller loan.
Complete criminals. This allowed them to pay themselves huge bonuses
as a reward for bankrupting small people. Class war, plain and simple.
These criminals will continue to strip underwater properties from regular
people and steal their pensions until people strike back. The people
won't do that until things get a lot worse. And by then, on the downslope
of peak oil, people will be susceptible to a Hitler/Mussolini type.
Just great...
[Dec11'10] Obama's current approval rating is at 45%. For context, Bush
started off in 2001 at just 55%, shot up instantly to 87% after 9/11,
drifted linearly down back to 55% by April 2003, then shot up to 75% with
the invasion of Iraq, then drifted back down to 45% (Obama's current),
when he was reelected (whatever) in 2005, then eventually drifted down
to 25% by the end of his second term in Dec 2009. Looks like O'Bomber
won't get reelected unless he starts another war or receives the gift
that keeps on giving -- another 9/11.
[Dec12'10] The graphs of M3 at
shadowstats show that
the actions of the Fed have finally flattened the strongly negative
(deflationary) trend in M3 that began in June 2009. Previous to this,
M3, the most general measure of total money, had grown pretty much
continuously on a year by year basis since the Depression. M3 growth
did almost go flat for about 5 years between 1990 and 1995, but then
continued upward strongly after that. M3 began to flatten again about
6 months the Sept 2008 crisis, then jumped back up sharply with the
stimulus, coincident with the specatular more-than-doubling of BASE.
The recent unprecendented downturn in M3 only started in June 2009 and
flattened to zero over the past 6 months.
[Dec24'10] An amazing xmas present from the Congressonal worms. An almost
$1 trillion tax cut, mostly for super rich people, and paid for by a
transfer mostly from social security! I would call it class war, but
our side is not fighting back. So it's more like class massacre.
[Dec28'10]
This
graph prepared by David Lewis
here,
showing the history of R&D (public and private combined) for defense,
health, and energy says it all. We currently spend about $80+ billion for
defense R&D, about $27 billion for health R&D, and less than $2 billion
on energy R&D. Right at the moment of peak oil. As David Lewis puts it:
"I suppose the US could still choose to have other priorities, but I
guess what I'm seeing here is something like the Fall of Rome. Imagine
you were poring over statistics as the Huns closed in and noticed
the budget for coping with Huns was about as sizable as the climate
science and energy R&D budgets are here compared to the more important
things the Roman Senate were putting their money into". I don't think
he fully realizes the gravity and nearness of peak fossil fuel energy;
but he has his price ratios exactly correct: renewable energy will never
be cheaper than fossil fuel.
[Jan23'11] Here is a 8-month-old tidbit I just came across.
In a clever marketing trick, a photograph of a beautiful
nude model from PhotoAlto, a stock photo agency (mirrored
here)
was photoshopped (contrast reversed, changed to gray
scale, fake gun image added) by a German magazine and
then spread widely through the internet (e.g., 'right'
here,
'conspiracy'
here,
'metro'
here,
etc). By contrast, the bottom image
here is what a
real back-scatter X-ray image looks like (notice that the bones inside
the legs are visible, meaning that some X-rays penetrated that deep).
Kewl use of sex for mind control (not the real back-scatter image...).
[Jan30'11] Here (
part 1,
part 2,
part 3, and
part 4)
is a thought-provoking series of articles arguing that the 'wars for oil'
are actually wars for state-less oil *companies*. The Afghan route for
Caspian oil will supply India and China, not the US (cf. 80's Alaska
pipeline oil going to Japan, not the US). Rich people think differently
than you and me.
[Feb16'11] The level of denial in mainstream media reports on the
(mild!) wikileak about peak oil makes me chuckle (in horror), but also
feel a bit schizophrenic (my Feb-2011-updated peak oil talk slides
are
here --
6M PDF). It's like the Monty Python "it's just a flesh wound"
skit. But geology doesn't give a hoot about the clueless
palaver
churned out in Time magazine. The lifeblood of industrial civilization
is starting to drain away -- at 1000 barrels a second, 80 million barrels
a day, one cubic mile per year. Good luck breaking an 'addiction' to
our blood supply! There is at best 15 years of gradually decreasing
supply followed by 15 years of rapidly decreasing supply, followed by
god knows what. I often read in the oildrum or 'sensible capitalist'
sites about how renewable energy is a waste because it's more expensive
than fossil fuel. Of *course* it's more expensive! It will probably
*always* be more expensive! What do you expect when it's made out super
convenient, super high energy density, always instantly available,
use-it-once-and-it's-gone-forever fossil fuels? Renewable energy is
not like that. It doesn't run out if you can manage to maintain your
machines, but it's intermittent and expensive (=energy requiring!) to
store. Does this mean we shouldn't do it? Of course not! Does
this mean we shouldn't conserve? Of course not! We should madly
construct expensive, intermittent non-fossil fuel power and electric
bikes/carts/trucks to store that energy *and* we should conserve, too.
But right now, there is no sign of panic. To parrot what one of the
hedge fund a$$holes said last summer, "I would recommend you panic."
Like Mubarak, the oil supply will cause mass demonstrations. But unlike
Mubarak, the oil supply will pay absolutely no attention to them.
No matter how big they are. As the Big Squeeze sets in toward the end of
the next decade, it seems likely that our maneuverability as a society
is going to be reduced -- right when we really need it to flexible
and adaptive. At least the (forced) convervation part will happen.
We need a better word for a rupture between your consciousness and the
consciousness of everybody else, caused by most everybody else except
you being crazy: schizo-all-the-reset-of-you-are-nuts-ia... :-}
[Feb20'11] Over the past 2 months, another
1/5 of a trillion
dollars was added, presumably from the Fed, to US bank reserves,
after a year of relative quiet. I presume this must (part of) QE2.
A longer term view shows that this action, begun in Sept 2008, remains
utterly unprecendented, and strangely without effect. It also looks like
have been 3, not 2 bouts of money injection. From the money multiplier
plotted on the same graphs, it's clear that the money didn't go anywhere
-- rather, reports suggest it was lent back to the Fed, who then turned
around and paid interest to the banks on the money they just created,
presumably out of yet more created money. Without clear information on
'over the counter' (i.e., secret, under the counter) trades of these
banks, one can only presume that this money is an insurance payment to
bail out bad derivative bets that banks haven't yet declared as losses.
If that's not the case, then show us the money. After crashing the
economy, these banking intestinal worms are now trying convince everybody
that no one deserves a pension (except themselves), and that all pensions
should be retroactively reduced to the lowest common denominator.
The might Wurlitzer media is dutifully re-broadcasting this to
'left' and 'right'. We should go after *their* 'pensions'! As
Matt
Taibbi says, we need to put one of these guys into a real jail for
a year. What they're doing is a *lot* worse than stealing your car or
breaking into your house and stealing things. They're stealing the the
whole town.
[Feb21'11] Jame Clarage, a physicist in Texas, did a simple calculation
of how much energy one google search costs. I've been searching for
a long time, since Altavista. Along the way, especially toward the
beginning, I would often get a little twinge when I searched THE ENTIRE
WORLD to find the phone number of the guy in the office a few doors down
(but I would do it anyway). It turns out that that twinge was justified.
The simple calculation, which might be off by a factor of 2 or 3 (but it
hardly matters) is: 10 million Google searches per hour divided by the
estimated energy to power Google's server farm for one hour (estimate of
1 million servers from Gartner multiplied by 1 kilowatt per server per
hour). This comes out to 0.1 kilowatt-hour per search. Yow. That's a
one hundred watt light bulb on for a full hour -- for *one* search.
I might do several hundred searches in a day (20 kilowatt hours).
For context, the average Briton uses about 37 kilowatt hours a day for
heating their poorly constructed homes (estimate from David MacKay's 2008
book, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air -- but note that the average
US-ian uses 2x as many kilowatt-hours per day as an average Briton: 250
vs. 125 kWh/day). The average American currently does 1.5 searches a day.
One could imagine that this will increase. A few years back, someone
estimated that a Second Life avatar uses more energy than a real life
Brazilian. We are at a very particular moment in time. As the energy
supply becomes more and more constricted, search will get more expensive.
But still, I value search highly: I'd rather do 400 searches (40 kWh/day)
than use a car for a day (the average British car user uses 40 kWh/day).
But maybe I'll start writing down more telephone numbers. [update Sep'11:
another number for google searches/hour is 40 million/hour]
[Feb23'11] American worker logic: because rich bankers made fraudulent bad
bets, we should take away teacher's pensions and fire them (Rhode Island
is sending all of their teacher pink slips). The richies are having
trouble not laughing at how easy it is to take candy from a baby while
they plan their tropical dream homes and furnish their yachts.
[Feb25'11] Imagine if the 10 trillion (minimum!) dollars poured into
banks to (temporarily!) fix the failed bets and outright fraud of
utterly useless bankers, the money poured into the always-growing
poor-people-extermination military, and the money (and research
grants!) poured into the pitiful homeland security up-your-*ss boondoggle
had instead been spent on alternative energy and alternative-energy-ready
grid improvements. Then we might have had a fighting chance to not
flame out a few decades from now. The most maddening thing about this
whole thing is to watch large groups of exquisitely organized human
minds helplessly and hopelessly flailing about, doing the utterly,
obviously wrong thing -- right at the most critical moment in all of
human and cultural evolution, and all in slow motion. It's absolutely
tragically maddening.
[Mar10'11] Car sales in America are picking up. Americans are buying
SUVs and pick-ups. With gas surging to $3.50, they are spending
an extra $1000 a year on gas. 40% of American corn is being turned
into ethanol (accounting for about 10% of of the fuel burnt in cars,
so all-ethanol would require 400% of the total US corn crop -- see
my comments above on corn ethanol, a few years back). Cantarell,
the huge Mexican oil field that powered American SUVs is cratering,
now down to 1/4 of what it was just a few years ago. In New York, where
half the people don't even have cars, the people with cars are
absolutely
outraged by bike lanes -- even non-existent ones. I just don't know
what to say.
[Apr05'11]
This analysis in the Daily Bell makes some good points, but ignores
the fact of its mere popularity, which means that people not only hate
Rebecca Black, but they hate themselves for being drawn to watch it
(80 million of them). This irritating video has pretty good production
values for a 13-year-old because it was produced (for just $2K) by small
company using now widely available software. So perhaps people are not
only hating themselves but hating the fact that musical production has
become cheaper and more democratic. Wrong target! This is similar to
lower middle class people being against taxing the rich, even while the
share of the super rich eclipses the levels of 1929 and shows no sign
of stopping its increase.
[Apr13'11] In a recent poll, 61% of Americans saw Obama as more liberal
than they were. They also don't want high speed rail. Given that Obama
is indistinguishable from Bush in most important areas (military spending
and maintaining/starting new wars, bowing to big banks and the super
rich, strengthening the surveillance state), it's hard to guess what they
have in mind. A fourth war? Immediate removal of existing rail tracks?
A Guantanamo in every state? Bringing the TSA into school to feel-up and
X-ray kindergartners on their way home? Doubling the 'defense' budget?
End Medicare and Social Security now instead of just cutting them back?
Bailing out *the cousins* of the banker's trophy wives? Sheesh. I would
say something about just desserts, but Americans seem to like theirs.
I can't imagine that this disconnect from reality can persist much
longer, but I have been wrong (many times) before. I will try not to
fall into a fashionable "sullen dispair", as John Michael Greer
has
just warned against :-} (he certainly nailed me on that one...)
[May06'11] Maybe Elvis was still alive and was killed. I doubt he
was one of the persons killed in the raid, but I can't be sure.
No believable real evidence has been publicly presented and the
body/bodies are supposedly at the bottom of the ocean and the living
(if any, whoever they are) are being tortured in some secret location.
The official story has already changed (female 'human shield'/not human
shield, armed/unarmed, watching live/not watching live feed, etc etc).
Three crudely faked death photos, one published at many major newspaper
websites, were quickly outed (why? something more than simply cash for
photos? if the internet can figure this out in an hour, couldn't major
newspapers do the same?). The Mighty Wurlitzer plays on. Maybe the
long series of apparently faked videos and recordings were finally
starting to make people laugh, and the chip had to be finally cashed.
Of course, faked videos aren't proof of his prior death. Maybe things
will be clearer in a few months, but I doubt it. Remember the first
Gulf War 'unplugged incubator babies' hoax, the Jessica Lynch hoax,
the Pat Tillman hoax. Or remember the entire premiss of the second
Iraq war, with a million plus killed and trillions lost. It took years
before those lies were finally unraveled (the incubators was a complete
concoction, Jessica Lynch was treated well by Iraqis before they had
to flee a hospital under American attack, and Pat Tillman was killed by
friendly fire, and last but not least, the Iraq WMDs were fakes and Iraq
had nothing to do with 9-11). In any case, killing Elvis has provided a
temporary circus-like diversion in the US from the staggering 'recovery'
-- and watching the super rich pillaging pensions and laughing on their
way to their banks.
[May12'11] Still hard to tell if it really was Elvis, or if I can
believe that helicopter-crashing commandos perfectly ran their 99.99%
DNA match to a half-sister (99.99% not!!) on ruggedized equipment in
record time before dumping the body in 12 hours. Of course, just because
that's very unlikely, and just because the latest videos they 'found'
is mostly likely faked doesn't mean it *wasn't* him they killed; but it
certainly isn't evidence in favor. And today, introducing: The Son of
Bin Laden! Is this a joke? (Nigel Tufnel voice). Whoever it was that
was actually killed, the Emmanuel Goldstein psychological operation
has resulted in a major terror booster shot of 9-11 nonsense (which
Elvis probably had nothing to do with) and many new minutes of hate.
My sister's flight was delayed because an Imam had to be taken off and
re-searched, then even after that, he was ultimately prevented from
flying by the pilot. Meanwhile The TSA goons are protecting us from
terror
diapers; and there are plans afoot to Xray or feel up your crotch
just to get on a train. Why not just post a goon on every street
corner? After all, the US has exported all its real jobs. Pitiful,
US-ians.
[May12'11]
Ignitable drinking
water, courtesy of fracking for shale gas or coal bed methane, courtesy
of peak fossil fuel forcing humans to go after harder-to-get reserves.
The quasi-religious belief in 'progress' in the face of obvious limits
-- often exhibited by scientists who should know better since they
try to find out how the world is, not how they want it to be -- is
disappointing.
[May18'11] "[Steven Chu, US Secretary of Energy] was my boss. He knows
all about peak oil, but he can't talk about it. If the government
announced that peak oil was threatening our economy, Wall Street
would crash. He just can't say anything about it." -- David Fridley,
scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. There was an
"we've got this under
control" kind of article by Phil Hart in the oildrum yesterday,
pointing out that peak oil has so far been less precipitous than first
expected; we have been on an 'undulating plateau' for 5 years since
regular growth stopped around 2005. The argument is that this will
allow us all to react appropriately as the slow deline that never ends
begins in earnest a decade from now. In my opinion (and that of several
well-informed commenters) this neglects five key points (that I have
endlessly repeated above). First, the plateau has had the effect --
via the constriction of growth -- of *reducing* our attempts to mitigate
the problem. We are doing virtually nothing now given the size of the
problem for industrial civilization (see Steven Chu above). As conditions
get tighter, our maneuverability is likely to be *further reduced*
rather than stimulated. Second, the flatness of the plateau is partly
a reflection of better secondary production techniques and horizontal
drilling, both of which tend to reduce current output decline but at the
cost of increasing *depletion* rates. This results in a sharper falloff
when it finally comes (e.g., Cantarell down to a 1/4 of its output in
a few years, North Sea 10% per year decline rates; the imminent death
of northern Ghawar will be a tremendous shock). The very fact of the
current extended plateau probably implies there will be a sharper dropoff
than we saw with the classic symmetrical decline in 1970's Texas. Third,
the recent slight increase in all "all liquids" looks less impressive when
you account for the fact that it includes a greater and greater percentage
of non-crude, much of which which has substantially a lower energy density
per barrel; condensates and natural gas plant liquids (pentane, butane,
and propane) are still misleadingly counted as full barrels (
here
is a more sensible graph of all liquids by Rune Likvern with everything
converted to crude oil equivalents). Also, "all liquids" includes
things like ethanol whose production generates approximately zero net
energy (EROEI ~= 1); American corn ethanol shouldn't be added to the
curve at all. Fourth, this analysis pays no attention to increasing
*internal* demands of exporting countries (Jeffrey Brown [westexas]
Export Land model). Finally, it ignores the evidence that there will
be massively increased competition for exports between *importing*
countries in the near future (China and India would consume the *entire*
exports of world oil and coal *by themselves* in 15 years if they were
to continue growing at the same rate they have over the past decade).
The author of the post works for an oil company. It will be "happy
days" for oil companies, at least! But I am worried about what my 5
points imply for the rest of us. I couldn't have said it better than
Ben Bernanke (!) said last week: "the FED cannot create more oil".
[May26'11] An energy drought is virtually certain in a 'long term' view
(15-20 years). With oil, for example, each year another cubic mile of it
goes irreversibly into the air as CO2 and water vapor. There are about
25-30 decent cubic miles of oil left (and that's including some that
hasn't been found yet). That basic picture hasn't changed in decades
(the peak in world oil discovery was in the 1960's -- *45* years ago).
But in the short term, many unexpected things could happen. For example,
looking at current trends, China is set to consume all world oil *and*
coal exports in 15 years -- *if* they continued expanding at the rates
of the last decade. I think this is extrememly unlikely to happen.
Further bumps up against maximum production will cause price fluctuations
in things made from, transported by, and that use oil, and this will cause
people to buy less stuff, both in the west and in China. Eventually,
reduced demand will lead to China tapering off their increasing demand for
new energy imports from its torrid pace of the last decade. This will
remove (a small amount of!) the pressure on limited energy exports.
This will keep us on an undulating energy plateau over the next 5 or 10
years (which says nothing about what financial chaos might accompany
those undulations!). So in 8 or 10 years, the "we've got this energy
thing under control, at least in the west" crowd (see Phil Hart above)
will say that they were right all along -- right around 2020 when the
hammer blows of peak all-energy first begin to fall in earnest. By 2030,
when it's too late, everyone will realize something should have been
done sooner. Like right now -- in 2011. But, as has become blindingly
obvious to me over the past 5 years, it is absolutely impossible to
imagine, even assuming the most globally enlightened players, that
any significant steps in a safer direction (e.g., massive worldwide
war-footing investment in electric rail, electric grid, neighborhood
retrofitting, manufacturing lots batteries and small battery vehicles,
wind, solar, solar heating, massive gasoline taxes, reclaiming farmland
from under concrete, reorganizing food production to use less fossil
fuel, stopping all the 'Monsanto' chemical company nonsense) could ever
be undertaken (or even be discussed!) before outright physical shortages
of energy and soon after, food, force contraction of industry, commerce,
and then population. Contraction in industry, commerce, and population
will never be a politically viable campaign platform for dictators,
democrats, or revolutionaries (despite what the archdruid recently said
about the possibility of 'use less' as a fashion statement). The reason
for this is simply that using less energy is less fun than using more.
The perfectly religious hope that "scientists will think of something"
will never go away until the scientists fail. They are very likely
to fail when industrial civilization runs low on easy energy -- mostly
deposited in our 'account' in three bursts 90, 140, and 300 million years
ago -- around 2030. However, the small possibility that the scientists
won't fail is enough to prevent any attempts to prepare for the towering
difficulties we will all face if they most likely do. So, play good
music, enjoy eating, find out new things, and be creative while it lasts.
The collapse will take quite a while.
[May30'11] 9-11 booga-booga is finally beginning to wear off (witness
Texas' recent threat to ban the TSA, less than one month after the
'kill Elvis' show). If that starts to spread, serious medicine might
eventually be required. Sadly, all that would be required to give
average people a booster shot of terror for the new decade would be a
big explosion in a major city. Or an attack on the tower formerly known
as Sears (incidentally currently owned in part by the same investment
group that owned the WTC's). There has already been a constant stream
of preparatory stories (e.g., the drill a few months back in Portland)
in the mainstream media/circus.
[Jun16'11] By analogy with looking for difficult oil in
deep water off the edge of the continental shelf, I read today
here
from Canadian geologist David Hughes that one of the best targets for
fracking are the (formerly!) impermeable seals themselves that previously
allowed conventional gas to build up underneath them (makes sense).
Talk about burning the furniture to stay warm...
[Jun19'11] "If I was pressed to answer I would argue that the new
paradigm is perhaps something similar to the 'we are no longer afraid'
(strength in social networked numbers) paradigm of the young people in
the Middle East but this time without any evident political content." --
Michael Gurstein, commenting on the much self-video'd 20,000 person
riot in Vancouver after the defeat of Canucks in the Stanley Cup.
[Jun26'11] The US currently has a total of 300,000 (1/3 of a million)
people in Iraq and Afghanistan (which is smaller than Texas), divided
equally between uniformed personnel and contractors (similarly consisting
of mercenaries, cooks, medics, etc). At the height of the Vietnam war,
there were 500,000 troops in Vietnam. These latest wars have now gone
on for a full decade, show no signs of winding down, have wrecked both
countries, restored the opium trade, killed over a million people,
and are filthy sores on the rotting body politic of the US and UK.
[Jul08'11] The Congress worms pass a bigger than ever 'defense' budget
and then cancel the successor to the space telescope.
[Jul19'11] An abridged list of Rupert Murdoch's media holdings from
Good magazine:
TV: Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News Channel, Fox Kids Channel,
Fox Business Network, Fox Classics, Fox Sports Net, FX, the National
Geographic Channel, The Golf Channel, TV Guide Channel
Radio: Fox Sports Radio Network
Books: HarperCollins (which publishes JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Lemony
Snicket, JG Ballard, and Neil Gaiman)
Magazines: TV Guide, The Weekly Standard, Maximum Golf, Barron's Magazine
Newspapers: The New York Post, Wall Street Journal, The Times (UK), The
Sun (UK), The Australian (AU), The Herald Sun (AU), The Advertiser (AU)
Websites: Foxsports.com, Hulu (part ownership), Scout.com, The Daily
Film studios: 20th Century Fox (Avatar, The Simpsons, Star Wars, X-Men,
Die Hard, Night at the Museum), Fox Searchlight (Slumdog Millionaire,
Juno, 127 Hours, Black Swan, Little Miss Sunshine)
Sports (part ownership): Los Angeles Lakers, Colorado Rockies, Australia
and New Zealand's National Rugby League
Time for some creative destruction.
[Aug06'11] Here are graphs of
BASE and
WSHOMCB (mortgage-backed
securities held outright by the FED) - just two of the hard to remember
things you hardly ever hear about on teevee that massively increased soon
after the Sept 2008 chaos began, and which have remained just as distended
since then. BASE more than doubled to over a trillion dollars, while
WSHOMCB increased from absolute zero to the same size as the (doubled)
BASE. As Richard Heinberg has written recently, we have to get control
of the ridiculously volatile financial system before it *really* messes
things up. Peak oil is a b*tch, but it's relatively slow. We have been
on a peak 'oil' plateau (where 'oil' is defined in terms of equivalent
energy units of crude, lease condensates, natural gas plant liquids,
and biofuels) since at least 2006. As total 'oil' begins to fall over
the next 5 years, it will fall slowly. If the financial system has an
epileptic fit for a mere plateau, it needs to be redesigned, so saner
heads can get to work rearranging things as total available energy -- the
primary basis for economic growth -- slowly decreases. Unfortunately,
there is virtually no trace of discussion of this on teevee, CSPAN,
or state or city government. They don't dare mention the elephant in
the room. And ironically, as the grinding stasis/contraction continues,
there will be even less incentive to bring the topic up. It seems that
we are all collectively intent on flying into the wall at full speed.
I suppose it's just human nature. But to paraphrase Guy McPherson,
mother nature has a bigger bat.
[Aug14'11] For something completely different, I recently installed
Fedora 15 on a machine. The Gnome 3.0 interface is dumbed down,
irritating, no easier to use, doesn't look any better, and is
more graphics resource intensive (what's not to like?), and crashes
several-year-old graphics cards. It even enraged Linus himself. The idea
of making your computer into a passive tablet is depressing. I don't
want to stroke the screen when I'm programming. If the goal was to make
a more useable interface, there are perfectly good examples out there.
It amazes me that the Linux desktop could be in such a desperate state
after so long. It's not rocket science. What a waste of programmer
resources.
[Aug15'11] Basic budget numbers from
2010 (shown in a nice simple graphic
here)
are *never* mentioned in proper context on the teevee. Total spending was
$3.8 trillion, which includes defense, discretionary, social security,
medicare, medicaid, other, interest on debt. Total receipts were $2.6
trillion (mostly individual income taxes, and social security and payroll
taxes, with corporate taxes only accounting for 11% of receipts) for a
deficit of $1.3 trillion. Total individual income tax brought in $1.1
trillion. Total 'defense' spending was $0.9 trillion. In simple terms,
total defense spending is currently approximately equal to all individual
income tax revenue. And total defense spending is approximately equal to
the entire deficit. Basic numbers, people. As the late Chalmers Johnson
said, this is the decline of the Roman empire. If this isn't fixed (and
there is absolutely no sign of any change in defense spending), the US
is going down. One unfortunate difference from the Roman empire is that
the Romans didn't have nukes. Instead of the idiotic campaign circus,
why not simply have people vote for how much they want to pay in taxes,
how big of a deficit they want, and how much to spend for 'defense',
social security, medicare, medicaid, and 'other' -- all in trillions.
Simple, real things. Everybody has to shut up and come up with 10
real numbers that add up. That would be a real vote about real things.
Addition.
[Aug18'11] For the first time, the amount of corn used to make ethanol
in the US -- an idiotic, approximately *zero* net energy process (same
amount of fossil fuel used to make it and distill it as is gotten back
from burning it in cars) -- has eclipsed the amount of corn fed to cows.
This grew up from almost nothing to over 50% of all US corn in less than
a decade. This really shows the utter bankruptcy of modern thinking
with regard to cars. Needless to say, this can't go on for much longer.
It isn't much different here in the UK/EU. While out on the streets
cycling while idiots in cars honk and throw their weight around, I wish I
had a megaphone attached to the back of my bike that would randomly bellow
out things like "50% of car trips in London are less than 2 miles", or
"I'm just as late for dinner as you", "cyclists will inherit what's left
of the earth", or "you, pig, are piloting a 100,000 watt vehicle while
mine is 100 watts", or "I paid for this road, too" or "your engine sucks
compared to the American ones". Well, maybe I wouldn't say the last
one for fear of my life, tho it's certainly true of the damn black taxi
engines, which account for 20% of London's toxic particulates. The taxis
are wonderfully designed (much better than American taxis) except for the
absolutely awful horrible disgusting engines. Even tho UK/EU-ians only
use 50% of the total energy per capita that Americans and Canadians do,
they're not really any different than US-ians. It's just because they
already filled up all the space combined with the fact that they used
up most of their fossil fuel resources (until the North Sea, but that
is now rapidly depleting). They would have done exactly the same thing
as Americans did if they had enough fuel and space, despite their most
sincere protestations about how much better than Americans they are.
On the other hand, they *are* positioned a little better now, precisely
because they weren't able to destroy their pre-car cities as thoroughly
(tho sometimes, the 'pre-car' bit is a bit hard to make out here...)
:-}
[Aug23'11] The utter contradiction of (1) resuming economic growth and
house price increases (making extra things to put in newly purchased
houses) together with (2) austerity and lowering wages (that would be
for people who buy most of the houses and extra things) and (3) flat
energy supplies (that would be the energy that makes the extra things)
would be hilarious if it wasn't so blackly dire. The economic system
and human's desire to reproduce are running up against limits that
historically they haven't dealt well with. Stopping growth in cell
phones and big screen teevees is one thing. Stopping growth in food --
which currently requires a lot of fossil fuel since it is now made by a
small fraction of the population -- without stopping growth in people
is what I worry about. Plus, I *liked* the whole retirement concept!
It seems to have gone out the window for everybody but the very rich.
Instead of any sane discussion of obvious realities, the US govt/Obama
admin just blew $1 billion over the past few months bombing Libya.
Precious money that could have been spent on practical alternative energy
research and electrified rail so that the US wouldn't be idiotically
pouring *over* 50% of all its corn into its stupid car gas tanks.
[Aug29'06]
For many years, because AI/computer-vision/robotics/google
were crude compared to animal and human biological-brain-based models,
I pooh-poohed them in an academic way. I pooh-poohed the breathless
Hollywood terminators and unrealistically super-powered super-intelligent
robots. I utterly, completely missed the forest for the trees. Now,
70-80% of stock market trading is done by computers with algorithms
designed by physicists. The trading is happening too quickly for humans
to follow, using non-human-style trading patterns that battle each other
where 10 *microseconds* can win the day. Human traders and human writers
do follow the longer time scale *results* of this trading, trying to
make sense of it, and no doubt half the time confabulate reasons for why
a particular thing occurred, long after the fact. I used to point out
how face recognition never worked well in unconstrained environments.
But who cares about that? There is a camera on every PC pointing out
from the screen that each person looks at. And why even bother with that
when people post better pics. Google doesn't really understand meaning?
It will never have to. Simple co-occurence and page rank have re-formed
the student mind. When the first unmanned or remote controlled bombers
manufactured by General Atomics in San Diego were sent up, I used to
make fun of them because they would sometimes crash, or be too dependent
on their human video death game controllers. Now, both semi-autonomous
unmanned and simple remote-controlled flying machines are killing people,
many people, every single day, and are beginning to be re-patriated.
Because of the internet, some people now get their news outside of
the 'mighty Wurlitzer' of the mainstream media. But the internet has
been filled to the brim with disinfo, some generated by people in new
'public service' jobs, and some generated and distributed by machine.
When tasers -- remarketed electric shock torture from the 1960's CIA --
came on the market, I described them above merely as politically correct
guns for SUV-driving suburbians. But now police are tasing a person to
death *every week* in the US. Just think how many people they are tasing
that didn't die. England just reported its first police taser death last
week (poodle!). And the police in the US aren't shooting any less people.
There are already combo prototypes of unmanned aerial drones that can
tase you from the sky. Eventually, surveillance cameras or TSA metal
detector check points will have tasers in them. The recent war in Libya
(it didn't even come up in the vile US Congress!) was a brilliant example
of putting all this together. It was amazing to see the raw power of
information control not just in the US/UK/EU but in, say, Saudi media.
The money and gold of the regime were seized electronically without
protest. The literal handful (maybe 5!) non-mainstream reporters on
the ground in Libya were silenced by death threats conveyed through
the 'reporters' from CNN/CIA. Gaddafi's army was burnt to a crisp
by high tech night bombs to pave the way for the al-Qaeda rabble, led
by a literal al-Qaeda guy from Paki who had been tortured by the CIA,
then imprisoned by Gaddafi only to be let out by Gaddafi's son. Libya,
previously with the highest standard of living in Africa, above Saudi
and Russia (!) was turned overnight into a smoldering improverished,
no-electric power, no-water, no-hospital wasteland run by NATO-installed
al-Qaeda. Compare this to alternate reality most people got off the
internet/teevee.
-----------------------------------------------
I admit this all looks bad. However, it also depends on fossil fuel.
Fossil oil is currently on its final plateau and coal and natural gas
are getting there soon. We are close to the peak net energy plateau.
Since it is a plateau before the drop begins in earnest, the current
orgy of building military killing machines and police human suppession
machines will likely crescendo over the next 10 to 20 years, and will
continue to be repatriated from brown-people-land back to the homelands.
But it seems unlikely to me that 'terminator world' can survive in that
form past the beginning of the collapse of industrial civilization, which
for the past decade I have been expecting to begin around 2030. High tech
machines have specialized parts like high quality infrared cameras that
are manufactured in secret. But they also rely on parts manufactured
for consumer products by consumer-dependent corporations. Turning the
whole population to manufacturing tanks when they used to be making cars
in WWII was one thing. It was a time of perfect exponential increase
in fossil fuel energy. Turning the whole population to manufacturing
terminators and crowd control machines seems less practical as the grid
starts to fail, and long distance transportation begins to break down,
and the debt based money system malfunctions in a time of economic/energy
contraction. I suppose this is the final stage of peak oil awareness --
the embrace.
[Sep12'11] Solyndra, a silicon valley green-tech thin film solar
startup compary that had raised more than $1 billion in venture capital
and secured another $0.5 billion in federal loan guarantees has just
declared bankruptcy. Part of the reason was uncertainty about government
incentive prorgrams. Thus, right at peak oil, it's still cheaper to
'burn the furniture' of remaining harder-and-harder-to-get fossil
fuels than it is to build and use renewable energy. As the price of
fossil fuels increases (or stays the same while people's purchasing
power drops), this is unlikely to change, unfortunately. The main
reason is simple: renewable energy systems are made using fossil fuel.
Renewable energy systems will always be more expensive than fossil fuel
until there is no fossil fuel left. Then it won't be possible to make
them any more. The reason that Solyndra failed was that the small solar
energy market was swamped with lower-priced coal-made Chinese conventional
solar cells (from Suntech and Yingli, made with a more 'business-like'
approach to environmental damage). The Chinese cells are essentially
50 year old designs, as opposed to the hi-tech thin film cells from
Solyndra (using rare earths from China) that were supposed to be so
cheap they could be sprayed onto roofs. The article about it in
Forbes
completely misses the take-home point. It shows that the Chinese
can turn coal into solar cells for cheaper (much lower labor costs,
no pesky constraints on pollution) than California can turn coal and
natural gas more cleanly into thin film cells. Crucially, it doesn't show
that either process could work when the coal and natural gas are gone --
whether clean *or* dirty. Rock on humans. For the record, I'm *strongly*
in favor of subsidising solar heat concentration and solar electric while
we still can, even though fossil fuel will always be cheaper.
[Sep21'11] Solyndra has a bit of dirty laundry. It looks like some of
the people running it realized they could game the system. Compared to
the utter disaster of ethanol (using *over* 50% of the US corn crop
together with congressional subsidies to generate an essentially *zero*
net energy product (about 1 energy unit of fossil fuel is turned into
about 1 energy unit of ethanol), Solyndra was at least making solar cells
that turn energy positive for every year after 5 or 8 years. But the
fact that solar electric was regarded by sociopathic money parasites as
a possible host is profoundly depressing. I wish those parasites would
just get some horrible disease so normal people could live.
[Oct05'11] Steve from Virginia is wordy, but I like his main points.
As energy prices go up, initially from getting close to peak energy,
they tend to cause economic contraction. This results in energy
prices temporarily falling. This in turn results in fossil fuel energy
companies no longer going after expensive (i.e., lower energy return
on energy investment) reserves; but it also results in renewable energy
companies going broke. Eventually energy prices spike again. But that
soon causes economic contraction and a repeat of the cycle. Thus,
business cycle time delays interact poorly with the later development
of industrial civilization. Conventional economists usually expect
that energy price increases will spur innovation and renewable energy
and more exotic non-renewable energy. Instead, the price *crashes*
are selectively decimating the very companies that are supposed to grow
and save the day because they are smaller and closer to the edge than
fossil fuel companeis. I didn't see this dynamic coming when I first
started to think about peak oil 10 years ago. The result will probably
be fossil fuel severe shortages at a time where there is still plenty
of positive EROEI fossil fuel left in the ground. I suppose that's a
silver lining of sorts.
[Oct16'11] Student debt has now eclipsed credit card debt and is headed to
$1 trillion dollars (the average cumulative student debt at a for-profit
college is almost $30K). From 1990 to 2000, earnings of young college
graduates and college costs were both going up. Since then, earnings
have gone flat or dropped slightly, but costs have continued linearly up.
If 1991 was 1.0, young college graduate earnings are only up to 1.1x
but costs are up to 1.55x. Obviously, this can't go on forever. It is
looking more and more like the housing bubble. It took a while for that
one to pop; even after household incomes went flat, prices continued
to gallop up for 6 years (and house prices still remain bizarrely
inflated relative to salaries in many places). Then there is the
effect of college debt on new/future housing debt -- it would seem to
be negative, or deflationary. But despite all the talk of deflation and
debt destruction, the on-the-ground feeling is that the actual prices for
things you actually need (rent, food, furnishings) are increasing while
incomes are decreasing. It feels a lot like 70's stagflation, but with
near-zero interest rates, so savers/pensioners are hit, too. In the long
term, I can't see how the coming debt destruction could be inflationary,
but my previous predictions in this area have not been accurate (London
rents are continuing to inflate). As a teacher, I'm not looking forward
to what this will eventually imply for college education. Things seem to
be spinning around in non-productive directions. Take "article spinning"
-- a computer based method of "elegant variation" to take existing
articles, rewrite them with synonyms so that google doesn't recognize
them as semantically equivalent (since google doesn't need/do semantics)
then spray them all over the web and have them link to your website,
to run up your google page position (this web page, ridiculously :-}
got a hit from thebestspinner.com). Or the bizarre copper carry trade
in China, where reports suggest that over the past 3 months, virtually
all of the copper imported into China was used as a financing instrument
(!) The idea is, get a low interest loan to buy copper using dollars,
defer payment on the loan for 6 months, stockpile the copper, use it
as collateral for a yuan loan, yuan appreciates against the dollar,
make a profit. Now copper price has crashed more than 30% causing a
problem for these huge inventories (several times as much copper as is
used in the entire US in a year). Or the story I previously pointed to
about Lenovo (Thinkpad computer manufacturer) making more than half of
its profits in *real estate speculation*... World gone wild.
[Oct18'11] The comical but "very real, very real, very real" (Diane
Feinstein, Peter King) alcoholic car-salesman former-khebab vendor plot
seems laughable; and in the UK, Liam Fox was outed as a Mossad mole.
But there are also reports of a large-scale US military exercise in
the middle east today. Probably just the usual shadow boxing/disinfo.
But the kill Elvis show has long worn off, small crowds of villagers
with pitchforks are collecting here and there in American cities,
son of COINTELPRO adbusters and color revolution shills are out
among them in force, there is the unsightly spectacle of an African
American president bombing black Africans, creating a callosal
humanitarian
disaster in order to 'save civilians', and not even 'succeeding',
robot assassins killing 100 people every few days, oil prices staying high
(so far) unlike in 2008, and a frigging election/sewer/circus coming up!
Who knows?
[Oct26'11] Steve Jobs told Obama that Obama would be a one-term president
because he failed to eliminate the teachers unions (!), and because
there is no 11 month school year and classes until 6 PM, and because
Steve couldn't manufacture his fondle phones as cheaply in the US as he
could in China -- all this while Steve was piling up one of the largest
hoards of US personal and corporate cash, and being a lot more stingy
with it than his nemesis, billg. The problem is that US-ers and UK-ers
and EU-ers (well, and me, typing on a old Apple laptop) agree with him.
They wouldn't be willing to pay more for fondle phones (or even just
buy new models less often!), and so suicide nets and slave wages it is.
And damn those teachers. But perhaps Steve is now working word problems
in hell, forever (I know, bad taste).
[Oct26'11] The US withdrawal from Iraq seems to have come down to
the refusal of the Iraqi government to give US troops immunity from
prosecution for any heinous crimes they may have committed or have yet
to commit. Whether they actually leave on time is another question.
But what about payback? After almost 10 years, a holocaust of Iraqis
(1-2 million killed, millions more wounded and poisoned, Fallujah a
horrifying depleted uranium wasteland), over $1 trillion US tax dollars
spent, Iraqi money and gold and artifacts looted, a few thousand Americans
killed and more wounded, the public witch-hunt basis for the war (weapons,
9-11 association) completely and utterly debunked years ago, and the
country of Iraq completely trashed, the US now says it will leave,
paying no reparations, while retaining oil contracts! When the US is
eventually laid low, the world will remember them/us like they remember
the Nazis -- good tech, but intrinsically bad people who stood by and let
the militarized state massacre millions of other humans they considered
to be genetically inferior both inside and outside of their country.
When the power of the US wanes, the rest of the world may very allow
for the US what happened to the Germans at the end of WW2 -- cities
firebombed and several million Germans casually starved to death in
post-war concentration camps.
[Nov20'11] The US police storm trooper/dystopian sci-fi thing creeps me
out. The EU/UK has their own version. I always hope that people here or
people there will rise above being 'good Germans'. But, unfortunately,
I think there was nothing special about Germans. What they did was
quintessentially human -- it's the human way. Most all human chimps
have their own hidden master race thing going on under the covers.
The economic contraction (US-ians actually used 5% less oil than in 2007)
plus a doubling (US) or tripling (UK) of college tuition has driven some
mostly younger people to begin questioning the status quo (update: the
Berkeley tuition is planned to increase from 11K to 21K in one year).
But not close to a majority. If the overall social situation showed
even the slightest hint of really getting out of hand, I think one
well-placed false flag could instantly drag everybody back into line for
several years (e.g., a small dirty nuke in a big city). The sad thing is
that I don't even think one will be needed. A string of Joe Pa's will
do just fine! -- and there is virtually an unlimited supply of those in
the wings. The relatively big Libya operation hardly even made the news.
There will be many 'good humans' when energy descent starts to really bite
in 15 years. Well, OK, it was a wrong-side-of-the-bed/glass-half-empty
kind of day... :-/ Tomorrow's another day.
[Nov27'11] I watched Back to the Future for the first time since I
saw it when it came out in 1985. It was complete with Spielbergian
'Libyan' terrorists (played by Jeff O'Haco and Richard L. Duran) driving
a VW microbus that somehow had no trouble keeping up with the DeLorean.
The doctor took a big jump into the future -- to around now. That future
was a time of flying cars, capes, and desktop fusion. Flying cars,
like fusion, are the future -- and they always will be. It made me
gloomy the whole next day.
[Dec28'11] Ron Paul's antiwar position on foreign affairs and
anti-police-state and anti-bank-bailouts position on domestic affairs is
better than Obama's. He is the *only* antiwar candidate! Other aspects
of his domestic plans (e.g., his return-to-feudalism austerity plan,
the demonization of the EPA, gutting Social Security and Medicare,
reducing regulation on financial criminals even more than its current
almost non-existent state) are worse than Obama's. He is similar to
Obama in being utterly clueless about the implications of peak oil
(he thinks high prices will cause the market to email mother earth to
create more low energy-return-on-energy investment oil). With respect
to the EPA, PissedOffAmerican said in a comment, "I'll take smog over
a nuclear winter". But in any case, it makes *very little difference*
to actual policy who is elected to be the president of the US.
[Jan04'12] Statins damage muscles because they (are designed to) inhibit
the mevalonate pathway and ubiquinone (coenzyme Q10). This produces
muscle cramps, myalgias, and sometimes myopathy and rhabdomyolysis
as 'side effects'. The most potent statin (cerivastatin) had to be
withdrawn from the market in 2001 because of the risk of rhabdomyolysis
(pathological digestion of skeletal muscle) was ten times higher (at 1
per 1000) than with other statins. In this context, it is worth pointing
out that the heart is the most important muscle in the body...
[Jan17'12] "It is my professional opinion that the production of
excess energy has been demonstrated when the results of the last
20+ years of experimentation are evaluated. There has been a lot
of work done in the past 20+ years. When considered in aggregate I
believe excess power has been demonstrated. I did not say, reliable,
useful, commercially viable, or controllable. If any of those other
terms were applicable I would have used them instead. If anything,
it is the lack of a single clear demonstration of reliable, useful,
and controllable production of excess power that has held LENR
research back." -- Joe Zawodny on cold fusion on his
blog.
[Jan24'12] Sure Steve Jobs was a money slut who wanted to break the
teachers unions so he could turn the US into a giant Foxconn with
suicide nets, slave workers *and* slave engineers, powered by coal
extracted even faster and more dirtily than the US currently does (as
long as the opaque clouds of coal smoke didn't reach Steve's mansion).
But an equally as great problem with 'Steve Jobs' are all the people who
slavishly, repeatedly buy the smooth surfaced devices that are killing
live music and conversation. Now, Steve's AI, Siri (originally the
soldier's assistant), can be lazily asked with voice commands to text a
'friend' to say you will be late to a meeting. It's natural you are too
lazy to take the effort to text, otherwise you would have been on time.
Or Siri can find you the nearest sushi restaurant, which you will hardly
be able to taste because you will be stroking the large smooth-surfaced
pill during dinner. Stop buying! Start practicing an instrument instead
of learning to type on a large pill!!
[Feb07'12] The tragicomedy of errors in energy continues. As we stand
at the beginning of the peak oil downslope, the boom in *natural gas*
drilling from 2004 to 2009 has resulted in a temporary glut of natural
gas. This has reduced US natural gas imports. US natural gas imports
began in 1990, and reached 1/5 of US gas usage by 2003, but now are down
to 1/7 of US natural gas). But it has also caused natural gas prices
to crash below the costs of current production. That resulted in 2009
in natural gas producers *halving* the number of active drilling rigs
in the space of a few months. The low cost of natural gas has also put
pressure on renewable energy companies and plans (why invest in wind
now when natural gas is so cheap?). Of course any idiot can see that
this low price will only last a few years. Fracked natural gas wells
deplete in less than 2 years (much faster than oil wells and faster than
non-fracked wells) and the towering daily usage of natural gas isn't going
anywhere (60 billion cubic feet per day in the US). When storage and the
current crop of frac wells are depleted, there will be a horrible price
spike, re-invigorating investment in in the latest expensive production
methods. The price spike (natural gas use is just about evenly divided
into industrial, electric power, and residental+commercial uses), will
then motivate people to think about renewable power for a year or two.
I used to think this was a stupid way to raise a kid or run industrial
civilization (6-month year look-ahead, no planning for even the mid-term
future), and that it could be fixed. I still think it's stupid; but now I
see it can't/won't be fixed. As a world society, we have made the choice
not to fear greed. The only long-term planning these days is for war with
"North Garnet". That should fix things real good. World stupid bowl.
Big mistake, once again, since we should have started retooling in the
1970's when the problem first came to light. Instead, we will barrel
blindly on, toward a dreadful mid-century catastrophe.
[Feb13'12] "They were irrational statements that made the deputy be
concerned for the safety of the children," Jim Amormino, a spokesman for
the Orange County sheriff's department said, describing why this
unarmed
black religious Camp Pendleton marine nursing student was shot to
death in front of his daughters by 4 white armed cops while he on an
early morning prayer walk with them. This wasn't news. Your news would
be Whitney Houston (who had an amazing voice). In other non-news, the FAA
has gotten the go-ahead from the House and Senate (75% of the Senate!)
to purchase 30,000 aerial drones for domestic surveillance/torture use.
They will initially be armed with shotgun tasers (US police already kill
2 people per week with tasers and torture a much large number of people
per week with tasers without killing them). I liked the old "Prisoner"
teevee series, but I didn't want to live in it! (except for Port Meirion).
What's next? Domestic drones with robocop cannons and missiles like the
ones in Afghanistan? "Oh sorry, you looked like you were endangering
your kid so we accidentally took out your house and wife and other kid.
Please accept our apology and get some counseling."
[Feb14'12] My best guess peak oil estimate from around the time of my
Iraq antiwar speech in 2003 until recently was 2008. Now I am beginning
to wonder whether this was actually an overestimate! The first clue
(snark alert) was a sympathetic 2012 articles on peak oil just published
in Science and Nature. Journals like Science and Nature would never
touch a politically hot topic like this until it is completely safe
(i.e., irrelevant). When it could have counted for more in 2004, they
were publishing prominent main articles by oil businessmen like Leonardo
Maugeri (see above), saying there was no need to worry about peak oil.
But the real clue to me (snark off) were these two shocking graphs:
(1) the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) graph of
total
gasoline retail deliveries (which includes ethanol),
and (2) the US Department of Transportation graph of
total
traffic volume (both *not* zero based [update Apr05: the retail
sales graph is now changed to zero based]). The first graph shows
that the US has been on a long gasoline consumption plateau from about
1988 to 2007 (with two dips around 1995 and 2005). The middle of this
plateau was 1998! Things changed suddenly in 2007, when consumption
began to decisively fall. The fall was approximately linear until the
unprecedented discontinuous drop of the last two months. Note that
there have been gradual improvements in miles-per-gallon since 1995,
all during the plateau. But the savings from those improvements were
completely cancelled by people doing more driving in cars with more
powerful engines (Jevons' paradox -- increases in energy efficiency
lead to the same or greater energy use). Jevons is starkly visible
in the second graph, which shows the linear increase in total traffic
volume from 1996 until 2007. The continuous upslope in driving ate up
every last bit of engineering efficiency gain over the past 20 years.
What began to happen in 2007 in the US is new and different than anything
in the past 20 years -- closer to the real, forced overall energy usage
drop that happened in the late seventies during the pre-peak-oil Arab
oil embargo. Gasoline deliveries have gone from around 60M gals/day
for a full 20 years from 1985-2005, to 45M gals/day in 2010 (a 25% drop
in 3 years), to only a freaky 30M gals/day in the last 2 months (a 50%
drop in 5 years! -- but the last 2 months are undoubtedly an outlier).
Another couple of years of this and we're talking Greece. Greece imports
100% of its oil, and has been hard hit over the past 5 years by the
tripling of oil price -- the major reason, completely ignored by the MSM,
for its recent increased debt problems. Standard economists will say,
oh, it's just a flesh wound (in the US); the usage is down because of
the temporary credit crunch, and that is about to go away. In reality,
peak oil happens when people can't afford to pay the increased price
of mining the harder-to-get, lower return on energy investment energy
reserves that remain. Oil price doesn't have to spike at peak oil.
It will probably drop some. It frightens me to see people, here in
the Unemployed Kingdom, still accelerating their metal crates as if to
kill me (which frightens me, too :-} ), while the world is suddenly and
catastrophically changing around them. I suppose the rapidly depleting
North Sea, which still provides the great majority of domestic UK oil will
keep Greece at bay here for another 5 or 10 years (North Sea depletion
is running at 5-10% per year). The deepest problem is that this is a
slow motion disaster, which is what makes it so insidious and hard to
respond to. The world won't end this year or next.
[Feb28'12] This
remarkable
chart from
Asymptotes
of Power by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, shows that
the increase in the US incarceration rate -- which has reached the
absolutely stunning number of 5% of the US workforce -- exactly parallels
the beginning-in-1980 increase-to-1929-levels of income disparity.
The argument of the paper is that the elite are worried that the increase
in violence against the general population required for them to keep
(or to keep increasing) their ill-gotten gains may be too large for the
general/world population to accept. Despite Occupy, Arab spring, and
the UK/EU riots, a general uprising still looks distant.
[Feb29'12] A great and hopeful article about energy and society
from UCSD physicist Tom Murphy
here.
Go Tom!
[Mar10'12] As Rome burns (along with the
yearly world cubic mile of oil, of course),
this
is what the parasitic money classes are doing. Paper oil. Enron
ownership games with oil on its way to port. Shame. But what about
all the other people who have kept this damaging parasitic rule-bending
cheating legal? It looks like oil *is* set to drop sharply in the next
few months (tho highly unlikely to get down to $35 like last time).
These criminals should be sentenced to actually make something real,
say, an iPod, after being woken from their dormintory bed. Shame, you
worthless humans. All these tricks exploit tiny variations in oil usage,
oil fear, and oil production, which despite the upcoming swoon in price,
is still right up again the limits. The little money-making wiggles are
utterly meaningless in the greater scheme of things and should be damped,
not encouraged. In any sane world, we would, as Chris Cook says, stop
this nonsense and try to begin practical planning 10 or 20 years ahead,
like you would if you had a kid (oh, I forgot, all these people do have
kids...). Instead of that, you have barf heads like Alan Kohler voming
on the teevee about how there is no oil problem. And a bunch of internet
weenies who see oil price manipulation as evidence against peak oil.
Unfortunately, as I've said many times, both are true; in fact, peak oil
is absolutely the *best* opportunity for oil money gamers! Go
here
to see Matt Mushalik blow the supposed 'graph guy' out of the
water with a bunch of real data. But Matt will never get good
air time. On days like this, the chance of any substantive
change looks so remote that I descend to rooting for
Brave
New World vs. 1984 and recording
indulgent
Miles jam tracks that make me think of 1970...
[Mar19'12] Apple has $100 billion in cash -- 1/10 of a trillion dollars,
equal to 1/30 of the total US budget. Much of this pile is for effective
marketing of anti-social media devices...
[Mar23'12] Tom Murphy gave a very sensible interview to OilPrice
here.
The questions of the interviewer (the editor of OilPrice) reveal a
fundamental misunderstanding of science that is widespread, even among
scientists; it amounts to a religious faith in never ending progress
that will arrive just in time to improve human existence and allow us to
continue our unprecedented increase. Science is about finding out how
the world is, independent of how we would like it to be. Of course, human
scientists do this through experiments that they fervently hope will work.
But if their experiments don't work, then eventually, that hope must be
extinguished or moved on to a different experiment. Engineers try to make
new practical things that might be more efficient than existing things.
But like scientists, even though an engineer may fervently want to make
something, and there is a lot of money to be made if it could be made,
some things just can't be made. High-temperature superconductors capable
of carrying high currents would make MRI cheaper and some company a lot of
money. Those facts alone says nothing about whether they are a physical
possibility. Atomic physics could care less about the hope of engineers
for progress in high temperature superconductivity *or* economic demand
(e.g., prompted by running out of helium from methane wells). As energy
depletion begins to bite by the end of this decade, there will begin to
be less and less *energy* for scientific and engineering exploration.
I agree with Tom. We should do something now. Mother nature will soon
be coming to bat -- twice. First on energy, then on climate. She's not
religious and she has a really big bat.
[Mar28'12] My physics education was quite
spotty, so I was surprised to learn
here
that the average amount of power produced by fusion in the sun is only
one tenth of a milliwatt per kilogram of sun. A human body generates
thousands of times that much power per kilogram. A car engine is a
million times more power-dense than the sun. The (long) planned fusion
reactors would be more than a billion times denser. So tokamak fusion is
really not exactly like power from the sun. Since we haven't yet reached
break-even (as much power out as we put in) for even 1 second after
50 years of trying, I don't think we should count on fusion working.
We should invest more in other proven technologies like wind, solar
electric, and solar heating. Just because they currently cost more
than fossil fuel is a not a good reason to avoiding investing in them.
At least they do produce energy, unlike fusion. They will likely *always*
cost more than fossil fuel, since they are made out of fossil fuel --
that is, right until fossil fuel gets rare. If we are not already
making our energy machines using non-fossil fuel power when the fossil
fuel gets rare, then industrial game over.
[Mar29'12] From a Tainter-esque perspective, consider the long lamented
37-page Glass-Steagall Act and the recently passed 2319-page Dodd-Frank
Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was supposed to fix
the problems caused by repealing Glass-Steagall. I hate to see what
will get passed to fix Dodd-Frank...
[May03'12] Busy lately. Here is a charming passage
from the recently released 2010 Army "Internment and
Resettlement Operations" manual available as a PDF
here:
"2-40. The I/R [internment/resettlement] tasks performed in support of
civil support operations are similar to those during combat operations,
but the techniques and procedures are modified based on the special OE
[operational environment] associated with operating within U.S. territory
and according to the categories of individuals (primarily DCs [dislocated
civilians]) to be housed in I/R [internment/resettlement] facilities."
It's nice that U.S. territory is a "special operational environment" but
I'm feeling uncomfortable about the possiblility of becoming 'dislocated'.
But on the positive side you can get brownie points if you are one of the
"detainees and DCs [dislocated civilians] willing to assist with product
development, such as taping audio surrender appeals" or "detainees and
DCs [dislocated civilians] willing to participate in PSYOP product
testing." (p. 284). Personally, I wouldn't go for taping surrender
appeals since my singing voice was never good, but perhaps I could
be one of the other useful "detainess and DCs [dislocated civilians]
with special skills who can assist with I/R [internment/resettlement]
facility operations. Such skills include language; construction;
engineering; and training in medicine, education, and entertainment."
Yeah. Don't intern me bro, I can play Giant Steps on the guitar for
the internees! That'll soften them up. Gentlemen: your fellow frogs
are writing these instructions for slowly boiling naked frogs.
[May19'12] Facebook went on sale today for almost 1/10 of a trillion
dollars, to be paid to a bunch of parasites hiding out on treasure island.
Facebook is basically a private sub-internet that offers nothing you
can't already do on the non-private internet with a *very* moderate study
of web design. Its profits are miniscule by comparison to a tenth of a
trillion dollars. The sucker IPO generated money roughly equivalent to 5%
of the entire yearly federal budget. The price had to be propped up to
keep it falling way below the opening price by Morgan Stanley, the lead
underwriter, late in the day. Watch the furbo parasites dump now that
they've pumped (update: mr. pimple just dumped a billion 4 days later).
Facebook makes me sad to be a human. Industrial civilization slams into
peak oil, and this is the response? Peak oil will be fixed by social
media? and by giving Bono 1.5 billion more dollars and 20 billion to
mr. pimple?
[May23'12] The 'end of the university' has been predicted many times,
and I mostly ignored these predictions because they didn't seem to
be happening at all. For example, about 10 years ago, Don Norman,
the founding head of the UCSD cogsci dept moved to a company in Chicago
that was going to 'replace the university' in 5 years with high-cost but
high-quality online business school courses. After 5 years, the company
was not doing well, and Don went back to a standard academic position at
first-tier Northwestern. However, the recent huge increases in tuition
(in both the US and UK) paid for by clearly unsustainable increases in
student debt, something will soon have to give. As top level universities
have begun to put high quality content online for free, it will begin
to put much more pressure on mid-tier universities -- much more than so
far generated by low-end online courses have (U Arizona, etc).
This
article outlines some of the main points. This progression reminds
me of the inexorable increase in the prison industrial complex that
accompanied/led to the stunning 4-fold growth in per capita US prisoners
from 1980 to now, a percentage of the population in jail that now dwarfs
all other countries in the world. It would take a truly concerted push
back to stop inexorable progress toward the dystopian future described in
cryptogon's comment
here.
All the pundits who are so quick to bash professors and 'old methods' of
teaching humans forget that the old methods got us to where we are now.
As anyone who has taught and done research at a university for the last
25 years will tell you, the increase in the costs of college has not
appeared in their salaries or working conditions, which haven't changed.
What *has* increased at virtually all universities is the percentage of
the university budget devoted to administration, with many places now well
over half admin staff. The planned de-skilling inherent in having low
paid drones play videos of good lecturers is essentially a continuation of
that trend at the expense of actual teachers. The combination of fascism
(militaristic corporatism) with artificial intelligence is particularly
toxic. In this context, I begin to see bright side of peak energy :-}
-- fascist AI won't work as well without the grid.
[May27'12] Here is an update on the peak oil
'elephant in the room'. While the mainstream
media like the NYT are publishing idiotic articles like
this
containing utterly hallucinatory sentences such as: "Industry
experts and national security officials view the Alaskan Arctic
as the last great domestic oil prospect, one that over time could
bring the country a giant step closer to cutting its dependence on
foreign oil", the reality is that people in the US are simply
using less oil. They are using less oil by driving
a
lot less, because they can no longer afford it. This is an
unprecendented, historic change that you can easily view on the internet,
yet which can never be mentioned in the fantasy land of the official
media. The shocking graphs above show that we have entered a completely
new regime of contraction that utterly differs from the previous two and a
half decades of business as usual. The hallucinatory media's response is
that "peak oil is dead" -- right at the moment that peak oil is beginning
to bite big time! For sure, the US is on its way to cutting dependence
of foreign oil. It will get there by using half as much oil as it does
now in a wrenching transition that has just begun, and it will have to
continue contracting its oil use after that as domestic supplies continue
their decline. Now-mostly-depleted Alaskan oil provided a small bump
on the relentless downslope of lower-48-state production in the 90's,
achieving a plateau for a few years, but never getting close to the
1970 lower-48-fueled domestic peak. Arctic oil is likely to be similar,
slightly flattening the domestic production downslope when it possibly
(!) comes on line in 5 or 10 years. This will be during a time that China
and India will be competing with the US for remaining world exports.
Those remaining world exports are themselves decreasing each year as
internal demand of exporting countries increases. An example is Egypt,
which used to be an oil exporter, but which began importing last year
(around the time of the uprisings). The peak in oil discoveries was
in the 1960's. We have now burnt through much of that inheritance.
Hope the scientists (as opposed to clueless journalists) come up with
something soon... (who, me?) :-0
[June21'12] The correctional population has now reached 5% of the
labor force in the US (Fig 17 in Bichler and Nitzan, 2012, PDF
here).
From 1920 to 1980 the correctional population was flat at about 1%
of the labor force. The previous runup in the income share of the
top 10% of the population in the roaring twenties occurred without
an increase in imprisonment. But the recent 1980-to-now runup of
the income share of the top 10% from 33% back to 50% almost perfectly
matches the 1980-to-now increase in work force imprisonment of 1% to 5%.
Bichler and Nitzan suggest that we may be reaching an asymptote of
the pigmen, with further increases in their hoard risking torches
and pitchforks; and the rate of increase of imprisonment rate has
flattened (hit by the Great Recession!). There is probably still some
room to squeeze the bottom 90% or 99% even further (look at Greece,
where 70% want to leave). But Bichler and Nitzan are right that
there *is* tipping point past which things will go all
Robespierre.
[June24'12] A hybrid Bermuda grass
Tifton 85 (made
by cross-species fertilization so that it is sterile so that it
doesn't reproduce so that it has to be bought from a supplier -- GMO:
the early days) designed to feed cattle that had been growing for 15
years on a ranch outside Austin. It responded to a drought by
producing
cyanide gas killing a small herd of cattle. Drought induced prussic
acid poisoning of livestock has occurred before. Another example of
production of cynanide compounds by plants to keep animals from eating
them comes from Madagascar, where there is a bamboo whose young shoots
contain cyanide to prevent eating. In turn, the Golden Bamboo Lemur has
evolved resistance to this cyanide and eats what would be a lethal dose
(for other lemurs) of these bamboo shoots every day.
[July2'12] I saw Prometheus, which was visually spectacular, but
irritatingly crappy and nonsensical in its plot, dialogue, and character
behavior. The giant (outsourced!) army of animators (the movie cost
1/8 of a billion dollars to make) was expertly marshalled, with one epic
struggle reminding me of Laocoon and his Sons. But, incongruously, the
story -- written and controlled by much more highly paid insiders -- was
disjointed and stupid. Perhaps these Alzheimer-y quotes from Ridley Scott
himself provide some insight: "There's no real link [with the original
'Alien'] except it explains I think who may have had these capabilities,
which are dreadful weapons way beyond anything we could possibly conceive,
bacteriological drums of shit that you can drop on a planet and the
planet... Do you know anything about bacteria? If you take a teaspoon
and drop it in the biggest reservoir in London, which also scares the
shit out of me, and amazes me that there are not huge guards around
it... That's the way to do it. You don't do 9/11, you just get a teaspoon
of bacteria, drop it in, and eight days later the water is clean and then
suddenly on the eighth day the water goes dense and cloudy, but by then
it's been sent to every home and several million people have drunk it,
you've got bubonic. It's that simple." Not content to leave it at that,
Ridley continues: "That's how scary it is, so these evolutions of these
guys who have watched developing DNA, it's like 'How can DNA change that
quickly, sitting in front of me on a table...' That's because your mind
doesn't allow you to accept that that may be feasible, that's the deal. In
the same way that we have been here three billion years, we know we've
been... The Gulf of Mexico they believe is a huge asteroid. That was an
impact zone, you know that? Yeah, for that big a thing to actually hit
our globe, it would have had to adjust the spin, the axis. That probably
created the first massive cataclysmic thing which took away all of the
dinosaurs, so that after that you're left with water, that's why the
Grand Canyon was a sea and it is now a dry valley." (quote from
here).
Ouch. Hearing people praise this tripe reminds me of when reporters
would reverently transcribe Reagan's word salad when he was off his
teleprompter. In the case of Prometheus, all delivered to you by
Newtonian-mechanics-stimulated skeletons clothed with texture-mapped
NURBS computed on giant arrays of linux servers. Just think of how
terrified Ridley would be if he actually knew what was in
dirt...
[July23'12] The prolific-to-the-very-end Alexander Cockburn died at 71.
Half the wikipedia entry about him is headlined 'anti-semitism'...
Whatever. His unique radical -- as well as humorous -- voice will be
sorely missed (even if he did doubt global warming and peak oil :-} ).
Meanwhile in Colorado, it comes out that many people in the theater
where the shooting occurred thought it was a "promotional special
effects" event. Talk about a culture of violence!
[Aug01'12] I'm liking a Toyoki Koga electron that emits Bo Lehnert
needle radiation photons. I suppose that's not the kind of research
that gets Russian oligarchs depositing 3 mil into 'physicists' bank
accounts...
[Aug07'12] I love the internet. We have a small DeLonghi DEM10
dehumidifier (small flat, no clothes dryer, in damp rainy London).
After 2 and a half years it failed; the compressor would momentarily
spin up but not stay on. After a quick google, I found someone who had
diagnosed the problem as a failed 1 uF 275V capacitor on a small printed
circuit board under a plastic cover inside the machine, a weak point in
the design. I unsoldered the original capacitor, soldered in a new one
(cost about 50p), and the dehumidier is back up. The dehumidifier wasn't
expensive (about 120 pounds) so I could easiy imagine someone just tossing
it into a skip (dumpster), where the 99.99% working stuff (case, cord,
sensors, circuit boards, fan, compressor, copper refrigeration circuit,
refrigerant) would end up in a land fill. That's why we need to keep
the internet up :-}
[Aug13,'12]
Imprelis
Reading about the DuPont Imprelis disaster today, I am struck by how
difficult it can be to continue to make progress at the same speed, a
point made repeatedly by Joseph Tainter. Imprelis (aminocyclopyrachlor)
marketed by DuPont beginning Oct 2010, is an artificial auxin (auxin
a natural plant hormone), used like many other artificial auxins as a
broad-leaf weed killer. Well known examples are 2,4-D (1950's-to-now
home weed killer) and 2,4,5-T (agent orange). Weeds exposed to
these chemicals overgrow and die while grasses are less affected.
Aminocyclopyrachlor is less human-toxic, and more stable and more water
soluble than 2,4-D. The result of this combination of three apparently
'good', carefully-engineered-on-purpose properties was that it began
killing mature trees (esp. evergreens) as it was washed into their
roots a year and more after it was applied to lawns. It was broken
down even slower inside killed trees making compost made from the trees
plant-o-toxic for years. It has been taken off the market and lawsuits
are underway. Now I have no problem with lawsuits and I think people
should be protected from dangerous chemicals. But at the same time,
from a broader perspective, this is a case of people wanting something
that only possible in the fantasy land of advertisements. And look at
where Imprelis was being applied -- to large mostly pointless lawns on
inaccessible 'green space' in between car-filled roads on land where
nobody ever sets foot (and on gigantic, perfect, never-used lawns on
rich-people and imitation-rich-people estates). Imprelis does just
what it was engineered to do -- kill dandelions in grass effectively,
for a long time, while being 'non-toxic'. The sequence of events brings
to mind the rise and fall of copycat statins (e.g., cerivastatin) that
were engineered to be better and more specific than the first statins.
They were so much better at being statins (inhibiting the mevalonate
pathway) that they resulted in muscles (such as the heart!?) being
pathologically digested (one of the many other downstream effects,
alongside changing blood lipids) and had to be taken off the market.
Or Celebrex, Vioxx et al. -- cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors that were
engineered to be more specific than older drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen
(which inhibit both COX-1 and COX-2). The COX-2 inhibitors upset your
stomach less, allowing higher doses, which eventually resulted in perhaps
100,000 early heart attacks and strokes in the US, and the 10x more
potent Vioxx being taken off the market, again, because cyclooxygenase
is involved in more than just inflammation. The stomach upset from old
drugs turned out to be a feature, not a bug (not that the old drugs like
acetaminophen are that great -- acetaminophen is responsible for almost
half of all US liver transplants, interacting esp. poorly with relatively
small amount of alcohol, with a *very* non-linear dose-response liver
damage curve). With a system of patents that rewards single blockbuster
chemicals that are designed to be applied to one point in a complex
meshwork of chemical reactions in animals and plants, I suppose we
could expect no other outcome. But it's equally important to realize
that there really isn't a better alternative (to the patent system or
to the one-drug clinical trial system). Even an enlightened approach --
e.g., using chemical combinations -- would break down from an impossible
combinatorial explosion at clinical trial time, long before getting
anywhere vaguely close to the number of chemicals in natural 'drugs',
AKA food. We are running tremendously hard to stay in the same place.
Suing DuPont is not going to fix our problems. It would be better
to just let the weeds grow (or pull them out by hand), or get rid of
the useless never-used-by-humans-or-animals 'green space' altogether!
It would be better/cheaper for people to lose weight and exercise more
(or at all) so that there was less heart disease and arthritis pain.
This can't happen when we live in fantasy land. DuPont makes money
because people buy the stuff. We need personal responsibility in addition
to effective regulations.
[Aug17'12] I admit to a certain morbid fascination at seeing nervous
richies suspiciously eyeing each other in a prisoner's dilemma-like
way as they try to cash out their dropping FacePlant shares (though
Facebook tanking is bad for CA, which is a shame). Then there is the
crabbed issue of richies upset about helicopter noise from other richies
doing the Hamptons to New York commute by helicopter. Being a boomer,
I suppose I should instead listen to the CDC (center for disease cash)
which suggests that *every* boomer sign up for a hep C test so that,
if positive, they can go on a $100K half-a-year course of pegylated
interferon (immune system stimulator) plus ribavirin (interferes with RNA
metabolism) plus telaprevir or boceprevir (viral protease inhibitors)
and hope that their viral load goes down before the immune stimulation
casues autoimmune problems like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, retinal
detachment, or lung inflammation/pneumonia. Eeek a mouse (not!). One
standard quickie hep C test is advertised as 98% accurate. Accept that
that unreasonable claim is true, and say 2% percent of boomers (mostly
former needle users) have hep C. By rough Bayes, the quickie test would
result in half of the positive boomer diagnoses being false positive.
More expensive tests work better (98% correct :-} ). So perhaps all 100
million of us should get expensive hep C tests? (e.g., a $500 PCR test,
tho even those can be false negative if virus titer is low at test time).
That would come out to $50 billion for one test each, plus $300 billion
to treat the positives. A fine proposal, but it should only be made
in the context of getting rid of something else of comparable size.
How about the F-35 program?
[Aug26'12] For every dollar that California spends on public transit, it
spends ten dollars on automobile-related investments. This will change!
Time to fix the grid instead! More electric rail!
[Sep07'12] The courts won't touch a single criminal
banker [update: 3 UBS execs *were* convicted today
for fraud!] but instead go after the guy who made the
"hopium"
poster because he lied about basing it on a copyrighted AP photo!
Now that's much worse than copping a few trillion in tax dollars here
and there, right?
[Sep10'12] People often decry the Fed 'printing money'. It is true that
the Fed has been given the right to create money out of the void and then
lend it to big banks who pay interest for this created money back to the
Fed (which is itself a collection of privately-owned banks). The Fed
disposes of this created money back into the void when the principal
is paid pack. But the more significant source of money-creation *by
far* are the banks themselves (the ones that get the ex nihilo money).
Fractional reserve banking (e.g., a 10% reserve requirement) means that
banks can create 10 times as much money as is deposited into them (over
time, with multiple cycles of deposit and loan, each time only retaining
10% of the deposit). This bank-created (not Fed-created) money is what
the banks mostly charge interest on. Since banks typically pay 1/4 as
much interest out on deposits as they demand in interest on loans, this
is another factor of 4. So for an injection of $1000 (on which they pay,
say, 1% interest), they can create $10,000, and then charge 4% interest
on it. The bottom line is that a bank pays $10 interest a year for the
priviledge of charging $400 in interest per year. Not bad 'work' when you
can get it. Now reduce reserve requirements further and you're talking
big money for nothing. This is a preposterous amount of money to pay for
a trivial accounting system that is now all run on cheap web servers and
database backends. Flexible money creation should be run as a public
utility, *not* a private for-profit business. [Sep24 update: excellent
video
here
(go to equations in second half) from Steve Keen on how this absolutely
fundamental mechanism responsible for the creation of the majority of
money is concealed/omitted from standard economic models. Economists are
truly emperors with no clothes!]
[Sep20'12] Reading Dmitri Orlov, I came across this recent
NYT
article showing an amazing increase in US arms sales
(now 80% of world total exports of arms!). The graph is
cropped in my browser not look shocking until you click the link
here,
and even there, it seems cropped a little so it doesn't match the
text! (graph looks like $56 billion, text says $66 billion). The Obama
administration has thus more than doubled the export of arms compared
to the last 4 years of the Bush admin. Major US exports are Hollywood
movies about terminators -- and actual terminators.
[Oct04'12] Carl Zimmer, now at Discover, has his undies bunched
here
about the circumstances surrounding the publication of the French
GMO-is-dangerous study and complains that the study (which cost at least
$1M) didn't test enough animals (it didn't). Fine. But he studiously
avoids commenting on the fact that there have been virtually *no other*
independent long-term feeding studies -- well, aside from the Big One
currently being performed on humans, hopefully not [yet] with the
spermicidal
corn announced by San Diego's Epicyte way back in Sept 2001
(inserting human anti-sperm antibody genes into corn is just like
traditional breeding methods, right?). Carl makes a comparison between
anti-GMO people and global warming deniers. Some days, I grow tired
of yuppies dumping on climate change deniers. Not that I am a denier
-- I *am* a yuppie after all. I fully expect an absolutely awful
humanity-unfriendly climate sh*t storm in the second half of this
century as CO2 reaches 500 ppm, right around the time the useable (net
energy positive) hydrocarbons really start to run low. But it hardly
matters whether one is worried about, or believes in, climate change.
The myriad daily consuming/living decisions that drive CO2 increase
made by the people in the two different groups are NOT THAT DIFFERENT!
I would venture to guess that lower income climate deniers (many in the
bottom half of the US that makes less than 45K a year) probably generate
*less* CO2 than the more stylishly dressed, higher income climate worriers
on their 'eco'-tours to pretty places. As Mary Logan writes
here,
climate change is a euphemism for growth. Attempts to grow, or at least
not shrink, will continue the rigidly linear CO2 increase, no matter how
'worried about climate' Carl is, until net energy positive hydrocarbons
are rare. It's the urge to grow -- consuming in the ever-decreasing
energy return on energy investment fossil fuels in the process -- that
has powered the linear upslope. Our current growth pause didn't even
make a tiny dent. Feeding spermicidal GMO corn secretly to poor people
won't stop it. Then it will be Mother Nature at bat.
[Nov16'12] Quite the spate of articles these last few weeks about the
US becoming a top world oil producer and an exporter! Back in the
real physical world, global crude oil production has been on a plateau
since 2005 (the slight "all liquids" increase has come from scraping
the bottom of the barrel (yup) with zero-net-energy ethanol, etc).
And American fracked gas and tight oil producers -- the more expensive
'new' oil that is supposed to save us -- are right now going out of
business left and right because the current cost of producing this more
expensive oil and natural gas is too close to the current price for them
(~$90/barrel and ~$4/MMBtu). The downside overshoot in gas price is
particularly striking at less than 1/3 the price of the energy-equivalent
amount of oil. So there must be another explanation for the new burst
of deceptive articles. Today, Steve Ludlum suggests that the problem
is the same one the business press had before the stock market crash
of 1929. They they knew the stock market bubble couldn't continue but
were afraid to say so for fear of triggering a crash. In this case, if
people knew what the real propects for next few decades were, they might
get real mad. So don't mention the war. I mentioned it once or twice,
but I think I got away with it. But seriously, I think people really
*can* smell what's up, unconsciously, without numbers. They are just
trying -- like me -- to keep their head down and carry on. If you have
a job, this will work OK for the next decade.
[Nov25'12] I recently read an article by Andrew McKillop, previously a
sensible peak oil guy for a decade, who has now suddenly changed his tune
here.
I pointed out that the reduction in US driving
visible in Department of Transportation
data
has not been mostly due to efficiency gains or voluntary conservation but
rather the result of the inability to pay for fuel (cf. the inability to
pay for food visible in the doubling of the number of people on foodstamps
over the same time period). One particular omission from the new McKillop
world view is the slow but relentless reduction of available exports as
a result of increasing internal demand in exporting countries visible
since 2006 (Jeffrey Brown Export Land Model) and increasing by the year.
Again, this isn't a cliff, but it is a long term trend *very* unlikely
to reverse with world population growth, and unlikely to be fixed by a 3
year US fracking boom, much less phantom zero-net-energy ethanol 'gains'
added to 'all liquids'. My guess (in 2003) was that peak crude oil (not
incl NGL like butane and propane) would be 2008. There was a peak in 2005
at 74 million barrels a day, then a dip, then back to 74 in 2008, then
another dip, then back to 74 in 2010, then another dip, and then slightly
higher to 75 million barrels a day in 2012 (now in the latest dip)
(recent data
here).
Calling the exact position of a peak on a bumpy plateau is a little like
cognitive neuroimaging (depends on how much smoothing you do :-} ). But
knowing that we are on the bumpy plateau is not difficult to do *at all*.
Remember that ten years ago, the official energy agency projections --
now shown to be ridiculously incorrect -- were that we would be at 100
million barrels per day now. The peak in oil discoveries was in the
1960's. Fracking will be a small uptick on the downslope of the world
discoveries curve. I am *sure* that Andrew McKillop knows this, too,
which is why I find his new tack peculiar. I'm not unhappy that people
are driving less. That's a good thing! But I am a lot more worried than
Andrew McKillop about whether civil society will be able to withstand
another 20 relentless years of deprivation-induced driving reduction and
food price increases as world population continues to increase. Maybe he
thinks that since nothing blew up so far, this may be the new business
as usual. Even though I disagree, I sincerely hope he's right!
[Nov27'12] Gregor Macdonald wrote a good
article
about energy that discusses the (forced) move away from oil from a US
perspective. One important point is that this is a move toward coal.
The US has outsourced its manufacturing to China where coal use has
seen a staggering increase (another decade of Chinese coal increase
like the last decade would have China importing most of the world's
exportable coal). As gasoline-powered drivers are driven off the road
(good riddance!) coal use will strongly increase in the US to support the
electrical grid, which itself is badly in need of an upgrade. One thinks
of the internet and its devices as forward looking, but powering them
and manufacturing them has led to the largest increase in coal use in
human history. There has been a lot of talk of trying to do something
about this but absolutely zero action. And as Macdonald points out,
it's easy for Europe to bray about reducing carbon use when all their
goodies are being manufactured in China. Even though hurricane Sandy and
weird weather themselves are *not* the best evidence of global warming,
they have begun to convince people in the US that global warming
is real, despite the best efforts of Frank Luntz, Fox, and endless
stoopid anti-science blogs (Luntz has now reinvented himself to
sell
global warming!). But all the already-convinced yuppie global
warmers fondling their smart phones and typing on their laptops (I
put myself in this category, tho no smartphone) are the very damn ones
using the extra coal! Probably there could be no real movement in coal
use (i.e., no reduction in its staggering upward trend) until a real
once-in-a-millenium storm scrapes a major coastal city all the way down
to mud. We know from the geological record that storms *much* larger
than Sandy or Katrina occasionally occur. Without such a freak event,
however -- which has a low probability of occurring in the next 20
years! -- it will most likely be full coal ahead, until the EROEI gets
lower and the price rises, choking demand as is occurring now with oil.
In all likelihood, this means that nothing substantive in the linear CO2
upramp will happen for another 15 years absolute minimum (33 gigatons of
CO2, which equals 9 gigatons of carbon will be added each year).
[Jan09'13] Food stamp usage (run in most states by JP Morgan!) jumped up
late in 2012. Almost 1 out of 6 Americans (about 48 million) are now on
food stamps -- an all time record. A lot of these people are employed.
Thank god the housing bubble is being reinflated, right?
[Jan15'13] The horrible air today in Beijing (roughly 20x
above the US federal air quality standard for small particles)
was as bad as the air in a room where somebody smoked
several
cigarettes or as bad (in terms of small particles) as the air gets
in a car where someone smoked one cigarette. Eeeeew! Breathing the
bad Beijing air is about equivalent to smoking 2 cigarettes a day. That
doesn't seem like much, but the cardiovascular risks from inflammation
caused by small particles in air pollution and cigarettes
ramp up
quickly at low doses and actually flatten out at higher exposures.
Lung cancer risk, by contrast is more linear with cigarette dose, perhaps
because it simply deposits more carcinogens. You have to be a little
touched to smoke in Beijing (or London for that matter).
[Jan25'13] Apologies to my brain for wasting precious time uselessly
oogling and googling... On Dec 14, in addition to airing footage of the
actual Sandy Hook shooting site, CNN Anderson Cooper also aired
footage
[group of police running at beginning and
around 1 min] of an "active shooter drill"
taking place some afternoon at St. Rose of Lima Pre School
here,
near Sandy Hook elementary, but clearly implied by context that
it was Sandy Hook elementary. During the shooting itself, another
active shooter drill was taking place about 35 min away in Carmel,
Putnam County. This has odd similarities to the multiple aircraft
drills known to be associated with 9-11 (Vigilant etc) and the subway
bombing drill apparently simultaneous with 7-7 (Peter Power). You could
argue that the pre-school footage was a harmless fake; after all, CNN
didn't say outright that the running policemen were at the event (tho
it did run the clip twice in the report). And "active shooter" drills
are now getting as common as the old air raid drills I did in grade
school in the 60's, where we would all hide under our desks to protect
ourselves against nukes :-} . Similarly, the report (last line
here)
that the armed "camo pants" man running away from the school that
police officers chased down and handcuffed in the nearby woods was
an off-duty tactical squad (SWAT) police officer from another town
is also weird (if it is true). Why was he armed? Why was he at
the school during the shooting? Wasn't he originally reported to
be related to one of the kids in the school? If he was SWAT, why
was he running away? Isn't this CNN newsworthy?! Again, clearly
suspicious, but not a smoking gun (though worrisome to imagine armed
off duty camoflage SWAT guys as normal people to have around grade
schools). Then there was this bizarre "just read the card"
warm
up to a press conference by a father who has just lost his daughter
in the shooting, but looking for all the world like an actor getting
into character. Again, maybe instead the effect of stress or camera
shyness or savvy. However, given that these anomalies surround a major
country-wide emotional Hunger Game-like passion play (Suzanne Collins
even lives in Newtown), they don't reinforce trust in MSM reporting
and suggest that one should maintain a studied uncertainty about what
actually happened (aside from the fact that a lot of children were
killed). There is enough uncertainty about this event even in the
general public's mind that a week ago, CNN aired a piece on
"Sandy Hook conspiracy
nuts", brazenly opening with the same running policemen drill from
St. Rose Pre School! Uncertainty isn't conspiracy. Scientists are
uncertain all the time. After all, if we weren't uncertain about how
things actually are, why would we bother to do experiments at all?
(P.S. I favor less guns).
[Jan26'13] The cost of producing newly-found oil is currently around
$90/barrel, approximately equal to the current price of oil. Oil in
the good old days only cost $5 or $10/barrel to produce. Oil at
$90 has resulted in historic drop-offs in driving in the US and EU.
When oil went up to $160/barrel in 2008, the world economy crashed.
There is essentially zero chance that even newer (deeper, tighter,
colder) oil will cost less than $90/barrel. Delicate point in time.
We are getting ever closer to the point in time where people can't
afford the price that is the minimum required to produce new oil (a
half a million barrel plus horizontal frack well costs $10 million to
drill versus $1 million for an old style vertical well). In the past,
expensive-to-produce oil was inaccurately referred to as "previously
uneconomic oil". We used most of that up. We are getting closer to only
being able to find "forever uneconomic oil" -- that is, oil that has
an energy return on energy invested less than one. In economic terms,
this works out to oil that is too costly for industrial civilization
to afford. We are not right up against the wall yet, though; massive
quantities of natural gas are currently being flared at tight oil wells
in the US because the crashed price of natural gas (from the previous
boom in natural gas fracking) has made it 'uneconomical' to recover it --
it is burned off on-site, looking from space like a new network of cities.
All part of the 'wisdom' of the markets.
[Jan31'13] A full one quarter of jobs in the US now pay less than $23K,
the federal poverty line for a family of four. This is moving strongly
away from the Henry Ford idea that people should make enough money to
buy the outputs of the companies they work for. At $23K a year, it
is hard to imagine buying and maintaining a car, house, flat screen,
or renting an apartment. Occupy indeed.
[Feb12'13] The tight oil fracking business looks like it could be headed
to the same self-inflicted crash the natural gas frackers experienced
last year. Previously, I had thought that Chris Cook's idea (Mar 2012)
that oil price would crash in 2013 was wrong, partly because he phrased it
in terms of oil market manipulation and seemed to not pay enough attention
to simple depletion, progression from crude to natural gas liquids, etc.
I was thinking of it in my simplified 10-year-moving-average way as: (1)
oil production costs always increase because good (high EROEI) oil is
drilled first, (2) this results in oil price increases, (3) increasing
prices eventually result in economic constriction, (4) oil prices then
come down because people can't afford it, and finally (5) producers
of the expensive oil (the only kind available) go out of business when
the price gets below their production costs. If *this* is what Chris
Cook meant by financial manipulation (I had trouble fully understanding
what he wrote), then I generally agree now :-} (tho I think it is very
unlikely prices will plummet as far as they did in 2008).
[Feb20'13] The
Fed
is on the move again, strongly increasing the BASE in its first major
move since Dec 2010. The price of oil is plotted on the same chart as
a reference. Maybe the Fed was worried about the 'dreadful' February
sales at Walmart? What a better way to fix this than to give *banks*
more money! Or perhaps the Fed is trying to keep the mini housing bubble
going that has started in CA and other real estate (a lot of all cash
buyers, esp. including banks, who can now rent out foreclosures instead
of, well, foreclosing). In 2001, it seemed completely impossible to me
that the real estate bubble could continue to inflate given how far it
had already come by then. But then it proceeded to double in size over
the following 6 years! (which is why any short-term economic suggestions
I make should be completely ignored, like this post I suppose...).
Right now, it seems impossible to me that the current mini bubble could
continue to inflate given the average person's financial position, a
median income of 50K, 50 million people on food stamps, current savings
rate down to almost zero again (like 2006), ballooning college loan
debt, with 50% of 40-year-olds underwater on their loans (esp. on condos
that have suffered the largest proportional price drops), and with bad
employment numbers. But this new bubble probably has little to do with
average people. Instead, the privately owned Fed (such refreshingly
clear thinking and writing in John Hotson's 1996! article
here) is inserting
huge wads of near-zero-interest-rate cash into banks to fund institutional
investors (e.g., other banks) buying rentals which have a better return
(e.g., 6% gross, 3% or more after costs depending on how slummy they are)
with the intent to keep them for just a few years. This is class war but
one of the classes isn't fighting back (yet!). Of course, making sure a
small number of rich people get richer as the housing bubble reinflates is
*so* much more important than preparing for the Great Energy Transition.
I have probably underplayed the international currency war dynamics,
however, since Japan, UK, and EU central banks are just now doing the
same thing. So perhaps the growing US mini bubble is just collateral
damage in the bigger scheme of things. The blinkered madness of it all
still infuriates me (even as I participate in it every day...).
[Mar01'13] Bradley Manning is a brave, admirable man -- "I leaked
documents to show the true costs of war". The guy who snitched on
him is a lame, cowardly traitor to humanity, Adrian Lamo -- what a
pathetic excuse for a human! Another pathetic sight this week was
Kathryn Riefenstahl, or whatever her name is, and her CIApic starring
a fierce female torturing people to reveal the hiding location of an
already-dead guy probably long buried. All this while the US inches
closer to direct military involvement in Syria. By his actions, Obama
has turned out hardly different than Bush. Gay marriage is great and all
that, but when it comes to bankers, overseas wars and assassinations,
greater-then-the-rest-of-the-world-combined 'defense' spending, the
war on drugz, mideast policy, and an ever-growing police state in the
decaying homeland, where's the beef? (or should I say donkey? et tu,
Ikea meatballs?!).
[Mar09'13] A fine piece (of ...) recently played in the execrable NYT
showing that drone pilots slaughtering people halfway around the world by
remote control are getting PTSD -- AKA guilt -- poor things. How about,
DON'T DO THAT! I don't imagine in the fullness of time that academic
apparatchiks fawningly studying the video-screen'd imperial legions
will be viewed kindly, either. Here we are in the 12th year our Afghan
dirty war, launched on false pretenses, with almost half of those years
surged and droned by Obama (different than Bush, how?). A human, moral,
not to mention, budget catastrophe, getting worse by the month, allowed
by Americans who can't be bothered to stop it, along with the other half
who, preposterously, think it's still a good idea to hire people to kill
the children of people they don't know, halfway around the world, even
after the already-dead man who didn't do it was killed again...
[Mar20'13] The disastrous destruction of Iraq escalated 10 years ago and
continues to this day. There have been a lot of articles about how we
were lied to. B.S.! Anybody with half a brain *knew* they were lies in
2002, *before* the war started.
Here is what
I said about it publicly 10 years ago. With one or two million dead,
trillions of dollars wasted, and a country sent back to the dark ages
(100 killed by bombings today alone), a giant crime was perpetrated
against people who had nothing to do with 9/11. The crime was a
thousand times worse than 9/11. It *was* in large part about
oil. All this as
the US prepares to make its overt intervention in Syria more overt.
On this day, I wonder whether the good things the human mind has come
up with outweigh the bad.
[Apr04'13] The Fed has
continued
to inject massive amounts of money BASE (~M1, red line) and the big banks
have taken it all and immediately put it back into the Fed (WRESBAL, blue
line) to collect interest from the Fed at a higher rate than the rate
that that loan from the Fed charges. This is the third major injection
of free money into banks (the first was Sept 2008, then Jan 2011, and now
Jan 2013. This suggests that banks came under huge new hidden stresses
in Jan 2013 (around the time that Walmart reported sales were dropping
off a cliff). This is what peak oil looks like -- limits to growth.
Too bad the media shills declaring peak oil 'dead' -- even with oil
between $90 and $100 for a year -- can't be retrospectively fired from
10 years into the future when it will be obvious to everybody they were
wrong. Pay no attention to the money changers. They can create money;
but simply storing larger numbers in the bank's database doesn't create
net energy.
[Apr04'13] The recent squib about the Brain Activity Map (BAM) Science
(et al. Yuste) reminds me a bit of the cornucopian shills in the energy
business. Just because we really *want* cheap convenient renewable
energy doesn't mean it's possible. For example, it would be great
for MRI if there existed high temperature superconductors that are
(1) strong, and (2) maintain superconductivity with high currents.
After decades of looking for one, none has been found. They *might*
exist, but they are not guaranteed to exist simply because *we*
need them. It's an empirical question. Similarly, the various
contraints -- in fossil fuel energy replacements *and* large scale
neuron recordings are well enough known -- and not likely to change
radically next year just because we humans would really like it to be.
I have had a long-standing interest in analogies between symbol use in
cells, language, and computers, and I recently happened across
this
report about creating logic gates out of
genetic material. But it also got turned into this absolutely
nightmarish
fantasy by a non-biological tech writer for Extreme Tech:
"Moving forward, though, the potential for real biological computers
is immense. We are essentially talking about fully-functional computers
that can sense their surroundings, and then manipulate their host cells
into doing just about anything. Biological computers might be used as
an early-warning system for disease, or simply as a diagnostic tool
(has the patient consumed excess amounts of sugar, even after the doctor
told them not to?) Biological computers could tell their host cells to
stop producing insulin, to pump out more adrenaline, to reproduce some
healthy cells to combat disease, or to stop reproducing if cancer is
detected. Biological computers will probably obviate the use of many
pharmaceutical drugs." Suuuuuure. I can just see the software update
message: 'I'm sorry, but we discovered a small bug in the DNA program we
installed into your pancreas which causes the pancreas to explode, so we
suggest you immediately eat/install this software update virus package;
should your pancreas have already exploded, we suggest your relatives
incinerate your remains to avoid infecting the rest of the family'.
Monkey wrenching around with gene networks that have taken billions
of year to evolve is child's play. What could possibly go wrong? --
especially when corporate profits are at stake.
[Apr12,'13]
I was really blown away by this
list of recently failed solar companies assembled by Eric Wesoff.
For years, I have highlighted the problem that since renewable energy
devices are almost entirely made using non-renewable energy, one would
expect *upward* pressure on their cost as fossil fuel becomes more
scarce and more expensive. So solar companies failing during times of
economic stress partly brought on by increasing fossil fuel prices didn't
surprise me. Rather, it was the sheer scale of the recent failures
(hundreds!), and the breathtaking rapidity of both the entry and the
demise of these firms (how many are left?!). It was really the vitality
plus destructiveness of capitalism that shocked and amazed me, once again.
Of course, some of the carcasses will be scooped up by those remaining.
But others will simply be junked. And, of course, some of them probably
deserved to be junked. But in the greater scheme of things (think 10
years :-} ), it seems bizarrely wasteful to bankrupt 200 solar companies
-- including the largest, in China, that was supposedly responsible
for bankrupting the others -- in the space of hardly more than a year,
right at friggin' peak oil! Why not move forward in a less manic way?
Or what if the US had spent the trillions it spent destroying Iraq on
renewable energy? If one could count on renewable energy being a good
bet for vulture capitalists 10 years from now, no prob: then we just
have to wait for the great harpies to rip back into town. But renewable
energy may remain a risky boom/bust bet quite a way down the fossil fuel
depletion curve -- that is, it will be cheaper to eke out energy from
lower and lower EROEI fossil fuels for some time yet. My biggest worry
is that the vitality of capitalism itself is based on high EROEI fossil
fuels, which fuel rapid growth and big profits, and that right when we
*really need* its creative destruction, capitalism will have a limp d***
because profits will be too low. That because I think it's not really
"capitalism", but rather "first-half-of-fossil-fuel-ism", based on
one-time exponential growth of energy from fossil fuels. None of this
is to imply in a backhanded Ozzie Zehner-like way that we *shouldn't*
develop renewable energy. Of course we should, full blast, now, while
there is still plenty of fossil fuel left. It will take several decades
to figure out and adapt to what really works at the generation *and*
usage ends. Barely enough time. I'm still hoping.
[Apr30,'13]
I shouldn't have wasted any time reading about Boston,
but... a Boston suburb was basically put under
martial
law, or at least a dress rehearsal for it. The sheer symbolism of
it all! William Rivers Pitt fumed last week that Dunkin Donuts stayed
open and everybody in Boston was cheering. This presumably make it OK
for warrantless SWAT teams in armoured personnel carriers to flush whole
neighborboods of people out of their houses in a police-state/Iraq style
at machine-gun point. Regardless of how much of Boston was affected,
the important point it that is was portrayed on teevee as martial
law -- and glorified as such. And it did nothing to find the injured
guy in the boat! Instead, somebody spotted blood drips on his boat,
and then the police came and shot it full of holes for half an hour
somehow mostly missing the unarmed suspect until the FBI -- who it
turns out had already been following the brothers for several years,
and had them on an airline watch list (they flew anyway?) -- arrived
to stop them. And the campus police officer that was killed earlier
was probably shot by another policmen, not the fleeing suspects.
This level of security theater couldn't have happened in (this part
of) Boston 10 years ago. Looking at all that military kit, it makes
more sense now why homeland 'security' has tragically become
bigger than the New Deal.
But the New Deal happened near the beginning of an almost perfect
exponential increase in oil. Not going to happen this time.
This graph of a typical tight
oil well (Bakken) is our best shot now -- more than a 50% decline in the
first year -- a true 'Red Queen' situation. Instead, in the context of
tight budgets, it looks like the bloated, useless homeland 'security'
bidness is now going to become even a little bit bigger, preposterously
devouring an even larger share of the dwindling funds that should be
being allocated instead to transitioning off fossil fuels -- or, for
that matter, to plant maintenance that would have prevented the Waco
explosion, which killed 5 times as many people as the Boston explosion.
I suppose there is some slight chance that this dire prospect could be
turned around. My hopium supply is low today.
[May04,'13]
US housing is 'recovering' (higher prices are better?) with prices
up almost 10% in a year. At first, this seems mysterious given high
unemployment, record low labor force participation (back to 1978!), lower
wages, the difficulty of getting loans, college kids moving back home with
no job and big debt (the people who are supposed to enter the housing
market), and with housing ownership at an 18 year low (!). The key
to understanding this is withheld inventory. There are 7.5 million
housing units held off the market mostly by banks, who very recently,
have had rules changed so they can be landlords. Also, investors have
gone after rentals driven by below-inflation interest rates. About 1
million houses are sold per year. There are still 3 times as many homes
in delinquency or foreclosure (3 million) than usual. It is in banks'
interests, *not* average people's interest for the bubble to reinflate.
It is hard to see how this could go on for another year, but I have
always underestimated the money changers (as well as their ability to
hoodwink the average person into thinking that paying a higher price
for a basic necessity is actually a good thing).
[May09,'13]
Go Elizabeth Warren! [introducing her new bill in the Senate] "Some people
say that we can’t afford to help our kids through school by keeping
student loan interest rates low," said Senator Warren. "But right now, as
I speak, the federal government offers far lower interest rates on loans,
every single day–they just don’t do it for everyone. Right now, a big
bank can get a loan through the Federal Reserve discount window at a rate
of about 0.75%. But this summer a student who is trying to get a loan to
go to college will pay almost 7%. In other words, the federal government
is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than
the rates for the biggest banks–the same banks that destroyed millions
of jobs and nearly broke this economy. That isn’t right. And that is why
I’m introducing legislation today to give students the same deal that we
give to the big banks."
"Big banks get a great deal when they borrow
money from the Fed," Senator Warren continued. "In effect, the American
taxpayer is investing in those banks. We should make the same kind of
investment in our young people who are trying to get an education. Lend
them the money and make them to pay it back, but give our kids a break on
the interest they pay. Let’s Bank on Students... Unlike the big banks,
students don’t have armies of lobbyists and lawyers. They have only
their voices. And they call on us to do what is right."
[May23,'13]
The stock price of Myriad Genetics rose to a 52-week high after Angelina
Jolie's announcement.
[Jun04,'13]
Good article by Steve Ludlum
here.
It repeats what he has said in the past many times but it bears repeating.
Here are the main points. First, oil price, though high enough to
cause economic problems, is dangerously close to or even under the cost
of current production. We are very close to a situation where oil is
too expensive to afford but to too cheap to produce. That situation
will result in declining oil supplies and further economic contraction.
The second main point is that poorer countries are actually willing to pay
more for their initial barrels of oil than richer countries are willing
to pay for their excess barrels of oil because those initial barrels are
more valuable to poorer countries than the excess barrels are to richer
countries. This means consumption in richer countries will continue to
go down. The third point is that eventually, poorer countries economies
will suffer from the lack of the ability of richer countries to buy
their expensive exports. This puts additional pressure on exports-driven
purchase of oil, even in poorer countries. Injecting massive amounts of
money into insolvent banks won't fix these fundamentally deflationary
pressures. Instead, the mass injections are mainly have the effect of
making very rich people even more rich. No easy fix, especially nobody
dares talk about this in an adult manner in public.
[Jul04,'13]
The oildrum announced yesterday that it is shutting down and
turning into an archive after an 8 year run -- right when the
real work begins. I guess nobody is interested in the real
work! I suppose the expressed intention of the oildrum to avoid
finance and policy does make it less relevant at a time where the
worldwide flattening of oil production is easy to see elsewhere.
I will certainly miss the excellent technical articles on energy
production. Still, I am somewhat amazed looking at
this
Google graph (HT Southern Limits) of the searches for fracking,
peak oil, shale oil (and the oildrum), that worldwide interest is
apparently dropping, right as we begin to enter the critical phase.
Maybe it's because people subconsciously know what's happening as
they subconsciously detect that they are driving slightly less miles
each year (which is occurring simultaneously in the US, EU, China, and
India). But back in the 'real' world, car production is growing
3
times faster than global oil supplies. As Steve Ludlum would
say, this is truly a worldwide waste-based economy. Now the recently
constructed empty cities can be decorated with cars with empty gas tanks!
Matt Mushalik is right on the money: "What to do: re-tool car industry to
manufacture non-automotive products. CNG buses, rail cars and components
for the renewable energy should be on the top of the list. What not
to do: Build more road tunnels, motorways, highways and new airports."
We (US/EU/China/India) are still mostly doing the second.
[Jul05,'13]
"I am an optimist, and so I believe that some of us will persist as small
bands and tribes of semi-aquatic, nomadic humanoids. What's more, I find
this perspective quite inspiring —- far more so than the perspective
of breeding many more generations of office plankton whose job is to
convert natural resources into smoke and garbage while popping pills to
try to stay sane." -- Dmitri Orlov.
[Jul07,'13]
According to Tad Patzek (blog
here), the total land
area now used just for agrofuel crop fields (maize, sugar cane, oil
palm), not including access roads, storage, transport, docks, etc,
exceeds the area of the Indian subcontinent. These biofuel monocrops
occupy land that previously contained zero-net-energy producing
earth-life-supporting temperate and tropical forests and savannas.
Insane humans have turned these forests and savannas into temporarily
net energy producing 'sustainable' 'energy' farms by rapidly using up
fast depleting fossil fuels, fossil water, soils, and phosphates from
other places -- in order to put the output of these fields into their
100,000 watt machines AKA cars, so they can drive back and forth every
day to their important jobs for just a few more years (a bicycle is
a 100 watt device). This is almost twice the area currently being
used for wheat and rice cultivation. Complete and utter insanity.
Why don't humans ride a 100 watt bicycle to work instead of driving a
100,000 watt car to the gym to pedal a stationary bike like a drugged
hamster on a wheel, so they could avoid horrendously damaging the
earth their offspring will inherit? Oh, that would be because they
don't trust their fellow car drivers not to kill them for getting in
the way and slightly slowing them down on their mad dash to work (or
the gym). It's perfectly logical. We'll party on for maybe another 2
decades tops (I include myself). We can't help ourselves. Then
mother
nature will be up to bat. She can't help herself either. She's big
into thermodynamics, can't be bribed, doesn't care if you ride a bicycle,
and she has a really big bat.
[Jul11,'13]
It's critical to keep our eyes on the Bank-gate and Stasi-gate and
Energy-gate balls and not get distracted by sex- and race-baiting --
two divide and conquer strategies as old as the hills, because they work
so well. Probably impossible to implement in practice, tho, given our
language super-charged monkey brains. A related problem -- too many
people -- is probably intractable for similar reasons. With evidence
visible everywhere of there being already too many people for the earth
to support (energy, freshwater, soils, metals, oceans, climate change),
the world added 82 million people in 2012 for a total of 7.2 billion
(
www.worldwatch.org ).
This is the highest annual increment since 1994, forcing upward revision
of population projections made only 10 years ago. The mind boggles
imagining the additional increment in resource extraction of fossil
fuels, freshwater, soil, metals, and oceans required -- *in one year*
-- to equip more than another whole UK worth of new people with not just
food and water, but also houses, sewers, electronic devices, electrical
power, roads, cars, places of work, not to mention ridiculous things
like fitness gyms and artificial nails salons (all the 'demographic
transition' things that slow population growth). In addition, life
expectancy is going up. The rate of increase in population is still
slowing, but current projections have now been moved up to 9.6 billion
people in 2050. The mind boggles but the mind can't do anything practical
about it; the current rate of approach to collapse is still too slow.
Mother nature will be left with a dirty job at mid-century.
[Jul14,'13]
Above, I stated I wasn't too worried about methane. This was because
even though it is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, it is cleared
out of the atmosphere much more quickly than CO2 (methane atmospheric
lifetime is 10 years, since there is a lot of oxygen around to oxidize
it to CO2, see Gavin Schmidt). Maybe I'm a little more worried now.
A really big 'burp' of it would be a problem. Recent reports of a rapid
increase in melting-caused methane bubble chimneys causing persisting
holes in the ice cover of frozen lake (some vents are even
flammable!)
are disturbing. The amount of methane released *so far* is still small
in its effect compared to the effect of burning one cubic mile of oil a
year plus burning approx. equal amounts of coal and methane -- or even
compared to the amount of methane released by growing rice (anaerobic
decay in rice paddies generates a lot of methane). In another 3 decades,
CO2-induced warming will mostly likely have made us *warmer* than the
warmest recent interglacial. Though that warmest interglacial didn't
result in catastrophic methane release, being warmer than it, we will
then be in truly uncharted territory. If the recent rapid increases in
methane release start to increase more rapidly each year, the positive
feedback might lead to a large transient methane release in the next few
decades (most of this would come from anaerobic decay of thawing subarctic
permafrost). This would temporarily (i.e., for 5 or 10 years until it was
oxidized) put the world into a what-CO2-will-do-to-us-in-80-years-from-now
state. This might have the salutary effect of raising consciousness
more than a slow increase in temperature would. But unlike methane,
the human-added CO2 will stick around for thousands of years.
[Jul17,'13]
It's morbidly fascinating to watch the construction of a massive
totalitarian surveillance state, in plain sight, eyes wide shut.
The recent revelations were old news to many people given previous whistle
blowers like Binney, Mark Klein, and many before them. I remember reading
about the NSA and the NRO (now folded in) in Ramparts in 1970 (blackbird
spy planes, signals intelligence, analog phone recording). Many of the
new things revealed are 'merely' system upgrades made possible by faster
CPUs/GPUs and larger hard disks, and by the fact that people now willing
carry around video-capable personal surveillance devices. The secret
FISA court is also an 'upgrade' -- a parallel, secret, unconstitutional
Supreme Court that somehow always manages to agree to the military and
government's requests, but gives the patina of 'legality' -- in secret!
The steady drumbeat of movies and media and ever-increasing and strong
majority poll approval by what used to be called the 'left' is going
further to making the all encompassing surveillance state a fait accompli.
Like the increase in prison population, the ever-increasing militarization
of daily life and daily SWAT teams encroach slowly but surely (see
Radley Balko), until people find it unremarkable to have storm troopers
everywhere, picking off an unfortunate so-and-so here and there, while the
rest of the sheep nervously mind their own business -- just we have seen
in so many dystopian movies over the years. As the totalitarian security
state takes shape, it gains momentum from the sheer number of people it
employs -- in the military, TSA ("thousands standing around"), private
companies, and universities, which are getting more interrelated and
harder to tell apart. Back then, those movies would give us a frisson.
Now it is merely an uncomfortable fact of life ("don't mention the war
or the mini drone will tazer your @ss, stoopid!"). The only positive
thing I can think of is that a perfect panopticon is extremely energy and
resource intensive; for example, the new $2 billion Utah spy center will
use 2 million gallons of water a day just for cooling. I'm hoping that
as energy and resources becomes scarcer (e.g., rare earths for magnets
hard disk actuators), that it will slow our relentless approach past a
comfy, pornified Brave New World to a full-on 1984. It looks like the
economic (really energy-plateau-induced) contraction of the past 5 years
has finally managed to flatten the linear increase in prison construction
and prison population in the US. Starting from a per capita imprisoned
number that was flat from 1920 to 1980, the US had more than quadrupuled
its per capita imprisoned by 2007 (the US now has more per capita people
imprisoned than any major civilization in history). Perhaps energy
starvation will be able to do the same for our metastasizing panopticon,
though that would be cold comfort: after all, the US prison population
hasn't gone down even a little after it flattened. A sad commentary:
hoping that at some time in the future things will -- at best -- stop
getting worse because of energy strangulation. Sheesh.
[Jul19,'13]
The 'revolutionary' Honda Fit is *so* back to the future. It has a 1.5
liter, 117 horsepower engine (i.e. 87,000 watts [1 hp = 745 watts]).
Accelerating that 'underpowered' car is like turning on almost *one
thousand* 100-watt light bulbs. It's very similar to a 1979 Honda
Civic (but with a slightly larger, but more efficient engine). Future
historians will laugh at how preposterous it was for most people in
the US to view a 100,000 watt vehicle as 'impossibly underpowered', yet
for them to fret about unplugging their unconnected cell phone chargers
that draw a fraction of a watt. On the positive side, a light-bodied,
well-designed 20,000 watt device would leisurely be able to get up to
50 miles per hour and carry 4 people -- and would be less lethal to
cyclists and pedestrians. And what about a battery-assisted bicycle?
Those run handily on 250 watts. In other 'news', Microsoft dropped 10%
today (no, I'm not sorry, can I have some more, please?). The loss in
'value' was $25 billion. The idea that the idea of Microsoft could be
worth $25 billion less in the space of a few hours makes me laugh at
the human monkeys running our ridiculous economic system as it careens
toward its deadly 2030-2050 encounter with mother nature.
[Jul21,'13]
After having just read about NHS automaton 'nurses' in the UK
yelling at family members not to give any water to a dying relative
on the "Liverpool Care Pathway", I wasn't surprised to see that Law
Enforcement Today found it worthwhile to run an article suggesting
that militarized police (they even have bayonets now) not
shoot
the family dog (while shooting the family?). Actually, one story
illustrated police shooting a small dog who struggled injured on its back
before being dispatched by several more shots, all while it was trying
to protect its homeless owner, who was having an epileptic seizure.
People are seriously losing their common sense, not to mention their
sense of humor. I suppose the bayonets are for cases where a drug raid
unexpectely turns into trench warfare. It's a shame we human monkeys
have nukes. Somebody could get hurt.
[Jul23,'13]
I love Chris Hedges' recent commentaries
but I'm afraid I agree with Jb's
comment
at Economic Undertow's Monday Mayhem: "The truth is, the masses
aren’t going to 'rise up' until they believe they have nothing left
to lose. They must be more terrified of telling their children that
there's nothing to eat (let alone go to college) than they are of
getting hit in the face with a tear gas canister. When they do rise
up, they will seek to restore what they lost: cheap fuel and food;
look at Egypt!". That is not going to happen in the US for at least
15 years, probably sometime after the entire world reaches peak net
energy roughly around 2025 or so. We're there for oil but not yet for
all energy. So, carry on with the shorter showers for now. In China,
growth in electrical consumption (which is strongly correlated with
economic growth) has flattened to almost to zero growth (N.B.: that
means they are still using *half* of all the world's coal to generate
electricity to make stuff for the rest of the world). Electrical
consumption growth had briefly gone negative at the height of the 2008
crash, but over the past years has been back up to 10 to 15% increases
per year. This has resulted in incredible pressure on their
water
supply (for extracting, washing and processing coal). But despite
all the breathless Zerohedge-y blather about Chinese growth flattening
immediately, now, blah (the derivative of a noisy function is *so*
noisy!), it's means little in the overall (multi-year-smoothed) approach
to world peak energy, which is the one to be really worried about.
China has plans to add the equivalent of two India's worth of electrical
generating capacity in 7 years. They probably won't get all the way
there, but they will try, turning more and more land into desert on
the way. The increase in Chinese coal use starting around 2000 is
what has made world per capita energy consumption go up again after
having flattened out for 20 years from 1979 to 2000. Overall growth
in energy use will mostly likely increase for at least another decade.
The richest 200 people in the world -- who have as much money as the
poorest 3.5 billion people, are still desperate to skim off yet more
for their bug out plans, and they will keep the pedal to the metal until
the car is completely off the cliff. *Then* people will finally panic
and revolt -- when it is too late to effectively change course.
[Jul27,'13]
"The US promises it won't torture Snowden". What an amazing statement
on so many levels! What on earth does this mean? That by default, you
get tortured? But the US has already defined "enhanced interrogation"
(with Cheney watching) as "not torture". So by default, you get worse
than "enhanced interrogation"? (as in shipped to Egypt in an unmarked
CIA jet). And who is the statement directed to? Not even the American
people could believe it! Somehow this make the Obama administration
better than the Bush administration? Sheesh.
[Jul28,'13]
Almost all the members of the SEAL team that 'killed bin Laden' were
wiped out a few months later in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
The relatives have motivated an investigation, with the bizarre
subtext that the military purposely allowed the Taliban to shoot down
the helicopter because the US military was somehow more sympathetic
to the Taliban than to their own special operations people and
allowed the Taliban to get revenge for Obomber 'killing bin Laden'.
Paul Craig Roberts has a different, more plausible scenario
here (originally
presented in 2011). It's partly based on a 2011 interview with a
neighbor that was put online soon after the attack; the neighbor
reported that 3 helicopters had arrived at the beginning of the
raid, speaking Pashto to warn people away, then 2 left, and one
exploded, killing all on board (the guy interviewed said he saw many
body parts, and the downed helicopter was well documented).
Here is the 2011 translation (video link now
dead). The general idea is that perhaps no SEALs were involved at all.
The evidence is pretty flimsy, but then so is the evidence for the
official story (buried at sea?, internet-outed photoshop jobs given to
senators?, Hollywood movies by Kathryn Riefenstahl?).
[Aug01,'13]
Catherine Austin Fitts has interesting recent interviews about a new
economy (e.g., she mentions Dallas) in the US being created out of the
ruins of the old economy that combines new US tight oil, new fabrication
(esp. for military hardware), and industrial US farming. She says
the coming bail-ins will be mainly in offshore banks in an effort to
repatriate offshore capital to prevent Detroit-like collapses from
spreading, and that there will be a continuing bull market in equities
as bonds go down (hard to see stocks continuing up, like Chris Cook on
oil crashing in 2012, which turned out to be wrong -- but who knows).
With the druid, she expects a very slow motion collapse. But as a
person who is fundamentally a money manager and makes income from selling
investment videos, she has a very short term focus. Fracked wells that
decline by more than 50% in one year and have no long tails as stripper
wells seem like a poor power source for a "breakaway civilization" to me!
She generally puts too much emphasis on money dynamics and she seems to
understand very little about the geology of fossil fuels or that fossil
fuel energy is the original force of creation, or about energy return
on energy invested, or much about the dire eventual results of all our
CO2 exhaust (20 years into the future for a money manager might as well
be infinity). She thinks we will mine the moon (a litmus test indicating
utter lack of understanding of physics and net energy). But she *is*
right on target with respect to the upcoming teardown in ridiculously
impractical after-the-fact health care for people poisoned by industrial
food and lifestyle (though I don't see how the "breakaway civilization"
industrial food is supposed to fix that!) (and she should probably take
her own health care advice to heart!)
[Aug08,'13]
Bradley Manning's
statement
is so much more worth reading than the millions of lines
of video crap written daily for the teevee or the higher
end crap published in the NYT. It is all a way of gradually
and subconsciously moulding people's minds into thinking that
post-Constitution
America is 'normal', that it's 'normal' for domestic police
departments to have weaponized drones staring down from above
ready to call in SWAT teams with tanks -- "step *away* from the
bambi!"
[13 armed agents to hood and kill a fawn]), or to have every personal
message, image, and location vaccumed up by a bunch of creepy,
leering J Edgars, or to have the TSA patting you down on the way to
the grocery store or movie theater. It's not normal, and it would be
a really bad idea to passively let it get worse each year. Could end
up in a really bad place in another decade or two. But the light
at the end of the tunnel :-} is that we will run low on energy (I'm
hoping!) before we will ever be able to get all the way to
Elysium.
[Aug25,'13]
Saw Elysium. It was OK. Not nearly as good as District 9, but
that was expected, given the requisite Hollywood-i-Sony-i-fication.
The writing was a little uneven. It was good to see latino good guys
for once! (slum scenes filmed in slums surrounding Mexico City). But of
course, the silliest thing, as usual, was energy. There was seemingly
still huge amounts of unspecified energy available for mining, and hi-tech
manufacturing, flying cars, flat screens, hyper biotech, chip fabs, not
to mention food for the masses, and rocket engines capable of instantly
accelerating and decelerating heavy payloads up to 17,000 miles per hour
(AKA orbit) and back to zero to land, to keep the space station supplied
with air, water, marble, etc. So... what was their problem, exactly?
The basic energy contradictions are analogous to the Matrix's measly
100-watt humans supposedly having their energy 'harvested'. To keep
a human alive, you have to put in more energy than you get out. Basic
thermodynamics of life. But ignoring that, let's suppose you *could*
get 50 watts net per human. That couldn't possibly power billions
of multi megawatt machines. Like Elysium, the math doesn't work.
There will be a lot less usable energy in the future than that.
[Sep08,'13]
Obama is pushing for attacking Syria with 1/6 of the US population on
food stamps. There are 350 total million Americans. Out of that, the
"civilian noninstitutional population" -- that is 16 years or older,
not in jail, mental hospitals, the military, and old folks homes -- is
245 million. There are 11 million officially classified as "unemployed".
But there are also a record 90 million people 16 years and older *not*
in the labor force (retirees, younger people not looking for a job).
That make 101 million people over 16 not working. This, number which has
been going up as baby boomers retire and are not replaced by equivalent
numbers of college age people taking jobs (they're back at home without
a job but with a loan to pay), is approaching the number of people in
the labor force. Probably better not to waste money killing Syrians
halfway around the globe and spend it instead at home, Obama.
[Sep09,'13]
Scott Creighton had a great post on Common Core
here.
This one sentence says it all: "With defense and security expenditures
slowing, corporations are looking to profit from new cloud-based
software used to collect and mine information from student records
to create individualized education programs designed by third-party
companies." What an utterly depressing, inhuman, Brave New World picture!
"When the Great Spirit Died" indeed. As a teacher, this makes me want
to puke.
[Oct02,'13]
"The state, in its internal projections, has a vision of the future
that is as dystopian as mine" -- Chris Hedges. Chris has does have
the somber outlook of a preacher's son. But look on the bright side!
The unprecendented peak and decline of vehicle miles driven (somebody from
Forbes or the Economist forgot to tell drivers in the US/UK/EU that 'peak
oil is dead') means that we have probably passed 'peak Walmart'.
[Oct08,'13]
On the 12th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, with the
government closed because of debt problems, there are *twice* as many
troops in Afghanistan as there were when Obama became president, and the
US is spending $10 million *per hour* there (no, that spending didn't
close down). There is only one party -- the war party.
[Oct12,'13]
"In the theatre of the absurd we know less about what Glenn [Greenwald]
has than what we know about the NSA. maybe, we need the NSA to hack
Glenn, and leak what he has." -- Trish at the Rancid Honey Trap (update:
Greeewald is now starting his own media outlet with the help of a
'friendly' billionaire).
[Oct26,'13]
I've written about the irony of the shale gas producers all piling
into fracking at the same time thus putting themselves out of business
by crashing natural gas prices to below the cost of production of
fracked gas. I initially chalked this up to short term business as
usual; and the first guys in *did* make money. But I overlooked the
insidious role of banking documented by Deborah Rogers in
this
PDF. The rapid moves into fracking required a lot of new debt.
This provided a new opportunity to banks. By analogy with mortgage
backed securities, the banking 'industry' went ahead and created 'complex'
(i.e., obfuscated) 'products' like 'volumetric production payments' and
then by analogy with the 'innovations' surrounding subprime house loans,
bundled leases on unproved gas fracking fields and sold them to pension
funds (genius). This was fine until natural gas prices started to crash,
at which point the investment banks (e.g., Barclays) forced continued
natural gas overproduction to get their short term loans repaid, further
crashing gas prices and putting many of the fracking companies out of
business (did I mention pension funds?), ironically right as we hit peak
natural gas. I suppose stricter banking laws might have damped out some
of this idiocy/criminality and resulted in less money being skimmed
off by the sociopathic richies. And perhaps this might have resulted
in more fossil fuel having been invested in producing renewable energy
devices, which are less profitable in part because they have a high up
front cast, but are much more sane from the point of view of salvaging
industrial civilization during the coming fossil fuel energy downslope.
A fine idea -- to bell the cat! But no mouse has the power to do it.
As we get closer to zero net energy for fossil fuels, which is expressed
in economic terms at the point where the cost of producing fossil fuel
is not high enough to make any profit at all, but too high for non-rich
people to afford, we start to enter a long period of declining production.
We have now passed the wealth inequalities of 1929, largely due to short
term sociopathic banker scams. The sociopathy is now completely public.
One recent example is Carlos Icahn's suggestion that Apple borrow
money to buy its own stock (Apple has $150 billion in cash reserves,
with $100 billion of that in offshore banks to avoid tax). This would
increase the value of the stock far beyond the borrowing costs. All this,
while lawyers haggle over how much the designer of the late Steve Jobs'
just-finished never-used utterly ridiculous $140 million superyacht
should be paid. Despite gigantic bank crimes, there has been no trace
of an attempt to reign them in or to reinstate any of the common sense
banking laws from 30 years ago. The sociopathic richies operate these
6-month-look-ahead slash and burn schemes, but then expect to keep
their filthy lucre forever, while being able to continually do things
like cut pensions and health care without consequences (see, e.g.,
the recent announcement in Detroit that pensions will be cut to
less
than 1/6 of their original promised -- and paid -- for size).
As long as this expectation is fulfilled, they won't stop their pillage
and plunder. The increased pressure from the energy downslope *will*
eventually change this, and regular people will finally turn away from
their cellphones in rage. The richies won't stop themselves until their
heads rot on pikes on a bridge.
[Nov25,'13]
My father, Charles Sereno, died suddenly and unexpectedly in his home a
few days ago. He was a good man who was the prime force in setting up
my world view and I will miss him terribly.
[Dec06,'13]
I'm listening to Phony Toady Iraq-war Blair on the hotel teevee droning on
about how great Nelson Mandela was. What a steaming pile. The MSM says
how great Mandela was, 40 years after the fact, while it pours sewage
out of its mouth about the Mandela's of today. CNN's viewership went
into the toilet this year, dropping by almost half (!). Couldn't happen
to a better set of Orwells. It truly makes me feel like I am entering
a parallel reality when I listen to the 'news' 'feed' for a few hours
(I don't have cable at home). You have to be schizophrenic to be
sane.
[Dec15,'13]
Here is an interesting old
film, from an the
BORAX experiments by Argonne national labs in Idaho. The film shows an
experiment on BORAX-I, which took place in 1954. A small nuclear reactor
core was purposely exploded by a critical event (caused by withdrawing 4
of the 5 control rods, then ejecting the last one with a spring; the site
became a superfund cleanup site). Something similar likely happened in
this
video
of the more recent and much larger explosion at unit 3 at Fukushima,
which had some features of a criticality as opposed to a hydrogen
explosion (which may have occurred in unit 1). It seems very likely
that many radioactive uranium and plutonium containing control rods
from the in-operation core were ejected and aerosolized at unit 3.
Once again, I admit I initially underestimated the severity of the
disaster at Fukushima.
[Dec18,'13]
Steve Ludlum just wrote another interesting -- but
in parts overly florid and confusing -- post
here
. The main point, however, is very good: it is impossible
to fix an economic contraction caused by *energy constraints*
by fiddling with the money system (QE, interest rates, etc, etc.).
Specifically, the problem is that energy return on energy investment
(EROEI) is getting lower and lower. This is expressed as higher
energy costs, but also, demand destruction. Fiddling with money
has virtually no effect on average EROEI. EROEI depends primarily
on geology. The 'new advances' in fracking didn't change EROEI of
fracked deposits. It was always crappy. The reason those deposits
are being mined now is simply desperation -- people are willing to pay
10x as much for them as they were 20 years ago. If oil prices drop
even a little through additional demand destruction (austerity), the
frackers are toast. Similarly, the EROEI of tar sands dregs is
at
best 3 (from a supporter!), which compares unfavorably with Texas oil
at an EROEI of 50 or 100 from the golden years in the mid 20th century.
Although is it possible to implement negative interest rates (paying to
keep your money in the bank), EROEI of less than 1.0 is an absolutely
hard limit for an energy *source*. Bottom of the barrel tar sands at
EROEI=3 are uncomfortably close to 1.0. Now perhaps physicists can come
up with an idea to improve EROEI. But changing the interest rate or
paying physicists more is very unlikely to change the overall form of
the Maxwell equations, or the equations that describe how a heat engine
works, or how much energy it takes to crush rocks to a given size.
The main mistake of average people but also scientists is to assume
that the huge amount of growth that occurred in the late 20th century
was due to people coming up with bright ideas. People *did* came up
with bright ideas. But most of the growth was only possible because we
found a bunch of high EROEI energy deposits created 100 million or more
years ago. That's just as much responsible for the bright ideas as the
other way around. We have now mostly used up these high EROEI deposits.
Pure ideas (or pure money fiddling) in the absence of high EROEI energy
deposits cannot make new growth, period. And given the current precarious
situation of the biosphere, that's probably a good thing.
[Dec29,'13]
I'm getting a worried feeling that something is coming
seriously unglued in the money business. The latest scam -- the
Fixed-Rate
Reverse Repo facility -- proposed in June and now implemented,
somehow spit out $100 billion dollars in a single day, a few days ago.
The housing boom is now driven by cash buyers; 60% of single-family
homes are now bought with cash -- except that it's not really cash, but
effectively near-zero-interest Fed loans to private equity firms, hedge
funds, and big banks, who just recently got approved to be landlords.
I can imagine banks will make responsive landlords. Sort like the circus
with finding out who 'bought' your home loan (I find the whole idea of
'buying' a home loan odious). I have greater difficulty understanding
the abstract financial gobbledygook about 'collateral', 'liquidity', and
'marginable risk-on positions' than the Dirac equation for the electron.
It sure seems like some kind of same-old, roaring twenties Ponzi
scam of the kind typically executed right before falling off a cliff.
However given my previous ability at predicting short term outcomes (much
*worse* than random), this probably means more good times are on the way
(for the next few months!). But I'm much less likely wrong on the long
term, average-for-a-whole-decade picture: energy depletion means growth
can't go on. The money people don't look that far ahead and don't seem to
realize that things have fundamentally and irrevocably changed from the
previous 200 years of same-old boom and bust. The previous 200 years of
boom and bust rode a continuous expansion of energy starting with coal,
then coal+oil, then coal+oil+methane, then coal+oil+methane+nuclear.
In a little over a decade, all all 4 will be in decline, all at the same
time, across the entire world.
[Jan06,'14]
Reverse Repos
I tried to force myself to understand the
financial gobbledygook surrounding the "fixed rate
reverse repo facility", since $0.5 *trillion* dollars
did
this over the past 4 days. For scale, a trillion is about how
much the US spends on all aspects of 'defense' each year, and about how
much US income tax is collected per year. So this was a cash deposit
equivalent to 1/2 of a year's US tax proceeds, deposited into the Fed
in four days. The 'people' who can do this are about 90 mutual funds,
18 special banks, and the Fed's 21 primary dealers. Here is the best
I could do (I think it's like a pawn shop). A "reverse repo" (for a
bank) is where the Fed 'lends out' securities (e.g., treasury bonds,
but could also be things like mortgage-baked 'securities' that the Fed
bought) in return for a cash deposit from the bank. The bank holds
them for a short time (a day, a few weeks), then returns them to the
Fed and the bank is paid interest (GCFRTSY:IND, now at 0.03 percent).
This is (intentionally!) hard to understand because why call what the
Fed is doing 'lending' securities?! when the Fed is actually paying
interest on this so-called 'loan' (N.B.: using money generated out of
the void). A better way to describe this is that the banks are lending
cash to the Fed! I suppose lending securities is like 'lending' your
guitar to the pawn shop in return for cash -- but a normal person
would only call that 'lending' with an ironic tone. In this weird
case, the pawn shop is the big bank and the Fed is the poor person
getting the temporary money. The reverse repo is similar to the
Fed
paying interest on banks' 'excess reserves', which began in 2008,
*after* the worst part of the crisis had cleared. The tripling of
the BASE money supply since 2008 was virtually all due to increases in
banks' 'excess reserves' now deposited with the Fed (Fed graphs
here).
As far as I can tell, all this extra money originally got lent
into existence by the Fed itself! According to Investopedia,
the repo 'mechanism' is usually "used to raise short-term
capital" So the Fed needs cash?? Seems unlikely. It seems
like yet another way to recapitalize bankrupt banks. But why
such a ridiculous amount in 4 days? Maybe just some end of
the year accounting trick; but this 'facility' didn't exist last
year. Why is there suddenly extra 'cash' around? Bloomberg
says
the Fed will be using reverse repos to "neutralize cash in the banking
system" and as a way to begin to undo all of the "easing" (for banks,
not people!) they have done. But it's hard for me to see how this
could possibly work since it seems exactly the same as paying interest
on 'excess reserves' -- that is, it looks like yet *more* easing!
Also, since banks are essentially bankrupt, they hardly need to have
a bunch of real cash withdrawn from them. And no real person I know
is cash-heavy. Like Henry Ford said, if people actually knew how the
banking system worked, there would be a revolution tomorrow. It is
true that these amounts, while large, are small compared the flows
in derivatives or the flows in currency markets ($4 trillion/day).
As usual, there is not even a tiny mention of perhaps the single
largest cause of the ongoing crisis, the declining energy return on
energy investment (EROEI) which powers the physical (i.e., real)
economy. Making rich sociopaths even richer won't fix that, but
that's exactly the plan: in 2013, the amount of money set aside by 8
wall street banks for bonuses ($90 billion) was more than the total cost
of food stamps for 50 million people ($75 billion) (numbers from
Jim
Quinn). In the past, I have underestimated how long things can go on
(e.g., I thought the previous housing bubble was impossibly inflated in
2001 but it went until 2006), so I imagine things will continue 'up'
for another year or two. It's also important to keep in mind that,
compared to the mere $1 trillion a year collected in US taxes, the bond
market is currently at $90 trillion (up from only $10 trillion in 1990),
currency market bets/hedges around $250 trillion, and derivative bets
around $450 trillion. It seems hard to imagine how these numbers will
be re-synced with the real, productive, fossil-fuel-driven economy,
esp. as it begins to flatten and contract.
[Jan19,'14]
It's hard to see how
this
FED graph of the BASE money supply and student loans could somehow
'unwind' gracefully. I am getting exactly the same feeling I had around
2004-5 (impossible growth rates can't last forever). Which means it will
probably continue for the next few years :-} I guess my 2004 prediction
that peak oil would probably arrive around 2008 was correct after all.
'All liquids' have continued slightly up; but since the energy density
of non-crude oil liquids is less than crude oil (and since some liquids
like ethanol are double counted since they are close to zero net energy),
I think in retrospect, we will see that the long net energy downslope
actually did begin a few years ago.
[Jan20,'14]
Here is a
short piece
occasioned by the death of my father written for Naked Capitalism (where
he used to comment). Though not really fitting their gamut, I was
pleased to see that Susan hosted an article there from Gail Tverberg's
site about energy there a few days ago :-}
[Jan31,'14]
[Jan31'14] Food stamps are 1% of the US Federal budget; the military
is more than half. That's why the Republican and Democratic congress
worms and Obama decided they needed to *cut food stamps* ($8 billion) to
'balance the budget'. There is only one party -- the war party.
[Feb05,'14]
The Internet
The internet is primarily a way of doing the same things that we were
doing before, but using different technology that can be more easily
monitored, reported, and archived. I often worry about not having
the internet for search (when I am coding, when I am looking up a
scientific information, etc). But I did my PhD without the internet
and learned a lot in the process. And I was still able to search.
It just took a little longer, but probably because of that, I put
in a little more emotional energy into trying to remember things.
But that has served me well (e.g., when I'm doing a google search...).
Yesterday, the Teilhardian internet was abuzz about the Super Bowl.
We had super bowls back then, too. But now, we could *immediately*
download video of people in the winning city going outside and
lighting
stuff on fire (these were the college students); and we
immediately found out that the losers dejectedly went online and
masturbated,
and that an overenthusiastic fan in New York
bit
off part of his brother's ear during a superbowl party. This doesn't
surprise me, or suggest that humanity is going downhill. Law codes dating
back 4000 years already had fines for biting off ears; and the
Code of Hammurabi had four
laws on the topic of someone who had "smitten the privates" of someone
else, with fines and punishments depending on the relative rank of the
smiter and the smitten (one of the punishments was cutting off an ear).
It's the same humanity it always was, and certainly the same as it was
when I was in college. But I just hate being constantly reminded of it
:-}
[Feb19,'14]
The banker 'suicide' count is getting weirdly high (one was a nail gun
suicide?! is this a joke?). The sensible shoes explanation is that there
is trouble on the way, either for the world, or for bankers because of
pending investigations not yet public, and that a bunch of them freaked.
Though complete speculation, it is not completely out of the question that
this is some kind of coup warning to the richie bankers to reign in some
of their most egregious banker games, from the people that worry about
controlling a large population that could become increasingly restless
during a long hot summer.
[Mar14,'14]
The US national debt has almost doubled since the economic crisis of
2008 (about $10 trillion to about $17.5 trillion). For reference, the
BASE money supply (similar to M1) in that same time went from about $1
trillion to $4 trillion (the extra $3 trillion is the 'excess reserves'
cash that the Fed created that is deposited back in the Fed where
it makes more interest than was paid to withdraw it from the Fed --
a ridiculous scheme to literally give money to bankrupt banks so that
the bankers can keep paying themselves bonuses for their catastrophic
failures). Another reference is that the combined derivatives exposure
of JPM, Citibank, BoA, and Goldman Sachs has risen above $200 trillion,
which is based on total assets of about $5 trillion (over 40:1 levering,
what could go wrong?). In the case of Goldman Sachs, their derivatives
position is even more extreme -- over 400 times their total assets.
Despite the Fed's economic stress indicators saying that
nothing
is stressed, we have certainly not had an economic recovery since 2008
in the usual sense of the word. One straighforward measure is
traffic
volume; its perfectly linear 2% a year increase from the early 80's
suddenly flat-lined in 2008, and then stayed that way to the present.
Sure Blackstone made out like gangbusters buying foreclosures to
rent, and the student debt 'business' is thriving, but most people
have not recovered at all. I find it difficult to believe that the
distractions of the the Ukraine/PussyRiot/disabled-gay-athlete psyops
have completely taken people's minds off their evaporating pensions.
Peak energy in the form of ever decreasing energy return on energy
investment slowly creeps along, too slow to knock people in the head.
Instead, we see market oscillations (e.g., iron ore crashing because
of Chinese steel slowdown, copper crashing because China temporarily
stopped buying it to put in warehouses to use as collateral) that
give irrelevant/misleading signals about the slower but much more
insidious decline in usable energy (and useable everything else).
I still feel the need to write about it from time to time. But I have
taken the words of Robert Maynard Hutchins to heart; he was supposed
to have said: "Whevever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until
the feeling goes away". My version is: "Whenever I get the urge to
warn people about peak energy, I ride my bicycle until the feeling goes
away". Not looking forward to this summer. Perhaps these new
taser
drones, now hilariously being breathlessly marketed to the very
ask-your-doctor sheeple they are intended to be used on (!) will keep
them in line. At this rate, everyone is going to need a
tinfoil
jacket. The number of prescriptions for ADHD drugs has almost
doubled among adults, just in the past 4 years. Perhaps another few
doublings of these slow-release cocaine prescriptions -- so that half
of the population is taking it -- and people truly won't care.
[Mar16,'14]
When someone robs $7000 from a bank,
this
is what the State does. For crimes the other way around, bankers simply
get larger bonuses. There have been *no* prosecutions of bankers for
their subprime and other 'toxic waste' (self-described!) crimes (contrast
this with the S&L scandal of the 80's, where many people were prosecuted).
The ever growing police state now functions to defend banks. This is
the very definition of fascism.
[Mar21,'14]
In a striking parallel to fracked natural gas and fracked oil, coal prices
are going down, even as coal miners are continually driven to dirtier,
as well as lower energy-return-on-energy-investment, coal. The reason
is demand destruction. Peak net energy will never be perceived for what
it is. Instead, as net energy goes down, the price often goes down, too!
Peak oil is dead, long live peak oil.
[Mar30,'14]
The CDC now reports that 1 in 68 eight-year-olds have some kind of autism,
up 30% from just 2012 (when it was 1 in 88). I'm sure the problem is
genetic, right? Time for more DNA testing to find out if you will come
down with autism soon 'because of your genes'...
[Apr01,'14]
Giant 'reverse repo' event (see above) again today. The magnitude was
equivalent the last big one, exactly 3 months ago on Dec 30. Up from
almost nothing in 2013, the average daily rate of 'reverse repos'
(the Fed 'pawning' its assets to big banks so it can give those banks
even more free money -- as interest on the securitised 'loan' the big
bank is making to the Fed) in 2014 is now almost 1/10 a billion a day.
That could add up to big money shortly! That suggests big banks have
gotten back into really big trouble during the 'recovery'. It's all talk.
Elephant talk. Serious misanthro.
[Apr02,'14]
Interesting reading on statins. They directly block one enzyme,
which is part of a pathway of enzymatic reactions (mevalonate pathway)
that leads to cholesterol. Since cholesterol is found in all cell
membranes, and since neurons have extensive and elaborately folded
cell membranes, this is probably the pathway to some of the brain side
effects and neuropathy (e.g., see Beatrice Golomb review
here).
Among other downstream effects are blocking coenzyme Q10 and the
production of dolichols and heme-A, which are probably the pathways
involved in the occasional catastrophic side effects like irreversible
muscle wasting (rhabdomyolysis), pancreatic cell damage (diabetes),
and mitochondrial DNA damage. The effect on cholesterol -- the original
target -- is probably *not* the mechanism for the positive effect with
heart patients. Rather, the mechanism may be the blocking effect
on a cell nuclear DNA transcription control mechanism (NF-kappaB --
nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B-cells), which
is a part of immune system pathways activated by cellular stress and
which is involved in blocking cancerous growth (when statins block
NF-kappaB, they therefore reduce immune-system-caused inflammation).
Quite a tangled web for a Sally Field to describe in 30 seconds on the
teevee to the "ask your doctor" people! And these effects vary greatly
from person to person (that means, you will have to "ask your doctor"
when you hobble back to the office, if you can remember where it is...).
One should probably avoid statins if one is able -- how's that for peecee
advice :-} . For, example, recent studies have shown increased diabetes
and stroke when statins are given to people without heart disease.
Looking ahead (and assuming the power stays on) where does this lead?
Should everybody have all their DNA sequenced to find out how they would
respond to tens of thousands of different 'therapeutic' drugs so that
they can then go on a regimen of ten or a hundred thousand drugs, each
carefully blocking some of the worst side effects of all the others,
all 'improving' your wonderful life? At that rate, everyone might as
well get married to their doctors since that will be the only person
they ever talk to. Thankfully, the power probably won't stay on long
enough to see this. And besides, we are all *already* taking one hundred
thousand different chemicals/drugs a day, every day, AKA food. Ya think,
maybe people should just eat better, instead?
[Apr16,'14]
Life's Work
I was feeling low last week. Doomerish stuff doesn't usually get
to me. People often say that old age is not for sissies, implicitly
referring to physical infirmity. But the mental part is worse. Once at
a large scientific meeting, I remarked to an attendee near my age that
"each year, I get more misanthropic, but more accepting" -- a classical
vice. I suppose last week was nothing more than an occasional objective
glimpse of reality, which most of the time one tries to keep partially
hidden for sanity's sake. Probably the most poignant realization is
that my life's goal of always trying to learn more and find out more
just for sake of understanding more things about the world did *not*
turn out to be a good thing. Instead, there is a predictable way in
which new human knowledge gets applied. Five thousand years ago, early
metallugists figured out how to make bronze from tin and copper, and this
almost immediately got used for better weapons, rapidly rearranging and
enslaving new groups of people. Last century, advances in understanding
atomic physics were quickly -- within the same two decade-long
time window relevant for bronze -- harnessed for enormously better
weapons. Closer to my home, in the case of psychology and brain science,
better understanding of biological vision, audition, touch, movement, and
emotion in combination with computers helped boost the field of machine
learning, which has resulted in the first installment of a new terrible
plague of 'smart' weapons, better mind control, computerized 'trading',
better industrial robots, and the beginnings of computer-based medical
triage, bedside drug monitoring, and smart pills. There is no sign that
these trends will abate in the near future, even as resource depletion
(reflected indirectly in the inability of people to pay) begins to visibly
constrain things like the growth in the number of miles driven. Despite
the fact that industrial robots use a lot more energy *per unit item
produced* than humans operating machine tools on an assembly line,
the now-global optimization method of capitalism for short term profit
makes it inevitable that humans will continue to be displaced by more
energy-intensive industrial robots, further reducing available jobs
(which after being outsourced to lower-wage countries weren't very good
ones anyway...), and reducing the ability of people everywhere to pay
for the very things made by these industrial robots. Obviously, this
is *eventually* a self-limiting process. But I think it will continue
right up to the effective cliff in the net energy curve where massive
increases in energy use only result in tiny net energy increments (near
net energy zero). We're not there yet, despite being past peak crude oil.
As it get more expensive to produce good food, instead we will get more
profit-friendly genetically modified 'plants', cultured Google-burger
'pain free meat', and 'food' manufacturing. More people will have large
amounts of fat surgically removed, maybe even by machine. The polarizing
trend of rich people getting even richer will continue and they will of
course be able to afford much better tasting non-manufactured organic
food, will keep themselves thin, and will live as long as they can soon
inside havens surrounded by land-based and aerial machine-controlled
weapons and surveillance devices. Though there is not nearly enough energy
to get to Elysium or the Matrix, everybody will work together full speed
to do their absolute best to go directly there for the next 15 years.
The truly depressing thing is that the eventual ignominious unravelling
in the later part of this century is exactly the predictable result of
my original life's goal of finding out more about how the world works.
Bummer. But I'm doing better this week :-}
[Apr21,'14]
To follow up on the previous post, I was wondering if there might
be some very rough way of estimating how long we might expect the
replacement of humans by machines, referred to above, to go on. As many
people have pointed out, a human can only generate about 100 watts
of power continuously. Integrated over an entire year of hard work,
that only amounts to about 200 kilowatt-hours of energy. That's about
as much energy as we currently get out of just one 42 gallon barrel of
oil, after refining it down to 20 gallons of gasoline and burning the
gasoline in a 25%-efficient gasoline engine. Thus, my aphorism
one barrel of oil
equals one year of hard physical work. Currently, oil is around
$100/barrel (it was about $60/barrel when I wrote the 2005 article at
the link almost 10 years ago). But the cheapest human slave still costs
more than that. For example, the official minimum wage in Bangladesh is
$220/year, which is near the low end for poor countries. The minimum wage
is around $500/year in many African countries. This suggests that oil
still has to double in price relative to the cheapest humans to turn the
sights of the fascist capitalists away from industrial robots and firmly
back to human slave labor. A wild card is the rate of oil depletion.
But the top of the peak oil curve looks like it will be quite flat, as
many (myself included) have been expecting. This will probably have the
effect of keeping business as usual going without major interruption for
at least another 10 or 15 years. So my guess is that we are looking at
at least 10 or 15 more years jobs losses to automation. The price of oil
can't go much higher than it is now without crashing the world economy
(again). Instead, the gap will probably be closed by the wages of the
poorest continuing downward, as they are now doing even in southern
Europe, which isn't nearly as poor as Bangladesh. Eventually, declining
energy return on energy investment will put a definitive end to this and
people will return to cutting down trees for a while. Ten years ago,
my initial guess was that the effects of declining EROEI of all fuels
would really begin to kick in in a big way around 2030. Still seems
about right today.
[Apr24,'14]
The US nearly emptied its stored natural gas supply during this last
cold winter. They weren't quite as bad as Britain the previous winter,
when then UK came within a day or two of having to begin shutting down
the gas grid across the country. But the idea that the US is going
to overnight turn into a gas exporter to the EU is laughable. The EU
will have to buy gas from Russia (around 60% of its energy supply) and
Russia currently needs to sell gas to the EU. With the US pulling a
reverse Cuban missile crisis on the EU/Russian border, things could get
out of kilter. Maybe this is in the US's interest; it certainly isn't
in the interest of the (f'ed) EU! C'mon EU-ians, get off your backs!
Yesterday, the US sent a few hundred US troops to Poland. Is this a joke?
(Nigel Tufnel accent) It seems utterly irrelevant in military terms.
Sending cash and a few hundred snipers/advisors to stir the pot is
one thing. Actually fighting against Russia is entirely different.
Fighting Russia wouldn't be like the cowardly turkey shoots in Iraq or
Afghanistan (not to mention that both those wars were essentially lost,
and both required hundreds of thousands of troops). Russia is fully
capable of shooting back with modern weapons. The US military knows
that (tho sometimes I wonder if the Nulands and the Powers and the James
Jeffrey types really understand this). This makes it highly unlikely
there will ever be Ukraine no-fly zones. The sustained level of Matrix
unreality in the US and UK/EU media is pretty amazing to me. What I
really don't know is what in the heads of most people watching it.
[Apr29,'14]
About 20% of the worlds PC's use Windows XP. Today Microsoft announced
it will not fix a critical Internet-Explorer-bug-spread rootkit in
XP discovered over the weekend. This is why Bill Gates is about to
become a hundred billionaire. There is a clear conflict of interest
here because this bug actually increases Microsoft's revenue by
forcing users to upgrade against their will. I wouldn't put it past
Microsoft discreetly paying a 'contractor'. Some government lawyers
need to step in. Classic anti-trust situation. Where are they?
[Update: On May 1, Microsoft wisely relented on their threat to not
fix the showstopper bug in 20% of the world's peecees]. Meanwhile
in Ukraine, a sniper shot the mayor of Kharkiv in the back while he
was swimming (the mayor was previously on a Swiss government
sanctions
list for supporting Russians, but then turned his support to Kiev).
He was flown to Haifa for treatment. In the same town, a bunch of neonazi
football hooligans with about a 10:1 count advantage beat up a peaceful
pro-Russian demonstration in the middle of town. Stupid humans and their
stupid master race ideas -- one of the 'great' things that language has
added to the animal brain. I suppose this was the plan the whole time,
in what Pepe Escobar sarcastically calls the $5 billion dollar "Khaganate
of Nulands".
[May15,'14]
According to
OECD
stats, the working age population is about 67% of total US population
(about 320 million). The 'unemployment rate' is supposedly 6% (about
10 million). But there are about 90 million people of working age who
are 'not in the labor force'. This means that 46% of the working age
population is currently unemployed in the US. 15 years ago that number
was about 39%. The UK is similar, and moving in a similar direction.
With all the scare talk about the death of retirement, it looks like
retirement is becoming the new norm :-} I need to retire before the
party's over!
[May20,'14]
Gordon Duff catapults 9-11 disinfo today. Not that this is surprising
given the stupidity of many of the things he mixes in with real info at
his site. But this seems to me to be a sure sign he must be being paid
to do this.
[May29,'14]
This
is a telling graph: it shows vehicle miles traveled (something I have been
yammering on about endlessly...) together with the civilian labor force.
Obviously, the civilian labor force did not suddenly go flat for lack
of people (the US population curve is a linearly increasing straight
line at this scale). But perhaps it goes some way to explaining the
less-driving graph. People in aggregate haven't been able to afford to
pay for gas during the 'recovery', which was not only jobless, but which
even flatlined the number of *potential* job seekers (i.e., the official
unemployment numbers are a pedantic diversion). This is all beginning
to look like a truly new and dire economic regime. Welcome to Greece.
Today, the US economy/GDP was reported to have contracted, which was
described by FTN Financial as "rare for expansions" (you don't say?) --
so naturally, the stock market hit a new high. Among the biggest buyers
of stocks lately have been the companies themselves. This increases their
share price. Yes, it is truly a perpetual motion machine. Peak oil is
dead; long live peak oil.
[Jun03,'14]
The recent suggestion that the incompetent US government should resign
and be taken over by Google, looked at objectively, is an almost pure
example of fascist corporatism, Mussolini-style. Look at the content,
not the fashionable, preposterously overpriced, city-of-Glassholes
from whence it came (the Italian fascists were stylish dressers, too).
Similarly, in the larger context of the decline of empire, the fact
that the US now has to rely on mechanical drones, 'barbarian hordes',
and other pirates (al-Qaeda jihadis hired via Saudi against Syria,
Kievian neonazis hired via jewish oligarchs against Novorossiia)
to fight its wars instead of genuine imperial storm troopers points
to the beginning of the true decline of the US imperium. The US has
plenty of aircraft carriers; but relatively inexpensive water surface
skimming missiles have rendered them somewhat vulnerable against
any but the poorest of the poor, good mainly for fighting aliens in
Hollywood movies (latest Gojira). After wasting somewhere between
$1 and $2 trillion dollars invading and making a shambles of Iraq and
Afghanistan and killing between 1 and 2 million people there (that would
be $1,000,000 spent to kill each human), the US is in no condition to
invade another country right now -- certainly not one that can shoot back.
Few US-ians publicly opposed those utterly disastrous policies; I did,
but I had no follow through. And after the larger demos in the UK,
everybody went home -- and then reelected the same guys who did it.
Meanwhile, back at the energy ranch, California's supposed new powerhouse
of fracked oil reserves was just downgraded by 96% (!). Geologists
decided that the Monterey formation actually contains only 4% of the
original estimate of 14 gigabarrels (without drilling any new holes?).
For scale, yearly US usage is currently 7 gigabarrels. The new estimate
of reserves is 0.5 gigabarrels -- about one month of US usage. Oh
well. For the past 4 years, the oil frackers have been spending
1.5X
as much money drilling for oil as they get in return for it each year.
This is explained as 'worth it' because of all the new 'reserves' that
have been make accessible. They have been able to do this through
finance/debt (shale debt has more than doubled in the last 4 years).
Nothing to see here. Keep driving. I'm sure the rapidly depleting (as
in one year) fracked wells will somehow refill just when we need them
to, in order to allow the drillers to pay off those subprime loans a
few years from now. Don't you know peak oil is dead? Good thing, too,
since mother nature doesn't do debt; when net energy goes below zero,
there is no overdraft protection.
[Jun10,'14]
Things look uber-bubbly to me. For example the cab reservation
program/company Uber just got an $18 billion dollar valuation. Looking on
the bright side, it could start to kill off the toxic black cabs here
in London. I actually like the cab drivers and the interior design
of the black cabs, but I absolutely detest their primitive, often
poorly maintained, filthy diesel engines, which measurably shorten
Londoners' lives by causing artery disease from sub PM2.5 particles,
plus emitting scads of NO2. They probably account for a full 1/4 of the
toxic pollution in London (London NO2 is *twice* as bad as Beijing).
Oh yeah, back on topic: $18 *billion* dollars for some Uber software?
It's probably fine software and a fine idea, but that's getting close
to the amount the US spends on all biomedical research per year!
When it looks to me like it's absolutely impossible that the bubbles
(IPO, stock, house, bond) could go on inflating, it probably means
there is still a year or two to go. I'm absolutely sure about the 5-10
year arc of gradually declining net energy (total available energy).
And you can't make stuff, eat, etc without energy. But I'm *total*
shite on the 1-2 year horizon where financial anti-gravity machines rule
(e.g., companies now using zero interest rate loans to borrow money to
buy their own stock, which increases its price -- what Carl Icahn was
telling apple to do 6 months ago). Household confidence is improving,
and people are starting to use their credit cards again. Don't worry,
the anti-gravity generator never fails (but our fridge just did).
[Jun16,'14]
Every time I see one of these
videos (from Boston
Dynamics now bought by Google), I find myself thinking about how you
could bring one of these things down. First, take away its fossil fuel
:-} . But I'm thinking some kind of rope snare would work too. I am so
over stupid human tricks. More and more I see my whole life of trying
to figure out how the brain works as a terrible mistake. If we every
*did* figure out the brain well enough to make something like it, it
would be a huge catastrophe. Luckily, I am almost certain there isn't
enough fossil fuel left to get there.
[Jun29,'14]
Americans' approval rating for Congress is at 7% and Obama's approval
rating is down to 41%, gradually approaching Bush's lowest numbers
of around 25% (Bush was still around 41% in 2006 with 2 years to go).
Americans' approval of the military stands at 74%, the highest of any
major group asked about. The ingredients for fascism are pretty clear.
They need to ask a more direct poll question: "Would you approve of
the military taking over the government/Congress? to see how close we
actually are. Currently, 79% of Americans are "satisfied" with their
current "level of freedom", down from 91% in 2006, so perhaps there is
beginning to me some pushback. Not much, tho. Tho Chomsky and Pinker
are now all big on how the US is not like central America, stuff like
this
suggests that if you're not an MIT professor, the US *has* become quite a
bit like central america. Another war would do wonders for Obama. Here
is an
annotation
of Bush's poll numbers that I did in 2007 showing the huge boosts due
to 9/11 plus Afghanistan, then the second Iraq invasion, and then the
capture of Saddam. It is true that the May 2011 killing of 'bin Laden'
didn't help Obama, perhaps because people didn't believe it, or maybe
because they had already begun to forget who the long dead Osama was
supposed to be. But an important point is that it doesn't really
matter if Obama's numbers are almost down to 40%. Congress is at 7%
and doesn't seem to cause problems for them ("the presidency" is at
29%). People don't look very restless. If people started to actually
get somewhat restless, a few extra SWAT raids or flash Boston-style
demonstration martial law security theatre rollouts would probably
do the trick. US police depts *already* do 200 SWAT raids *a day*
(mostly for drugs, which they *don't* find a majority of the time).
And if serious unrest developed and stubbornly refused to go away,
a small nuke in a small part of a large city is always an effective
last resort. As I've pointed out above, a small device would do less
damage than most people think, esp. if it was detonated in a basement.
Easily survivable by most people in a large city, and another 'attack on
America' would be instantly effective in galvanizing the entire country
around the government and military and taking focus off the richies.
A
richie here and
there claim to be worried about pitchforks, but I think we are still a
long way from persistent unrest. Further down the line, it's not hard
to imagine a domestic, race-based 'color revolution', incited by the
same tactics used in Ukraine: snipers shooting at both sides.
[Jul01,'14]
Biggest ever 'reverse repo' event
(see above) in the middle of June (chart
here).
The magnitude was the biggest ever. These events are coming at exact
quarterly intervals (first was the middle of Sept 2013) and getting
bigger each time, and the average rate in between the spikes is going
up exponentially. A 'reverse repo' is where the Fed 'pawns' its assets
(jewelry) to big banks (the pawn shop!), who give the Fed 'spending money'
(the Fed needs money?). On the face of it, it doesn't make sense.
But this could help the banks in two ways. The Fed could give those
banks even more free money -- as interest on the securitised 'loan'
the big bank is making to the Fed in return for the Fed's 'jewelry'.
But the banks could also use the 'jewelry' as collateral for other loans,
so they could show bank regulators that they are in good shape with the
temporarily borrowed money collateralized by the Fed 'jewelry'. Then they
get back the money they lent out, and give the 'jewelry' back to the Fed
to get their loan-to-the-Fed back. I read a gobbledegook explanation
by commentator ShorTed that this was all normal, which seemed to focus
on the advantage to the banks of the higher rate of interest that the
Fed pays. To me, it suggests that big banks remain in deep trouble,
else why would this whole thing just have been invented only 9 months
ago, and now be on an exponentially increasing curve? Regular people
also remain in deep doodoo. Since 2007, the number of people in the US
on disability has *doubled*. Exponential sh*t like both of these things
can go on for a while. Then it must always stop, usu. suddenly.
[Jul06,'14]
Now that we are past peak crude oil, we may be coming up on peak
petrodollar. Oh-oh. After peak petrodollar, it will be harder and harder
to simply create dollars electronically, which doesn't cost very much,
and get people in other parts of the world to send actual stuff (e.g.,
the computers whose programs create the money) in return. The dollar
probably won't go down without a fight, though.
[Jul12,'14]
[Jul12,'14] In early July, Zerohedge, following Seeking Alpha, reported on
CYNK, a social media plan-for-a-company with no earnings, no assets, no
product, no website, one employee, and spending of a paltry $1.5 million
(on what?). Then on July 9-10, this vague idea-for-a-social-media-company
was bid up to over $5 billion dollars in market capitalization. On July
11, trading in CYNK was suspended for 2 weeks (because it probably doesn't
exist). My favorite comment on the CYNK run-up was from i_call_you_my_base
-- "Dot com bubble and housing bubble at the same time now. Neither
worked on their own, so it's probably wise to try both simultaneously".
Meanwhile, a giant increase in bank lending, which
started
in January 2014, has mainly consisted of companies borrowing money
at low interest to buy their own stock, pay dividends, and acquire
other companies; corporate debt vs. corporate cash is at the
highest
level it has been at in 15 years (zerohedge plotted it upside
down...). As Wolf Richter points out, none of those things has any actual
productive effect. This is what peak oil looks like. As ridiculous
as it is, this kind of churning will nevertheless go on for a while,
since total energy input (mostly from more coal) to the world economy
hasn't started declining. It is still nominally going slightly up;
but that doesn't account for continually dropping energy return
on energy investment, an increasing percentage of less-energy-dense
shorter chain hydrocarbons in an 'oil' barrel, and the utter insanity of
zero-net-energy corn ethanol (double counting). Of course, in theory,
it would be better to prepare for the inevitable downslope in total
available energy and productivity in a more rational way, but I am
becoming more and more accepting of the likelihood that a more rational
approach will never be able to emerge. Here is Rune Likvern's
estimate
of net cash flows for tight oil well in the Bakken formation of North
Dakota, one of the most successful oil fracking operations in the world.
They are currently $14 billion in debt! That's the cost of about
150 million barrels of oil. The North Dakota tight oil operation
is currently producing 0.8 million barrels/day, up from 0.3 million
barrels/day in 2011 and almost nothing in 2007 before the price of oil
spiked (2013 US consumption was 19 million barrels/day). Output is
expected to reach 1.0 million barrels/day this year, which should make
it possible for them to begin paying off some of the debt this year.
But keep in mind that fracked wells deplete very rapidly (60% in one
year). This is what the future of industrial civilization is based
on: a tight oil "retirement party" (Art Berman). Rune Likvern has an
excellent analysis of the relation between peak oil and banking
here.
Central banks have 'printed money' (reduced interest rates, QE)
in part to mitigate the effects of high-priced oil (translation:
low net energy oil -- the only kind left) flowing through
the world economic system; oil is now $3 trillion/year
out of a world GDP of $70 trillion/year. But this hasn't
helped people buy gasoline. The number of miles driven has been
going
down since 2008. Instead it has created asset bubbles in housing and
stocks (e.g., see above). Bank-created money can still buy oil for now.
But banks can't print oil. In the long run, printing money will have
no effect on integral of the oil depletion curve because that sum is
controlled by net energy, not stupid bank tricks; when the net energy of
an oil deposit is below zero, no amount of money printing will turn that
into an energy source -- it is a 'reserve' that will never be tapped.
The expansion of debt relative to the real, energy-dependent economy
is happening at a rate never before seen in human history. Party on.
There is still some time before the SHTF.
[Aug15,'14]
Danger Will Robinson: oil (and other energy) prices are dropping.
Oil has dropped to its lowest price in about a year and has been on a
slow downtrend since 2011 (after returning to trend after the huge 2008
spike and dip). Lower prices might seem like a good thing, but if this
continues, it will decrease effective 'reserves' by making some of them
(e.g., most fracked/tight oil) too expensive to drill. Eventually,
even the (permanently!) reduced demand will run into supply leading to
another price spike and another permanent downward increment in demand.
This is what peak oil looks like: a sawtooth, not permanently high oil
prices.
[Aug19,'14]
Police have a job that is *less* dangerous than fishermen, roofers,
iron workers, garbagemen, electrical line workers, and farmers, and
equivalently dangerous to the jobs of taxi drivers, landscapers and
grounds workers, and maintenance and repair workers. As many police
die crashing their cars as die from miscreants. We need to stop
militarizing the police even more than they already are. But given
all that, the Ferguson circus is a psyop. Police have always been
this way (sociopathic storm troopers), esp. in the black community.
Google Fred Hampton 1969. The psyop idea is to sell the idea of this
being normal to the rest of us (libruls), similar to the 'show lockdown'
that occurred in Boston after the Boston marathon event. A domestic
'strategy of tension'. It would be absolutely trivial for the police to
plant a live fire infiltrator to kill a policemen 'from the protestors',
Kiev-style, in order to justify a major crackdown, and after wall-to-wall
MSM sewer pics of black people breaking windows and stealing teevees.
Here
are the actual looters; these guys could really use some Chicago-style
1960's police action on them. Police are simply vicious collaborators --
as in the WWII meaning of the word. Update: Aug21: here they are, first
lying in a press conference, then shown in a cell phone video
executing
another black man in cold blood.
[Aug20,'14]
Today, Wolf Richter
wrote
that retail sales have been flat for about 6 months because consumers
are pinched. Given that the Fed reported that about
*half*
of Americans *can't* come up with just $400 cash
for an emergency without a taking out a loan or selling
something, this didn't seem surprising. But looking at the
general upward trend in spending, it prompted me to look up a
longer
term chart from the Fed (this includes retail sales and food sales
-- food sales are approx equiv to retail sales excluding food). For the
life of me, I just don't understand how retail and food sales could have
returned to their normal yearly growth rates after the 2008 shock (20%
drop). By this measure, there has certainly been a recovery since 2008.
But where did the money come from? Are people's salaries up over 20%
from 2008? Mine certainly isn't and I don't imagine most other people's
are either. There must be a lot more debt somewhere...
[Sep01,'14]
Today, Russia announced a
new gas pipeline
to China. As usual, as I re-read my previous posts above trying to
predict what might happen with respect to future oil and gas imports,
I was unable to see the future. I *was* clued in that China couldn't go
on increasing its imports at its 2001-2011 rates for very long without
soaking up all available word exports in another decade or so (see my
2011
peak oil
presentation (PDF)). But I said nothing about *Russia* and China.
Now, thanks to EU support for the US in creating the stinking mess in
the Khaganate of Nuland, it looks like Europe (EU/UK) has agreed to
voluntarily donate their portion of Russian exports to China! How white
of them! That should make it easier for China to absorb all available
world exports. Fantastic work by Cameron and the European Council.
Who needs old-school fossil fuel anyway? (well, we do cook with it at
our house, and it runs a lot of the generators that power my MRI magnet
center, but whatever...). After all, peak oil and peak gas are dead.
The fact that the bitumen and tight oil companies responsible for
the oil Renaissance (retirement party) have all gone into
massive
debt since 2012 probably doesn't mean anything. The fact
that gas exploration requires a lot of oil isn't relevant
either. Central banks will find a way to print oil to help
out gas exploration. Pay no attention to energy return on
energy investment. Instead, pay attention to the Burmese
beauty queen who absconded with her $200,000 tiara (and $10K
from pageant committee who wanted her to get breast implants).
May
Myat rocks!.
[Sep07,'14]
Car miles driven have begun to slightly creep up.
Here
is a long term graph (with BASE bank reserves to show the start of the
second depression). It's hard to see the uptick there, but if you zoom
in to a 5-years-only graph, you can see that we have almost gotten back
to 2011. Note that this is still almost 3% below the 2007-2008 peak.
And it looks nothing like the relentless linear 2-3% yearly increase that
occurred every year from 1970 to 2007. The recent uptick is probably
the result of a 'glut' of oil from the fracking boom of the past several
years. Amazingly (I shouldn't be amazed, I know), SUV sales have even
turned up (to almost one-third of vehicle sales). So is peak oil dead?
Certainly not, even in the US! The all-time peak of oil production in
the US remains 1970. This was all from regular (non-tight) oil in the
continental US. The peak in 1970 was correctly predicted by Hubbert in
the late 1950's. Then the US found Alaskan oil in the 1980's, which
resulted in a small upward bump on the US oil production downslope.
Then deep offshore oil was exploited (remember the Deepwater Horizon
oil spill?), which resulted in another uptick on the overall downslope,
starting in the late 1990's. Finally, starting in 2011, tight oil
resulted in the largest uptick on the overall downslope, starting in
2011, a spike reaching up almost half the way back to the 1970 peak.
But despite all the hoopla, the US hasn't gotten close to the 1970 peak;
and it still imports half of its oil. And the tight oil 'bonanza' is
hardly that; all the tight oil companies are still in debt (see above)!
And tight oil wells often deplete 60% (or 80%!) in a single year, so
compared to old style oil wells, tight oil is truly 'running as fast
as you can to stay in the same place'. Oh well. I suppose there is
no point in trying to promote 'reality-based' thinking. In the end,
it seems to be almost irrelevant to behavior, until it's too late. Then
it *does* affect behavior -- quite strongly :-/
[Sep26,'14]
"The reason I’d enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn’t been,
as I’d assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my
job. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn’t written anything
important enough to suppress." -- Gary Webb
[Oct01,'14]
LA police have killed one person a week for the
past 14 years. This doesn't include people killed
by police in jails and mental institutions. Last year,
killings by LA cops accounted for 7% of all homicides (PDF
here).
While the number of killings by civilians has dropped by more than half
since 2000, the number of killings by police has remained flat.
[Oct08,'14]
"If you have burst out some new ideas in your specialized or interested
field, welcome to submit your great papers to the corresponding Journals
or Special Issues" -- science spam email. Makes me feel like I haven't
been "bursting out" enough lately.
[Oct10,'14]
Mr. President peace prize is now bombing Afghanistan at the
fastest rate in two years. Both parties (Pussy Riot losers and
Inflatable John McCain losers) are the war party. There is no
effective difference. The Pussy Riot losers are actually worse
because they silence the pitiful remains of the left. Oil prices
have continued to drop. This doesn't indicate there isn't a peak oil
problem. It *does* indicate that a lot of frackers are about to
go
out of business. The withdrawal of investment currently going on will
only be felt in supply about a year or two down the line. But everything
is going to be all right for a year, so don't worry be happy :-}.
[Oct20,'14]
Oil has continued to fall under the careful ministrations of the financial
sociopaths. If some 2008-like event happens, oil could fall further, like
it did in 2008 -- from demand destruction. That would have catastrophic
effects on non-conventional oil (perhaps this was the Saudi plan --
but a year of $60 oil would be a disaster for Saudi). This is what peak
oil looks like half the time; the other half of the time there will be
nasty spikes, like early 2008. Dropping drone bombs on pickup trucks and
bombing Syrian refineries won't fix this. I'm getting a listless feeling
that I must be crazy since nobody else seems to see things this way.
Reading IgnorantGuru perked me up a bit. "It may come as a surprise to
many of you, but the U.S. Army is ‘the’ single largest install base
for Red Hat Linux. I’m their largest customer." -- General Nikolas
Justice (
2008,
see also "Debian is
pwnd
by the NSA").
[Oct21,'14]
Over the weekend, I talked to some academics about energy depletion.
As I've commonly found, they hadn't thought much about it, and just
assumed that 'somebody will come up with something'. I didn't do a very
good job of explaining myself because I didn't explicitly mention the
main point, which is that energy return on energy investment is going
down, and rapidly getting closer to the dangerous cliff under 5:1 where
the *proportion* of total extracted energy that is lost in the process
of energy *extraction* begins to rapidly increase (toward infinity at
energy return 1 for energy investment 1). I think this is the *most*
critical single point to explain. Corn ethanol at 1.1:1 vs. deep water
oil at, say, 8:1 is a good example. Imagine there are 10 available
units of energy. In the deepwater oil case, we consume 10 units to
obtain 70 net units. With corn ethanol, we consume the 10 units to
obtain 1 net unit. In the second case, most of our available energy
of 10 units went to energy extraction. It's obviously impossible to
run our current industrial society on corn ethanol. It would require
locating and using 10x as much energy as we are currently using!
If there truly was that much energy just 'lying around' (there isn't),
who in their right mind would waste it making corn ethanol when it could
just be spent directly! Of course, to a business mind, this is all way
too conservative and impossibly too far into the future (10-20 years).
For example, Twitter -- with a market capitalization about $25 billion,
with finally a small positive revenue for a few quarters this year,
mostly from advertising -- could suddenly get a few more users and
then its market capitalization might double overnight. Worrying about
things like the energy supply are *so* last century. But there are still
some sensible engineers who keep the lights on for the Twitter servers,
the smart phone factories, the wireless hubs and cell towers, and the
twitter-er's battery chargers. The Fukushima disaster has turned the
attention of the engineers in a number of countries toward coal (e.g.,
Germany, Japan, US). Since coal is subject to the very same energy return
on energy investment constraints as other forms of energy, it will now
deplete even faster (China currently uses half of the coal in the world
and is set to consume all world exports in another decade or so at its
current growth rate; China made 1.5 times as much cement in 2011-2013
as the US made in the entire twentieth century -- mostly using coal).
As coal depletes, nuclear energy will have to come back to keep the
lights on. And it won't be cold fusion; you can't boil much water if
the fusion is truly cold. Now back to my regularly scheduled matrix,
don't worry, be happy...
[Nov01,'14]
In response to the leaked 'Bibi is a chickenshit' comment, first the
twin towers 'cartoon' and now a reference to the 'grassy knoll' (!).
"Are you threatening me?" -- Beavis corn-holio voice. Looks like
a little blackmail after a long and troubled marriage. They must
have some serious deep state goods! All silly posturing, however,
when there are more important things to attend to :-} . Back in 2003,
I expected peak oil in 2008, and that it would be a gradual flat top.
That was in fact, approximately the peak of *conventional* crude oil
(there was a previous peak in 2005 but the 2008 crude oil peak was just
a tiny bit higher. But the resulting oil price spike got the oil people
to rapidly pile all their drilling rigs from fracked natural gas (the
previous craze because of an earlier natural gas price spike) into fracked
oil in 2009-2012, and US oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford
(those two formations account for almost 2/3 of all tight oil) spiked up
as a result. These wells deplete spectacularly rapidly (70% in one year)
putting drillers in a serious 'Red Queen' situation. However, over the
past year, demand destruction from people not being able to afford oil,
plus tight oil production increases, have slightly outpaced depletion
of conventional oil, which has resulted in a small but dangerous (for
the frackers) fall in oil prices. Since so much slack has been taken
up by non-crude-oil (smaller chain lease condensates, even smaller chain
natural gas plant liquids, tight oil, tar sands, biodiesel, and finally
the towering stupidity of ethanol), 'total liquids' has continued to creep
up, which has surprised me. I seriously underestimated how quickly the
frackers could gear up for natural gas (fast enough to crash the price in
just a few years), and then so rapidly switch to oil (it's staggering to
see the google plots of new wells). The latest new trick being introduced
-- which involves an old, energy expensive trick that was used to put off
the Cantarell peak for a few years a decade ago -- involves CO2 flooding:
N.B.: the new trick is to combine (energy) expensive CO2 flooding with
(energy) expensive fracking. Of course, the total liquids *volume*
increase doesn't factor in energy return on energy investment (which
means more other kinds of energy have gradually been converted into
'total liquids' leaving less total net energy available, and which is
reflected in higher production costs), and 'total liquids' don't even
have the same energy density (all the replacements are less energy dense).
But the total *volume* hasn't yet definitively dropped. Redefined 'peak
oil', meaning maximum end user 'total every kind of liquid', is still a
few years away (around 2016 vs. my initial guess of peak oil in 2008).
I wish it was further away. You'd never guess we were this close to such
a major sea change, what with markets shooting crazily up, because...
Japan decided to 'print' more money?! And indices of consumer sentiment
are going up to almost pre-2008 levels (probably a sure sign that there
will be a crash next year). In any case, it's hard to predict the future.
Perhaps, when the 'total liquids' peak comes, it will finally convince
people to adopt smaller electric vehicles and electric bicycles, and all
hell won't break loose (though peak total liquids will not be good for
less developed places). It has been a good sign that US vehicle miles
driven topped off and went down a little without all hell breaking loose.
Here's hoping I have underestimated human resilience. Who *wouldn't* want
to be able to retire for a few years without dealing with Mad Max?
[Nov03,'14]
Euan Mearns has an excellent post
here
with graphs and detailed definitions relevant to my previous post above.
Euan says in comments that the same guys who piled into fracking gas,
then turned on a dime to pile into fracking oil won't be that sensitive
to lower prices. I hope so. One problem is that if there is another
2008-like crash, it could easily be accompanied by a more serious oil
price crash (than the current $78/barrel). Even if this was relatively
short lived, I think it would really scare the banker rats away from the
drillers for a year and cut into production a few years down the line
(on wells that deplete 70% in one year). Demand destruction is real:
the inflation-adjusted median income in the US has dropped 6% since 2007
(that would be after the 'recovery'). But even with demand destruction,
the yearly oil drain is still a big yearly oil drain (at the rate of
1000 barrels a *second*). The likely result of a drilling investment
hiccup will be a huge price spike 1-2 years after the drillers withdraw.
The very short look-ahead of our economic system isn't very well adapted
to bumping up against hard limits. The problem is that with liquid fuels
so central to modern industrial civilization, see-saw over-corrections
can reverberate well beyond oil markets. You know something's gone
seriously awry when Alan Greenspan is advising people to buy gold --
probably just dementia getting to him :-}
[Nov08,'14]
Only 13% of voters aged 18-29 voted in the midterm elections (the overall
turnout was 38%), the lowest in 72 years. These are some of the people
with huge student loans living at home unable to rent (much less buy a
house) who see little end-user difference between red and blue or Obama
and Bush. Some of this is explained by the fact that young people vote
less and by the fact that midterm elections virtually always go against
the party in power. But there is also a lot of pent-up frustration.
Could go either way (Mussolini or Robespierre). The election of a bunch
of Republican nasties by old people isn't a good indicator of which way
the wind blows. Now back to our daily oil minute :-} . As we approach
peak net energy of all types, it's worth keeping in mind
this
graph of world GDP vs. world energy use. GDP is directly proportional
to energy input, which is very likely to flatten within a decade.
Note that the energy input listed is not all net energy (e.g., it
includes corn ethanol, which essentially contributes zero net energy).
But most of the graph represents net energy. It suggests to me that
the idea of the dematerialization of the economy is utter nonsense.
The economy consists of flows of real energy (AKA goods and services,
mostly made using fossil fuels) being traded (i.e., transported,
mostly using mostly fossil fuels) under the control of symbolic device
accounting systems like paper money, debt, gold, etc. (mostly running
on computers constructed and powered by fossil fuel). Energy is the
only true 'currency'. Just because it's possible to temporarily mess
up the symbolic devices used for trading energy doesn't mean that the
symbolic devices aren't always based on energy flows. When the energy
flows lessen after peak net energy, messing around with symbolic devices
(or gold!) won't create more energy flows. For reference, China oil
energy consumption is up to 11 million barrels per day. This will
probably continue upward for the next 10 years (for reference, current
world crude oil use is 76 million barrels/day, and total liquids use
is 90 million barrels/day, and China GDP growth is at 7% per year).
Low oil prices are unlikely to be a 'problem' in two years.
[Nov30,'14]
Despite continuing yearly decreases in violent crime in the US (the
peak in violent crime was in the 1970's at the end of the Vietnam war),
and yearly decreases in the number of police killed in the line of duty,
police forces are becoming increasing militarized and police killings
of citizens are increasing again (in recent years, police have killed
about 1000 people a year, while about 40 police have been killed a
year). I say 'again' because police killings were also high at during
the 1970's. For example, in 1971 the police killed 93 people in New
York City, while in 2011, police killed 102 people in all of California
(the state with the most police killings because it is so populous --
note that there are a lot more people in California than New York city).
Since the vast majority of police officers never fire their guns in the
line of duty, the new police state is being implemented by a relatively
small number of rogue sociopaths (see for example, Albuquerque, New
Mexico) operating with banana republic-like impunity in the context
of increasingly militarized SWAT teams inappropriately called up for
jobs that don't require them. Like other inexorable yearly changes
(e.g., yearly increases in per capita imprisoned in the US now at world
record levels despite yearly decreases in the US violent crime rate),
this yearly increase needs to be reversed by top down adminstrative
decsions to weed out the sociopaths and demilitarize local police to
avoid having things blow up from a bottom-up revolt.
[Dec04,'14]
There was an insightful
comment
by Sam Taylor on Euan Mearns' blog about the economic dynamics
of horizontal drilling and fracking (LTO means "light tight
oil"). Since the wells come on line quickly and then deplete
very quickly, this technology has increased the chance of large
oil price and equipment investment oscillations, right at a time
when they are least helpful (peak oil). Euan Mearns' graph
here
of oil prices (blue) compared to the number of oil and gas drilling
rigs (from the US) is a truly stunning demonstration of the 'creative
destructive' power of capitalism. The transition from natural
gas to tight oil (when the natural gas frackers crashed themselves,
fortuitously just as oil prices recovered) is striking. The increased
volatility will be great pickings for hit-and-run parasitic financialized
blood-sucking operations (e.g., subprime tight oil fracking leases; 16%
[or 18%] of the $1.3 trillion junk-bond market is now in energy, up from
4% just 10 years ago). But the parasitic operations don't generate
energy. And that is hardly the best way to prepare for transitioning
industrial civilization off of fossil fuels. We don't need creative
destruction in the circulatory system of industrial civilization.
We need more smoothing! The financial press lives in a very different,
non-physical, non-smoothed world from the people who actually get
coal and oil to make their computers, and then generate perfectly
smooth power to run them so their trivial bloviations can be perfectly
transmitted. From an excellent Feb 2014 presentation by
Steve Kopits: from 1998
to 2005, $1.5 trillion was spent to add almost 9 million barrels/day of
oil production (world then around 75 million barrels/day). But from 2005
to 2013, $4 trillion was spent on new oil prospects (finding, drilling)
to add just 4 million barrels/day -- that is, each new barrel this decade
cost 6x as much to get as last decade (mainly because it took more energy
to get it!). Most of this new oil went to more Chinese driving, since,
starting around 2007, the yearly increase in car miles driven in the
US/UK/EU suddenly flattened and began to slowly declne. Another $3.5
trillion (equivalent to the yearly GDP of Germany) was spent to fix
up legacy fields with the result that legacy fields produced 1 million
barrels/day *less* -- their production would have been a lot worse without
that investment. It is interesting that Steve Kopits mentions that
Chinese demand for oil had already begun flattening early in 2014, which
is one of the things that must have helped to cause the recent oil price
crash. Instead of always writing about 1-2 month random fluctuations
(like the oil price crash), the financial press should be required to
also regularly write about basic, averaged-over-5-to-10-years numbers.
Despite peak oil being 'dead', capital expenditures *per barrel* have been
rising at 11% per year since 2000. If the world economy avoids a massive
crash, the recent price oil crash will not last very long. If there *is*
a massive crash, it will probably be triggered by the bankruptcy of oil
exploration and production companies. We need more smoothing!
[Dec07,'14]
The biggest turnaround
since 2008 (8% drop in one month) is just now visible in
this
graph of the US BASE money supply (which suddenly inflated by a factor
of 4 since 2008 as banks 'deposited' money in the Fed to collect small but
safe interest). Increases in BASE in the past 7 years have correlated
very closely with the Fed's various 'quantitative easing' programs.
The accompanying student loan graph (which disturbingly has exactly
the same shape as BASE, tho y-axis scale is 1/6 that of BASE) is not
as up-to-date and doesn't show a downturn yet. Could just be another
glitch down (like the past 5-6 glitches in BASE) which is about to be
'fixed' by another huge injection of digital cash. Things will be clear
in another 2-3 months. The things that makes me feel most insane is that
nobody 'official' seems vaguely aware of the fact that economic growth
and growth in energy use are essentially the same thing, and that growth
in energy use is getting harder and harder to sustain. In November,
there was 40% drop in oil and gas well permits responding to the oil
price crash. This is looking more and more like deflation.
[Dec09,'14]
[Dec09,'14] Global currency markets trade over $5.3 trillion a day.
For scale, the gross domestic product of the entire US is about $17
trillion dollars *per year*. What could possibly go wrong as the dollar
strengthens and dollar shorts need to be covered?
[Dec13,'14]
I read Wolf Richter sometimes. Check out how huffy he gets
here
with 'Dave', who suggested that he actually do something useful (clean out
a clogged street drain he observed) as opposed to just getting online and
blathering on about things (uhh... like I'm doing here). Maybe it's also
living in the home of hi-tech in San Fransicso. But what is 'hi-tech'
really? Take the amazing story of Amazon (headquarters actually in
Seattle). It has been in business for two decades. Its revenues and
stock prices have gone continuously up. It profits have remained at
approximately zero for all of the last decade. But what does Amazon
actually do? It buys and runs huge banks of servers -- manufactured
using coal and then powered mostly with coal. It then gets small
manufactured objects, many frantically picked off of their warehouse
shelves by human slaves, whipped by battery powered 15 to 20 second
computer-voice countdowns. Finally, it uses those servers to arrange
shipping of small manufactured objects to people sitting at home --
mostly by using yet more fossil fuel: oil. So this is how the economy is
de-materialized -- by using more fossil fuel (IT now uses more than 10%
of all power generated worldwide). I'm sure this will continue to work
'well' as long as there is plenty of fossil fuel around. Maybe that's
what the Amazon CEO's were thinking this month when they cashed out 20%
of their shares...
[Dec23,'14]
Reading this four part series (
1,
2,
3,
4)
on the Mexican food export boom together with
this
article back-to-back and projecting a short distance into the
future will unsettle your stomach. From the second article: "Another
turning point came in 2013 when Monsanto, one of the largest suppliers of
herbicides (e.g., glyphosate, now found in substantial [10x US drinking
water limit, 1000x EU drinking water limit] concentration in
breast
milk of American mothers) and genetically modified seeds,
bought San Francisco-based weather data and insurance startup Climate
Corporation, which was started by ex-Google employees, for $930 million.
'That was an aha moment,' said Rob Trice, a 14-year venture capitalist
in Menlo Park who founded the Mixing Bowl, a hub of ag-tech thinkers and
entrepreneurs. 'Here was one of the largest ag companies buying an IT
company in Silicon Valley.'" Rentiers gobbling up cropland, farmed by
slave labor in hi-tech greenhouses, with the slaves sleeping on cardboard
and forced to buy overpriced food at the company store -- a new idea?!
Glassholes indeed.
[Jan11,'15]
Info-filled interview with Art Berman
here.
For example, the best tight oil shales are 2% oil. They're
expensive (=energy intensive) to produce because they are
mostly rock, instead of being essentially an oil soaked
sponge like much of Ghawar the Great. Oil prices continues to
sell at half-price because of a 'glut' of oil that is probably
around 1% (!) of still-slightly-increasing world demand (=usage).
This suggests that the money system supporting industrial civilization
is badly broken.
[Jan19,'15]
The rapid contraction in the hi-EROEI oil business (tight/fracked
oil) has continued as oil prices stay low. If oil prices remain low
for another 6 months, this could cause real damage to US economy,
since (1) about a third of the good-paying jobs created over the
past 3-4 years have been in fossil fuel energy, (2) a quarter
of high-interest junk bonds are energy-related, and (3) a lot
fracking debt will not be able to be repaid. The precipitous decline
in long term interest rates visible in this 1-year Fed plot of
10-year
and 30-year interest rates is pretty scary. The situation seems
so delicate now that even a very moderate increase in interest rates
in the direction of historical norms would cause havoc in the gigantic
global bond market ($100 trillion -- *triple* what it was in just 2000,
perhaps a full quarter of that from heaping bank bailouts onto the public
balance sheet). None of this is even on most people's radar; US consumer
sentiment just hit a new 'post'-recession record toward the positive.
It's impossible to guess how likely another financial blow up is.
The world situation is volatile, and there is a growing post-9/11-like
sentiment in 'western' countries. The last time that particular evil
in the hearts of men and women welled up, two big new wars were started
(both still running, millions of Muslims killed in them, many Muslim
cities with many neighborhoods reduced to rubble). A war in an oil
country could end the current 1-2% oil 'glut' in the face of the world
burning a thousand barrels a second. The latest western target, Yemen,
has a reasonable amount of oil left, but its production has dropped below
1/4 million barrels a day lately, so a US/UK/EU attack on Yemen probably
wouldn't cut off much oil. In any case, the longer view is that there are
still at least 15 years left of a thousand barrels a second (or at least
800 barrels a second :-} ) before the SHTF big time. There are still at
least 15 years calm before the storm (my definition of "calm" includes
things like bond market blowup and another oil price spike).
[Jan22,'15]
Sometimes you just have to give credit where credit is due. Several
studies by a group at the Canandian Centre for Disease Control
showed that in one bad flu season, there was an *increased* risk
of getting the flu in people who had gotten multiple flu shots.
This was even replicated experimentally in ferrets (PDF
here).
The masterful popular press report of this by the Monty
Python-esque Canadian Broadcasting Corporation described this as
'blunted
protection' and fretted that it "muddies public health messages".
And now, how to defend yourself... with a banana. One possible
explanation is that you get a flu shot, some antibodies are made
that prevent you from getting the seasonal flu; but they are not as
protective against the serious pandemic flu as actually getting the mild
seasonal flu. But the explanation suggested by direct tests in ferrets is
that the circulating antibodies generated by the flu vaccine actually
promote infection by a different (the virologists say "heterologous"
which is the opposite of "homologous") virus.
[Jan25,'15]
The gossip is that the Fed has ended quantitative easing (AKA
giving criminal bankers large amounts of money for free), and
that this is why the dollar is going up. However, a look the
FED
graph of the BASE money supply and the record of excess reserves of
depository institutions, which explains almost 100% of the variance in
the BASE, you can see that an additional $400 billion (almost half a
trillion dollars, a full 10% of current total BASE, or approx. *half*
of what the total BASE used to be until 2008 [less than 1 trillion])
showed up in BASE in the space of *one month* from December to January.
Doesn't sound lke QE has stopped yet. Still might.
[Feb06,'15]
Interestng an article on the difficulties of hacking
hi-tech proprietary farm "tractor operating systems"
here.
It made me think of the scenes in Interstellar where all their dusty
laptops just seemed to work and it was no problem hacking their farm
equipment. The article points to closed source as the problem, and
maybe that is part of it. But there is also the problem of the towering
complexity of the tech building blocks and the lower level software in
the first place. There is some opportunity for Blade-Runner-y fixes;
but they rely on a reliable source of all the hi tech chip goodness
-- and Ridley Scott didn't show us any of the places where they were
using up all their remaining clean water for chip fabs... Anyway, the
laptop that I'm typing on is on the last legs of its video card (sadly,
the class action lawsuit over 20-40K video card failures against Apple
just got thrown out a few weeks ago because the two guys couldn't prove
Apple knew). The source of the problem is intriguing. It arose out
of trying to do the environmentally friendly thing and remove the lead
from solder. But non- or lower-lead solder melts at a higher temp.
This made the temperature window smaller between the temp to melt the
solder and the temp at which plastic and other circuit board parts
begin to melt (so Apple almost certainly knew; but they relied on the
fact that many people just buy a new computer and toss the toweringly
complex 2 year old one in the trash). The surface mount chips have a
few hundred contacts on the flat bottom surface of the chip that get
tiny sticky solder balls inserted, heated to center them, then the chip
precisely placed on the board by a robot before being put in the oven
(and maybe being X-ray-ed after to see if everything worked). So I found
a Blade-Runner-y south London shop where they can "re-ball" your video
card chip with the real, good-stuff, lead solder :-} That sounds more
like Interstellar. But it relies completely on having a bunch of chip
fabs and board makers turning out the many-layer motherboards and having
access to the lower level drivers that the 2011 chips run. A simple
example is that there is no software way to make a 2011 Mac boot off the
still-working integrated graphics chip -- if you exclude as 'software'
putting the computer under a blanket so that it the firmware does an
overheat shutdown, which will cause the firmware to skip using discrete
graphics card for just the next boot... Right now, it seems unlikely that
local 'maker' shops will ever be able to make the raw tech parts (chips,
multilayer fully populated surface mount circuit boards) from scratch.
It's a basic Turing-like problem: a maker shop that can make a maker shop.
Probably takes more than a village (and a whole lotta water...).
[Mar05,'15]
You know we're getting close to the end of the
bubble when things like this happen: on teevee, they
suggest that you should take out a 7-year auto loan to
buy
stocks... [update: Mar 11th: Feb 2015 set a new record for companies
buying their own stock -- at the rate of $5 billion/day]
[Mar16,'15]
Oil just went slightly under $43. The financial lunatics who
make idiotic graphs connecting the extreme(ly insignificant --
to the long term picture!) minima and maxima are all a-titter about
'support breached'. But saner commentators like Rune Likvern
have suggested agree that low prices might last
for a little longer than many were expecting, esp. if
interest rates rise even a small amount. In fact, they they
just
have. This is because this will make servicing debt more difficult
and taking out more debt more expensive -- the things that are required
not only to 'make' oil (CAPEX for tight oil), but also to buy it (car
loans, so other income can be used to by gas for the car). So in brief,
there might be more demand destruction for quite a while. The question
is whether demand destruction can keep up with depletion without causing a
huge crash. On the positive side, total miles driven in the US
topped
out in 2007 and has been more or less flat for 4-5 years (well,
until the recent oil price reduction beginning at the end of last year
:-} ). Nothing *really* bad happened even though many people I talked
to about driving less before this said it was *totally* impossible (and
it is true that it mostly wasn't 'less', as 'the same'). Presumably,
all we would have to do is have a small continuous downward slope in
demand to match depletion. That would probably work well for the next
10 years, I'm hoping. But keep the bigger picture in mind! The world
uses roughly 1000 barrels of oil a second, and the fluctations from year
to year are a percent or two. This steadily depletes remaining harder
to get resources; we wouldn't be steaming 1 unit of oil out of 20 units
of tar sand if there was a lot of good stuff left. As population grows
(more than one entire UK per year) and the third world industrializes,
even with US/UK/EU demand destruction, it is complete fantasy not to
expect serious shortages and serious price spikes (and dips) after 15
more years of 1000 barrels a second. In fact, the next spike is very
probably due to happen in early 2016.
[Mar26,'15]
The fact that E.M. Forster could almost exactly predict the
internet
'mass for shut-ins' reality of Baylandia 106 years ago in "The Machine
Stops" suggests a certain unpleasant determinism to human affairs.
I always used to say that the science fiction guys were wrong because
flying cars never appeared. But now I think I may have been too hasty.
There is probably enough net energy left over the next 15 years for some
glasshole to market a few flying car/drones to some other glassholes,
and hopefully enough extra energy beyond that for a quadracopter fan
controller virus writer to play his own bit part in the song that
remains the same. Reading medium and theverge makes me think that
peak oil is attractive. However, I know it's time to get back on my
anti-misanthropy pills. In truth, there is *nothing* about running
out of oil (and water and food) while adding more than a full UK
of people (two California's) to the world every year that is in the
slightest bit attractive, esp. considering what humans are
capable
of.
[Apr19,'15]
From
this
FED graph of BASE (base money supply, which provides a convenient
marker of the economic disruption of 2008) and US vehicle miles traveled,
it looks like recent low oil prices may have had a strong effect
on driving. Oil prices dropped in the middle of 2014, and vehicle
miles have shot up finally surpassing the previous unprecedented peak,
which occurred at the beginning of 2008. 2015 will probably turn out
to be the year of peak 'all liquids', which is crude oil + condensate
+ natural gas liquids, + light tight oil + tarsands + biodiesel +
[cough] ethanol. This suggests that oil price will probably spike back
up in 2016. Confirmation comes from the fact that Blackstone, which
recently became largest US landlord by buying distressed properties
during the US real estate downturn is now stockpiling cash to buy
... distressed oil and gas companies. As Nomi Prins said, it takes a
pillage. [Update: Apr22: Art Berman wrote an excellent article
here.
One graph from that article
(this
one) says it all: our current 'massive glut' of oil is an oversupply
of production relative to consumption of ... *less than 2%*.
[Apr28,'15]
Steve Ludlum makes a
good
point about price signals during the recent drop in oil prices (he's
quite wordy as usual! -- I know, I should talk). The recent drop in oil
usage in early 2014 -- which led to a drop in oil prices in later 2014
-- was probably induced by forced reduction in usage (e.g., in China,
in Greece, in the bottom 80% of the US because people could no longer
afford oil). Though the forced part made people unhappy, using less is
absolutely the right thing to do -- the only thing to do -- if you take
a twenty-year perspective on the use of a critical finite resource in a
finite world. But then this slight overall reduction in usage resulted
in a temporary and relatively tiny 'glut' -- hardly more than 1% of total
usage. The immediate result of this tiny amount of excess production was
a sudden halving of oil price. But then this *immediately* resulted in
people turning around and starting to use more. This looks like a pattern
that is going to occur repeatedly. The problem is that it occurs slowly
enough that people seem to somehow forget the last time it happened.
How else to explain why someone would rationally by an SUV right at peak
oil? (so perhaps I've been wrong! maybe we need *less* smoothing --
perhaps even more insane capitalist destruction that wreaks havoc *every*
year!) But seriously, the low price of oil coupled with another bout of
quantitative easing (or no interest rate increases) *is* likely to lead to
a bit of a 'boom' over the next 6-12 months. Though tight oil people have
virtually stopped drilling, and have fired a bunch of people, there are
still plenty of already-drilled but not yet 'completed' wells, and lots
of debts to repay. This will keep oil prices low for a while even in the
absence of drilling. This will help airlines and food prices and perhaps
even real estate. But in about a year, we will probably get back to a
2007-2008 like oil spike. China and India are not growing oil use as fast
as before, but they are still growing, and this growth will more than use
up savings from places where per capita oil use is dropping like
Greece
(in dark gray). When oil price spikes again, we will likely get
another 2008-like financial event (stock market crash, and another
oil price crash). But this probably won't happen until 2016 or early
2017. So happy motoring (and enjoy the US strategy of tension) until
then!
[May08,'15]
Oncology doctors typically make almost 2/3 of their income from
reselling cancer drugs to patients (to their insurance companies and
Medicare) at a mark-up -- the "buy and bill" reimbursement scheme,
which is not available to doctors in most other fields. Last year,
one-tenth of a *trillion* dollars was spent on cancer drugs. There is an
obvious conflict-of-interest here that promotes prescribing the newest
most expensive drugs, regardless of relative efficacy. You know it's
bad when you find muckraking articles about the practice in...
Forbes!
As with many other aspects of medical care, success is increasingly
measured 'quantitatively' by determining whether the size of the tumor
or tumor markers have changed, regardless of whether these measurements
actually correspond to a better or longer life for the patient. I know,
I know, I live in a glass house (a university), where costs over the
last decade have ballooned to such an extent that a student loan bubble
comparable in size to the previous housing bubble has been created.
In fact, university costs have increased even faster than the medical
care costs I just complained above. I do wonder (probably like many
medical doctors wonder) where all the extra that money has gone, because
my work and pay is not very different from what it was 20 years ago,
before the huge run up in university costs. It seems unlikely that this
can end well for universities when the next crash comes.
[May21,'15]
San Diego just proposed a plan to spend over $1 billion
dollars, including a quarter of a billion dollars directly
from tax receipts (city of San Diego and San Diego county),
and a 1/6 of a billion in construction bonds to build a
new football
stadium. It's true that they already have one, which was first
opened less than 10 years ago. And you'd think at this late date in
the game of keeping industrial civilization online that this particular
*beeellion* dollars might be better spent in San Diego on water, energy,
light rail, bicycle lanes (one of the best places in the world to cycle).
On the bright side, I suppose having the San Diego Chargers around
could help when San Diego has to go mano e mano with Los Angelenos
over water, a few years down the line (San Diego imports more than 80%
of its water).
[May22,'15]
Basic average numbers to remember for solar electric. Power hitting
the atmosphere is 1366 watts/m^2. Practically available average
power considering atmospheric losses, oblique, diurnal and weather
variation *before* conversion to electricity is about 190 watts/m^2.
Power available after conversion including defects, soiling, and inverter
and spacing losses is about 15 watts/m^2 (=1.4 watts/sq ft). For scale,
a standard sized car is a 100,000 watt device (135 horsepower) at maximum
output, and can cruise smoothly at highway speeds on about 20,000 watts.
Therefore, to directly power a car crusing at 60-70 mph (no storage),
you need the average output of 14,000 sq feet of solar cells --
an array 120 feet by 120 feet, which is 1/4 the area of an American
football field. At current prices, such an array (at volume discount)
would cost over $300,000. For strong acceleration (like they do here
in London trying to pass me on my bicycle on their way to a red light),
you need a million-dollar full football field's worth of solar cells.
That's why people are going to eventually be driving smaller, lighter
cars at lower speeds, and accelerating less -- which is excellent news
for cyclists!
[May25,'15]
A sage quote from a
well-written
article by the archdruid: "The second thing that can be said for
certain about the coming era of impact is that it’s not the end of the
world. Apocalyptic fantasies are common and popular in eras of pretense,
and for good reason; fixating on the supposed imminence of the Second
Coming, human extinction, or what have you, is a great way to distract
yourself from the real crisis that’s breathing down your neck. If the
real crisis in question is partly or wholly a result of your own actions,
while the apocalyptic fantasy can be blamed on someone or something else,
that adds a further attraction to the fantasy."
[May29,'15]
"In my view, the overriding concern should be the probable endpoint
of this technological trajectory. The capabilities of autonomous
weapons will be limited more by the laws of physics — for example, by
constraints on range, speed and payload —- than by any deficiencies
in the AI systems that control them. For instance, as flying robots
become smaller, their manoeuvrability increases and their ability to be
targeted decreases. They have a shorter range, yet they must be large
enough to carry a lethal payload — perhaps a one-gram shaped charge
to puncture the human cranium. Despite the limits imposed by physics,
one can expect platforms deployed in the millions, the agility and
lethality of which will leave humans utterly defenceless. This
is not a desirable future." -- Stuart Russell,
comment
in Nature on lethal autonomous weapon systems entitled
"Take a stand on AI weapons". We are increasingly going to
be in a race between Terminator-world (imagine this
thing, eventually armed
with tazers and bullets) and the depletion of fossil fuels. As Stuart
Russell says: "Doing nothing is a vote in favour of continued development
and deployment". Unfortunately, there is probably enough fossil fuel
left to be able to begin to deploy crude versions of small autonomous
weaponized drones, first on low-market-value humans (e.g., in Yemen or
Ukraine), and then, eventually, in the US and UK homeland.
[May31,'15]
The scientific peer review seems to be getting more and more broken.
There used to be a few reviews, then the editor would usually make an
editorial decision (the original point of an editor); and the editor
usually even read the paper! Now, there are many cycles of review
at every journal, and when there is a conflict, instead of the editor
reading the paper and making a decision, the robot emailers seek out yet
another reviewer. Then the whole thing starts again after rejection and
sending elsewhere. A tremendous waste of resources! The disempowerment of
editors was in part an attempt to be more transparent and objective; but
the unintended consequence was a massive increase in the 'incarceration'
of scientific papers. In a strange analogy with the prison system,
mandatory sentencing guidelines in the US were supposed to make things
more fair. The (probably not unintended) result was to vastly increase
the rate of privatized imprisonment -- by 400% -- in a country that
already had one of the highest rates of imprisonment (more blacks in jail
than there used to slaves). Maybe it's just because I'm old and I've just
read one too many "let's play scientist pretend dress up" style review.
Or maybe it really is the beginning of a Tainter-esque collapse from being
unable to continually service ever greater amounts of complexity.
[Jun29,'15]
While people fret over unplugging their cell phone chargers, they
studiously ignore the big picture -- the single decision that most
affects one's carbon footprint, by far, is the decision to have a kid.
Kids in the US/UK/EU are 5-10x more carbon intensive than kids elsewhere.
But restrictions on having kids cannot be discussed in polite company.
This means that a few decades down the line, 'not enough food' will
impolitely join the conversation. 'Not enough food' does not care
about political correctness, cannot be bargained with, never turns on
its cell phone, and always works. This looks bad. But just because it
looks bad doesn't mean there is any easy way to fix it. If everybody
suddenly stopped having kids (they are already reducing), we would
end up with just old people. Even in that completely unreasonable
scenario, there is probably not enough 'stuff' (energy, minerals, soil,
freshwater) to support an aging population long enough to reduce it by
natural attrition. So 9 billion here we come, and after that probably
some unnatural attrition.
[Jul20,'15]
"I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. .... I’m
going to shield you from public and congressional anger. .... My
administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." --
President Obama, to top executives of bailed-out financial firms in a
secret/
leaked meeting at the
White House on May 20, 2009.
[Aug06,'15]
Dmitri Orlov posted an insightful comment on the Druid's log today
about the difference between the USSR before collapse and the US today.
In the case of the USSR, there was a rich public sector for oligarchs to
plunder. This is less the case in the US because a lot of the plundering
has already been done. But this has a silver lining. Dmitri says:
"In the USSR certain members of the political class were rather eager to
get the collapse show on the road because there was something in it for
them, while in the USA at the moment these same sorts of people don't see
much of a bright post-collapse future for themselves, and so will do all
they can to run out the clock". May we carry on in style. Dave Cohen
recently commented on Jim Hansen's warning and Jim Hansen's suggestions;
I agree with his analysis. I have no problem with Hansen's warnings.
I completely believe them! (even if Hansen has used the overly optimistic
EIA reserves numbers). The problem is the suggestion to cut out the use
of fossil fuels. It's a good idea in theory :-} If we were to actually
cut out a meaningful amount -- say half -- of world fossil fuel use, there
would immediately result catastrophic food shortages, mass migrations
enormously bigger than Calais, and a permanent world-wide depression.
Such an energy input cut would instantly stop 'renewable energy' growth
in its tracks since virtually all renewable energy devices, not to mention
the infrastructure to connect their electrical output to personal devices,
not to mention the devices themselves, not to mention the roads over
which the devices are delivered to houses, are all essentially made
out of fossil fuels (many roads *are* fossil fuels). It's a good idea
in theory. So once again, may we carry on in style. There has been
not
even the slightest hint of a reduction in the extremely regular
Mauna Loa linear upward slope in CO2 -- and I don't expect one until the
massive worldwide depression starts. Some countries *have* topped out.
For example, the US has. The fundamental reason why overall fossil
fuel use has flattened and gone down (mainly as a result of using less
coal to generate electricity used by industry to make things) is the
semi-permanent post-2008 recession. Secondarily it is due to the final
bit of outsourcing of fossil-fuel-using manufacturing from the US to
other places. As the energy return on (mostly fossil fuel) energy
investment continues down, it is likely that less fossil-fuel-driven
action/production/growth/making-stuff will happen without any legislation
at all. I think it is going to be difficult enough dealing with that kind
of enforced conservation and shrinkage, so that any plans for explicit
voluntary reduction in fossil fuel use will probably not happen, ever.
All the discussion by right wing 'drill baby drill' blowhards and left
wing 'renewables' blowhards is just noise -- they're both voting with
the kilowatt-hours they use, which except for a very small fraction at
the extreme fringes isn't very different, regardless of what they say.
In 15 years, there will be less kilowatt-hours to go around. It won't
have anything to do with what either side said, or with money games,
or the Fed. It will simply reflect declining energy return on energy
investment.
[Aug10,'15]
Some recent news from the helium shortage front
here
and
here
and
here
[2014] to update what I wrote back in
2005. In 2013, helium prices
spiked as the US threatened to shut down the Federal Helium Reserve
(which currently still holds almost 1/3 of total world helium).
But then the US backed off, saying they will wait until 2021
to shut it down, and will continue to sell previously collected
US-tax-subsidized helium (it cost about $1.5 billion to collect
in the first place) way below current extraction cost, encouraging
over-use and discouraging conservation/recycling. Another transient
and misleading price relief is that Qatar started producing more
helium (now second only to the US). And helium has benefitted
from the general price drops in 'commodities'. I'm sure there
will no problem for a few more years, AKA 'the forseeable future'.
A 6 month look ahead has always worked in the past so why change now?
Tim Worstall at Forbes, from the Adam Smith Institute in London,
assures
us we've got so much helium, there's no reason to even bother
recycling
it; he also thinks peak oil is nonsense, and that we'll get oil
from other planets if necessary (does he realize that one of
the largest single one-time blow-offs of helium was launching
the Saturn V rockets? Oh I forgot, we'll get helium-3 from the
moon. Suuure.). Probably a lot of good info will be available
at the Nov 2015
World
Helium conference, but the registration was a bit stiff at
$1300... 21% of world helium is used for MRI. 8% is used on party
balloons. Burning through all our helium *is* strangely like
19th
century logging.
Dance monkeys
dance.
[Aug12b,'15]
Some of the yahoos over at zerohedge
should read Gail Tverberg's latest:
How
economic growth fails. A key quote: "When civilizations collapsed
in the past, a major cause was diminishing returns leading to declining
wages for non-elite workers", which led to them buying less stuff,
which led to diminishing returns. Seems like every other article
over there these days is about how a minimum wage will kill companies,
without the most basic realization that lower wages mean that people
buy less stuff, which would be what companies make. That's Henry
Ford 101. Continuing upward weath transfer won't help (each rich
person can only buy so many carz). Then for home-school college,
the zerohedge guys could be introduced to the concept that world
energy consumption and GDP almost perfectly track each other (
graph
from her article), with world energy consumption the leading
indicator. Kilowatts bat next-to-last (of course, it's mother nature
that bats last -- guy macpherson). To end upbeat, the US installed a
whole lot of new wind power in 2014 (take that, Euan Mearns).
[Aug12,'15]
Zerohedge points up this muckraking
letter to the
editor by a retired geologist living in Silverton, Colorado who more
or less predicted there would be some kind of mine overflow disaster,
but then zerohedge conveniently neglected to provide the crucial
backstory helpfully added by Paveway IV in the zerohedge comments.
The Sunnyside mining company decided to stop treating toxic drainage
from one of their abandoned in 1991 silver mines and plugged up
the mine with concrete. This caused the toxic water in the mine
to back up to a higher altitude mine. When the EPA plugged *that*
one, the tall head of toxic water (because sulfide metal deposits
turn water into sulphuric acid which dissolves heavy metals)
finally broke free after some minor digging, sending a
toxic bolus
of orange water out of the Gold King Mine into the Animas river.
Don't forget that we need silver for, among other things, making
photoelectric cells. I suppose this is small news compared to the
astonishing spectacle of Fox Nooz' Roger Ailes apologizing to Donald
Trump; or the fact that *hedge funds* are buying California farmland to
(get somebody to) plant pistachio and almond groves, which demand massive
amounts of water from the rapidly depleting aquifers (2000 foot deep
wells vs. the old 200 foot deep wells), because those crops are 10x
as profitable as what was growing there before. What could possibly
go wrong?
[Aug13,'15]
iPhone-i-fication
The parallel dumb-phone-ification and model-year-ification of Mac OS X
10 and Windows 10 *and* Linux is depressing. Both expert and non-expert
computer users rely on an enormous non-verbal, non-conscious base of
visuomotor arm, hand, and finger actions. The enormity of the state
space only originally became obvious to me when I first started to do
serious user interface programming in the early 90's. When I watched
people try to use my programs and immediately get to parts of the state
space I hadn't sealed off (because I had never gone there myself, since
I unconsciously knew what the goal was), I realized just how complex
the tree of possible actions that I had already non-verbally learned was.
Initially, competing software companies used this 'inertia of the basal
ganglia' to seal in market share; the startup cost to learning a new
pile of key and interface widget action bindings was enough to seal in
a buyer (my 60-year-old brain has had real trouble adapting to Inkscape
after having used certain vector graphics-related key combinations since
Illustrator 3 :-} ). To some extent, the dumb-phone-ification of desktop
and laptop systems is an example of this -- utterly misdirected since
I don't ever want to touch the screen when I am programming or writing
(using a mouse is bad enough! imagine the chronic shoulder problems that
constantly touching a desktop screen would cause!).
But as processor speeds have flattened out and computer applications
have been built out, there is less real need for change. What great
new features can be introduced into an email reader or a web browser or
a word processing program or a vector graphics program? MacWrite and
MacDraw had already roughed out many of the the main features of the
last two kinds of applications more than 30 years ago in the mid-80's!
Now that incremental improvements in these main applications have
essentially been finished, instead what we are witnessing is regression
(e.g., in Mac OS X, useful features present in Pages '09 were removed
in more recent versions to make it more dumb-phone-like, forcing many
users into downgrading, which luckily was still possible).
Loss of useful function is bad enough. But a more insidious development
is ever more pervasive model-year-like changes. One small irritating
example from recent versions of Mac OS X is what happens when you grab
a group of files to move them. As you are click-dragging, the files
rearrange themselves into an evenly spaced cluster. This disturbing
uncaused-by-the-user movement of something you are metaphorically holding
visually draws attention away from the intended target of the click-drag,
not to mention wasting programmer time, adding unnecessary software
complexity, and wasting CPU cycles. The files are supposed to be inert,
not struggling prey items.
Can you learn to ignore this and get back to as efficient as you already
were? Sure, to some extent. But despite considerably more CPU power
and memory (four 3GHz cores w/16G RAM), the practical responsiveness
of the interface is *worse* in a number of cases than a 1990 model
NeXT workstation with a 25Mhz single-core processor with 16M of RAM
(that's roughly 500x the available CPU cycles and 1000x the RAM).
A small example, you say. But multiply that by innumerable similar
idiocies and you've got some real energy wastage.
Many other model-year-ification changes involve needless rearrangement
of interface elements (e.g., new location of buttons, or new message
formatting in emailers). And finally, instead of fixing existing
subsystems, new parallel, unfinished, subsystems are rapidly introduced,
and then partially fixed up as they fail (are debugged) in the hands
of users.
This sure looks like we are on the way to a Tainter-esque collapse from
having to maintain too much needless complexity. That won't happen
next year. But I'm not looking forward to another 20 years of additional
complexification, not to mention penetration of software into devices.
By then, as energy constriction becomes more apparent, and the energy
cost of all this stoopid stuff becomes more apparent (0.1 kWh per google
search equals a human pedaling a bike for an hour), perhaps people will
regain some common sense. Or maybe not.
[Aug17,'15]
Energy slaves
As we watch the spectacle of the race between economic contraction and
energy depletion (contraction is winning this month with respect to oil,
which is now experiencing an oversupply 'glut' that has gotten up to a
staggering... 3%), it is easy to forgot just how much oil energy *did*
get used (the 97%). In the case of crude oil, about 85 million barrels
a day, for the world, last year (which is roughly where we have been
for the last 10 years plus or minus a few percent).
Since one barrel of oil is about equivalent to a year of
labor by one human slave laborer (my calculation
here, focusing on the
half-a-barrel of gasoline that comes out of a barrel of oil), that means
every day this year, humans effectively got the equivalent of a *year's*
worth of labor out of 85 million slaves -- per day. On a yearly basis,
just for oil, that's like having more than 30 billion full-time slaves --
4.4 full-time slaves per every human on the planet, including the poorest.
In the US, with higher per capita oil consumption, each person had the
equivalent of 26 slaves, just from oil. Since oil is 44% of the fossil
fuel used in the US, each person in the US effectively had 60 full-time
human-equivalent fossil fuel slaves, if you include oil, natural gas,
and coal.
These effective slaves were used to pump water, grow food, light homes,
make roads and things, transport things, and of course, get fossil fuel
energy for next year. Energy slaves can be used for many things that real
human slaves can't do, like pushing a 2-ton car down the freeway at 60
miles per hour (that takes the equivalent of about two hundred 100-watt
human slaves). Look out and see the world as it is. It seems highly
unlikely that we will be getting this much effective slave labor from
fossil fuels in 30 years, and given current growth rates in renewable
energy, highly unlikely that increases in renewable energy will have
made up for the loss of fossil fuels.
Renewable wind and solar energy go to almost zero
almost every day, and vary seasonally, so they require
dispatchable fossil fuel backup generating capability (nuclear
reactors can't be turned on and off fast enough for daily
variation) that can bear the full grid load. It takes
900
tons of material to build 1 windmill. Even if you are not as
much of a skeptic as EnergySkeptic, that's a *lot* of stuff to make,
move around, install, service, and replace. Virtually all of that
making and moving and servicing is currently done using fossil fuel.
It's amazing to me that people can't bring themselves to even mention
this elephant in the room.
Fossil fuel depletion is likely to hit us hard before (fossil-fuel-caused)
climate change does (and before windmills are made, erected, and serviced
using mostly windmill-generated power). I suppose a silver lining
is that less energy will make it harder for humans to make
artificially
intelligent weapons. As in the case of too many humans, the idea
that laws would be able to stop intelligent weapon use is fantasy --
either by 'terr'ist scary drug lords', like the article above ridiculously
blathers on about, or by the military and the police and corporations,
which it carefully whitewashes. Only less energy and less food can do
that, not laws.
For over a hundred years, the military on the move has consisted mostly
of fossil fuel by weight. A 42 gallon barrel of oil makes 19.5 gallons
of gasoline and 4 gallons of jet fuel (kerosine) (among other things).
At peak thrust, an F-15 jet burns 25 gallons of jet fuel per minute (that
minute of fuel required 6 barrels of oil to make). A B-52 burns 3000
gallons of fuel an hour (that hour of fuel required 750 barrels of oil to
make). 'Force projection' is almost exclusively 'fossil fuel projection'.
The Germans lost WWII largely because they ran out of fuel at the end.
The elephant in the room is that fuel for the whole world is going to
get tight in 15 years, and seriously depleted in 30. The next hundred
years will be utterly different than the previous hundred.
[Aug25,'15]
The money people got themselves into a tight spot yesterday, but
the HFT's probably did well on the snapback. In the past decade,
companies have spent almost $7 trillion buying their own stock.
This is called 'investment'. Perhaps this is finally winding down.
The remaining oil deposits could care less about these machinations.
A little over 1000 gigabarrels of usefully net-energy-positive oil is
left ('usefully' means at least 2 net units for an investment of 1 unit,
or EROEI=3). This remaining total is very roughly equivalent to how much
we have used so far (second goes faster). We will get that remaining
stuff out and burn it all. At our current burn rate, this would get
used up in only 15 years (by 2030). However, we should be able to
spread this out over at least 25-30 years by conservation, including
'conservation by other means' (i.e., not being able to afford it).
'Conservation by other means' of oil *hasn't* happened yet in the
US in this economic cycle. The plunge in oil prices that started in
2014, probably initiated in China, has seen a large increase in miles
driven in the US (Fed graphs of oil price and US miles driven
here).
It is true that some of this might reflects getting priced out on rent
and having to drive further to work. But to see an unambiguous example
of 'conservation by other means', look back on that same pair of graphs
to 2008-2009. In 2009, oil price had plunged after the 2008 spike, but
driving continued to decrease. That was because people couldn't afford to
buy the cheaper gasoline in 2009. The price was the same as it is today.
By mid-late 2016, the US may again be conserving, involuntarily.
[Sep01,'15]
If oil stays low for another few months, it could cause great difficulty
for banks involved in oil price hedging. It is highly ironic that *low*
oil prices, virtually at the moment of peak oil, is what might might
blow up the economic system this particular time, delivering another
public bail outs for bankers. As Michael Hudson says, the banks were
bailed out, resulting in all the gains since 2008 going to the 1%, but
the 'debt tumor' was left in place. Now they are coming for everybody's
pension. We need an anti-banker war in the US, not a race war. We need
banker's heads on pikes on the Tower bridge. People, keep your eye on
the ball!
[Sep05,'15]
Sebastian Thrun, the pioneer of Google’s autonomous cars "wants to teach
people how to face the future" in the Economist. Reading things like
this, creates a quick chain of thought in my head. First, I think back
to how he got his start in neural nets, originally inspired, ironically,
by trying to make pale imitations of biological networks. Then, I
fast-forward to one of the Google exec's TED talks about how the killer
app for self driving cars will be better transportation for blind people,
'which is so much better than having to use public transportation because
it's all run by a friendly giant corporation'. Then I think, 'but if we
only had more energy and time, couldn't things eventually work out in
a different, more humane way?'. Then, 'what if there actually *were*
enough energy to let these maniacs get to where they are trying to go,
and *then* we ran low?'. Then I think, 'there isn't enough energy left,
and this makes me happy and sad at the same time'.
[Sep13,'15]
Came across this accurate
9-month-old
article about the complexification and decline of Mac OS X.
Tainter-esque, sadly. When older stuff works better in a virtual machine
better than the new stuff in native, not a good sign...
[Sep16,'15]
There are more than 1 billion internal combustion engine cars in
the world (had a few words with some of their fine pilots on my wet
cycle ride home tonight). After years of development, and despite the
probable arrival of peak all liquids this year (peak crude oil [45 API
gravity and lower] already happened in 2005-2006), there are less than
1/1000 that many electric cars today. I'd say "better late than never"
but we probably have only 10-15 years to ramp up real quick (double the
size of the grid, mine more lithium than has ever been mined in history,
etc) to avoid "never". "Never" is what happens when net energy decline
makes people desperately try to keep existing things working rather
than spending a lot of money (=energy) investing in designing and making
new things. In 10-15 years, the US managed to improve its manufacturing
methods when confronted with better designed and manufactured Japanese
cars. There is a lot of current motivation. Here is a
chart
from Rune Likvern showing the exstimated debt position of tight oil
companies in the Bakken, North Dakota (the Bakken accounts for a little
over 1% of total world oil production/usage). I remember writing about
an earlier version of his chart in late 2013 when everybody was insanely
bullish on tight oil, pointing out that tight oil companies were seriously
in the hole and would need years to reach break even. As you can see
from the chart, the tight oil companies have instead gone deeper into debt
since their previous 2013 low point (even I didn't think it would be this
bad -- I assumed they would at least get back to zero). So many things
still remain possible as we burn through our usual 90+ million barrels of
oil on this fine day. But every day, some possibilities contract.
[Sep28,'15]
Just saw the new Everest movie, which brought back memories of reading
a paperback as a teenager in the 1960's about a climb of Annapurna.
Perhaps a false memory but I seem to remember a scene where several
roped-together people fell off one side of a ridge so the other guys
jumped off the opposite edge, saving everybody. By 1996 (events in the
movie), it was getting pretty crowded on Everest. But that was nothing
compared to now. This graph from the Everest wikipedia article of the
number of people reaching the summit is a straightforward
exponential.
On 23 May 2010, an insane 169 people reached the summit of Everest -- in
one day. What is it about exponential that you humans don't understand?!
[Update: nobody got to Everest this season because it was so stormy!]
[Oct06,'15]
Well, this FED graph of
reverse
repos (with BASE/narrow money supply as a reference) sure looks
like something went haywire starting in 2014 and got worse in September
(really big spike on the right). As I described it above, 'reverse repos'
are where the poor Fed "pawns" its assets (jewelry) to big banks (the
pawn shop!), who give the Fed 'spending money' (the Fed needs money?).
This allows the Fed to give those banks even more free money -- as
interest on the securitised 'loan' the big bank is making to the Fed
in return for the Fed's 'jewelry' (to guarantee the big banks that the
Fed will pay them back, hah!). But the banks can also use the Fed's
'jewelry' as collateral for other loans, so they could show bank
regulators that they are not bankrupt, even tho they basically are.
The spike every 3 months and the big Jan 1 spikes suggests this has to do
with quarterly and annual reports. Some of this could be the beginnings
of fallout from the subprime fracking crash finally hitting the fan.
Or some hidden (deceptively called "over the counter") derivatve bets
gone bad. The y-axis scales are a bit confusing. The 'reverse repos'
are smaller than BASE, but are now approaching a full 15% of BASE
(the reverse repos are now up to $0.65 trillion dollars). BASE, the
'narrow money supply', which used to consist mainly of cash and short
term deposits, now consists (since 2007-2008) mostly of 'excess reserves'
that the Fed is paying banks void-generated interest on (they are 'excess'
because the money got there from the Fed, but then there was nobody to
give out a loan to, so the banks instead 'loaned' the Fed-generated
money back to the Fed, in return for Fed-generated interest -- very
similar to the reverse repos). Did I mention that the misleadingly
named "Fed" is actually a collection of private banks? If a few
more people knew how all this actually worked, they might not be
ripping
off just the suits. On the positive side, these spikes can probably
continue for another couple of years without anything blowing up.
[Oct28,'15]
I watched a bunch of US teevee this week after a several year break.
It was an interesting experience. For the first few days, I had a jarring
feeling of having been transported into an utterly alternate reality,
like I had gone to an alien planet. The comprehensive side-effects
warnings in the incessant drug adds played like weird SNL parody to me.
But after a week of nightly pummelling, the repeated commercial jingles
got more familiar and pleasant-sounding and the peculiar repeated 'news'
and 'sports' events somehow began to appear slightly more real and the
side-effects warnings less comical. I think the critical factor over
the next difficult 15 years will be just how long the video and internet
feeds can be kept up and running smoothly indicating everything is 'OK'.
Keeping the reality distortion field up will be critical to stability;
as much as I might make fun of teevee, instability is not enjoyable
(the median income of a worker in the US is only $30K, which makes it
hard to cover rent, food, transportation, and electronic feed). But it
seems somewhat unlikely to me that the feed can last without major
glitches beyond 15 or so more years of sustained energy depletion.
The current oil 'glut' is a tiny 1-2% oversupply, which means that
98-99% of the oil got sustainedly burned as usual, and as is obvious
from the smoothly monotonically increasing Mauna Loa CO2 graph.
The 'giant' 'traffic jam' of oil tankers in Texas is a mere day's
worth of oil usage. Art Berman had a good article on oil prices
here. The strong anticorrelation between the US dollar value and
Brent prices in his Fig. 5 is something I only noticed about 4 years
ago while fiddling around with Fed graphs. This suggests that when
oil prices spike back up probably in 2016 (Art Berman thinks they will
stay low for longer), the strong (petro) dollar winds will die down.
As I have often said, the world economy needs more smoothing, not less!
As Art Berman comments on his own article (comment #10) this kind of
'smoothing' seems to be happening. A good thing. I am always trying
to think of 'synergies' :-} I went to a battery and bulb store to try
to find a slide projector bulb (of course they didn't have any), but
found instead zillions of cart batteries for old people, fat people,
disabled people, old+fat+disabled people). There were still endless
streams of 2-3 ton cars whizzing back and forth across the gigantic
no-walking landscape of suburban Illinois. But one can hope that in 15
years, the battery store will have grown and there will be more battery
operated bicycles and covered carts for younger people :-}
[Nov02,'15]
There is an excellent up-to-date presentation
of Jevons paradox by Tim Garret
here.
The main points are, increased efficiency empirically results in an
*accelerating* output of CO2 (N.B.: the world considered as a whole:
reduced per capita US energy use merely reflects outsourcing of
energy-intensive parts of the world economy to China). In order to
stabilize CO2 emissions despite efficiency gains, decarbonization must
occur as quickly as energy consumption grows. Today, this would require
roughly the equivalent of one new nuclear plant worth of non-carbon
energy (about 1 gigawatt) *per day*. This seems unlikely to occur.
The other way to stabilize CO2 emissions is collapse. Bummer.
[Nov19,'15]
Between just 2009 and 2015, the sum of buybacks (companies buying their
own stock) and dividends (payments to shareholders) as percentage of
companies' net income has gone from about 60% to almost 120% (as in,
companies spent more on buying their own stock than their net income,
probably meaning they had to borrow money to buy their own stock).
The result is companies are being hollowed out (80,000 jobs cut at HP)
in order to pay rich people even more. This looks like the end stage
of an overly greedy parasite of the kind that Darwinian evolution
routinely eliminates (evolution selects for sustainable parasites
:-} ). Unfortunately, the unit of selection these days is the whole
world.
[Dec01,'15]
US light tight oil guys (frackers) went into debt with the expectation
that oil would stay above $80. Instead of digging out of debt
as production has ramped up, $40 oil has resulted in debt for them
*increasing*. This size of problem is at least comparable and probably
bigger than the subprime bubble ($1 trillion in subprime and Alt-A
loans) that set off the last economic rupture in 2008. Things are
still levitating along, Wile E. Coyote style. Given the typical 6-month
lookahead, it seems unlikely that the system will be able to withstand
$40 oil for another year without a catastrophe. So here's hoping oil
prices go back up before that. People talk big about the big bad oil
companies (they *are* big and bad -- and the biggest ones will make it
through no prob); but then people drive, and eat food and use stuff
-- all requiring a lot of oil. On the topic of the demand side of
supply and demand, I have wondered to what extent hedge funds and other
money manipulation 'services' might be affecting oil prices.
Here
is an article citing some of the main numbers. About $5 billion a
day in oil actually bought for use (85-90 million barrels a day),
which is about $1.3 trillion a year. There is about $0.3 trillion in
commodity trading assets that could be used for oil price speculation.
This suggests that commodity traders could affect prices in the
short term (e.g., could account for 10% of demand on one particular
day in a market where the current average 'glut' is only 1-2%).
However, just based on assets, it is difficult to see how they could
consistently push prices in one or the other direction over the medium
term (6 months) given the size of the market for actually-used oil.
The function of the hedge funds seems to be exactly the opposite of
what they are advertised to do -- that is, they wildly magnify market
swings so that a 1% mismatch in supply and demand results in a 50%
price swing. But since a lot of derivative bets involve much larger
than usual leverage, the author's conclusion is less certain.
Here
is a clear explanation of fractional reserves and the extension to
essentially zero reserves for derivatives written by a gold bug (but
so what).
[Dec02,'15]
Since I saw the recent Everest, I read
this
account of how the computer graphics for it was done. Every scene
on the mountain was shot in front of a green screen in a studio in the
UK. Each single final video frame (48 per sec in 3D) of the mountain
scenes then took 8 to 16 hours to render (i.e., 200 to 400 years of CPU
time if the film was done on one computer). The best comment was the
first by AndyS: "Excellent write up. It brings to mind the sketch from
That Mitchell & Webb Sound about Doctor Who: Not really worth it all,
is it?"
[Dec03,'15]
These days, the world appears to be just one big 'training exercise':
"The call first came in at 10:59 a.m. of multiple shots fired from the
area of 1365 S. Waterman Ave. The Police Department’s SWAT team was
training nearby and was suited, ‘ready to roll’ and responded rapidly,
Lt. Richard Lawhead said.' -- KTLA report, Dec 2. At this rate, if you
see a 'training exercise', I'd go the other way...
[Dec04,'15]
The Matrix 'reality distortion' field has achieved a new level with 100
'reporters' overseen by 'Anderson Cooper' ransacking 'muslim items' and
'evidence' at the 'crime scene'. Clearly, this is what the market will
now bear (tho I stand amazed). A majority of the US public supports
drone bombings. At this rate, how long will it be until there are
real life and death gladiator games in the homeland, just like
old
times? While studying the brain, I have overrated human
intelligence. Ed Hutchins was right. Most things we attribute
to individual cognitive intelligence are actually due to 'situated
cognition', which relies on the arrangement of things in the environment,
external to the cognitive agent, like the teevee sewer and
'shoot-and-cry'
mind-training moovies for liberals. That's a seriously dangerous
environment, will robinson.
[Dec09,'15]
John Titus' has a good youtube presentation
here on the Fed's
policies starting in 2008. Since 2008, I have blathered on endlessly about
the unprecedented increase in the BASE money supply, which was entirely
due to an increase in excess reserves, which in turn was largely caused
by the Fed paying interest on excess reserves deposited back with the Fed
(now 90% of reserves!), because it was such an obvious 'new bad thing'.
But because of all the jargon -- esp. with regard to the variously named
bailout components -- I still had trouble distilling this down to the
main points. The critical point is that there is a virtual mirror image
of the increase in excess reserves in the equal and opposite drop in *net*
lending (deposits versus reserves). That is, loans that would have been
made to people and businesses have instead been made back to the Fed.
This is obviously hugely deflationary for the real world (withdraws money
from the real world). The most criminal part of this wealth transfer is
that the main component of the 'assets' bought by the Fed from banks were
worthless, fraudulent mortgage backed securities. It is difficult to see
how these full-price purchases by the Fed will ever be 'unwound'. So,
the bottom line summary in seven easy parts is: (1) large banks behaved
completely criminally, generating fraudulent mortgage back securities,
(2) this lead to a crash in the price of these 'toxic assets' in late 2007
because the criminal banks became suspicious of each other, (3) the Fed
rescued the big banks by buying these worthless securities at full price,
(4) banks then *also* began to get paid interest for excess reserves in
2008, which consisted mostly of the money they got from selling these
worthless securities to the Fed, (5) a horrible side effect of this,
virtually identical to what happened in the Great Depression, was that
lending to the real economy was throttled (in the 1930's, it was from
regulators *requiring* larger reserves, as opposed to this time, where
money was simply printed and handed to the banks!), (6) the banks used
their earnings to pay themselves record bonuses for a job 'well done',
and finally (7) nobody went to jail. Since 2002, I had long expected that
there would be trouble at peak oil. Peak *crude* oil occurred in 2006
or 2008. Peak 'all liquids' crude + condensate + natural gas liquids +
tar sands + fracking + biodiesel + ethanol) is probably now (2015). But I
*certainly* had not even the vaguest inkling of the level of accompanying
moral decay possible. But the moral decay of the upper classes
eventually filters down. Bummer. I guess this is really nothing new
if you look at the first stunning graph by Pavlina Tcherneva in
this
2014 article describing income trends.
[Dec12,'15]
David Stockman (yup) says
here
that along with the tiny increase in the Fed funds interest rate
(currently around 0.12%, presumably going up to 0.25% on Dec 16), the
Fed will also increase the rate of interest which the Fed pays on big
bank excess reserves (it currently pays 0.25% on $2.5 trillion in excess
reserves deposited with the Fed). Stockman also suggests that reverse
repos (see above -- the Fed 'pawning' it assets to big banks) will be
increased (this is merely another way of giving money to big banks).
It amazes me how long these kinds of incredible, criminal hacks can
continue without causing a complete breakdown! The idea is that if the
Fed *doesn't* increase interest on excess reserves deposited with the
Fed -- so that it is higher than the interest on that same money that
the Fed created at the moment the loan was made to the the big banks --
then the big banks would have to make more risky loans (i.e., to real
people and businesses). They wouldn't want to do that. Imagine if
the news assholes actually reported things like this, in plain English.
The man on the street would have a tough time believing it.
[Dec15,'15]
A new
study
of about 150,000 births has reported that there is a 20% increased chance
of autism (autism spectrum disorders) if a pregnant mother is depressed.
However, if a pregnant mother takes antidepressants (SSRI's) during
the second and third trimester, there is an *additional* 87% increased
chance of autism. First, do no harm. This certainly suggests that it
would be a good idea to treat maternal depression with something other
than SSRI's.
[Dec24,'15]
As expected, the Fed 'raised interest rates' on Dec 16.
What the 'news' tells you is that the Fed raised the overnight interest
rate charged to big banks (though most people won't understand the meaning
of that). But there are two main things the 'news' will never mention,
which are much more important. First, most big banks don't need to borrow
(and therefore use the new raised Fed funds interest rate) because they
have massive, historically unprecedented excess reserves. Second, the
Fed also raised two other key interest rates to keep them both higher
than the raised Fed funds rate -- the rate of interest paid on the huge,
historically unprecendented excess reserves, which are deposited with
the Fed (new policy inaugurated in 2008), and the rate of interest
paid on reverse repos (this is when the Fed 'pawns' its assests to big
banks in return for a big-bank loan to the Fed (!), which is basically
a parallel method of paying interest to big banks; it is mainly used
for quarterly reports to show that big banks aren't insolvent because
they have 'pawned' Fed assets on their books). For interest on excess
reserves, the Fed therefore just increased the payments to big banks
from $6.5 to $13 billion a year. The Fed basically levied a new $40
per head per year tax on Americans on Dec 16, with the proceeds to be
paid entirely to big banks. The new policy merely transfers yet more
money from the bottom 90% to the top 0.1% and does nothing to stimulate
lending to regular people and businesses.
[Dec28,'15]
Zerohedge has
nice
article showing what the Fed-driven, buy-your-own-stock-on-credit
'markets' have become -- a complete cheating sham/scam. The pics
shows high speed communications lasers previously used in US defense
applications, here adapted for high frequency trading. This basically
allows better front-running. The high speed traders -- which now
often make up a majority of the 'market' (!) -- make many trades per
*millisecond*, taking advantage of tiny price differences caused by
ever-so-slightly slower trading programs. Allowing this is utterly
preposterous. An easy way to fix it would be to introduce a small
temporal jitter into each trade (e.g., when a trade is made, the time
at which it is executed could be randomly jittered by up to a second in
order to give traders with less-than-military-grade laser communications
an even chance). Note that the laser systems are replacing private
microwave link systems (on the same microwave tower), themselves only
installed a year or two ago, to beat high speed optical ethernet cables.
The idea that paying for military-grade communications lasers in order
to front-run other 'people' (actually, mostly other high speed computer
trading systems) is somehow 'market capitalism' is laughable. This is
simply front-running, something that has always been defined as cheating.
This is not even a casino. This is how firms can manage to impossibly
win every market day, siphoning off money from the rest of the world that
actually makes things and provides services. Companies raising the value
of their own stock by using borrowed money for stock buybacks is mere
parasitism. I wish I could like humans more. As Cognitive Dissonance has
said, 'at least I'm still saying "I wish"' :-} These kind of 'traders'
won't stop 'trading' until the fires in Rome reach their power supplies
(which tyler has helpfully photographed :-0 ).
[Dec31,'15]
A nice demonstration of the unique properties of fossil fuel is the recent
cancellation of the Darpa 'bigdog' project. The kickable 4-legged pack
robot was finally detached from its electrical power supply walking
on treadmills in the lab. The handlers managed to get it to run
around parking lots and lumber through grassy fields carrying a load.
The catch, however, audible in the first outside videos, was that they
had to use fossil fuel and an internal combustion enging in order to get
reasonable energy density untethered. A Prius NiMH battery has only 1/45
the energy density of gasoline. Lithium batteries are better (perhaps
1/30 the energy density of gasoline), but still a far cry from the energy
density of a tank of gas. The untethered pack 'dog' driven by a 2-cycle
chainsaw engine just makes waaay too much noise. The multi-megawatt
robots endlessly animated in sci-fi videos are also waaaay too quiet
in operation. They should actually sound like real military hardware.
A jet fighter can put out over 30 megawatts when it accelerates (cf. a
747, which continuously puts out 65 megawatts at cruising altitude).
The only thing a battery for a theoretical jet fighter would be good
for would be as a weight to drop, a la Monty Python...
[Jan08,'16]
The black-holing of Ian Murdock's death is sure creepy. Not a peep
about it in some places I would expect!
[Jan11,'16]
Microsoft now makes more money from Android (via a $15 license fee for
each Android device from software patents) than it does from Windows.
Fondle slabs forever!
[Jan20,'16]
Sometimes the utter absurdity of modern life pops into focus. In this
case, in the form of leaked environmental impact statements (!) (
PDF1
and
PDF2)
from Navy Seals who want to use 68 often-scenic sites in Washington
state to practice 'combat swimming', simulated attacks with simulated
weapons on buildings, and beach landings in National Forests with
the beautiful Olympic mountains in the background. The military --
carefully respecting their environmental impact, while running war games
in some of the most beautiful parts of the homeland -- utterly absurd.
Remind me not to hike up there any more. I wouldn't want to stumble
upon some 'insertion'.
[Feb04,'16]
Banks sending out notices of reduced deposit insurance protection and laws
that explain that your deposits are actually loans to banks that might
not be repaid is a bit spooky. But amazingly with the incredible tension
surrounding ridiculously low oil prices, nothing seems to have outright
snapped yet. It is true that the stock market has not really started
to drop in earnest, and is likely to do so in the next year. But may
the halcyon days continue for a while longer :-} I'm still counting on
bail-ins not arriving in the US/EU for another 5 or 10 years. The 1-2%
oil 'glut' will subside in 2016 and price will snap back up when there
is an equally tiny undersupply of 1-2%. But, the daily oil (daily all
liquids) will still be 80-90 million barrels a day for another 5-10 years,
and hopefully there won't be massive debt defaults for another 5-10 years.
As Dave Cohen just wrote, "We're near the end of an unhappy exponential
curve". But look on the bright side of life: we're not yet on the dire
downslope yet! Meanwhile, back in the alternate reality, I was amazed
to find out how high the average Americans' television viewing remains
(almost 5 hours per day); Brit's are similar (almost 4 hours per day).
The reality distortion field is still up! People are paying attention to
the preposterous 'election'/circus (and here in the UK, too). In the US,
the average percentage usage of human waking hours breaks down as: 23%
work, 18% TV (1/5 of waking hours), 8% eating/drinking, 5% shopping, and
4% housework. However, young people definitely watch less traditional TV.
Over the past 5 years, 18-24 year olds have dropped their traditional
TV viewing from just over 3 hours a day to just over 2 hours a day;
however, they made it up to their 5 hours a day screen quota with their
portable devices. Not for nothing that Rupert Murdoch bought a 5%
($70 million) stake in Vice in 2013. Heh.
[Feb05,'16]
There is a useful analysis of the current costs of battery grid storage
here
(or as easier to read
PDF)
by a not disinterested party (a lawyer for large energy companies --
mostly fossil fuel :-} ). The conclusion is that electric battery
storage is currently more expensive (translated: uses more energy than
digging coal). Duh, of course it does! That means that total energy
usage will have to go down as we run out of coal. We are already down
to digging up pretty crappy coal, just like with oil -- but despite that,
it's still cheaper *net energy wise* than renewables plus battery storage.
What the article misses is that we should nevertheless install renewables
plus batteries (and pumped hydro and compressed air and flywheels)
anyway, and plan to get by using less energy and less reliable energy.
It makes me laugh when lawyers and business people argue against physics
and geology. Of *course* renewable plus battery is more expensive now,
and forever, you dufus! Of *course* we will eventually run low on even
crappy coal and it will eventually get more energy-expensive (reach lower
net energy) than solar/wind/batteries/pumped hydro! Just what is it about
"finite earth" that you guys don't get?
[Feb06,'16]
"The ultimate cost of protecting the privileges of the few at the expense
of the many is the dissolution of the social order that enabled the rule
of the privileged few." -- Charles Hugh Smith.
[Feb14,'16]
I had a great time giving a DNA and language talk on Friday
(main points covered in recent Phil Trans Roy Soc
PDF
here), then we had a very nice not-too-expensive French meal
with 5 slow small courses on Saturday, then our flat heating system
broke, so things are very cozy now! My worried glances toward
2030 remain, but the big bottleneck is still a ways off :-} I
think of a comment I made here once years ago, something like, no
dictator *or* revolutionary will ever have powerdown as their stated
platform -- and that will be true all the way down the downslope
of power. I suppose I should have included myself in there.
"Less
than enthusiastic" by Paul Heft kinda nails it, unfortunately,
for us overfed overlords, looking uncomfortably forward.
[Mar17,'16]
Drugs are now 12% of total wholesale sales in the US. Not surprising,
judging from a few days of watching US teevee. Also today, Google is
looking to sell Boston Dynamics after getting some blowback from the
public creeped out by the Boston Dynamics videos (Google after all is
an advertising company and is best positioned to measure the public),
together supposedly with Google's estimation that there was no obvious
thing that Boston Dynamics could make that would make money for Google 5
years from now (similar considerations -- creep factor [slaves running
around picking packages driven by verbal countdowns], no profits --
don't seem to have stopped Amazon!). Google is afraid the sheeple will
associate the 'not-cute' Boston Dynamics robots and their new 'cute'
self-driving carz.
[Mar28,'16]
"People who are between 20 and 35, basically they're surrounded by a soup
of algorithms telling them everything from where to get Korean barbecue
to who to date. That's a very subtle form of shifting control. It's
sort of soft fascism in a way, all watched over by these machines of
loving grace" -- John Markoff. It's so much better when your control
is "subtle", and your fascism "soft". Currently, the number of people
who expect an energy shortage in the next five years has hit an
all
time low -- 30% down from 60% just a few years ago.
The number of people that think that the energy situation
in the US is very serious is similarly at a record low:
28% (versus almost 50% in the 1980's). Guess information
about energy (see for example, Tad Patzek's recent article
here)
-- the very thing that powers all the 'machines of loving grace' -- isn't
being effectively delivered by those very same machines when they dispense
directions to the Korean barbecue (information about energy is definitely
not 'cute'). Amazing given the geological 'facts on the ground' and
the relative ease of finding out about them via the internet.
[Apr07,'16]
Bankers have a way with words. Here's one (embedded
Bloomberg video) whose parasitic vulture business is buying
the carcasses of crashed companies on the cheap at the end of
a credit cycle, describing why oil compaines haven't quite yet
run out cash (and hence aren't yet an appealing meal to him):
"When will they run out of cash? when their hedges burn off".
Unlike the public mentioned in the last post, he fully expects the
'hedges to burn off' in the not too distant future.
[Apr08,'16]
John Weber has calculated that it takes about 600 barrels of oil --
equivalent to about 1000 MW-hours of energy -- just to make the steel
reinforced concrete base of a 2.5 megawatt wind turbine. Such a turbine
can generate approximately 4,000 megawatt hours of energy per year.
This looks pretty good so far (the base costs only 1/4 of a year of the
future power output of the turbine). After adding in energy to make
the rest of the device, energy to make energy storage (e.g., pumped
hydro -- so the turbine can be a drop in replacement for storable
fossil fuel), energy for service, the net energy return is reduced,
but still looks handily net positive. There is no place on earth yet
where renewable-based energy systems actually feedback a substantial
portion of the power into the industrial systems (mining, cement, steel,
transport, manufacturing, maintenance) that are capable of creating them.
I hope it's possible. The best way to find out would be to try to set
something up like this on a small scale, after the fashion of the failed
Biosphere II experiments from the early 1990's. It would be expensive
and would look like a boondoggle (like Biosphere). However, I think it
could provide highly valuable real world experience with trying to do
this before we have no choice.
[Apr09,'16]
Highly cool successful retrieval of the Falcon first stage (landed itself
back onto an ocean barge). I say this even though I think manned space
exploration is an utter waste of money -- this is exactly what robots
should be used for! not the military!
[Apr12,'16]
Greg had a great comment on an Albert Bates
post, "Too big to scale" (the comment was
here
at a repost of the Bates article at doomstead diner): "All civilisations
reach the pinnacle of their stupidity before collapsing. It's a
very long list but The Cloud is it for me. The analogy I like goes
something like this. I'll cut your legs off but give you a nice new
motorised wheel chair and you will never have to walk again. All this
for a small monthly fee. Can't you see all the advantages over legs?
What's wrong with you. No legs is the way to go. PS if you don't pay
us our monthly fee your wheelchair will stop working."
[Apr15,'16]
The Fed, a privately-owned
institution despite the misleading name,
wrote
this to JPMorgan Chase, holder of $2 trillion in assets and $50
trillion in derivatives (N.B.: entire US GDP is $18 trillion): We have
identified a deficiency in your wind-down plan which if not properly
addressed could "pose serious adverse effects to the financial stability
of the United States." Wind-down plans are what banks would do if they
failed (they haven't already?!). It's a bad sign when the pigmen start
losing trust in each other. It's rather amazing that they trust each
other at all.
[Apr22,'16]
Overall economics numbers update: gross world product about $75 trillion,
value of all land/property/goods about $225 trillion, notional value
derivatives about $800-1000 trillion. There is the idea that the notional
value of derivatives is irrelevant because losers will pay winners,
cancelling them out. Given basic world numbers, it is obvious that this
won't be possible. What has happened is equivalent to 50 people taking
out a mortgage for the full value of the same house.
[Apr30,'16]
[Apr30'16] The next big helium event will probably occur when the US
revisits the idea of stopping the sell-off of their strategic helium
reserve (established 1925) at below market prices. This policy since 2005
has had the effect of depressing helium prices and helium exploration.
The last time the US threatened to stop this, there was an outright helium
shortage (e.g., the Queen Square MEG machine was shut down for a few
months in 2014). When this happens again in 2019, there will probably be
another price spike and more shortages, perhaps longer lived this time.
Back in 2014, several MRI manufacturers (e.g., Siemens) temporarily
cancelled their 7T programs. But these have been reinstated in the
interim (businesses must operate on a 1-2 year look-ahead). The *best*
'helium' wells contain 0.3-1% helium (the rest is methane and other short
chain hyrdocarbons). Fracked gas wells contain virtually no helium
since the caps of those shale formations are not tight enough to hold
it in (which should not be confused with the fact that the formations
themselves are too tight to allow the larger methane and oil to flow
out freely without fracking -- helium is really small and diffuses into
space when it escapes into the atmosphere). The 2019 helium price spike
and possible shortage will likely increase helium exploration in a manner
similar to the 2008 spike in oil prices precipitated fracking. That may
result in a temporary helium renaissance around 2021-22. For example,
there are useful concentrations of helium in gas wells in Qatar and
eastern Siberia, similar to the great original helium finds in Texas
and Oklahoma. However, helium is roughly on the same depletion curve as
natural gas, and so I expect it will begin its permanent downslope after
the Great Helium Bubble of 2020, probably starting around 2025.
[May04,'16]
From an
article
by Mike Rosenberg: in the US, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
on jobs in the media, in 2000, there were 66K news reporters and 129K
public relations people. 15 years later, in 2015, there were 46K news
reporters and 218K public relations people. That is, we went from 2 PR
people per reporter to almost 5 PR people per reporter in just 15 years.
Can you say singularity? This is a general phenomenon well beyond the
'nooz'. In one of the academic departments I work at, there was an
absolutely soul destroying presentation from a PR person (an 'impact
officer') who had recently been hired by the university. I felt sorry
for the person, who was a former academic. They didn't say anything
horrible; just that we should spend more time on PR and a little less
on research. The administrative/teaching staff ratio at universities
in the US/EU/UK has gradually but inexorably increased over the past 30
years, with administration now above half everywhere and showing no sign
of reducing its suicidal host-destroying growth. Another recent example
was the launch of Sea Hero Quest this week, an online video game funded
by an 11M euro grant to 'help dementia research'. 0.2M pounds of the
11M euro grant went to a researcher to support a post-doc for several
years to study demented and non-demented brains at the centre here; 0.15M
pounds from that same grant went to a famous youtuber for his one-hour
appearance at the launch event in London this week. It's getting harder
to strip off the soylent beer goggles.
[May05,'16]
It is amusing to see polls reporting that 20% of republicans will vote
for Hillary rather than Trump. Don't get distracted by the circus: there
would be very little effective difference between Trump and Hillary.
Just as there was very little difference between Bush and Obama (wars,
bankers, corporations, trade, policestate/Guantanamo, middle east policy,
Russia). The only practical difference Obama made was that he silenced
even the meek little peeps made by the 'left' against his virtually
Bush-identical policies.
[May11,'16]
The market capitalization of FaceBook is $0.3 trillion dollars which
is equivalent to 2% of the entire US GDP of $17 trillion dollars.
The business model is advertising and intelligence-gathering. Perhaps the
second aspect explains why its valuation has remained so ridiculously high
given that it does not seem to be making a lot of money from advertising.
It's remarkable to think that the information in the giant database of
a latter day Stasi has all been voluntarily uploaded.
[May16,'16]
Here is a good 3-page
PDF
summarizing recent trends in car sales. Sales of hybrids peaked in
2013. This was probably not caused by increased sales of plug-ins.
Rather, people have gone back to buying heavier, larger-engine cars
because of lower gas prices (the main reasons the Prius is efficient
are simply (1) small engine, (2) thin tires, (3) light weight, and (4)
aerodynamic design -- the four main things that determine miles per
gallon). Almost half a century after "Limits to Growth", right at peak
all liquids, people as a group have decided to use more oil by buying
heavier cars with larger engines. On days like this, I agree with Dave
Cohen, as opposed to Chomsky, or my late father. It's not the system,
but what people do. Despite high flown words about women and children
emitted by a higher level symbol-using system that has been layered
on top of the original DNA-and-protein symbol-using system (
PDF),
people are still fundamentally animals (that's not an insult).
Like animals, they won't be able to do the globally right thing until
their food supply starts to run low, and it's not low yet, and won't be
for another 15 years.
[May20,'16]
Just read the sequence of titles of
these
articles from the last two years of the 'mighty Wurlitzer'
on Theranos. Toward the end, watch as the rats expertly depart the
sinking ship that they *just finished building*. Language is great,
but some days I prefer animals that don't have it :-Q
[May26,'16]
In the course of setting and using up an iOS system for someone else, I
am even more strongly struck by how infantilizating the touch devices are
than I was struck even 5 years ago! Compared to using a real computer
where I can see the file system and selection/manipulation is cleanly
separated from linguistic input, it feels like a padded-cell panopticon.
To see people helplessly stroking the mental walls of their little
portable prisons as they 'experience' a dinner 'together' is amazing,
and more amazing for being unnoticed. I have actually *tried* to make
myself want one! But so far, I just can't like it ("I can't like it"
was a friend's kid's response to being told she should eat her broccoli).
The iPhone is currently 65% of Apple's revenue. This is how one actually
votes. The trumpillory votes don't matter; what you buy, does.
[May29,'16]
Americans luv carz just as much as the British :-} Britons
turn into angry Top Gear monkeys when they get into a car.
All the proper, studious avoidance of gaze when one runs into
a neighbor on the street goes out the window as they morph into
rude, honking, speeding monsters (well, I suppose this is a cyclist
talking). But back to the Americans. Here is a interactive
StLouis
FED graph of car loans and car miles. Car miles hit an unprecendented
speed bump in 2008 when gasoline prices went up and then the recession
hit. But starting in 2010, there was the beginning of a sudden upward
trend in car-related debt, which went from $0.7 trillion to over $1
trillion in just 6 years (the only thing growing faster was student
loans, which doubled for the same time period to $1.25 trillion).
When gasoline prices dropped in 2014, there was an immediate increase
in the slope of car miles. Apparently, nothing can match feeling of a
100,000 watt device. Divided by, I don't know, say 120 million people
in the US, that's $2500 in extra car debt for each driver. That's 5%
of median salary. This is how people have voted. The same thing has
happened in the EU where SUVs have outsold other passenger vehicles in
2015 for the first time. I can appreciate RE's latest epic rant
here;
but I really do think people *could* have voted differently with respect
to carz! Right at peak oil, dammit! Giving most of us monkeys cars
will turn out not to have been a good idea.
[May30,'16]
Sometimes, it's important to step back and assess long term trends.
Since 1960, spending on health care has gone up 5x as much as GDP, and
a stunning 50x as much as wages. Part of this increase is explained
by the fact that today, 33% of Americans are obese, while back in 1960,
about 12% were obese (extremely obese went from 1% to 6% over the same
time period). The average American is 24 pounds heavier than in 1960.
Note that percentage of overweight, as opposed to obese Americans has
remained *flat* from 1960 until now at about 33%. On the bright side,
increase in obesity seem to be flattening, and health care spending has
slightly tapered its rate of growth. The massive increase in obesity
was probably a combination of mistaken health advice to stop eating fat,
which partly motivated a sugar intake increase, coupled with 'weaponized'
'food' products, more driving, more desk, and more cell phone. It is
easier to gain weight than to lose weight. Not good. So, I think we are
going to need an even bigger health care. Of course, determining how
overweight one is hardly requires 'health' care or a cholesterol test.
But whatever. Health care *spending* will probably continue increasing --
for about 10-15 years. After that, it is going to have to shrink.
[May31,'16]
Health Care Induction
Continuing on the topic of health care, as friends and relations begin
to get cancer, I often spend a few days doing binge reading on PubMed.
It always takes a couple of hours to readjust to the jargon in the
abstracts. I am always hopeful that there will be some new drug that
is less toxic that only lightly 'taps' (damages) DNA just enough that
apoptosis is triggered in the abnormal cells -- but without causing too
much damage elsewhere. Many chemotherapy agents stimulate normal cells
to excrete tumor promoting factors (!), enable metastasis, and have long
been know to be themselves carcinogenic.
But the small average differences between regimens with adult metastatic
cancer is disheartening (e.g, often just a few percent increase in 5
year survival). The amount of progress over the past 50 years of the
war on cancer is not encouraging. Most of the studies don't have a pure
no-treatment 'observation' arm, which is the only way to measure how much
chemotherapy actually helped over not doing it. At best there is: 'we
gave both groups A', 'then we gave just one group B and observed both'.
The differences between the different regimens measured in quality of
life (QoL) are small or non-existent, and average survivorship curves
that show just a few additional months of life are not encouraging.
In considering 'progress', you have to take into consideration that early
diagnosis can contribute to curing things that wouldn't have required
curing at all, which can inflate the 'cure' percentage, or it can catch
things that do require 'curing' later, but that eventually kill on the
same schedule. Then toss in the fact that oncologists are the only
doctors that are allowed to re-sell drugs to their patients at a mark-up
(not allowed in many other countries), which can provide half of their
salary. This ridiculous US rule creates an obvious pernicious incentive
-- conscious or unconscious -- to prescribe the latest, most expensive,
just-patentably-different drugs instead of off-patent, non-patented drugs,
(or better food!).
The internet is filled with instructions on what *not* to eat, because
food will 'interfere with chemotherapy'. The chemotherapy drugs are
quite various. For example there are the classic metabolic poisons (e.g.,
methotrexate interfering with folate metabolism), or something/anything
that damages genetic material (e.g., nucleoside analogues, chemicals that
interfere with microtubule assembly/disassembly involved in cell division,
inhibitors of helicases (DNA untangling/twisting/unwtisting enzymes)
that snap DNA, chemicals that target various growth factors or inhibit
vascularization). Many are extremely carcinogenic and have to be handled
in a hood. The pharmaceutical industry spends more on promotion (about
1/4 of sales revenue) than on research (about 1/7 of sales) (note this is
overall, not just cancer drugs; cost of doing bidness, I know). The drugs
are often injected directly into the heart with a David Lynch-like 'heart
plug' (no 'heart plugs' in the original Dune!) because they are so toxic.
Given that some cancer is due to environmental poisons (AKA 'genetic
predisposition'), some current chemotherapy reminds me of old quack
ideas of homeopathy. You could also move closer to a toxic waste dump...
Then, there is the unlikelihood that a single (or two) drugs targeted at
a specific node in a meshwork of metabolic interactions could ever work,
despite this being the only viable business model. And to be fair,
there would be a combinatorial explosion in trying to test different
combinations of 50 or 100 drugs -- there aren't enough people on Earth
to objectively test all the combinations on real people. And even then,
it wouldn't even get vaguely close to the huge number of natural compounds
we routinely injest in natural food (natural chemotherapy!) not to mention
the large number of new compounds we injest that have been created by
industrial society (those would be the source of a number of cancers).
Of course, you're probably thinking, well, what would *you* do if you
had/got metastatic cancer? It is clear that from the moment one is
inducted into the oncology treatment system, there is basically only
one way out. It's quite a bit like that other 'induction' (for a man
of my age, 61) -- getting drafted, or enlisting. Once you are in,
trained, suited up, and on the battlefield, set against some other
hapless teenaged men in similar suits, your autonomy is long lost; the
end comes at the very beginning, the moment of induction. From then on,
it's just you and your tumour markers to the end. When you are so down
and out that the last dose of chemotherapy has a chance of killing you
outright, then finally you can try your 'alternative' therapies, when
they have no chance of helping, and morphine. There are no quality of
life studies comparing induction to refusal because who would fund that?
So you are on your own. Bummer. If I do get metastatic cancer,
however, we'll see if I still talk such big talk when my own life is on
the line.
[Jun03,'16]
I used to be proud to be an academic. Now, with student debt on a
steeper tear than Chinese coal use, according to the BBC, a quarter
of a million predominantly female UK students have turned to 'soft'
prostitution to pay their tuition in the 'modern hooker economy'.
Older wealthier men browse for them in online human shopping apps.
I would never in a million years have predicted that this is what the
university system would come to when I entered the university as a
freshman undergraduate at a state university in 1973. Students (e.g.,
me) were poor back then, too, but because of stronger state support for
universities, it was possible to make enough money during the summer,
and with odd crap jobs (night guard) during the school year to scrape
by and pay for both tuition and room and board. It's not even vaguely
possible to do this now, at the same school I went to. I'm sure there
were a few female students who turned to prostitution back then, too,
and some older men who paid them. But it wasn't anything like 1/4 of the
female students (if the current estimates are to be believed). This is
starting to really look like the decline of the Roman empire -- which,
incidentally, I read about back then, in The Satyricon by Petronius.
I remember the scene where a slave's job under the old rich master's bed
was to bounce the bed up and down to help the older master have sex with
a prostitute. It was interesting and all, but I didn't want to live it.
Societal declines seem to have some common features.
[Jun05,'16]
The unemployment numbers recently came out at a ridiculous 4.7%.
The utterly depraved statisticians who came up with this number did so
by *not counting* 95 million adults, almost 1/3 of all people living
in the US -- which they classify as "people not in the work force".
This number has almost doubled since 1990. This suggests that real
unemployment is closer to 20-30% (they also artificially do not count
child rearing as a component of work).
[Jun16,'16]
It looks like allowing 'nooz' teams to
rummage around at the
crime scene in order to 'discover evidence' (cf. San Bernardino) is the
new Standard Operating Procedure for Gladio2 ISIS TM terr'ist events!
The perp shops at Disney Springs on the day, his wife and friends say he's
gay, he's a regular at the nightclub, he pretends to be NYPD, he's been
interviewed twice by the FBI, filmed by hidden camera for a documentary
on the BP oil spill (bad actor!), he actually *was* an actor (imdb now
scrubbed; the 'crying mom' on the green screen is also an actor), he works
for
G4S
(=Wackenhut) security, and his father is an Afghan C-Eye-Eh
asset who hangs out at the State Deparment and meets with
Dana
Rohrbacher? Okie-dokie! Though the FBI says it has no evidence for
any contact with ISIS, Maddow's whole program on ISIS booga booga means
it *must* be ISIS TM (not NYPD :-} )! Would those be the same ISIS
TM supported by the CI A to overthrow Assad? Sorry, I meant to say,
the same ISIS that we can only *stop* by overthrowing Assad? The same
ISIS TM we're trying to bomb, but that only the Russians can find?
And when the Russians do find them, we ask them to please stop? It's a
complete Orwellian circus! In contrast to earlier events, this time,
we have nothing but words, virtually no video (well there were laughing
crisis actors carrying 'injured' 20 feet back *toward* the scene of the
crime). One video suggested to be beginning of the attack sound more
like a recording of multiple police shooters storming the building (which
probably caused deaths) -- or there were multiple shooters. Very hard to
figure out what actually happened. There is hardly any public evidence
in favor of the official story and it is unlikely any evidence will be
presented over the next few weeks, and then the story will simply fade.
None of the odd things I listed above count as evidence of what actually
happened. There could be crisis actors at a real crisis. Meanwhile,
all the people that the US droned to death this week (on average, mostly
bystanders) didn't even make the news at all.
[Jun25,'16]
Google/Boston Dynamics/DARPA has *finally* figured out that they need
"cute",
which means, don't show 'Spot', the cute walking drone, handling
a gun. These things are still a ways from full deployment in the
homeland, but they are merely walking drones (here is a
gallery
from 3 years ago); they *will* be armed. From the video at the first
link, you can see that the Boston Dynamics walkers finally have a working
vestibulo-ocular system. The main thing the videos should make people
think about is how to defend themselves against these things. They move
a lot slower than flying drones, and their battery-constrained range
isn't that great. And like flying drones, their weakest link may be
their uplinks.
[Jul09,'16]
Dang, I hate when 'reality' (supposed drone bomb end to Maidan
Dallas) confirms my paranoid fantasies (previous). W.r.t. Dallas,
the original police and citizen reports of multiple rooftop
snipers are
now cleansed, and the 'lone gunman' has supposedly been blown up by
Robocop (!). We are at war with East Asia, to be danced/marched by
Beyonce.
[Jul11,'16]
What is wrong with this headline: "Unexpected deaths put
promising immunotherapy on hold". Well, at least the "on hold" part
is promising :-} Meanwhile, the deaths of policemen are on track to be
at a *record low*, after continuously declining to about half of what
they were at their peak in 1974. There are a lot of occupations that
are more dangerous than policing (e.g., logging, fishing, piloting,
roofing, garbage, mining, truck driving, farming, power line installers,
construction workers). You wouldn't get this idea from watching the
noooz.
[Aug24,'16]
Settling in after our big move. As my former advisor, John Allman would
say, "two moves equals one fire" :-} Back in the USSA, I just read that
Americans' spending on ADHD drugs (i.e., slow-release cocaine) went from
$7 billion to $13 billion from just 2010 to 2015. Good work when you can
get it, eh? Thank god god has provided drugs to fix all of our terrible
'genetic' problems.
[Aug29,'16]
I wasted some time distracting myself thinking about unintended
consequences of human monkeys in self-driving cars (maybe it's
because I just went to the zoo). Several people have pointed out
that this will probably be hard on car manufacturers since it could
substantially increase the percentage of time that any vehicle could
be used (currently, cars spend 97% of their time turned off because
most are individually owned). However, it wouldn't decrease traffic
much because less cars would simply be used more often. Initially,
self-driving cars would likely be more respectful of pedestrians
and cyclists than human-monkey-driven cars. But pedestrians and
cyclists will soon figure this out, and the unintended consequence of
self-driving cars is that cycling and walking are likely to become much
more strongly policed. I can already imagine a hi-tech fix for this:
robotic cyclist tire puncturers to put the fear of self-driving cars back
into cyclists. I agree with Dave Cohen; this is best that our
"best minds" can come up with??
[Aug31,'16]
The continuing low price of oil creeps me out. This is not because
I like oil companies. The current price of new oil is so much higher
than current oil prices that companies have bailed on new exploration
while simultaneously going backrupt because they can't pay their
loans for previous expensive-oil investments. This is all happening
in the background, so far off of people's radar that they look at you
like a kook when you try to talk about it. When told, many people
will cheer this without realizing that they are cutting off their
nose (just-in-time diesel trucking delivery of just about everything
they use and eat) to spite their face. If the diesel trucks stopped
running, the miniscule fraction of electric delivery trucks would do
absolutely nothing to prevent store shelves from being cleared in a
few days, Venezuela-style (see Alice Friedemann's book on trucks).
The problem is, it is difficult to have an adult discussion of these
topics. Another example is grid-connected rooftop solar. Even at
relatively low levels of grid penetration (5-10%), grid-connected solar
can destabilize a smaller grid (e.g., like on the Hawaiian islands).
Of course, non-grid-connected solar cells used to charge electric car
batteries or a house battery don't have this problem. Neither would
just locally using electricity when the solar cells are generating it
(turn off the lights/internet/tv at night, take a nap when it's cloudy).
But those things are a lot more expensive or inconvenient than getting
a large subsidy for an expensive grid-connected solar system. The adult
part of the discussion comes as follows: are you willing to pay more and
be inconvenienced, in order to do the right thing? For example, are you
willing to pay more for stuff made by companies that don't rely on the
grid? I think the general answer is a simple "no". It's true a small
fraction of people have set up off-grid houses and would pay more for
the same stuff or use less stuff. But read most of the comments
here
by the proud monkeys, many of whom say Cheney-style that there is no
way in hell they are *not* going to use energy whenever they want to.
The changes to the grid (e.g., an enormous amount of additional
storage) that would be required to make a much higher penetration of
grid-connected-solar practical would be expensive, too. People as a
group will instead effectively mortgage their kids' future, and will
not in general complain about the yearly mountain of military spending
(which could instead be used to do some of these expensive but critical
upgrades). To be clear, I don't claim to be a better-than-average
monkey myself. I would complain if my electricity bill doubled or
quadrupled (tho I wouldn't complain if military spending was reduced
:-} ). I suppose I'm just a more-nervous-than-average monkey. I'm still
hoping that people's positions might slowly change. Though looking into
the eyes of the peevish pilots of some of the 100,000 watt 4,000 pound
steel cans beside me as I cycle 6 miles into work usually makes me fearful
rather than hopeful, perhaps their kids will have a different attitude,
and maybe there will eventually be huge numbers of electric trucks.
On the positive side, people's opinion of what is absolutely critical for
life can, and has, changed a lot from generation to generation.
[Sep02,'16]
Following up on the previous post, although I agree that intermittent
renewable energy is not a great fit for the current grid, requiring
expensive grid upgrades etc etc etc, I tire of reading people like
Gail Tverberg constantly dissing renewable energy without discussing
practical approaches to the real issue, which is that we will be forced
to use a lot less energy and the need to begin practicing doing this.
We won't use as much electricity at night. It will be a good thing!
Every day, watching single, often overweight people, accelerating their
4000 pound steel cans past me as I cycle up to the red light -- where
I meet them again -- using my 150 watt body output, I feel the same
frustration (expressed
here
in my letter to the editor of the San Diego Reader, after they published
a stoopid front-page anti-biking screed). What an incredible waste
of 100,000 watts of power! I remember a couple of years ago making a
comment to Gail Tverberg about, 'why not try cycling?', and she assured
me that it was completely impossible in Atlanta where she lives (she's
only 3-4 years older than me). Well, I'm sure if she lived in San
Diego, she would consider it completely impossible here, too.
This excellent
comment on Gail's most recent data-filled article on grid problems
is more my speed :-} Of course, I realize that wind turbines and solar
electric are part of the fossil fuel economy, and won't be able to be
made and installed the same way as they are now, when fossil fuels are
much more scarce and when their EROEI is a lot lower. But complaining
about renewable energy having low EROEI or subsidies won't fix every
more scarce fossil fuels and ever lower EROEI of bottom-of-the-barrel
fossil fuels!! What about fossil fuel and car-related subsidies?!
(giant roads with no provision for bicycles -- how much would it cost to
put in separated cycle lanes on new highways?). *That's* what everybody
should be talking about on "Our Finite World" and "Energy Matters"!
The main blog posts on those two sites sound like they have been written
by spoiled -- but extremely well educated -- children. We still have
some time before things really start to fall apart! I'm disappointed
that some of the most literate writers can't conceive of even tiny
forward looking steps to slightly cushion the inevitable blow.
[Sep12,'16]
Queen Hillary's stumble has all the 'conservative' sites a twitter about
the failing health of one of the pretenders to the throne, though they
conveniently ignore the fact that King Reagan was an Alzheimer's basket
case for his entire second term. One possibility recently suggested
by a Trump partisan is that she has Parkinson's and is taking L-dopa,
which helps with the loss of dopaminergic inputs from the degenerating
subtantia nigra, but with well known 'overshoot' side effects, not
only in the motor system, but also in the limbic striatum (e.g.,
increased impulsive behaviors). There is little direct evidence for
this; she could easily be having occasional small seizures instead,
or transient ischemic attacks (TIA's), or early vascular (Lewy body)
dementia, or maybe the stumble *was* due to pneumonia. But assume
for the moment that she is taking levedopa to help her basal ganglia.
Would this make her any worse than the usual sociopaths in office?
Probaby not! She was already a horrible neocon: you can't blame the
(hypothetical) drugs for that (N.B.: criticism of Hillary does not equal
support for Trump). Meanwhile, the 'left' is doing its best to ignore
their emperor's obvious clothing defects. But the saddest thing about
this maddening, ridiculously neverending spectacle, is that who gets
elected DOES NOT MATTER at all! As I've said many times above, the
fact that a man with full blown Alzheimer's could 'run the country',
shows that a God-like, all-powerful president is an utter illusion.
The 'election' is a morality-play-like diversion that has very little to
do with actually executed domestic and foreign policy. Without visual and
voice recognition, Obama and Bush were essentially indistinguishable from
both a domestic and foreign policy perspective. The king/queen show is
strictly window dressing for the proles and yups. Back in the day, there
used to be child kings and queens. JonBenet Ramsay for Queen!
[Sep14,'16]
Naked Capitalism recently had a Jerri-Lynn Scofield
piece
on the downsides of 'fast fashion' (e.g., H&M) -- people throw out
clothes more often, and cotton is energy- and water-intensive to
produce, and difficult to dispose of (she is a former derivatives trader
now working mostly in India and writing about the textiles trade).
This is the zillionth example of how improvements in technology (e.g.,
faster computer-aided design chains) invariably *increase* rather
than decrease resource usage. Of course, it would be a good idea to
simply be a little less 'fast' and throw out one's clothes less often
(that doesn't require any new technology!); that is just like cycling
intead of driving sometimes, or having more than one person in a car.
But the little nag in the back of my head knows: even if you could get
people to do this particular 'right thing' by overcoming the advertising
mind control (wear your same damn clothes for an extra few months!), it
would only put off nonrenewable energy/soil/water/metal/mineral/species
depletion a little bit. To change the current disastrous trajectory of
humans on earth would require new thinking that is orders of magnitude
more adventurous than this. Today, the little nag in my head once again
says that there won't be any course correction until humans can't get
enough food. OK, now I have to go home and get my dinner... I will cycle
home (in my H&M trousers), even though rationally, I know cycling will
make no practical difference. It will make me feel better.
[Sep22,'16]
In April 2016, Joe Brewer wrote a piece
in Medium (which I just found via
Dave
Cohen) entitled
"The
pain you feel is capitalism dying". The Brewer article is marked,
with unintentional humor, as a "5 min read" :-} This shows that
basic geology/energy facts are finally percolating into the brain of a
"change strategist working on behalf of humanity, and also a complexity
researcher, cognitive scientist, and evangelist for the field of culture
design" (who got a masters in atmospheric sciences). After a brief
moment of reality (5 min?), the piece ends firmly back in the Matrix:
"Yet the prospects for getting through this struggle are nothing less
than a thriving planetary civilization that is inclusive and nourishing
for all people while at the same time remaining in harmony with our
home planet of Earth". The pain *I* feel now -- if you can even call
it "pain" at all -- is knowing that the pain I feel now has not even
reached 1 on the 1-to-10 "pain of capitalism dying" scale. I agree with
Dave Cohen: so far, capitalism is still expanding, *not* dying -- it's
the biosphere and the oceans (and Ghawar) that are dying. Me and the
writers at Medium are doing just fine now, and will continue to do so --
as will capitalism -- for at least the next decade. I think around 2030,
the pain will begin to get a lot more widespread. There are plenty of
places already in serious pain -- e.g., those currently enduring the
mostly-US-engineered disaster in Syria. The guys writing for Medium,
and me and the others reading it are not experiencing real pain.
[Sep27,'16]
*Of course* the cage match was nearly a tie! (I didn't watch it, and the
viewing audience was smaller than the Super Bowl but larger than Monday
night football). Well OK, perhaps Hillary came out slightly on top,
if you use the dollar/peso exchange rate as an index, or online bookie
odds (tho the online bookies all missed Brexit). I think that whichever
freak gets elected, it won't make any practical difference for policy
toward the things that actually count (criminal bankers, blood-soaked
Salvador-option operations in Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya/Somalia
(and Turkey!), US military spending, support for Egypt/Saudi/Izzy
dictatorships, taxes on the rich and corporations, trade agreements
that allow capital to freely search the world for rock bottom labor
prices in countries with no regulations, energy/transportation policy,
water/soil/fish/energy/resources rundown, creeping domestic police-state).
It's possible that the electorate may Trump themselves in the foot,
Brexit-style. But it's strictly entertainment, folks! The real voting
occurs when you decide where to drive, what to buy, what to eat, and what
to do on the internet each day. The few *single bits* of information
that one injects into the world via elections are almost completely
irrelevant compared to that firehose of information/decisions that a
modern person emits -- and which immediately effect policy -- each and
every day.
[Sep28,'16]
Soon, Americans can 'sue the Saudis for 9/11' (sic), which makes political
silly-season sense, but not any scientific sense. I wonder if this will
prompt other countries to sue the US for things *it* didn't even do?
It would be bad enough if they sued the US for things that it actually
*did* -- just to take one of many examples, killing a million or so Iraqis
on the basis of known lies. Obama just described the possible problem of
the new bill as "It has to do with me not wanting a situation in which
we're suddenly exposed to liabilities for all the work that we're doing
all around the world". Ah yes, "all the work". Slaughtering 1 million
humans *is* quite a bit of work (that one wasn't started by Obama, but he
kept it going, while starting up new deadly 'work' all around the area
in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen). Expensive, too. Do you
think this is also "God's work", like what Goldman Sachs does?
[Sep30,'16]
Today, like many other days, I find myself involuntarily 'filled with
disgustion' (from an old Frank De Lima routine) as the human monkeys
muscle their ridiculous 6000 pound single-driver SUV's around me on my
bike up to the red light. But my involuntary scorn is truly unfounded.
With respect to limits to growth, cycling is like unplugging one's
cell phone charger. Won't make the slightest difference. I live in
(rent) a standalone house, occasionally use our car, occasionally fly,
and generally live a modern life. I am no less stoopid than the lady
monkeys mindlessly accelerating their fifth-of-a-megawatt steel can SUVs.
I cycle because it makes me feel better physically and keeps my limbic
system balanced (because I temporarily experience being a prey item twice
a day), and because it helps me suppress the cognitive dissonances that
daily nag at my mind.
[Oct05,'16]
"We’re going to be living in a different kind of country if people can
be arrested for asking questions at a library." -- R. Crosby Kemper,
director of Kansas City library system, commenting on our
creeping
police state. I suppose the questioner
got off easy, given that police trainers are now
creepily explaining to US police in training that the sex
they have after they have killed another human being will be the
best
sex of their lives (from the "Do not resist" documentary).
Some perk, eh? I guess telling them that more Viet Nam vets committed
suicide than were killed in the war after they killed other humans is not
as good an advertisement as 'better sex'. Despite its muckracking tone,
the point of the Washington Post article may be merely to intimidate the
public (further) and make the public realize that police really *are*
that creepily dangerous, and that they essentially view the bottom 2/3
of the public as gooks or hajis (derogatory meaning) or Palestinians --
i.e., not completely human untermenschen.
[Oct11,'16]
There are now $1 trillion (or $1.4 trillion,
depending on how you count) dollars in
student loans,
which shot up from $0.1 trillion in just 2008 (just 8 years ago).
That's a stunning slope of about $0.1 trillion dollars a year. This debt
incurs a huge interest charge (4-7%). This means that the bankers and
the government who have rented this money -- which was created out of
thin air at virtually zero cost when the loan was made (see this
PDF
from the Bank of England which straightforwardly explains how this is
done) -- are raking in almost a tenth of a trillion dollars a year from
this. And they expect to be able to skim off this income for decades.
These loans are typically non-bankruptcy loans that will unleash harpy
swarms to go after the parents' assets when the students can't pay.
This is an utterly unsustainable situation. There is no way that the loan
and college 'industries' can continue to increase student debt at $0.1
trillion a year (10% per year!!) *and* expect that students will ever be
able to pay the loan-shark money rent (remember, the Fed overnight rate
is 0.4%) into the bulging pockets of the bankers. Wages aren't growing at
all per year. Jobs aren't growing at all per year (except bartenders and
Uber drivers). There are 93 million people of working age that aren't
even in the workforce -- that is a larger number than the 74 million
boomers or the 75 million millenials (N.B.: last two groups overlap
with first). This isn't the way the universities used to work when I
started. It was more affordable. There was more government support.
Universities ran leaner operations. They had less administrative
staff. Less (mostly female) students had to turn to prostitution.
I am ashamed of what they have turned into. The money system (and the
university system) should be reformed before the whole thing blows up.
Unfortunately, the chance of significant monetary reform occurring in the
near future seems small since this kind of 'growf' can probably go on for
another decade (the interest payments are less than $0.1 trillion a year
and US GDP is $18 trillion a year). It's just not at all on anybody's
radar as they oogle the monkey crotch clown talk. Guess I should enjoy
the best of the Weimar while I still can. The world crony 'capitalist'
system is like a large, powerful toddler with no parents to rein it in,
gorging itself while there is still stuff left in the earth's kitchen.
We're all at fault -- *we* are the giant toddler.
[Oct12,'16] Randy Newman's latest embarrassing effort tries to fix the
amazing fact that -- even in the face of a blizzard of anti-Russia
propaganda from the yellow press -- Putin is more popular with *Americans*
than either Hillary or Trump. Good luck with that!
[Oct18,'16]
A presstitute
talking dirty. This is how the shadow
government gets cowardly journalists to strong-arm real journalists.
The new McCarthyism is desperate to get people to look away from the
"dirty talk" reality of the real government behind the curtain that you
get a tiny glimpse of in those various emails. But the mighty Wurlitzer
is pretty mighty, and (bookie) odds show that it has been able to refocus
attention back onto the monkey crotch clown talk (but away from WJC's
crotch, nuclear war, etc) and onto 'Russian vote tampering', which will
send war-mistress neocon- and banker-friendly Hillary into the White
House (N.B.: seems unlikely Trump would have ended up different in those
respects -- at best, he suggested that we shouldn't antagonize Russia;
but on Libya, when it counted in 2011, he said "I would take the oil —-
and stop this baby stuff. I’m only interested in Libya if we take the
oil."). This year's circus beats all previous! For example, see Lambert
Strether at Naked Capitalism who has a long article that essentially
says that Hillary's 3 speeches to Goldman Sachs -- for which they paid
her $675,000 -- are irrelevant, 'because they are boring'. He says
"What can Goldman Sachs possibly have thought they were paying for?"
Stunningly, Lambert pretends not to know. The sad thing about this
spectacle is that probably no one even bothered talking dirty to Lambert.
Any Trumped-up cracker could tell him: $675,000 is *not* boring, stoopid!
(35% of all Americans have debt in collections), and *obviously* it wasn't
for the speeches, dumbass! Their site is frigging "Naked Capitalism"!
And it's even Naked Capitalism's fund raising week -- trying to raise
(a boring) $21,000.
[Oct24,'16]
Older and Wiser I
Out on a hike the other weekend, I began thinking about power down,
the predicament the world is in, and whether it could have been avoided.
So I did a quick review of my own life decisions. I was fully aware of
limits to growth back in the early 1970's. Back then, in high school,
I read about flywheel energy storage in Environment magazine, and
the two-blade one-megawatt Grandpa Knob wind turbine, which was already
running in 1941. I then studied geology in college, among many other
things, including history and evolutionary biology. But I didn't learn
much about petroleum geology, partly because I thought of oil companies as
big and bad (they were/are). I also avoided studying economics and money.
Both of these decisions were strategic mistakes (not because I want
more money).
In the 80's and 90's, I studied the visual system, got a job and tenure,
and during that process more or less suppressed thoughts about limits
to growth, despite an overriding unconscious dread that would sometimes
bubble to the surface when I would write a small poem. Though I had the
background to do it, I didn't do any research into limits to oil in the
80's and 90's. I didn't finally fully develop my initial 1970 awareness
of oil limits until the buildup to the Iraq war in 2002, motivated by
its oil angle. During this whole time, I would drive 12 miles one-way
to work (well, at least it was in a small Honda). I would cycle on the
weekends, but only for non-work-related exercise, and would rarely cycle
into work (along a beautiful route, which I kicked myself later for not
using more often, after I moved to London in 2007, where I cycled daily
on crowded streets for almost a decade through the drizzly polluted air).
It wasn't until 2004 that I finally stopped driving and started taking
a shuttle into campus (cycling a few miles to the shuttle stop, which
fixed my knees, blood pressure, and made me thinner).
It's pretty clear that to have
generated a different outcome today, we would have had to begun majorly
re-engineering and re-planning just about everything about industrial
civilization starting roughly around 1970. This is about the time
that a fully modern appreciation of our basic predicament had became
apparent, including energy, climate, soil, and the impossibility of
continuous growth. But looking at my own intellectual history, I see
that despite what I regard as all my optimal advantages -- generally
cushy life, extreme left upbringing, early realization of the problem,
no distraction of having to raise a family (despite my efforts in that
direction), a very wide background in many scientific fields, and specific
interest in the big picture (e.g., DNA and language) -- the *biggest*
picture *still* didn't fully sink in to my conscious mind until about
2002, when I was already 47 years old.
Now, I find myself making snide remarks about young people expecting to
find 20 megawatt Iron Man 'power packs' growing on trees. Maybe I would
never have stooped that low. But, in essence, I failed. I shouldn't
expect other people to have done better.
Probably nothing could have stopped the additional half a century
of car-centric suburban build-out that occurred after 1970, which
will probably be energetically impossible to undo, and which will
likely come back to haunt us in another decade or two. Only a small
percentage of people now have a comprehensive understanding of the
interlocking problems of finite energy and freshwater/soil/food, how
the money system works, how human populations with available resources
grow just like animal populations, and finally, the imminent end of
growth. Few are consciously aware of the severe gravity of our
current
situation, the result of growth taking off a few years before I
was born. And I didn't even mention climate change, which won't hit
hard until later this century, after the initial impact of limits to
growth from declining net energy.
On the positive side, it seems likely that even after the limits to growth
really begin to bite in another decade, most people will remain unaware,
and will simply do their best to make their way forward.
[Oct28,'16]
Here is some utterly nonsensical blather from the recent Paris Agreement
on climate change: "Accelerating, encouraging and enabling innovation is
critical for an effective, long-term global response to climate change".
This goes along with the pious talk about "internalizing externalities".
What complete rubbish! It's pitifully obvious that the *only thing* that
could possibly make a difference to our predicament would be: less people
using less stuff and eating less meat. What is happening is exactly
the opposite: more people, each using more stuff, each eating more meat
(raising meat animals uses 20-30x as much water and energy per pound as
eating the vegetables directly). Nobody can/will ever campaign on the
platform of using less. And innovation, for example, to make vehicles
more efficient simply results in people using them moar, cancelling the
efficiency gain and then some. By far the most likely path forward will
be to try to maintain worldwide business as usual for as long as possible.
This means more people, using more stuff, eating more meat. However, since
earth resources are finite, less people using less stuff eating less meat
will eventually happen, by hook or by crook. Clive L. Spash
here
calls it 'the Paris agreement to ignore reality'. 70% of world wildlife
was eliminated between 1970 and now, during worldwide business as usual.
Worldwide business as usual will very probably continue for another
decade plus. Trumpillory won't make much difference -- it's a silly,
indulgent distraction (what's next? "Putin controls the FBI"?) from
thinking deeply about the real problems. Thinking about what happens
after business as usual breaks down (after about 2030), I always
involuntarily channel Gary Larson's cartoon of a giant roach taking a
shower -- when the drain plugs. The giant roach says: "I hate to think
of what's down there" :-}
[Oct30,'16]
From various short-term indicators of the kind the business press spends
virtually all its time writing about (e.g., bonds yields, general cyclical
trends, record increase in mergers, bubble property markets starting to
top), it has been suggested that the next downturn is due soon, maybe
around the beginning of 2018. Let's say that's right (I have no idea,
but doesn't seem unreasonable to me -- I was expecting problems sooner,
as usual). However, since oil use and oil production just have just
now roughly come back into alignment, this suggests that there could
be a substantial oil price spike in 2017. But if another 2008-like
credit problem comes down the pike almost immediately after this, the
spike wouldn't last as long as the pre-2008 spike or even as long as the
smaller intermediate recovery after the post-2008 lows. Then we might
be back to an 'oil glut' again for a few years (2019-2020). Not what I
would have predicted even 2 years ago! Predicting the future is hard!
If electric cars get a lot more popular than they are now, they could
shave another one percent off of oil demand. That would be enough for
another 'glut' even with more than 98% of people still using oil-powered
carz (not to mention 100% of them getting their food via oil-powered
trucks and ships). What a wacky way to run industrial civilization!
When the inevitable serious downslope hits -- as a result of using
10 barrels while finding 1 barrel every year -- this will result in
less-prepared people facing a steeper downslope. Gail Tverberg thinks
that prices will only go down. Her reasoning, roughly, is that when oil
prices are high, people begin to not be able to afford it. Then she looks
at recent measures to fix the economic crisis. In general, they result
in transferring more money (e.g., via poor people having to rent more
money [debt] in order to be able to keep buying things) to rich people,
and making it even harder for the bottom 99% to afford stuff, in order to
continue growth. She suggests that declining EROEI is not as important as
affordability and she expects oil prices to remain below levels that will
fund new developments. In her favor, oil prices *have* remained lower
for the last two years than a lot of people (myself included) expected.
Two things that seem at odds with her view are the steady increase in
vehicle miles driven that started right around the recent low oil prices
(people do seem to abe able to afford more gasoline) and fact that low
prices were driven by a tiny glut that would seem to be able to get
used up quickly once the collapse in new drilling starts to percolate
through the system in the face of the 98.5% of production that *does*
get used every year. We will know by late 2017. At this point, I still
expect higher oil prices.
[Oct31,'16]
The long-standing mismatch
this
2013 paper between both annual and cumulative curves of PhDs
awarded and faculty positions created (which has persisted relatively
unchanged from 1982 until near the present is pretty shocking.
PhDs have continuously been created at roughly *7* times the rate of
new faculty positions. The article suggests instead of preparing PhD
students for faculty positions, they should instead be farmed out more
quickly as initially unpaid or low-paid workers for "resource-constrained"
companies, who are mostly interested in "better understanding customers,
regulations and funding strategies". Such a different world than the one
I entered as a beginning PhD student in 1978! It makes sense to have a
slightly greater supply of PhD's (some people may bail, some may fail),
but a ratio of 7:1 is clearly way too high -- and much higher than it
was when I started.
[Nov01,'16]
The relevance of the recent data dumps surrounding the activity formerly
known as 'the election' is not so much their content, which mixes a few
sordid bits amongst banal blather, but rather the demystification aspect.
This is similar to Watergate, which itself was extremely unremarkable.
After all, Nixon's successful efforts to kill half a million people in
Vietnam and surrounding countries were unbelievably more horrible than
his trivial Watergate caper. In the present case, seeing how sausage
is actually made shouldn't truly be any kind of revelation for a normal
adult, since they see the same thing that happening in their everyday
jobs. But seeing that bland and occasionally tawdry talk that underpins
reality (monkey crotch clown talk, accepting Saudi money to help fund
jihadis for C-eye-eh purposes) in the context of the usual main sewer
media idealizations has the potential to make some people think more
analytically and objectively about things than they otherwise would
have. It normalizes and validates the true conspiracies of real life.
Finally, it's good to remember that whichever pathetic contraption gets
elected after this 2-year-long emmerdement, the real-world (non-teevee,
non-soundbite-window-decoration) outcome will not end up being very
different! (remember 'peace-prize' Obamabush, remember Brexit).
[Nov08,'16]
I hadn't seen these particular videos before (but a lot of
other people obviously have!). This Boston Dynamics
video
is from way back in 2012 showing SandFlea, the jumping
robot. It is followed by the creepier-looking
RHex
tough-terrain robot, and then the completely creepy
RiSE, which can crawl
up vertical walls and tree trunks. Only missing is the sex robot that
does a strip tease followed by driving a metal stake through your heart.
There is a certain inevitability to technological/military development.
Science fiction writers got there almost a century ago. It's pretty
clear that these things won't be good news for most humans. But like
human population growth, the development, military deployment, and
'peacetime' deployment of robot technology won't be substantially impeded
until the humans run low on energy. There is still a rather large amount
of useable energy left. There are probably already small, armed flying
robots currently undergoing testing that could easily kill an unsuspecting
human. I can't imagine that a even a 'suspecting' human would be able
to survive the onslaught of 10 or 20 such robots. We clearly need some
laws to slow down the crazies before the world goes full retard. Go,
lawyers! (that's a new one for me).
Update: 9 PM CA time: It looks like Brexit #2 is almost
official (9 PM CA time). My city friends are appalled (once
again) as they feel the angry glare of the people in the
flyover
states that receive transfer payments from the cities/coasts. On the
positive side, it's important to remember that the US election is an
enormous psychological operation that is mostly orthogonal to the actual
operation of the government.
[Nov09,'16]
As there was after the Brexit vote when we still lived in London,
there is mournful feeling in the city air here after the election of
President Di@k, esp. among so-called 'leftists'. I admit to schadenfreude
seeing Charlie Rose commenting on the election, unable to conceal his
pain and disgust. This is the same Charlie Rose who once cheerled
Hillary's and Robert Ford's Libya-to-Syria 'Salavador option' --
that has utterly destroyed the lives of millions of people in Syria,
after the destruction of the lives of millions of people in Libya,
another Hillary project. Charlie cheerled when it counted, in 2012
and 2013, when he was catapulting the chemical weapons hoax propaganda.
In 2013, Charlie Rose asked Assad about the faked chemical weapons attack
"Do you have some remorse for those bodies, those people that is said
to be up to at least a thousand or perhaps 1,400 who were in Eastern
Ghouta who died". For shame, Charlie, for this 'incubator babies' stunt.
A few years later, he gets Trump to 'admit' that Trump agrees with the
'new' Obama that the US weapons are 'now' going to the 'wrong people'.
Wrong people my ass; that was the (publicly stated!) plan from the
beginning! There is also a mournful feeling in the UK/EU, which was much
more lopsidedly in favor of Clinton. That is a sight to behold, given
that loose cannon Trump says he is anti-NATO and wants to cooperate with
Russia, which would be the best thing that could happen to the UK/EU --
to get the US out of meddling, compromising EU natural gas supplies,
messing up EU contracts/business with sanctions, arranging the Nuland
'fuck the EU' Ukrainian coup, creating a blizzard of refugees, installing
US-controlled missile batteries in Romania and Poland (compare if Russia
installed missiles in Mexico and Canada), and generally economically
and politically sabotaging their so-called 'allies'/lapdogs. I would
be surprised if any of that actually happens, tho. Aside from the
pain of occasionally having to hear the voice and see the face of
President D**k, I still think it is unlikely that Trumpillory will
make much difference in the end. When Trump begins appointing people,
in a few months, we will soon find out (as we did with Obama, when he
immediately re-appointed Bush's bankers) if there will be any change at
all in the course of the ship of deep state, after the effects of this
working class let-off-some-steam FU wears off. The business cycle is
the business cycle, and there probably would have been a crash in 2018 no
matter what. The pentagon and the c-eye-eh and enn-es-ay will still be
bombing, fomenting, and surveilling. Google and Uber will be googling and
ubering billions of things just like they were before. Automation will
continue to worm its way uninvited into all walks of life (DDOS attacks
from 'smart' lightbulbs). Couples will still pitifully both look down
at and caress their iPhones and have their second-to-second thoughts
controlled by social media programs, all while they are having an
'intimate' dinner out 'together'. The Terminator-i-zation of society
will continue. The amount of remaining oil and coal and fresh water
and lithium has not changed. The world will continue to burn 1000
barrels of oil per *second* for the time being. The civilian labor
force participation rate peaked in the 90's and has been in decline
since then. There is no way that outsourcing can practically be undone.
It took almost three full decades to achieve, it would take decades to
reverse, it would require overthrowing multinational corporations that
care nothing for people in individual countries, and it would require
dropping US wages to 25% of what they are now. So, just relieve the video
and audio pain (and indigestion) by just not using the teevee/video/audio!
Just read instead :-}
[Nov10,'16]
It took exactly one day to see that probably not too much will change.
The proposals for Trump's cabinet are the exact same corrupt bankers and
neocons and Iraq war architects and defense contractors we've had under
Bush and Obama! Bring on the snark! It's unfortunate that most
flyover
guys won't even know what a neocon is :-Q The election was pure theatre
-- two *years* of hate, when Orwell could only imagine two minutes!
Hopey Changey is now on the US's other foot. Sorry zerohedge shut-ins,
your swamp has already been refilled (well, it was too much work so they
ended up deciding not to drain). Barely an hour of getting to watch
Hillary's supporters cry and then you get smacked upside the head with
Giuliani, fatty Christie, the Bolton thing, and some Goldman back bencher!
I feel your pain. But at least torture will be brought back (though I
somehow missed when they took it away?). OK, must rein in the snark,
because there I just did exactly what I'm about to criticise people
for doing (but it felt good). Scott Creighton has a great piece
here: "You are at war
with the wrong enemy and that is by design". Here are some
critical
graphs that people should be talking about instead: the civilian
labor force participation rate, which has basically been on a downslope
since about 1996, and the employment-to-population ratio, which has only
made up 1/4 of the unprecedented-in-almost-a-century spike downward
in 2008-2009. More robots won't fix this. More consumer debt won't
fix this (it's at record levels, incl $1+ trillion college loan debt).
Both of these graphs could be set up for another big fall around
2018 (look at the spacing of the previous gray/recession zones).
Outsourcing and worldwide wage arbitrage begun in earnest in the
80's and 90's caused this slow decline. Even more secret free trade
agreements won't fix this. Obama didn't fix this (how could he have?).
Hillary wouldn't have fixed this. Skate-boarding on the 101 freeway
against mein trumpf won't fix this. Trump won't/can't fix this!
People ought to suppress their inner primate and start talking about the
real stuff (energy, food, fish, population, fresh water, climate chaos
their kids will have to face) before things go full monkey retard!
Though I am dubious about Paul Craig Roberts' idea that Trump will
have a positive effect on foreign policy or banking or somehow be a
challenge to the deep state, I did have to laugh at the title of his
most recent article: "Progressives find 'white trash' more threatening
than nuclear war". More my speed is Linh Dinh's quick summary
here.
[Nov11,'16]
"The latest neocon/liberal-hawk scheme is for the
U.S. population to risk nuclear war to protect corrupt
politicians in Ukraine and Al Qaeda terrorists in east Aleppo,
two rather dubious reasons to end life on the planet." --
Robert
Parry. The washington post C-eye-eh outlet reports that
one day after the election, Obama is supposedly cleaning
Nusra house because Hillary is gone. The election of preznit
Di@k ends up having a positive effect on the lives of people in other
countries?! But, given that Trump has a neocon VP, now just appointed
head of his transition team, has just talked up that neocon cockroach
Bolton (outed in 2005 by the late Larry Flynt!), and still has to deal
with the somewhat autonomous pentagon/intelligence agencies, it is
premature to think that this indicates that the necons crazies are being
reined in. It's just one small report amongst the usual daily blizzard
of disinfo, which includes 'reporting' on what Trump is planning. I am
remembering back to the inauguration of Obama in 2008 when the Izzy's
phosphorus-bombed Gaza and we got to watch Obama sit obediently silent.
The most likely reality today is that, as Linh Dinh just wrote,
Trump
is simply an Obama for a different demographic. As John Steppling
just
said, "the big mistake of liberals was to think Trump was
bringing fascism, without realizing fascism was already here".
Here is a cartoon (upper right) from a local Mexican paper (
PDF)
for an international view :-} Now that Soros-funded
Pussy
Riot has finally weighed in, it's an official US color
revolution!
[Nov13,'16]
Trump climate hoax
Trump says he thinks climate change is a hoax and he supposedly wants
to ditch the Paris Climate Accord (we'll see what actually happens).
Any high school science educated person can easily verify that climate
change is not a hoax (doesn't explain Euan Mearns). And many 'leftists'
are therefore righteously upset about 'how dare he?'. Michael Mann says
"A Trump presidency might be game over for the climate. It might make
it impossible to stabilize planetary warming below dangerous levels."
The problem is that, unfortunately, the Paris Climate Accord is itself
a complete hoax, along with all the previous accords. All the accords
haven't made even the tiniest of dents in the *rate of increase* in
CO2 emissions. They are nothing more than window dressing. In fact,
partly driven by slightly higher average temperatures, which drives
up the rate of bacterial metabolism, the *rate of increase* of CO2 has
actually *gone up*! Making outsourced solar panels in China using low
quality coal (i.e., which generates a lot more CO2), and then shipping
them halfway around the world to decorate yuppie roofs using bunker oil
(the dirty diesel that powers outsourcing, and worldwide 'free trade')
is not green, and actually generates almost as much CO2 as directly
burning higher quality fossil fuel more expertly, locally, even when you
factor in the energy you get back from these grid-tied panels. Remember,
the panels don't obviate fossil fuel since there have to be fossil fuel
peaker plants (N.B.: which use fuel less efficiently than base load
plants) that can *fully* drive the grid when it is dark and not windy.
The panels reduce the amount of fossil fuel needed at the plants, but
use more fossil fuel elsewhere (incl for grid upgrades when the panel
input gets substantial). Just because the CO2 was excreted in China
doesn't mean it doesn't count.
It's not clear to me that denying climate change is morally worse than
accepting climage change and then doing nothing about it -- such
as climate-change-accepting 'leftists' who continue to partake
of modern industrial civilization. Though I think of myself as
especially enlightened (who doesn't? :-} ) and ultra-extreme-left,
I have no illusions about my carbon footprint -- it's a lot bigger (as in
10-20x bigger) than somebody living in a rural village in India. I am
partaking of the fruits of industrial civilization, even though I cycle
to work, try not to fly too much, and have been eating less meat lately.
If Hillary had been elected, all the 'leftists' wouldn't have complained,
and would have gone on generating exactly as much CO2 as they will with
Trump as preznit. Whether or not there is a Paris Climate Accord will
have little effect on how much CO2 we all generate.
An example of something that *does* affect how much CO2 we generate is
gasoline prices; lower gasoline prices over the past year and a half
have immediately stimulated Americans to buy bigger-engine cars and
drive them more miles per year (it wasn't just Trump supporters).
Because increases in efficiency have been completely used up by
increasing the size of 'cars', current fuel economy is *the same*
as the fuel economy of a 100-year-old Model T (about 25 miles/gallon).
It *is* true that climate change deniers are more stoopid than those who
accept the obvious reality of climate change. But for better or worse,
that doesn't necessarily make them more morally culpable. Knowing about
climate change and effectively doing nothing is pretty bad, too.
Now if everybody in the US dropped everything and installed full roof
panels, didn't tie them to the grid, bought a small plug-in electric car
(or better, a small electric cart), got a job closer to home, didn't ever
go on long road trips, bought a bunch of large batteries to power their
refrigerator after dark, and stopped flying and eating meat, then perhaps
that *fossil fuel energy* investment (all those 'renewable' things are
directly made from fossil fuel!), would eventually reach break even in
the CO2 department, maybe a decade or two down the line -- and then the
yearly increase in CO2 could begin to slightly slow a decade from now.
CO2 levels would still be increasing, however, esp. as other countries
continue to modernize, even in a so-called 'green' way.
However, it seems unlikely that the average American, who has a median
income of $50K, could even vaguely *afford* to do something like this now
(much less *want* to do it, since it would be a downgrade, after spending
a lot of money they didn't have); it seems unlikely they will want to do
it a decade from now, Paris accord or no Paris accord. And that doesn't
include the 95 million Americans of working age who are 'not in the work
force'. Rural villagers in India are not going to be able to afford to
do this either. They are going to try to save up to buy their first car.
Talking down Trump, as satisfying as it might be, is just a way of
avoiding talking about inconvenient reality, which is that there is no
'drop in', non-fossil-fuel, non-CO2-emitting replacement energy source
to feed, water, power, and make concrete for the 7 billion people
currently on the planet and the two California's of new people being
added every year. Talking down Trump serves the same function as when
the right pretends that there are no energy supply or climate problems
-- neither address the elephant in the room. As Gavin Schmidt said,
"planetary warming doesn't care about the election".
[Nov17,'16]
The four biggest long term problems we need to face are: (1) the
net energy supply for building/powering/maintaining/feeding/watering
industrial civilization is flattening and will begin to decline in one
to two decades, (2) the world economic/money system is not designed
for steady state, much less contraction, and is likely to become
(substantially more) unstable in one to two decades as debt increases and
asymptoting interest rates reach the bumpy plateau of zero, (3) climate
change 'baked-in' by increasing levels of long-lived CO2 will begin to hit
hard in three to four decades, (4) population is still increasing at the
rate of more than one entire UK every year, probably for at least three
more decades (i.e., *40* more UK's worth of people, houses, roads, cars,
food, water, concrete in three decades, and the continued destruction of
the animals/plants/soil/water that that entails). The 'right' ignores
1, 2, and 3, and obliquely acknowledges 4 with anti-immigrant-ism.
The 'left' ignores 1, 2, and 4, and thinks 3 will hit first (I still think
that 1 and 2, ignored by most official 'left' and 'right' people, will
hit hard before 3). It would be worth having adult discussions about 1 to
4 rather than the utter nonsense that fills the air these days. On days
like this, I am beginning to doubt that these problems -- the *four*
obvious elephants in the room -- will *ever* be publicly acknowledged!
Instead, people on both sides can't get enough of the stupid, irrelevant,
"it's over, man" election -- with record low turnout, in which the winner
got less votes than last time's loser, in which voters strongly disliked
both candidates, and which was won by the tiniest of *statistically
insignificant* margins! (anybody claiming to be able to have been able
to have correctly predicted such a close outcome, esp. considering the
non-linearities inherent in the stupid electoral college, is an idiot).
The deep state banking/corporate/military apparatus running the government
hasn't changed! The election is not our main problem! This
worried rant
describing how the left needs to reach out to the flyovers,
just
linked to by the archdruid as insightful, doesn't even *mention*
any of these four, giant staring-us-in-the-face problems! Prostrating
the whining left to a bunch of crackers won't fix any of the problems!
Producing iPhones domestically by dropping US wages to Chinese levels?
Keeping wages the same and tripling the cost of an iPhone? Both seem
unlikely. Energy-intensive computer-based automation, AKA 'progress'
is not going to fix the problems -- it's going to get kicked in the @ss
by number 1! (I think the archdruid would agree on this point).
[Nov20,'16]
As I expected, Trump's actual appointments so far are 'full swamp':
Michael Flynn (WJC Haiti guy, Bush/Obama Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria war
and Salavador Option guy), Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo (Monsanto,
oil industry shill, anti-Iran), Steve Bannon (Goldman Sachs, neocon,
propagandist with David Horowitz), VP Pence (neocon). The Times
of Israel reports that Trump is is getting advice from Kissinger,
the original creature from the black lagoon! Despite all the
distracting noise from so-called 'left' and so-called 'right', not
much will change. Not better or worse than Obama -- the same, which
is depressing. A positive change so far seems to be less baiting of
nuclear-armed Russia and somewhat less support for ISIS/al-qaeda in
Syria (but note the recent scrambling Swiss F-18 fighter jets around
Russian presidential plane). For a deeper assessment, see this
excellent comment that somehow leaked through the PC filter at naked
capitalism.
[Nov21,'16]
I got asked my opinion about a web
re-report of the recent 'discovery' of 20 gigabarrels
of oil in north Texas. I sent back my usual, grumpy-old-guy caveats.
I said, it's unclear how much of that oil is actually decently net energy
positive until they actually start drilling/fracking. These articles
never put things into proper context (US-ians use 7 gigabarrels a year,
this 'giant' find -- assuming the ridiculous hype is true -- is not
even a full 3-year supply. And what about the 8 gigabarrels 'found'
in Brazil in 2007 that was supposed to turn Brazil into a powerhouse
oil exporter? Instead, in 2015, the Brazil oil company bonds were marked
down to junk; the initial annoucement was mostly hype. I noted, we are
currently burning 1000 barrels a second but only discovering about 130
barrels a second, and that this reminded me of the sorry spectacle of
acquifers being pumped down at 5-10 times their replenishment rate
(US/Ogallala, India, China, etc). But still, it is very hard to
suppress the religious feeling that tech will soon discover Iron Man
power packs filled with Lost-In-Space 'deutronium', because progress
*must* happen, because we really *need* it to happen. Even I feel this.
Then -- while continuing avoiding work :-} -- I skimmed
chapter 1 and
chapter 2
of old-guy Daniel Kripke's ebook on the (non)effectiveness of sleeping
pills. These are mostly benzodiazepine or shorter acting/cleared drugs
with similar target effects (zolpidem). In the second link/chapter,
even though measurements (and family member reports) showed that the
sleeping pills were actually making things worse for the person than the
placebo, the users thought the drugs were helping more than the placebo.
The scenario is utterly typical for intervention in a complex feedback
system -- if you strongly jack up one node (GABA-A receptor channels),
you will have an immediate 'good' effect (you will get sleepy).
But before long (in just a week or two of steady intake), the multiple
neurobiological feedback systems will 'fix' this destablization,
and the long-term sleepiness effect will soon be mostly cancelled.
But now, the person will find they can no longer sleep without the pills.
Maybe OK to take very occasionally, but a catastrophe when used regularly.
Among other things, regular intake significantly increases your chance
of death (by 4x!), and causes depression.
My first reaction in thinking about the history of this was, people
must have started out trying to do the right thing, that is, start
with alcohol, which affects the GABA-A receptor, make barbiturates that
do the same thing, then engineer a shorter-acting version of the same
thing, then finally, discover that it doesn't really work, the way that
drinking enough alcohol before bed to make you sleepy every night doesn't
work in the long run. But in thinking through *why* people think the
pills work even when, objectively, they don't, it seems obvious that the
drug developers knew this would be the case, from the very beginning.
By analogy with alcohol -- some short-term effects will remain, even
when one is drinking too much on a regular basis, and second, it will be
hard to stop, even though it is impairing daytime 'life performance'.
These features, of course, make a fanstastic long-term business case
for selling these drugs, which are now taken by perhaps 10% of the
US population!
But how is this related to the north Texas 'discovery'? In going back to
the cornucopian view of energy (high tech fracking will save the day),
it's really just another version of thinking that hi tech fast kinetics
GABA-A channel drugs will save the day; and like that other case, a
little common sense and knowledge of the human experience and history
says say otherwise. In the sleeping pill case, all the humans involved
-- drug companies, doctors, patients, family members -- collaborated to
generate this bad outcome. I sound like a grumpy old man. Actually, I'm
just a former young man who is now somewhat grumpy to find out that the
distilled, seemingly simple, common sense knowledge of other older humans
(e.g., don't overrun your resources, calm yourself down before going to
sleep, be suspicious of too-good-to-be-true tech) was right after all.
[Nov27,'16]
Trump just hired Betsy DeVos, the 5-billionaire sister of
Erik Prince (Blackwater/Xie/etc) who married into the Amway
fortune, to run the dept of 'education'. Tastes pretty
swampy, trumpettes. Mike Whitney has a good summary of
Trump's almost instantaneous jump 'back into' the swamp
here,
which assumes Trump ever left it. The 'make rich people great' plan
basically boils down to: (1) tax cuts for rich people (this will be called
a 'middle class' tax cut), and (2) tax cuts for large corporations (this
will be called 'building infrastructure' and repatriating 'offshore'
cash plans). Giving (even more) money to rich people and multinational
corporations will not help with the basic reason growth will never be
able to shoot back up, which is declining world net energy. I suppose the
richies are not worried about pitchforks manned by trumpettes because the
trumpettes loved it the last time they got sheared by trickle down under
Reagan (they even fondly reminisce about it!). Stunningly, American's
(esp. republican's) economic confidence has risen to a record high.
However, we are in a very different situation than with Reagan's first
term. Giant tax cuts and giant deficit increases are not a sure thing
in an environment of rising interest rates (bond losses) and record debt
(tho there is still a way to go to get to Japan/EU/UK/China debt levels).
I don't think that Obamacare, such as it is (a sop to insurance companies
copied from Romney vs. a single payer system like Medicare) can even
itself be gutted -- the insurance companies will complain. The fascist
fun fest will run for another one to two decades through one or two more
business cycles; but eventually, it will come to an unhappy end when net
energy starts to severely plummet around 2030 and worldwide contraction
begins in earnest *and* climate change starts to bite. I don't think
it will be the end of the world -- just the official recognition of
the beginning of a more difficult, contentious, warmer, but above all,
a much lower-energy world.
[Nov29,'16]
The Stein recount thing was just weird, condemned by the Green Party
itself. Though at first a little Arab-Spring-y, it quickly became
obvious that it was hopeless from the beginning, given the basic numbers.
Why bother in the first place? To destroy the greens? (they were hardly
a threat!). Maybe just raising money? (more raised for the recount than
for her entire election 'bid'). Today it was also announced that Goldman
Sachs will likely remain in the driver's seat (new Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin). The first comment at zerohedge was, "I wonder how
many Trump supporters will now admit to buyer's remorse". Meet the new
swampboss -- same as the old swampboss. The post-Trump bond interest
rate spike (up 0.5%, a 20% increase) seems to have stablized over the
past two weeks, for whatever reason.
[Dec04,'16]
Grope and change. Yet more of the swamp has been
drained
-- oops, right into the white house. Trickle down will
work this time for sure, Trump snowflakes -- plus you'll get
a Trump world wide wrestling muppet-shearing thank-you tour,
at which you can cheer wildly! William Engdahl suggests
here
that the trumpen horse is a scheme to sabotage the Russia-China alliance
by seeming to ally with the weaker (Russia) to isolate the stronger
(China), and to start a new big war on Iran (Flynn and Ledeen).
The recent call to Taiwan by Trump made after Engdahl's article was
written does fit into this picture. The Saker hopes Engdahl is wrong,
pointing out that attacking Iran and befriending Russia would be
incompatible.
[Dec07,'16]
The part of the stock market that is going crazily up (the so-called
Trump rally, which isn't really that) are financial stocks and energy
stocks. What an insane detachment from reality as I usually think
of it! The parasitical financial sector has helped increase debt to
record levels, while the energy sector is at peak oil, with 1 barrel
found for 7 used this year, and tight oil drillers still deep in debt
trying to pay it off by selling into a glutted market. A common sense
assessment suggests that these stock valuations -- and the accompanying
11-year high in consumer confidence -- are not rational. My common sense
suggests they could fall back to earth suddenly. But these things always
have a habit of floating in mid-air like Wile E. Coyote for much longer
than you ever expect them to! The market and consumer confidence are
definitely not rocket science -- where gravity is never suspended.
[Dec08,'16]
Panicky Dallas police withdrew almost half of the liquid assets
from their pension fund as lump sum payments ($0.5 billion withdrawn,
leaving only $0.73 billion liquid assets) over the past several months.
The lump sum withdrawals were suspended today to avoid the fund becoming
insolvent. Clearly, this is Putin's fault. But seriously, this is
the fault of bailing out banks by running interest rates to zero, which
is rapidly bankrupting pension funds. The simple result is that huge
amounts of money have been and will continue to be transferred to the
idle rich unless there is real push back. You can't push back using
a$$book.
[Dec12,'16]
After updating the vote counts, it looks like Clinton won
the popular vote by a full 2% (2.5 million votes), and will likely have
gotten as many votes (66 million) as Obama did for his second term
(N.B.: several million less than Obama got in his first term). A 2%
margin is pretty statistically significant, contrary to what I said
a few weeks ago. The archaic electoral college system is certainly
stoopid. But this doesn't change the fact that the elections remain
almost completely irrelevant distractions. The Trump snowflakes
have been quiet about the farcical cabinet nominations of same-old
billionaires, Goldmanites, and generals, which reads like an article
from The Onion. I feel their pain. Yesterday, the cesspool of
nominations was joined by the Bolton-perv-swamp-thing (eeeeeww!).
Bait and switch -- 'hope and change' for a different demographic.
As with Obama and the left, the Trump snowflakes will keep their lips
respectfully zipped about him, by design, enraged only at Democrats,
even after having watched their man instantaneously backtrack on
the faux populism that they just voted for a few weeks before.
The nutso "Russian hacking" conspiracy theory based on
no
evidence amazes me. The Democrat's problem was *not* Russia; their
lousy right-wing candidate was! The Democrats appear to be committing
hara kiri, right when they could be powerfully rallying their forces!
I suppose this could be some kind of neocon/CIA vs. FBI/NSA/military
'deep state' dispute as some have suggested, tho the behind-the-scenes
guys aren't usually so unruly, and the Trumpen horse hardly seems capable
of the feats of strength that would be required by faction 2.
[Dec15,'16]
The Fed has "raised interest rates" a tiny bit in what almost looks
like a response to the bond market crash (=bond/mortgage interest
rate increase). This could be partly the result of Chinese
selling
Treasuries to stop the yuan from falling further; but that
started happening before the current jump up, which is closely
correlated with the election result. Despite endlessly writing
about it, I still have difficulty fully understanding the mechanics
of what is actually being done by the Fed. My vague understanding
was that the Fed interest rate was defined for money generated out
of the void for overnight loans to a small set of the largest banks
in the world, which then pay interest to the Fed. But this
Fed text seems to describe a
different method where the Fed undertakes "open market operations as
necessary to maintain the federal funds rate in a target range of 0.5
to 0.75 percent, including overnight reverse repurchase operations (ON
RRPs) at an offering rate of 0.50 percent". The sentences after that are
hard for me to understand. The overnight reverse repurchase operations
(reverse repos) are where the *Fed* gets a loan from a large bank by
the Fed "pawning" some its assets (the misnamed 'Fed' itself being a
privately owned central bank) to large banks (the Fed needs cash?!),
so that the large banks can get interest payments *from* the Fed.
I tried to describe/understand what is actually happening
here as a
method of banks being able to show that they had assets (the 'guitars
and jewels' the Fed temporarily gave them). I suppose the reverse repo
business is the logical reverse of the banks taking out a loan from the
Fed and therefore can also serve as as control lever. This is described
in the Wall Street Journal as different from the old mechanism where "the
Fed controlled the fed-funds rate by buying or selling U.S. Treasuries,
adding or draining the total amount of reserves in the banking system."
The reason for the 'new mechanism' is said to be that huge excess reserves
(see the gigantic increase in the BASE money supply coincident with the
same-scale giant increase in Federal Reserve Bank assets graphed
here
that began in 2008) have made it "harder to control the fed-funds rate the
old way". The gigantic amount of excess reserves are not being loaned
out to people; rather they have all been deposited back with the Fed,
which then pays big banks interest on them (!) -- which I think is a
separate source of big bank income from the reverse repo 'mechanism'.
I still don't quite have a solid intuitive grip on these most basic and
central money mechanisms, or how regulating the amount of from-the-void
money given to banks necessarily controls the interest rate!
[Dec16,'16]
I have hardly listened to US National Public Radio for the past two
decades. Listening again today was a jarring experience of an alternate
reality fully as weird as the experience I get when I very occasionally
watch a block of regular US teevee. The unquestioned background
assumptions behind a discussion on how 'facebook needs to help us mark
fake news, or sort it off the bottom of the list' made my jaw drop --
namely, that many people actually get their 'news' via facebook, and
that facebook is considered a good source of one's mental hygiene (I
know you're thinking, 'where have you been, dude?'). Then it was onto
saving the children of Aleppo, dealing with Russian hacking, and looking
forward to blizzards of drones delivering amazon packages (including
intercontinental, whatever). When it comes to roughly understanding
the technology of how these NPR reports are written and delivered and
transmitted, or understanding roughly how a person's car and the hundreds
of computers and programs in it efficiently carries them along the road,
there is only one reality. But what was so disturbing to me was the
contrast between my rough understanding of the true reality of '
the
children of Aleppo' or 'Russian hacking' or 'Amazon package drones',
and the alternate nonsense mental pictures transmitted via real radio
waves into the real car. It's weird that people living in an alternate
reality nevertheless participate in a system that constructs real things
that respect real world constraints. Imagine that food was grown using
methods analogous to those of NPR 'news'. We'd all quickly starve.
May the real diesel trucks that keep the just-in-time shelves stocked
every 3 days continue to run in the real, non-NPR world!
[Dec29,'16]
I have often heard from the supposed US 'left' that Putin, together with
the evil oil companies are conspiring to prevent cheap renewable energy
from replacing fossil fuels. These are people that heat and air-condition
their homes with fossil fuel, fly in airplanes powered by kerosine, drive
to work using gasoline (except for the less than 1% who have electric
cars, and anyway, those guys' batteries are charged using coal or natural
gas if they charge at night), eat food grown using fertilizer made from
fossil fuel (methane reformation), then planted/watered/harvested and
shipped and trucked to stores with fossil fuel, and who use devices
(e.g., cell phones, rooftop solar) made in China from coal, shipped
to them in container ships using bunker fuel to a port, then offloaded
onto diesel trains and trucks, and then finally onto gasoline trucks,
and who surf the internet 24/7 using servers powered entirely by coal,
methane, and nuclear after dark. Let's do a quick sanity check on trucks.
About 67% of freight tonnage in the US goes on trucks covering about 0.4
trillion miles per year. Recently, an electric truck that can carry
a full 60,000 pound cargo container has been investigated for use at
the Long Beach port. It goes up to 10 mph and has a 30-60 mile range,
which is sufficient for local purposes. By contrast, a long distance
truck typically carries 1,500 to 2,500 pounds of diesel fuel. Lithium
batteries are at best 1/25 the energy density of 25%-efficient diesel.
This means that a drop-in long-distance lithium truck battery pack will
weigh nearly 1/2 to 3/4 the entire gross weight of the truck, which
in the US is 80,000 pounds. Obviously, this would reduce the payload.
This is not to denigrate shorter range electric delivery vehicles, which
are certainly part of the future -- but a future that must look different
than the present. These physical considerations have very little to do
with Putin or evil oil companies (I'm not saying oil companies *aren't*
evil). Solar electric and wind are not drop in replacements for our
current on-demand, just-in-time way of life. Electing a different person
can't change basic physical considerations. It's fine to 'blame Trump';
but to a large extent, this seems to me to merely be a way of avoiding
talking frankly about (or even mentioning!) the wrenching changes about
to overtake industrial civilization as net energy begins to decline
over the next two decades. [Update: Dec 31: excellent presentation on
the big picture with a positive ending by Chris Martenson
here.]
[Dec31,'16]
Looking at other instances where ethnic tensions have recently been
exploited by the US neocons and their NATO lapdogs to draw and quarter
societies (e.g., former Serbian republic, Iraq Sunni/Shia, Syria,
Ukraine, Yemen), it is disconcerting to say the least to see similar
strains being played up in the US itself (by both 'right' *and* 'left'!).
Violent human primate ethnic identity politics is a dangerous, powerful,
and ever-charged battery for social change. It's best to look behind
the curtain at who is trying to draw upon this putrid reserve of violent
human primate potential energy, which once in full bloom, is exceedingly
difficult to bottle back up. For a positive finish, here is an
uplifting
talk by Douglas Rushkoff. He doesn't mention energy; but, it made
me feel briefly happier about being a human :-}
[Jan15,'17]
Amazon's Echo/Alexa is a high quality listening and semantic
interpretation device -- a post-Orwellian intelligent bug -- that people
can voluntarily install in their own homes. There is still a bit of
a 'creep factor' when a news item appears on these devices (e.g.,
recent story about a court case trying to get access to the Amazon
Echo recordings). But unfortunately, the 'creep factor' is declining.
Modern teevees not only listen but also often stream video of you off
to corporations, and instead of being creeped out, people instead make
fun of sensible people who put tape over the cameras! (it's harder to
find the microphones). As the internet of things begins to penetrate
everybody's extrapersonal space even more completely, there will be trash
cans and refrigerators with video -- all networked. *Other* people's cell
phones are already beginning to recognize *your* face. The refrigerator
or garbage can will be able to tell one of your networked light bulbs
to turn itself on so they can see better. All of this is supposedly to
'help' you, for example, because you are so stoopid/mentally disabled
that you are no longer competent to manage your own refrigerator,
since there are so many other more important things to do than paying
attention to what you eat (/snark). Of course, the internet of things is
actually a way of helping large corporations make more money, so that the
8 men who own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world
8 men
can increase their ridiculous piggy share (about $0.4 trillion) even moar
(not to mention the Roths child family, who somehow didn't even make that
list despite owning maybe 5 times as much wealth (~$2 trillion, about
as much wealth as the bottom *three-quarters* of all living humans!).
Clearly, the most sensible thing to do would simply be to avoid installing
and using these infernal surveillance devices. It's ridiculous to think
that you need to have your 'refrigerator', AKA artificial intelligence
programs at a few gigantic corporations, keeping track of your diet.
The giant corporations *don't* have your body's best interest in mind!
The weaponized food they created is a good part of the reason that 70%
of Americans are overweight, with some teenagers needing transplants for
their fatty livers, which look like they came out of a ne'er-do-well
alcoholic kid of a billionaire. No doubt, we will soon be treated to
'news' stories of how the smart garbage can called in the SWAT team
to stop a burgler, oh, and by the way, be sure not to change your hair
style before throwing out your garbage... Just keep that shite out of
your house! Don't become reliant on those devices!
[Jan18,'17]
I listened to National Public Radio again for a half an hour (pussyhats,
Rick Perry stumbling through his scripts, what small business owners
and insurance companies think of the utterly undefined replacement
for Obama/Romney care, how a rainy month impacts California's water
conservation rules, can't get rid of the DOE, oops, because it actually
mainly does nuclear weapons and nuclear waste cleanup, how Steve Mnuchin
foreclosed on an 80 year old couple's house then sold his company share
for nearly $1 billion dollars, why Guantanamo has to stay open because
"we are still at war", an advertisement from a company to assist you with
your international finance needs, Will and Grace is back). The alternate
reality that the NPR stream was designed to conjure in my head barely held
together, like bad Halloween make-up. I don't know what the FecesBook
alternate reality stream smells like these days; probably a different
feel for different demographic. Surely pussyhats and cosplay, but maybe
less Steve Mnuchin? I wasn't motivated to say anything out loud so a
cacophony of angry inner speech merely bounced around in my head. I then
read a story on the internet about how a minor cold snap in Charlotte,
North Carolina (some ice and snow 11 days ago) caused people to rush to
Walmart and completely empty the just-in-time shelves, which didn't set
my mind at peace, but made me think about the function of opiates for
the masses. Let NPR sing, and let another day of productive work begin!
It is difficult to look out upon the world as it actually is these days
without feeling schizophrenic. But the fake news disinfo blizzard from
NPR is just water off the oily duck's back of my mind's eye :-}
[Jan22,'17]
[Jan22,'17] The turnout in the anti-Trump womens' marches was huge
:-}. Just as the 'left' was blind to the fact that Obama was *the same
as Bush* (same banker criminals, extend existing wars, add even more wars,
with direct Syria attack (as opposed to just hiring al-Qaeda) only blocked
by the British lapdogs (!), more assassinations/drones, more surveillance,
a 'health insurance' plan from Romney), the 'right' will be blind to the
"government Sachs" of Trump -- and moreover, they will just shut up, just
like the 'left' did for 8 years of Obama-bush. Even now, I hear that the
good Obama was prevented from doing all the good things he wanted to do.
The 'right' will similarly 'reserve judgement' for Trump's whole term
(if he doesn't quit), and then afterward, just like the 'left' did.
Republicans now control the house, senate, and preznit. There could
easily be some kind of economic contraction toward the end of 2017 or
early 2018, precipitated by tiny interest rate normalization, or an EU
bank/derivative blow-up, more EU uncertainty if Dutch/French populists
are elected, or a moderate oil price spike if the 0.5% oil 'glut' gets
a little close to 0.0%, or Saudi getting color-revolutioned, or all of
the above. The deplorables are going to get tarred with it big time,
even though they did nothing to cause it. Nobody will mention criminal
bankers and how most money is created by banks, not the Fed.
[Jan22b,'17]
Trump, introducing Mike Pompeo (Trump CIA head nominee) at the CIA on Jan
21: "Now I said it for economic reasons, but if you think about it, Mike,
if we kept the oil, you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s
where they made their money in the first place, so we should have kept the
oil. But, OK, *maybe we’ll have another chance*". This is a little like
listening to an Alzheimer's patient when the frontal control and filtering
system starts to break down. Yee-haw. In the immortal words of Frank
Zappa, "Politics is the entertainment branch of industry".
[Jan23,'17]
The fiercely polarized, almost 50:50, partition of the US between the
working class -- some of whom regard Trump as the last 'great white hope'
-- and the usually better-educated, sometimes better-paid people who voted
for Hillary, many while holding their noses -- must have the deep state
laughing their @sses off at this latest successful divide-and-conquer.
The problem is truly not rayciss, low-paid Trump crackers or politically
correct Hillary snowflakes (some of whom are equally low-paid -- e.g.,
bartenders with college degress). The problem is that both Hillary and
Trump supporters are not able to see that the real problem is the final,
forceful merging of government, global corporations, and global banks
in utterly unfettered world dominance, in order to finish the strip
mining of the entire earth for the benefit of a few ultra-super-rich
men. Both 'left' and 'right' seem to be stumbling toward fascism in
unison! (e.g., McCarthyite anti-Russia rhetoric on the left,
block
traffic and you will die Indiana bill on the right). The Trump
supporters cheer when a $3.7 billionaire with roughly 20,000 times as
much wealth as the median wealth of a 60-75 year old American (maybe
50,000 times as much as the wealth of a median Trump supporter) tells
them they have been cheated, and that he is going to do something about
it, because he wears a baseball cap, so that make him 'one of them'.
We have exceeded 1929-style wealth disparity, except that now we have
used up all the easy energy that was still there, ready to begin to be
exploited in 1929 -- and we now have 7 billion people to feed instead of
2 billion. The Roths childs' family fortune is now equivalent to the
combined wealth of the bottom 75% of all humans (5.25 billion people).
There is still a supply of reasonably net-energy-positive energy to
continue running that global strip-mining operation for the next decade
or so. When net energy starts to drop more catastrophically in about
15 years, the ultra-super-rich will do their best to hide in their
armoured compounds from the occasional roving starving band. Maybe a
few, more visible, less ultra-super-rich richies will get Mussolini'd.
Our problem isn't *just* sociopathic ultra-super-richies at the pinnacle
of the global banking/capitalist/extraction system. Our problem is them
(and esp. their money system that is designed to *not* work right in the
steady state or contracting state), plus a finite and rapidly dwindling
supply of net-energy-positive energy, plus Trump crackers *and* Hillary
snowflakes that don't realize the imminent severity of the net energy
situation. The net energy problem can't be easily fixed by more low-EROEI
coal *or* by more intermittent wind and solar power. As the world's
population ages and slows its increase, it will gradually begin to temper
its currently ever-growing use of nominal (N.B.: not net!) energy, which
will help cushion the blow; but this, too, will eventually be overtaken
by depletion. It's ironic to consider that soccer moms in their SUVs,
using the grid, and buying stuff on Amazon delivered by diesel emit as
much CO2 as Trump crackers in their 4x4's, using the grid, and getting
stuff on Amazon delivered by diesel. In fact, because soccer moms and
other upper middle class people who typically worry more about climate
change can also afford to fly more, they actually use and need *even
more* fossil fuel than the rayciss Trump crackers! On the hopeful side,
no matter what catastrophe happens, the people that survive without being
exposed to the worst abuses will bounce back and be happy with less. It
doesn't matter if you win the lottery or lose a leg -- or your gasoline.
A few months after the event, generalized happiness returns back to
what it was before the positive *or* negative event. Contra
Dave
Cohen, this is a feature, not a bug, which is going to come in handy
in the not too distant future.
[Jan26,'17]
Sure is depressing reading right *and* left bloggers digging in for
extended trench warfare, both somehow completely ignoring the net energy
and wealth-distribution elephants in the room. The level of discourse
amongst the primates on left and right has gone from the toilet into
the sewer. Feeling melancholy in the autumn of my life. But
Science's
best tips for safe cycling cheered me up :-} So maybe it's still
my late summer.
[Jan29,'17]
Trump bans immigration to the US from 7 countries, 5 of which
the US/Obama has been actively bombing -- a list pretty much
straight out of the neocon PNAC. The new Trump order doesn't
even name the countries but simply refers to the list from
Obama administration orders. Saudi and Izzy are OK (oh, right,
*we* didn't bomb *them* ...). Whatever. And lookee here at these
pig/human chimeras so we can charge your insurance $350,000 for a
replacement liver grown in a dystopian Blade Runner freakshow lab so
you don't have to change your bad eating and drinking habits. Remember,
all of this is divide-and-conquer nonsense! Keep your eye on the ball.
The 'ball' in never in the 'news'. For example, the wall is in the news
(despite the fact that it's already there!), but the potholes I have to
carefully skirt in my twice-daily cycle commute -- while still watching
the angry car-people -- are not (I got a flat yesterday when my brain's
avoid-5000-pound-cars module overrode the avoid-deep-potholes module).
Government Sachs is not in the news. How banks create most of our
money out of the void and decide who gets it is not in the news.
Declining net energy is not in the news. The fact that China is no
longer building an entire US interstate highway system every 3 years
(they finished building two, starting in 2011) is not in the news.
The fact that since 2009 (after the recovery from 2008), global GDP has
grown around 3% per year, but global debt has grown around 6% per year,
is not in the news. The fact that what we are headed into is not just
another turn in the credit cycle is not in the news. Keep your eye on
the ball. Remember that on his first day in office, Obama signed an
executive order closing Guantanamo prison, which is, uhh, still open.
And look at the social wreckage of the former Yugoslavia (brought to you
by the previous Clinton). Bad idea to head in that direction (still a
ways to go, though). One week at a time.
[Feb05,'17]
The tiny world oil 'glut' (now probably less than 1%) is often suggested
to be the main thing that is keeping oil prices lower than many people
had been expecting -- in particular, the people who took out big loans
to drill light tight fracked oil wells, and who are now still deep in
debt even after substantially increasing US oil production. But there is
another indirect factor, which is that it gradually takes more and more
energy to produce a barrel of oil as we scrape the bottom of the barrel,
so a nominal produced barrel has effectively used up some of the other
barrels in 'total world liquids'. Because of this, though total liquids
production has slightly increased, the final amount of useable energy has
increased less, or maybe even declined. Since total economic activity is
very closely related to total energy used, most of which is fossil fuel,
having less net energy could be part of the reason that growth seems to
be slowing down (to just under 3% per year), though this is difficult to
measure directly, since it can be affected by exchange rates. However --
with full knowledge that passenger car driving is only one use for oil
-- looking specifically in the US at passenger car miles, you can see
that US car miles are still on a tear, increasing at a somewhat more
rapid pace then the three decades before the 2008 crisis, when they
actually dropped for the first time. Total miles are up, but
so
is population, so it turns out we are only back to about 2003 after
population adjustment. But nevertheless, partly as a result of low
prices due to the oil 'glut', losses in the part of the economy and
world that are extracting the lower-net-energy oil are not being paid
for by the drivers who are driving more, and in less fuel efficient cars.
The low oil prices have certainly gone on for longer than I was expecting.
Can oil prices continue down, even as oil net energy continues to fall,
and as more people drive more? Maybe for a little while; but over the
'long haul' (here meaning a few years) this seems highly unlikely to me.
In 2004, I guessed that peak oil would happen in 2008. If 'oil' is
measured as 'all liquids' -- which mixes stuff with greatly varying
net energy yields (e.g., ethanol, which has zero net energy) -- I was
wrong: total liquids (crude oil + condensates/pentane + NGLs/propane
+ biofuels) have increased almost 10% since 2008 (88 => 98 million
barrels/day), though standard density crude (vs. light tight oil from
fracked wells, which has to be mixed with heavy oil from, for example,
tar sands, before being sent to refineries) did in fact peak in 2008.
But looking at the surprisingly slow recovery of growth since 2008
and the continuing deformations of the money system, I am beginning
to wonder whether 2008 was 'effective net energy peak oil' after all.
One can easily imagine that in an effort to make up for declining net
energy, a large amount of additional oil energy could have been expended
to extract oil/liquids, just in order to tread water, which would look
like a big increase in extracted energy. After 2008, China poured *two*
entire US-20th-century's worth of concrete, using coal, and then suddenly
stopped, perhaps mostly due to having 'finished' their infrastructure.
Since other factors than reserves (like sudden Chinese policy turns)
can rapidly change energy usage, it is hard to know how close we are to
peak net all-energy. Hopefully still a ways to go! Finally, another
factor not previously mentioned above is simple demographics; the aging
population, both in the US and soon also in China, will use less energy,
everything else held constant. It is difficult to factor everything
into the mix and figure out what is causing what.
[Feb06,'17]
Trump's threat to 'defund' California is humorous since California sends
more money to the federal government than it gets back; the federal
government distributes the extra it keeps to the Trump states, who by
contrast with California get more money back than they pay in taxes.
California also produced one quarter of the country's food. But it's
a great sound bite for the Trumpanzees :-} . However, when it comes to
water, California gets a lot more water from surrounding states than it
sends back to them, so seceding would be suicidal on that count.
[Feb07,'17]
Mrs. Billionaire-Blackwater-Amway just got confirmed for 'education'
secretary courtesy of an historic tie-breaking vote by the neocon
vice-president Pence. She plans to use privatization to make American
education just as great as American prisons (the US has the largest per
capita prison population in the world). Come to think of it, why not just
combine the rump remains of the public schools for the 90% and prisons
into one big happy private business, the department of EduPrisoCation?
It would make school safer (booga booga Sandy Hook, scary boys and
girls!) and it would be quicker to deal with misbehaving students, no?
I will likely be retired before getting to experience the fruits of her
'labor' at the college level. For better or worse, the rate of change
will be slow.
[Feb08,'17]
Where were the 'leftists' that are now agog at banning Muslims when Obama
was *bombing* Muslims (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen),
which is what generated many of the refugees spreading across the EU?
Bombing Muslims is worse than banning them. The previous two sentences do
not imply support for Trump. I don't pretend to know for sure what Trump,
and the generals he has appointed, and Kissinger, and the 5 Goldmans,
and the CIA, and AIPAC, etc are actually doing, given the fantastic
clouds of disinformation being thrown up each day. But I do know that
the 'left'/'right' debate is almost entirely a side-show. It's comical
watching sites on both the 'left' and the 'right' suddenly forgetting
what they were for/against a few weeks ago. For all practical purposes,
we seem to be in Bush's 5th term, AKA Obama's 3rd term (e.g.,
bombing
bridges in Raqqa in Syria in support of greater Kurdistan).
[Feb11,'17]
Police in the US now (data from 2014) seize more assets ($4.5
billion/year) than burglars do ($3.9 billion/year). Over the last decade,
this has turned into a major funding source for police departments.
This has strong echoes of historical events accompanying decline of
many different historical empires. But it doesn't seem like we are
declining yet; there are self-driving cars and robot factories about to
put everybody out of work! I was just reading in the execrable Wired
on how Trump can't fix the loss of industry because most jobs will be
replaced by robots. There wasn't a peep about energy in the article.
As long as low-cost, high-net-energy energy is available, robotization
will continue. Changing over to robots currently often requires more
energy than using humans because robots are more energy intensive to
make and to run. This would suggest that robotization could reverse
quickly if energy suddenly gets harder to get and/or more expensive
(cf. the way frackers suddenly started fracking, and then just as
suddenly stopped -- creative destruction, man). For now, the robots are
up and coming. And certainly, the coming energy scarcity is likely to
be a local pheonomen in the future, so robotization could continue even
after it is too energy intensive to use in some energy-scarce part of
the world. Still, I will be very surprised if robotization is still
rapidly increasing 15 years from now.
[Feb13,'17]
I read lots of downer stuff and I see lots of foul comments from trolls
and 'regular people' every day :-/ . Perhaps because the Oroville dam
problem is closer to home (I drink water from it during the summer),
reading some of the comment sewage in the upper right "Live chat" feed
here [update:
now a stale link] temporarily spooked me. But only temporarily:
don't you guys know that they voted for Trump in Oroville? :-/ As
long as unlucky humans aren't being dismembered right in the living
room, messing up the carpet, unfortunately, most humans are willing
to give blanket approval to human dismemberment -- somewhere else,
where other people have to clean it up. It's pretty clear that
a
hypothetical privatized infrastructure program wouldn't have touched
what should have been fixed in the Oroville emergency spillway 10
years ago (more concrete on the hillside below the emergency spillway),
because it wouldn't have been profitable then or now. The problem was
that when a relatively small amount of water went over the emergency
spillway (for the first time ever, in an effort to spare the damaged
main concrete spillway), the emergency spillway immediately began to get
undermined, increasing the chance of a break in *it* (N.B.: as opposed
to a breach in the main dam). From pics posted on the web, it looks
like the *main* spillway channel has been eroded some distance up from
the initial breach, almost up to the level where the high tension power
lines cross. However, this happened a few days ago, and the damage
line has not moved up at all over the past few days of continuous large
releases (through the main spillway). The current higher failure point is
where the main spillway began to get much steeper, probably as a result
of it passing over softer, more erodable rock past that point (which
probably explains why the breach in the spillway occurred below this
point in the first place). However, we still have a long, nail-biting
way to go (early June) until the inflows to the lake peak, with little
chance to repair the main spillway. The main *dam* remains undamaged.
If it were to fail, the result would be truly apocalyptic. Thankfully,
that still looks very unlikely (at this point in time!) :-}
[Feb15,'17]
A wrinkle in the 'main spillway' problem referred to above
from an Oroville press briefing today (watched
here). *Inside* the reservoir (under
water), there is a channel leading to the main spillway release gate
that is reaching its erosion design limits, which will require some
slowdown in the amount of water being released in the near future (current
release rate is 100K CFS, which is over 400 tons of water per *second*).
Luckily, the resevoir level is now low enough to absorb the next storm
without overflow. The broken outside end of the main spillway is still
holding up very well. Best of luck to these guys!
[Feb18,'17]
Amazon/Bezos delivers your books and music and packages and tchotchkes,
stores your music and pictures, listens and interprets and centrally
stores what you say in your home (if you have Alexa), has your credit card
info, owns the Washington Post where much of your news originates, and
has a half a billion dollar contract with the CIA. What could possibly go
wrong? In return, Amazon has made your life *so* much more convenient --
imagine how much time you used to waste back in the day having to (gasp)
store your own music and (gasp) manually play selections from it, and
(gasp) manually open a photo album. Amazon/Bezos is only here to help you
free up your precious time so you can be more creative! Riight.
[Feb21,'17]
Reverse Engineer has a good summary article on
the
blame game for the current predicament industrial civilization finds
itself in. It prompted only two comments, one from Blair T. Longley.
Predictably rambling and long-winded, Blair ended up reserving the
most blame for scientists. They have created orders of magnitude
more power from advances in mathematics, physics, and engineering,
but failed to develop similarly sophisticated and powerful advances
in politics and economics and an understanding of societal dynamics.
I agree in spirit, esp. with respect to classical economics :-} .
But I think Blair underestimates how difficult it is to deeply
and scientifically understand the dynamics of large populations of
language-capable brains powered by fossil fuel, developing and learning
and manufacturing and scheming. Waaay harder than apes, even though
many features of human emotional mechanics are not that different from
non-human apes. Language is a second, higher-level life-form, souped
up with the ability to generate code from meaning (instead of having
to wait for mutations in code), and now super-powered by an internet
infused with the beginnings of AI injecting a toxic brain-modifying
slurry into the already pretty foul-tasting mix. Though I agree that
the simple frauds injected into everybody's brains -- for example,
about how money works -- *are* frauds, they are nevertheless subtle
enough to make it difficult for most academics interested in physics
and mathematics and biology and neuroscience to understand. I always
tried to read very widely, especially when I was younger, but I
didn't really gain even a basic understanding of money creation and
debt until I was almost 50 (partly my fault because I had ignored
economics as unworthy of serious attention...). And that is the
absolutely utterly dead-simple part! Developing a theory of how we
might have slowed or re-engineered this runaway train before it got to
the current desperate state is many orders of magnitude more complex.
Quantum mechanics is absolutely trivial by comparison -- electrons and
protons are all exactly alike, they don't learn, and they only constitute
a few moving parts :-} [Update: good Michael Hudson interview
here
-- an excellent uplifting post, though failing to mention the additional
difficulty of declining net energy].
[Feb27,'17] I think they got the category for the Al-Qaeda White
Helmets Riefenstahl Oscar wrong -- 'special effects' instead of
'documentary'?
[Mar01,'17]
The Trump speech continues the tradition of 'reality
teevee', which translated, means complete and utter
detachment from reality. Complete blue pill. The bad thing
about getting old is having to repeatedly see that this same-old
shite
always 'just works'. Remember the trifling silly fake reports that when
broadcast through the fetid NYT megaphone of Judith Miller convinced
90% of Americans that Iraq had a bomb that led to the deaths of at
least half a million Iraqis and the permanent contamination of Iraq
with a third of a million rounds of depleted uranium? Saddam didn't
have chemical weapons but we did. And before that, remember the fake
story of 'unplugging baby incubators' tearfully performed in Con-gress
that launched the first war on Iraq? Ralph Nader had some
worthwhile comments
on RealNews. The agencies that the Trumpanzees want to kill (education,
worker and environment protection) are just a few percent, total,
of the size of the ridiculously bloated military budget, which Trump
supposedly wants to increase; in fact, the proposed military budget
increment itself would be bigger than the budgets of those other
agencies put together. Won't happen. But imagine what better uses
the fantastically bloated current military budget could be put to!
Not that the hysterical McCarthyite 'left' pushing the fake Russian
hacking story is better! Despite their supposed opposition based on
ridiculously superficial differences such as bathroom signs, *both*
parties are rightwing/corporate/ultra-rich/fascist. Another thing Ralph
Nader mentioned is that large corporations have now spent $2.5 trillion
buying back their own stock. This wasteful parasitic enrichment of
already ultra-rich stockholders merely sucks the remaining life out
of the shell of a formerly innovative and productive businesses,
and reflects a pitiful and utter failure of intellectual vision in
the challenging time of peak energy. This sure looks like catabolic
collapse -- consumption of the tissue of one's own body on the way
down. Tomorrow is another day and I'm sure I will be feeling less
red-pill-y then. Today, after watching just a few seconds of the Trump
speech, I am basically thinking what Geoffrey Chia says you
shouldn't
say in public.
[Mar03,'17]
This comment from Reverse Engineer (on why military growth might *not*
restart after a societal power down) made me smile :-} -- "I disagree.
We went 60,000 years without being dickheads, I don’t think it is
hard wired at all. I think we just got a flawed Op system that needs
replacement. It’s like Windows 7, just worse." It reminded me of my
late father.
[Mar08,'17]
According to a report from Americans for Financial Reform (
pdf),
during the past election cycle, the financial sector donated over $2
billion to federal candidates and parties, which works out to $3.7
million per member of Con-gress. The surprise biggest spender was the
National Association of Realtors ($120 million!) handily exceeding Soros
($25 million) and Goldman Sachs ($12 million). In between were a bunch
of hedge funds (and Bloomberg L.P.). And this was only what had to
be reported. The real totals could be twice that.
[Mar12,'17]
Four brief points about the recent information leaks about C-eye-eh
hacking software.
(1) The C-eye-eh/Stasi effort was almost entirely parallel to the
NSA/Stasi effort, except run by an organization that has a big, mafia-like
'wet works' division, not to mention its own drone fleet for actually
killing people abroad (and sometimes at home).
(2) These guys had a casual approach to letting this technology back
out into the underground hacker community (which is where they got some
of it from!). This makes sense when one compares their related actions
with respect to arms and drug trafficking.
(3) Perhaps most disturbing, was the almost completely blase/whatever
reaction of 'everyday' people to the news that the C-eye-eh had hacked
teevee software in (e.g., in Samsung teevees) to make it appear that
the teevee was off, even though it was actually on and transmitting
information through the teevee's microphone (newer ones have cameras
too) back through the user's internet to the C-eye-eh. Now we have
1984-like data streams going to Thought Police at *two competing*
secret organizations!
The subdued response is probably because people are already *voluntarily*
installing similar things (e.g., Alexa) in their homes that transmit
everything back to the (e.g., Amazon) mothership to be interpreted, are
bored by the Samsung fine print about how it sends audio back to Samsung,
and are accustomed to voluntarily uploading pictures of their breakfast,
genitalia, etc to the cloud. It is true that @ssbook, Snapshite, Amazon,
and Samsung don't (yet) have 'wet works' divisions, for when you resign
(ref to The Prisoner :-} ). But who knows where your teevee feed has
gotten to by now, given point number 2?
And remember, although Amazon is not officially part of
the security state, it got a $0.6 billion contract in 2013 from the
C-eye-eh for cloud services. That's the virtual dictionary definition
of fascism -- the coming together of big industry and authoritarian
government. Several of the leaked hacks have false flag options to
make it appear as if they come from Russia or China instead of Langley,
which clearly proves that 'Putin is a thug who sabotaged our election'.
Yeah, and we are at war with East Asia, too.
Self-declared 'Democrats' now like the C-eye-eh slightly more
than 'Republicans' do for the first time in a number of years.
At supposedly 'left' university, I get politically correct 'teacher
training' that explains how I should watch my tongue and not say
anything bad about the military because 10% of the school is somehow
in the military. And there are weekly 'active shooter' presentations,
despite the fact that per capita shooting deaths in the US have
plummetted
since the end of the Vietnam war. Sorry, I deviated a bit off-topic
from number 3.
Finally, (4): why now? I have previously suspected that one function
of the stream of recent leaks has been to scare people and habituate
them into thinking there is nothing they can do, similar to nightclub
shootings, etc. But the latest leaks will be hard for people to
distinguish from Snowden, since many probably don't even clearly
distinguish the NSA and the C-eye-eh. Perhaps there *is* something to
the idea that these recent leaks represent internecine warfare in the
shadow government. It is increasingly important to keep one's head
screwed on tight in this topsy-turvy world.
[Mar13,'17]
Grid storage
The possibility of fast progress in the deployment of grid battery storage
is a positive development. Mostly talk so far. In two years, there will
be more concrete data to look at about how 'large' (but see next) grid
battery storage systems actually perform. It is critical to keep basic
'order of magnitude' scales in mind when talking about grid storage.
This is virtually always omitted in breathless press reports because it
involves (gasp) *more than one number* -- that is, you actually have to
compare *two* different numbers :-} .
The total daily world electric power usage in 2012 was about 54,000 GWh.
Tesla has said that 34 GWh of world battery electric storage was produced
in 2013. At that rate of battery production, it would take 1600 years
of battery production to make enough batteries to store one complete
day's worth of total world electric power usage. Or put another way,
total battery production in 2013 equalled slightly less than *one minute*
of world grid storage.
There are a very large number of half-days when wind+sun generate
almost nothing (calm+night), and many weeks when wind+sun power output
is low, so *one full day* of storage is not an overly ambitious goal.
Tesla's (not yet done) Gigafactory was originally advertised to be able
to produce 35 GWh of batteries per year (including batteries for cars),
but 2016 *projections* for Tesla and Panasonic are for yearly production
of 100 GWh of batteries. At that higher projected production rate,
the time required to make enough batteries to store one day of current
world electric power usage would be reduced from 1600 years to 550 years.
However, remember that this doesn't count replacement batteries, since
batteries wear out in 5-10 years.
From these basic order-of-magnitude considerations, it is clear that we
still are a very long way from a solar/wind/battery drop-in replacement
grid. It's also important to remember that the amount of energy used
by internal combustion engines is roughly equivalent to the amount of
energy used by the grid -- that is, to replace all cars and trucks with
plugins, you'd have to double the size of the current grid. This puts us
back to about 1000 years to make the one-day-of-storage grid batteries.
And this is not counting any of the new batteries needed for the electric
cars and trucks themselves.
I am *not* trying to disparage 'renewable' energy (N.B.: it's not truly
renewable until it has actually been made out of its own output, rather
than from coal, oil, and methane), *or* trying to ignore the fact that
we will be able to count on hydro, biofuels, remaining fossil fuels,
nuclear, etc, *or* trying to insist that the world of the future must be
exactly the same on-demand, just-in-time world we have now, *or* trying
to claim that we won't be able to replace lithium-ion grid batteries with
hot liquid sodium/sulfur batteries, and so on. But it is important to
memorize basic, real numbers, rather than to just unconsciously snort
and parrot the feel-good hype/nonsense (Elon Musk's advertising stunt
about Australia).
My soundbite: "One full year's production of batteries from Tesla's
GigaFactory will hold *one min* of world grid energy storage".
[Mar14,'17]
The stunning increase in complexity of hardware and software systems has
made it virtually impossible for a normal intelligent human (with *lots*
of time to waste!) to be able to understand the entire system hierarchy
from low level hardware to the top layers of virtualized software.
Encryption is utterly useless if there is a chink in a different layer
or a weakness before or after things have been encrypted. For example,
Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) in current vPro systems,
building upon its introduction in Sandy Bridge, allows remote access
to peecee disks and other hardware for 'management and security tasks'
when an OS is down, or the peecee power is 'off', and when the internet
and boot disk are disconnected and the RAM is out via 3G wireless
built into the chip (for Anti Theft 3.0, seriously, we're just trying
to help you wipe your disk when the bad guys steal it). Why bother
with encryption? I doubt anything could go wrong with the AMT scheme
(snark). To paraphrase Robert Maynard Hutchins, 'When I feel the need
to upgrade, I lie down until the feeling goes away' (the original was
'exercise' :-} )
[Mar17,'17]
The new 'Trump' budget proposal (this name explains nothing about the
people who actually prepared it) increases the half a trillion dollar
US 'defense' budget by more than $50 billion (10%). The cuts would be
paid for by cuts in other more useful agencies -- e.g., a $6 billion
(20%) cut in the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Just think,
instead of spending $3 million in chump change to take out a Walmart
toy drone with a Patriot missile (a US military stunt this week),
the military will be able to afford to use a nuke next time :-/
. The proposed *increase* in the US department of war is more than
Russia's *total* spending on its own war department. The preposterous
proposed increase prompted a complaint from, of all places,
Fortune
magazine. The response from the 'left' on the military increase
has been muted, perhaps because 'Putin sabotaged our election' (except
that despite all the hysteria, no evidence has been presented for this).
There is no real leftwing left in the US or the EU/UK! Now would be the
time to get into the streets -- when the military hardware that gets used
later is actually being planned, not when they are already transporting it
(usu. with the approval of both the right and the pseudo 'left') to the
next theater of war. This is waaay more important than protesting the
stoopid 'Muslim travel ban'. If the US military hadn't killed millions
of Muslims in other countries and funded 'Salvador option' Muslim death
squads over the past few decades under Bush *and* Obama, there wouldn't
have been a 'Muslim problem' in the first place ('b' reports
here
on who we killed today). The US military bombing and occupying
other countries, and the presence of over 700 US military bases
in other people's countries across the world is the real problem.
Of course, the proposed Trump budget won't go through as is. It is
merely a red meat banner meant to pacify the Trump base ('hope and
change' for a different demographic -- Linh Dinh). But the current
more-than-half-a-trillion a year current cash burn by the ridiculously
bloated US war department *will* continue, just like military funding
continued after the Roman empire had already begun to decline (and
this doesn't even include the 'black budgets' of the C-eye-eh, etc!).
I suppose the chaff from this 'budget debate' will help keep people's
eyes off of the bigger problem (incl both the eyes of the right and
pseudo-left), which is the impending wind-down of global industrial
civilization as an increasing population runs into hard limits in net
energy, fertilizer, food, water, minerals, soil, fish, and so on. But the
wind-down won't get into high gear this election cycle, so *who cares*?
Instead let's continue to blow all our spare change -- which won't
last forever -- on the military. For shame -- and shame on the
half
of Americans who actually support *increasing* this stoopid, already
insanely monumental waste of money and energy, and a source of endless
human suffering.
[Mar19,'17]
California has had to spend a fifth of a billion dollars just to do
emergency patches to the Oroville main spillway, which was opened
again on Friday as the lake levels started to go back up. We need to
immediately stop wasting so much money on the mostly offensive component
of the so-called 'defense' department and divert the money into more
productive pursuits like refurbishing our water supply.
[Mar21,'17]
A single bitcoin transaction, including 'mining' costs, currently
uses at least 30 kWh (a per-transaction estimate for 2017
here is even higher: 100 kWh).
Let's stick with 30 kWh. Translated into my favorite energy unit,
the 'cyclist-hour' (one cyclist-hour is about 0.1 kWh), one bitcoin
transaction is equivalent to cycling for 300 hours straight (50 days
of 6-hour-a-day cycling). Isn't the 'non-physical' internet great?!
For comparison, a single credit card transaction costs less than 0.01
kWh, so less than 10 minutes of cycling. This whole picture reminds
me of the human monkeys who peevishly accelerate their 6000 pound
quarter-of-a-megawatt steel chariots past me on my bike, up to the
red light where I meet them 10-15 seconds later, JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN.
We are doing bitcoin because we can -- for now. In theory, the system is
supposed to adjust the cost of mining to the processing power currently
available, and many people are throwing processing power into bitcoin
'mining' currently. It remains to be seen how gracefully bitcoin will
be able to contract when the energy that powers the miners themselves
itself gets a lot more expensive to mine.
[Mar23,'17]
At about $1.3 trillion, the US student loan bubble has now grown to
the same size as the US subprime loan bubble, which blew up in 2008.
The default rate is similar to the peak subprime default rate (over 10%).
Two differences are that most of these are government loans, and there
is no collateral involved. In the UK in early 2017, the government
announced a plan to sell some student loans to the private sector.
I haven't heard of anything like that in the US so far. Looking at this
strikingly
steep and linear increase, which took off immediately after the
subprime bubble crashed, it is hard to imagine it can continue for a
long time. But then, I said the same thing 5 years ago! If the current
increase ($0.15 trillion/year) is maintained, in another 5 years, it
will reach $2 trillion, an amount utterly unimaginable just a decade ago,
when student debt was 'merely' $0.1 trillion. I don't see any way that
this could be 'unwound' gracefully, but then I'm not very creative when
it comes to banking. I imagine their will be US rentiers wanting to
'buy the loans' (just saying 'buying a loan' kinda makes me retch)
since loans essentially generate free money without having to fix any
toilets, as long as the poor students or their parents continue to pay.
This is an awful transformation of the university system I first entered
in the 1970's.
[Mar24,'17]
Two excellent remarks from the web today. First, from
Cryptogon: "It’s a sh*t
sandwich all around in the general purpose computing world. It’s a
very serious worry, because I see the least capable computer users (most
computer users, in other words) fully embracing swipetard devices and
operating systems, which are mainly intended to serve as tamper proof
vending machines and surveillance platforms". And then from
Scott
Creighton: "The Trumpster’s glorious generals are currently bombing
the crap out of civilians in Mosul and invading Syria via Raqqa and
the whole of the American public is only concerned about how to keep
poor people from getting healthcare or how many fabricated ties Rachel
Maddow can produce between Trump and Russia. Orwellian? Fascist? Just
plain sad and pathetic? You decide". Finally, I can hear the calls
for self-driving carz to save us from Abu/Trevor/Khalid/Adrian what's
his name/face/asset. Nothing that even moar VR can't fix, first seen
here,
in an arty third-person view (Veljko Popovic), and then
here, in righteous first-person view
(Keiichi Matsuda).
[Mar26,'17]
There is some clear demand
destruction visible starting in 2016 in this Fed graph of
total
US vehicle miles travelled and gasoline prices (reduced slope at
right edge of graph, blue line). The reduced-gasoline-price stimulus
to car miles that began in 2014 (red line) has rather suddenly
moderated at the beginning of 2016. The rate of increase (0.6%
per year) is now lower than US population growth (0.7% per year).
We are still not back to the unprecedented absolute drop in car
miles that occurred in 2008 and 2009, or back to the bumpy plateau
in car miles that lasted from from 2009 until 2014. There is still
a small (less than 1%) oil 'glut'. However, the internal usage
of oil-exporting countries is ever increasing, and China is still
rapidly increasing its imports (~10%/year, see mazamascience PDF
here),
and is still a long way below US per capita usage. Even if all of these
trends moderate, it still seems likely to me that we are experiencing
the calm before the net energy storm that will hit in a few years
when everyone finally realizes we are in the second, more difficult
half of the age of oil, and when Ghawar finally dies. There is
already a crisis of midlife white Americans increasingly
dying, not just
from alcoholism and opiates from from all causes, at a higher rate than
poorer blacks, reversing the situation 15 years ago. The situation in
the US is beginning to look like what happened (esp. to men) in Russia
in the 1990's, and this will likely to be exacerbated during the reign
of Trump -- our very own Yeltsin -- who will release our own oligarchs
from what few constraints they still have. After 5 or 10 more years of
'oligarchs gone wild', and 5 or 10 more years of oil depletion, Americans
will be longing for a Putin to clean house. Let's hope we get a Putin
rather than a somebody-else-tler.
[Apr02,'17]
Older and Wiser II
Visiting relatives, I was again stunned peeking into the alternate
universe that is American teevee, which I see about once a year.
I expected the drug ads, but was surprised to see that Harvoni was all
over the place now. There was nothing for Sovaldi, its 'bargain basement'
competitor -- only $60,000 per year for Sovaldi versus $100,000 per year
for Harvoni. I suppose the idea is to bankrupt the public dime (at
the rate of a million public dimes per treatment) of the VA (homeless
vets with hep C) until the payment system crashes, then call it a day.
Given 3.2 million people with hep C, it would take a mere $320 billion
dollars to treat them each for a year with Harvoni (for scale, that's
10x the size of the entire current NIH budget).
Then I saw hours of the inane 'blame Russia for everything', wall-to-wall
on the 'newz', then as R2D2 on Rachel Maddow, then as 'comedy' on Colbert.
There was a lack of any trace of concrete content in support of this
idea, and the whole shtick was instead about personalities. But even
more impressive was the stunning tone-deafness of the supposed 'left'
to their their carbon-copy of 1950's-style, McCarthyite red-baiting.
And of course, not a peep about the massive Pentagon escalation in Iraq,
Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, currently underway.
I drove through hopelessly spread-out, unwalkable subdivisions liberally
dotted with vast tracts of unusable 'green space' surrounding work
places, all built on the best farmland on the whole planet. On the
way back, I watched "Superstore" on the plane, a 'workplace comedy'.
Most of the cast was obese to morbidly obese. It wasn't a comedy but
rather a tragedy of average people with no options in a state of clinical
depression somewhat controlled by drugs, food, and the toilet 'humor'
of continuous humiliation of other people stuck in the same situation.
It brought to mind factory chickens being fed Prozac, Benedryl, and
caffeine to make them passively alert so they gain weight faster.
Ten years ago, I would have more strongly felt the urge to think about
how all these things could possibly be fixed or at least ameliorated
before the status quo becomes completely impossible to maintain.
For example, the majority of western 'health care' -- ignoring the huge
administrative overhead and plain parasitism of US-style 'insurance' --
consists of insanely expensive, hi-tech, one-factor attempted patches to
people's bad eating habits and thinking habits that aren't really capable
of undoing the effects of a life of bad food or thought. My former self
would have thought, Why not drop everything and improve diets (both food
and cognitive)? Why not outlaw weaponized food?
In my academic work, I have argued that cellular symbol machines
and human linguistic machines are deeply analogous (PDF
here).
Before coming up with that idea, it had taken me years of study
in college to completely come to terms with the amazing and harsh
realities of the growth of complexity during mere Darwinian evolution.
Human language-based cultural evolution is orders of magnitude faster than
biological evolution because of the presence of 'reverse translation' at
the linguistic level. The ability to turn symbol strings back into code
for direct transmission is critically absent from the cellular-level
system that founded Darwinian evolution, and this gives cognitive
evolution an even wilder character than Darwinian evolution.
But only now (!), after almost 4 more decades of study have I finally
consciously come to terms with the same amazing and harsh realities
of *cognitive* evolution and *cognitive* growth. As a fresh assistant
professor, I used to marvel at the fact that the irritating gnat that I
just squashed had about 14,000 genes packed into it (versus only maybe
19,000 genes to make a human). But biology doesn't care. It makes
stunningly complex organisms by the trillions and then they carelessly eat
and squash and overgrow each other, may the best grower win. The dynamic
of growth *no matter what* drives an evolutionary system until it runs
into hard limits. Growth -- biological or cognitive -- simply can't be
stopped when there is still free energy (in the chemical sense) for the
taking lying about.
I used to complain about how people would carelessly buy an iPhone --
containing multiple chips with a billion parts in each one, put together
with the complex, refined outputs of 200 other supplier companies,
each using materials gathered from around the globe -- and then
carelessly discard the thing just 2 years later. But now I finally
see, this is *just like* biology! (go ahead, marvel at my naivete).
Biology carelessly discards a lot of gnats, and a gnat is *a lot* more
complex and miniaturized and energy-efficient than an iPhone -- and it
can even reproduce (many of) itself(s) without factories, and all its
parts can be recycled and re-used.
The partial introspection we experience inside our human brains is at
best only a very minor restraint to growth. Even when we can clearly see
the end of growth just a decade away, we *still* can't make ourselves
do anything to cushion the blow. We can't even slightly slow down in
our frantic approach toward the geological brick wall. Only 'geology'
(energy/soil/water depletion) has the power to stop biology and language.
Unfortunately for us, geology lacks empathy. My undergraduate major
was geology, the queen of the sciences :-}
[Apr12,'17]
Wolf Richter has a good article
here
on Tesla. Tesla currently has a market capitalization of about $50
billion. Since its creation in 2008, it has lost money every year,
for a total loss of almost $3 billion. It continues to exist because of
investors and government subsidies sinking money into it (emphasis sink).
For comparison, GM also has a market capitalization of about $50 billion.
Since 2008, it has made almost $50 billion. Despite Tesla's wonderful
'disrupt-i-ness', this looks like an exceptionally poor starting point
for weathering the next recession. Of course, perhaps its business of
buying lithium batteries and solar cells manufactured by Panasonic and
packaging them will take off in the next few years, right in the middle
of a recession. Theoretically possible.
[Apr17,'17]
Sometimes it's just crushingly depressing to watch
the mass action of the (American) human primate brain.
The Pentagon's stupid war show stunts (the Wall Street Journal
reports
that Trump didn’t know about the MOAB use until it had been dropped)
have resulted in a 17% drop in Americans who think he will "keep his
promises", but at the same time, a 10% *increase* in his "favorability"
(assuming *this* isn't itself disinfo). This reminds me of my
observations of human primate behavior in my daily cycle-communte to
and from work. The human primates driving their 200,000 watt SUVs
look at me with a combination of pity, disdain, and irritation at
my seeming over-pious-ness. I know and respect this. Most of them
believe in global warming and the need for healthy physical activity
levels, but cannot consciously see how their extremely inefficient
daily commute and their subsequent occasional drive to the exercise
place directly relates to global warming as well as their woefully
inadequate activity levels. They 'need' such a large vehicle so they
can more safely ferry their family about. This is partly to protect
their offspring from having to walk amongst the other SUV drivers,
who
kill
1.5 times as many pedestrians per vehicle mile as regular cars do.
They feel safer looking down on the other more reasonably-sized cars
despite the fact that their increased height increases the tendency to
roll over in sudden course corrections (increased height is also why
they are more likely to kill pedestrians). If I slow them down by even
500 milliseconds, they are likely to muscle their huge metal can around
my 100 watt bicycle to rush up to the red light to show me that even
though they are angry, they have magnanimously restrained themselves from
crushing me. If I don't wear a helmet, they will mentally tut-tut how
'dangerous' I am being despite the fact that a 12 ounce styrofoam shell
would do nothing to protect me against an impact of their 6000 pound SUV.
On less well travelled roads, I have to constantly check behind me to
prepare for evasive action in case someone careens into the bike lane
while texting. The whole experience, somewhat paradoxically, tends to
refresh me, perhaps because of the life and death aspect, and after
I make it safely to work or back home, I tend to quickly forget it.
I suppose I find Trump's 'war boost' more depressing because in that
case we are talking about actually blowing up large numbers of people
as opposed to carz merely "showing me who's boss".
[Apr21,'17]
For something completely different, I just got a Boss RC-30 looper
and was messing around jamming over 12/8,11/8 time. This is 'leave
one beat out' every second measure, like the time in John McLaughlin's
Dance of the Maya (listen to Billy Cobham when he comes in at 0:55). I
accidentally left the record mode on, and so unintentionally recorded two
lead tracks, which sounded kind of cool, and major/minor-y, and 1970's, so
I concatenated it 4x, turned the reverb waaaay up, and saved it
here,
for a trip down memory lane :-} (RIP Alan Holdsworth :-{ )
[Apr23,'17]
In June 2016, business owners in San
Diego helped city planners publish an
in-depth
study of how to fix a central stretch of El Cajon boulevard to make
it more walkable and bikeable and less dangerous (I commute on this
stretch every day). The study found that the only cycling 'tolerance
demographic' likely to use the entire stretch of this road in its current
condition was the 'strong and fearless' (woohoo), which corresponds
to less than 1% of the population. One of the main options proposed
by the study was to add bicycle lanes (the ones with curbs greatly
reduce chance of cyclist death) because the study also found that street
parking there was underused. In Jan 2017, this minor change was
blocked
(unfortunately, I didn't find out about the public meeting until now)
because it might impede parking. That would be the street parking that
the study had found was underused. Also, homeowners thought it would
'kill children' because traffic would be diverted to side streets where
wannabe rich person houses are -- despite the fact that the study found
that no traffic diversion would be created (since cars already just race
up to red lights). So it looks like the only change will be a painted
bicycle lane on half of the length of the route, and only on one side
of the street. Go ahead, drive to the 'climate action march' or the
'support science march', because of not being 'strong and fearless'
enough to make a change that would *actually matter*. Then drive to the
doctor to figure out what to do about pre-diabetic fatty liver disease,
in a city that probably has one of the most year-round bicycle-friendly
climates in the entire country, just a few years before the world oil
situation blows up for good. Sheesh.
[Apr25,'17]
In a demonstration of how seemingly harmless technological
'conveniences' can backfire, a new longitudinal Framingham
Heart Study of almost 3000 participants showed that after correcting
for age, sex, education (for analysis of dementia), caloric intake,
diet quality, physical activity, and smoking, that drinking one
artificially sweetened beverage per day resulting in a *tripling* of
the 10-year risks of both stroke *and* Alzheimer's dementia (PDF
here)
(drinking sugar-containing beverages had no such effect). This risk was
probably overestimated since there was a correlation between people with
diabetes and people drinking diet sodas, and since diabetes/metabolic
syndrome is associated with Alzheimer's, which could be the brain
expression of metabolic syndrome -- the inability to 'take out the
garbage'. Note that there is some independent evidence that artificial
sweeteners actually *cause* diabetes (as opposed to diabetics simply
adopting artificial sweeteners after getting diabetes) -- by altering
gut flora. The toxic beverage manufacturers immediately responded
that their drinks are "safe for consumption" and that other factors are
important such as "genetics". So either, drink up and hobble in to get
your genes sent through an expensive DNA sequencer so that your very own
'personalized medical program' can be constructed to help bankrupt the
already tottering edifice of American 'health care', *or* just stop
drinking that sh!t and improve your diet...
[Apr26,'17]
Alternate reality
Reading the intertubes today really drove home the point that I'm truly
living in an alternate reality from many people. I'm really not happy
about that.
First, I kinda burped reading the sentence in an
article
in The Verge on raising sheep embryos outside of the uterus by Rachel
Becker: "It's appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs
grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy." This was an
improvisatory flourish by the author since according to the Childrens'
Hospital of Philadelphia guys, the ostensible point of the 'external
womb fetal lamb ziplock bag' study was to eventually put human preterm
infants into the bags to avoid preterm damage (rather than to 'helpfully'
completely eliminate the chores of pregnancy). What made me flinch
was the off-hand presentation of a dystopian nightmare as 'appealing'
- and somehow relevant to the world I live in, where 70% of Americans
are overweight or obese and are literally running the 'health care'
system into the ground, having their insurance pay for expensive
drugs and expensive surgeries in a ridiculous and toxic (and hopeless)
attempt to fix a lifetime of bad eating and exercise habits, and where as
many Americans die from opiate overdoses as from guns or carz, and in a
world where there are already waaaay too many people for existing supplies
of energy, freshwater, soil, fish, etc. You think maybe the overdosers
have also soured on the 'appealing future' of raising human babies in
ziplock bags probably plumbed into desperate unemployed 'support moms'?
Offhand comments like this jar me into a realization that I live in an
alternate mental reality. Perhaps I need to ask my doctor for a drug
to fix this (but that would require going to the doctor :-} ).
Another example of my disconnect from
reality is the Morning Consult POLITICO
poll
today. First was the poll itself. One question was, 'Which of the
following issues are important enough to prompt a government shutdown?'.
The positively hallucinogenic choices were: (1) increased military and
homeland security (i.e., 'yes' means, shut down government if military
spending not increased enough), (2) continue cost-sharing insurance
payments, (3) continue benefits for retired coal miners (huh?), (4)
increased deportation, (5) decreased domestic program funding (i.e.,
'yes' means, shut down government if domestic spending not decreased
enough), (6) planned parenthood, (7) sanctuary cities, (8) border wall.
The winner (at 47% yes to 39% no) was, yes, shut down government if
defense and homeland security spending is not increased enough. The weird
concoction of words in the questions hardly self-assembled into coherent
meanings in my brain, and the answers were unsettlingly Weimar-ish.
Then there was a disgusting, grovelling
post
by Susan Webber (Naked Capitalism) explaining to enlightened fascists
(oh sorry, I mean 'leftists') why "it is naive and self defeating to
demand that a progressive or bona fide leftist candidate oppose war
as a major platform position".
And, finally, remember that since those SF food delivery robots are
going to have to be armed to protect them from poor homeless people, be
sure to ask your personal surveillance system, sorry, I meant your new
Amazon 'hands-free camera and style assistant' for tips on how not to
look homeless (that is, while it's not busy trying to imitate your voice).
As Richard Heinberg recently
wrote:
"In many of my writings I try my best to avoid morbid fascination and
focus on practical usefulness. But every so often it's helpful to step
back and take it all in. It's quite a show."
[May05,'17]
Interesting graphs
here
from Jeffrey Snider on the temporally distinct peaks in derivatives
(JPM=2008, BofA=2010, Goldman+Citi=2014) by the main derivatives guys.
I didn't realize derivatives were down -- though "down" is a relative
term when current notional value derivatives total for the big 4 is
about $170 trillion, "down" from over $200 trillion (where global GDP
is a mere $75 trillion).
[May10,'17]
Google's panicky decision a few months ago to start denying ad revenue
to any even vaguely controversial non-junk-music videos on youtube
(driven by demands of large advertisers) will have a dampening effect on
non-mainstream information availability. The main effect here, however,
might be mainly to put a dent in video production values. I am quite
happy to abide low budget production values if the information is good
(and anyway, I usually prefer to read, because it's faster). A more
dangerous change would be stronger censoring of web searches that would
turn google completely into @ssbook. It's probably on the way, which
will require people to know more about what they are looking for, or
drive people back to samizdat-style bulletin boards. However, even that
could be imperiled by direct interception of packets on the wires of the
intertubes. But then there is always amateur packet net! The continuous
progression of 'just a little easier' can go backwards. One advantage of
'just a little harder' is that cost of individual messages is higher,
which (in my dreams) might have the result of reducing the amount of
repetition, disinfo, and plain noise. One can dream.
[May15,'17]
Elon Musk's new Boring Company is starting to bore
a tunnel under LA from LAX to Westwood. The
demos
and mock drawings show a sled with a tray to hold a single automobile.
This is utterly preposterous as a subway replacement. Imagine the
traffic jam at the entrance, much less the exit, where cars having been
transported at 160 mph would have to rapidly emerge one after the other,
if this was scaled up even to the throughput of the blue line. However,
this is surely not being designed for everyday people. It makes sense
only as part of an 'Elysium strategy' to allow rich people -- the same
ones who will buy a 'Tuscan' solar roof for their vacation home --
to bypass clogged freeways, like an automotive version of a personal
Lear jet. Perhaps the outlet at the airport end will go directly to
valet parking for the rich person's security line bypass. The US is
slowly but surely morphing into the long established arrangement seen in
large third world cities -- a walled rich city center surrounded by a
thick ring of favelas, and no middle class (Elysium itself was shot in
the slums surrounding Mexico city). Disappointingly, this is the same
dystopian future envisioned long ago in books, then in movies. As their
decline continues, most Americans (who of course haven't the
slightest
idea of where North Korea is on a map), will ignore their changing
reality and instead will fret over the latest Trumpfart or the Russian
Phantom Menace, brought to you by the monolithic DemoRepubloFascist
party.
[May17,'17]
From time to time, I read a bunch of abstracts on clinical trials.
Sometimes they are merely observational. The best ones do a direct,
randomized intervention (tho in cancer studies, there is rarely the
critical 'no treatment' arm). They generally show small effects.
Upon reading the latest tranche of the zillions of conflicting and often
marginal scientific results on treatments for heart and artery disease,
stroke, dementia, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer, I am often left
with the feeling, 'if we only just had a really big study'. There is,
in fact, one really, really, really, big 'study' that is usually not
mentioned in scientific and esp. pharmaceutical contexts. *Half* of the
world's population (3-4 billion people) until recently ate a vegan diet
(little or no meat and diary). It's not a scientific, randomized study.
But it *is* an intervention, big time. The results are that these people
just don't get heart disease, stroke, dementia, diabetes, osteoarthritis,
osteoporosis, and cancer with anywhere near the same rates as people in
richer countries with richer diets. For example, even those with the
APOE4 allele don't get Alzheimer's (much lower rate than in the US)
if they eat a mostly plant-based diet. This is hardly a revelation.
We already knew the truth in Europe, hundreds of years ago. The diseases
of Americans and other rich countries are simply the diseases of the
idle European aristocracy. It's completely obvious that we could get
rid of the majority of 'health care', which is really sick care and
bad-diet care, if people simply ate a diet that was mostly plant-based,
and walked and used their bicycles every day. It's also pretty obvious
that we haven't been able to fix the results of a bad diet and lack of
exercise with daily drugs and an occasional drive to the exercise place.
US adult obesity rates continue to rise, with almost 38% of adults in
2014 obese (CDC data; this doesn't include overweight people, who together
with obese people make up 71% of the US population). Obesity is partly a
function of social class (black > hispanic > white > asian). Lower class
people are more likely to eat 'weaponized food' for a variety of reasons.
On the positive side, US youth obesity rates have been almost flat over
the past decade, though at this rate of change, industrial civilization
will collapse before obesity rates are impacted. Maybe US obesity is,
in part, a class-based, unconscious physical expression of peoples'
fear of what comes next.
[May20,'17]
I just read an Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's
puff
piece on a glossy
white paper (original PDF can be downloaded from
here)
on how self-driving electric vehicles will rapidly overtake internal
combustion engine cars. The original study was by Tony Seba at Stanford,
the owner of the "Seba Technology Disruption Framework TM", who bills
himself as a professional 'disruptionist'/rethinker. Stories about
the Arbib and Seba 'study' have been widely catapulted across the web.
I paged through the original report. Ambrose managed to exaggerate
the already exaggerated white paper. He started with his title, "All
fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years in twin ‘death spiral’
for big oil and big autos" (the report, and later in Ambrose's article
says 'most gone by 2030'). Here is a collection of other predictions.
Crude oil will fall to $25 a barrel, bankrupting all oil companies and
many car companies. Electric cars have near-zero marginal fuel cost
(presumably, the special kilowatt-hours used by electric cars will somehow
be less costly to generate than regular garden variety kilowatt hours
that the rest of us use). The electric vehicles will run for 1 million
miles with almost no repairs (the report said half a million). They will
be constructed out of adamantium (actually, he didn't say that...).
Grid usage will have to increase by 18%, but no grid expansion will be
necessary because everything will charge at night (night energy source
not specified -- it must be the special "zero marginal cost" energy).
All internal combustion cars, trucks, trains, and ships will be gone by
2030. Cities, then suburbs will ban human drivers (he didn't say anything
about whether this means we can finally get some bike lanes). Car dealers
will disappear by 2024. China and India will do it, too. This will all
happen because electric is so much cheaper.
I suppose fantasies like this are more pleasant than the Planet of Slums
reality that is beginning to remake cities across the US in the image of
big cities in the third world. In the past, I have linked to Ambrose's
financial articles, but this has made me more wary of his other stuff.
It's not that I'm against reducing the number of cars, or that I don't
expect 'disruption' from some self-driving cars and trucks, or that
I prefer dealing with human-driven cars on my bike. It's just that
Seba's whole fantasy of how this plays out seems highly unlikely.
Uber is supposed to upend the world when it supposedly succeeds in
killing all the taxi services thengoing driverless and firing all
its drivers. But currently, Uber is losing roughly a billion dollars
a *quarter* in order to undercut regular taxis, and they're not dead yet.
And though it's dangerous to linearly extrapolate past trends into the
future when exponential things can (occasionally) happen, it's important
to remember that currently, in the US, there are about half a million
electric cars out of a total of about 250 million cars -- that is, 0.2%
of US cars are electric. After recent large increases, new residental
solar installations are now actually falling year-on-year. I am dubious
that flat or already-declining available net energy will support very
many more bouts of energy-intensive 'disruption'. In any case, we'll
know in just 8 years :-}
[May22,'17]
How to eat right before you get too old to care
Motivation.
Seeing the terrible decline of some older people we know, and
stimulated by my friend Pete Markiewicz and Lori doing the same,
Claudia and I have changed our diets to whole foods plant-based.
I am humbled by *how long* it has taken me to really get wise on diet,
esp. when a lot of the basic info has been out there for
decades! Claudia has
helped me a lot in this. She was initially motivated to google around
after suffering several terrible bouts of food poisoning in London,
when she came across "Happy Healthy Vegans", then Neil Barnard,
John McDougall, T. Colin Campbell, Pam Popper, Michael Greger, and
so on. Though I had almost gotten to the same place in the early
80's in graduate school, subsequently, I was unconsciously misled
by the constant spew of industry-funded disinfo and FUD (always
follow the money), tho with flickers of understanding
here and
there.
But this is my final answer. Given my broad education and
general willingness to look behind received opinion, I have
to say that I'm seriously embarrassed at how long it has
taken me to see straight on this most fundamental part of
life (what's a blog/diary without some first-class
embarrassment
:-} ). I don't want to get dementia. I don't want to 'replace' my knees.
I don't want my skeleton to fall apart. I don't want to take statins.
I don't want to take the latest toxic anti-Alzheimer's drug. I don't
want to get colon or prostate cancer and then get infused with toxic
chemotherapy until I die. Finally, by the time I might need that stuff
a few decades from now, it seems likely that the current ridiculously
bloated 'health care' system may have already started to fall apart.
I'm not counting on that 'sick care' system -- which is actually mostly
'bad diet' care -- even being around a few decades from now. We don't
have kids, so I need to (finally) do the right thing now.
The Largest 'Clinical Trial' Ever.
From time to time, I used to binge-read a bunch of pubmed abstracts on
clinical trials. Sometimes they are merely observational. The best ones
do a direct, randomized intervention (though in cancer studies, there
is rarely the critical 'no treatment' arm). They generally show small
effects. Upon reading the latest tranche of the zillions of conflicting,
directly or indirectly industry-supported and often marginal scientific
results on treatments for heart and artery disease, stroke, dementia,
multiple sclerosis, diabetes, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and cancer, I
am often left with the feeling, 'if we only just had a really big study'.
There is, in fact, one really, really, really, big 'study' that is very
rarely mentioned in scientific and esp. pharmaceutical and surgical
contexts. Thirty years ago, half of the world's population (3-4 billion
people) essentially ate a whole foods plant-based (vegan) diet with
little, or no, meat and dairy. It's not a scientific, randomized study.
But it *was* an intervention, big time.
The results of that 'big study' were that old people there simply didn't
get heart disease, stroke, dementia, multiple sclerosis, diabetes,
osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, erectile dysfunction, and cancer with
anywhere near the same rates as people in richer countries with richer
diets -- as in 1/10 or even 1/100 the rates for age-matched groups.
One striking example: even those with two copies of APOE4 allele in
third world countries (e.g., Nigeria) rarely get Alzheimer's. In the
US that gives you 5-20x the incidence of Alzheimer's (because it's
'genetic', woohoo). As the poor world adopts more calorie-, meat-,
and dairy-dense western diets (or people from there come to the US/EU),
their stool volume goes down to one third of that of mostly-plant-based
eaters, and they rapidly acquire western diseases of middle and old age.
All this should hardly be a revelation. We already knew the
truth in Europe, hundreds of years ago. The diseases of Americans,
Europeans, and other rich countries are simply the diseases of the
idle, over-meat-and-dairy-fed old European aristocracy (gout!). Or the
idle over-fed Thai artistocracy. Or the the idle over-fed Egyptian
pharoahs (mummies had atherosclerosis and gallstones). Or take a
comparative anatomical look at the human gut -- from its length,
you can see it was designed to process mostly vegetables and fruits
and grains. Or take a comparative look at human molars -- they have
thicker enamel and shallower cusps than other already bascially vegan
apes in order to grind even more grains and starchy roots. 'Paleo'
is merely the latest industry-supported disinfo/FUD campaign to try
to obscure those long-known facts. More evolutionary details are
here.
Embarrassingly, I already knew all this in 1979 (I was 24, taking courses
in paleoanthropology and comparative primate anatomy).
The basic truths about human protein requirements and the fact that
improved diet can actually *reverse* diet-induced diseases -- even
after they are well along -- was rediscovered experimentally by modern
medical doctors in the first half of the twentieth century (Dr. Russell
Henry Chittenden b. 1856, Dr. William Cumming Rose, b. 1887, Dr. Walter
Kempner b. 1903, Dr. Lester M. Morrison b. 1908; Dr. Denis Burkitt
b. 1911, inventor Nathan Pritikin b. 1915). But subsequently, these
critical observations have been completely and criminally expunged from
modern medical education. With the rise of molecular biology,
and the pharmaceutical/cancer/surgical/medical-device industries
in the second half of the twentieth century, diet has become almost
completely detached from health in the mind of the public but also,
especially, in the minds of doctors, who literally get no training
at all in nutrition. In fact, attention to diet is actively smeared
as unscientific and 'un-medical'. I never even came across most
of these names until recently (I knew of Burkitt's lymphoma but had
no idea of his more critical work on diet!). Michael Greger's Dec
2015 "How Not To Die" is an excellent, humorous, comprehensive, and
extensively documented compendium (see also his videos at
https://nutritionfacts.org/,
which made it to PropOrNot -- Russian Red kale, dontcha
know?). Or see this fine, politically incorrect,
2010 video from Dr. John
McDougall, which effectively covers all the main points (or see his
excellent 2012 "The Starch Solution") -- then read the utterly flaccid
wikipedia FUD on him (*so* weakling the shill wikipedia editors had to
timorously repeat the same FUD sentence twice!). Or see "The China Study"
(2nd ed., 2016) by T. Colin Campbell. Or see this amazing
1982 interview with
then 67-year-old Nathan Pritikin.
It's completely obvious that we could get rid of the majority of western
'health care', which is really sick-care and bad-diet-care, if people
simply went back to eating a diet that was mostly plant-based, and
walked and used their bicycles to get around on shorter trips. It's also
stunningly obvious that we haven't been able to fix the ever worsening
results of a bad diet and lack of exercise with drugs and surgery and
DNA testing, *or* by driving to the exercise place! US adult obesity
rates continue to rise, with almost 38% (4 of 10) adults obese in 2014
(CDC data). This doesn't include "overweight" people, who together with
"obese" people make up 71% of the US population! In the US, obesity is
partly a function of social class (black > hispanic > white > asian).
Lower class people in the US are more likely to eat 'weaponized food'
for a variety of reasons. They no longer eat like 'real' poor people do
(like the old people in rural China whose average total cholesterol never
goes above 130). The obesity epidemic isn't 'genetic'. DNA testing and
'personalized medicine' isn't going to fix this. And this diet-driven
health disaster is now rapidly and catastrophically spreading to the
rest of the world.
The Main Problem.
The main problem with the US (western) diet is simply that people eat too
much meat/fish and diary -- food that is too calorie-dense (=fat-dense),
and/or too protein-dense, that contains no fiber, and that contains
carcinogenic raw and cooked animal proteins and cancer-promoting growth
factors. A second related problem is that people eat too much refined
plant-based oil (free oil) and refined sugar (chips/crisps are basically
just spiced, plant-oil-and-sugar delivery devices), and refined flour.
It doesn't help much to add bare fiber to a too-rich diet. The fiber
has to be intimately associated with and stuck to the nutrients and fats
and sugar as it is in whole food. To take an example from the second
problem, there is nothing wrong with fructose if you extract it slowly by
eating a fiber-filled cup of cherries or oranges or bananas (fructose is
not a 'poison'!). But it can be unhealthy if you routinely drink large
purified amounts of it in the form of Coke *or* in the form of a glass of
manufactured fruit 'juice'. Remember how much orange juice you get when
you squeeze one orange (which mechanically separates and removes much
of the fiber, which is the job of your stomach and intestine). Thus,
there are *two* bad things about a full glass of manufactured orange
'juice': (1) it contains the sugar from waaaay more oranges than any
normal person can eat in one sitting in the form of actual oranges,
and (2) the fructose isn't embedded in any fiber. It's no better
than Coke. The exact same argument applies to olive oil versus olives
(one tablespoon, 15 ml of free oil, equals the still-attached-oil in 40
small ripe black olives). But why focus on diet in the first place?
The simple bottom line is: basic scientific evidence has shown that
diet is *much* more powerful than genetics, drugs, and even exercise,
in determining your long-term healthy survival.
Dairy.
Americans/UK-ians/EU-ians eat waaay too much cheese and dairy, which in
addition to containing no fiber, also contains a lot of saturated fats.
The amount of cheese that Americans and Europeans now eat is staggering,
and has continuously and massively increased toward the end of the 20th
century as a result of business and advertising practices. In the US
in 1900, people ate 3 pounds of cheese a *year*. That was not very
different from Europe *at that time*, since many people had recently
come from there. Now Americans eat 45-50 pounds of cheese a year (some
European countries now eat even more, and have world-record levels of
colon cancer and Type 1 childhood diabetes to match). Cheese is just
highly concentrated cow's milk. Cow breast milk (before concentration
into cheese!) is designed to cause a baby cow to put on nearly 1,000
pounds of weight in a year. It has 3x the protein content of human
breast milk. It contains natural estrogenic hormones from the constantly
pregnant industrial milk cows, which is probably why dairy is associated
with breast cancer. It contains IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor one)
as well as other peptides that stimulate increased production of IGF-1
by the human liver. Peptide breakdown products of milk casein protein
(casomorphins) cause histamine release, i.e., inflammation. Casomorphins
also slightly hit opiate receptors to keep you -- as a virtual baby cow --
addicted to cow breast milk. Cow's milk given to early-weaned humans of
certain genetic backgrounds causes most Type 1 (childhood) diabetes.
100% of Type 1 diabetic children have antibodies to milk proteins
(probably a result of milk proteins having gotten into the circulation,
and then exposed to the immune system, via leaky gut), while 0% of
non-Type-1-diabetic children have them; and Type 1 diabetes is extremely
strongly correlated with dairy intake by country. Finally, cheese has
about 2000 calories per pound. Cheese is super-milk. Milk also has
lactose (milk sugar), but that's *not* the main problem.
This doesn't even consider the hormones and antibiotics added to make the
industrial calves grow faster. That's strictly business. The reason
they give antibiotics continuously to cows and other food animals is
that they put on weight 10% faster than when given the same amount of
non-antibiotic-laced food (perhaps the antibiotics mow down some of the
intestinal bacteria, thereby leaving more food energy for weight gain).
The dairy industry is a hugely powerful lobby. Just look at the article
out this month about how it's OK to eat as much cheese as you want.
This meta-analysis arrived at this preposterous dairy-industry-funded
conclusion, then parrotted by the Guardian and the NYT, and then the whole
web, by omitting any study from their meta-analysis that included people
with heart and artery disease -- i.e., the very people damaged by too much
milk and cheese. Or look at the Enron Texas billionaire-funded
'Nutrition Coalition',
which is trying to 'reform' dietary guidelines (by lobbying Congress)
to recommend that people eat *even more* butter, meat, and cheese.
Or see 'Authority Nutrition' or 'Nutrition Impact LLC' -- other industry
shill groups (N.B.: the similarly-named Nutrition Action from Center
for Science in the Public Interest is great!).
Meat.
In the case of meat, a similar massive increase in the amount eaten has
occurred. In poorer parts of Europe, this has happened quite recently.
For example, in southern Europe, rates of diabetes have shot through
the roof (including type I, auto-immune diabetes). To take an example,
in Crete, they now have nearly the highest rates of the more common,
acquired, type II diabetes in all of Europe. Just 50 years ago, they used
to eat meat just a few times a year for holidays and had no diabetes.
Now they eat it (and cheese) every day. In China, after eating a
western diet for just a decade and a half, diabetes and obesity rates
have ballooned almost up to American 'standards'. In the UK, Alzheimer's
has just overtaken heart disease to become the leading cause of death.
Alzheimer's is strongly correlated with metabolic syndrome (obesity,
diabetes, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, heart and artery disease,
unbalanced blood lipids, erectile dysfunction). In Africa, colon cancer
did *not* increase as poor Africans reduced fiber and ate more junk food,
probably because they haven't yet been able to afford to increase meat and
dairy consumption very much. In the case of osteoporosis, high-protein
diets from high meat and dairy intake may cause the kidneys to excrete
calcium (as a result of acid load from the body having to perform excess
proteolysis); drinking cow breast milk and eating a high-animal-protein
diet as a human child, teenager, and adult literally rots your bones.
Then there is how humans now raise industrial chickens. They are
fed recycled animal protein, antibiotics, growth promoters, Prozac,
Benedryl, and caffeine, and then the tissue is injected with brine to
make it absorb water, so a given amount of meat weighs more. Again,
this is all 'strictly business'. The antibiotics and growth promoters
make the chickens gain weight faster when given the same amount of food.
The rapidly-grown (9 weeks when it used to take 6 months!) salty chickens
we eat now are essentially obese; the meat has 10x the fat of chickens a
century ago (20% fat vs. 2% fat -- 3x as many calories now coming from
fat as from protein, more percent calories coming from fat than with
ice cream!). The psychoactive drugs (and keeping the lights on 20 hours
a day) makes the chickens alert, passive, continuous feeding machines,
in spite of their dire living conditions. This has some disturbing
analogies to modern humans.
Oils.
You often hear the 'olive oil is good'. It is very slightly better than
eating a similar amount of: (1) toxic trans fat (hydrogenated vegetable
oil [40% trans] used in processed foods, but also naturally in butter
[3% trans], beef [2% trans]), or (2) saturated fat (in chicken, beef,
cheese, butter, and also 20% of the fat in fish), or (3) other purified
plant seed oils (corn/cottonseed/sunflower/safflower/canola oil, also
mostly for processed foods). But olive oil, like all the other oils,
contains 4000 calories per pound. It's the most energy dense thing
you can possibly eat. It doesn't fill you up at all because the volume
is so small. It impedes normal nitric-oxide-mediated artery dilation
function just as much as other oils/fats do. It also doesn't taste
like much! (just eat a teaspoon by itself). Do an experiment halving
the amount of olive oil in a dish and see if you can really *taste* the
difference. The biggest effect is on the texture of the food;
most of the flavor in a meal comes from other things in food
(mostly from plants). The simple rule is that you shouldn't eat
too many calories in fat; trans fats and animal saturated fats
are somewhat worse, but too much olive oil will lead to the same
problems (olive oil is 15% saturated fat!). Here is a
pdf
transcript of an enlightening, somewhat confrontational interview
of Neil Barnard, by 'fat-positive', media- and publisher-friendly, Mark
Hyman; Neil Barnard has all the goods. The so-called 'Mediterranean
diet' only became extremely olive-oil-heavy in the late 20th century;
this has resulted in some of the highest rates of childhood obesity
in the entire world (Greece and Italy). Instead of 30%, 40% (or
more!) total calories from fat, it's best to get 10% total calories
from fat. Given how calorie-dense it is, this translates simply to
'eat a lot less fat/oil'. Reducing oil reduces arterial inflammation.
It best to completely avoid purified oils.
Alcohol.
Large studies have found a "J-shaped" curve, meaning a little seems to be
slightly better than none, but any larger amounts are quite a bit worse
than none. It looks like the "J" goes above into the worse-than-none
region above 1 drink per day (damn!). There may also be hormonal effects
(hops contain phytoestrogens that hit estrogen receptor alpha). which may
be another reason (besides the alcohol itself) why alcohol consumption
is associated with breast cancer in women. So, as with cheese and meat
and oil, it's critical to keep the right dose -- a small one. Finally,
the small cardioprotective effect of alcohol only applies to people who
don't exercise, who eat too much meat and dairy, not enough vegetables,
and/or who smoke. At low doses, it doesn't obviously *hurt* the hearts
of people that already have healthy diets and physical habits. A low
dose is less than one drink per day.
Exercise.
Another problem is that people think that they are fat and unhealthy
because they don't exercise. Exercise certainly helps with muscle and
joint pain, and general skeletal maintenance, and circulatory fitness.
But note that even massive exercise can't cancel the effects of a bad
diet - chronic marathon and ultramarathon runners eating a bad diet
still get atherosclerosis!
The main misunderstanding here is that the *great majority* of the food
calories you eat every day are used up maintaining intermediary cellular
metabolism (heating yourself, taking out the cellular 'garbage', making
ATP to power tens of thousands of different energy-requiring chemical
reactions). The average human exhales about 2 pounds (~1 kg) of CO2
every day. The carbon in that CO2 excreted by each cell comes entirely
from food (unless you are starving to death). This means that in order
to maintain a heavier weight (more cellular machinery), you have to eat
more calories, *every day*. You burn almost as many calories per hour
sleeping as during waking hours. To keep a reduced weight, you have to
continuously eat less calories, forever.
Take an average overweight or obese person. They will often have been
eating as much as 1.5 times as many calories, say 1000 extra calories,
as they should have been, just to maintain their extra weight. This extra
weight then has to be carried around by a skeleton and joints not designed
for that much weight (not too mention simultaneously under osteoporotic
assault as a result of a high-dairy-protein, high-oil, inflammatory diet).
How much exercise would this person have to do to fix the calorie balance
without changing their every-day eating pattern? Well, if that person
ran *seven* fast (8-minute) miles a day, every day, including weekends,
that would fix it right there. That is completely impractical for
most people, esp. if obese. There is another effect that people often
fasten onto -- that regular *extreme* exercise *slightly* increases
metabolic rate. But that effect only breaks out of the noise with people
that are training for marathons or the Tour de France -- for example,
people cycling 30 miles a day, or running 10+ really fast miles a day.
Even then, the 'increased metabolism' calories are a small fraction of
the calories burned by a couch potato just sitting there maintaining
intermediary metabolism in all of their enlarged and more numerous cells.
The only way to permanently lose weight is to continuously and forever
eat less calories per day, period. This is actually not hard at all to
do if you eat a less calorie-dense, whole food plant-based diet.
Cancer.
One of the principal defining features of abnormal cancer cells is
that they continue to divide and crawl around, ignoring 'social' cues
from the surrounding cells that cause a normal cell to stop dividing
and stay put. When the tumor mass(es) grow to a large size, you die.
But this only occurs with the last few doublings. Unlike yeast, which
can double in 1-2 hours, the doubling time for tumor cells is usually
much slower (2-3 months, or longer). Starting with one abnormal cell
and assuming no cell death and a 3-month doubling time means you would
only end up with 16 abnormal cells after a year, and a million abnormal
cells after 5 years, which is still an invisible, undetectably small mass.
At that rate it would take almost 8 years to get up to a billion cells,
a detectable 1-2 cm tumor. However, if the doubling time is slowed
down to 6 months (by the immune system killing some abnormal cells, by
some abnormal cells killing themselves via apoptosis, or by a reduction
in tumor promoting growth factors), then it would take 15 years to grow
to a detectable size, or if doubling is slowed to a year, then 30 years
to become detectable. Because tumor growth is an exponential process,
relatively small modifications of the growth rate have a huge potential
to change lifetime outcome, for example, death at 90, from some other
cause with an encapsulated 2 cm tumor vs. death at 50, overrun with
large metastasized tumors. Diet has an enormous potential to affect
tumor growth throughout life, via anti-cancer compounds in plants,
by reduction in inflammation, by avoiding consuming tumor-promoting
proteins and factors in meat and dairy, and by avoiding obesity which
storehouses fat-soluble carcinogens. Diet is natural chemotherapy.
Recommendations.
For breakfast, for example, you could eat oatmeal with some fruit and
a some ground flax seed. Don't put dairy milk or dairy yogurt on it;
use nut or grain or soy milk or yogurt (the ~10 grams a day of soy
protein that the Japanese eat, about equivalent to a cup of soy milk
-- is associated with *lower* rates of breast and prostate cancer).
Oatmeal helps with blood lipids. It has a lot of fiber. It fills you
up and keeps you satisfied longer. Many people have lost a lot of weight
by changing *nothing* but eating oatmeal for breakfast.
Try to eat as many vegetables and fruits and grains and beans
as possible. Anything in the direction of less meat and cheese
and oil, and more whole-food plant-based and starchy food helps.
Eating a high-animal-protein diet is about as carcinogenic as
smoking, esp. if the diet includes a lot of processed and grilled meat
(beef/pork/chicken/lamb/fish/sausage). Learn to make flavorful spicy
foods without meat and diary and using less or no oil. Remember that
fat and meat actually don't have very strong flavors all by themselves.
Most of the flavor in a dish comes from plants, not meat. Just don't
drink soft drinks and manufactured 'juice' at all. Go for carbonated
water or squeeze a fresh orange or cut up a mango (tastes better,
more satisfying!).
Try to avoid eating any processed 'weaponized food'. These foods are
painstakingly designed to make you eat more than you should by avoiding
triggering satiation. This includes fast food and pizza, but generally
most highly processed food/junk. American pizza -- now metastasizing
worldwide -- has morphed into an insane ultra-mega-cheese-and-meat-and-oil
delivery system. Italian pizza (as found in Italy) does have cheese,
but much less of it, on a much thinner crust -- and the original Italian
pizza marinara didn't even have cheese at all! The American version
has quintupled the cheese content. American pizza every few days is one
of the reasons why teenagers (esp. lower income) are now getting fatty
livers and fatty, insulin-resistant diabetic muscles; their teen-aged
livers look like those of aged alcoholics. Insulin resistance is mainly
due to deposits of intramuscular fat, *not* sugar intake. The intestine
immediately transports fat that is eaten into the bloodstream from
where it then immediately gets deposited into fat stores. By contrast,
turning carbohydrates into fat is actually a much more energy-intensive
process, despite the idiotic anti-carb disinfo that is gospel to most
overweight people.
If a diet change can be maintained for even a few weeks, your palate
*does* change, remarkably quickly. You begin to find less calorie-dense,
less oily foods just as satisfying mouth-feel- and taste-wise in just
a few weeks. You don't have to give up any spices or taste. Rather,
a bare potato simply tastes 'brighter'. Most of the flavor in meat
dishes comes from plants. Plus, you get to eat a lot more, making it
much easier to get full. Most people losing weight on a whole foods
plant-based diet say that they have to make no conscious effort to
restrict their food intake *at all*, aside from eating mostly plants
and avoiding processed food and added oil.
Finally, if you eat an every-day high-calorie high-fat diet, the intensity
of the experience of calories and fat becomes lost to you, requiring
an ultra-high-calorie-and-fat preparation -- say, a duck confit burger
topped with a slice of fried foie gras, and a side of the original
'french fries', double-fried in duck fat to increase the fat content,
followed by a cheese course and a chocolat fondant -- to rise out of
the everyday background in order to achieve bliss (yes, I have eaten
that, with a lot of wine :-} ). Eating less-calorie-dense food most of
the time restores the bliss of an occasional high fat treat (and that
bliss can be achieved without the foie gras, which anyway contains
amyloid plaque
precursors from the stressed, force-fed duck's fatty liver disease;
remember that Mad Cow was contracted by eating meat from cows that had
eaten sheep spine). Also, you taste your food more intensely without
having to use so much alcohol to wash the fat off of your tongue after
every bite (esp. natural salt and sweet).
If you go completely plant-based in the modern world for more than a few
years straight, the *only* supplement you need is B12. That's because
people eating plant-based real-poor-people diets used to get it from
eating small amounts of bacteria in dirt on vegetables (you only need to
eat micrograms since proper blood levels are in picograms). Since B12
gets into meat via the same pathway (animals eating bacteria) and given
the high-antibiotic conditions in concentrated animal feeding operations,
meat eaters are often deficient in B12 (more commonly than vegans!).
Last, but not least, meat and dairy account for between 20% (UN estimate)
to 50% (World Bank estimate) of human greenhouse gas emissions, partly a
function of whether you include methane (methane has a shorter atmospheric
life than CO2, but is a lot more potent). This includes pumping water,
fossil fuel driven deforestation, making fertilizer, growing animal food
(5-20x as much food production required compared to eating the plants
directly), methane (animal farts and open pit manure decomposition from
20 billion chickens, 1.5 billion cattle, and 1 billion pigs and sheep
pooping in miserable conditions, at any one time). After having removed
most shallower-living, easier-to-get fish from the world's oceans,
humans are now literally scraping the bottoms of the deep oceans with
huge trawls to decimate stocks of 100-year old (human-mercury-laden)
deep-sea fish. It's an utter joke to eat chicken and fish and beef and
pork every day and 'be against human-caused climate change' or to be for
'sustainability'. Eating 'local', or 'wild-caught', or 'grass-fed' meat
and fish doesn't help in the slightest. Reducing or eliminating eating
chicken and beef and pork and dairy and fish is a *lot* more important
than sobbing about Trump and the Paris accords.
[May29,'17]
The brash boldness
of criminal banks is increasing. Look at this this
Fed
graph plotting excess reserves and then interest paid on excess
reserves. Excess reserves are money originally created out of the void
by the Fed, then held by large banks beyond their reserves requirements.
*Interest paid on excess reserves* is the amazing concept of re-depositing
the created-from-the-void money with the Fed, who then pays the banks
interest for doing this (!). This is an utterly risk-free way for
banks to 'make money' (quite literally). You can see that in 2017,
the Fed has suddenly started rapidly ticking up the interest rate it
pays large banks on the 'excess reserves' (about 1/3 of this interest
is paid to foreign banks). From 2009 to 2016, the rate was 0.25,
then then 0.50% in 2016, then 0.75% and 1.0% in 2017. The Fed has
carefully set this rate to stay higher than the tiny increases in
effective Federal Funds rate, which can be seen in comparison in
these
graphs. Put this in the context of the
96 million Americans currently not in the workforce
out of a working age population of 205 million people (graphs
here).
That means almost *half* of working age people in America are not
employed. And we are creating money to give to large US and foreign banks
who can then deposit it back with the Fed to collect interest. Normally,
I would now say something like 'if more people knew how this worked...'.
But the sad reality is, if more people knew, the more likely outcome
would be *more* votes for bankers and rather than pitchforks for bankers.
Maybe the way to get them raise their pitchforks would be to take away
the 'smart' phones.
[Jun05,'17]
It's blackly humorous to watch the 'left' and the 'right' reacting to the
proposed Trump withdrawal from the Paris climate accords. Numbskulls on
the 'right' are doing their stupid anti-science jigs, @assbooking and
commenting and slobbering to each other using technology they don't
understand that was created by, uhhh, the same kind of scientists and
engineers that figured out climate change. But the appalled 'left' (and
most EU-ians) are just as bad. They act as if the Paris accords have
had even the tiniest measurable restraining effect on the collective
rush of the insane monkey posse known as humanity toward the hard
limits of a finite earth. The Paris accords are not a 'first step' --
they have done *absolutely nothing* to the utterly linear increase in
world
CO2 output. It is arguably better to tear them up, because they have
served merely as a smokescreen and a way to salve consciences by saying
'we are doing our best', when in reality, we are doing *nothing at all*.
The only way to fix the problem would be for everybody to immediately
begin to use less stuff, eat less meat and dairy (meat and dairy
account for between 20% [UN] to 50% [World Bank] of human greenhouse
gas emissions!), reduce hospital visits through improved diet, take less
pharmaceutical drugs, drive less, fly less, bicycle to work and the food
store, live in smaller houses, buy less crap, and esp. have less kids
(the other half of greenhouse gas emission increases). We all know *not
one* of those things are negotiable for the great majority of either the
'right' *or* 'left'. A pox on all the dancing *and* the sobbing.
[Jun09,'17]
The market capitalization of Tesla now equals
that of
GM, the largest US car manufacturer. For now, let's ignore the
fact that Tesla has lost $2-3 billion a year over the past few years
while GM is making roughly $6 billion a year. Instead, let's compare
market capitalization per car sold in 2016. That would be $5,000
per car sold for GM (or $6,600 for Ford) versus $800,000 per car
sold for Tesla. Thus, Tesla's market capitalization per car sold is
roughly 160x that of GM. Of course, this doesn't do justice to how
much more 'disruption' Tesla is capable of than GM, and how much this
'disruption' costs. For example, a pension fund investment in Tesla has
great potential to 'disrupt' some old people a few years down the line.
Another potential example is cobalt. One of the critical components
of 'lithium' batteries is cobalt. Battery manufacture currently uses
about half of all world's cobalt production. The price of cobalt
doubled in late 2016 from $12/pound to $25/pound. About 1% of cars
are electric, and a tiny fraction of 1% of homes have lithium-cobalt
(e.g., Power Wall) electric storage. The money rentiers are
slobbering
over the money changing prospects of a mere 10% increase in cobalt
production in 2017 (123,000 tons/year to 136,000 tons/year). Just
imagine the 'disruption' we can look forward to when everybody gets
an electric car and an electric home, and cobalt production expands by
50x or 100x (5,000% or 10,000%). Higher prices will no doubt cause a
hundred times as much easily accessible cobalt to be found -- because
we humans need and deserve it. Disrupt me harder. This doesn't mean
I oppose electric carz! (or better, electric bicycles) or think that
there won't be some more progress in battery technology (e.g., see
update below). It's just that it's also important to consider physical
reality of our current overshoot when reading puff pieces like
this
recent one from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (that I already complained
about above) to counteract the global reality distortion field. I know,
deep in my heart, that there is probably no way to soften the eventual
blow that will arrive around 2030. But every new day, really just like
the cornucopians, I imagine that anything is possible! [Update: Jun13:
here is some late 2016 progress on the battery front :-} the new
Renault/Nissan
Zoe battery developed by LG has 41 kWh (200+ miles) usable (75%
more energy than the original battery which was 23 kWh), but weighs only
a little more at 670 pounds (old battery was 640 pounds) and fits in
same space. Given that electric cars are considerably less complex than
ICE cars, their price could eventually reach parity with ICE cars -- less
complexity cancelling out greater expense of the large battery.]
[Jun15,'17]
A large number of retail stores are
close to, or in, bankruptcy and are
closing
many stores. This is often attributed to
online sales. But online sales only accounted for
8%
of total retail sales in 2016. Of course, online sales are continuing
to grow (Amazon accounted for about 1/4 of total growth in retail sales
last year), but this also includes online sales by the companies that
are going bankrupt. Put together with the recent rise in car inventories
and recent pauses in the preposterous increases in high-end real estate,
the overall picture suggests we are getting close to another recession
-- a slight contraction of the economy, which will cause a slight
increment in the small glut of oil, which will cause a large oil price
crash, which will come at exactly the wrong time for light tight oil
companies, who have increased debt-funded capital expenditure over the
past year. Huge increases in 'subprime' light tight oil debt
coming
due in 2018 could turn out to be a nucleus for instability in
world banking system in 2018-2019. However, I had expected 'subprime'
light tight oil debt to have caused a problem long before this.
So hopefully things will continue to limp along without another
2008-like crash. The 2008 crash resulted in a permanent decrement
in retail sales unlike previous recessions. Here is a 25-year
Fed
graph of 'retail sales' (blue), the related 'new orders for consumer
goods' (red), and the BASE money supply (green). The red and blue
lines never returned to their long-term trend lines. Compare 2008 to
the almost invisible effect of the 2001 dot-com bubble crash. The BASE
money supply graph (green) shows the huge spike in bank 'excess reserves'
that began in 2008, and that conveniently illustrates the three main
bouts of quantitative easing (2008, 2010, 2012), AKA 'give more money
to already super-rich people'. The Fed has indicated that they are
about to start 'unwinding' the three QE's. This is not yet visible
in the green line. Though I think super-rich people are unavoidably,
intrinsically, irremediably evil, personally, I would prefer limping
along to Greek-style austerity any day. But I'm just one insignificant
non-rich passenger on our runaway train...
[Jun19,'17]
Amazon buys brick-and-mortar Whole Foods with the intent to fire a bunch
of people, create a more automated zombified buying experience, crapify,
and reduce prices to compete with Walmart. An example of the automation
is a 30 May 2017 Amazon patent on a system to block attempts to use
your 'smart' phone to comparison shop when you are in their store using
their wifi. Forget about the so-called election. The real voting comes
when you buy stuff through Amazon. That vote for Amazon is a vote for
a cashless, police-state panopticon. They won't need to shoot too many
attempted shoplifters because they will recognize you, pre-crime style,
before you even walk through the front door. Avoid voter's remorse just
a few years down the line! Avoid amazon! It's *not* inevitable.
[Jun24,'17]
Sauve qui peut
It is difficult to talk about diet because of its powerful social,
personal, political, and business overtones. The advantages of a
plant-based diet are obvious from the scientific perspectives of hominid
evolutionary history, interventional dietary studies, and climate change.
Humans have a digestive tract evolved mostly for vegetables and fruits
and grains when compared to other animals, they have molars specifically
evolved to grind seeds when compared to other apes, and they live a long
time, which gives chronic problems caused by eating a too-high-protein,
too-high-fat diet a lot of time to build up. Eating a meat-heavy diet
(chicken/beef/pork/dairy/fish) is a major initiator of human cancer,
heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, erectile
dysfunction, and retinal damage. Plant-based diets have been known
experimentally to actually *reverse* the progress of many of these
diseases for more than a half a century. And finally, we now know that
eating meat accounts for perhaps as much as 50% of human-caused climate
change when you include the methane, repurposing land (it's meat that
cuts down the rain forests), pumping water, growing animal food, etc.
But the social, political, and business overlays on diet combine to almost
completely drown out the basic facts. Returning to a mostly plant-based
diet looks like a social move down the 'ladder of development', esp. for
people who have just clambered up. It is a return to the diet of the
truly poor. It looks like a sign of deprivation and failure, for both
rich *and* poor. It turns its back on meat-centered high European
food culture. There is even an unpatriotic tinge to bankrupting large
industries and throwing people out of work (big meat, big dairy, big
hospitals, big pharma, big medical devices, big insurance). For example,
if everybody were to eat less meat, they would require a lot less surgery
and less drugs and less MRI's and less doctor visits and less in-home
care and less cars and less battery-operated carts.
The hidden social aspects of discussing plant-based diets has some
analogy to what I imagine the well-to-do car drivers are thinking
as we interact on my daily bicycle commute. When not (respectfully)
resentful at my occupying even a small amount of road space, or at my
slowing down their righteous commute by a second or two, I imagine that
they also extend empathetic pity toward me, seeing my graying hair,
and thinking that for some reason, I might not be able to afford a car,
like the other poor people that they see on bicycles. I probably get
the most heat from genuinely economically poor drivers, esp. before I was
wearing my helmet, because they were only one step up the pecking order;
or if seeing my helmet, they realize that I am not poor, they also assume
that I am cycling for political (or selfish) reasons, and then resent my
'slumming'.
But I'm not cycling mainly to save the planet. The planet doesn't need
saving and will do just fine after humans will have mostly exhausted
the easily accessible energy -- stored in several hot periods in the
Paleozoic and Mesozoic hundreds of millions of years ago -- over the
next few decades. The humans population will then begin to go down.
Sure it might take 10,000 or 50,000 years to re-populate, re-vegetate, and
're-plankton-ate' the planet, but the planet has a lot time on its hands.
Getting back to diet, eating mostly plant-based, like cycling, is mostly
about saving myself. Old, obese, heavy-meat-eating humans come to have
bodies resembling that of the dead killer whale that recently got tangled
in fishing lines near the coast of Britain, and that had a stunning one
part per *thousand* PCB's in its fat. And killer whale physiology has
adapted to being a top predator, unlike humans. Humans have been able
to turn themselves into top predators not by adapting their bodies, but
by using language, the second coming of a symbol-using system (
PDF)
built on top of lower level DNA-and-protein system that initiated
Darwinian evolution. That final step occurred within an instant of
Darwinian evolutionary time, so the re-evolution of human physiology,
gastrointestinal tract, teeth, gut, and so on, hasn't even started
('Paleo' is a complete crock); and there is not nearly enough energy (the
100+ million year old coal/oil/methane will have been mostly consumed
within the space of 100 years) for re-evolution of the essentially vegan
huamn gastrointestinal tract to ever get off the ground.
Finally, the bad effects of having a mostly vegetarian physiology,
but eating too much meat and fish and dairy, are exacerbated by highly
efficient methods of industrial meat production, where waste animal fats
are incorporated into animal feed, which is then fed in all directions
(chicken fat to beef, beef fat to chicken, fish fat to chicken, etc).
The result is to concentrate man-made fat-soluble toxins and metals in
animal fat, which are then immediately deposited in human belly fat,
like the trans fats that end up there when humans eat too much trans
fats (including the trans fat that naturally occurs in beef, pork,
lamb, and chicken). Even plant production isn't immune -- for example,
metals-containing chicken feces ends up being used as rice fertilizer.
But the bottom line is that eating mostly plant-based doesn't have to
be seen mainly as social or moral commentary. It's also a rational
and individually selfish response to knowing the facts of the interplay
between Darwinian evolution, biochemistry, and the optimization method
known as capitalism. Sauve qui peut.
[Jun28,'17]
Much as with the toxic interaction between capitalism/business
and human diet referred to in my diet rants above, the
interaction between capitalism and 'noooz' is
equally toxic:
Anonymous/undercover Project Veritas guy:
"Why is CNN constantly like, Russia this, Russia that?"
John Bonifield, CNN supervising producer for the CNN Medical Unit:
"Because it's ratings. Our ratings are incredible right now."
Bonifield later reports on 'what he is up against' (meaning what
Bonifield's supervisor is up against from the CEO of CNN, Jeff Zucker):
"Good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we're done with it.
Let's get back to Russia."
On the Russia reporting, John Bonifield says:
"Could be bullsh*t. I mean, it's mostly bullsh*t right now. Like, we
don't have any big giant proof... I don't know, if you were finding
something, we would know about it. The way these leaks happen,
they'd leak it. It'd leak. If it was something really good, it would
leak."
On Trump, John Bonifield simply says:
"Trump is good for [our] business right now".
Project Veritas is run by conservative James O’Keefe.
Here
is a pathetic attempt (one of many) to smear the *real information* in the
video, no doubt illegally and surreptitously obtained (like virtually all
domestic C-eye-eh surveillance) by an anonymous person. The Heavy.com
piece uses fear, uncertainty, doubt, and character assassination. Doesn't
work for me, and I'm as left and anti-Trump as they come. But I think
the Mighty Wurlizter will eventually win this one, because of the even
more dismally short attention span of people these days. For example,
last night, Russiagate merrily continued to gush out of CNN, with an
hour-long evening show containing such gems as 'Russians are genetically
programmed' to be shifty spys, and to want to undermine US freedoms.
What a creepy re-run of McCarthy-ism, but also European/American
'master race' propaganda (e.g., see US WWI recruiting poster
here).
The Mighty Wurlitzer used this across Europe and the US to whip up,
and drag along, the (always!) generally antiwar populace in England,
France, Germany, and Russia into both WWI and WWII. The 'genetic master
race' bullsh*t, whether coming from Germans, US-ians, or Israelis -- is
utterly poisonous chimpanzee politics. It doesn't directly use science.
It doesn't even really use language. Rather, it's about creating
masterful flows of subconsciously perceived chimpanzee politics images and
chimpanzee politics soundtracks and chimpanzee politics voice timbres.
Of course, creating and blasting these finely crafted products out to
the insouciant populace, requires an incomprehensibly complex machinery
created by physicists, mathematicians, engineers, writers, directors,
editors. Almost unbelievable coordination and distributed intellectual
power is required to deliver and present the CNN product about the
supposed 'genetics' of Russians on the airport flat screens where I saw it
-- along with my fellow travelers, the majority of whom were overweight
or morbidly obese. For better or worse, this is truly the pinnacle of
language-driven human cultural and business evolution -- both CNN, but
also the current the state of the American body. In the near future,
I'm hoping that complexity (and girth!) will begin to decline!
[Jul03,'17]
Good sh*t
The interaction between bioscience, entrepreneurship, and the seven
deadly sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth) is
always fertile ground for black humor. Over the past 5 years, there has
been a surge of interest in the 'gut microbiome'. Initially disregarded
because it was so complex, not to mention constantly under scorched-earth
attack by 'life saving' antibiotics, molecular biologists have more
recently began to start cataloging its diversity in unprecedented detail,
finally realizing that it is literally a critical part of the body.
It is highly responsive to what we eat. Since the poor people of the
world -- who live on a few dollars a day and so can only afford to
eat a whole foods plant-based diet -- have massively lower incidences
of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, macular degeneration,
breast/prostate/colon/pancreatic cancer, rheumatoid and regular arthritis,
asthma, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, gout, kidney stones, gall
bladder problems, and erectile dysfunction as they get old, some biotech
guys have come up with the idea of gathering sh*t from these poorest of
the poor people, purifying out the wholesome bacteria in it, and then
reselling it to obese, diseased, bad-diet westerners as a hi-tech pill.
There's always IPO gold in the 'tropics'. Of course, an oral pill
would probably be pretty useless, because it has to pass through the
acid bath in the stomach, one function of which is to kill bacteria.
So perhaps suppositories or enemas. I'm sure there would be a market
for a hi-tech battery-operated cell-phone-app-controlled 'tele gut
microbiome rejuvenator pump'. And if vampire Peter Thiel is already
injecting himself with young people's blood, just think, he might need
some of their sh*t, too! Of course, the back door approach won't work
very well either. The problem is one of the deadly sins, gluttony
-- which is usually pronounced 'meat-o-ny'. Eating a high-protein,
high-fat, animal-based diet results in the wrong kind of food down
there for the poor people's whole foods plant-based intestinal bacteria.
But the hope of being a daily glutton, but then fixing it with a pill,
is an eternal human desire, so the minor fact that it won't actually
work won't stop it. Probably not too long before Therash*t, Stronz-onos,
MetaboT$rd, Merde-oni, and iShite, are butting, uh..., heads.
[Jul11,'17]
A biotech stock analyst (from 2003, quoted in the NYT, dredged up by
Chris
Hedges: "We sometimes joke that when you’re doing a clinical
trial, there are two possible disasters. The first disaster is if
you kill people. The second disaster is if you cure them. ... The
truly good drugs are the ones you can use chronically for a long,
long time". The frank admission of evil, though disgusting, is
somehow less mentally disturbing to me than somebody like
Willem
Post, a retired engineer who posts on a Maine
NIMBY anti-wind-power site (and on Euan Mearns site).
It is difficult to put a finger precisely on the source of
my unease. Willem Post is excellent on the subject of the
true
carbon costs of electric cars or on the
basic physics and engineering background to
energy
efficient houses -- and why better insulation is just as, or
even more, important than making more 'renewable' electric generation.
I generally agree with him that by not considering the whole system (e.g.,
including natural gas peaker plants) that green techno-cornucopians are
badly overestimating the so-far quite incremental effects of 'renewables'.
Then there is overall growth. For example, the average 2004-2014 global
growth rate in energy usage was 2% per year. This was barely covered by
renewables, which grew at 2.8% of total energy per year. And note that
that this doesn't consider increased energy costs of spot generation as
intermittent solar and wind are daily compensated by larger and larger
ramp-up/ramp-downs causing more wear and tear on natural gas peaker
plants. One problem is that he is geologically naive -- he expects that
"we have time to prepare, as we have about 100 to 150 years of fossil
fuels left over". In that view, there is plenty enough energy left to
slowly (potentially!) build lots of high-quality EU-style Passivhaus's.
This is probably why he is so against wind turbines marring the beautiful
ridges near libertarian rich people's edge-of-the-forest houses in Maine.
This is similar to general US tax proceeds being paid as subsidies to rich
people buying Tesla 'Tuscan roof' solar panel roofs for their mountain
vacation home (not to mention subsidizing Elon himself). Something about
Willem Post's whole package of off-the-grid retreats for 'euro' rich
people really rubs me the wrong way. I know he talks about the need
for subsidies for poorer Maine-ers for house insulation. But I know
he also must know this will never happen. He seems not to realize how
close we are to a net energy precipice, or if he does, he doesn't let on.
Of course, he *has* to know that the harvesting low-energy-density solar
and wind resources inevitably requires larger geographic footprints.
And, of course, he knows that energy storage can have a similarly large
footprint -- the energy in a gallon of gasoline is equivalent to lifting
3500 gallons of water (13 tons of water) one kilometer into the air.
Perhaps, the real source of my unease is that deep in my heart, I know
we are all basically acting the same as him -- just to varying degrees,
each mostly proportional to how rich we are. The stock analyst, letting
it all hang out, was somehow more refreshing.
[Jul13,'17]
Sometimes, I come across something that fundamentally
upends my understanding of large scale money.
Here
in an example, which shows a graph of the 'percentage of global bond
market returns explained by central bank asset changes'. After a spike
during the Financial Crisis, it was down 1% or less. Then, there was a
short spike to over 30% at the end of 2010, but quickly back to under 1%.
Then, a fatter spike in June 2013, and then an even fatter one starting in
2014 going up to 20%, but only going down to 10%. Finally, starting in
2016, a sustained increase, now reaching over 50% (!). The bond market
(worth $200 trillion) is much bigger than the stock market (worth $70
trillion), and has proportionately more daily trading. The article quotes
BofA saying "Central banks have become the bond market". These
Fed
graphs of reverse repos (another weird big bank support
mechanism where the Fed 'pawns' its assets for an interest-bearing
loan from big banks to the Fed, because the Fed needs money,
haha), and Fed total cash balance are strongly correlated
with the 'Fed percent of the bond market' graph. Similarly,
the
huge
linear increase in the balance sheet of the Bank of Japan
took off at a similar time (near the end of 2013). And the
last, biggest jump in excess reserves held at the Fed
happened
around the same time. Another eye-opener today for me was
this
article, showing that 40% of the Fed's interest on excess reserves
held at the Fed is paid to foreign banks. These graphs suggest that
beginning around 2014, worldwide central bank disturbances of similar
magnitude to those observed during the Financial Crisis have occurred,
yet without huge, easily visible consequences. I am amazed that nothing
has blown up! I feel like passenger on Titanic, hearing some loud noises
coming from down below, but not knowing what they really imply. The loud
noises include: (1) possible reduction in bank excess reserves causing
(more!) asset inflation in the real economy, (2) effects of change in
interest paid by Fed (US taxpayers!) on excess reserves (which are 40%
foreign!), (3) effects of unwinding the $4.4 trillion QE Fed balance
sheet, (4) effects of Fed interest rate increases, (5) effects on the
bond market (now 50% Fed?!). I still don't really have a completely
firm basic-level understanding of how all this self-referential stuff
actually works. However, it seems clear we are now exploring a new part
of the parameter space, right as we sail over peak net energy.
[Jul18,'17]
Following up on last week's 'why hasn't this already blown up',
take a look at this graph (from Credit Suisse via zerohedge) of
who
has bought stock since 2009. It shows that companies buying their
own stock accounts for *all* cumulative buying of stock since 2009!
I knew it was big but not that big. Stock buybacks benefit only
the
scum bosses, and mostly disregard performance. Filthy rich parasites
are hollowing out the entire world for themselves. Walter Scheidel,
using historical examples, argues that the only thing that has *ever*
reversed this trend is mass violence and/or catastrophe. Sociopathic rich
people have always thought the same way. This article on the
collapse
of a private equity fund investing in energy, shows that the richies were
fully expecting oil to spike in the near future (like I expected!). What
caused the oil price collapse was a tiny glut from the combined effect of
(1) frackers having to sell into a soft market to pay interest on their
still-unpaid loans, and (2) the world's proles not having enough money
to drive and buy even moar. Neither reflects well on humans.
[Jul26,'17]
Toyota announced they are working on a
solid state lithium battery that supposedly can
"charge
in a few minutes". This brought out the usual 'Iron man power
pack' magical thinking in many of the commenters (well, at least those
that weren't whining in the most unmanly fashion about the frigging
'styling' visible in the publicity photo...). Let's do the math.
A service station pump can put 10 gallons of gasoline into your tank
in two minutes. Internal combustion engines are about 25% efficient,
so given that you get about 8 kWh (kilowatt-hours = energy) out of the
33 kWh in each gallon of gasoline, you are loading about 82 usable kWh
in two minutes. To put that much energy into a half a ton electric car
battery in two minutes would require an electrical power supply capable
of putting out 2500 kW (kilowatts = power) over those 2 minutes, as
in 2.5 megawatts -- enough power for 2000 average homes. In reality,
the power used goes down during charging, so to get an average power
of 2.5 megawatts, you would need more like 5 megawatts of power at the
beginning, and then even a little more given less-than-100% efficiency.
The idea that consumers are going to be hooking up high voltage 5
megawatt cables to their beautifully styled carz to draw off a burst
of power equivalent to that used by 4000 households -- and that the
battery is somehow going to absorb all that energy without being damaged
or having its recharging life reduced is complete fantasy (
here
is what a 2 megawatt cable actually looks like -- this is a ship-to-shore
cable). 20 cars charging at the same time would require the entire
output of the largest existing wind turbine running in high wind.
Of course, this kind of fantasy is the only way that the wonderful
resource extraction system known as capitalism can advertise these
fine advances in battery chemistry to the average human primate who is
otherwise busy fussing about the blue trim. In reality, if you spread
out the charge over 15-20 minutes, don't fully charge the battery, and
put up with some battery life loss, it becomes more practical and safe
to put in another 150-200 miles worth of range into an electric car.
But it will still require almost a megawatt of additional electrical
power per car to come from somewhere (and it will reduce battery life).
The Toyota Prius is extremely efficient -- it's the car equivalent of
a diesel locomotive. Driven gingerly for a year, it actually got an
average mileage (measured by how much gasoline we put into it) of 65
miles per gallon including city plus highway. But, recently Toyota
inexplicably sunk a huge, now abandoned, effort into hydrogen fuel
cell cars. Perhaps their new magic battery won't turn out like that.
But possibly it will -- it might be 'the battery pack of the future,
and it always will be'. I know, I just need to get over it and 'eat
my own dog food'. Male mandrills have ridiculous red and blue 'trim',
too, on their faces and testicles, driven by Darwinian evolution.
Language-driven human evolution just works in the same way. And besides,
all this talk about carz is a little off base, at least this year in the
US, because the American primates are bankrupting the car manufacturers
by buying less carz, and instead buying even more and bigger SUV's,
pickups, crossovers, and vans using near-zero percent interest loans,
partly because gas is still cheap. I can just imagine the meetings
between the empirical scientists and engineers at Toyota, who have to
respect physics and engineering constraints, and the Toyota advertising
guys, who have to respect how most human primates seem to 'think' these
days ('the advertising guys just said what??!').
[Jul27,'17]
I just read
this
account of how script kiddies can hijack an 'internet-of-things',
automatic carwash, of all things, and make the mechanical arm hit the
vehicle, continuously spray the occupants, and bring the exit door down
repeatedly on the vehicle trying to make its escape. Of course, the
system was run by a stoopid insecure Windoze CE machine, and 'who does
that today?'. But peeling back the layers, this is a little parable for
the downfall of humanity. First, why wash the friggin carz so much in
the first place?! The reason is that the fat guys with man-breasts and
heart disease that roar by me on my bicycle every day wouldn't think
of going out in public without the 'makeup' picture purrfect on their
hyper manly turbo charged pickup truck. But it's too inconvenient to
wash their metal can by hand, so aspie engineering humans have made big
machines to help. But then it was too inconvenient to even have one
person watching over the automatic car wash machine by hand, so Windoze
CE and some outsourced computer programmers to the rescue. But I'm sure
the security on the intelligent refrigerator that will have a landing
port for amazon soylent food delivery drone system will be *much* more
secure and will never chase you around the house trying to drop a jar
of soy pickle things on your head, or mistakenly call in the swat team
when somebody yells, or lock the fridge door because the latest delivery
of soylent overdrew your account - because it won't run on Windoze CE.
Right.
[Jul28,'17]
Total government plus personal debt in 1980 was slightly less that
median household income (this excludes corporate debt, data from
here).
Now, total debt is closing in on 6x median household income, which
comes out to 7.3x as much debt relative to income as in 1980. Debt is
'money that has been rented'. In the case of renting a house, somebody
has to make the house before it can be rented. This actually uses up a
lot of energy and materials and labor, and the house must be maintained.
In the case of renting money to buy a house (a mortgage), banks simply
generate debt/money out of the void by updating some digits in a database
at the moment of creation of the loan. Then, they get to charge monthly
rent on this 'thing' that they have 'made' for 30 years, on threat of
taking the house, for virtually no expense in energy or materials or
labor or maintenance. Interest rates are currently low, which makes the
'more than 7x as much debt' somewhat less onerous. For example, in the
1980's, interest rates on a 30 mortgage averaged about 12% versus about
4% now, which means that that interest rates are 1/3 of what they were,
but there is 7x as much debt instead of just 3x as much debt. The banker
parasites have thus roughly doubled their share relative to the rest
of us. We need to get them off our backs. We should take a cue from
the banks themselves - they have completely lost trust in each other.
On 27 July 2017, the head of Britain's Financial Conduct Authority
said that Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate, will be
phased
out by the end of 2021. The reason? Ignore the chaff in the
article just linked. The real reason is that large criminal banks
now trust each other *so little* that unsecured interbank lending has
essentially dried up to nothing (though they are fine with unsecured
lending to regular people - e.g., credit cards). Here is a
Fed
graph showing interbank loans, plotted along with the BASE money
supply. I always put the BASE in because it is easy to see when things
went haywire from 2008 on, when it went vertical (for comparison,
see the tiny blips in BASE for Y2K and 9-11). We ignore big bank
shenanigans at great risk to ourselves and the real world. From this
Fed graph
of 10-year-minus-1-year interest rates (and 5-year interest rates for
reference), it looks like short term interest rates go below long term
rates (blue line) pretty reliably about 6 months before a recession.
Since long term rates are going down relative to short term, but are
still 1% above short term, it looks like perhaps another year (amazingly)
until all hell breaks loose again. However, as is obvious from the graph,
when change comes, it can be very rapid.
[Aug04,'17]
The recent Seymour Hersh phone call with Ed Butowsky, recorded and
leaked by
Butowsky is entertaining -- well worth a 6-minute listen. No mention
of Seth Rich's surprising morning demise after Rich apparently made it
through the first night in the hospital in reasonable shape, so maybe
that was disinfo and it really was a robbery. But, perhaps even more
likely, this leak is to fix that other leak, and disencumber the DNC.
Hersh is certainly not above catapulting disinfo/decoys -- look at his
ridiculous 're-broadcast' of the 'bin Laden' killing in Pakistan ("he
was already dead, Jim"). It didn't sound like Hersh was planning for
this to be leaked (e.g., Brennan comment), but who knows; the mainstream
media treated it like radioactive debris and completely ignored it.
But standing back a little from the fray, the whole so-called 'war
between the deep-state and Trump' is deeply suspect (pace Paul Craig
Roberts, but also Hersh!). The utter continuity of government in the
transition from Obama to Trump, including bankers, neocons, the Pentagon,
and 'defense' contractors, intelligence agencies, Amazon, Google, and
so on supports my assessment before the election -- Trump vs. Hillary
was a *complete* side-show. It's all about keeping the non-super-rich
public -- right and left -- off-balance while injecting new memes, like
the new cold war, into their distracted, misdirected, drugged brains,
while managing unprecedented looting by the super-rich in the run-up
to powerdown. One could argue that this is better than having to deal
with a bunch of *un*distracted, really angry human primates who don't
really know how the find the people they really want to string up.
[Aug06,'17]
An evolutionary approach to diet
The other great apes, like all monkeys, are all basically whole-food,
plant-based eaters (leaves, roots, seeds, fruits, nuts, plus a few
insects). Some packs of chimps do get 1-2% of their yearly calories
from eating an occasional baby monkey or baby duiker, but if there are
no baby monkeys or miniature antelopes around, a chimp pack won't eat
any meat at all. Bonobos appear to be exclusively whole food plant-based.
When we look at how humans have *changed* relative to our closest
relatives (bonobos and chimps, then gorillas, then orangs), the ancestors
of modern humans have very clearly thickened the enamel on our cheek
teeth, flattened out the cusps, and shrunk the canines so they don't
stick up relative to the other teeth. Those tooth changes -- as well as
humans having an 2-3 times as many copies of the gene for salivary amylase
as chimps have (for breaking down starch) -- are clearly adaptations
for adding more grains and seeds and starchy roots (and even bark!) to
vegetable, fruit, and nut eating. This has been confirmed by analyzing
what has been found in the tartar between the teeth of early hominids.
These changes may even be related to the need to support a larger brain
(starch is the primary direct energy source for the body and brain).
These changes occurred long before the origin of agriculture.
Our guts are not very different from chimpanzees. Compared to
chimpanzees, we have a relatively longer small intestine (human small
intestines are more similar in length to that of orangs and gibbons),
and a relatively shorter large intestine, and a somewhat smaller overall
size of the gastrointestinal tract. But it's important not to lose
sight of the big picture -- the human gut remains most similar to that of
an herbivore as opposed to a classical omnivore like a bear, much less
that of a carnivore. A good summary by Rob Dunn can be found
here.
Human cooking of some kind has probably been around for at least a
third of a million years, which is enough time for it to have begun to
have had a small effect on our physiology. Humans typically cook meat
to firm it up, which makes it less disgusting to us than when it's raw
(the form preferred by carnivores), and perhaps not incidentally, more
like edible plants. The relatively longer small intestine may suggest
that humans are adapted to slightly more digestible carbohydrate food than
with other apes, and the shorter large intestine is perhaps the result of
having to deal with somewhat less uncooked plant fiber. However, keeping
perspective, our gut looks nothing remotely like that of an animal that
eats meat at every meal. To take one example, the pH of our stomach is
not anywhere near as acidic as that of a carnivore (high stomach acid
helps break down high-protein food and kills more bacteria). If you
feed an herbivore like a rabbit a high cholesterol diet (the standard
'rabbit model of human atherosclerosis'), the rabbit immediately gets
artery disease, just like a human (77% of the young male hearts of Korean
war casualties showed signs of atherosclerosis). If you feed an omnivore
like a dog a high cholesterol diet, its physiology can deal with it until
it nears the end of its lifespan. Some (but not not other) Neantherthals
may have eaten a lot of meat; perhaps, this is one reason why they lost!
Once we got language and domesticated animals, however, all bets were off,
and we could eat absolutely anything we fancied and go where no monkeys
had gone before (e.g., the arctic). The important thing to keep in mind
here is that is it highly unlikely that there has been anywhere near
enough time since the origin of modern language (long after the origin
of cooking) to have made even the slightest dent in *evolutionarily*
changing our dentition, our guts, our basic physiology, or what chemicals
our digestive systems expect to get as daily input. Just because we *can*
eat a lot of meat doesn't mean we are designed to do so; and hominin
cooking may was probably mainly used to make *vegetables* more digestible.
Evolution is slow, but remarkably opportunistic. It seems likely that
primate evolution has basically arranged for us to critically depend on a
dietary intake of an amazingly complex array of nutrients and antioxidants
from plants, fruits, and grains, all accompanied by a lot of fiber
(some of it cooked), which is then fermented in the colon. There is
evidence that normal appetite control depends on signals deriving from
short chain fatty acids that result from fermentation of plant fiber.
To take one of thousands of examples, we don't make vitamin C (like
carnivores do!) because we expect to get it from eating plants. Most of
these thousands and thousands of nutrients and chemicals, as well as
fiber in plants are completely absent in meat and dairy. Eating meat
also immediately changes gut flora (e.g., feeding meat for just one week
to a long-term whole food plant-based eater).
Trying to distill this panoply of healthy, expected plant chemicals into
a pill won't work because: (1) there are *so* many chemicals, most not
yet characterized or annointed 'vitamins', (2) pharmaceutical companies
can only test and patent one chemical at a time, and (3) eating large
amounts of single chemicals outside of their normal whole-food context
often leads to disaster. For example, higher *serum levels* of vitamin
E's are associated with reduced cancer and reduced heart failure risk.
But when long-term supplementation with one of the vitamin E's was tested
- a very different thing than getting all the vitamin E's in the context
of real food - it turned out to be associated with a *higher* risk of
heart failure. The human gastrointestinal tract is happy when it has
to work to extract frutose from actual fruit; it is not happy to get a
concentrated aqueous solution of already-purified fructose poured into it.
Finally, if you were to take your hypothetical daily 'super combo plant
goodness pill', but then go on eating meat and dairy every day, you would
end up with all the wrong bacteria feeding on the animal protein breakdown
products in your large intestine (a lot of the same bacteria that make
rotten meat smell different than rotten vegetables). Of course, we could
try to 'fix' this by also daily feeding ourselves special antibiotics (as
is done with industrial farm herbivores when they are fed ground-up animal
protein), and maybe by using special hi-tech probiotic suppositories.
But that dystopian diarrheic nightmare is certain to be a losing plan
as net energy declines over the next few decades.
Our 'expected diet' is analogous to the way the visual system relies on
the fact that there will always be an 'expected world of objects' out
there that it can use to drive the normal development of the higher-level
visual system. Genes are involved in setting up the basic architecture of
cortical visual areas; but those areas won't work right without a complex
visual 'diet' of years of real world input, which the genes utterly rely
upon to generate the final product in a healthy working visual brain.
Take the real world of moving visual objects and environments away, as
when you raise an animal in the dark, and the visual system completely
fails to develop properly (and, in fact, ends up permanently broken).
Humans *can* survive while eating meat and dairy every day. But doing
so will reliably bring on the 'diseases of the rich'. The arteries of
5,000 year old mummies -- the rich of their day -- were clogged with
atherosclerotic plaque; the mummies also had gallstones. The diseases
of the rich (many of which are interrelated) include heart disease,
atherosclerosis, strokes, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, vascular
dementia, Alzheimer's dementia, macular degeneration, cataracts, hearing
loss, gall bladder problems, kidney stones, kidney disease, erectile
dysfunction, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, and autoimmune
diseases like type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis,
lupus, and so on. These now-expected diseases of middle age and old age
were virtually unknown in middle-aged and older people in rural Africa or
rural China 30 years ago. These diseases are now beginning to appear in
our children (e.g., type 2 diabetes can longer be called 'adult onset').
That's a high price to pay, not only for the individual, but for society,
which must then support a ridiculously bloated 'sick care' system that
hopelessly tries to repair these self-inflicted wounds with more and more
expensive biotech. More than three-quarters of US 'health care' is spent
on this. The eye, ear, and brain diseases are especially frightful to me.
But biotech is losing the war: the percentage of life lived disabled in
the US is slowly but surely increasing.
The bottom line is, eat a whole foods plant-based diet, and your whole
foods plant-based primate body will thank you. And it may help you to
avoid being inducted into the 'sick care' system, which is usually a
life sentence.
[Aug15,'17]
One good way to deal with destablizing 'strategy of tension'
psyops
is to ignore them. Granted, it's not easy, given the daily blasts
of the mighty Wurlitzer. One way to regain perspective is to focus
on simple numbers from elsewhere, say Chicago, that suddenly are not
making the 'nooz' today. And black humor helps: the US (including
the supposed 'left') is happy to support right-wing fascist religious
fanatics overseas (e.g., ISIS/DAESH/whatever, not to mention the
literal historical Nazi Bandera-ites in Kiev), so why all the sobbing
when a few turn up on the home turf? And I mean the real ones, not
the laughable assets. And remember Mussolini -- what the mob first
gives, it can end up stringing up. Inequality of gains like
this
don't go on forever. Unfortunately, the first stop is likely to be
more nazis. Rising inequality is the *real* problem, *not* Trumpillory.
Divisive identity politics is a classic diversion. Gotta keep your eye
on the ball.
[Aug20'17]
Would you like a vaccine with that?
Being rather out of touch, I only recently looked into the leghemoglobin
story (Impossible Burger). In order to make a high-tech 'vegetarian'
hamburger that looks red, leaks red juice when grilled, and really tastes
like beef, silicon valley entrepreneurs raised a quarter of a billion
dollars from Google, Bill Gates and others, to insert a gene normally
expressed in the inedible roots of soybean plants (the leghemoglobin gene,
'leg' for 'legume') into yeast to make the yeast generate large amount
of leghemoglobin when fermented. Adding this to isolated wheat protein,
coconut oil, and isolated potato protein results in a manufactured
substance that looks and grills and tastes a lot like a beef hamburger.
This is all marketed as 'the future of protein', to help stop the warming
of the globes, yadda, yadda.
You might wonder why this literally causes steam to shoot out of my ears.
Let's ignore for the moment that eating a too-high-protein diet is the
very thing associated with all the diseases that people get when they
transition from eating a whole foods plant-based diet to a standard
meat-and-dairy-heavy western diet, AKA the diet of only ultra-rich people
before the beginning of the twentieth century.
One of the additional things that is unhealthy about eating a lot
of meat could be eating the heme iron that is in the meat proteins.
Eating heme iron (as opposed to eating iron from plants)
seems
to be associated with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. One
possible mechanism is that heme iron can help to oxidise cholesterol.
For example, there is an 27% increase in coronary heart disease risk
for every additional 1 mg/day of heme iron consumed daily. There are
similar magnitude increased risks of diabetes, stroke, and cancer for
that same heme iron intake increment.
Then there is the question of whether it's safe to eat a lot
of leghemoglobin (people don't normally eat soybean roots),
not to mention that this leghemoglobin has been synthesized in
a new species/cytoplasmic context. A set of documents (PDF
here)
released by the FDA, only after forced by an FOIA request describe some
of issues in more detail.
A cautionary tale is tryptophan (an essential amino acid). Tryptophan was
originally extracted from bacteria that naturally generate it. But after
more than 1500 cases of permanent neurological damage and 37 deaths, a
number of
trace
impurities in batches of tryptophan manufactured by Showa Denko in
genetically modified bacteria were identified as co-occurring with the
neurological damage cases. Very unfortunately, the contaminants were
never fully characterized. Virtually all tryptophan was banned in 1990
(among other things, it competed with antidepressants).
The contaminated batches were from the 4th version of the Showa Denko
manufacturing process that involved inserting 5 additional copies of the
native bacterial gene for producting L-tryptophan into the same bacterium.
Somehow, the abnormally large amount of tryptophan generated by the
engineered bacteria led to the generation of much higher amounts of the
toxic trace chemicals. Exactly what effect large amounts of leghemoglobin
have in the context of the hundreds of thousands of other chemicals in a
normal yeast cell remains to discovered, probably about 5 years from now,
with the help of lawyers. The only good thing I can think of to say is
that perhaps this is preferable to Sergey Brin's even more Blade-Runner-y
dystopic in vitro tissue-culture 'Google-meat'.
But looked at from a broader perspective, the whole plan of trying
to generate high-tech ersatz meat is just so hopelessly misdirected.
But it is also such a damnably predictable response of the economic system
that is rapidly destroying the carrying capacity of the only planet we
have, under the captain-ship of the robber barons of the twenty-first
century such as Brin and Gates. Most non-ultra-rich people before the
twentieth century were perfectly happy, not to mention much healthier,
*not* eating such large amounts of meat and dairy every day. By eating
unreasonably large amounts of high-protein, high-fat meat and dairy and
fish, along with other other manufactured high-plant-oil weaponized food,
we have created an epidemic of staggeringly unhealthy people serviced by
a staggeringly profitable medical-pharmaceutical-food industrial complex.
What *should* be the the two most important measures -- average health
and health care costs -- are obviously continuing to go in the wrong
direction. And this is catching. Not only do people who come here from
places where they had healthier diets quickly get our diseases when they
adopt our diet; but the ones that stayed behind are all racing to change
their healthier diets to be more like ours.
Trying to fix this by adding another yet more powerful weaponized food
to the arsenal is *so* decline-of-the-Roman-empire-like! It's not
politically correct to tell people they should just eat a lot more
fruits and vegetables and grains, and a lot less meat and dairy and
fish to improve their health, and help mitigate overshoot. There is a
strong analogy to electric carz. Rather than daring to suggest that
people should just walk and cycle more and drive less, we guiltwash
them into ersatz (electric) carz, which have no chance of fixing
the underlying energy/overshoot problem, or reducing energy usage.
Reading the stunningly clueless comments in and on the many puff pieces
written to support the Impossible Burger roll-out over the last year (I
refuse to link them) makes me realize that this can't/won't be stopped.
In fact, it's probably just a matter of time, given Gates' involvement,
until: "Would you like a vaccine with that?".
[Sep05'17]
Whole foods plant-based diet works as advertised
The whole foods plant-based diet sure works as advertised! 16 years ago,
my cholesterol numbers were considered relatively 'good' for my age,
at least by American standards:
age=46, tot=177, HDL=52, LDL=115
But by 10 years ago, they had crept up to 'average American', which is
definitely *not* good (see esp. 'bad' LDL):
age=52, tot=206, HDL=51, LDL=140
After just 3 months of a whole foods plant-based diet, my numbers are
considerably *better* than they were 16 years ago, and probably back to
where they were when I was in my thirties:
age=62, tot=152, HDL=58, LDL=83
I don't know what my cholesterol numbers were 5 years ago, after 5
years of a meat-heavy EU/UK diet, but they were probably worse than my
last previous test 10 years ago (my weight stayed constant within a few
percent the whole time). This effect (a 40% drop in LDL from 10 years
ago) *exceeds* the average effect of a large chronic dose of a statin
(never took them). And in contrast to statins, the diet 'side effects'
were all great (joint pain gone, sinus congestion gone, constipation
gone, clearer headed, sweet breath even before brushing). Food is better
(and cheaper and better tasting) medicine, indeed!
There are exactly 5 main bullet points on diet. First, the standard
American diet has *way too much* protein (as in 2-3x too much) -- chicken
and fish and beef and pork and dairy (or ersatz isolated plant protein
replacements) are too protein-dense. Metabolizing too much protein
results in excretion of calcium, causes inflammation, and promotes cancer
(esp. grilled animal protein).
Second, eating too much animal and plant fat (including olive oil)
and animal cholesterol causes yet more inflammation and damages blood
circulation, which damages your entire body and brain, and stores
carcinogens. Carbohydrates don't cause diabetes; too much fat does
(intramuscular fat blunts insulin sensitivity).
Third, meat (fish/chicken/beef/pork) and esp. dairy contain growth
factors like IGF-1, and independently stimulate the liver to produce
more endogenous IGF-1. This promotes cancer growth. Cancer cells
reproduce slowly. Slowing down their exponential growth helps a lot in
the long run.
Fourth, plants contain a huge array of health-promoting chemicals and
fiber that are not found at all in meat, fish, and dairy, and which *are
expected* by our standard vegetarian anthropoid primate digestive system.
For example, primates don't synthesize vitamin C like carnivores do,
because our digestive system expects to get it from eating plants.
Thousands and thousands of other plant-synthesized chemicals are also
expected.
Fifth, hi-tech pharma drugs, but also dangerously concentrated
single-factor supplements, including those extracted from plants, cannot
fix the results of a bad diet. They can actually make things worse.
Cholesterol doesn't 'normally' increase with age; old plant-eating humans
have the same cholesterol that they had as kids (130).
Dead simple, really. Eat more whole foods and starches including
plants/fruits/grains, eat less fish/chicken/beef/pork/dairy/oil, and avoid
pharma and supplements! The constant fog of confusion surrounding diet
is a criminally deadly, corporate-run smoke screen over simple truths
that have been known for hundreds (really thousands) of years.
[Sep12'17] The human mind is a
shallow processor that is easily led astray by non sequitur arguments
when they are prefaced with valid observations as a setup! I include my
own mind here (see below). For example, when I talk to people about oil
depletion, I often get back something about 'depletion whatever is all
a plot of the evil oil companies'. Well, *of course* they are evil,
and *of course* they plot behind closed doors, just like any large
corporation (e.g., Google). But it is a complete fallacy to say that
because oil companies are evil tricksters that oil depletion is false,
or worse, that oil depletion will be no problem. The evil plots of oil
companies can't affect how much net-energy-positive oil is left in world
geological reserves for future human draw-down; evil plots can't refill
high net-energy resevoirs. Profit-seeking behavior can't rewrite the
laws of physics so it will be easier to replace diesel and kerosine for
long distance flying and shipping and for construction and growing food.
We are on the cusp of a permanent, severe liquid fuels depletion problem,
with no drop-in replacement lined up. World all-liquids 'oil supply'
looks like it is peaking now (2016-2017); 'crude oil' itself peaked 5
or 10 years ago, depending on exactly what you consider to be bona fide
'crude oil'.
Similarly, with health concerns like high cholesterol or high blood
pressure, it's pretty obvious that big pharma stands to gain from strict
cholesterol and blood pressure targets. But this is *no argument at all*
that strict cholesterol and blood pressure targets are wrong! Both of
these are correct: big pharma is bad, and high cholesterol is bad.
But they are unrelated. Pharma is a very poor way to try to 'fix'
high cholesterol and high blood pressure, which are both 'side effects'
of a bad diet. High cholesterol and high blood pressure are clear signs
that the body's normal homeostatic mechanisms are being driven to their
limits trying to manage the diet-induced damage. Improving diet is the
only way to actually remove the underlying problem. However, I can't say
that I have always been able to avoid falling for this rhetorical trick.
For example, 5 years ago, I thought that the move to lower the suggested
targets for cholesterol *was* simply a plot to sell more statins. And the
lowering *did* result in pharma selling even larger barge-loads of statins
to people with bad blood. But finding out that total cholesterol in old
people in rural China never goes up (and averages about 130!) finally
drove the point home to me that the standard US cholesterol guidelines
are actually *too lax*! The ridiculous profits of big pharma, or the
fact that big pharma has engineered misleading clinical trials, doesn't
make high blood cholesterol a good sign.
[Sep27'17] Thankfully,
I don't have to watch the football freak show on the teevee.
The whole National Anthem charade was only instituted in 2009.
Yet another in a long line of red flags to wave in front of a
working class bull while banker oligarchs sink their lances deeper
into his neck muscles. 78% of Americans are living paycheck to
paycheck. But their real problem is football etiquette. Sure. The
best one could hope for is that this expertly executed bit of
wedge
politics ends up in a small backfire, slightly negatively impacting
football watching, which in my dreams could be positive development
if the fans redirect even a tiny bit of long overdue attention to the
10 bloody lances hanging down their backs. Funny comment in response
to zerohedge's obediently generated clickbait (no link, b*chez): "What
next? ALL viewers must stand too?".
[Oct03'17] Another Maidan-like slash
Sandy-Hook-like American Gladio psyop kicks into high gear (and stocks
bump, natch [written before the 'bump stock' nonsense]). Americans and
Ukrainians are made of the same stuff and will respond to the same bait.
Hopefully, the result won't turn as bad as in Ukraine. Here is a video
(via Scott Creighton) from a taxi driver sitting at the porch of the
Mandalay Bay hotel that unequivocally and repeatedly records the sound
of at least
two
completely different sources of automatic sniper gunfire, strongly
suggesting that the official story of the 64-year-old lone gunman
on the 32nd floor firing from about 1200 feet away (about 1/4 mile)
is wrong/incomplete. The two sources are audible in the first few
min; you can hear echoes from the closer shooter, but then a much more
distant shooter that is not preceded by close-up shooting sounds. Then,
as the taxi driver leaves the Mandalay Bay, around 5:02 in the video,
she videos what could be muzzle flashes coming out of the Mandalay Bay
hotel closer to the ground floor. There are other videos from
different
viewpoints
[0:27] that show similar flashes around the same place (not too
far above ground floor, with correlated shooting sounds). The sound
correlations, being visible from different angles, and intermittency is
suggestive; but reflections from an aerial source, or a strobe light
in a room are also possible. And it could all be part of the usual
disinfo storm in order to poison the well on the clear audio evidence
of multiple shooters. I have no idea of what actually happened, and
it's unlikely that the full truth will ever come out, after having been
mixed in with a daily firehose of disinfo garbage. Almost 600 people
killed and wounded in less than 5 mins seems too high for one shooter
at such a long distance -- that's a whole 'standard Chicago month' of
killings in just 5 min. But I won't find the official story convincing
until they find his passport (sorry). By analogy with the 9-11 show,
I imagine it won't be too long before Chertoff x-ray machines and crotch
pat downs are de rigeur before getting a hotel room. Be real scared,
so we can make you real saaafe. Let's all 'come together' because we
might eventually need machines and crotch fondling in restaurants, too.
Lookee here (at least 20 times) at this heart-wrenching hyuuman interest
story! Pay no attention to Chicago, there is no human interest there
(or Baltimore, with twice the homicide rate of Chicago).
[Update: Oct5]: this
horrific pic confirms the
high death toll; also, Paddock's plane may have been bought by a defense
contractor, Volant Associates, in 2013.
[Update: Oct8]: multiple independent videos now available with more than one
shooter clearly on their soundtracks.
[Update: Oct9]: the main-sewer media drops this like a hot potato to
throw stomach-band-snapping fat Harvey Weinstein under the bus in all his
pussy-grabbing physical repulsiveness as an ultimate distraction! (not
that Harvey 'the pig' doesn't deserve to go under the bus, or better,
spend some time in a pillory; it's just that there are so many other
equally deserving slime bags in Holly-pedo-wood). Perhaps the daily
smear with Harvey was because anomalies were detected that were causing
public indigestion, in spite of the disinfo firehose.
[Update: Oct11]: Classic disinfo strategy: real victims suffered horrible
wounds, but crisis actor fake gunshot (or actual victims with minor
concrete/bullet fragment wounds) with better 'optics' are interviewed
to get the 'uplifting' story 'straight'. Just because there probably
were crisis actors hired does not imply that people were not shot.
[Update: Oct12]: The
SkyVue
towers (abandoned ferris wheel construction
project visible across from the stage -- look left from this
google
maps view of the stage) are one of several possible location of the
acoustically
closer shooter(s). No muzzle flashes are visible
from occasional video of the towers from concert floor
videos; however, for an automatic rifle with a suppressor
(muzzle extension) installed, you have to be
within a few degrees
of the direct line of fire to see the muzzle flash at all.
Here
is a detailed timeline.
[Update: Oct13]: all iphones/laptops/recording-devices confiscated from
concert workers at the Route 91 festival by the FBI were returned
to their owners wiped clean. This is known as felony destruction of
evidence -- but critical to keep dis-disinfo out of the public domain.
You are just a worker bee with no rights to your own information, even
without having committed any crime. What's next? All witnesses must get
ECT? ... for their mental health, of course. Reminds me of a scene in
the original 1987 Robocop: "Madame, you have suffered an emotional shock.
I will notify a rape crisis center". Also today, Kymberley Suchomel,
28, a witness who mentioned multiple shooters in a viral
facebook
post was found
dead
in her home, presumably having 'died in her sleep from epilepsy' after
her husband left for his early morning job. This follows the death
a week ago (Oct 4) of another key witness, John Beilman, who
'killed
himself and his daughter' after being questioned by the FBI the
previous day about a charger found in Paddock's room that is used
to charge batteries for military communication devices (Beilman had
previously worked at Ultralife Corporation in Newark). Yet another key
witness, Jesus Campos, the 'security guard' shot in the leg, has
left
the building, just before his meet-the-press. Also today, in
addition to rearranging the timeline once again, which should help
to make it more lawsuit-proof, Sheriff Lombardo told us today that a
visual inspection of the geriatric GSW'd brain during a coroner’s
autopsy found no abnormalities, but that they are awaiting microscopic
examination (what, no fMRI?). And finally, someone broke into Lee Harvey
Paddock's home in Reno 'before the police got there'. Americans will
believe anything, so it's not important to sweat the fine details.
[Update: Oct17]: A 24-7 diet of Fat Harvey has dampened outrage at
the randomly changing, obviously incorrect official Las Vegas story.
Now I just hear echoes of echoes of disinfo, which effectively defuses
the situation. Daniel Hopsicker (and reddit) say there were two Volant's
and the one who bought Paddock's plane is John W. Rogers, an oncologist.
Incendiary rounds seem to have been shot at the nearby jet fuel tanks (but
it's difficult to ignite jet fuel this way). The 21st century version
of the might Wurlitzer is sure impressive. Or as a ZH commentator said"
"Squirrel! It's what's for dinner".
[Update: Oct18]: the 'security guard' with the untreated GSW reappears
looking like he gained a bunch of weight after his 'Oct 10' awards
ceremony, to give a weird, pre-recorded, handler-touching-him, managed,
softball interview on... Ellen?! Well, she is involved with the slot
machine business. See, we made you think you took drugs even though
you didn't (but it would have been even better if he did some vaudeville
dancing with his cane...)
[Update: Oct22]: A good example of 'poisoning
the well': Neon Nettle 'alt' media (which I linked above) reports that
Chad Nishimura, a valet who parked Steven Paddock's car
didn't
remember Paddock bringing in 'crazy bags' (i.e.,
a lot of stuff). This was true. Then they report
that Chad Nishimura was killed in a 'botched robbery'.
Here
is the report of the Oct 16 event quoted by Neon Nettle.
That report doesn't, however, mention the name of the
victim, pending notification of relatives. But a commenter
at Neon Nettle outed them by reporting that the person
killed at the church was 'Hector lemurs-Flores', confirmed by
this
report, which identified the victim as Hector Antonio Lemus-Flores.
The reason this is bad is that it contaminates and disables the real
information from and about Chad Nishimura. Classic well-poisoning,
Neon Disinfo. Doesn't mean that there isn't occasionally some real
information not available elsewhere there. That's exactly the point:
mix real information with crap. See also 'Jim Stone'.
[Update: Oct26]: Jesus Campos, the 'security
guard' 'wounded' by a high caliber bullet, who is apparently
not licensed as a security guard by the state of Nevada
only returned to the US from Baja Mexico through San Ysidro
one
week after the shooting, driving his rental car for hours with a
'wounded' leg ("anything to declare sir? Good luck with that wounded
leg"). It's not clear when he left, which was probably not that difficult
to do when you are a material witness to the largest mass shooting in
US history, and besides he had to go to Mexico to avoid Obamacare, and
they have better 'reverse liposuction' there, man. And lookee here,
'investigators' have found that Lee Harvey Paddock scarily 'searched
the internet' for SWAT tactics (even though his laptop disk drive was
missing -- note to self, be sure to remove disk drive before starting
a 'killing spree'). And look, Paddock's brother is into child porn!
Like I said, no need to sweat the details of the script, sorry, I mean
the 'careful investigation' of the largest mass shooting in US history.
Americans are easy.
But seriously, the fact remains that many public videos taken from many
different positions clearly contain audio evidence of multiple shooters
(automatic gunfire bursts with different volumes, overlapping bursts that
are not echoes, different muzzle-report/bullet-strike timings). Here is
but
one
of many examples. There are also many witnesses who claim there were
multiple shooters. Two of these witnesses have already died after
surviving the event unharmed (Danny Contreras and Kymberley Suchomel).
I don't know what the real story is. Could be No Country for Old Men
for all I know (e.g., the Mexican lady warning 'all you people are
going to die'). But those videos prove conclusively that the official
story from Wolf Blaster (before the main sewer media dropped the story)
is simply wrong.
[Update: Oct30]: Good article by Scott
Creighton on the "no real victims"
well-poisoning disinfo.
[Update: Nov02]: More possibly suspicious Las Vegas
survivor deaths over the past few days summarized
here.
The couple's Mercedes inexplicably 'exploded' when they hit the
gate of their gated community. Also, Jason Aldean's lawyer just
had a 'seizure in his sleep' (like Kymberley Suchomel) and died.
[Update: Nov06]: Air traffic control
audio reporting
"active shooters on the runway" (go to 2:00). These could also be a
security response, not other shooters].
[Update: Nov10]: Many conspiracy theories this week
about an attempted assassination involving
Saudis
in Las Vegas on the night of the shootings, and more on shooting
from helicopters, insert/remove by helicopter, or all three,
smooshed together with, natch, ISIS. If the flashes observed by
the Mandalay Bay taxi driver in the unbroken lower-floor hotel
windows during the shootings (correlated with shooting sounds) were
reflections, they would have had to have come from a source
in the sky, given
observed angles. Several helicopter videos posted a month ago clearly
show flashes in regular sets of four (4 front, then 4 back) that look
like standard helicopter running lights, not shooting. Since then,
all the 're-mixes' have made this hard to assess (perhaps the point).
It's also quite possible that those running lights are the elevated
source of some of the reflected flashes.
As far as Saudi, we know that several things
are true (recent summaries from different viewpoints
here
(Henderson),
here
(Madsen) and
here (Meysann)):
(1) Mohammed "YemenFamine/QatarSanctions/ISIS-supporter" bin Salman is
now in control after the Nov 4 Saudi coup, which occurred just after
the silly 'robot citizen' show, and just a few days after Kushner left
Saudi, (2) Prince Al Waleed, worth around $25 billion (one of the 5
or 10 richest men in the world), with some ownership at the Mandalay,
is now not free to go (incidentally, he was the one who offered money,
which was refused, to Giuliani on 9-11; he also has major stakes
in many American hi-tech companies, e.g., he is one of Twitter's
largest shareholders), (3) Prince Mansour bin Muqrin Al Saud was
killed on Nov 5 in a Saudi helicopter crash, (4) the Lebanese
prime minister, Saad Hariri, resigned while under house arrest in
Saudi where he still is, and (5) an armed posse walked through the
Tropicana, possibly during the Oct 1 shooting. From the
grainy video they
could be escorting the 'white t-shirt guy'..., but behind the posse
(?), and the stretcher (?), and then the t-shirt guy peels off at the end
(?). It's highly unlikely that this was Mohammed bin Salman, and there
is no independent evidence he was there. Having these 'reports' seeded
with ISIS (and Thomas Wictor joining in!, and featured on Rense) also
suggests this is just the usual spray of disinfo to contaminate real info.
Finally, I just came across this
video
taken by Holly Wilson Leslie on Oct 1 at 10:55 PM (25 min after shooting
stopped), of a running helicopter in extremely tight quarters, at the
north side of the Harley Davidson Store adjacent to the Airfield 5191
S. Las Vegas Blvd, with some unidentified SWAT-like armed men fiddling
with some kit lying in the street. Hard to know what to make of it.
Since then, it has been re-uploaded by flat-earthers (yup). A high
degree of uncertainty remains, and unfortunately, the amount of chaff
increases by the day. To end on an up note, it's nice imagine that
one day, our own Clown Princes, Gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Buffett -
who now have more wealth than the bottom 1/2 of the country - may have
*their* wealth seized while they are imprisoned in a luxury hotel.
[Update: Nov14]: A few weeks ago, somebody noticed what look like three people dressed
in black running back and forth on top of a platform or trailers behind
a fence while shots are still being fired off and on, in a video that
had previously been posted to youtube a month previously (Oct 7).
One figure even looks like he is carrying a gun. This
link will start
the original video at 4:54, right where the most obvious figure appears.
Before starting it, first slow it down with Settings -> Speed -> 0.25
so that you you can make out the black figure, in spite of the shaky
camera. A left arrow while video is running will back it up 1-2 secs.
Here is a copy of that video frame-by-frame so you can see that there
seem to be
3
people in black running around up there. That elevated platform
is on the left side of the killing field (looking at the stage), about
halfway back. Many people were killed on the right side of the stage.
Looks suspicious, but not definitive.
[Update: Nov22]: Just now came across the fact that the ear lobes of the
'woozy' Paddock and the 'leaked' photo of the dead guy in the hotel room
are different; the living Paddock's ear lobes are
attached, while dead guy's are pendulous. This was
recognized on the internet at least as early as
Oct
4 (!). The Las Vegas police confirmed that the grisly photo was in
fact a photo of the 'suicide'. Compare the ear lobes of live (
1,
2,
3),
and dead
grisly).
Clearly different guys. It wouldn't be the first time 'death mask' photos
were faked (see e.g., fake bin Laden 'death' photos shown to
US
senators).
[Update: Nov30]: A girl says "There's glass falling from Mandalay
Bay" after the last two shots of the night at 3:30 in
this video (posted
Oct 2). This may be a re-telling of an earlier event.
[Update: Dec03]: Here is a
summary of
the current anomalous state of affairs: the worst mass shooting ever in
the US disappears from the news with nothing explained.
[Update: Dec23]: Just read the month-old comments from "Geoff Jones" on
this video
suggesting the figures in black moving along the top of the
1-2 story stucture were bartenders at a private function, therefore
dressed in black, maybe carrying brooms not guns as they were escaping.
Another commenter said, they only looked black because they were backlit
by the stage lights that were turned on the crowd. Yet another commenter
way down in the list pointed to a similar structure with similar (vague)
figures on it on the opposite side of the arena starting at 1:17 in
this video.
Two semicircular structures on either side of the concert floor are
visible from 10 floors above Paddock's room during the shooting in
this videohere.
No strong conclusion possible since the videos are lo-res/shaky. In any
case, the story remains out of sight, probably for good. Different ear
lobes on live vs. dead Paddock still unexplained. Many witnesses
reporting multiple shooters and audio evidence of multiple shooters
still unexplained.
[Update: Feb10]: The Clark County Coronorer's office released an
autopsy
of a "Stephen Paddock" with the wrong height (3" too short; the real
Paddock was/is 6'-4" tall). This discrepancy is consistent with the
difference in ear lobes between Paddock (attached) phots and the leaked
'dead guy' pics (pendulous). As expected, the whole 'investigation' has
dropped completely off the radar. There is no need for any investigation
of the biggest mass shooting in US history!
[Update: Feb27]: Just came across a long series of videos by someone
who claims (mostly believably) to be an animator. The latest is
here
on the view out the Mandalay window. Other curious ones
comment on the absolutely bizarre store-security-video
here and Mr. Casual
here.
The fact that the videos are all still up probably comes
from the 'no victims' disinfo in them. By contrast,
Scott Creighton, who debunked the 'no victims' disinfo,
just got his third strike and his youtube channel has been
purged
-- for debunking the 'no victims' disinfo!
[Update: May03]: An odd just-released body cam video of police entering
Paddock's room, with him apparently dead on the floor (pixellated),
records one person saying "We do not have a broken window"
(0:39)
and then about 15 sec later, a person saying "Standby, we've
got curtains open on a window that's not broken"
(0:55)".
Windows not broken yet? (they were clearly broken the next day).
A different room? No smoke from 1500 rounds? And here is another
video from
somewhere under the bleachers that contains two overlapping independent
machine gun sounds (immed. after 4:00 and 5:00). The closer cracks
could be bullet impacts from the softer muzzle reports, tho on casual
Audacity inspection, the timings don't seem consistent with one source.
[Oct30'17] Quite the scandal
fest this week: Trump/Manafort vs. Spacey vs. Hillary/Bill/UraniumOne
vs. HillaryFusionGPSFakeDirtyDossier vs. Weinstein! It would be hard
enough to keep this all straight without the usual main sewer media
subterfuge. For example, with Manafort, there is now a "Conspiracy
against the United States" as blared by the Mighty Wurlitzer. This,
despite the fact that the FBI Manafort charges do not cover any activities
related to the presidential campaign and relate to things he might have
done in 2006: the charges are about Manafort using millions of dollars
of laundered money from Ukraine for home improvement. Also lost in the
shuffle is the fact that Manafort also worked for the Clintons for years.
Talk about 'conspiracy theory', you C-eye-eh, guys. Unfortunately,
the glaring anomalies of Gladio Las Vegas (see above) have now been
effectively buried by all the noise.
[Nov03'17] The 'news cycle' is
out of control! So much ISIS-schmei-sis, it has yanked Weinstein right
out of view, much less the Las Vegas mess. Las Vegas probably has the
largest number of surveillance cameras anywhere in the US, but not a
single relevant surveillance video has come to light. Must have all
malfunctioned (like 7/7).
Meanwhile, the FED has finally actually started to dump some
of the junk it has been holding since the last financial crisis
(by not 'renewing' it). You have to zoom into the last year
here,
but then you can see the sudden drop. Looks like the first real shoe
to drop.
And Tesla just lost 2/3 of a billion dollars this *quarter*.
But carz are so old school - let's go to Mars instead! The Mars
fantasies made the Tesla car stock go up, so what's not to like?
We can't even *slightly* slow our approach on the Earth to the brick
wall of peak world net energy (and food and water and soil), while
continuously burning 150 tons of oil per *second*, but we're going
to somehow spend billions of dollars to rocket a few tons of water,
MRE's, and other kit and to Mars — a windy, extremely cold,
almost airless, ultraviolet-blasted, virtually waterless desert, with
a toxic soil containing 1% perchlorates, because... *that* will save
our sorry @sses? What a ridiculous, preposterous, embarrassingly
puerile fantasy! The real problems are all here! We are hitting
peak net energy in plain sight. The 'jobs' report tells us that
'unemployment' is down to a new cycle record low of 4.1%. But the labor
participation rate (62.7%) is back to 4 decade lows, and almost 1 million
people exited the labor force in October, pushing the total number of
people 'not in the labor force' to a record 95 million people.
Here
are Fed graphs of the civilian labor force participation rate (red) and
employment-population ratio (blue), which show we have not 'recovered'.
I was talking to a television producer last week who tried to argue
that from a utilitarian point of view, people such as Weinstein might be
valuable to humanity on sum because of all the 'goodness' and 'pleasure'
they brought to people while they were doing their day jobs (i.e., when
he wasn't molesting young women and masturbating in front of them into
potted plants). Yeah, like that Weinstein POS 'masterpiece' Resevoir
Dogs — one of the few movies I've ever actually walked out of.
Also, what about the PTSD I have from the image of Harvey The Pig,
a real-life Mr. Creosote, having to be hauled out of Naomi Campbell's
birthday party by ambulance when his gastric band began to impede his
breathing after he ate too much at the buffett? [Update: or the fact
that he hired ex-Mossad agents from London Black Cube to harrass/honeypot
the girls he molested?] And I admit to unhealthy schadenfreude at the
thought of a bunch of Hollywood molester/pedos running scared for the past
two weeks. I only wish some real big-money people who frequent Little
St James Island and Nickelodeon will 'awake to black flack' from the
crossfire, and have to be 'washed out of their ball turrets with a hose'
(Randall Jarrell).
[Nov08'17]
Here is a fine comment by "Long FB" at
Wolfstreet:
"Three college roommates [trans.: dumba$$es] come up with an idea to
take crotch shots that disappear six seconds after their girlfriends
look at them. Three years later Wall Street values this idea at
$30 billion dollars. This market cap is higher than companies like
American Airlines, Humana, Allstate, CSX, Deere & Co, Southwest
Airlines, Marriott, etc. See any problems here?". The older I get,
the more I see the impending disaster of humanity, which for the past
15 years I have been expecting to start around 2030, as being mostly
traceable to one simple, universal *individual human* error -- which
is continually enthusiastically adopting devices/strategies that make
everyday tasks just a *little* bit easier, but that come with unforseen
and ultimately truly terrible costs and externalities. With Snap,
was it previously *really* that difficult to just show your girlfriend
your pee-pee face to face? Sure, it is 'easier' to use Snap for this
purpose, sitting at your desk, or lying alone in bed with your cell
phone, without ever having to leave home. But looked at from a longer
perspective, the societal mass action that results from trillions of
similar, seemingly minor 'decisions of convenience' has always had the
potential to head off the system in a seriously wrong direction. These
universal human failings weren't a problem in a small Neolithic village.
But (temporarily!) empowered by incomprehensibly massive amounts of
fossil fuel energy (=geographically-localized failures of the biosphere
to recycle nutrients), our gigantic lumbering world-encircling human
system is now literally destroying the planet because of them - our soil,
minerals, food, water, all other animals even including insects - in a way
that seriously threatens our very existence. All inexorably propelled
by the lust for small increments in 'personal convenience'.
Here
is an excellent article by Andre Staltz, presenting some not-yet-fully
realized bad outcomes of this unconscious mass action with respect to the
comparatively smaller issue of the internet. The only way this could be
changed would be for each *individual* person to 'fight the machine',
many times per day. Is this possible? Not bloody likely, I'm afraid.
The only thing that will stop it is net energy rundown, followed by
food rundown.
[Nov24'17]
Studied blindness
Reading research into depression, well, just depresses me :-{.
One blindingly obvious reason people are depressed and uncooperative
is because they are 50+ years old, post heart- and gallbladder-surgery,
overweight, high blood pressured, diabetic, with feet that are already
tingling from impaired circulation that also slows their thinking, maybe
already getting around in a battery cart, taking piles of pills from
plastic bins multiple times every day, and stuck in front of the teevee.
That would depress anyone. Most of those depression-inducing physical
states are transparently related to diet (too much meat and dairy protein,
too much fat from meat and from purified plant oils). The most crushing
evidence for this is that as our 'standard western diet' rapidly spreads
around the world, it rapidly brings with it a world of pain and misery and
heart disease and diabetes and dementia and osteoporosis and cancer that
simply *wasn't* there before. Trying to treat the resulting 'depression'
and improve 'mental health', and making new depression-fighting apps,
without mentioning the diet elephant in the room seems the height of
folly. Yet, it's nearly impossible to get funding for simple dietary
interventions or better presentations of these simple, self-evident
dietary facts.
I suppose everyone should have the 'right' to eat in such a way that
makes their lower extremities turn gangrenous and their brain get choked
off from its circulation as a result of diabetes and artery disease (you
don't have to be fat for this to occur if you eat the wrong things).
They have the right to ignore the long-known facts that true 'paleo'
humans, well *before* agriculture had been invented, had evolved molars
to grind *more* grain compared to the already fruit-and-nut-and-leaf
eating apes that are our closest cousins (Loren Cordain, the fat exercise
dude promoting the paleo/Atkins diet, when he should know better, is a
dork). But this implies a right to burden the 'sick care' system to the
breaking point. With all the 'left' discussion of the need for health
insurance, there is a terrible lack of discussion there of the personal
responsibility for eating a healthy diet. Publicly-paid health insurance
is a wonderful thing that I, being card-carrying left, whole-heartedly
support. But roughly 3/4 of medical care in the US tries to vainly to
'fix' the results of bad diet with pharma and surgery. This simply
doesn't work very well, despite being spectacularly expensive, wasteful,
and the source of a dizzying spectrum of 'side effects' (they're actually
the 'main effects'). The majority of the diseases that people go to
the hospital for are completely avoidable and not 'genetic' at all.
Trump didn't cause this. Just because there are a bunch of stoopid,
anti-science, overweight, right-wing meat-eaters who want to get "big
government's hands off their Medicare", while they, too, are getting sick,
*doesn't* relieve the need for more personal responsibility on the left
with respect to diet. The studied blindness to obvious inconvenient
truths reminds me of blindness to our energy predicament. It's worth
noting that for all my snarky pseudo-outrage here, only a year ago,
I was almost as 'studied blind' to the critical importance of diet.
Turning briefly to energy, in bitcoin-la-la-land, bitcoin 'mining'
consumed almost
30 TWh
of energy this year, more than 1/800 of all the electricity consumed in
the *entire* world, more electricity than is used by almost 160 countries
(e.g., Ireland). This planned idiocy (since how hard it is to 'mine'
is controlled by a simple parameter that is adjusted to keep the rate of
successful 'mining' constant) is one of the main things that is keeping
the bitcoin bubble inflated. The rate of increase in bitcoin electricity
consumption is currently exponential; it increased 30% last *month*,
but the price of bitcoin went up 40% last month, so all that terrible
waste of energy was 'worth it'. This is about as logical as poisoning
oneself with diet, then investing in high tech medicine to try to patch up
the damage afterward, without changing one's diet at all. Obviously the
current growth of bitcoin 'mining' can't continue, since at this growth
rate, it is set to consume *all* of the world's electricity by just 2020;
so bitcoin price will soon have to asymptote. But do we really have
to wait until the lights start flickering? [Update: Dec12: the bitcoin
bubble has now surpassed the previous all-time record 'tulip mania']
I would like to think that we should be able to apply
the almost magical power of our language-based brain
operating system, the 'second coming of life' (see
pdf),
to diet and energy so that we could help ourselves to aim our world system
in a better direction, for example, by stopping investing exponentially
more energy each month in utterly pointless bitcoin 'mining'. But as
we leap over one rubicon after another, ignoring the growing signals in
plain sight that our biosphere is literally collapsing, I'm beginning
to wonder whether our mad dash over the cliff can even be slowed.
[Nov29'17]
The latest update to MacOS, High Sierra,
shipped with several stunning, face-palm
bugs.
One allows a user to login as root by simply entering user "root" and no
password into a pop-up panel asking to verify priviledges before doing
something invasive. I half wonder whether this was actually a plot to
scare people away from a real operating system (unix) into the padded-room
touchy-feely 'playpen' of iOS. But seriously, it's probably simply the
result of galloping increases in complexity and the needless and vile
creation of parallel ways of doing the same thing. Much of this is 'make
work' - like adding fins onto carz - that doesn't improve the underlying
functionality in any way, but merely provides a reason to 'upgrade' to
the latest 'model year'. In the case of software, the really bad thing is
that complexity in increased, which in turn requires increased resources
to maintain it (or not, as the case above illustrates!). In the popular
press (and in IT departments around the world), there is constant braying
'upgrade immediately else you will die'. How about just "don't upgrade"?
It is very easy to fall prey to the notion that an older operating system
is contaminated, decrepit, and gray-haired, and just about to fall to
pieces compared to the latest sleek new 'tail-fin' version. This is just
advertising nonsense sneakily talking to your primate limbic system.
The reality is that an older patched system has a lot of beauty of its
own, and the benefit of *less code*. I'm sure that the software for
self-driving carz won't have any problems like this. Several other
'advantages' of this latest OS is that it uses a new file system, APFS,
which is not, and will never be, supported by any previous apple OS
(including the one in use last month, not-high Sierra). The new file
system has catastrophically slow performance on spining hard disks,
including Apple's own Fusion Drives. Those spinning drives would be where
all the 'stuff' people access with their phondle phones is actually stored
in the great cloud. The reason for this bad performance is that APFS
causes spectacular fragmentation of files because of 'copy on write'.
This so-called 'advance' (a 30-year-old idea) offers absolutely nothing
positive to somebody who actually programs computers or manipulates large
amounts of data, and instead causes a set of expensive headaches (e.g.,
an APFS-formatted USB stick or hard disk can't be read by last month's
Mac OS 10.12, Sierra). Expensive second-party software will be eventually
be released and debugged to mount this new filesystem read-only. Sadly,
we are getting closer to the end of the road. That's the bad thing
about 'growf': you *must* always have it, even when you don't *need* it.
[Dec06'17]
I feel for the more contemplative Trumpflakes with the latest
revelations of Izzygate (oh sorry, I meant Russiagate) and now,
Jerusalem!! There *were* the $35 million pre-election plus $5 million
post-election inauguration donations from Sheldon Adelson to tend to.
Squirrel!! It's what's for dinner! This hardly means I support the
stunningly mindless idiocy of the 'democrat' Russiagate-ers either
[Update: Dec08: new fake-Russiagate-news-self-debunking record --
3
hours]. In fact, there is something blackly 'refreshing' about
the Trump/Kushner Jerusalem ploy, whether the result of idiocy or art;
'sensible people' are more outraged more by this latest Trumpfart
than they are by the miserable daily apartheid 'facts on the ground'
in the 'two-state' charade *and* the $5 billion that flows out of the US
treasury every year to support the existing 'facts', and to continue to
build new 'facts'. The thing that makes 'sensible people' so incensed
is that all the attention to this latest Trumpfart could actually
cause average people to become more aware of the real problem, which
is that the US is constantly paying for more 'facts'. So, one-state
it is! The two possibilities are, officially recognize the existing
apartheid/open-air-prison within the one state, where half the population
officially can't vote, or transfer the 6 million Palestinians somewhere,
many for the second time, out of their homes and off of their land.
The one-person-one-vote option will never be on the table, since that
would require elevating the Palestinian untermenschen to 'real people',
and we can't have that in the 'only democracy in the Mideast'. I fear
that in the end, this will probably turn out to be just 'Squirrel!' --
with things returning to their grindingly miserable status quo before
too long. It all makes me feel like an expat in my home country.
So I'll write about cycling instead :-}
When I talk to people who only drive carz (I drive a car once a week,
but cycle every day), if the topic of cycling comes up and they don't
know I cycle, they will go off on some tirade about all cyclists go
through red lights (most don't, actually), how they all cycle dangerously
(most don't), yadda yadda. As someone cycling every day, I do the same
thing, but in reverse. Though most carz are courteous or at least not
overtly aggressive, I mainly remember the actions of a small number of
car a$$hats. And so when people ask me about carz, I might tell them that
all carz are a$$hats, even though the great majority aren't. In reality,
most of my commutes are uneventful. Yesterday, however, I was waiting
peacefully at a light with a giant-tire 4x4 to my left rear. I had
just stopped at an asian market and so I had a plastic bag of produce
(lemon grass and galanga and canned jackfruit) tied to my backpack.
It seems to be the case that extra anti-cyclist aggression is somehow
triggered by the sight of someone actually successfully operating part
of their life by bicycle (or maybe it was just the lemon grass sticking
up). I wasn't blocking him/her in any way (I couldn't see through the
windshield reflection). When the light changed, the driver floored their
quarter of a megawatt engine up to full power, rushing close by me in
a cloud of diesel exhaust (up to the next red light, natch). I got off
onto the sidewalk and walked for a bit so as not to meet that person at
the red light, while contemplating why efficiently carrying my shopping
was so enraging, and of course, once I was back on the road, I made extra
efforts to peer through the windshield reflections of other trucks to try
to discern the intentions of their pilots. But I wasn't really worried.
Having been cycling for decades, I'm used to it. Gunning the motor
was no different than when a dominant male macaque very briefly mounts
(symbolically copulates with) a non-dominant male in a social situation.
This rarely results in bloodshed. As a cyclist, my overriding goal is
to avoid bloodshed (my own!); mere symbols can't hurt me.
[Dec15'17]
I know the internet is an echo chamber, but I couldn't
help myself... The humor-impaired San Francisco chapter
of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
hired
a robot (at $6/hour, cheaper than a human) to patrol the
sidewalks to keep the homeless humans away because of so many
"needles and tents and bikes" (the machine was identical to one
I saw this summer, patrolling a food-court/mall in Boston). I was
pleased to hear that the homeless humans responded to their Christmas
present by smearing its cameras with barbecue sauce and possibly
excrement,
and then someone, appropriately, put a hood over it. But that all
worked only because this first generation device wasn't armed.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to last. Before long, more
nightmarish
devices could easily be armed with tasers, then rubber bullets,
then real bullets. Amazon delivery robots and drones will need
to be armed to prevent theft. The whole world will turn into
"armed response". Before long, we are probably going to need
tripwires, slingshots with gooey opaque projectiles, and small
firecrackers that make sticky dust clouds. Else, in the
poignant
words of "penrose" at information clearing house, it will only be:
Go gentle, America, into that good night
Tweet, tweet against the dying of the
light
[Dec20'17]
After hearing a story on NPR (driving to a store to replace my bicycle
communting backpack), I realize I don't really have cause to complain
about cars. It was an interview with a Iraq war veteran who took a job
in the police in Baltimore, then recently resigned in disgust. One of his
'training' experiences was riding with his partner, who stopped and yelled
at a young man who had been riding a bike on the sidewalk. Incidentally,
in California, it's legal to ride on the sidewalk as long as you yield to
pedestrians, and as long as your city doesn't prohibit it; I never do it,
however, because at my overall average speed of 17 mph, which includes all
stop signs/light, I'm going way too fast for the sidewalk. Anyway back to
the 'community outreach' story. After the person got into the street, the
'officer' gunned his car into him, knocking him off, crushing his bike,
which he then threw over a fence. Thankfully, I haven't come close to
facing anything like that, and I hope I never do.
[Dec23'17]
"Mass casualty drill
'same
time, same place' as Amtrak derailment. Just
another random
coinky-dinky, I'm sure. Scheisse! Then later this week,
the weird resignation of Eric Schmidt, which occurred,
probably coincidentally, immediately after Trump's latest
executive
order on seizing the stateside property of people involved in 'human
rights abuse'. Schmidt is one of the richest people in the world, with
a small army of young blonde Instagram admirers, who last week controlled
one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Three other executive
resignations after the order, also probably coinky-dinky, include include
Gary Jacob (Synergy), Suresh Nair (Giga-tronics), and John Schnatter
(Papa John).
[Dec29'17]
You have to zoom in to the end of
this
graph of BASE and of US securities held by the Fed to see the
beginnings of the unwind (just $12 billion of $2 trillion added since
2008 removed). The same thing is happening in the EU as orchestrated
by the global cartel of bankers, which operates independently
from, and above the 'governments' of individual countries. As this
continues in 2018, it could eventually pop this latest insane bubble.
The ultra rich have already prepared for this, and use
outrageous
techniques not available to plebes. Hard to say exactly when the
'pop' will happen (now, or 1.5 years from now). But since it's always
hard to catch a falling knife, for the cautious (and not-ultra-rich),
it's safer not to try.
[Jan03'18]
The recently revealed "Meltdown" and "Spectre"
hardware
'bugs' in Intel and ARM processors are a good example of the costs
of complexity. Both 'bugs' (not really bugs since the hardware works as
intended) involve a tricky counter-intuitive speed-up mechanism called
"speculative execution" and "out-of-order execution". I remember when
this was widely introduced in Intel processors in the late 1990's
as processor speeds began to hit the wall (around 3 GHz) that they
remain at today. For example, the code in both branches past a branch
point can be executed in parallel before the processor knows which one
will be needed. When it finds out, then it uses the correct result
and discards the irrelevant one. To oversimplify (summary
here,
and gory details for meltdown
PDF here and spectre and
PDF here), the
problem is that since these parallel execution speed-up mechanisms are
going on 'below' the 'bottom level' of the assembly language that higher
level software gets compiled into, the *software* can't easily check as
to whether the memory location being accessed should be allowed to be
accessed. By gaming this hardware mechanism, one process can examine
data in another process, which could even be another virtual machine
running on the same hardware (Docker, etc). Software fixes for this
are already rolled out or in progress, and it remains to be seen how
much of slowdown they will cause. Unfortunately, people running older
kernels will never get a fix.
One can easily imagine problems analogous to 'meltdown' and 'spectre'
arising in the 'internet of things', as the complexity of technology is
increased, further optimized, and more intimately networked.
Similar hard physical/electronic limits to the late 1990's
processor speed ceiling are now happening with spinning hard
drives (that would be the 'old' tech where all your 'modern'
cloud data lives). The cost per gigabyte has and
flattened.
For example, an 8T drive costs about twice as much as a 4T drive,
which contrasts with what was happening up until recently, where larger
drives became cheaper per gigabyte than smaller drives, soon after their
introduction. Major upticks in density were magnetoresistive read heads,
"giant magnetoresistance" heads, tunneling magnetoresistance heads
(with microsopic heating coils), and perpendicular magnetic recording
(vs. in-plane). We haven't hit the wall but we are getting closer.
Unfortunately, there is no real cure for the increased costs of
complexity. If one can afford the cost, no problem. But eventually,
the cost to support continually adding complexity will be too high.
And remember that 'cost' all boils down ultimately to 'energy'. That is,
it will require *too much energy* to increase complexity and maintain
it. And our total (net) energy supply is flattening, and may actually
begin to decrease a decade or so from now. At that point, things can
only get simpler. Although it is hard to imagine anybody doing this
voluntarily (including myself), the only real adaptive strategy is
to reduce complexity (e.g., additional increases in computing speed)
before one is forced to do so under duress.
[Jan05'18]
Today, I sadly lost my Ironman Triathalon wristwatch when it fell
off my wrist during my daily cycle commute because the holes for
the spring-loaded pins that hold the wrist band on finally wore out.
I bought the watch in 1986, and wore it every day since, so it lasted
for 31 years of continuous use. Being a bit of an aspie, I successfully
replaced the CR2032 battery maybe 8 times, cleaning out and re-seating
the waterproof O-ring each time. I dunked it underwater in the bath and
shower and while swimming maybe 10,000 times and it remained waterproof
and unfogged until the end. I replaced the wrist band multiple times.
When I went online to get a new watch, I found a confusing gaggle of a
thousand different functionally equivalent models, many with different
bands, many non-replaceable, and with slightly different functions and
shapes, none of which were more compelling or practically useful than the
six main functions of my original 1986 model (time, date, day, stopwatch,
countdown timer, alarm) that I used every day. Reading online reviews,
I found that people who still wear watches expect to replace them every
year or two along with their cell phones. When I reflect on why I took
care of my watch, it is clear that it would have made little difference
to the world if most other people did the same thing as I did with their
own watches (and some surely did). Instead, I realize that I did it
merely to calm my troubled mind.
[Jan08'18]
US coal production has continued to drop, now down about
35% from what it was during its US peak in 2007 (it was
already almost flat by 2000, see MazamaScience PDF graph
here).
This, perhaps not coincidentally, marked the peak in total US energy
consumption. That means we are now back to what US coal usage
was around 1980. It's worth making a comparison to English coal
production, which peaked around 1914, more or less coincident with the
peak of the British empire. Most people looking at the US curve assume
that the falloff must be because coal is 'dirty', coal is expensive,
that other cheaper things are replacing it, and that it would be
no problem to increase US coal production again if we ever wanted
to. Sure it's dirty; see for example, the coal-induced London
killer
fog of Dec 1952 (visibility 3 feet), which killed over 10,000 people.
And certainly, some of the functions of coal are being replaced by
natural gas and to a lesser extent wind and solar. For example, one
reason for using less coal is that it is harder to ramp a coal plant
rapidly up and down to compensate for daily variations in wind and solar,
which have recently been added to the grid; we are not using less coal
because it's dirty or more expensive, but because it doesn't work as well
for dispatchable power (peak demand occurs every day when people return
from work, just as the sun and wind go down or off). The more easily
dispatchable methane is a bit cleaner; but methane is a CO2-generating
fossil fuel like coal that just happens to be temporarily cheap as a
result of the *methane* fracking binge that crashed natural gas prices,
just prior to the current tight oil fracking binge that has crashed
the price of oil, leaving fracking companies deep in debt up to this
minute. Like coal, there is a limited supply of high net energy methane.
After WWI, English coal production continued down until today. By the
time Margaret Thatcher got around to breaking the UK coal miner's
strike of 1984, UK coal production was already all the way back down to
levels not seen in England since the first half of the 19th century.
By analogy, it's unwise to assume that we will be able to rapidly
ramp up high net energy US coal production when we may be desperate
to do so, say 15 years from now. The most important reason for
the rise and fall of English coal was simply the fact that high net
energy coal in England ran out. It seems quite possible that this
is also the reason for the peak in US coal in 2007, and the even more
recent peak in China coal in 2015 -- see MazamaScience PDF graph
here).
Because China uses so much coal (e.g., somewhat ironically,
to make our 'green renewable energy' devices and iPhones),
China's coal peak was main reason total *world* coal production
to also peaked in 2015 (see MazamaScience PDF graph
here).
Though these leisurely peaks are visible in plain sight, the final world
peak in coal is still conventionally thought to be a long ways off.
And since conventional wisdom incorrectly puts energy demand, not energy
supply, in the drivers seat, it makes people think that stupid money
tricks (e.g., mortgage-backed securities, the Bank of Japan buying
insane amount of Japanese securities starting in 2013, Tesla's tiny
2000-car-battery grid battery), which are capable of causing short term
gyrations, are capable of doing truly magical things -- like creating
new supplies of high net energy fuel for our taking.
Actually, I find 'coal forever' and 'peak coal' equally horrifying :-{ .
'Coal forever' would be (already is) a climate disaster (CO2, mercury).
But since world energy use and world GDP are extremely highly correlated
because energy drives growth, peak coal slash peak energy probably means
peak world GDP, which is something our current money system is seriously
not adapted to dealing with (and me too...).
[Jan13'18]
Controlled, randomized feeding studies and large scale correlational
studies of diet and disease suggest that the low carb, high protein,
high fat diets people 'instinctively' follow these days are probably
responsible for a majority of American (and increasingly Chinese
and Indian) health problems like atherosclerosis, diabetes, strokes,
osteoporosis, arthritis, Alzheimer's, breast/prostate/colon cancer,
autoimmune diseases. The relevant scientific evidence has been around
since the 1950's (Burkitt, Kempner, Pritikin). The simple fix is to eat
a lower protein, lower fat, and higher carb diet (less meat/dairy/oil,
more plants).
You might think that people who have skills in seeing through
disinformation would be able to see through the fog of disinformation
with respect to diet. But look at the pathetic case of RE at Doomstead
Diner. He is an insightful, articulate and raunchily funny commentator.
Yet his personal health is a shambles. Though he is the same age as me,
his circulatory/skeletal/immune systems have fallen into such disrepair
that he can no longer walk a block unassisted by a battery cart and has
recently been shopping for gravestones. He attributes the problems to
having fractured a cervical vertebra from a gymnastics coaching injury;
but he doesn't consider what might have weakened his bones making them
more susceptible to fracture in the first place (e.g., osteoporosis
induced by a too-high protein diet). He is a heavy smoker (another
assault on bone remodeling/repair). Recently, without reading any studies
of diet and health, he decided that the way to improve the rapidly failing
health of what he calls his 'meat package' would be to eat more
raw meat!.
His unnecessary physical decline is painful and pitiful to watch, and yet
seemingly impossible to arrest. The architecture of the collapse of his
health is a striking and unintended analogy to the collapse of industrial
civilization that he himself has written about with insight and humor.
[Jan23'18]
Just because it goes on longer than you expect doesn't mean 'forever'
I waste too much time reading about money, but I don't get any wiser.
In fact, I think it has made me more stupid. Ever since the 2008 crash,
which roughly corresponded to peak crude oil (not condensates, not natural
gas plant liquids, not tar sands, not fracked tight oil, not biodiesel,
not corn ethanol), I have been stupidly amazed that the result wasn't
a bigger crash and a long retrenchment, but instead an *even bigger*
and *even longer* bubble than just about any previous bubble.
I have watched as companies with price-to-earnings ratios above
200 (where the 'normal' price-to-earnings ratio is something
like 20), burn through gigantic piles of cash, year after year,
seemingly with no bad effects. These would be companies like
Uber/Yelp/Amazon/Netflix/Twitter/Tesla, Schlumberger/Pioneeer/Halliburton
(oil), and IQVIA/Vertex/Ligand (pharma), many of which represent the
'new' economy, 'new' fracking, 'new' not-cable teevee, 'new' fix your
bad diet with pharma. You can look at the numbers for yourself
here.
When I first heard about companies borrowing money to buy their own
stock, I thought it indicated we were near the end of the bubble.
I was totally wrong. Then I read that this self-buying accounts
for most stock buying, and that perhaps 2/3 of profits go into stock
buybacks. Clearly *that* couldn't go on. But it has! For several
years! Despite central banks saying that were going to unwind
their unprecendented purchasing of assets after the 2008 crash, they
have barely begun; the tiny 'unwinding' dip in the red line in
this
FED graph is virtually invisible without zooming in to the last
few months.
The contagious madness has led to the spectacle of central banks and
sovereign wealth funds (Saudi, Norway) starting to make long term
investments in the stock market, sometimes even by taking out loans
(getting deeper into debt).
Finally, there is oil. Here is an excellent interview with
Art
Berman on the finance of fracking. There is a strong analogy between
tight oil fracking and Netflix or Amazon; fracking is another example of
'anti-creative' destruction made possible by near-zero interest rates
(compare, a metastatic Amazon destroying brick-and-mortar, despite being
less energy efficient and still essentially unprofitable). Shockingly,
the fracking companies had negative cash flow even when oil was at an
economy-crashing $100 a barrel. Not surprisingly, they have remained
cash-flow-negative with $50 oil. Part of the reason they are still
in operation is that the oil field service companies have been forced
to reduce their prices (those would be some of the companies mentioned
above with stratospheric price-to-earnings ratios...).
The production dynamics of fracked oil is insanely short-sighted.
Fracking and horizontal drilling result in an up-front burst in
oil production followed by super-rapid depletion, when compared to
conventional vertical wells. These sudden bursts of production are part
of the explanation for the small (1-2%) but highly destructive oil glut
that has helped crash oil prices. Primary production in fracked tight
oil wells depletes very rapidly (60% depleted in a year). And despite
having already sold off the fruits of these production bursts, frackers
are *still* all in the red!
Finally, fracked wells are not compatible with pump jacks. Those are
the nodding 'donkey head' oil lifters that produce small amounts of oil
for many years from conventional wells, after the gas pressure driving
much more voluminous primary production has dropped too low to push up
the oil. Pump jacks don't work on fracked wells because rock porosity
is way too low for significant oil to seep into the bore to be lifted,
and because the lifter valves don't work well in horizontal holes.
This is a second factor that increases the rate of fracked oil depletion.
Thus, the fracking companies really do look like Tesla and Uber -
temporarily burning through massive amounts of investor cash without
making any money, all while destroying existing profitable operations.
It fits John Michael Greer's description of 'catabolic collapse' to a tee;
metabolizing your own muscles for energy, while burning the furniture
for good measure.
Clearly, all of this nonsense can't go on forever, but it certainly
goes on much longer than any rational person would ever expect! I am
completely certain the current bubble can't continue for another 10 years.
But, I suppose it's possible that the animal spirits will power us
'upward' for another whole year (!). I can literally see the increase
in animal spirits every day in the ever increasing size of the 'cars'
(Tundra/Armada/F-150/Silverado) and their ever-bigger tires clattering
over the torn-up pavement alongside my bicycle.
I certainly don't want a crash (or a bicycle crash :-} ). I just wish
there could be more overall sanity and caution as we sail over peak
net energy, metals, fertilizer, water, soil, fish, etc., with an ever
growing population and with interest rates finally starting to
rise.
We are now using 6 barrels of oil for every one we find. The only way
that 'all liquids' oil production has been able to continue slightly
upward is because of super-rapidly depleting 'frack cocaine'. But,
since the previous 2008 shock was partly caused by the oil price spike
due to peak crude oil, when peak fracked/other oil arrives, the cliff is
likely to be sharper. An economy-crashing oil price spike won't help the
'alternative energy economy'; it will sink their boats, too, since all of
their operations utterly depend on oil. The increase in 'all liquids'
that I called 'slight' above was comparable to the total increase in
energy from 'renewables'! Similarly, when the stock market starts to
decisively go down, buybacks could stop suddenly, which given their size,
could create strong positive feedback (in a negative direction).
Though consumer confidence is now at record levels (usu. a bad sign,
incidentally), there are some other sane people out there who are thinking
the same way, and explicitly discussing civilized methods for using
less energy and how we might try to engineer a graceful contraction.
It's utterly useless to focus on Trumpfarts; our problems are much
bigger and much more difficult to solve. Hordes of irony-blind richies
taking their private jets to Davos to discuss the 'threat of climate
change' isn't going to help. There is no essential difference between
the approach of the two 'different' parties to the real big problems.
Talking about Trump is a just a way of ignoring talking about the real
problems of an economic system designed only for growth and a brain
operating system designed only for 'moar' that together have brought us
to the threshold of catastrophically overrunning a finite earth.
[Jan25'18]
Here is a short practical description of the new Tesla semi truck in
comparison with a standard diesel truck. First, it has a 500 mile range,
which is one-third that of the range of an easier-to-refuel diesel truck.
Second, the electric truck battery alone costs $180,000, which is
more than the cost of that entire diesel truck with the longer range.
Third, the electric truck is projected to have 20% lower operating
costs than a diesel truck (finally, good!). Fourth, the 900-1000 kWh
battery weighs in at 17,600 pounds, which compares to the 1,700 pounds
of diesel fuel in a diesel truck that gives it triple the range of the
electric truck. The weight of an empty truck without an engine is about
15,000 pounds (same for electric and diesel). The weight of an electric
truck engine is less than that of a diesel truck engine, but a diesel
engine only weighs about 3,000 pounds. Since the maximum gross weight
of a truck in the US is 80,000 pounds, the 500-mile electric truck can
carry about 45,000 pounds payload versus over 60,000 pounds payload
for a long distance diesel truck with triple the range. There are
currently about 2 million trucks in operation in the US. About 180,000
new semi trucks are purchased per year. Given that the up-front cost
is substantially greater for an electric truck with a smaller range,
and that is considerably more difficult to 'refuel', the incentive for a
shipping company to replace the new purchase of a diesel truck with a new
purchase of an electric truck will not be strong given only a (projected)
20% reduction in operating expenses. From these basic numbers, it seems
clear that despite all the hype, electric trucks are unlikely to replace
more than a small fraction of the existing diesel fleet over the next
decade. [Update: Feb07: ZH commenter snark on less than expected TSLA
quarterly cash-burn of 'just' $0.3 billion, but greater than expected new
2017 long-term debt of $3.7 billion (total long-term debt, $9.5 billion):
"Watch live on Youtube as SpaceX launches a pallet-load of TSLA investors'
cash into space!"]
[Feb17'18]
Language is a symbolic-representational operating system for
the ape brain — AKA the 'second coming of life' (
Sereno,
2014). Unfortunately, language can only ride around on top
its ape brain chassis, which can make for a particularly explosive
combination. To see this, read this interview with
Selco,
who made it through the human-language-engineered catastrophe in Bosnia.
Identity politics, which is essentially chimpanzee politics, is an
always-available reservoir of enormous violent power than can easily be
activated and subverted by our new linguistic brain operating system.
It's bad enough to wallow in identity politics, either left or right,
when resources are plentiful. But when the going gets tough, identity
politics has the potential to blow all our heads clean off. As Selco
said: "Nothing that I saw or read before could have prepared me for the
level of violence and blindness to it, for the lives of kids, elders,
civilians, and the innocent". We must learn to avoid identity politics
at all costs.
[Mar10'18]
Aneuploidy
A majority of neoplastic 'transformed' cancer cells are aneuploid (="not
euploid") -- that is, they have additional or missing members of
the normal (euploid = "true-ploid") complement of chromosome pairs,
and/or have chromosome fragments. There is tremendous variation in
the pattern of aneuploidy within one tumor type, and across different
tumor types. With all the molecular biology reading I used to do, not
to mention history of science, I was kind of stunned to notice that I had
forgotten this basic fact, originally pointed out by Theodor Boveri in the
late 19th century. This is called "chromosomal instability". As cells
continue to divide, different cells rapidly acquire different abnormal
patterns because the cellular machinery for condensing, duplicating,
and lining up the chromosomes in preparation for the very physical act
of cell division is disrupted. This disruption can be passed down to
the daughter cells.
The result is that cancer cells essentially split into millions
of different pseudo 'species' (Rasnick, Duesberg) within your body.
Many naturally occurring species have differences in the number of pairs
of chromosomes -- e.g., humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, but apes
have 24 pairs, macaque monkeys have 21 pairs, capuchin monkeys have
27 pairs and so on. In the case of aneuploidy, there are much larger
number of possible asymmetrical chromosome configurations by additions,
subtractions, and chromosome parts.
With extreme deviations from normal number of gene copies (e.g., some
genes completely missing), cells will typically die, kill themselves,
or be killed by the immune system. With smaller deviations from normal,
however, the new 'species' may be adapted to the abnormal conditions of
a tumor (reduced oxygen levels) or the presence of chemotherapy agents.
The fact that chemotherapy agents are so diverse in their function and
'effective' across many different tumor types is a clue that cancer is
not 'a few bad genes'. Chemotherapy agents include a dizzying array
of things that damage or kill cells such as classic metabolic poisions
(methotrexate disrupting folate metabolism), agents that damage DNA
(by methylation, by nucleotide impersonation, by blocking DNA unwinding
enzymes so DNA breaks, etc), inhibitors of vascularization (avastin),
agents to block receptors that protect cells from being killed by the
immune system, DNA-damaging radiation (the point of it), and so on.
Though it could easily hurt a cell living in a well adjusted cell
community to have an extra copy of a particular metabolic enzyme, an
extra copy might come in handy with a lot of methotrexate around. Or,
an extra copy of a DNA-unwinding enzyme (a topoisomerase) might be handy
to partly overcome irinotecan blocking its action; this contrasts with
the bad effects of an extra copy of topoisomerase I when there is no
irinotecan there. Or more simply, an extra copy of a gene could help
if genotoxic chemo or radiation got to the other copies.
The emphasis on single-gene mutations as a source of cancer is probably
seriously overblown and maybe even not the main explanation of cancer.
The problem is, there are a large number of things that induce cancer.
A number of them don't even cause mutations (e.g., asbestos, chronic
acid reflux). One could imagine intracellular asbestos strands (or
graphene fragments, for that matter) wreaking havoc with the physical
machinery of the mitotic spindle, leading to aneuploidy. But the show
must go on for 'genetically personalized' medicine and $100K per year
'blockbuster/breakthrough/game-changer' drugs-of-the-month that typically
improve survival by a pitiful 5% on average over no treatment at all.
You'd never get that idea from looking on teevee where actors portray
the one-of-a-hundred people that actually do experience a miracle cure.
The insanely expensive war on cancer has essentially failed. Cancer
rates are staying the same or going up. Esophageal cancer is up 600%
over the last 30 years -- that ain't genetic. Once you stop counting
'cancers that we cured' that really didn't need to be cured (e.g.,
in situ ductal 'carcinoma'), there has been very little major progress
over the last 50 years.
So what to do? Reduce esophageal-cancer-causing acid reflux and therefore
esophageal cancer, for example, by eating less protein (mainly meat
and cheese)? Stop smoking to reduce lung cancer? Sensible, perhaps,
but people will never go for it. Besides, unorthodox thinking like
that has the potential to collapse the economy, man. Instead, we can
look forward to a bright future where people will be able to eat lots
of meat and cheese, and then take 'genetically personalized' potions
to fix all the problems that this causes. For example, you could mix a
proton-pump inhibitor for the acid reflux with an osteoclast inhibitor
to fix the bone-dissolving effects of the proton-pump inhibitor, then
add a few additional things to to block stomach bleeding and occasional
phossy jaw caused by the osteoclast inhibitor. Presto, problem solved!
Given that thousands of 'personalized' reagents will be required
in time-varying dosages, this mixture could conveniently
be dispensed from a mouthpiece on your internet-of-things
refrigerator-slash-biotech-fabricator, which could also test for tumor
markers while you were sucking on it. Eventually each kid will need
their own personalized refrigerator/synthesizer/tester. Now, don't
share your mouthpieces, children, be sure to practice safe mouthpiece...
[Mar11'18]
Alternate reality
I grew up in the 60's. During the end of the US invasion of Vietnam in
1972, I got a draft lottery number, which was low enough to be called.
Thankfully, the war ended just in time for me not to have to make a life
changing decision about how to respond (at the time, college deferments
had been discontinued). Back then, I often felt that I had a different
world view from maybe 2/3 of of the US population, which was divided
on the Vietnam war, not to mention, on the topic of what a healthy
diet consisted of. But it didn't feel schizophrenic to me -- just
that people had different opinions. I attributed this, in an aspie
way, to the other guys simply not knowing the facts. For example,
as a teenager with a vivid physical and biological imagination,
I knew approximately how many 750 pound general purpose
bomb
craters there were in Vietnam (roughly 20 million).
I knew a lot about the physics and biology of shrapnel
interacting with biological tissue. I knew about
My
Lai back in the day when real reporters showed real pictures of
what real war actually looks like. And I remember my father's story of
taking bleeding dying relatives to the hospital in the back of a car
after they were hit by flack from a stray anti-aircraft shell when he
was 11, growing up in Honolulu, during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Over the years, after many failed attempts, I got wiser and realized that
it was not really possible to change most peoples' minds with facts.
But when I contrast how I felt back then with how I feel now, today I
have a greater sense of schizophrenia. Many days, I feel like I am truly
living in an alternate reality -- from the academics I interact with
at work, from the people in the cars I interact with on the road in my
twice-daily cycle commute, and from most of what I read on the internet.
It's not that information about reality isn't available on the internet.
For example, as the shrieking about the Russiagate nothingburger (a
Russian troll farm spent $100,000 dollars! We must nuke them to stop
this meddling!) begins to subside on both sides, I think of related facts
I have come across, which are still available in the regular media if you
go picking around. Here is a 2016 report from Forbes (!) on the
failure
of Elon Musk to successfully lobby congress to ban the use of Russian
rocket engines in lifting national-security satellites into orbit.
Elon Musk, who made his fortune with Paypal, who only has an undergraduate
physics degree, and who pays his engineers sh$t, lost. The reason was
reality, visible even to the congressworms from both sides -- his rocket
engines simply weren't nearly as good or cheap or reliable as the RD-180
Russian rocket engines that the US military still buys from Russia.
To restate that, the US military continued and still continues to launch
*all* of its surveillance/killer/space-weapons satellites *using Russian
rocket engines*! That's reality/facts as far as I'm concerned. When I
contrast this with the Russiagate nonsense I hear my colleagues
mouthing, Pyootin-this and Pyootin-puppet-that, I feel like I am in an
alternate reality from both 'right' *and* 'left'. Don't you lefters
and righters all remember the Nuland 'f$ck the EU' 'color revolution'
shoot-at-both-sides coup that installed Nazis in Kiev right on the Russian
border? Imagine if the Russians tried something like that in Tijuana?
I'm sure it's not my mind going soft, since I think it's actually working
better after I improved circulation to it by eating more plants :-}.
So, for some examples, let's look at
some articles from Russia Today :-}
Here is
a good article that accurate transcribes quotes arising from the recent
Google/military drone kerfuffle that excellently demonstrate alternate
realities. For example: "Some Google employees were outraged that the
company would share its technology with the military". Those people are
in a different reality than me. They are working for a company that was
birthed by the military industrial complex. Google *is* the military
intelligence complex!
OK, but have you no care for the US drone pilots that are 'stressed'
and 'demoralized' (more quotes in the RT article)? We must help our
citizens avoid PTSD by offloading the stressful job of killing real
people by remote control to AI drones now!
And don't you care about saving money and about our national debt?
RT quotes the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) writes: "Downward
economic forces will continue to constrain Military Department budgets for
the foreseeable future. Achieving affordable and cost-effective technical
solutions is imperative in this fiscally constrained environment".
That 'downward pressure' resulted this year in such a large increase in
the US military budget (supported by both parties) that the increase alone
was more than the *entire* Russian military budget. Scheisse, I'd hate
to see what 'sustained' or 'rising' US military funding would look like...
In a related RT article, former CEO Eric Schmidt,
then tells us, don't worry, 'killer AI' is still
1 to 2 decades away, and anyway it will be
controlled
by humans: the AI takes care of the details of the wet work and
the humans have more of a supervisory role so they don't get PTSD.
Win-win situation.
Finally, the RT report finishes with another 'win' by pointing out
that we shouldn't forget that Google AI is now helping to treat diabetic
retinopathy in India! (which is now rapidly increasing because Indians can
now afford to eat too much meat and cheese and oil, just like Americans).
The topics and sentences of the official Frankenstein narrative faithfully
reported by RT don't hang together well for me, in part because I
don't marinate in them daily. I suppose that is a little schizophrenic
of me. That's OK. It's important to retain an empirical, logical,
and sensible approach even if other people don't. If you *don't* feel
pretty schizophrenic these days, it just means that your brain operating
system is not working right :-}
[Mar27'18] It's worthwhile putting
US gun deaths, bad as they are, into the perspective of all causes of
death (almost 3 million per year). There are about 30,000 gun-related
deaths per year. These break down into 65% by suicide (20,000), 15% by
police (4,500), 3% from accidental discharge (1000), and finally, 17%
(5000) from criminal/gang/drug/mentally-ill/mass-shooting activity.
One-quarter of all gun crime deaths happen in Chicago, Baltimore,
Detroit, and Washington D.C. That leaves about 4,000 gun-related violent
deaths for the whole rest of the US (1,000 per year in California).
Though tragic, non-suicide/non-police gun violence deaths (5,000) are a
tiny fraction of yearly heart disease deaths (700,000), cancer deaths
(600,000), medical error deaths (200,000), lower respiratory disease
deaths (150,000), accident deaths (150,000, incl. 40,000 car accident
deaths and 30,000 drug overdose deaths), stroke deaths (140,000),
Alzheimer's deaths (110,000), diabetes deaths (80,000), kidney disease
deaths (50,000), deaths from infections (40,000), and liver disease deaths
(40,000). Violent gun crime accounts for about 1% of annual deaths
(2015), a much higher precentage than in European countries, but still
a very minor cause of death in the greater scheme of, well, death.
Everybody must die; but we would like to minimize premature death.
The overwhelming majority of premature deaths (heart disease, cancer,
lower respiratory, stroke, Alzheimer's, diabetes) in the US are caused
by bad diet, not the guns of criminals.
[Apr26'18]
Nothing hightlights the incredibly short
look-ahead required of capitalist businesses more than
this
report that Ford will stop selling nearly all North American
cars to refocus only on trucks and SUVs, in order to increase
its profitability over its currently flat 8%. It also plans to
incorporate hybrid drive trains into these oversize vehicles. I see
many spotlessly gleaming Ford F-150's, 'Explorers' (not!), and 'Escapes'
(not!) roaring by me during my daily bicycle commutes, more often than
not piloted by diminuitive women, some even wearing hajibs. This move by
Ford makes incredible short term business sense since the profit margin
on trucks and SUVs is higher than on the things we used to call 'cars';
and, because of relatively low gas prices, people are buying
larger
and larger vehicles. A side effect is that accident deaths and
pedestrian and cyclist deaths are ticking up, because the larger vehicles
tend to roll over more easily and hit pedestrians and cyclists higher
(more lethally). Of course, from even a slightly sane, wider view, this
move -- by both consumers and corporations -- is a move in a ridiculously
short-sighted, wrong direction. The temporary 1% 'glut' of oil is a
transitory thing, spurred on by the US frackers, who remain deep in debt
from selling fracked oil, and who are selling subprime fracking leases to
avoid going even deeper into debt, bizarrely emulating Tesla/Netflix/Uber
to gain market share without ever actually making money. Ten years from
now, people will say about Ford and their stoopid consumers, 'what were
they thinking?'. I say, Ford was thinking *like they always have to*
(6 months ahead), and consumers were thinking 6 months ahead, too.
In some respects, I think this particular mess is more the fault of the
stoopid consumers.
Speaking of projections into the future, here is a sensible quote from
Catherine Austin Fitts on pensions: "If we can print money to give
$20 trillion [plus] to the banks, and, [if we can] let $21 trillion
go missing from the federal government, [then] why is it a problem
to print $5 trillion to fund the pension funds?" (article
here).
[May01'18]
Here are two excellent quotes from Michael Hudson from a recent
interview:
"You asked what is the fight about? The fight is whether the state will
be taken over, essentially to be an extension of Wall Street if you do
not have government planning. Every economy is planned. Ever since the
Neolithic (era), you've had to have (a form of) planning. If you don't
have a public authority doing the planning, then the financial authority
becomes the planners. So globalism is in the financial interest - Wall
Street and the City of London, doing the planning, not governments. They
will do the planning in their own interest. So neoliberalism is the
fight of finance to subdue society at large, and to make the bankers and
creditors today in the position that the landlords were under feudalism."
"92% of corporate revenue in the last five years has gone either into
stock buy-backs or higher dividend payouts. That means only 8% has gone
into new investment to expand production or employ more labor. So the
financial business plan is one of asset stripping and shrinkage, not
growth. Nobody in the 19th century imagined that industrial capitalism
would evolve along these self-destructive lines. They all believed that
the most technologically efficient system would win out in a kind of
Darwinian or Spencerian struggle of the fittest. But instead, you've
had a covert, parasitic financial counter-revolution. The rentier class
- land rent, monopoly rent, and high finance - have fought back
and created a fallacious vocabulary whose objective is to deceive the
population into thinking that giving more money to the wealthy 1% will
trickle down to the 99%, instead of seeing this 1% income as extractive,
not productive."
[May18'18]
Reading this
recent
post by Mary Fricker, it never ceases to amaze me how rapidly
large changes in the basic 'plumbing' of the banking system can occur.
In this case, as a result of the 2007 financial crisis, banks were
'forced' to became 'safer', supposedly curtailing some of the practices
that resulted in the last crash.
But almost immediately, non-reported, non-bank lending and borrowing
-- N.B.: between *banks* and non-banks -- ballooned. For example,
non-bank mortgage originations went from 20% of mortgages to 50%
of mortgages in just a few years. Also, by performing 'off balance
sheet' funding operations using collateral, transactions can be done in
private, concealing growing risk. Though strange to the average person,
the basic operation of 'borrowing' money -- that is, *creating* money
from the void at the moment of the loan -- is actually straightforward to
understand. But by 'multiplying the loaves and fishes' -- differentiating
this basic process into many different, unreported, intertwined versions
-- it has become nearly impossible for the average person to keep up.
Sure looks like the crescendo leading up to the next dump of this 'toxic
waste' onto the proles. Seems like we are somewhere around 2006.
Of course, I had been expecting this to all come unglued 3 years ago (see
above), and that it would be motivated by oil shortages, possibly caused
by deep-in-debt frackers finally not being able to make their interest
payments. Instead, we maintained a tiny 'glut' of oil (oil is only now
starting to creep up in price), and frackers have somehow managed to stay
in business despite always having been deep in debt, and having
burned
through 1/5 of a trillion dollars over the
past 5 years (Steve St. Angelo
video). Consumers,
meanwhile, also using 'creative' financing, have bought increasingly
larger 'cars' -- so much so that I have been forced to begin
wearing a left ear plug because I am starting to go deaf in that
ear from the increased traffic/tire noise. And despite historically
low (below 5%) 30-year mortgage rates for the past 8 years,
personal
interest payments have crept up to a new record that exceeds the
peak just before the last housing bust.
This latest mutation in money games won't fix the peak energy problem,
and it's not something that a Renaissance gold merchant from 16th century
Florence wouldn't instantly recognize. And it certainly won't stop the
next crash, or the next upward transfer of wealth. Would it have been
better to have faced our impending problems more openly? Probably. But,
keeping the main outlines of the ever more complex big picture (energy,
food, science, engineering, war, banking, geopolitics) in mind all at
once is nearly impossible.
[May21'18]
The fact that the new CIA director, Gina Haspel, is a woman does
nothing to obscure the fact that she's the latest torturer-in-chief.
Here is an excellent piece by Caitlin Johnstone on how
the
mask is slipping, with all the details. But I agree with
Ron
Paul: Haspel is not the problem -- the CIA is the problem.
[May31'18]
Bubble, Bubble, Oil and Trouble
Rather like people wanting to hear good news about their bad eating habits
('bacon actually a health food!' 'butter is back!'), people want to hear
comforting news that business as usual will continue after a temporary
setback. Just to be clear, if I had a choice, I would prefer that
business as usual continue forever, too. I was nervous enough in the
run up to the 2006 US housing bubble. But the US 'everything bubble'
(housing, oil/energy, stocks, bonds, cars, college) together with
the EU, Japan, and China bubbles actually looks worse.
Housing.
Starting with US housing, it is still continuing up, as people
mechanically replay what happened just before the 2006 housing bubble
popped -- desperately trying to buy a house near the top of the market
because of fear of higher interest rates and higher prices. The rationale
there is that, once interest rates go up, they won't be able to afford as
big of a house. Of course, once interest rates go up, no one else will
be able to afford a bigger house either, not to mention the fact
that people already in a big house will have trouble servicing their
variable interest rate loans for it. This will obviously cause prices
to decline and some people to get underwater, causing more declines.
But at least the speed of a housing bubble pop is relatively leisurely.
Even though the pop started in 2005-2006, prices were still holding up
pretty well in 2007. Stocks, where 1 microsecond differences in order
delays makes a difference, are another thing.
It's worth noting that dollar interest rate increases will have less of
an effect on housing in regions of the country where panicky rich buyers
from, for example, China are offshoring their domestic gains. Vancouver
has only recently tried to moderate this destabilizing cash inflow.
As growth in China flattens, these flows might even temporarily increase.
Oil.
Turning to oil, one of the things that set off the great 2007-2008
recession was oil prices, which were the result of hitting peak crude oil.
The high prices in 2007-2008 generated a gold rush of tight oil frackers,
with many fracking rigs available on the cheap from the previous natural
gas fracking craze that had just finished flattening the increase in
natural gas prices by 2006. The sudden drop in interest rates in
early 2009 then resulted in a 'sub-prime' fracking bubble. Today,
9 years later, with US 'oil' production back to its 1970's peak (N.B.:
light tight oil is already almost as light as lowest octane gasoline,
and so less useful for making higher energy density jet fuel or diesel
without blending), oil frackers, amazingly, have still not made any net
money and remain deep in debt. They have increased US oil production
by 4 million barrels a day.
Of course, individual fracker
CEOs and investors have gotten insanely rich by
flipping
subprime oil leases and skimming off some of the money flowing by.
But the bizarre reality is that oil production, involving the
lifeblood of industrial civilization (there is 3 days of just-in-time
food and other stuff on the shelves and in peoples' houses if the diesel
powered container-ships/trains/trucks ever stopped), is channelling Uber,
Tesla, and Netflix! -- burning the furniture just to manage paying
interest on their debt (though they haven't yet started launching
pallet-loads of investor cash into space like Tesla). A tiny 'glut'
(only 1-2%) has kept the price of oil too low for frackers to be able
to even break even, after almost a decade of breakneck production.
But that is finally ending as reserves begin to be drawn down.
We are in a strange position (one which I never anticipated 5 years ago)
where oil price is too low for oil companies to break even in the longer
term; but oil prices can't go higher because then people won't be able
to afford it (in their oversize vehicles), with the economy on the verge
of a crash that may drive oil prices even lower. One critical result
is that oil companies have slashed their budgets for exploration over
the past four years, and are now discovering the smallest amount of
oil ever -- only one barrel of oil discovered for every *six* used!
Obviously, using 6 and finding 1 can't go on forever. In fact, it
can't even go on for another 5 years; there will eventually be outright
shortages, which will cause chaotic price fluctuations. See Art Berman
here
for more details.
Energy more generally.
Turning to energy more generally, there was also a bubble in
'renewable' energy (don't get me wrong, I like 'renewable' energy).
But it did nothing to ameliorate the fact that we seem to be
beyond the peak in net energy use in the US. The total raw energy
*input* (not useable output, see below) used in the US remained
approximately constant at about 98 quads (quadrillion BTU's) between
2010 and 2017. The much touted 'renewable' energy (solar, wind)
boom in the US only resulted in an increase from 1% to 3% of total
energy input in the US between 2010 and 2017 (compare that to 36%
of total energy input from oil). You can see the tiny solar and
wind contributions to the total energy inputs in yellow and purple in
the 2017 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) Sankey diagram
here,
which can be compared with the equivalent 2010 diagram
here
(divide the 2010 numbers by 1000 to get quads). But the solar/wind
bubble seems to be ending. After Tesla acquired Solar City in 2016,
Solar City's solar installations dropped to less than half, which was
part of the bigger picture that in 2017 and 2018, solar installations
in the US overall actually went down.
For context, in that same time period, from 2010 to 2017, primary energy
inputs from coal decreased from about 21% to 14% of total energy input.
So that means that the new inputs from solar and wind boom only made
up for 2/7 of the large decrease in coal energy. The other 5/7 (the
majority) of the loss of coal input energy (about 5% of total energy
inputs) was compensated for by increased natural gas and biomass burning.
However, the *output* end of these charts also suggests the overall
quality of energy inputs is somehow steadily decreasing. For example,
growing corn to ferment into ethanol isn't even a net energy source since
you have to put as much fossil fuel energy in to make it (e.g., to distill
it) as you get back out; and producing fracked oil, which really took off
in 2013-2014, uses more energy than producing conventional crude oil.
The result is that the total *useable* energy coming out the other end
of the Sankey diagram actually substantially decreased from 38 quads in
2010 to 31 quads in 2017 (the reason that output is always so much less
than input is that most raw input energy is necessarily lost as heat --
e.g., internal combustion engine cars are 25% efficient, while a good
combined cycle natural gas plant that re-uses the heat in flue gasses
might hit 60% max). The comparisons are approximate because methodologies
may have slightly changed over the years. Nevertheless, it is clear
that despite the renewable energy bubble, we may already be beyond peak
net energy. Since GDP is very highly correlated with energy use, this
could explain why the 'recovery' since 2009 has been so sluggish.
Stocks.
The stock market bubble has been driven largely by an unprecendented
amount of stock self-purchasing. This May, there was a record of 1/6 of a
*trillion* dollars in stock buybacks -- in one month! Because interest
rates are so low, companies can make more 'money' by taking out a low
interest loan to buy their own stock to make it go up in price than they
can by actually making and selling things. This strange 'catabolic'
behavior (which used to be illegal) now comprises a majority of the stock
'market' (not counting the 90% of trading that is now automatically done
by computers). Obviously, this unnatural bubble is also threatened
by a normalization of interest rates. Although the stock and bond
markets historically have tended to move in opposite directions, the
likely increase in rates will make the much bigger bond market go down
in parallel with the stock market this time. As already mentioned,
since most 'trading' is done by machines, price moves can be violent.
'Cars'.
The combination of low oil and gasoline prices starting in 2014
together with low interest rates resulted in people immediately
driving more and buying larger 'cars', if you can call them that
(although the *per capita* number of car miles hasn't recovered
even to roughly 2003 levels). Nevertheless, the situation of
car makers and car buyers is delicate and car miles seem to be
topping out again (after their previous unprecedented dip that began in
2008).
An increase in interest rates and/or gasoline prices has the potential
rapidly deflate the 'car' bubble. This will likely bleed over into
electric cars. It is often forgotten that electric cars primarily use
fossil fuel energy (see LLNL Sankey diagrams above), delivered over lossy
power lines. It is likely that the gasoline and electric car bubbles
and the car loan bubble are setting themselves up to pop in parallel
with all the other bubbles.
College.
Starting in 2009, the slope of the yearly increase in
student debt
suddenly increased by a factor of *10* and has stayed there since, with
total student debt now at roughly $1.5 trillion dollars. Without a
jubilee, this new large source of debt will be a tremendous drag on
the housing bubble, the car bubble, the renewable energy bubble, the
Tesla Tuscan roof solar roof bubble (remember that one?), and so on.
It is much easier to walk away from bad housing debt than bad student
loan debt. This suggests that when the bubbles begin to pop, there
will be substantial knock-on effects on other parts of the economy.
Perhaps the student loan slope can increase by another factor of 10x as
interest rates increase? I would guess, no.
Italy and so on.
Until last week, the interest rates on Italian bonds were negative.
How could this be!? This means, people have been *paying Italy*
for the privilege of *lending Italy* money. That previous state
of affairs was the result of a huge increase in quantitative
easing by both the EU and Japan that began in earnest in only 2013
and exceeded what was done in the US in 2009-2014. EU central
bank interest rates were actually negative. See
here for the Bank of Japan
balance sheet. The Bank of Japan has explained how they can unwind
this without causing problems. It looks like they have just started
to moderate the blistering rate of these purchases. Thus, the bubble
extends to much of the rest of the industrial world.
In the US, something went haywire around the same time (mid-2014) with
'reverse repos',
where the Fed 'pawns' its assets (jewelry) to big banks (the pawn shop!),
who give the Fed 'spending money' for a fee (the Fed needs money?!).
One explanation was that the quarterly spikes were a way for banks
to be able to show they were solvent (with the Fed's 'jewelry'), once
every quarter.
China.
Finally, China. By
2014,
China's total energy use (at 20% of world) caught up to and slightly
surpassed that of the US (at 19% of world). For comparison, Russia
is at 6%, India at 5%, Japan at 3.6%, Canada at 2.4%, Germany at 2.3%
and so on. The slope of the yearly *increase* in Chinese energy use
from 1970 to 2000 was about 27 megatons of oil equivalent per year.
By 2003, China had reached about 1000 total megatons of oil equivalent
usage per year. The slope of increase in 2003 then suddenly jumped by
a factor of *six* to 180 megatons of oil equivalent *increase* per year.
This blistering rate of increase continued until 2016. See the excellent
Mazama Science
Energy
Export Databrowser (their PDF of all-energy use in China is
here).
Since 2016, Chinese energy use has rapidly flattened, topping out
around 3000 megatons of oil equivalent use per year (3x what it was in
just 2003!). There was a huge drop in the use of coal that was barely
compensated for by continuing increases in oil, natural gas, and nuclear
power usage (solar is still under 1% of total energy supply in China).
Over the past 15 years China has done $20 trillion of QE compared to
the measly $4 trillion done by the US. China poured *twice* as much
concrete as the US did in the *entire 20th century* -- in just 6 years
(2011-2016). Over that period, China built highways and cities and malls
and hospitals and subways and high speed rail at a staggering pace. One
small but telling illustration of the breakneak rate of growth is the
Chinese
rental bicycle bubble. And the Chinese everything bubble has fed the
coastal real estate bubbles in the US, causing inflation in real estate
that has far exceeded salary increases there, even after accounting
for lower interest rates, as Chinese have fearfully offshored their
domestic gains.
It seems likely, there will be problems servicing the huge new Chinese
debt load now that growth has definitively flattened. And there could
be knock-on effects on the US/UK real estate bubble.
Conclusion.
The unprecedented co-occurence of: (1) the shale oil slash fracking
lease bubble, (2) finding one barrel of oil for every six used, (3) the
'renewable energy' bubble, (4) the student loan bubble, (5) the stock
market bubble, (6) the bond market bubble (normally anti-correlated
w/stocks), (7) the subprime car buying bubble, (8) the EU/Japan QE
bubble, (9) the China bubble, and finally, (10) peak net energy, point
to something wicked just around the bend.
Probably bad things won't happen until 2019, or who knows,
even 2020 (based on long vs. short-term interest rate
spreads). I remember
with the last housing bubble, how I thought around 2003-2004 that it
couldn't *possibly* continue. But it did, for at least 3 more years
after that. This time around, already by 3-4 years ago (2014-2015, see
my incorrect predictions above), I was certain the various new bubbles
couldn't continue upwards and that oil prices would soon be spiking,
and that an earth shattering crash was just around the corner. I was
massively, totally, wrong. I would have made a terrible businessman.
But I understand the longer term picture well and none of what happend
since 2014-2015 has changed *that* picture in the slightest. It looks
like central banker bears are getting ready to crash the long-in-the-tooth
expansion so their friends can zoom in and vacuum up shiploads of
distressed assets on the cheap.
Though the main problems/bubbles are clear, it is extremely difficult
to predict how this next crash will unfold. Currently, it looks like
Japan/EU/UK and/or China might actually be in slightly worse shape than
the US. If the contagion starts there, then the US could get an initial
(unearned) temporary 'flight to safety' boost. That could keep things
going up for another 6 months or a year in the US relative to other
countries.
But all the kerfuffle about growth/crash is still really just 'noise'
with respect to the big picture. It's maddening to see these ramdom
'squirrel' events ('Italy!', 'The Fed!', 'China!') distracting
attention from rationally dealing with the basic outlines of overshoot.
Two more California's of people are being added to the Earth every year.
The biosystem that supports us all is in trouble. The earth simply won't
support the additional gigantic increment in the usage of land, water,
food, fish, metals, minerals, concrete, housing, sewers, hospitals,
tech, electrical power, and cars for *two additional California's* worth
of people *every year* for very much longer. I suppose this whole post
shows that I am guilty of the same distraction...
[Aug05'18]
Gag me with an exoskeleton
I worked myself into a (mostly unjustified) rage after reading
How
Technology is Hijacking Your Mind by 'Google ethicist' and
former magician, Tristan Harris.
It wasn't just that he didn't put his expose of modern advertising
techniques into proper historical context. Modern advertising and
propaganda is at least a century old. For example, see Bernays'
highly successful 1927 campaign to convince women to smoke ("torches
of freedom"). Despite all the 'modern' blather, Google and Facebook are
merely advertising companies -- both make more than 98% of their revenue
through advertising. I suppose that explicating how old techniques have
been adapted and supercharged by modern tech is potentially worthwhile,
at least for people who aren't already part of the machine.
The thing that threw me into rage was his *utterly* flaccid but
paradoxically simultaneously fart-filled 2-sentence summary (what
can I say, I'm an academic...):
"We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to
be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that
put our values, not our impulses, first. People's time is valuable.
And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other
digital rights."
Gag me with a cell phone exoskeleton! We don't need our smartphones
and notifications at all! You can have a perfectly good modern
life without them. Completely turning off the wretched notifications
is the first thing I am now forced to do in more recent desktop Mac
OS's. Luckily, you can still (sort of) turn them off, but that's
unlikely to last.
But it was 'exoskeletons' that really made my blood boil. I
just *hate* 'exoskeletons'. What's so frigging modern about an amoured
chariot? I cycle alongside a bunch of unhealthy people in their
SUV 'exoskeletons' twice a day. The people don't perceive them as
exoskeletons because they are inside. Outside, they are roaring,
6000-pound, steel-covered, quarter-of-a-megawatt monstrosities.
They are so insanely overpowered that they can drag a trailer on
its side without
without even
blinking.
The final straw was combining metaphorical digital 'exoskeletons'
with the idea that there is some kind of choice about all of this.
In what impossible alternate universe does Tristan think that
Google or Facebook could somehow stop doing the two things that
define
their very existence?
(1) creating a worldwide panopticon (first envisioned in the 18th century!)
(2) combining this with super-charged advertising and behavior-control
I also note that Tristan somehow failed to mention number (1). Those two
things are the whole f---ing point of Google and Facebook and Amazon,
from their very start as military intelligence gathering operations.
Those functions weren't 'accidentally discovered', like the article
credulously claims.
So some Google court jester is going to steer the ship of Google
in such a direction as to protect "people's time" in the same way
that "people's privacy and other digital rights" have been protected?
Great. People's "privacy and other digital rights" are non-existent.
Yeah, let's get together and 'bell the Google cat', fellow mice!
Nice jester costume you've got there. The only way to throw off the
yoke is: 'just don't use'. Don't damage your mind by subcontracting
parts of it out to companies who certainly do *not* have your best
interests in mind.
[Aug19'18]
There seems to have been an escalation in internet censorship this
August with one of the most intelligent true left commentators, Scott
Creighton (willyloman/americaneveryman/churchdog42, not the British
pyramid guy), taken down last week, and then Caitlin Johnstone's
Twitter account suspended this week (now restored after an internet
backlash). Taking advantage of internet resources that are solely
supported by advertising can indeed be a 'deal with the devil'.
So-called 'social media' *can* help a lot with one's distribution.
But the light switch can be turned off in a wink, taking down
everything written before in a way that was not practical back in
the days of advertising-supported newsprint. At least back then you
could still go and read the thing in the library that got somebody
in trouble with the censor overlords. Now you can only find
hit
pieces, written by pusillanimous cogs in the machine (TechCrunch is
owned by WordPress which is owned by Automattic -- what an appropriate
name for censor overlords made mostly out of software.
[Aug21'18]
From this
Fed
graph, it looks like the real estate bubble may have finally popped.
This is sales, not price; price will follow sales. It's never quite the
same as last time. Talking to people, they will say that it's not like
last time because you can no longer get liar loans. But that doesn't
matter when the income to price ratio is back to where it was in 2007.
Another difference from last time was that then, US problems preceded
those elsewhere. By contrast, now the rot is beginning external to
the US, causing the dollar to rise because it's the best of the bad.
Eventually, however, the rot spreads to everyone.
[Aug22'18]
The Cyclist's Prayer
Our cyclist, who art in heaven,
we try daily not to join you,
by recognizing that every car driver
has the right to trespass against us
if we hinder, at any moment,
their right, granted by god, to use
the full power of their 200,000 watt engine.
If a driver remembers a
hindrance by a different cyclist,
deliver us onto the sidewalk,
and lead us not into a car door.
Amen.
My friend Pete Markiewicz pointed out that a 200,000 watt car has become
a real weakling -- you will soon be able to buy a car with a
1.2
megawatt engine. Accelerating that car is like turning on 12,000
incandescent 100-watt light bulbs. After all, you're worth it, for all
you do.
[Sep02'18]
The real reason drivers should try cycling
It is true you can save a small amount of gasoline; but this is not
very significant effect. For example, Claudia and I have an efficient
late model Prius that driven gingerly gets an *average* gas mileage
(freeway+city) of 64 miles/gallon (over 2 years, verified by recording
total gallons in, total miles out). So I save (just) one gallon of gas
a week by cycling the 6 miles (one way) to work. Hardly earth shaking.
The real reason for car drivers to try cycling is to get a real glimpse
of what car exoskeletons look like and behave like -- from the outside,
in their true element.
You might say, 'but I already know this from being a pedestrian'.
Not true. Few people (e.g., where I live in San Diego) actually walk
where they have to directly interact with their alter egos in car
exoskeletons. Rather, they drive to a business, try to park as close
as they can to the front door, then walk a short distance to it. Often,
they are not directly exposed to the exoskeletons in action at all,
because they are only walking out to the parking lot.
On a bike, by contrast, you actually experience these fearsome machines
in their true element, muscling their way around your bike, using their
quarter of a megawatt engines to their fullest.
On a bike you are a peasant; the people in cars and esp. SUV's are
literally 'on their high horse'. As a cyclist, you are a mere irritating
gnat to them. They will show this to you by terrifyingly roaring by with
a deafening honk to 'punish' you for daring to slightly slow them down.
Your life is spared daily as mere convenience.
The most important point is that they don't realize how loud and
terrifying their monstrous machines are from the outside. Cycling on
roads with cars, even for a mere 10 miles, for one day, can put all this
into perspective. In the UK, after an unseemly number of women cyclists
-- who follow the rules of the road better than men -- were crushed to
death under the tyres of lorries (truck tires), a program was instituted
requiring lorry drivers to spend a little time riding a bike in London.
A capital idea! How about make that part of the drivers test here?
3-wheeled bikes would be made available for those who can't pedal hard
enough to keep a regular bike upright.
[Sep18'18]
Just say no to brain-penetrating nanoparticles
There is a lot of evidence that Alzheimer's dementia is highly correlated
with metabolic syndrome (type 2 diabetes, et al.), even more than the
'diagnostic' amyloid plaques and tau tangles. 'Diabesity' has increased
catastrophically across the entire world over the past decade and
a half, which is strongly correlated with the fact that the rest of
the world is rapidly adopting the Standard American Diet (SAD) (high
meat, high dairy, high oil). Given these two basic facts, one should
conclude that most of our attention should be focused on getting people
to go back to eating the way they did before they got sick (less meat,
less dairy, less oil). Recent worldwide dietary changes together with
the long onset time of dementia suggest that we will see a catastrophic
increase in dementia over the next two decades. For example, in the UK,
in 2011, dementia overtook heart disease as the leading cause of death
(currently 13% of all deaths).
Instead, as the 6th extinction gallops along, and as remaining forests
are rapidly destroyed to make room for rapidly increasing animal
agriculture (space for food and dairy animals, cropland for food for
food animals, pastures for food animals, cropland for oil plants), the
plan instead is to try to fix this with biotech. Here is but
one
example of literally hundreds of thousands of papers spewed out
every year trying to do this. Despite all the resesarch and expense,
it's important to remember that *nothing has worked yet for Alzheimer's
disease*! That particular paper focused on iron deposits in the brain,
which are correlated with dementia. The idea was to use iron chelators
to remove the iron. The problem is that the blood brain barrier tries to
keep many compounds in the circulating blood out of the brain. No prob.
They will simply engineer nano-drugs to get around this.
The idea of big pharma engineering boatloads of hi-tech brain-penetrating
nano-particles creeps me out. It's not that I'm unaware that a huge
number of compounds/nanoparticles already get into the brain. I simply
don't trust that the goals of large corporations are in the best interests
of the majority of the population who don't own those corporations.
I would like to keep all of them out of my brain. Besides, the brain
already has its own iron (and many other thing) chelators; if you eat
the right things and exercise, they usually work just fine.
Perhaps because of the language differences, the concluding sentence of
the abstract was uncommonly frank: "Despite a lack of evidence for
any clinical benefits, the conjecture that therapeutic chelation, with
a special focus on iron ions, is a valuable approach for treating AD
remains widespread." This describes the situation perfectly. I highly
doubt it will be any different, 10 or 20 years from now, as world power
down begins.
[Sep19'18]
In the hospital after a car hit me on Sept 18 on my daily bicycle
commute home. I had the right of way on the main street with an SUV at
a stop sign on a right side street. It was daytime, and I had front and
back flashers. The SUV driver inched out so she could see the oncoming
traffic, then saw me coming fast (her own words in the police report!),
then attempted to shave exactly 1 second off of her commute by trying
to dash out in front of me when I was at most 15 feet away and going
around 22 mph. I only had time (about 500 milliseconds) to turn slightly
sideways to spread out the blow. The impact broke my 3 top ribs, my
nose bridge, my clavicle, a small part of my scapula, and completely
collapsed my right lung. I was on a chest tube for a week. Guess the
cyclist's prayer didn't work! God probably doesn't like cyclists.
I have steered around stupid car tricks like this many, many times in
the past, but this one was too perfectly timed.
[Oct08'18]
I struggled back to teaching in two weeks (with a seriously sore
shoulder!). I have a new geometry to my right shoulder because my distal
clavicle break fused side-to-side instead of end-to-end. Otherwise, I'm
fine. I was wearing a helmet and didn't suffer any loss of consciousness
or loss of memory (e.g., of the moment of impact!).
[Oct22'18]
Poppy
Just got around to watching the "
(Baby) Your time is
up" video by Poppy (Moriah Pereira), with music and lyrics written
by the the usual committee (Thomas Wesley Pentz, Tom Schleiter,
Corey Mixter, Vaughn Oliver, Thomas Helsloot, Simon Wilcox, Jasper
Helderman). Or perhaps you saw it (minus pitch correction)
live on Sept 11
(natch!).
These are lyrics straight from the MKUltra's horse's mouth!
Your life is meaningless
You're just like cockroaches
Extermination's your only hope
To top it off, a judge just ruled against a lawsuit by another woman
Mars Argo (Brittany Sheets) against Corey Mixter, one of the 'creators'
of Poppy, for stealing her personality and pathology. Read the
rest
of the lyrics. Now, stop complaining about me being a doomer :-} .
It's a catchy tune — not the usual four chords (I,IV,V,VI),
but five (I,bIII,IV,bVII,bVI) with an interesting progression that
doesn't start on the tonic (starts on bVI), with a another cheery chord
(VI) for variation, immediately followed by an ominous b5 change (VImi
-> bIII). The compression filter on the chordal backround is turned
way up past recommended, so you actually hear the volume 'pumping'.
I felt an unnatural compulsion to transcribe it. Here is the repeating
8-bar form:
||: Ema7 | Dbmi9 (low) | Ab | Ab(add 9) (Fmi var) |
| B (low) | Gb | Db | Db sus :||
or relative to the tonic (I):
||: bVIma7 | IVmi9 (low) | I | I(add 9) (VImi var) |
| bIII (low) | bVII | IV | IVsus :||
There are moments in the process of doing scientific research (in
practice, unfortunately, these momements only account for a very small
amount of total time spent :-} ), where one gets the feeling one is
peeking into the hidden underlying reality of the world. For example,
I got this feeling after spending maybe 1000 hours looking at turtle
neurons through the microscope, late at night. It's not that this
allowed me to understand how the brain worked, but rather, it allowed
me to see via all the stubborn differences in morphology in the neurons
in different parts of the brain, the 'personality' of all the different
cellular agents that were cooperating to create turtle consciousness.
Watching this video gave me a similar feeling. The
whole package (video, imagery, lyrics, music, back story,
platform-spike-heel-poison-pill-communion, baphomet dress, the brazenness
of it all) *totally* creeped me out. Though somewhat of an exaggeration,
it provides a matter of fact, in-your-face glimpse of hidden reality of
the sociopathic, casually evil people (bankers, CEO's) that control our
rapidly degrading earth-life-system, and how they view the rest of us
(useless eater cockroaches that deserve to be exterminated), all mouthed
by someone who either is doing an amazing impersonation of MKUltra
slave or actually is one. Yeah, I know, it's supposedly about robots
(with brains that need to be shocked by electrodes?).
It's not that I disagree with their diagnosis of the problem! Of *course*
there are serious resource/water/energy constraints just around the
bend! (and I say "you don't even know!", too). The thing that gets me
here is misanthropy coming from ultrarich people who regard themselves as
a master race *and* have the means to arrange the extermination of poorer
humans they regard as untermenschen. Robots are irrelevant.
[Oct30'18]
After 2 years of utterly failed Russiagate nonsense and wall-to-wall
Stormy Daniels, there is a possibility that the Democrats will make no
gains in the midterm elections. This is amazing given the tendency for
midterm elections to turn against incumbents, esp. in situations where
the incumbents currently control everything. The Democrats could have
done better by doing nothing (though concentrating on more substantive
issues than the Russiagate b.s. would have been a plus).
It's hard to see how the Democrats could turn this around, given that
MSM outlets have found that the nightly negative Trump show is a big
money maker together with the fact that the very same show provides
Trump with a constant supply of red meat wedge issues for the flyovers.
It's a complete (highly profitable) sh*tshow on both sides, while Rome
literally burns. But despite all that hot air, it *really doesn't
matter much* who wins! With the sewer teevee turned off (so you
don't have to constantly look at @ssface), and names redacted, I have
a difficult time seeing large differences between the parties in
banker
and rich people bailouts (class war of finance against the
rest of the economy), overseas wars and military spending, support
for dictators, ever creeping fascism via militarized police and the
military-industrial-FANG-information complex, yearly CO2 output, number
of deportations, etc, etc. It was Clinton, not a Republican, who got rid
of the Glass Steagall Act. Trumpface's so-called 'protectionism' (e.g.,
increasing the cost of raw materials such as steel for US corportations)
merely continues the gutting of American manufacturing that has gone on
without regard for whether the regime was 'Democratic' vs. 'Republican'.
At this point, everything held constant,
Trump would be a shoe-in for a second term because most people don't
seem to realize that the everything bubble is getting ready to deflate.
However, between now and then, a crash as big or even bigger than 2008
will most probably have begun to unfold, and it will be blamed on Trump.
Unfortunately, that has the real potential to give rise to someone
*worse* than Trump (cf. Brazil today). Rather than turning left, as
occurred during the Great Depression, the US (including both nominal
'left' as well as nominal 'right') may turn hard fascist right (N.B.:
we're not there yet, and we *really* don't want to go there).
[Jan05,'19]
You Can't Beat Photosynthesis
After billions of years of evolution, the code-using system in cells
has managed to construct a supremely efficient, self-reproducing system
capable of capturing some of the constant stream of energy coming to the
earth from the sun. Photosynthesis captures 1-2% of the sun's energy
that falls on a green leaf. Engineers often make like fun of this,
pointing out that a simple crystalline silicon photoelectric cell from
the 1950's could reach 10% efficiency. But they forget two key points.
First, all silicon photoelectric cells have literally been made from
the products of photosynthesis! Fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) reflect
extremely rare instances (across the total surface area of the earth)
where the biosphere has *failed* to recycle the energy-containing
hydrocarbon chains produced by photosynthesis. These deposits were laid
down over a half a billion years of earth history (oil mainly in two hot
periods 140 and 90 million years ago). We have dug up and extracted
over half of these concentrated accidental energy treasures in a few
hundred years.
Second, we have not gotten anywhere vaguely close to constructing a
*self-reproducing* energy capture system like photosynthesis. This would
be an industrial civilization powered by solar and wind that was capable
of making, installing, and servicing solar and wind energy devices
using energy from solar and wind devices, while still having enough left
over energy to make everything else in industrial civilization (water,
food, highways, cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes, concrete, steel,
chip fabs, etc, etc).
Cornucopians will now begin to madly wave their hands that Elon Musk
is about to announce an electric bulldozer. The harsh reality is that
the incredible growth in 'renewable' (wind and solar) energy usage
only amounts to 3% of total energy usage in the US and only 1.5% of
total energy in the world. This hasn't even covered the world growth
rate in energy usage. It is worth restating that this means that all
our current solar and wind power devices were literally made out of
products of photosynthesis. For example, most photoelectric cells are
made in China out of coal. And they were all installed and serviced and
decommissioned using products of Carboniferous (coal) and Mesozoic (oil,
gas) photosynthesis. To be charitable, we might say wind and solar
are currently 1.5% 'renewable'. But even that ignores the fact that
the outputs of wind and solar cannot curently be used to make steel and
concrete for wind turbine bases, to mine neodymium, lithium, and copper
for generators and batteries, to transport and erect and service solar
panels and wind turbines, to make the concrete in the roads they are
transported over, etc, etc.
This isn't an irrelevant fact. The supremely efficient, self-reproducing,
photosynthetic devices are constructed by intelligent individual cellular
agents that each contain a gigabyte of DNA code. The code is as small
as it can possibly be (just a handful of molecules for each nucleotide
bit). It's already max 'nano'. We are far from fully understanding how
they work. We can't come vaguely close to constructing a biological
cell 'from scratch' (i.e., without using the metabolic nucleoplasm
and cytoplasm of other existing living cells). We haven't come even
vaguely close to engineering artificial versions of energy-capturing,
self-reproducing devices of this complexity, efficiency, much less this
infinitesimally small size (and no, hacking photosynthesis pathways to
make them 25% more efficient by inserting a few bacterial genes doesn't
count as engineering such a device from scratch).
Of course, one could imagine that one day, we will make
'a lot more' batteries and solar cells and wind turbines.
And over the past decade, there has been a
substantial increase
in the amount of solar and wind capacity installed (N.B.: the amount of
energy generated is always considerably less than "capacity"). But even
'a lot more' is a massive understatement. As noted previously, one full
year's production of batteries from Tesla's GigaFactory is capable of
holding about *one minute* of world grid energy in storage (more details
here).
This is not vaguely close to handling daily variations in 'renewable'
energy production (no solar/wind at night), much less seasonal variation
(more heat needed in winter). And remember that only about one-third of
total energy used is currently delivered as electricity. Electrifying
all transport would require doubling the size of the grid, which hasn't
changed much in decades.
None of this means I dislike photoelectric cells (or wind turbines)!
They're great, and we should continue using oil, methane, and coal to
make tons of them. But to directly compare the cost of electricity
instantaneously produced from intermittent sources to energy produced by
burning storable, transportable, dispatchable fossil fuels,, at minimum,
the cost of several days of energy storage for the intermittent sources
must be included. Once this is done, environmentally destructive fossil
fuel burning remains cheaper, which is an indirect indication of how much
energy it currently takes to make those two different classes of devices.
Second, even though renewable energy devices are currently made out
of fossil fuels, this doesn't mean it's impossible to make them out of
renewable energy sources. But the only way to find out is to actually
try to do that. We are currently only 1.5% of the way there, which
means 98.5% of the way yet to go.
In 10 or 20 years, a substantial additional chunk of our
'photosynthesis energy bank account' will certainly have been drained.
Despite all the talk of 'stranded coal', look at the
CO2 curve from
Mauna Loa. The slope of the curve is *increasing*. The only deviations
from a smooth curve are the upward bumps from the two biggest recent El
Nino events (1998 and 2016). It seems highly unlikely that our
overall energy usage
picture will have substantially changed in 10 or 20 years. There will
probably be more solar panels and wind turbines, which will slightly
thicken the currently miniscule yellow solar and purple wind lines at
the top left of the LLNL Energy Sankey diagram (link above). Hopefully,
the increase in wind and solar will finally at least overtake the yearly
increase in total energy usage. And finally, alas, there is fusion.
The 60 year old dream of fusion is still very far away. ITER's current
plan is to achieve self-heated fusion demo by 2035. This *projected*
goal is merely to get 10 times as much power out as is put in, while
keeping the reaction running for just 6 seconds at a time. None of
the heat produced will be captured. That projected, often postponed,
goal is still a very long ways away from anything vaguely resembling an
actual power plant.
In conclusion, the most likely scenario for 2030 is the beginning of a
continuous, painful contraction, due to reduced net available energy
for industrial civilization, as the dregs of our half a billion year
old 'photosynethetic energy bank' -- like fracked oil in the US and
dirty brown coal and lignite in Germany and China -- are desperately
scraped out, in the process of trying to keep current systems working.
Currently (in the US), 89% of our total energy comes from oil, natural
gas, coal, and nuclear, in that order. The current form of industrial
civilization (food, water, roads, cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes,
heating and air conditioning, 24/7 grid, chip fabs, iPhones, 7 billion
people) simply cannot run on current wind and solar energy sources.
Pretending that it will be able to do so, without also pointing out
that this almost certainly require enormous changes to our lifestyle,
is a great disservice to humanity.
So the bottom line is, don't laugh at 1-2% energy capture by
self-reproducing, one-gigabyte-of-code-per-every-cell devices on which
*all* of industrial civilization is based. We are rapidly drawing down
the 'bank account' they created (by accident!) over a half of a billion
years. We have depleted the easy-to-get half of that energy account in
just 200 years. The second half of that energy account is getting sucked
out at a much higher rate than the first half. Our progress toward
constructing a truly renewable (that is, self-reproducing) industrial
civilization has been almost non-existent. Danger, Will Robinson!
[Jan14'19]
Now I think I'm *really* worried :-}
Doomstead Diner and Ugo Bardi have gone all
Seneca
Rebound! Who doesn't *want* rebound? Of course, I *want*
rebound! (and I don't want a collapse to rebound from, either!).
But the thing that makes me apprehensive is that both Reverse
Engineer and Ugo Bardi know full well that in complete contrast to
the previous 3 biggest collapse-and-rebounds of humans described by
Ugo (the Roman empire, the 1400's Black Death, the 1700's pre-coal
just-finished-cutting-down-all-the-forests mini-Black-Death), this
time, we have: (1) a worldwide depletion of easy (low-cost) energy
resources beginning to impact supply (e.g., obscurely visible as
frackers still in debt since the beginning of fracking), (2) per capita
energy consumption 3-4x what it was in 1700, (3) worldwide depletion
and heating of the biosphere (freshwater, soil, fish, plankton,
forests), and, (4) world population more than 10x what it was during
previous collapse/rebound cycles. This means if there is a collapse,
any rebound will likely be 'more problematic' than in the previous
3 cases. But I suppose it's best to just 'get with the program' of
the new green deal, and tell people that everything will work just like
it does now, but with "100% renewable", even though this is extremely
unlikely, in order to prevent panic. My thinking about what renewable
energy is capable of is closer to that of Pedro Prieto. Go here
here
for his insightful comments in response to a 2016 'early new green deal'
article by Ugo Bardi. Unlike any of the other commenters (or Ugo!),
Prieto actually ran a large scale photoelectic plant (in sunny Spain).
[Jan21,'19]
The New Green Deal is Hope and Change 2.0
The New Green Deal is Hope and Change 2.0. We now know
how the original Hope and Change 1.0 worked out under Obama.
By bailing out big banks and reducing interest rates primarily
for already-super-rich people, it achieved a polarization of
income between rich and poor in the US that for the first time,
eclipsed that of 1929. The 5 big Bank profits are now over
$110
billion a year -- more than 3x what they were in 2004.
Problem #1 -- we also have to fix money creation
The first fundamental fake of the New Green Deal is that it doesn't
address the underlying problem of money creation by private banks.
After the 'loss leaders' trying to suck people in get trimmed away,
the resulting large increase in conventional debt proposed will likely
just increase wealth polarization to even more obscene levels than now.
To really fix this, we would need to change how money is created.
The Federal Reserve, despite its name (from 1913), is a cartel of
*private* banks that serves as the US central bank. Like most people, I
had thought of the Fed as public. My second fundamental misunderstanding
was that I thought of the Fed as the ultimate source of most money.
Instead, most money is created at the moment of a loan, by regular
banks. Talk of 'reserves' is obfuscation designed to confuse the
rubes (see below). The reality is, the great majority of new money
comes into being at the moment a bank loan is created. This takes
nothing more then changing some figures in a bank database. The loan
is typically associated with collateral (e.g., a house). The bank,
which just created the money out of the void for essentially zero cost,
now can claim ownership of real world thing, the house, put onto the
bank's books at the same time as the just-created money, if the borrower
doesn't pay back the created-from-the-void money. When the borrower pays
back the money to the bank, the money disappears back into the void.
The good thing about this system is that is flexible, allowing the
total amount of money to expand and contract in response to local needs.
Since the amount of money is not constant, whether or not it's 'backed'
by something like gold is less important than the fractional reserves
requirement (see footnote for details).
It's worth repeating the main point. The way most money in the world
comes into existence is by private banks simply creating it from the void.
Then, they get to charge interest for it.
This modern system of money creation grew out of gold storage in
Renaissance Florence, where gold bankers would only keep a fraction of the
total gold value of their certificates as actual gold held in the bank,
and would use the remaining gold to invest in various overseas schemes.
As mentioned, a 'gold-backed' currency such as the Florentine gold
certificates does not constrain the total amount of money when fractional
reserves are allowed.
Bonds are similarly a way of generating money from the void as a loan,
only in this case, the 'bank' is 'the public'. That sounds good.
If a corporation takes out a loan in the form of a bond, it has to pay
interest on it. But when the government issues a bond, public money
has to be used to pay the interest, exactly the opposite. You might be
able to get some of the interest payouts back by buying a treasury bill;
but the interest payments also go into the social security trust fund,
to foreign governments and banks, to the Federal Reserve (remember,
a cartel of private banks!), and to odd things like interest on excess
reserves of banks (socialism for banks).
There are several problems with the system of money creation by private
banks, especially as we enter a period of sustained contraction in
economic activity as a result of hitting peak net energy. It only works
correctly when the long term trend is continued growth. One reason
for this is that when banks create interest-bearing money this way,
they don't create the (large amount of) additional money required to
pay off the *interest* on the loan! Thus, it can't even work right in
the steady state. But during a continuous contraction, when people's
ability to service their debts is reduced, the result will be that banks
will end up owning the foreclosed world multiple times over.
The second major problem is that this kind of money creation is privatized
-- a major problem that needs to be fixed -- better before everything
unravels, but also possible after. The power to create money from the
void and then demand that interest be paid on it needs to be taken
away from private banks and made into a public, non-profit service,
like street cleaning. It is critical to preserve the ability of the
money supply to grow (obtain a loan) and shrink (pay back the loan)
to match local and global growth and degrowth.
Currently, private banks are primarily responsible for deciding what is
worthy of being funded; but these decisions are mostly conditioned by
what generates the most private bank profit. A truly publicly-owned bank
could also decide to fund loans for things that are of use to everybody
(e.g., new energy infrastructure), without skimming off greater and
greater amounts of interest (cf. the horrifying pile of student debt,
with total interest payments approaching the size of the principal).
In a not-for-profit public bank, the interest rate could be zero,
and not just for rich people. And there would be no need to issue
interest-bearing government bonds to cover government debt.
There have been sporadic cases of the issuance of publicly-owned,
interest free money over the years. In the US, the Bank of North Dakota
is a state-owned bank, but the only one. And "United States Notes"
(as opposed to "Federal Reserve Notes") were issued without incurring
interest off and on since the Civil War. Sometimes these issues were
not treated as loans. Non-private, interest-free issuance of money had
supporters such as Jefferson, Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.
Since this is how money is actually created, what are taxes good for then?
The purpose of taxation should mainly *not* be to raise money for public
works. Money for public works can be created as needed by public bank
loans. Rather, the main function of progressive taxes is primarily a way
of rectifying the winner-take-all dynamics of human economic systems.
People who have accumulated outsized fortunes are simply forced to pay
some of them back to the state in order to maintain social stability.
This social, 'keep the peace' function is best conceptually separated
from money creation.
A real new green deal can't happen without most people first
acquiring a firm understanding of how the current money/banking/tax
system actually works. I barely understand the main outlines after
wasting a lot of time reading about it. I doubt that most of my
scientific friends understand them any better. On the positive
side, the fact that Bloomberg, for example, has found it necessary
to actually address these ideas to try to discredit them is a
good
sign (this braying is now a daily fixture on zerohedge). But even if
everyone somehow got past the chaff, it would require the application of
an enormous amount of force to dispossess the bankers, who essentially
own the entire world. Dispossession is probably only achievable by
a worldwide military coup, which at the present time isn't likely (or
desirable). As the net energy crunch really starts to bite in another
decade, a more frank discussion about fixing the monetary system might
be possible.
Problem #2 -- The New Green Deal can't fix the net energy problem
The meteoric rise of industrial civilization in the 19th and 20th
centuries was based almost entirely on finding, extracting, and
burning concentrated stores of fossil fuels created by accidental
failures of the biosphere to recycle sunlight-derived energy over
the course of 500 million years. In the beginning, the net energy
available after accounting for the energy required to extract the
fuel was huge in comparison to the extraction costs (measured in
energy).
Renewable energy, here focussing on wind and solar, has two large
disadvantages compared to dirty, climate-destroying fossil fuels.
First, it generates smaller amounts of net energy than fossil fuels,
after accounting for the energy required to extract the fuel or to
make and run the devices. Second, it comes without any storage for
the night, when the wind dies down and it is completely dark. It
is utterly impractical to store electricity generated by wind and solar
across different seasons as is routinely done with natural gas (save some
in summer for the cold winter), or with coal. Energy-dense fossil fuels,
by contrast, can not only be burned when needed, but because of their
much higher energy-density, can be transported over long distances in
their 'storage state' with much smaller losses.
To get an idea of the order of magnitude of the problem, all the
batteries made on Earth last year are only capable of storing 1-2
minutes of grid power; and don't forget that the grid only accounts
for about 1/3 of our daily power draw. The best lithium batteries are
only 1/25 as energy-dense as fossil fuels. That's why the Bolt battery
weighs about half a ton. This is why long distance electric trucks are
currently impractical; the battery would be so huge that all the energy
in the battery gets used up just hauling the battery to the next recharge
station with nothing left over for a payload. Short-distance electric
trucks, by contrast, are more practical.
Given the continuous increase in computational power and the increase
in the number of pixels on teevee viewscreens, many people assume that
renewable energy storage and generation will be analogous. And there
have been some advances. For example, the nickel metal hydride battery
in the original Prius (this battery type invented in 1967) is only 1/42
as energy dense as fossil fuel. However, as mentioned above, the best
current batteries are not that much better. Current lithium batteries
(modern carbonaceous type invented in 1985) are still only 1/25 as energy
dense as fossil fuel.
But the New Green Deal can't change physics just because we *want*
more stuff. As many people have pointed out, you can print money but
you can't print energy. Money is mainly a claim on useable energy.
Sometimes, progress ends for physical reasons. For example, Moore's
law for processor speed failed around 2000, when the top speed of 3-4
GHz was reached. Apparent computation speed continued to increase,
but by different means (shrinking die size to accommodate more cores,
and by tricky execution such as do-both-sides-of-a-branch, then throw
away the unneeded side). Both of those strategies are beginning to reach
their limits, however. It is possible to further increase core count,
but that requires more power, which is not different than simply turning
on two computers.
Though there are likely to be continual improvements in battery
technology, solar cell performance, and wind turbine design, there are
certain physical contraints that are not going to change. For example,
the amount of power hitting a solar panel of a certain area is fixed
and not very large (else you would catch fire going outside :-} ).
Similarly, there are some windy places (where people have already placed
wind turbines), but a lot of other places with poor wind resources.
Finally, consider energy-dense batteries. A fossil fuel such as diesel
is energy-dense because it consists of nothing else than a uniform dense
liquid of energy-containing covalent bonds. It seems very unlikely that
a rechargable battery will ever get close to this energy density in the
forseeable future. Lithium batteries were already almost as energy-dense
as they are now in 1985! After another 30 years of research and even
more exotic manufacturing methods, we may be able to get to, say, 1/18
as dense as diesel -- still far from a drop-in replacement for the fuel
that currently moves all of our food, water, and goods around now.
But zooming out to the big picture, despite all the hype, the reality
is that *all* the wind and solar 'renewable energy' added to our daily
energy gulp has *not even kept up with* the increase in overall energy
use, so fossil fuel usage is still increasing. It is obvious to any
scientifically objective person that something is going to break pretty
soon as the bottom-of-the-barrel fossil fuel dregs are brought to the
surface and per capita net energy starts to decrease.
Conclusion
Of course, I'm in favor of more fairness and more green power!
And yes, I know 76% of Americans want higher taxes on the wealthy,
and 70% of Americans want Medicare for All. But, the New Green Deal
seems suspiciously similar to Hope and Change 1.0. There are three
main problems.
First, it does little to address the fundamental problem of money creation
by private banks. The decisions made by private banks about who to
give debt to have resulted in an unprecendented polarization of wealth.
By merely increasing debt even further using current methods, the most
likely outcome is merely a further increase in the polarization of wealth.
This is the most likely outcome after the 'loss leader' provisions are
stripped out of any New Green Deal on the way to its final implementation
through our banker-controlled government.
Second, it is utterly misleading to pretend that the New Green Deal is
going to somehow make it possible to carry on consuming energy at our
current rate. A typical reaction might be, well that means you are simply
shilling for oil companies and rich people, and telling me that only poor
people get austerity, and that you are against fairness. Instead, I am
saying that geology and physics and engineering tells us that net energy
is going to go down, period. This means that *per capita* net energy
is going to go down, period. We can't pretend otherwise, regardless of
what anyone's position on fairness is. We need to have much more creative
discussions about how to live with a lot less net energy per capita, how
to engineer more resilient, more repairable, and less complex devices --
while we still can! Decomplexification is coming, by hook or by crook.
Meanwhile, we certainly should try to make and refine as many 'renewable
energy' energy devices as possible now, again, while we still can,
before the bottom-of-the-barrel fossil fuels run too low.
Third, we have to tear our faces away from our personal surveillance
devices, now! Almost everybody is carrying one -- containing several
billion parts, with microphones, cameras, position sensors, multiple
remote connectivity modalities; they continuously mine moment-to-moment
human movement and cognition and physical state (e.g., ovulation),
and continuously send it to large corporations for the
sole
purpose of modifying our minds in order to allow the corporations
to make more money. People have been convinced that they can't operate
their life without one, despite the fact that these devices and their
software have blindingly obviously made everyone more depressed, more
pacified and infantilized, and less physically active in just a decade.
People were able to live without these devices without any problems
hardly more than 10 years ago. The psychological strength of the
addiction to these devices and social software, however, is incredibly
powerful and unlikely to be dislodged until energy considerations make
it more difficult to manufacture, obtain, and service these devices.
That probably won't begin to happen until around 2030.
On the positive side, once the firehose of corporate-managed 'content'
begins to be staunched, people will adapt to its absence as quickly as
they adapted to its presence. That might make it possible to begin to
have an adult discussion about the predicament we find ourselves in.
Footnote: Here is how to see that banks create money, but from the
standard confusing 'fractional reserves' viewpoint. Start with
$1,000 total in the world. Person #1 puts it into the bank. The
bank lends out $900 to Person #2. Now there is $1,900 in the world
-- the $1,000 of the person who deposited it and the $900 that
Person #2 has from the loan. Person #1 could use his $900 to buy
something. But Person #1 could withdraw his $1000 and buy something
else. After multiple cycles of this, the bank will have created
$10,000 from the $1,000 originally present in the world. This
reflects a conservative 10% fractional reserves requirement. Of
course, modern banking 'innovations' and the repeal of Glass-Steagull
have increased leverage well beyond a factor of 10. The fundamental
error in thinking about it this way, however, has been clearly
explained by the Bank of England (!)
PDF
here; the reality is that the money is created *first*, at the
instant of the loan. *Then*, reserves get worried about, and if
necessary, fixed by overnight loans (e.g., if Person #1 above were
to withdraw all his money before anyone else made a deposit).
[Jan27,'19]
Never ignore the first principal component
Advertising has always depended on surreptitiously focussing attention
on an irrelevant feature, often in an attempt to deflect attention away
some main, bad thing.
The complexity of slogging through the muck of every day life can
sometimes lead to letting one's guard down, and falling prey to the
advertising-like, sound bite 'nooz'. The easy way to fix this is, just
concentrate on the 'first principal component'. This only require having
a broad general knowledge about the world and some common sense.
One example is the notion that 'soy causes man breasts' that got popular
over the past few decades, largely via crappy, superficial popular science
articles. It isn't actually true. One way to see this is to read a large
number of scientific papers about the alpha and beta estrogen receptors,
and about how soy often has anti-proliferative (growth-slowing) effects
(soy phytoestrogens are actually anti-breast-cancer). That does require
some background knowledge of biology and molecular biology, not that
hard to get, but more difficult if someone never studied it at all.
But then, you could just look at the way men have looked in different
countries over the past few decades. In the US, seeing men on the
beach today, or at the airport, reveals a large number of American men
with man breasts. The number of man breasts was a *lot* smaller when
I was growing up in the 1960's and 1970's, especially among young men.
Given the short time span, this points to an environmental factor such
as food, not genetics. There was no large increase in the intake of soy
during this period so it must have been something else. Americans now
eat 3x as much cooking oil, 3x as much cheese, and almost 25% more total
calories than they did in 1970. They eat about the same amount of meat,
but have replaced beef with chicken and fish. They eat less fruit and
vegetables. These dietary changes are very likely responsible for the
current prevalence of man breasts.
But one should also look at how men looked in Japan or China 20 years ago,
when they were eating a lot more soy than American men, and before they
began to adopt the standard American diet. They were a lot thinner than
Americans of the time, and they didn't have man breasts at all (well,
except Sumo wrestlers...).
The conclusion is obvious: eating a small amount of soy every day does
not cause man breasts; by contrast, eating a lot of meat and cheese
(dairy contains natural growth stimulating hormones and IGF-1 from the
always pregnant diary cows) and oil and too many calories *does* cause
man breasts.
Another example of missing the forest for the trees are is the endless
barrage of one-factor diet nonsense (eat yet more meat, butter is back,
avoid gluten, avoid beans, avoid sugar, avoid fruit, you are so special
you need a special diet adapted to your special genes, etc). Instead of
vilifiying the vegetable of the day and blaming genes for everything,
just look at the first principal component in the well publicized health
disaster that has occurred in China and India over the past few decades.
As a result of adopting a meat-, dairy- (yogurt), and oil-heavy diet (the
standard American diet), the Chinese, for example, have escalated their
levels of type 2 diabetes to American levels in less than two decades.
While the chance of a stroke after age 20 is 25% in America, it has
galloped up to 40% in China (yikes!). Type 2 diabetes levels in India
have similarly ballooned, with resulting massive damage to their retinas
and other parts of their bodies that depend on good blood circulation.
And the Chinese are just getting into cheese (30% growth per year,
starting from almost nothing).
It's not a controlled study, but just use common sense! The standard
American diet suddenly began to be fed to a substantial proportion of
almost *2 billion* people over the last two decades, displacing their
previous starch-heavy (rice and potatoes) and low-meat and low-dairy
diet. The results have been very obviously bad for their general
health. No need for statistics. No need for genetics. No need for
new pharmaceuticals. No need for personalized medicine. No need for
health monitors connected by 5G to your smart refrigerator.
Just keep your eye on the first principal component.
[Jan30,'19]
It's worrying that a just-noticeably-different version of one of the main
drivers of the 2006-2007 housing bust has now returned, namely, mortgages
from 'non-bank banks'. Starting around 2014, the percentage of mortgages
dispensed through non-bank banks jumped back up, now up to an astounding
80% of the mortgage market. These are, of course, (even) less regulated
than banks (not required to pass the 'stress tests'). They are
more
likely to make 'no credit? no problem!' loans, and by taking some
business from banks, motivate banks to do more of this themselves (or
for the banks to invest in them). The 'non-bank banks' don't have any
deposits, but instead take short-term loans from banks (borrow short,
invest long). As we reach the top of the cycle, these are looking once
again like the 'toxic waste' bankers began to mumble about unloading back
around 2005, and which will probably be the initial locus of the next
financial downturn. The key question is how the mess will be unwound --
mainly, how will this affect the 'non-bank bank' investors. Last time,
big banks had to be bailed out at public expense because they were neck
deep in the toxic soup. Similar things will likely happen this time
unless massive gilet-jaunes-level pressure is applied. Unfortunately,
that's the only way to have any measurable effect. Elections are totally
irrelevant because both parties are on the same side, the banker's side,
just like both parties are the war party.
[Feb09,'19]
Your scientific credit score
I somehow managed to miss the kerffule over Brian Wansink, of 'bottomless
soup bowl' fame, who recently went down in flames, resigning from Cornell
just before his expected retirement, after 15 of his papers had to be
retracted for statistical irregularities. It was prompted, ironically,
by one of his own blog posts praising a student who worked and reworked
a recalcitrant set of data, finally extracting 5 publications from it,
most of which ended up retracted.
He did years of work looking at the effects of visual cues on eating
behavior. Many of his conclusions fit common sense expectations (you
eat more food if it's on a bigger plate, or if a soup bowl imperceptibly
refills), and no doubt, there was a grain of truth to many of his studies.
He helped motivate attractively sized, but only 100-calorie junk food
snack packages, not a bad thing!
His downfall resulted in a huge outpouring of blog outrage by 'real
scientists' who decried the evils of 'p-hacking', and who then sternly
warned us all that we will have to pre-register our hypotheses, else
science will go down the tubes.
As someone with a background in the history and philosophy of science I
found the faux 'scientist outrage' tiresome. But more importantly, the
prescription for how to fix this is utterly, depressingly totalitarian.
Unfortunately, it fits in well with the spirit of our time.
First, back to the history of science. Scientists often get trained
that they should make hypothesis and then only test those hypotheses
rather then rearranging the data into different bins and re-testing
until a significant association comes out. That's fair enough.
But looking at the history of many worthwhile discoveries (as opposed
to zillions of boring, repetitive, unenlightening, carefully performed
psychology or neuroimaging studies), a common theme is that they required
looking at the data from an experiment in a way that went beyond the
hypotheses that motivated the original experiment. Doing good science
certainly requires close attention to controlling the experimental
situation. But to really make progress, it also often requires a keen
eye for when the world is providing an answer to a
different
question than the one you asked.
Here is Ernest Rutherford describing such an observation: "It was quite
the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It
was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of
tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration, I realized
that this scattering backward must be the result of a single collision,
and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything
of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater
part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It
was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive centre,
carrying a charge." Clearly, having alpha particles be deflected at
sharp angles was not part of his 'hypothesis' at all.
But our totalitarian wannabe scientists will fix this. There will be a
central hypothesis store. It could be contracted out to something like
CITI, which universities already pay to run web courses to teach college
students (and aging professors) "ethics" using web forms. You will learn
"Why pre-registration might be better for your career and well-being".
Eventually, scientists could earn a 'scientific credit' score, rather
like the 'social credit' score system in China, which would be a more
objective method of tenure assessment as well as clearer certification
of training in the scientific method. Corporate peer review.
I read a tidbit from someone living in LA who offered a young Chinese
woman a ride to work. She turned it down because she said she had to
walk to work because she needed points on her FitBit to keep up her
social credit score. This will help keep her more fit. Who could be
against that? Who could be against registering your hypotheses?
Don't be a conspiracy scientist. If you have nothing to hide, you have
nothing to fear.
[Feb17,'19]
Scientists and Nurses -- never ignore first principal component's
amplitude
There has been a lot of click bait about how some science is going down
the tubes because of the 'reproducibility crisis'. Whatever. Having been
a working scientist for about 40 years, I haven't seen a radical change
in scientific ethics or practice, or the general quality of scientists.
There have always been a few bad seeds, just like in any profession.
Bad seeds can fool people for a period of time, just like in any other
profession.
As a warmup to talking about the real problems of scientists today, I
would first like to talk about nurses' health :-} The Nurses Health Study
on chronic disease is an excellent example of good intentions gone awry.
In the case of diet, it has served mainly to inject distracting noise
into public discussion. It has been used to obscure the straighforward,
70-year-old results of basic research into diet and health (Walter
Kempner, Denis Burkitt in the 1940's and 1950's).
So what's so bad about conclusions on dietary effects on chronic disease
in the Nurses Health Study? The problem is that first, there are a very
large number of nurses in the study (50-80K). While 'more' would seem
at first to be 'better', it also makes it possible to pick up smaller
*amplitude* effects that are still statistically significant. Now,
couple that ability with the fact that all the nurses basically eat the
same thing. They're virtually all carnivores. Some eat more chicken
and fish. Virtually none eat a whole foods plant based diet like the
diet eaten by 2 billion humans in India and China 50 years ago.
The result of not enough variance in what the nurses eat together with the
ability to detect very small but still statistically significant effects
means that this apparently trustable large study is predisposed to come
up with ridiculous conclusions. The most recent clickbait is that eating
yogurt prevents heart disease (reanalysis by Buendia, Li et al. 2018,
supported by the National Dairy Council, natch). This is preposterous.
We have known scientifically since Burkitt and Kempner that main cause
of heart disease is eating a lot of meat, fish, dairy, purified oil, and
almost no fiber. Since virtually all the nurses do this, conclusions
about yogurt are basically irrelevant and even criminally misleading
for the public.
How (on earth) is this relevant to the scientific 'reproducibility
crisis'? Well, as a result of their success, scientists have gotten
themselves into an situation that is somewhat analogous to the Nurses
Health Study. I don't think scientists' behavior has changed much from
earlier days. If anything, they are probably more concientious than they
were before. Rather, their problems are the predictable results of:
(1) a larger and larger number of scientists, (2) that fact that many
large effects have been 'used up' by previous successful researchers, and
(3) the rational tendency to respond to this by moving in the direction
of bigger data, which makes it possible to detect smaller amplitude
statistically significant effects.
There is basically no way to fix this. Adopting hypothesis registration
and a totalitarian 'science credit score' doesn't address any of these
three problems. Constraining a smaller percentage of the population
to become scientists would just increase anti-science sentiment.
Because earlier successes often 'use up' large effect sizes, each new
wave of scientists are increasingly constrained to searching for smaller
effects. The only way to do this is by increasing their sample sizes
and making their data analysis pathways more complex. The result is
the detection of smaller and smaller effects, which are nevertheless,
statistically significant. This gets people tenure, but generates
results that are less and less informative.
One critical side effect of moving toward big data mentioned above
is that analysis methods have become more and more complex, with ever
larger number of scientists getting involved in single projects, and ever
larger bundles of software applied by researchers who don't have the
time or capacity to understand how all the software works. With this,
psychology and neuroscience are moving inexorably in the direction of
particle physics.
That's a really bad way to go. Particle physics has ended up trapped in
a cul-de-sac, using ever more expensive equipment and ever larger gaggles
of thousands of researchers on one paper to sort through (i.e., ignore)
quadrillions of events generated by high energy collisions looking for
a special 20 or 30 events. The raw data is typically photon detections
and mass-energy calculated from the spray of conventional longer-lived
(i.e. actually detectable) particles coming out of a collision.
These results are supposed to be testing theories of completely
invisible particles like quarks that persist for so short a time that
they could only have moved a completely undetectable distance less than
the diameter of a proton. The principal quantity that can be measured by
the detectors is mass-energy; yet the masses of the supposedly 'beautiful'
symmetrical tables of particles the experiments are supposed to bear upon
are actually free parameters in the 'standard model' (who knew that the
secret of all existence was... an Excel spreadsheet?).
It will be a tragedy in my view if neuroscience (and psychology) ends
up in a similar place. But I don't know how it can be avoided.
[Feb19,'19]
5G for the serfs
A co-worker at SDSU sent me a link about an artificial retina at a website
I had never been to called "Circuit Insight", which is designed to answer
the question, "Isn't it time someone created a simple email newsletter
providing knowledge, vision and wisdom for the circuit board assembly
professional?". Indeed, I have often asked myself that :-}
The first thing that caught my eye was a
bizarrely frank and accurate article,
Brave New World
comes to California, about how silicon valley oligarchs are
reconstructing society as a modern feudalism with better screens,
complete with aspie-like narrated mp4.
There was another interesting article,
The 5G future
is almost here. 5G is the new, much higher frequency, RF band
currently being deployed around the world, from downtown Vienna, Austria,
to the Kensington and Talmadge neighborhoods of San Diego, where we rent,
to Shreveport, Louisiana.
Reading the objective facts about the inexorable deployment of 5G, which
clash with my knee-jerk distaste/dismissal, reminded me strongly of the
way I thought about fracking when it got started big time. My late father
Charles Sereno, who used to keenly follow the financial 'industry' with
considerable insight gave me the heads up on light tight oil fracking,
probably around 2007, long before it had become a household word.
At the time, which was pretty much right around actual peak *crude oil*,
I mistakenly dismissed fracking -- at the time mainly having been used
for natural gas, and which had just finished crashing the natural gas
market -- as an expensive, low energy-return-on-energy-invested fad for
oil that would peter out quickly. I was completely wrong and he was
completely right.
Well, I was sort of right; here we are in 2019 with the fracking
industry still net in debt from the beginning of fracking. Surely,
the lower energy return on energy investment was an underlying cause of
the present situation.
But back to the 5G article. My cursory reading on 5G had previously
focussed on the possible health effects. An FM radio electromagnetic
wave (~100 MHz) has a wavelength of about 6 feet and so can easily pass
through most walls, bodies, and so on (e.g., 3T MRI RF uses 123 MHz).
As the frequency goes up, the energy goes up (energy is proportional
to frequency). Current cell phone signals (all the previous G's) go up
to about 2 GHz, which is a wavelength of about 5 inches. These smaller
waves are much more easily absorbed by bodies than FM-radio RF frequencies
and much more likely to resonante inside roughly wavelength-sized sized
cavities (e.g., a head) causing causing hot spots. More RF gets into
smaller heads and more gets through thinner skulls (children). That may
not be healthy.
The frequencies of 5G are a new departure, reaching into much higher
frequencies, starting at 4 GHz, but potentially going up to 25 Ghz or
even 100 GHz. These waves are tiny (down to millimeter sized), much
more energetic, and much more likely to be absorbed by walls and bodies.
To fix this, phased-array antennas capable of generating beams of radio
waves that fall off rapidly in strength moving away from the main axis of
the beam are used to increase the penetration. These beams can be aimed
by both the transmitting towers as well as the 5G devices to efficiently
punch signals through objects, which is not required at lower frequencies.
An example of an application of the aim-able phased array antennas and
millimeter waves is the "Active denial system" directed energy crowd
control weapon (AKA non-lethal 'pain ray'). It's worth noting that these
100 GHz weapons don't work well on rainy days because fine water droplets
absorb the radiation (bring a water spray bottle with you to the demo...).
Millimeter waves are also used in some airport scanners.
The main benefit of the higher frequencies, as well as the much broader
bandwidths, is that the data rate can be massively increased and the
latency can be much lower (guaranteed 1 msec). But even with the tighter
aimed 'beams', the much smaller wavelengths are absorbed by objects
so much better than longer wavelengths are that 5G towers have to be
placed on virtually every block in order to provide adequate coverage.
Tens or hundreds of millions of new antennas.
But, in an echo of fracking, the most startling thing in the article
was the sentence: "The challenge is to figure out how 5G can make money
for the telecom industry". Once again, we are in a weird position
where there is an enormous, inexorable force pushing 5G forward (like
fracking), literally across the globe, without a clear 'killer app'
(something that actually makes money) in mind.
One idea was that the design goal of extremely low latency would be
required for self-driving cars. Rather then being autonomous, they
would then be tethered to centralized servers, which could combine
information across vehicles and roadside sensors and make use of greater
computational resources. Another potential use is manufacturing, again
making use of high data rates and low latency. Then there is 'health'.
Forget about eating more plants -- instead take a 5G-enabled pill
from your 5G-enabled fridge while your blood sugar (or your
blood alcohol)
is monitored in realtime by a tiny RF powered subcutaneus implant.
Finally, you could download cat videos or porn faster and at much higher
resolution, to keep you on the straight and narrow.
Some of this seems sort of useful. But the greatly increased complexity
of the devices not to mention the infrastructure required to carry and
process the much larger amounts of data will be very expensive, starting
with the requirement for 1000x as many antennas.
I can easily imagine there will have to be a huge amount of new debt to
finance this with no clear plan how to get out of debt, again rather
like fracking. It is very disturbing to me to see the headlong rush
to construct and install 5G without a pressing need that it will fix.
This contrasts with other pressing needs like slowing climate change,
dealing with fresh water aquifers being drained at 10x replacement rate,
converting industrial civilization to renewable energy, ending the insect
apocalypse before we end up with only roaches and flies, dealing with
soil loss and salinization, addressing declining supplies of metals
and rare earths, and so on. Those are all extremely clear problems
with the potential to literally collapse industrial civilization over
the next few decades. It's not clear yet how 5G will help with any of
those problems. If my wireless wellhead sensor tells me that on Thurday
at 5:07 PM, we were pumping at 10.934x acquifer replacement rate instead
of approximately 10x, we're still f*cked.
So why the intense pressure? Small industrial applications don't seem
'killer' enough compared to consumer things, and could seemingly be
replaced with simple fast wired ethernet. I can see the value of getting
closer to immersive experience and immediate response (latency going
from from 'sluggish' 1/20 of a second to 'indistinguishable from real'
1/1000 of a second), but that is mainly relevant for some kind of VR
goggles, which haven't really caught on (heavy, sweaty). Maybe it's
possible to make lighter, airier goggles? And maybe 5G would help
corporations track people in their daily movements even more than now?
Maybe military/crowd-control reasons? Maybe better animatronic onsite
porn? Remote surgery? Maybe this will keep people more pacified as
limits to growth problems get worse? In the end, none of that seems
very convincing to me. But given my dismal track record of business
'horse sense', don't trust me.
[Feb27,'19]
Roger Waters rocks :-}
Roger Waters @rogerwaters - 22:27 utc - 23 Feb 2019
Replying to @SenSanders
Bernie, are you f-ing kidding me! if you buy the Trump, Bolton, Abrams,
Rubio line, "humanitarian intervention" and collude in the destruction
of Venezuela, you cannot be credible candidate for President of the
USA. Or, maybe you can, maybe you’re the perfect stooge for the 1%.
[Mar04,'19]
I just looked at batch of videos by Jeff Nelson on nut 'science' and
advertising:
(
nuts1,
nuts2,
nuts3,
nuts4,
nuts5).
The idea of companies funding and trying to influence scientific
studies with conclusions that benefit the companies was not a
revelation to me :-}. But Jeff Nelson's aspie-ish presentations
are very good, which I think is partly the result of his background
knowledge of advertising, via his late father, who worked as an
advertiser in the Bay area, and his own work in media.
The topic relates back to my previous posts on the 'crisis in science'.
Jeff Nelson calls it 'commercial science'. The thing that surprised
me was that the commercial scientific 'research' business is now so
big that a major part of the advertising budget of food companies is
now for this so-called 'science' (!). The 'scientific results', which
are almost uniformly 'good news in support of bad habits', such as the
turned-out-to-be-a-scam, 'to lose weight, eat more chocolate', are then
effortlessly and massively redistributed and amplified through (social)
media, which the advertising company doesn't have to pay anything for.
Advertising investment in 'science' is thus a no-brainer. It is an
efficient end run around strict, accurate-reporting FDA constraints.
For example, the FDA appropriately prevented egg companies from
advertising eggs as "healthy", which is why they ended up having to be
called "the incredible edible egg").
But what does this have to do with the 'new crisis in science'?
'Commercial science' is certainly not new. Just think back to tobacco, to
"the cigarette preferred by doctors" in the 1950's. What is different
now is that (1) there are a lot more scientists, and (2) the speed
and breadth of distribution of information is much faster than it was.
It has been well documented that scientists get a substantial number
of pointers to the latest research not from reading the scientific
literature but instead from newspapers like the NYT science section
(previously), and now from the internet, especially when it comes to
fields outside of their direct expertise. This means that the random
noise inserted into the noosphere :-} by all the crap science strongly
affects how scientists themselves think.
The easiest way to diagnose science crap, however, is to pay simple
advertiser-like attention to the scientific topic. If somebody is
studying cortical connections in bush babies (Galago), you can pretty
much trust their scientific papers. As one gets closer to humans (e.g.,
studies in macaque monkeys versus new world monkeys or other earlier
branching primates), science gets more dogmatic and more aware of impact.
Once you get to human diet, mind, language, and sex, all sorts of sh$t
begins to fly. There is a lot more in the air now; however, it's not
that much harder to recognize :-}
[Mar05,'19]
Sorry to go unfairly ballistic on just one article, but
this
one really just set me off. The plan is, for people with
'refractory hypertension' (that is, that have high blood pressure
that doesn't come down after trying multiple drugz), to drill a
hole in their head and stimulate some random part of their brain.
I'm not exaggerating with the 'random' bit: the suggested targets
include the periaqueductal gray matter, the subcallosal neocortex, the
subthalamic nucleus (STN), the posterior hypothalamus, the rostrocaudal
cingulate gyrus, the orbitofrontal gyrus, and insular cortex.
$^#%@$#$*$%*!! These idiots are in the same frigging town as
Caldwell Esselstyn at the
Cleveland Clinic, who has actually clinically documented (angiograms)
the *only* *only* *only* procedure that actually *reverses* heart disease
(statins don't do this, stents don't do this, bypasses don't do this,
blood pressure meds don't do this). Esselstyn's simple procedure is:
eat plants and less oil. So instead, let's deal with the diet induced
catastrophe of heart disease and high blood pressure that is metastasizing
worldwide by drilling holes in people's skulls because they can't eat
right. $^#%%@$@##!%. These are supposed to be scientists. I suppose
there is, after all, a crisis of science. Too many scientists have
turned into complete, blithering idiots. Perhaps I need some
'Spravato'
ketamine nasal spray (vitamin K!) because my depression is 'treatment
resistant'. World gone wild.
[Mar06,'19]
Whiny right-ish, libertarian-ish energy commentators often tsk-tsk about
the subsidies offered to renewable energy, but then they conveniently
forget subsidies provided to fossil fuel operations. For example,
a single fracking operation might have over a thousand 80,000-pound
trucks visiting the site over publicly supported roads and bridges.
Trucks cause virtually all the damage done to public roads (80,000 pounds
vs. 4,000 pounds for an average car). The fracking operations don't pay
for fixing the extensive road damage they cause. For example,
in
Texas the state took in $1.8 billion in severance taxes off of the
oil and gas business, but they also recorded about $4 billion of bridge
and road infrastructure damage due to all these trucks. But then, why
bother with publicly supported roads? Wouldn't our world be so much
better with a bunch of weasels charging tolls for safe passage along
private paths, like back in the Middle Ages?
[Apr24'19]
Shite science
When I read
shite
like this, it kinda makes my head explode. The plan is, use the pinnacle
of human scientific knowledge about how biological organisms work at a
molecular level to genetically modify cows, so that they can withstand
the extra heat due to climate change, a substantial portion of which was
caused by raising animals for humans to eat in the first place (maybe 1/3
of total greenhouse gases come from animal agriculture, tropical forest
destruction for grass-fed beef pasture, methane cow belches, making
fertilizer from methane for animal food, breakdown of animal manure, etc).
To get some idea of the scale of the sh$t problem,
raising animals to eat in the US generates about
one
ton of animal manure per year, *per person*. So the 'enlightened,
sustainable, recycling' people in a downtown 'Mediterranean village'
condo would only generate a couple of hundred tons of animal sh$t during
a year of fine 'locally sourced' 'grass-fed' dining. That should fit
comfortably in the alley behind the 'sustainable village' condo building,
don't you think?
While our scientific geniuses are at it, why not genetically modify the
basically vegan guts of humans so that the humans won't get sick (heart
disease, stroke, arthritis, acid reflux, breast/prostate/colon/esophageal
cancer, Alzheimer's) when they eat so much meat and dairy and so little
starch and fiber and fruit? All you'd need is 3x as much stomach acid
(and a new stomach lining to deal with it), half-length intestines,
a shorter colon with much thicker walls, native synthesis of vitamin
C, improved metabolism of dietary cholesterol. Should be a snap with
CRISPR, no?
Sometimes, it seems that we humans are just *asking* to be harshly
pruned back.
[May13,'19]
Smell-o-metric analysis of the human microbiome
Back in the day (1974) when I was taking chemistry lab in college, the
TA came around with unknown samples for us to analyze and identify.
I took one sniff of ours and realized it was probably methyl ethyl
ketone (because I used to make model airplanes, where it is a commonly
used solvent). The TA made sure I couldn't see his key sheet, and said,
"I said qualitative analysis, not smell-o-metric analysis!"
You can do smell-o-metric analysis on the human microbiome, too. If you
change your diet to whole food plant-based low oil, you will very soon
begin to notice the strong smells of other people who eat meat twice a
day, esp. their breath (from their characteristically different mouth
microbiome). Your own mouth will no longer get that smell, even if you
forget to brush your teeth.
Within a few weeks of eating only plants, your poop will change
consistency, smell more like horsesh$t instead of dogsh$t, double
or triple in volume, your more voluminous farts will smell sweeter,
you'll stop burping up acid before dinner is even done, your teeth will
feel better, and your pleasantly full stomach won't hurt a bit (not to
mention your cholesterol will drop by *half*). It's not surprising that
if you put a different half a ton of food down the hatch every year that
different bacteria might grow down there (American human feces consists of
30% dead bacteria, along with indigestible material, inorganic material,
and up to 20% cholesterol and other fats).
When the microbiome of rural poor people was compared to that of high-meat
westerners, a number of differences did in fact emerge. Eating a lot
of meat results in more anaerobic bacteria in the colon, which is not
surprising (there is a really big difference in the smell of meat and eggs
left out to rot compared to the smell of rotting carrots and broccoli in
a vegetable compost heap). The pH of vegan stools (6.3) was lower than
that of vegetarians, which was lower than that of omnivores (6.9), which
correlates with the lowest E. coli and Enterobacteriacea (inflammatory) in
vegans (those bacteria dislike acidic conditions). Vegans and vegetarians
also had lower levels of Bacteriodes and Bifidobacterium and higher
levels of bacterial diversity (yeah, yeah) (recent reviews
here and
here).
However, when western 'urban vegans' were compared to western 'urban
omnnivores' (
here),
with all the hi-tech stops pulled out, the gut microbiome turned out to
be much less different than the previously recorded large difference
between poor rural people and meat-eating westerners. There *was* a
large difference in the plasma metabolome, and much of this came from the
roughly the same gut bacteria in vegans generating different chemicals
given their different input food, and these different chemicals were
then absorbed into the blood.
But of course, the 'urban vegans' were hardly eating a proper poor persons
diet! There were only 10-15% differences in carbohydrate, protein, and
fat intake between the 'urban vegans' and 'urban omnivores'. No doubt the
'urban vegans' were making sure they got the standard American massive
protein overload (2-3x too much) along with mass quantities of 'healthy'
oil (not). Nevertheless, the metabolomic differences were clear, even
given these moderate differences in diet. No wonder there were no
differences in short chain fatty acids like those originally reported
in poor rural communities.
But I can see the writing on the wall. Before long, there will be many
more large-scale, high-tech gut microbiome studies of minimally different
groups. This will unfortunately turn out like the Nurses Health Study,
where a large 'N' in a population without much diet variance allows
detecting small amplitude differences that are basically meaningless.
This will fill the air with yet more industry funded diet advice 'noise'
(e.g., 'butter is back', 'daily dairy yogurt is heart-healthy'), and
confuse people even further. Though intellectually interesting, I think
these studies are virtually useless for improving health, and actually
actively inhibit healthy changes in diet! This is because we already know
the answer: eat *a lot* more whole food plants (a lot more than even the
'urban vegans' do!), eat more starch, eat *a lot* less less meat, fish,
eggs, diary, free oil (free oil like olive oil is not 'healthy'), avoid
fried fake meat, fake cheese, french fries (the potatoes are fine; the
problem is the oil, which make them 10x as calorie dense as potatoes)
and so on. The studies will instead be wrangled to provide good news
for bad habits, suggest no substantial change (beyond rearranging a few
diet 'deck chairs'), and do nothing for an American population where a
stunning 2/3 of adults (3/4 of men) are overweight or obese - and where
children to adults are relentlessly getting a little more overweight and
obese each year! (US adult obesity defined as BMI>30 (more than about
50-60 pounds overweight) is inexorably increasing at 0.5% per year).
This has nothing to do with genetics and can't be solved by studying it.
These studies won't dare to recommend simply turning our backs on
our meat-and-cheese-centered European-based 'cuisine of the nobility'
(cultural sensitivity, don't you know?). Instead they will focus on
generating high tech prebiotics designed to try to get poor-people
fecal bacteria into unhealthy Americans. Since stool transplants from
poor people with healthy gut microbiomes are probably not on the table,
the tech will have to get in through the stomach acid. I can just see the
ads 'get more Prevotella with our 5G-enabled microbiome transport capsule
that you eat after your healthy grass fed beef and wild caught salmon
low-carb dinner'. Trying to 'treat' the Western diet with a high-tech
pill will be expensive, profitable, diversionary, and it won't work -
it will be a ridiculous waste of increasingly scarce resources.
Yet that is exactly what's planned! (see my
snark from a
few years back). Just look at the conclusion to the third interesting,
well-funded, supposedly 'vegan-friendly' study cited above:
"Thus,
consideration of gut microbiota composition may be important when
developing a ‘prebiotic’ approach to treat disease and/or maintain
health by delivering specific substrates for bacterial conversion
into beneficial metabolites. Such prebiotics may demonstrate varying
levels of efficacy in culturally distinct human populations. Integrating
information about the composition of the gut microbiome with the delivery
of substrates focused on metabolite production should help make possible
both improved diets and the ‘next-generation’ prebiotics, probiotics,
synbiotics and dietary supplements for maintaining health and treating
disease". Utter madness.
People simply have to eat the right damn thing in the first place.
Any discussion of 'health care' that doesn't mention diet is criminal.
Trying to continue eating mass quantities of high-calorie density meat,
fish, dairy, eggs, purified oils, junk food (and fried fake meat with
GMO-yeast-produced legume hemoglobin!), and then trying to fix the
resulting health disaster with hi-tech pill is a recipe for a whole new
set of nasty 'side effects' (remember Olestra, the 'non-fattening oil you
can't digest' (it caused abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and outright 'anal
leakage')? It made the 'food' industry half a billion dollars in 1998.
Now, it's mainly marketed as a paint additive, industrial lubricant,
and a way to treat PCB poisoning...).
If you just eat the right thing, you'll be able to smell the difference
without the need for metabolomics, NMR, 16S RNA sequencing, or dystopian
5G-enabled eat-able tech.
[Jul28,'19]
Irrational exuberance always continues longer than you expect
Looking at the current directions/derivatives of (1) world
energy
(fossil fuel energy depletion, 'renewables' growth not even keeping up
with overall energy use growth, continual reduction in energy return on
investment), correlated reduction in long distance truck orders since mid
2018 after just barely getting back to 2007 peak, (2) world
bubbles
(gigantic housing and stock market and bond and 'bottom-of-the-barrel'
fracking bubbles, together with abnormally low interest rates [e.g.,
negative!] near the peak of the bubbles), (3) world
environment
(the yearly increment of greenhouse gasses is *growing*, more extreme
hot weather and floods, US/China/India acquifer and soil drawdowns way
past replacement rate, increasing fertilizer-runoff-caused ocean and
reef dead zones), (4) world
health health of millenials showed
double digit declines (e.g., markedly worsening diabetes) from just 2014
to 2017, US adult and childhood obesity are going up 0.5-1.0% per year,
Chinese/Indian obesity/stroke/diabetes has reached and in some cases
(e.g., stroke) overtaken American rates as a result of adopting an
unhealthy overly-calorie-dense, meat/fish/dairy/oil western diet),
and finally (5) world
population (the inexorable addition of
80,000,000 humans [two entire California's worth] to the world every
year, and what that implies for 1-4 above), you would have to be insane
not to be
extremely worried at this point!
However, most people are not worried! Consumer confidence has surged
this month to near its highest since 2000! People are more worried
about LGBT++, or the fact 'The Wall' isn't tall enough, or obsessing
over the latest irrelevant Trumpfart, or trying to raise the idiotic
Russiagate nonsense back from the dead. For me, it feels like we are
slowly but surely descending through the crush depth of a submarine,
with the whole earth on board, while focusing on moats.
But I have always been a nervous nellie. I was nervous already by 2003
and the last set of bubbles didn't pop until 2007. Similarly, this time,
I was already panicky/doom-ey by 2013, and here we are in 2019 and things
haven't popped yet. Who knows, the bubbles may take another full year
to pop. This doesn't mean I am wrong to be nervous! We *are* slowly
but surely passing through the crush depth for humanity's submarine!
I suppose I had been hoping that this bubble would have popped
sooner, because that would have made the bubble-popping less violent.
On the other hand, on some days, I have thought that perhaps an
extra-violent pop is what would be needed to turn people's attention
toward the main problems and away from the latest 'squirrel'.
For example, as much as finding out that Pinker took a ride on the
'Lolita Express' engendered unhealthy schadenfreude, the whole filthy
pedo/richie/blackmail/intelligence/Epstein tarpit is a 'squirrel'.
That's just the way the scum ultrarich have always operated going back
to the ancient Greeks; but it's still just 'squirrel' with respect to
the main problems above.
As I get older, I realize that there is no point in trying to
root for less violent or more violent 'pops'. It won't make
any difference in the end. As I have written before,
there is only
one future. The path we are on to overrunning our resources has
been followed by humans many times before. In virtually all of the
previous cases, informed people at the time could *also* see where
they were headed, but that knowledge didn't stop them. Just back from
Lebanon driving around barren hills that used to be covered with the
Cedars of Lebanon, in what used to be the Fertile Crescent (before the
forests and soils were destroyed almost three millenia ago). The cedars
weren't cut down in a year or even a century; when the Romans arrived,
they were well aware of 'cedar depletion' and decreed that 'all your
cedars are belong to us'.
The only difference is that this time, we are talking about depletion
of everything on the entire Earth rather than just some things in
one small region of the Earth. This will make recovery harder or
impossible for most. But, unfortunately, I don't think our path can be
changed in any significant way. Knowledge is simply not strong enough
to stop out-of-control human growth. The only thing that will stop
out-of-control growth is depletion of physical resources. Depletion of
physical resources doesn't care about knowledge. Our DNA-and-protein-like
symbol-using brain operating system (language) is riding around on a
chimpanzee chassis; and it can never get off (sorry Ray K., but there
is simply not enough net energy left).
[Aug08,'19]
Epstein's 'suicide' on Friday night/early Sat morning could easily have
been prevented. However, the whole story is now officially over, and
nothing more will come out, beyond the two quick pics in the NYPost.
This will shut down the investigation into the shiksa white slave trade
slash powerful-US-person under-age sex blackmail operation, probably with
a particular foreign government involvement, it will squelch results of
the investigation so far, and people will soon forget about the whole
thing when they are given the next new 'squirrel!'/shooting whatever.
There will be no explanation of why Leslie Wexner gave Epstein his $54
million NY apartment, or how Epstein actually made his money (if Epstein
ever did actually make any money). It will never be clear what motivated
his re-arrest/takedown. Epstein may be dead, since that would be the
most tidy. But it doesn't matter what actually happened, and it will
be impossible ever know in the fog that will soon develop. There will
be a bunch of super-rich pedo-sicko-sociopaths - the scum that floats
to the top of our societies - throwing expensive parties this weekend.
What pukes. This show was even stupider than the Skripals, if that's
possible.
[Update: Aug18] Here is a pithy quote from Jennifer Mastui
Jennifer
Matsui (read the whole thing!):
"Did Epstein make the same mistake of Maxwell (who had asked for nearly
half a billion dollar in "loans" from his Israeli backers to relieve
him of his mounting debts) believing the dirt he had in his possession
would prove radioactive if released? By this time, the corpulent tycoon
was nicknamed the ‘Bouncing Czech’ a reference in most part to his
worsening money woes. The implication of this request, if turned down,
was the exposure of Israel’s state secrets. Epstein could have also
attempted to collateralize the cache of damning evidence still in his
possession to secure his freedom with the same fatal consequences."
[Update: Sep03] Now, less than a month later, Epstein is out
of the news and very soon permanently down the memory hole.
Further investigations into the whole pedo/blackmail/intelligence
aspects are now officially closed. It's now safely merely
fifty
shades of Epstein. The progression is very similar to the Las Vegas
shootings of Oct 2017. Despite incontrovertible video/audio evidence
(many videos taken from many different vantages) that there were multiple
shooters), this worst mass shooting in US history has now sunk completely
into obscurity without having been investigated, solved, or closed;
it is now merely another notch in the belt of American Gladio.
[Update: Sep06] The slightly-looks-like-Epstein
guy in the blue-t-shirt in
this
recent Epstein-island drone pic is not him but rather
this
blue-t-shirt guy, who was filmed by drone on the island when Epstein
was surely still alive. This is just the usual rabbit hole nonsense
that fills the void when all sources of real information have been
successfully sealed off.
[Update: Nov21] Ghislaine Maxwell remains untouchable. Though Epstein
was the 'public' face of the operation, Maxwell is looking more like the
real brains behind it. The reason she is utterly untouchable is probably
because she has 'curated' an immense treasure trove of blackmail video
of thousands of powerful people. This material is probably safely cached
in several overseas locations, probably including Izzy.
[Update: Nov26] Caitlin Johnstone has a good review
here
on how William Barr has 'ended all conspiracy theories'. And from
the Onion: "MIT Media Lab Agrees to Return All of Jeffrey Epstein’s
Donated Girls".
[Update: Dec24'19] Comprehensive summary from
David Collum
here.
[Sep03,'19]
Stop artificial muscles!
I just read three cover articles in the July 12 issue of Science
on high energy density artificial muscles from twisted and sheathed
plastic fibers. The papers showed cool contractile fibers with impressive
performance many times that of biological muscle (but, of course,
lacking self-reproduction, self-organization, and self-maintenance).
But it also immediately made me think of the dystopian biopunk atmosphere
of "The Windup Girl" (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi. This was confirmed by
reading the last few paragraphs of the second article where the authors
describe what these plastic springs could be used for. One main use would
be to squeeze drugs into the blood stream from pharmaceutical implants.
They even showed how glucose levels could be used to activate the drug
delivery, clearly a reference to treating diabetes.
The great majority (95%) of diabetes is Type 2 diabetes (insulin
insensitivity), which is caused virtually exclusively by bad diet (N.B.:
Type 1 is *also* caused by diet: antibodies to dairy proteins accidentally
generated via leaky gut that biomimic islet cell antigens and permanently
blow them out, but let's leave Type 1 aside for now). This has been known
for centuries. Type 2 diabetes can be completely and permanently and
trivially reversed in just a *week or two* by improved diet (eliminate
most meat, dairy, oil, and eat a lot more starchy and green vegetables
and beans and fruit). This has also been known for almost a century
(see Kempner, 1950). Insulin sensitivity is almost immediately regained
(Type 2 diabetes is mostly intramyocellular lipids causing insensitivity
to adequate insulin blood levels), lowering blood glucose to normal,
which requires almost immediately getting off metformin-like diabetes
drugs to avoid catastrophically low blood sugar. In a few more weeks,
fatty liver disease begins to disappear, diabetic retinopathy begins to
reverse, circulation to extremities improves, blood pressure decreases,
etc, etc. By contrast, keeping the bad diet and staying on diabetes
drugs can at best keep type 2 diabetes from getting worse, or slow
down the decline. None of the drugs come anywhere close to actually
*reversing* the harms caused by diet-induced Type 2 diabetes.
But instead of following the rational path to fixing Type 2 diabetes
by improving diet, the best minds of our time in the world's premiere
science journals are instead showing us how we will be able to use the
latest tech to implant little muscular drug sachets from biotech companies
into our increasingly disease ridden carcasses that will deliver the same
drugs people are already taking orally by the barge-ful. Don't worry,
you will get used to all these pharmaceutical implants contracting their
'muscles' inside your body. It's for your health! Now there's actually
HARPA, cousin to DARPA.
I know my complaints probably come off like an annoying repeat of "
there
is only one future" and "
medical research
can be detrimental to your health". Rather than being happy ogling
the cool new tech, I can't help thinking pursuing it is just *wrong*.
It's the wrong direction, the wrong kind of solution, and it's using
up dwindling net energy supplies that could be better directed toward
trying to cushion the coming powerdown.
But perhaps I concentrated too much on pharmaceutical applications. What
about robots? What about self-adjusting clothes? Several of the articles
commented on how artificial muscles could power prosthetics and make
stronger robots. How could I be a scrooge who is against amputees (and
women and children...)? But again, it's important to think in a "there
is only one future" kind of way. Do we really want the 'greeter robot'
in Walmart to have muscles that are 20 times stronger than human muscles?
Do we really want companies working out the kinks testing 'security
robots' in the decaying streets of Baltimore and Detroit? (cf. testing
retinal scanning technology in the aftermath of the genocidal US siege
of Fallujah, 2003). Or self-contracting 'ankle bracelet' straitjackets?
(self-adjusting 'clothes'!) I'm not looking forward to strong robots.
Strong robots outside of an assembly line are simply *wrong*.
In the past, I would have counted on the seeming impracticality of
this kind of 'blue sky' research as too expensive, too unreliable,
too difficult to maintain. But that's what I thought about tight oil
fracking around 2009; I thought that because it was so energy intensive
and because fracked wells declined so rapidly, that it would just be a
flash in the pan. I was utterly, 100%, wrong. What actually happened
was an absolutely crazy whole decade of tight oil fracking that brought US
'oil' (scare quotes because it is much lower density than real crude oil)
back up to its 1970 peak. It *did* result in fracking companies still
mostly net in debt and now ready to collapse. But it happened *anyway*.
By analogy, strong robots will likely happen anyway. We should really
try to prevent this from happening!
[Sep07,'19]
What happened to the Tuscan solar roof?
It's worth taking stock of trends from time to time. With German
car companies supposedly diving into electric vehicles, it looks
like momentum is building for more 'renewable' driving (whatever,
man). Set against this is that electric vehicle purchases have been
supported by large subsidies. When these subsidies are withdrawn
there are sudden downticks. For example, in July 2019, worldwide
sales of electric vehicles fell for the first time in a decade.
Most of this was caused by lowered sales in China caused by reduction
in subsidies there ($7500 -> $3700). However, electric vehicle sales
are still projected to increase by about 1/3 in 2019 (see stats
here).
Another seemingly unstoppable trend a few years back was the Tesla solar
roof. Tesla bought SolarCity for $2.6 billion in 2016. Recent articles
suggest that the purchase was done partly to bail out Musk's cousins,
Lyndon and Peter Rive. It was costly for Tesla, and SolarCity has
subsequently tanked. Since 2016, Tesla's total solar panel deployments
have gone from about 200 MW a quarter to about 30 MW a quarter. Those are
virtually all regular panels, not solar roof panels. Back in 2016, the
Gigafactory was supposed to be producing a gigawatt of solar capacity
a year by now. Tesla is now only producing a tiny fraction of that
(and is still buying panels from Panasonic). The current reality is in
sharp contrast to Musk's expertly executed show in 2016 on the "Tuscan
solar roof" (he's good at what he does; he managed to convince some of
my scientific friends).
A few rich people have installed Tesla solar roofs, so the
solar roof isn't pure Theranos. The subsidized cost of one
is roughly $100K (including batteries); these subsidies are
only for rich people. The solar panels are held on with
velcro. In summer 2018, it was
reported that 12 roofs had been installed in California, not surprising
given the price tag. It has been estimated (Reuters) that there are now
21 installations in California. Tesla said there were more, but didn't
say how many. This is a radically different actually existing future
than the one many people had in mind in 2016.
In looking back, it is interesting to see how a small amount of
strategic advertising can paper over a very thin or sordid reality.
Here is one bizarre piece of advertising, where a metrosexual
fireman describes how safe it is for his beefy associate to
chainsaw through a Tesla
solar roof to gain emergency access (?!).
[Update: Jun11,'20: Tesla is
cancelling
remaining outstanding orders for the Solar Roof].
But back to the main point, why are subsidies required? One might think,
for example, that since electric cars are mechanically much simpler than
internal combustion engine cars they should be cheaper than more complex
ICE cars. In reality, full range models are still a lot more expensive
to manufacture because the large (half a ton) batteries are extremely
expensive (note, money-expensive strongly implies energy expensive!) to
source and make (e.g., currently they require a lot of
cobalt).
Similarly, subsidies are still required for roof top solar electric.
This refers not just to outright subsidies, which are being tapered, but
to more subtle subsidies such as utilities having to buy solar power at
full cost even when they don't need it and when it isn't equivalent to
(that is, as valuable as!) dispatchable, storable fossil fuel energy.
Although money is not a straightforward
measure of energy intensity, the two are extremely
strongly correlated in the long run (see e.g., graph
here).
The reason that solar panels aren't made mostly out of solar energy is
that solar energy still actually costs a lot more than fossil fuel -
in *energy* terms. Of course, it is possible that improved efficiency
might change this. But solar panels have been around for many decades,
and additional efficiency gains are likely to be difficult, in the
same manner that the fuel efficiency of internal combustion engines has
plateaued at about 65 miles/gallon. This is what Marty and Claudia's
gingerly driven non-plug-in hybrid 2016 Prius (i.e., all energy coming
from fossil fuel) achieves. We had already gotten there 20 years ago
with the 1990's Honda Insight hybrid.
Despite all the happy talk about 'renewable' energy being 'cheaper'
than fossil fuel, it *isn't* really cheaper, else solar panels would
be made, delivered, and installed using solar energy (they are not).
There hasn't been even the tiniest budge downward in the *accelerating*
worldwide output of CO2. That's not surprising because
this
graph from Tad Patzek shows that our 17 terawatt 'civilization
machine' is still powered mostly by fossil fuels. Simply displacing the
fossil fuel burning to other countries doesn't help - e.g., solar panels
made by Japan from coal in China and transported here with bunker fuel
and diesel. In fact, it's actually considerably worse to do that than
it is to make them locally from fossil fuel.
A more likely possibility is that since 'renewable' (re-buildable)
energy is currently made mostly out of fossil fuel (e.g., a 50-ton
plastic composite wind turbine propeller), that as the return on energy
investment for fossil fuel continues to decline, that 'renewable' energy
will remain effectively more expensive (energy-wise) for a long time.
We are in the process of sliding down the gentler parts of the '
net
energy cliff', which gets suddenly really nasty around
energy-return-on-energy-investment of 3:1.
Can this be 'rescued' by something like the financial shenanigans that
gave us fracking? (massive near-zero interest debt financing with no
projection of ever being able to pay it off). That would be the New
Green Deal. Like fracking, this might 'work' for a while (5 or 10 years).
But in the end, it's just borrowing *energy* from the future; the *energy*
cost of doing business cannot be sidestepped by incrementing the amount of
money in electronic databases. If Pedro Prieto's low estimates of solar
net energy are correct, the only long term solution is massive de-growth.
Like Gary Larson's
shark negotiating in
the lifeboat with the castaway holding off the shark with an oar -
"Okay. I'll go back and tell my people that you're staying in
the boat, but I warn you, *they're not going to like it*" - there
is *never* going to be a de-growth platform. Instead, humans
will go down fighting the good fight - against thermodynamics.
Americans are supposedly 'very worried' about climate change; but 62%
of them think that only 'minor' (48%) or 'no' (14%) sacrifices
will
be required to fix the problem (HT Pete Markiewicz). Unfortunately,
thermodynamics could care less about the stories the good hominins
tell each other (and won't be offended in the slightest if you call it
'neo-Malthusian'...).
[Sep30,'19]
Enhanced summon: 'easier' is the downfall of humans
The motivation to write today came from
watching videos of the beta rollout of Tesla's '
enhanced
summon' 'functionality', now raging across the intertubes. In the
greater scheme of things, it's a small, stupid human trick, and no doubt
the officially released version will work somewhat better. But it is a
great illustration of the road to hell being paved with good intentions
of making life 'easier' (=richer).
The original idea for 'enhanced summon' was a 'natural winner'. It relies
on the fact that you, the car driver, are such a non-physically active
slob (though nevertheless good-looking), that you find walking a couple
of hundred feet to your car in the parking lot a chore; or maybe
it's raining. But then, you also are attracted to the idea of a car
coming to you like a servant, because you deserve it as a 'rich person'.
In addition, the car coming to you allows other people in the parking lot
to see that you are in fact a 'rich person' (cf. [google] Glass-hole).
The additional 'ease' is really quite minimal. After all, since you
went to a store, you probably had to walk around inside the store (using
a battery cart in the store just doesn't have the right optics for a
'rich person').
Now think of the programming effort to make this work. There is less
training video available on parking lots than roads; there are lots of
people walking in parking lots; lots of accidents happen in parking lots
(20% of all car accidents, including 500 deaths per year). Yet the goal
of providing a tiny amount of additional 'ease' (walking reduction)
together with the goal of providing an opportunity to have the driver
viewed by other people as a 'rich person' is amazingly powerful, and
instantly recognizable as a 'winning business strategy', even by me.
All this is occurring as the 17 terawatt '
civilization
machine' is on the cusp of beginning to break down as a result
of the difficulty of obtaining 17 terawatts of continuous net power
(not to mention the hot hell we are preparing for our grandchildren).
It's utterly embarrassing as a human to see us wasting energy trying to
save some wannabe 'rich people' from walking a couple of hundred feet,
so that they get just a bit sicker, so that they can get inducted into
the 'sick care' medical system as a result of bad diet and not enought
exercise just a few weeks earlier than otherwise, all just because
'easier'.
[Oct08,'19]
Not A Rant
Looking back at what I have written, I see faux outrage,
various interesting tidbits, earnest warnings, some humor,
and some misanthropy. Today, I will try to "just sit",
motivated by watching Doug Lisle's A+ performance
here.
Over the past few years, after (finally!) changing my own diet, which
greatly improved my health, I wrote a lot about the bad effects of
traditional western diets (e.g.,
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
and
9),
as I watched 0.5% of the US population crossing over the arbitrary line
from overweight into obesity per year (almost 2 million people per year).
It's fine to talk big about personal responsibility, but the reality
is that if you take a non-human mammal like a rat, which is capable of
exquisitely controlling its food intake in the wild to plus-or-minus 1-2%
of daily calories, which is what is required to maintain normal weight,
and then expose it to a standard western diet, it will get fat in just
a few weeks.
Humans are mammals with a language operating system overlaid. But humans
have all the same unconscious, finely tuned brain and body machinery as
other mammals for controlling their daily food intake (in the case of
humans, the total is almost a ton of food per year). The great majority
of humans would prefer not to be fat, and the majority of people think
about not being fat every day. Yet almost 2 million cross over into
(arbitrarily defined) obesity per year, and this trend shows no sign
of abating. Barring some thermonuclear-, asteroid- or banker-induced
catastrophe in the short term, it is likely that this trend will continue
until most Americans are obese (not just overweight).
Because of the ubiquity of overly-calorie-dense, supernormal food, in
order for a modern American not to get fat by the age of 40 when exposed
to a Western diet, they have to go through extraordinary measures that
will take a toll on their personal and public social life. Note that
here, I'm excluding guaranteed weight loss methods such as taking
methamphetamine.
One could of course blame this situation on a large corporation or a
political party or a politician or a school administrator or a parent
or an individual. But a quick glance around the world shows that this
is happening everywhere (40% lifetime chance of stroke in China past the
age of 25). As I have written, humans will eternally prefer a rich diet.
That's exactly why it's called 'rich'.
So the bottom line is that there is only one possible future - a fat
future. This isn't because people have no personal responsibility
or because corporations are bad (of course they're behaving badly -
that's by definition), or because there aren't enough regulations.
Any not-completely-totalitarian society with access to a plentiful energy
supply will simply end up getting fat.
Many other modern human problems can be understood in a similar way.
For example, compare the problem that there already are too many people
on the earth for its carying capacity, yet humans add two complete
California's worth of new people every year *after* accounting for losses.
There clearly aren't enough earth resources (energy, water, soil,
metals, minerals, etc) on our already looted planet to accommodate
two additional California's worth of humans every single new year;
and these resources are quite obviously already being run down at
faster-than-replacement rates with the existing population. The bottom
line is that there is only one possible future - one that has way too
many (fat) people on the earth (at least for a while :-/ ).
It obvious that a country where everyone is obese or an earth with
too many people on it is not desirable by anyone; both of these trends
are inexorably leading to catastrophe. So naturally, one's first urge
on realizing the problem is to 'get the message(s) out'. Over time,
however, one realizes that this is not going to work. Everybody already
unconsciously knows what the big problems are, and they actively work
against having them being brought into their conscious awareness.
This leads to the second urge, which is to be satirical and snarky
and know-it-all (I have that one down...). But in reality, that is no
more than a personal defense mechanism for dealing with the constant
mental discomfort of having *consciously* realized the enormity and
unsolveability of the problems, together with the impossibility of ever
'un-seeing' the problems after that.
That brings us to the third stage response: knowing, but 'just sitting',
and experiencing the passing of time. These three different responses
are not mutually exclusive. For example, here is Doug Lisle just a week
or two after his 'just sitting' video above, turning back to '
getting the message out'
(to a nurses conference).
For a change of pace, I will try a low-getting-the-message-out and
low-satire diet. I should be able to keep it up for a few days at least
:-} .
[Oct18,'19]
Go, Hawai'i!
Go, anti-war Tulsi (now polling at 2%)! She gained 40,000 followers
in one day after the failed NYT/Hillary smear and after she pushed
slightly beyond the Overton window at the debates (Streisand effect).
Trump will probably win b/c the Democrats will neuter themselves 'in
the foot' with Ukrainegate after the endless, utterly limp, Russiagate
("it's dead, Jim"). As Matt Taibbi says, 'everyone is a Russian agent'.
Won't really matter, however, as with the outcome of last election!
'The President' is merely a distraction to dangle in front of the proles
while other people (the same people, regardless of which party wins!) 'get
real work done'.
In unrelated energy news, there are now (2019) 200 million SUVs on the
road globally vs. just 35 million on the road in 2010. By contrast,
there are about 5 million plug-in electric cars on the road now vs. almost
none in 2011. The hugely increased numbers of fuel-inefficient SUVs
have more than erased any greenhouse gas gains from electric cars (IEA).
The increase in SUVs account for all of the 3.3 million barrels a day
growth in oil demand for passenger car between 2010 and 2018 (IEA).
That's a *more than 3% increase* in total world oil consumption.
SUVs by themselves account for more emissions than heavy industry or
trucks, or aviation. If you drive an SUV, you're an idiot. I know,
you're thinking that I'm still peeved at the SUV that broke 5 of my
bones and collapsed my lung by jumping out in front of me from a side
street, giving me only 500 milliseconds to react, in order to shave
exactly 1 second off of their commute, *and* after seeing me coming
down the main street with the right of way! (in the police report).
Maybe. But actually, I've hated SUVs long before that. Get out on the
sidewalk or a bike and look at their stupid drivers going by on the way
to the exercise place, perched like impatient monkeys in their painted
6,000 pound cans, peevishly honking (SUV drivers on their 'high horse'
feel more entitled to honk than drivers in small plebian cars). You will
have difficulty avoiding feeling deep shame for the human race, if you
have even a basic understanding of net energy decline and human-induced
climate change. Just so that you don't think I'm picking only on
SUV 'car' drivers, electric car drivers aren't any better (
PDF
here). Driving sucks, period.
[Nov02,'19]
Schizo!
Max Blumenthal was arrested in NY and held for two days. Woohoo.
It's worth remembering that in 2011-2012, *when it counted*,
Max Blumenthal was attacking "Assad apologists" in order to
support the disastrous Obama/Hillary/Saudi/Izzy war on Syria.
Perhaps his arrest will restore some of his street cred. For a
similar, but more colorful (epithet-filled) assessment, see
Scott
Creighton :-}
Meanwhile in Syria, US policy has bizarrely morphed from a partial
pullout into trying to get into the already running business of looting
Syrian oil. There isn't much oil, and Syria needs it, so the looting will
mainly serve to make it difficult for Syria to rebuild itself, despite
having managed to defeat the lunatic ISIS al-qaeda guys hired by the US.
But this is really just a continuation of the original two-decade-old
PNAC plan destablize states in the mideast surrounding Israel and Saudi.
Obama vs. Trump vs. whoever is just a show for the proles. The same
people (bankers, corporations, military) determine the same policies
in every case, regardless of whose ugly face you have to look at on
the teevee (just don't watch). Wesley Clark's report of '
7
countries in 5 years' (just 10 days after 9-11), has unfolded over
the following two decades almost according to plan *without regard* as
to who was preznit! The countries were "Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon,
Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran" (transcript
here).
Finally, speaking of Syria, the swill dispensed as 'news' has gotten
positively comical. After the body of bogeyman al-Baghdadi (already
killed twice) was supposedly 'buried at sea', after the raid was 'observed
in the situation room', it has now 'emerged' that a thief '
stole
the bloody underwear' on which the positive DNA test was supposedly
done. You think maybe they need to hire better writers?! I suppose
killing the long-dead bin Laden then 'burying him at sea' and the fake
'situation room' pic went so well the first time, they thought, 'why not
just do the *exact same thing* again'?, like the many successful reprises
of fake chemical weapons, the biggest being liar 'Chemical' Colin Powell
before the 2003 Iraq war.
As I have written before, I am confident I am not schizophrenic. But I
*sure* feel like it when I occasionally sample the parallel universe
presented as 'reality' by the supposedly 'left wing' mainstream media
(CNN, etc, which is 'far right wing' by my standards) but also, much
of the supposedly 'left' online media. And that doesn't even count
the continously interleaved double-bacon-cheese-pizza-noodle-burger
food porn, or the latest update in utterly preposterous plans to
make super-energy-intensive cell-cultured meat. 'Infinity' is often
presented as an abstract notion that is hard to understand. In real life,
by contrast, humans seem utterly unable to understand the concept of
'finite'...
[Nov09,'19]
For some perspective, from a
Pew study
(WSWS article from 2015), 84 percent of world population subsists on
under $20 per day (about $7,300 a year), while 71 percent of the world
population subsists on less than $10 per day (about $3,600 per year).
On the positive side, the number of people in extreme poverty (less
than $2 a day fell by 1 billion people between 1990 and 2013 (but still
leaving about 10% of the world population in that state).
[Dec07,'19]
"This
absolutely
appalling highway shootout yesterday encapsulates the under-trained,
military-cosplaying, Punisher-wannabe cops who permeate America's police
departments. They killed both the hostage and a bystander, then bragged
'no LEOs [law enforcement officers] were harmed.'" -- BrandonFriedmanDC.
During the shootout, the police hid behind a bystander civilian car *with
people in it*. Hey guys, some work on your 'punisher' style needed?
[Jan02,'19]
The law
I start with two insightful quotes from historian and Rockerfeller
confidante Carroll Quigley, from his 1966 book,
Tragedy And Hope:
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals
and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the
Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic
thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that
the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without
leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.... Then it should
be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other
party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with
new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing
less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands
able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of
the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist
fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret
agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.
The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in
Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s
central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of
financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic
control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and
the indirect injury of all other economic groups."
The slower-moving, seasonal
housing market looks like it is already
reaching
a plateau in the expensive markets in SF, LA, SD, NY, Seattle,
Portland, and Denver (tho, still going up elsewhere). The stock market,
by contrast, is lurching upward even more steeply, with the greed index
now at an all-time high.
None of that is based on corporate profits, which have generally been
declining since 2014. Large transporation companies (oceanic shipping,
rail, trucking, Fedex) are tanking. Many major companies, including
fracking companies, have never made money *for any single year of their
existence*. The greed bubble is not based on expectation of gains from
trade talks. Stocks are up because Boeing!? The inflated greed index
makes the stock market look like a delicate, highly overinflated water
balloon, waiting for a tiny, stress-concentrating fracture to initiate
a catastrophic rupture. It's impossible to predict what that event or
events might be, but if a stock market crash occurs over the next 1-3
months, it could have a big effect on the election, esp. if some banks
are damaged in the process.
I remember well the stupified look on then-mayor-of-London Boris
Johnson's face the day after the Tory-introduced Brexit squeaked by
in 2016 (the Tories were fully expecting it to lose). We may soon see
facial expressions like that flitting across the faces of the worms in
charge of the so-called 'left' (hah!) Democratic Party. Again, crashes
often have short snapbacks on the way down, so I have no month-specific
idea of how this might play out. And don't forget, I have been wrong
for the past 4-5 years :-} (I expected a crash around 2014!).
However, I really think that it doesn't matter a great deal exactly
when the crash comes, or who the winner will be, because essentially the
same policies will be in effect, no matter what crashes or who 'wins',
as Carroll Quigley wrote in 1966. Sure, you have to look at the same
particular ass-face for 4 years. But that's easy to fix by simply not
looking at the teevee or your anti-social media feed (just don't use).
For perspective, look back at Obama's banker-filled administration, which
engineered a disatrous increase in wealth polarization that finally broke
through the previous 1928-1929 record. Or consider Obama's overseeing
of the catastrophes in Libya and Syria (his administration was the one
that basically hired Al-Qaeda AKA ISIS in Syria to overthrow the elected
Syrian government). Or look at his drone assassinations. Or look at
Obama's maintenance of the costly occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq
(not to mention Guantanamo). There was no detectable change in rate of
increase of CO2 emissions between Bush, Obama, and Trump. Those weren't
mistakes or missteps or 'but, he tried'. They were THE LAW. The script
never changes, only the actors are replaced.
[Update: Jan02 -- one hour later...] Well, speaking of unexpected
events, I just now read that the Pentagon has taken credit
for assassinating Iran’s most important general, Qassim
Soleimani, one of the major figures responsible for defeating
ISIS/Daesh in both Syria and Iraq. Also killed was a top Iraqi
leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, who was coming to meet Soleimani.
This occurred several hours ago at the Baghdad airport, in a
dangerous
escalation in the Middle East. I just saw that SyrianPerspective
is down/attacked/spoofed again a few days ago. There are curently about
60,000 US troops stationed across all of CENTCOM (all Middle East), which
is not that large a number. There are 16,000 people at the gigantic US
"embassy" alone in Baghdad.
The US military can shoot a missile out of a helicopter or a drone
and blow up a civilian car inside the perimeter of a civilian airport
(Soleimani was on his way to a funeral for Iraqi soldiers). However,
it seems much more costly to actually win a real war (without using
nuclear weapons) against a country like Iran that can actually shoot back
(not to mention with Iraq joining in). The US could overwhelm *some*
of Iran's air and coastal defenses and destroy a lot of infrastructure,
but there would be a high price to pay in the Green Zone and other nearby
military bases. For context, the US *lost* their long war against
South Vietnam, which was much less well-defended than Iran, where the
attacking US standing army had 500,000 troops, with complete control
of the air, and after dropping 3x the total tonnage of bombs dropped
in WWII. Iran will likely sit tight for the short term. This act will
immediately increase pressure to throw the US out of Iraq (cf. Saigon),
and Iran would be happy to help with this. The US military has
been there for 16 years. Russian forces will likely be put on
high
alert.
[Update: Jan03] Looks like the US is
transporting a lot of materiel through
Spanish
and Italian military bases (see also
here and
here). For geographical context,
here is the location of the large number of US military bases
surrounding
Iran. The materiel movement, however, is *not* enough for an actual
invasion (it's less than the 2002 build-up to the 2003 US invasion of
Iraq, which took 6 months). Of the Democrats, only Sanders and Gabbard
had somewhat sensible responses. Despite the idiocy of provoking yet
another war, the people who control the US (bankers, military, neocons,
Israel-supporters, in part via sexual blackmail, who broadcast through
the Trumpfart figurehead) seem to be making a big move (maybe just to
try to hold on in Iraq for a while). The congress are not the ones who
have commanded the attack or commanded the materiel to move, and are
just complicit sideline observers. Of course, the US goy proles cheer
when things explode at a distance, regurgitating the yellow journalism
they stuff themselves with. The current matrix would have made the vile
war-mongering London press of 1910-1913 proud.
The movers could care less about the long term consequences for the
average person, either here, or abroad, and as in the case of WWI
and WWII, are international. Here is an insightful comment from
a retired Republican (!) senator, a Vietnam war vet,
Richard
H. Black. Compare that with supposedly 'left'
Elizabeth Warren strutting around like a neocon, endorsing
the assassination. MoA commenter, PavewayIV, notes that a
simple
attack on poorly defended Saudi oil and desalinization infrastructure
(e.g., just 10x the size of the highly effective pinprick Houthi attack)
would kill few people and could paralyze the dollar-oil-based western
banking system -- "Everyone has a plan (and a nation of laws), until
(1) food riots, (2) lamp posts" (N.B.: the Feds 'visited' him last year,
and confiscated his computers). Always remember that our just-in-time,
diesel- and bunker-oil powered economy has just 3 days of food on the
shelves.
[Update: Jan04] Qatari FM Mohammed al Thani quickly
traveled
to Iran. One possibility is that the drone that killed
Soleimani took off from Qatar, and the FM went there asking
them not to attack the US air force base in Qatar (which is not
something Soleimani would have done anyway). Finally, a wacky
theory
from PavewayIV - perhaps the US was actually aiming at Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandes and killed Soleimani by accident! It's a possibility,
though unlikely in my view, and one that would require stunning
(Mossad) intelligence incompetence given that Soleimani
was openly traveling on a civilian jet. Here is an
excellent interview
with Scott Ritter (can skip over Giorgio Cafieri). The contrast between
basic outline of historical reality (Scott Ritter) and the utter nonsense
in the main stream teevee and internet media is reaching 'Matrix' levels.
Keep your head screwed on!
[Update: Jan05] The Iraqi parliament just approved a bill to
expel US forces from the country and deny the use of Iraqi airspace to
all foreign forces. The Iraqi PM Mahdi told the parliament that Gen
Soleimani was in Bagdhad at the PM's invitation on a diplomatic passport
as part of his attempt to mediate between the USA and Iran, that he and
Gen Soleimani were scheduled to meet the day following his arrival in
Bagdhad, and that Gen Soleimani was carrying a note from Tehran to be
delivered to him. This explains the presence of the high level Iraqi
delegation killed with him.
[Update: Jan07] As Catherine Austin Fitts says, it
look like "someone is trying to start WWW III". Given that
much of the media apparatus has a pro-zionist, anti-Russian
bias, the recent US drone assassination of Soleimani has
'explosive' possibilities. Look back at this annotated
Bush
approval polls graph from 2007. 9/11 caused Bush's approval immediate
post-election approval rating of bare over 50% to skyrocket overnight to
about 85%. Note that this was merely the bad (false flag) event itself,
not any US response to it.
All it would take now for something similar to happen to Trump's
approval would be a (e.g., false flag) attack on a US military asset
in the Middle East. Probably about half of the people in the US
are already whipped up into thinking that dropping nuclear bombs on
Iran might be a good idea, in case the conventional war goes sour.
A majority of the remaining world oil reserves are still in the
middle east. The military still runs strictly on oil (the military
is 60% fossil fuel by weight when on the move). Just-in-time supply
lines for food (and just about everything else) still depend 100% on
bunker fuel and diesel (container ships, rail, long distance trucks).
Unfortunately, we are getting close to a 'Cuban missile
crisis'-type situation. Putin just made a
surprise visit to Syria today.
Paul Craig Roberts is a little over the top
here,
but worth reading. The internet and anti-social media has brought more
psychological control of the minds of the general population. But it
also remains a much faster way to find out what really happened than
was possible 60 years ago. May the second part give the advantage to
cooler heads (of which the late Soleimani was a prime example)!
Around 10:30 GMT this evening (Tues), missiles may have been fired at
several US bases. We will have to wait at least 24 hours before the fog
clears enough to determine how significant the attack was. Doesn't look
like a false flag. But what a mess. The head orangutan is preparing
to tweet to the nation, explaining how assassinating Soleimani a few
days ago has 'stopped an attack' that has just occurred, in language
an average American should be able to easily comprehend... The tweet
was... "All is well!". Okie-dokie.
[Update: Jan08] Weird kabuki missile theater!?
New S&P high?! Oil spike over within hours!? But there was
a real airliner crash, of unknown relation to the hostilities.
On the day after, still hard to know what actually happened (no US
injured?). Several military base buildings seem to have been
destroyed,
but the story is that the Iranians sent a warning to allow
evacuation. In a larger sense, it's not over because virtually
all countries in the region still want the US out more than ever.
The threat of a false flag remains a serious concern. Here is
a good article by Federico Pieraccini discussing some of the
lead-up
to the Soleimani aassassination where the US explicitly threatened
another 'Maidan'.
[Update: Jan12] Dean Henderson (Left Hook) wordpress
site just taken down by wordpress after he posted an article on
Iran (probably part of the Iran 'sanctions' purge). The Iran
self-shootdown of their nuclear scientists story seems a
a
little suspicious. For a more 'colorful' epithet-filled
assessment of the new situation, which should incidentally win an
award for most original hasbara ever :-} , see y9CH217s at
4Chan.
[Update: Jan15] Summary after a week. On 2 Jan 2020, The US
assassinated the top Iranian general, Qassim Soleimani, who was recently
responsible for defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria (and who previously
helped run guerrilla warfare against US occupation troops in Iraq).
Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission, perhaps motivated by the US,
flying under his own name on a commercial aircraft, and was killed
when a US drone missile hit the passenger car that picked him up at
the airport. 5 days later, Iran launched a symbolic attack, firing a
handful of small ballistic missiles at US airbases, after giving the
US a 2-hour warning. Many of the missiles precisely hit individual
buildings (incoming speed just under 1 mile/sec) reflecting greatly
improved targetting over Soviet era SCUD's. The US troops,
hiding Saddam-era
in bunkers except for a few drone pilots, were unable (or didn't try
to) shoot down any of the missiles. The attack severed optical fibers
for drone control. Under threat of a major retaliation against the US
and Israel if the US counterattacked, the US backed down. This is a
greatly different scenario than the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, or the NATO
destruction of Libya in 2011, where neither country could effectively
shoot back at US forces.
[Jan22,'20]
The greatest asset price bubble ever
The preposterous asset bubble continues to inflate to utterly
frightening, truly historically unprecendented proportions, with
stocks reaching new highs a few days after the US nearly started
another war, with the war pigs ascendant. By many standard measures
(e.g., 10-year interest rate minus 1-year interest rate -
Fed graph here),
things look they are just about ready to pop. But emergency 'liquidity
provisioning' (i.e., MMT socialism for the world-dominating cartel of
richest banks), is still flowing directly into the market. Tesla, which
has never actually made a net profit for any single year, is now valued
at $103 billion, larger than the world's largest automaker (Volkswagen
at $100 billion) and bigger than GM and BMW combined ($50 billion plus
$51 billion). In 2019, Tesla delivered 1/3 of a million cars while
Volkswagen delivered 11 million cars - that is, Tesla's valuation is 30x
more expensive per car than Volkswagen's. Such ridiculous distortions
will not last. Inflating the bubble *even more* simply means that the
coming crash will be even more painful. Though no one looks forward to
a crash, I wish it would crash sooner than later!
Another example of the amazing
misallocation of money in the current bubble is the
$43
billion in share buybacks that Boeing purchased over the past
6 years. Boeing could have completely redesigned a new narrowbody
plane for just *one-third* of that astounding $43 billion dollar waste.
Instead, they have now had to borrow $19 billion dollars just to stay
afloat, *on top of* the fact that even before the latest loan, they were
*already* at slightly negative equity. In my younger years, I would never
have thought that I could be looking forward to 'creative destruction'.
But the truth is, I'm *still* not looking forward to it, because 'creative
destruction' never manages to get back to people like fired Boeing boss
Dennis Muilenburg (and his financialization cronies who *haven't* been
fired) to claw back their ill-gotten yachts and houses and trophy wives.
Instead, it merely claws back money from average and below-average person
(median salary of $47K in 2019 from BLS stats, but 44% of US workers
between the age of 18 and 64 are in jobs that pay median annual wages
of $18,000).
[Update: Mar12]: The bubble is now clearly popping. Look out below.
Buy the f---ing the dip! (just kidding, do not buy).
[Feb10,'20]
The results of addition (2 + 2 = 4) turn out to be a 'matter of opinion'
after all! "The incorrect math on the Caucus Math Worksheets must
not be changed to ensure the integrity of the process....", and "Any
judgement of math miscalculations would insert personal opinion into the
process by individuals not at the caucus and could change the agreed upon
results. That action would be interfering with the caucus' expression of
their preferences". -- Iowa Democratic Party attorney. Cool. Will this
work when I buy my next laptop?
[Feb26,'20]
In 1969, a few years before I entered college, 78 percent of instructional
staff at US institutions of higher education were tenured or were on the
tenure track. Today, after decades of institutional expansion, that
figure is 33 percent. Between 1975 and 2005, the number of full-time
faculty in US higher education increased by 51 percent, while the number
of administrators increased by 85 percent and the number of nonmanagerial
professional staff increased by 240 percent. Higher education will hardly
be recognizable in a few more decades.
[Mar03,'20]
The Fed just dropped interest rates from 1.5% to 1% (1-year Treasuries
immediately plummetted to 0.9%) and the market only rallied for an hour
or so. As volitity rapidly increases and overnight repo/bailouts spike,
it sure looks like things are setting up for a much bigger implosion.
It's *not* due to the stupid corona beer virus. It's due to the
out-of-control money gamers that were not punished for their pre-2008
crimes, but instead rewarded with over $20 trillion in new cash. I think
was have finally arrived at much needed deflation, but it won't be pretty.
Of course, given the extreme opacity of how large money actually works,
the money changers will be able to take advantage of any crisis.
For example, the Fed's super-low-interest-rate, secret repo loans to
hedge funds are now more massively subscribed than ever. These criminal
hedge funds are using the borrowed money to invest in things like
mortgage-backed securities that to pocket the interest difference.
These guys are little different than pickpockets at a public execution.
[Mar09,'20]
The price of oil - the lifeblood of industrial civilization - dropped 20%
today and 48% over the last 18 days. Although this is the way markets
'are supposed' to work (demand down because of temporary drop in travel),
the result is nevertheless utterly preposterous. Imagine if our body
worked this way: "the price of hemoglobin has dropped sharply today,
and so we are going to stop investing in producing this product".
The market is a blithering idiot.
[Mar12,'20]
Under the cover of the beer virus psyop, the Fed just
announced $1.5 trillion of new super-low-interest rate QE
bailout
3-month 'loans'. Don't worry shysters, if you don't/can't pay it back,
it can just be rolled over! QE is back (this is QE5)! This socialism
for the rich is directed *exclusively* at criminal, parasitic bankers
and parasitic hedge funds. Of course I know this won't happen, but
people should really ignore the beer virus, keep their eyes on the ball,
and run these guys out of town. It wouldn't hurt to string up a few
'to encourage the others', as the French say.
[Mar15,'20]
Today (Sunday) at 5PM, the Fed cut interest rates to zero, and effective
March 26, has cut reserves requirements to zero. This last literally
means that an infinite amount of money can be created from the void
by banks. It's another new Pearl Harbor, baby. I guess the previous
one was wearing off so it was probably about time for a 'booster shot'.
[Mar17,'20]
The Fed today announced they will accept
stocks
as collateral in return for ultra-low-interest rate loans
at its Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), which is supposedly
designed "to support the credit needs of households and businesses."
I used to be against capital punishment but I wonder if should start
allowing exceptions :-} This will allow criminal banks to get loans
in return for stocks that are soon to be worthless. This is a replay
of 2008 where bankers privately joked about unloading 'toxic waste'
on the public, but this time, it's even moar! There will be
direct
bailouts of criminal, own-stock-buying corporations, now in the hole.
This enormous theft will occur while the proles are busy maintaining
a safe social distance (well, except when waiting in line for panic
shopping).
The massive job loss caused by the self-imposed depression of the
'corona with no clothes' is getting serious. What is being planned?
Even 'The Moon of Alabama' has joined the hysteria machine (what a loss
of nerve, bernhard, you've got to man up!). MoA is now begging for
a totalitarian lockdown! And shame also on John McDougall and Chris
Martenson! Small businesses are going to be slaughtered. This is all
feeling weirdly like Soviet Russia! The biggest point being made is,
you can be locked down with a wave of our hands, and there is nothing
you can do about it. Raw power.
[Mar24,'20]
What peak net energy looks like: the brick wall at the back of the theater
Being left, I always have a tendency to whine about how we are being
screwed :-} . Of course, we *are* being screwed. But it's important to
sometimes think like the oligarchs, who never let good crises go to waste.
The current "corona with no clothes" situation could also be turned in
favor of good, because of the huge changes in social structures that were
executed by fiat overnight. True, many people will just follow along
meekly, without understanding how they have been mentally manipulated.
But the sudden plasticity injected into the system potentially also
allows movement in a positive direction when the death threat fades.
People may get a glimmer that a world not controlled by criminal banking
cartels is actually a real possibility!
But let's think ahead for the time being like an oligarch, and
imagine how much additional social control will be able to come
along with universal basic income, legitimized and 'required'
virtually overnight by the lockdown-induced strangulation of income
to the bottom half of people in the country. Big Brother cellphone
and CCTV tracking of 'infectors' like in China and Korea will
be rolled out here, with much less resistance. Check out the
in-your-face
dystopian future outlined by the MIT Technology Review. Remember
the "yellow alerts" after 9-11? This time, the 'invisible threat'
reserves the right to cancel the basic right to human social behavior
(which has weathered thousands of viruses), probably repeatedly after
each previous threat fades, to continually keep the proles off balance.
It's not just that we should think of this as an opportunity for change.
It's 'now or never' to slow this next big tick toward dystopian
totalitarian control on the net energy downslope! Go
here for a colorful
projection of what could happen.
Over the past few days, partially locked-down out-of-work people in
San Diego have been going to the beaches, parks, and hiking trails.
So last night, the mayor of San Diego just closed all parks, trails,
and beaches, which will soon be covered with police tape to block this
'dangerous behavior'. The average monkey will say, 'can't be too careful
with an invisible threat that is everywhere!' This latest move reminds
me a quote from Frank Zappa:
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to
continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too
expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will
pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of
the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
- Frank Zappa
However, though the hiking trails are closed,
the San Diego gun shops are still open (they closed
them in LA for a while, but not here). It's not full-blown
martial
law until they close all the gun shops and bring in the National
Guard in armoured personnel carriers. Changes are happening so fast,
it's hard for me to predict what President Fauci's next move to combat
My Carona
will be
(original
here).
[Mar28'20]
Now what? the corona-panic fallout (a US perspective)
The corona-panic continues, especially on the so-called
'left'. In a matter of weeks, the ability of billions
to move around freely and to earn a livelihood
completely vanished. The intensity of righteous
anger at any sensible questioning of the worldwide 'medical martial
law' lock-downs has been impressive and frightening to me and Claudia.
It has destabilized friendships. The blinding anger at Trump from the
'left' subverts the common sense placing of the number of worldwide covid
deaths (30K), in the context of 500K 'normal' yearly worldwide deaths
from (primarily) viral pneumonia. The covid death count is undoubtedly
somewhat inflated because the great majority of corona-related deaths
are old sick people with multiple serious medical problems, including
other not-tested-for viruses, not to mention the highly unreliable PCR
tests, making it difficult to determine which cause should get credit
for striking the death blow.
Being far left, I am irritated to have to preface the next comment
with a declaration of my distaste for the oxymoronic 'billionaire
populist' Trump, but, in any case, it looks like logic-sabotaging
'Trump derangement syndrome' has flared up for the *third time* around
this corona-panic! When the Russiagate 'infection' fizzled out with no
trace of any smoking gun, Rachel Maddow cried, the evidence was buried
that the election campaign email leak was internal (almost certainly
from subsequently-murdered Seth Rich, and not from Russia), but then I
was hoping the chastened tatters of the so-called 'left' could move on.
Then there was the impeachment circus, which unintentionally managed
to publicize shady Biden business deals in Ukraine, Biden ordering and
succeeding to get Ukrainian prosecutors fired, which looked worse than
Trump, not to mention the fact that the whole operation was pointless
since it was sure to fail given the Repug Senate. But now, we are seeing
a third flare-up with the so-called 'left' telling us that 'Trump is
endangering us' with an 'incompetent lockdown'!
From reading push-back comments on the continual covid-panic scare stories
pushed out at places like ziohedge, it seems to me that a chunk of the
public is beginning to figure this out. Trump's popularity is
at a new high. With the 'everything bubble' now collapsing out of the
spotlight, the instantly dispossessed bottom half of the population may
be turning against the lockdown (cf. riots in Hubei). The 'lockdown
left' has apparently not considered how dumping the bottom half of the
population out of work by shuttering service industries and gig work
also results in discontinuing medical benefits for those people.
Incredibly, the cruise missile 'left' has ham-handedly managed
to refocus the rage of the bottom half of the population *away*
from the criminal bankers, who are being bailed out with
trillions of dollars
as we speak by Trump and his oligarch cronies in a manner reminiscent
of the fall of the Soviet Union, and onto themselves, as pampered
idiots whose only 'hardship' has been to get full pay to stay home.
The
gigantic
spike in unemployment claims (3 million) from just the first
week of applications has far exceeded all previous records; and this
doesn't include gig workers. The bottom half of the population
has been instantly impoverished. As small businesses try to hang
on, super-corporations like Amazon are *already* vacuuming up the
debris; Amazon just advertised for 100,000 new bottom-of-the-barrel
slave jobs for desperate bottom-halfers. See
Matt
Stoller for more details.
It's hard to predict what might happen between now and the election,
but if the election were to be held now, Trump would probably win against
the invisible, feeble Biden. I have no idea whether Trump will be able
to keep the focus off of criminal banker driven economic collapse and the
keep the focus on politically correct university professors being paid
to stay home and tend their gardens while the poor are driven into Amazon
slavery in order to supply their every need - or the exact order in which
the mountain of financial toxic waste will be dumped onto the public.
My ability to predict what will happen in the short term is exceedingly
poor, so I expected to be repeatedly surprised. In any case, I am
grateful for my university-provided ability (at least up to this point),
to write what I think without the censorship of "community guidelines"
and "terms of service".
[Apr01'20]
Corona forever: the loss of nerve, and the light at the end of the tunnel
In the heat of the moment, dealing with the disgusting
mainstream propaganda hurricane, and repeatedly having to talk
panicked friends and relatives back from the edge with
science and common
sense (or having to write off some that won't stop yelling about
'overflowing makeshift morgues'), it can be easy to lose sight of the
bigger picture. However, it's worth calmly zooming out.
First, the coming election/farce. Biden appears to be mentally failing
and could fare so poorly in a debate against Trump that the DNC is
now working overtime to force Sanders to drop out so that 'Cuomo,
the lockdown sheriff' can be inserted as a more 'worthy' candidate
than Biden so that it actually looks something like a 'contest'.
Many words and much thought will be utterly wasted on the ensuing,
utterly immaterial 'battle'. I can't resist re-pasting in a 1966 quote
from Carroll Quigley: "The argument that the two parties should represent
opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of
the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic
thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that
the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without
leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy." Go ahead,
throw one of the bums out. You can't miss - they're all bums!
Second, let's consider what will happen as a result of throwing
the bottom half of the population out of work for at least a month.
We were already on the verge of the popping of the gigantic 'everything
bubble', the largest bubble in human history. Adding an absolutely
unprecedented
worldwide unemployment spike and worldwide economic shutdown onto a
popping bubble was complete madness. There has been an unprecendented
spike in buying guns (85% year-over-year increase in handgun sales).
Once the lockdown ends - which it will, by hook or by crook or by riot -
the economy will begin to restart. However, the shutdown is likely to
result in a one-time, semi-permanent contraction of the economy as many
businesses will be unable to restart into the middle of a new Depression.
The resulting loss of life will likely greatly eclipse lives lost during
the corona-panic. There is really no historical analogue to the current
coordinated self-imposed shutdown of an interconnected worldwide economy.
We are going to have to wait to see what happens!
Third, let's consider the policy changes that will happen regardless of who
is elected. As a 'New Pearl Harbor 2.0', the coronavirus will be (has
already been!) wheeled out as the forever reason to massively increase
invasive surveillance and networked control of the population, by analogy
with the war on 'terror', powered by the 9-11 psyop. Some 'advances'
could be merely creepily 'helpful', like having google/amazon/@ssbook
listening and watching through your cellphone to see if you sneeze or
cough (after you finish having sex), and telling you to put your mask
back on. But it could then progress to warning you or blocking you from
saying or texting not-allowed things about infections. This will be
accepted by analogy with 'don't mention a bomb in the security line',
except that it will apply to all of your everyday interactions, and
as a result, your very thoughts. Younger people have never known life
without ever-present cellphones and social media feeds, so this will be
easy for many of them to accept without question. But I don't want to
dump on the young; many (perhaps more!) older people have unquestioningly
drunk the kool-aid.
The next step will be to bring the full metal jacket Orwellian system,
already partly rolled out in China, to the homeland over the next
few years, where eventually you won't be able to access buildings,
drive, or even get out of your apartment complex without passing
the face-recognition camera (one of the rare times you *must*
take off your face mask :-} ) and having a valid record in the
cloud of your vaccination and blood test history. Go
here to see how much of this
is already working in practice. This involves continuous tracking of
yours and everybody else's position data during walking and driving in
order to see who you came in contact with in order to be able to order
*those people* to self-quarantine for 2 weeks under severe, continuously
monitoried penalty, if you later turn out to get sick. Most Chinese have
accepted and support these draconian self-constraints. It may rapidly
come to the point that you won't be able get anything done outside of
your home without your always-on personal tracking device, for your own
'safety' and the 'safety' of others, of course. This is 'your papers,
please' - on a second-to-second basis, on a worldwide basis.
In my younger years, I used to make fun of the 19th century analogy of
civilizations as organisms that start out young, virile, and inventive,
but eventually get old, unadventurous, jaded, and weak. But that sure
looks like the direction we are now headed! We are trying to eliminate
all risk at the cost of permanent surrender of personal freedom.
Once personal freedom is given up, it is extremely hard to get back,
from historical example. This is also a very bad trade. The goal of
complete 'safety' is utterly unachievable. Just look at the abject
failure of the 'sick care' system, now consuming 20% of the US economy,
to fix the ills of a bad diet that contains too much meat, cheese,
fat/oil, and processed food. 'Bad diet' disease accounts for 80% or
more of the toxic and invasive treatments delivered by the ridiculously
bloated 'health' care pharamceutical medical complex. The treatments
don't work very well. For example, they certainly do not reverse heart
disease (like changing your diet does), and can at very best, slow down
its onslaught. We are slowly but surely arriving at a place that science
fiction writers could clearly visualize *more than hundred years ago*
(e.g., E.M. Forster's 1909 short story, "The Machine Stops" -
PDF
here). 'Nerve' is a terrible thing to lose.
But is there some light at the end of the tunnel? I think there is,
though the ultimate 'solution' may likely be unpalatable to both left
and right. Constructing the dystopian 5G internet of things that will
be required to implement a worldwide BioPanOptican will be extremely
energy intensive. Claudia is tired of hearing me complain about the
stylishly decayed but always inexplicably energy-intensive landscapes
of science fiction ("hey, where is that cool machine getting its 10
megawatts from?!" Where did all the street sweepers go?). As fossil
fuel net energy flattens and declines (fossil fuel is still 85% of
our total energy budget, wind and solar have *not even* covered energy
use *increases* over the past decade), it will be harder to construct,
maintain, and extend the ever-increasing complexity required for the
BioPanOptican. Less available net energy will mandate *less* complexity.
We should think ahead and have public discussions now how best to most
fairly manage the coming, unavoidable power-down!
[May03'20]
The fake science narrative
If you are a scientist, you have probably browsed Science magazine.
You may have submitted articles to Science. I got two articles past
the gauntlet in my younger years. Getting an article into Science can
be a big thing for your career (unfortunately, my second one came out
one day before 9/11).
My subscription to Science had lapsed, but I started getting it again a
few years ago out of curiosity. 30 years ago, it used to have a wider
range of articles. Nowadays, it had gotten monotonous. The editorial at
the beginning, more often than not, is on vaccines, or on the latest data
scandal, or on why we should trust 'science'. The issue more often than
not opens with the same pic of a fierce, sexy young woman climbing under
a rock overhang, suspended only from her wrists, but with her body somehow
impossibly held completely horizontal, but without either foot in play.
The news and views section invariably has something on the latest
drug development target or vaccines. For example, in the
24 April 2020 issue,
there was a covid/vaccines editorial. Then there was a covid fear porn
article, "A rampage through the body" that didn't mention anything about
ventilator-induced lung damage (the lead pic and much of the article was
about lung damage). This was followed by an execrable brief from pharma
shill, Gretchen Vogel, trying to cast aspersions on the few cases in which
scientists have attempted to randomly sample the population distribution
of covid infection in order to get a estimate of the actual risk of death
(e.g., Ioannidis, USC, Boston studies), which has turned out to be much,
much lower than the original hysterical estimates from Neil Ferguson
at Imperial College that helped initiate the wretched medical martial
law lockdown (e.g., 31% infected bypassers on a Chelsea Boston street
corner sample!). Losers. Yawn. There was also a half-page photo of a
terrified-looking African kid in a head scarf getting their jaw squeezed
open to deliver an oral vaccine.
Then on to the confusingly reformatted articles sections. There were the
usual 2 or 3 articles on quantum computing, which strangely read like
post-modern literary criticism. None of them are vaguely practical.
There are so many of them that in this issue, there was a retraction of
a result as an experimental artifact. Then there are always 2 or even
5 articles on cryo electron microscropy of protein, RNA/DNA, and/or
drug complexes. These are expensive machines that allow structural
determination in more naturalistic chemical settings than in traditional
protein crystallography, esp. where lipid membranes are involved (they
work by computationally rotating many copies of randomly-oriented
flash-frozen molecule samples into alignment in order to increase
resolution to almost as good as a X-ray crystallography). The pics are
always nice and sometimes startling. This issue showed a new pic of a
whole protein being translated through an endoplasmic reticulum membrane.
But every once in a while, there is an article that is *so*
egregious, it makes me want to spit at the magazine. This one
was, "Evolving epidemiology of poliovirus serotype 2 following
withdrawal of the serotype 2 oral poliovirus vaccine". You should
be able to access the whole article without a subscription
here. It was
written by a gaggle of people from the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine, the WHO, Imperial college (home of Neil Ferguson), the
Bill Gates Foundation, the CDC, UNICEF, and GAVI, the 'vaccine alliance'.
I will translate the abstract into English (you can verify that my
translation is correct by reading the real, acronym-studded mess).
There have been *no* cases of wild-type type-2 poliovirus for more than
20 years. However, the *vaccine* for type-2 poliovirus was discovered to
be causing outbreaks of "vaccine-derived poliovirus", causing paralysis.
So the type-2 vaccine was withdrawn from the three-type polio vaccine
mixture in 2016. As vaccine-derived type-2 polio outbreaks happened,
they were 'treated' with a type-2-only vaccine, that is, like the
one that was causing vaccine-derived outbreaks of paralytic polio (!).
The result was more outbreaks of vaccine-derived type-2 polio paralysis.
Therefore (!), a new type-2 vaccine is urgently needed. Luckily, there
just happens to be one now undergoing clinical trials.
Do you ever wonder why the vaccine-deliverers in Africa often need armed
guards? As far back as the 1970's, immunologists were conjugating tetanus
toxin to the beta-subunit of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in order
to generate immunogenicity for a normally tolerated self-protein (1976 PDF
here),
in order to make 'anti-pregnancy vaccines' for third-world countries,
and testing them on humans.
Like fake news, fake science isn't 'made up'. It's all based on real
equipment and reagents, and real lab experiments, and real (mostly)
debugged software packages. But like fake news, the all-important
*narrative* can be deceptive or outright misleading. In my earlier
years, I poo-poo-ed the narrative. That was for soap operas and Star
Trek episodes, not science. I was completely wrong. The narrative and
the background assumptions that frame the presentation of the hard data
are just as important as, and often, even *more* important than, the data.
It is critical to pay attention to the narrative. The
current science narrative is that President Anthony Fauci
(the dancing Fauci) is working with his collaborators at the
Defense department and big pharma to deliver covid vaccines at
"warp
speed". Never mind there has *never* been a working coronavirus
vaccine and nevermind that the only ones made so far (e.g., for SARS)
caused a subsequent coronavirus infection to be *more deadly* than if
the vaccine was *not given*. Nevermind that the CDC itself (PDF
here)
has just reported that covid looks very similar to a bad flu season,
or that the US death toll, even including 'covid heart attacks' and
'covid strokes' and 'covid cancer' is now only about 37K (also from the
CDC),
which is a regular flu year. That's *not* part of the narrative;
that's just data, whatever. The narrative is instead: covid is on
a 'rampage'; big pharma is coming to the rescue at 'warp speed';
keep your human slave muzzle on (even though the 'pandemic' is waning
without a vaccine, like it always does); mandatory/forced vaccinations
are here to 'help you'; and be sure to ask your doctor for your
digital
health certificate, else you might have difficulty getting out of
your house without being arrested. To stop this dystopian, Orwellian
'boot stamping on a human face, forever', we must pay explicit attention
to the narrative, not just the data. It doesn't matter whether it's a
'left' or 'right' boot. It's a frigging boot.
[May22'20]
We are *not* in this together
The criminal banking cartel that controls the world has been in overdrive
figuring out how to dump their losses resulting from the ongoing collapse
of the 'everything bubble' (the largest in human history) onto the
rest of us. In trying to see how this might unwind, it is important to
remember that most 'money' is created out of the void at the moment of
a loan by a commercial bank; but just as important, it is critical not
ignore the converse, which is that money is lost back to the void when
a loan is paid back or defaults.
The secret Fed operations to loan/create trillions of almost
zero-interest-rate dollars for their banker and hedge fund friends in
order to bail out their bad bets, together with new covid bailout funds,
some of which have reached the rest of us (a substantially smaller sum,
of course) would seem to be inflationary. This would be a traditional
way to transfer losses to the public by creating more money, which
devalues money relative to things, in order to protect ultrarich people
from outright losses.
But then there is the destruction of money caused by the huge number
of bad loans that have been created by the savage destruction of the
middle and lower classes, a result of throwing the bottom third of the
population out of work and crushing small businesses. Many of the lost
jobs and lost businesses will never return. Normally, this would cause
deflation, where money becomes *more* valuable relative to things.
Depending on how these two processes are balanced, the end result could
end up being a wash with respect to inflation/deflation. In this case,
what we are witnessing is literally a direct money (=things) transfer
from the public (bottom 99%) to ultrarich people and bankers.
Let's take one small counterintuitive example of the effects of the covid
coup on energy. The sudden strangling of the world economy has resulted
in a 30% drop in oil usage, cratering the price of oil, ironically,
right at the very moment of peak oil. The result has been that oil-rich
countries who have taken out huge loans using oil as collateral, such as
Kurdistan, Chad and the Republic of the Congo, are now at risk of having
their collateral seized by bankers. These are bankers who 'manufactured'
that money simply by updating a figure in their spreadsheet, which is
how money is created at the moment of the loan. In return, they are
now going to own actual physical things like oil and oil well hardware.
It's critical to understand the reality of bankers are stealing physical
resources by changing a single entry in a computer database. It really
is that stark.
We are *not* in this together. The covid coup has people scrambling
scared trying to keep house and home intact while the sociopathic rich are
getting even richer. The longer the fear can be prolonged, the more they
will be able to take. Fear is only for the proles, not for the Fergusons,
Cummings and Faucis.
[May30'20]
Color revolution riots, contact tracing, and the second wave
The covid scare had begun to wear off. For example, 0% of 1300 UCSD
students just tested positive for covid, even as the campus plans to
suspend almost all in-person classes for the Fall, to 'protect us all'.
Officials were surprised at the low number of students who came forward to
be tested. I dunno, maybe the students are finally beginning to wake up
to the unfolding dystopian nightmare, and have been googling 'the Stasi'?
At this critical moment, race riots followed by more general riots
have begun in a number of cities, starting in Minneapolis after a
video surfaced of a white policeman murdering a black handcuffed George
Floyd by kneeling on his neck for almost 9 minutes until he suffocated.
Floyd apparently worked as security guard for the same night club for
*over a decade* as his apparent murderer, Derek Chauvin did. In any case,
seeing the video is enough to drive any person (e.g., me) into a rage.
But it's critical to look beyond the race angle. The police were equally
brutal towards blacks under Obama. The riots are fundamentally based
on a huge amount of 'kindling' in the form of mass unemployment of the
bottom third of the population together with out-of-work poor people being
locked into small apartments as the temperature rises, all the direct
result of the population-wide lockdown, not the 'virus'. The media is
strictly censoring any mention of this (or referencing the analogous
riots that erupted in Hubei, China when the lockdown was eased there)
and will try to keep all eyes focused on race. Me and others pointed
exactly to the expected outcome of lockdown-induced riots two months ago,
at the beginning of the covid lockdown coup. The eruption is occurring
just as billionaires have each succeeded in padding their ill-gotten stash
with a *billion* extra dollars each, over just the past *two months*.
Now *that's* what I call looting. Of course, there are almost certainly
professional agitators in the mix, as has been uncovered to be the
case in many previous uprisings/riots (see e.g., professional snipers
strategically firing at and killing both police and demonstrators at a
critical point during the Maidan coup in Ukraine), but that is not the
whole explanation. Finally, it's worth keeping in mind that the *only*
way inequality has *ever* been reversed historically is by violence.
Voting is irrelevant. During times *without* unrest, the Bezos'es and
Zuckerberg's and Gate'es unfailingly succeed in grabbing more than their
fair share, period, until violence finally explodes (or comes really
close, like during the Depression).
But whether or not the trigger was some kind of false flag op, the riots
will momentarily take the focus off covid while a second wave is likely
in the process of being engineered. I say 'being engineered', because
during the swine flu of 2009, the CDC said 'declare all samples positive'
when the actual positive rate of samples sent to them and tested by them
was only a few percent, because they had a hundred million unsold vaccine
doses that would otherwise no longer be needed. There are a hundred
different tests of varying accuracy, some with high false positive rates
(not the UCSD test, though!). The testing of the tests is spotty and
different tests allow different numbers of PCR DNA amplification steps
to declare a 'positive' test, so it's possible to pick and choose between
tests, as needed. The new rules for reporting a 'covid death' - no need
for a positive test, no need for covid to have killed you (e.g., heart
attack 'covid', stroke 'covid', cancer 'covid', car accident 'covid') -
have already irreparably contaminated the official death count. But a
new wave of deaths could be engineered simply by massively increasing
not-very-good testing and continuing to use the ridiculous 'covid death'
reporting rules. Calling deaths due to a variety of different diseases
the 'same' thing strongly recalls HIV/AIDS, where there was Pneumocystis
pneumonia AIDS, cytomegalovirus AIDS, Kaposi's sarcoma AIDS, tuberculosis
AIDS, chronic diarrhea AIDS. Fauci was heavily involved there, too.
Finally, the second wave can be blamed on the rioters.
Meanwhile, the Stasi contact tracers have begun to be trained en massse.
It's worth remembering that at its height, a full 2% of the East
German population were employed as spying snitches. Here is a good
video of someone who took 9 hours of online courses to get
certified
(additional copies are
here and
here in case the
youtube slash google censors get to it). As the second wave is rolled
out, tinpot dictator governors may attempt to roll out forced contact
tracing based on the Chinese and North Korean model, before there
has been a chance for legal challenge. Their goal would be to reach
'full China-tard', where if you are positive, you can't get out of
your house, the state can come and take your kids (and pets), and
and you can be force-vaccinated (see the execrable Epstein-defender
and Epstein-island-visitor-who-swears-kept-his-shorts-on, Dershowitz
explaining this), if and when a not-too-deadly vaccine comes on the scene.
Since what's in the vaccine is proprietary they could be injecting
expensive saline for all anyone knows. This is truly pure fascism
where the power of the state comes together with corporations (e.g.,
big pharma and big surveillance) to 'make the trains run on time'.
The resistance needs to have started yesterday to block this sea
change, and that doesn't mean the fake white bored teenager or
maudlin boomer 'color revolution', which will merely bring out
the National Guard to protect the tonier neighborhoods ('burn
that sh*t down! But get TF outta here when you try to
burn *my* sh$t down').
There is no time to dither. The left has for the most part failed to
understand that totalitarian regimes are not (only) imposed from the
top down. Rather, they involve a collaboration between *three* parties:
(1) governments and police, (2) large international corporations,
and most critically, (3) a fearful population. Fear is the key -
and the corresponding desire for 'safety' and stability at all costs.
Thus, totalitarian regimes are in large part self-imposed, just like
the covid lockdown. Like 'good Germans', we have frightening numbers of
'good Americans', who remain in fear of covid-1984. If the world doesn't
begin to snap out of this, we will soon be locked into Black Mirror,
real-world edition. Perhaps there is a small opening this week because
fear of riots has temporarily obscured fear of covid.
[Jun10'20]
Blacks and the police
The militarization and Israel-ification (Israeli forces
trained
the Minnesota police in the knee-on-the-Palestinian-neck
method) of the police, especially after 9/11 has been an
terrible setback, with a new rash of murderous, unannounced late
night swat raids at the wrong address, flash bang grenades dropped
into baby cribs, shooting a wheelchair bound homeless man
in
the face at point blank range with a rubber bullet, and so on.
But this started long before 9/11 with Senator Carl Levin's 1033
program, which had the Pentagon supplying military equipment to local
law enforcement. The US police kill civilians at a much higher rate
than other 'civilized' countries (e.g., 100 times the rate in China!).
The militarized US police conduct 80,000 SWAT raids per year (over *200*
every frickin day).
And there is a glaringly disproportionate application of brutalizing
force, police killing, incarceration, the death penalty, and
especially the war-on-drugs, in black communities. The police
have always served to suppress the underclass while protecting
rich capitalists and bankers during extensive capitalist and banker
looting activities. Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the world's other 500
billionaires, with the help of criminal bankers (e.g., see this
lastest
banker scam), each just looted *half a billion dollars* from the rest
of us over the past few months while the bottom third of the population
was thrown out of work. That single act of rich-person looting brought in
far more than the sum of all poor-people-looting that has ever occurred
since the beginning of time. The rich-person looting was accomplished
without fires and wasn't mentioned in the news. The virtual silence of
the so-called 'left' on this topic is absolutely disgusting.
But despite all the bad things the police do in poor communities, getting
rid of the police entirely will not fix the problem. Take Chicago.
The criminals, mostly black drug-related gang members, who murdered
over 450 people, mostly black, in Chicago last year (more than one a
day) are not any less of a problem for poor black Chicagoans than the
criminal Chicago police who murdered 3 people that same year (down from
12 killings a few years earlier). As satisfying as it might sound
to disband the vicious Chicago police (I lived on the South Side of
Chicago for years), this would be *very unlikely* to improve things.
In fact, that strategy would not likely be supported by most of the poor
blacks living in those hellish neighborhoods; a recent poll (PDF
here)
suggests only a third of blacks want to even
reduce funding for (much less abolish) the police.
[Update: Aug06: A recent Gallup poll found that
81% of Black Americans want police to spend the same amount of or
more time in their area].
[Update: Jun21: 102 shot, 14 dead
including toddler on Father's Day weekend in Chicago]. And finally,
the suddenly unemployed Chicago police wouldn't disappear; they would
merely be rehired by rich people as personal security teams, with even
less oversight than the minimal oversight they have now (think Brazil).
[Update: Sep24: Charles Barkley tells it like it is
"Who
are black people supposed to call, Ghost Busters? When we
have crime in our neighborhoods? We need to stop the defund or
abolish the police crap". Also check out Portland murders
in Portland after the homicide squad was defunded.]
Rather, the most critical things to fix this are: (1)
end
the war on drugs and legalize drugs, the
elephant
in the room, (2) get stronger civilian oversight of the police to
de-Israel-ify them and demilitarize them (and reduce their funding
commensurately) so that the sadistic and psychopathic bad seeds
can be promptly removed (Chauvin had 18 complaints against him),
and (3) end the lockdown (the lockdown and the riots caused
41%
of black-owned businesses to close, more than for any other ethnic
group!). Alcohol prohibition essentially created the modern mafia along
with an enormous crime wave. It was responsible for the deadliest year in
US history for the police themselves (1930)! The late Gary Webb described
how the CIA (the 'cocaine import agency') imported crack cocaine into
black neighborhoods via Nicaragua in the 1980's, which exponentially
grew drug gangs in black inner cities as the US deindustrialized and
manufacturing jobs were permanently lost. The war on drugs must end!
Citizens must get police oversight! The lockdown must end! None of
this will be easy. By analogy with the case of Humboldt county getting
economically hard hit by CA pot legalization, poor black communities
would be hit hard by a loss of revenue were more drugs to be legalized
(as would bankers laundering the money!), requiring a wrenching transition
to a healthier future. Renaming buildings and streets, breaking windows,
and toppling statues is a silly distraction from solving real problems
like that.
Zooming out to the larger picture, CJ Hopkins nails it
here.
And for a more upbeat summary, see Jim Kavanagh
here.
[Jun15'20]
Creepy crawly
Today, I got an advert for an academic talk at UCSD, "Ultra-miniaturized,
implantable and wireless data acquisition and actuation systems".
It starts off talking about the problem of communicating over low
bandwidth channels, but then on to "gastric monitoring ePills", and
then neural recording. But the conclusion was the kicker: "Lastly we
will discuss how this technology can be used to develop distributed,
un-tethered sensing and actuation modules that can be injected throughout
the body to monitor a variety of biomarkers for personalized healthcare
systems".
A mind that could write this, or read this, without feeling utterly
creeped out is exactly the kind of mind that thinks that contact tracing,
the vaccine surge, and masks forever will 'solve' 'covid'. Gordelpus
people! (Stapledon). If you think that 'healthcare' means staying inside,
out of the sun, eating a standard American diet, taking a laundry list
of standard American pharmaceuticals, and then occasionally venturing
out in your car with your mask on to get devices injected 'throughout
your body' that are all hooked up to the internet, then by all means,
'stay healthy', you 'health' nut. Just don't tread on me, or force that
nightmarish kind of so-called 'healthcare' onto other people.
For something completely different, for the last few weeks, the parade
of events has reminded me powerfully of Mao's Cultural Revolution and his
young Red Guards, struggle sessions, etc. I made a few cryptic comments
about this in emails to people but they didn't recognize the reference.
Today Linh Dinh wrote about just this topic. "To better understand what's
happening, though, we should reexamine Mao's Cultural Revolution. Lasting
a full decade [1966 to 1976], it destroyed much of China's cultural
heritage and tore that society apart, all in the name of getting rid of
the Four Olds: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas." -
Linh Dinh.
[Jun21'20]
"The point is, let's not just assume Dementia Joe is worse than Trump.
He may not be." .... "I think he is a useful skin suit for the inner
party. If he wins, look for the mobs to disappear, Covid to disappear,
the GOP to purge anyone connected with Trump, the FBI/CIA scandal to
be broomed and so on. The inner party will be celebrating like it is
2008, but it will be a rush to stasis. For the inner party, those mobs
are just pieces on the chess board that can be easily sacrificed." --
insightful comment from right-wing TheZMman, on his own article, "The
Sunset of Trump". [N.B.: citing this doesn't mean I'm right wing, or
that I support either candidate :-} ].
[Jun28'20]
Here is an insightful comment, by 'adr', on one of the covid propaganda
pieces that are now posted daily as a top article on ziohedge:
"Why are positive test results kept as a running total of "infected"?"
"If you never got the disease, you weren't infected. Plus, recovered
cases should be removed from the total."
"Do we keep a running tally of pneumonia cases? This year was probably
the 285 billionth case of pneumonia, we're all going to die hundreds of
times over!!!"
"If you take the best case scenario of false positives from manufacturers
of the tests, which is 5%, with 500k tests per day, you will get 25k
false positives every day. A false positive rate of 8% would be enough
to cover the entirety of reported cases of every state."
"There isn't a single SARS-CoV-2 test that went through the proper
testing and evaluation period. If they did, the tests still wouldn't
be available. They were rushed out the door with only the most basic
evaluation for efficacy and labs were never even allowed to qualify them."
"Sorry Karens, you are wearing your mask and killing the economy for
nothing."
[Jul10'20]
Wile E. Coyote Economy
I walk past people on the sidewalks, many still wearing masks outside
in the intense summer sun of San Diego, on quiet streets, and feel like
I have somehow missed a big event - like a really old person who wasn't
listening to his teevee and somehow missed the fact of a nuclear skirmish
in another country (well, I am getting pretty old).
Why is everything so quiet? Sure, there
have been the protests and twitter mobs, and
'cancel' firings, ominously reminiscent of Mao's
Red
Guards. But the overall mood seems weirdly calm and passive.
Wile E. Coyote has gone off the edge of the cliff, is now suspended in
midair, but his eyes still look calm. Why?
Over the past 6 days, MSFT+AMZN+AAPL+GOOGL+FB just added over half a
trillion dollars in market capitalization. That stock price gain was
equivalent to 3.4% of yearly US GDP, in just a week, during a recession,
with 1/3 of the working age population out of work. A similar story
is TSLA. TSLA now has a market capitalization equal to the *combined*
market capitalizations of GM, Fiat/Chrysler, Honda, BMW, Nissan, Hyundai,
Mercedes, and Ford, while making about *2%* of the cars made by those
other manufacturers, and all while *losing money* every year doing
this (!). The stock market just had its best quarter in 33 years.
No worries there.
At the university, the newly minted tinpot dictator 'health officials'
are busily doing 'important work' to make all hallways one-way and
posting signs on every room (dontcha know? only one person per 250 sq
ft?) in university buildings with nobody in them because classes and
'research' are now almost all online. My fellow academics seem blithely
unaware of the demolition wave that is about to crush the
preposterous
inflation of college costs (2x the inflation of rapidly inflating
medical costs).
The
employment-population
ratio, previously around 61%, has staggered up from the 51% chasm
it found itself in in March, now back up to almost 55%. But it's
pretty clear that a large number of jobs are not going to come back.
The US economy is 70% services, with 50% of total jobs provided by
small businesses. The lockdowns were specifically designed to crush
small businesses while leaving most large multi-national businesses
untouched. Consider that perhaps half of all restaurants in the country
have failed. A quarter of people in NYC haven't paid rent since March.
Landlords getting no rent are going to stop hiring plumbers. Musicians
and singers have become permanent, cancel-able personae non gratae.
Sports, movies, gyms, remaining restaurants, bars, zoos, swimming pools,
picnics, the beach, hotels, concerts, and virtually all normal human
gatherings are under a permanent threat of lockdown going foward from now.
It's virtually impossible that we are going to see above average economic
growth to make up for the gigantic hit to the economy from the lockdown.
In fact, with the threat of constant fitful reruns of the 'Salem witch
trial' covid madness, it could take 5 years for economic activity to
even recover back to February 2020. And that doesn't even take account
of declining net energy. Though you'd never know it from seeing people
drive by with tinfoil masks on inside their cars, we have entered a new
Greater Depression.
There has been a completely unprecedented $1 trillion spike
in the M1 monkey supply (cash and demand [=accessible] bank
deposits) that began in the middle of March 2020, visible
here. This has rated
remarkably little comment in the economic press. This must have reflected
the money/debt created for the CARES etc. deposits. There was no similar
M1 spike during the 2008 crash and bailouts (you can see a tiny blip
on 9/11). In the 2008 case, under Obama, *all* the created money went
strictly to the criminal bankers, which can be seen indirectly by the 2008
spike in
"Total
Assets on the Fed Balance Sheet". Translated, that means that
the Fed bought banker crap - i.e., gave bankers a gigantic amount of
created-from-the-void money in return for crap. Another unusual event
has been an unprecedented paying-down of consumer credit card debt.
I suppose you could partly explain this as people simply not buying
as much stuff (the excess cash/savings deposits in the economy can't
explained by people not making housing payments because a transfer from
a renter's bank account to rentier's bank account should affect M1).
Meanwhile, the 'Fed' (N.B.: always remember, privately owned, despite
the purposely misleading name!) has begun to slightly unroll some of
the $3 trillion in junk they just bought in Mar 2020 (3x the bailout
given to regular people) to re-rescue criminal bankers (see
Total Assets on the Fed
Balance Sheet again). The left hand scale is in trillions (millions
of millions of dollars). This is the first free money rollback from
criminal bankers since the Fed rescued the repo market starting in Sep
2019 (that was when criminal bankers stopped trusting each other, even
for a less-than-24-hour overnight loan at 10% yearly interest rate).
Currently 25% of all personal income is coming from direct stimulus
payments, but that is soon going to taper. Half of workers in America
live paycheck to paycheck. The waves of loan defaults, foreclosures,
evictions, bankruptcies, commercial real estate loan problems, and
declines in rent and house prices will take several years to play out.
About 10 million people were dumped out of their homes starting in 2008.
This time around we could see 2x or 3x that. During the original 1930's
Depression, movies served to keep people in better spirits. I suppose
Netflix et al. are doing them same for people at home (or in a tent).
Though I hardly want to see more riots, the lack of them actually has
me on edge. 2021 is shaping up to be one of the most chaotic periods
in all of American history.
Perhaps the direction of things will be clearer a few months.
When people realize the lockdowns are never going to go away
and the economy isn't going to immediately recover, the plan to
control the potentially angry population will likely include
totalitarian medical martial law, implemented by
"employment
suspension" (suggestion from NEJM article) or "benefits suspension",
both to get around the Nuremburg code for forced medical treatments. This
will be supported by perhaps half of the population of 'good Americans'
who, amazing to me, are still living in mortal fear of the 'killer virus'
(cf. good Germans). No vaccine? then no job or food for you because you
are "endangering others". For a preview of what we might be in for, check
out
this
2017 Danish study of a Bill Gates toxxine with a mortality hazard
ratio of 5.0-10.0 (not a misprint).
During the original Great Depression, there was very likely substantial
excess mortality (certainly from suicide, but probably also from
malnutrition) among the millions of people at the bottom. Yet life
for well-to-do people in the top 10-20% went on as if nothing unusual
was happening. By employing restless, otherwise unemployed, young
men in construction projects outside of major cities, a revolution was
averted without a totalitarian lockdown. We shall have to wait to see
what happens this time around.
[Jul12'20]
Waste of money (=energy)!
We returned home last night to the smell of an electrical fire.
I immediately checked the air conditioner unit (which was not running),
verified that that wasn't the problem, then went inside, opened the
windows, and turned on a window fan upstairs. Half an hour later,
the whole house smelled like a burned circuit board. Going outside to
the street, I realized that the smell wasn't local (wish I'd done that
before turning on the fan...), but had in fact had drifted a good six
miles inland from the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious
assault troop carrier and mini aircraft carrier moored for maintenance
in the harbor at San Diego. The fire - according to the useless 'news'
reports, supposedly due to 'burning office materials' and 'nothing toxic'
(right...) - was surprisingly intense. Today, it was reported as
having caused steel in the foward island to soften, and the forward mast
to have collapsed. After breathing burning circuit boards all night,
from the smell outside this morning, it was clear that the fire wasn't
close to being put out. There are one million gallons of fuel on board.
To get some idea of the stunning waste of money here, the USS Bonhomme
Richard was finishing a 2-year 1/4 of a *billion* dollar maintenance
period when it caught fire in port, which will probably result in its
total loss, perhaps adding up to roughly $10 billion dollars down the
drain. That's a lot of money (which is approximately equal to energy),
that could have been spent on something more useful than a prop for
generals to pretend that they are still in WWII! (while actually only
useful for terrorizing people in third world countries that can't actually
shoot back).
[Jul19'20]
Masks, bellies, statues, and peak net energy
I'm feeling downright crabby today. I had been sincerely hoping that
by this time, with weekly excess deaths having trailed off to exactly
as expected in the entire country (scroll down to see graphs
here;
you can also display state-wise data), that people would have regained some
control of their minds. Instead, I would estimate that half of the
country *still* lives in fear, with their minds utterly in thrall to the
media, social and otherwise. Though it is true that their minds were
not made of sterner stuff before COVID-1984, which has merely performed
a public test of sternness, with many found wanting, I remain more crabby
than usual.
We went out today for coffee. Virtually every single person we saw was
overweight, with most carrying around 40-120 extra pounds. While sitting
down to eat, they would take off their muzzles, but as soon as they got
back on the sidewalk, a hundred feet from the nearest human, back on went
the muzzles. The occasional bypasser with a normal BMI looked emaciated
compared to the parade of man breasts and giant buttocks. To put on 40
pounds in a decade, you only need to add less than 2 ounces a day. That's
not much, but after a few decades of that, one's health becomes terribly
compromised (heart disease, respiratory problems, high blood pressure,
diabetes, cancer, arthritis and many other auto-immune diseases).
But today none of that counts. All other sources of ill-health and death
(60,000 per week in the US) have become utterly invisible, irrelevant,
and un-metered. Young people currently overrate the chance of dying
from corona versus a car accident by perhaps 1000x. To the extent that
they think anything about carrying around 50 to 100 extra pounds, it
is expressed strictly as righteous rage against *other people* who are
'endangering their health' by not wearing a mask at 10 feet away.
Some of the statues near the mission at Presidio now had fences put up
around them. Pulling down statues is 'anti-fascist', but submitting
meekly to face muzzles, endless second waves of 'cases', getting ready
breathlessly for the flu-plus-corona circus scheduled for the Fall, not to
mention next season, and presumably every year for the rest of our lives,
is not up for discussion. The National Propaganda Radio 'news' was 80%
'cases'.
C'mon people! Pick your minds up off the floor! They will still work
with a little effort! Stop saying "Stay safe!" when you really mean,
"Stay fascist" or "Sieg heil, Fauci"! I am living in fear, too. But it's
fear of the Wile E. Coyote Economy beginning to plummet into the abyss.
That's going to make a lot of people *really* not safe.
The unfortunate reality is that as the economy plummets, all-cause
mortality *is* going to spike. The difference between a lower class
person and an uppper class person, even after controlling for smoking and
obesity, is almost 10 years life expectancy (UK studies). I fully expect
that a Fall or Winter lockdown during an ongoing economic depression will
directly result in excess mortality having nothing to do with a virus.
I suppose I shouldn't hope that people will be able to figure that out.
But let's assume for the moment that in a few months, more people will
begin to see through some of the covid nonsense, and push back a bit
against the new totalitarian normal. The *real* problem of peak net
energy is *way* more scary than stupid 'covid', and I would argue, even
the new totalitarian normal. The continual reduction in usable energy
is going to inexorably bring about a demolition, possibly uncontrolled,
of industrial society. Wind and solar currently provide 3% of total
energy use (wind=2%, solar=1%). This is after a decade of strong growth.
As I've said many times before, wind and solar growth has not even
covered growth in total energy use. Wind and solar can't possibly
'save us' (not to mention that 72,000 jobs have been lost in the solar
industry due to the lockdown). And we are still adding two complete
California's of people to the earth every year, who need food, roads,
houses, sewers, electrical power and heating, cars, roads, cell phones,
internet connections, made out of steel, copper, aluminum, rare earth
elements and so on. For example, a cell phone contains 84% of the stable
elements in the periodic table (70 out of 83).
So stop sobbing about covid! (N.B.: I should take my own advice, and
stop sobbing about all the things that the covid psyop has permanently
changed, and just look forward). The *real* problem is a lot darker and
more intractable than a piddly cold virus that hasn't even been properly
isolated (and no, fishing a few probes from a massively amplified
mess of human nasal cells, exosomes, and inhaled bacteria does not
count as 'isolation', as Kary Mullis, the Nobel-winning inventor of
PCR always held). The real net energy problem is probably why the
'covid demolition' and the 'riot demolition' are being engineered
in the first place. Take a look at the top graph in
this
article by Matt Mushalik to get some perspective on the problem at
our doorstep. We should ignore the 'virus' and start 'talking dirty'
about the real problem, like the sociopathic engineers behind the scenes
are unafraid to do. The grinding downturn is going to play out over
years. Trump and Dementia Joe (and statues!) are completely irrelevant.
Declining net energy is the most important thing to deal with.
[Jul21'20]
In Chicago, there have been 417 murders (1654 shootings) so far (Jan to
July) in 2020, compared to 275 murders (1125 shootings) for all of 2019.
[Jul29'20]
The human cerebellum unfolding and flattening paper is
now online! PDF's, movies, and data available at
https://mri.sdsu.edu/sereno/cereb/.
[Aug08'20]
It's a truly bizarre run-up to the 2020 election as the Democrats
seemingly try to 'run out the clock', with the New York Times calling
for the presidential debates to be cancelled. I had to laugh at Tom
Luongo's quip: "In fact, I would argue debates between Trump and Biden
will be so lopsided they would work to Biden's advantage as people who
see Trump's attacks on him as 'elder abuse'." Meanwhile, Del Bigtree's
youtube channel (200K subscribers, 15 million views over 3 years), which
has often discussed problems with some vaccines, and more recently issues
surrounding covid including the censure of frontline doctors was
just
entirely erased from youtube without explanation. Attempted
discussion of the youtube erasure was then erased from Facebook.
The content has been restored at
The
Highwire. The next rubicon for 'samizdat' sites will be when internet
service providers or 'right-thinking' internet filters begin to censor
content on the fly. This has already occasionally begun to occur with my
school email account, which is piped through ProofPoint, where ProofPoint
has effective read/write access to my outlook inbox and sentmail box.
[Aug13'20]
Kamala Harris has been a strong supporter and implementer of the drug
war (as San Francisco attorney general: 2,000 marijuana convictions -
300 per year). She opposed marijuana legalization (despite previously
using marijuana herself). She opposed release of non-violent
drug offenders from overcrowded prisons (the US has the
highest
incarceration rate in the world, with almost half
nonviolent recidivists and a full 20% in there for
non-violent drug offenses). Her objection was that
cheap
prison labor would be lost. She has opposed mandatory sentencing
reform. This goes well with Biden, who since the 1980's had helped
engineer the catastrophic increase (per capita quadrupling!) of the
prison population through an endless series of 'tough on crime' bills.
On the other hand, Harris
refused
to prosecute Steve Mnuchin and OneWest Bank for boosting foreclosures
after the memo published by the Intercept documenting 1000 legal
violations in order to increase bank foreclosures. Mnuchin later donated
$2 million to her failed presidential campaign.
Ending the war on drugs slash legalizing drugs (cf. Portugal), and
going after criminal bankers are the two most important steps that
could be taken in the US to improve black lives in poor, hellish,
drug-gang-ridden neighborhoods. Harris *says* BLM; but her actions
have consistently made black lives worse; she put more black men in jail
than any other California attorney general. Tulsi Gabbard
tells it like it is at
the debates. Though Harris ticks boxes, she is a utterly run-of-the-mill,
'law and order' choice that reminds me of presidential election ploys
from 50 or years ago (Nixon war on drugs). She is a 'Democrat' who will
be seen to 'fix' problems in cities that are (N.B.: already!) exclusively
run by 'Democrats' - by being a an Izzy-supporting war hawk.
As Carroll Quigley wrote back in 1966, the practical differences between
the parties are highly overrated. Bush II started wars. Obama started
wars. (Trump didn't actually didn't start a war!). Obama hired the same
criminal bankers that Bush had previously hired. It was Bill Clinton,
supposedly a 'Democrat' who helped unleash the current iteration
of financialization parasites by killing the Glass-Steagull act.
The parasites are now killing the host. There has never been (and
probably can never be) a truly left party in America.
[Sep13'20]
The number and distribution of fires in western states (e.g., southern
Oregon) raises the possibility that some of them were intentionally set.
Links to articles about people that have been caught setting fires in
the woods over the past few weeks are
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.
Another collection of arson news links can be found
here.
It's a rogues gallery, including people with obvious mental illness.
The number of confirmed arson cases seems like a lot, but this needs
to be compared to the 'normal' number of of people caught setting fires
during this time of year, in these places. The fires were bad in Oregon
where half a million people got some kind of evacuation order, though
displaced people are considerably less (4 million people in the state).
But this has still not been a record fire year in a 50-year context,
and *certainly not* a record fire year in a 1000-year context.
[Sep19'20]
The pace of software updates is ever increasing. Recently, Apple released
MacOS 10.15.6, a minor system update, which introduced a severe kernel
memory leak that was immediately spotted by people using virtual machine
software (VMWare, VirtualBox), but which was a more general problem.
The 'upgrade' to 10.15.6 resulting in a lot of hair-pulling for sysadmins
using macs for actual work. After a full month, Apple released a patch
that fixed the problem. Notably, the 'patch' consisted of downgrading
to an earlier kernel build, probably because they couldn't track down
and fix the problem that they had introduced by a pile of new code.
Unfortunately, just another tiny Tainter-esque sign of 'death by
complexity'.
[Sep24'20]
Resist now! else we are no longer human beings, but merely permanent biosecurity risks
The title comes from Iain Davis' excellent article,
COVID
world - Resist!. The entire world is galloping in lockstep
toward a permanent totalitarian lockdown. For example,
here
is a current report from the UK. In the US, the BLM riots are being
used as an excuse for permanent Orwellian police measures, including new
police powers for forced internment (camps being constructed in multiple
states in the US, Australia, etc), forced separation of children (read
the fine print about halfway through this
just-passed
Australian law), forced medical treatments, and forced
biosurveillance.
I have tried to some talk sense into my nominally 'left' friends
about the coming storm. But in many cases, their fearful minds
haven't been strong enough to resist the wall-to-wall propaganda.
I don't get arguments in return, but only something incoherent about
'Trump bungled the lockdown' or 'Proud Boys'. I send then stuff like
this (
tasing
a woman at an outdoor middle school football game with half a dozen
people in the bleachers in Ohio for not wearing a mask) and they
can't see anything wrong (maybe because the woman wasn't black). Or I
mention that as of Sept 22, 2020, US universities have reported
48,300
"cases", ONE hospitalization, and ZERO deaths, and I get back
something about how the problem is 'students having parties'. Even after
pointing out the analogy with previous Gladio 'color revolutions' -
that they in retrospect have come to partially see through (e.g., the
faked poison gas attacks in Syria that helped launch the Izzy/Saudi/US
supported ISIS liver-eaters that made a shambles of Syria) - they often
*still* can't see virtually the same thing being rolled out right under
their noses. Despite supposedly supporting the underclass, they somehow
can't see the crushing of the bottom third of the population and the
largest ever upwward transfer of wealth, both occurring *in plain sight*,
and already obvious to any rational person back in April.
My greatest disappointment is talking with scientists, especially
biologists and psychologists, who should know better. What's going on
with science now is a frightening echo of Lysenkoism, yet a huge number
of supposed 'scientists' are obediently toeing the line.
I have had *much* better luck in gingerly bringing up the topic with the
lady at the airline ticket desk, the local organic grocer, the guy who
stocks the vegetable isle, the guy who came to fix the lights at school,
the engineer servicing my scientific equipment, or the covid security
guard at the bank. These are people forced to wear masks all day, who
can nevertheless clearly understand the dire new imposition of state
power, in a straightforward way that their supposed 'supporters' in the
'left' can't.
Part of the studied inattention of the 'left' is because the monetary
hammer has not yet been brought down on them. But that time will come.
For example, most of the cost of the draconian lockdown in CA universities
has yet to make an impact because of temporary shuffling of funds.
All fulltime salaries have been paid and cuts have mainly landed on
precariat lecturers and contractors (e.g., local food service and store
clerks).
But a terrible wind will soon begin to tear into the permanent staff with
layoffs and hiring freezes coupled with increased work for those left
behind to pick up the slack. There are a bunch of privatized 'online
learning' harpies waiting in the wings to offer cheaper contracted-out
classes appropriate for a partially demolished university system.
The idea is that permanent professors will construct the content of
a class, for say, a one-time $4K payment, which will then be actually
'performed' by low paid precariat. Even after the private sector online
learning parasites have extracted their tithe, the overall cost will be
arranged to be somewhat cheaper than real professors, who will be then
relentlessly be winnowed. Remarkably, some of the intellectual content
agreements I have seen make it illegal for professors to 're-perform'
the classes they have just sold to the private distance learning company.
Then the unused physical plant of the still-empty universities will
begin to be dismantled. At my university, the shutdown has resulted
in a number of uncaught broken pipe floods of unoccupied buildings, for
now still being slowly repaired. But the university can't continue to
maintain and air condition empty buildings forever, and many will be
remain empty with the virtual certainty of continued virtual classes
that need many fewer buildings.
Of course, Claudia and I could easily see what was coming back in March
2020, when I was madly gesticulating at my fellow professors about the
upcoming controlled demolition of the university system among other
things. But I couldn't get through the fog of fear, and was only met
fear porn from the NYT and offers for personalized masks.
I am still hoping that the supposed 'thinking classes' will finally clear
some of the muck out of their heads and begin to show some spine when the
stock market bubble pops, the inevitable blowback of the lockdown finally
begins to hit their home, and the realization that the destruction of
the economy and continuing transfer of wealth to ultra-rich people is
*on purpose*, and is not going to pause without real resistance.
Totalitarian measures *cannot* be imposed without the implied consent
of most of the population. It's critical to fight back before this is
all set in stone! There is still time!
[Oct03'20]
The Trump + covid show was certainly an October surprise! The internet
says that Trump is taking remdesivir (orig. for Ebola, didn't work well)
and an experimental mouse and human antibody cocktail, Regeneron.
Impossible to know what's actually happening in the disinfo fog.
A deep state October surprise? (a coup within a coup) A mild cold?
A pharma ad for remdesivir and Regeneron? A fake? For a
sympathy
boost? (like Boris' jump to 61% approval after his cold).
This video
strangely looks like it was shot on a boat (hand-held camera?!
ocean swells at Walter Reed?!). Truly the greatest show on earth!
The whole purpose is to keep the proles entranced. The most amazing
thing is that none of this makes the *slightest difference* to what
will really happen! Whoever wins, we will end up with the same
finacialization,
the same bankers, the same military, the same techno-fascist
pharma-surveillance-industrial oligarch complex. The only thing that
could possibly change this would to get a lot of people to *divert their
eyes* from the greatest show on earth, and look behind the curtain.
I freely admit that the chance of that happening is not high.
[Oct06'20]
The press is now hoist on their own petard of having blasted out
mind-numbing months of cr@p on the misleading, overly-sensitive PCR tests
easily capable of detecting non-infectious fragments! The Trump Golem has
recovered! (he might not even have been sick). As Jim Kunstler says,
"
How
dare he recover?", or see The Babylon Bee: "
Media
criticizes Trump for downplaying virus threat by not
dying". The best the presstitutes could do was rage
against him for taking off his mask upon reentering the
White House. Unmask me harder. Or look here at this
Harvard
professor
hilariously explaining how Russian intelligence agencies are infiltrating
Walter Reed. Really? I don't like Trump, but I can't deny experiencing
a 'just desserts' feeling toward the silly 'press' (and their silly
'health' and 'security' experts).
Unfortunately, this goes beyond silly. The new approach to science
(even in Science magazine!) is beginning to remind me of the dark days
of Lysenkoism. That wasn't just horrible for Soviet biology; it severely
impacted Soviet food production.
[Oct12'20]
Totalitarian lockdown, reign of terror, or just a whimper?
I admit to being gobsmacked at the enduring power of the 'Salem witch
craze' covid mania. Scanning through some poll results suggests that 2/3
of people still feel uncomfortable going outside of their homes, entering
a retail store, or eating in a restaurant, and more than four-fifths
of people would never dare fly (we've flown twice). An informal poll
of my academic colleagues confirms that many remain fearful, carefully
putting on their masks while walking alone through our sunny, deserted
college campus.
Part of the explanation is the censorship stranglehold over
independent thought and social communication that big surveillance
tech has with google, facebook, youtube, and twitter. As little
bits of truth start to leak through - e.g., the
Great Barrington Declaration
(website hopefully just temporarily down!) - from scientists
and doctors with a conscience, it is virtually instantaneously
memory-holed
by google and reddit, with a terrifying immediacy, permanency,
and worldwide reach. This makes it all the more critical to go back to
having conversations the way we used to have them, without the 'need'
for a totalitarian tech company intermediary transmitting, overseeing,
and censoring them. Samizdat!
But some small cracks are appearing in the dam. Catching an occasional
glimpse of a million people defying the government every few weeks in
Berlin, despite the best efforts of the presstitutes to suppress it,
will gradually embolden some of the pitiful, fearful, masked masses.
I think another sign of cracks is that the tinpot dictator 'health
officials' are desperately trying to tighten the screws just as the
excess death rate approaches zero.
As the trance starts to wear off, people may begin to more objectively
assess the costs of the lockdowns. As they do, they could potentially
start to get angry. Depending on which way the mood careens, we could
be in for a more forceful totalitarian lockdown or something like
a reign of terror. Neither very good choices. But there is third,
more dismal possibility, which is that people will just collectively
cave. Like the students dancing back-to-back in masks at their
'socially-distanced
prom' ('we are being punked as a species', said one commentator).
Or take the fact that in the US, a half a million people have committed
suicide with opiates just over the last decade. The ultimate cave.
I am hoping that some of the initial lawsuit
victories (e.g., the Michigan supreme court just
struck
down loony empress Whitmer's lockdown decrees) will begin to spread
to other states and inspire people. There is an excellent lawsuit
in progress in Ohio
against the decrees of the governor-emperor there. That one argues
that the lockdown is unlawful because covid is scientifically not the
emergency that the lockdown was designed to prevent. And there have been
similar successful legal challenges in other countries (e.g.,
Spain).
Probably fearful of being sued by this competent law firm,
google has allowed this explosive video by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich,
Crimes
against humanity, to remain up for a full 10 days, now
at over 1 million views (just in case, another copy
here on bitchute).
Go, checks and balances! Make those f'ers pay!
The current situation could still change. For example, Bill Gates is
already widely hated. If the narrative were to finally begin to crack,
when push comes to shove, his jackal friends could easily hang him out
to dry. One can always dream.
[Oct22'20]
The covid coup, seven months out
The sorry tale of the covid coup continues to drag on seven months
later with covid still occupying a ridiculously inflated portion of the
everyday thoughts of much of the world's human population (including me).
From the beginning, it was obvious to Claudia and I, and many others, that
(i) the threat from covid was exaggerated, (ii) the lockdowns would be
extremely costly, disruptive, and deadly, and mainly hit poorer people,
and (iii) that governments and large transnational corporations (pharma,
surveillance AKA 'social media' and 'web search', military) were going
to use covid as an opportunity to harshly crack down on freedom of
thought and movement, by framing covid as 'another New Pearl Harbor'
even bigger than 9/11. I have trouble avoiding saying I told you so.
How can we get out from under the covid-19 yoke, the covid-21 yoke, and
the forever yoke? The first thing we have to do is restore mental balance
by looking at the facts and calling out the criminals (e.g., Fauci).
(1) Put this virus into proper context
The first fact to keep in mind is that 60,000 people typically die *every
week*. The leading cause of death is heart disease. For decades, this
has been known to be a totally avoidable disease that is caused almost
entirely by diet (the one ton of food each person consumes per year).
70% of the US population is overweight or obese as a result of eating too
much meat, cheese, and plant oils. Levels of inflammation are through
the roof, especially in older people. Older people across the world
from different genetic backgrounds that eat a starchy 'poor people'
diet low on meat and oil simply don't get heart disease. The old
people that covid helped to kill wouldn't have died if they didn't have
diet-induced heart and circulatory disease, diabetes, inflammation,
respiratory problems, kidney disease, and so on. Locking down meat,
cheese, and oil would save a lot more lives than the covid lockdown :-} .
Covid is just the straw that breaks the camel's back, not the plague.
(2) The virus may have been a lab leak
Dystopian gain-of-function experiments have been going on for
decades using coronaviruses and other viruses in the US and China.
In 2014, gain-of-function experiemnts were suspended in the US
as too dangerous. (see the 2014 statement from the
Cambridge Working Group
calling for a moratorium on this dangerous 'research'). The NIH under
Fauci then transferred funding for the same experiments to China, which
had no similar restrictions. The virology lab in Wuhan (like USAMRIID)
was well known to be a combined civilian/military lab. But then in Dec
2017, the ban on gain-of-function experiments in the US was lifted by
Francis Collins with little fanfare, but 'just' for gain-of-function
experiments that were clearly 'beneficial' (sic).
It's important to catalog some of the ghoulish things that have
routinely been done in US and Chinese labs dating back to several
decades Human ACE2 binding capabilities (a feature of the original
SARS-CoV-1) were routinely spliced into collected wild bat viruses that
didn't have them. The resulting viruses were then 'passaged' through
cancer cells or humanized mice (with human-like lung binding sites)
in order to cause speeded evolution and optimization of the virulence
and infectivity of the virus in humans. Of course, this was all being
done to help us (sic!). A rambling but information-filled summary
with lots of references, excerpts, and debates can be found
here.
It's interesting to look at the 'debates'. Even the Gallo thing was
hauled out to argue against lab origins. But most of the arguments
against were merely ad hominem rather than addressing substantive claims.
Peter Breggin just came out with an excellent new report (
PDF
here) documenting Fauci's direct orchestration of this treachery.
Put simply, gain-of-function experiments create new human pathogens
never before seen; this is nothing less than biological warfare against
our own people.
Here are a few more technical points on the supposed wild
crossover from bat corona virus RaTG13, found in Yunnan, almost
600 miles from the wet market that was virtually next door to
the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Recently, a research group
was unable to assemble the published RaTG13 genome (
PDF here), only
reconstructing pieces about 20% of the total from the later-published raw
dataset (raw DNA sequence reads). This is the supposed wild predecessor
of COVID (originally named BtCoV/4991), suggesting that something is
amiss with this most critical piece of evidence for a wild origin.
Go
here for statistical
arguments showing non-natural patterns of synonymous and non-synonymous
mutations in RaTG13 Spike compared to SARS-CoV-2, suggesting it was
artificially created, or read a retired USAMRIID colonel's arguments
against
the miner's hypothesis (suggests instead the miners disease was
probably histoplasmosis). The miner's hypothesis of covid is the idea
that speeded evolution occurred during a single infection episode in an
abandoned mine in Mojiang in 2012 that sickened 6 and killed 3 miners.
Finally, a plausible hypothesis for how the lab accident occurred can be
found
here.
This idea is that the spillover occurred as a result of an unfortunate,
Chernobyl-like situation, during a review of samples undertaken to
rectify the sloppy safety procedures of the Wuhan institute, which had
experienced a number of previous leaks and closures.
After I have spent too much time buried in details, the importance of this
point is that the threat of a lab leak or possibly even a leaked bioweapon
(since USAMRIID, at Fort Dietrich, itself having been closed down in 2019
for leaks, and the Wuhan institute were both military installations, and
had close ties with each other) is probably how almost all governments
across the world were frightened into harshly strangling their economies.
Though China was mentioned, a USAMRIID leak is another real possibility,
possibly related to the June 2019 'vaping lung' deaths, or the June
2019 Maryland respiratory virus care-home outbreaks, both right around
the time USAMRIID was closed temporarily to rectify a pathogen leak of
some kind (never further explained). Then, there were the 2019 Military
World Games on Oct 18, 2019, in Wuhan, in which many athletes got sick.
Note that even if the virus was natural (or doesn't exist, see below),
just mentioning 'possible lab release' or 'bioweapon' would have been
sufficient to scare most governments.
Finally, there is a non-zero possibility that the virus doesn't even
exist. It has never been properly isolated. The Drosten Jan 2020
paper on a 'work flow' for 'isolating' the virus uses DNA sequences
from China, propagation in cell culture without purification, PCR, and
software to assemble 'the genome' rather actually isolating, purifying,
visualizing, and sequencing large amount of virus taken from people
sick with specific syndromes (as opposed to 'headache' and 'cough').
The covid death profile is indistinguishable from all-cause mortality,
and very similar to other multi-cause respiratory diseases in all old
people. It is possible this is all basically a hoax (the deaths from
other respiratory viruses and bacterial infections and experimental
drugs and over-use of ventilators are of course real).
(3) Don't underestimate human biological robustness
Third, people underestimate the robustness of biological organisms.
Biological evolution has had millions of years to weed out non-robust
systems and has evolved powerful multilayered defenses and repair
mechanisms. Biology is robust, even against molecular biologists gone
bad. It is not a simple task to engineer a killer virus given robust,
layered defenses.
The 'great covid pandemic' turned out in the end to only be a bad flu,
killing people that were already older on average than the overall average
age of death (!). The infection fatality ratio turned out to be only
0.15%, about the same as the flu, nothing remotely like the 1918 flu
(N.B.: most 1918 flu deaths were from bacterial, not viral infection).
Given that most people are not infect-able (because of a large amount of
preexisting T-cell immunity from experience with similar coronaviruses,
the chance of dying from covid is much smaller than 0.15%, especially
for someone who is not a few months away from dying of existing diseases.
One of the most insidious effect of the covid coup has been to further
distance people from their amazing bodies and surrender them to vicious
arms of the pharma police state. Instead of respecting the wonderously
robust, second-to-second homeostatis of 40 trillion human cells together
with an equivalent number of bacterial cells, and maybe 10 times as
many viruses, they now entrust their health to for-profit companies
that in some cases, have negotiated freedom from all liability (e.g.,
vaccine manufacturers). The perverse incentive is stunning obvious,
yet many people studiously look the other way despite the fact that
their own 'bacon' is on the bottom line.
(4) Big pharma and Fauci killed people by blocking cheap effective treatments
Fourth, there are staggeringly effective, staggeringly cheap
treatment methods such as large vitamin D doses on admission (
25x
(!) reduction in ICU admissions)
and hugely effective, standard
steroid
inhalers that are already routinely available in all ERs.
The criminal Fauci spent day after day trying to criminally trash
talk cheap, effective, non-vaccine, non-biotech approaches to protect
big pharma profits. Those simple treatments could have saved tens of
thousands of people's lives.
(5) Lockdowns killed comparable numbers of people to covid
The evil plan instead was to lockdown *the entire world*, throwing the
poorest people in every country out of work, or in Peru and Uganda and
the Philipines, shooting people in the head if they came out of their
house in search of food or even merely forgot their mask. Instead of
using dirt-cheap vitamin D, the entire world was made hostage to big
pharma by first dumping many billions of public money directly into big
pharma's pocket to develop a bevy of toxic 'vaccines' to be given to
the entire world, under military escort.
Even the CDC has come around. Just this week they
published
a report suggesting that (liberally labeled!) 'covid' deaths accounted
for 200,000 excess mortality deaths, but lockdowns accounted for an
additional 100,000 excess mortality deaths. There was no accounting for
deaths caused by Cuomo's ventilator disaster or care home disaster, or
deaths caused by not giving people vitamin D or a simple steriod inhaler.
The upcoming disaster in poorer countries is
certain to dwarf that total. Here is an
excellent
video from Dr. David Nobarro, a sensible WHO official (originally
up for director of the WHO before he was bypassed for the vile Tedros
Adhanom, largely as a result of lobbying by China), appealing to world
leaders to stop using lockdown as a primary strategy.
(6) Work from home is like the origin of the industrial revolution from feudalism
The work-from-home zoom nightmare strongly resembles the very beginnings
of the industrial revolution in feudalism, where workers took piece work
back home, obviating the need for a centralized factory. Why bother
paying to air condition the proles when they can just sweat it out
at home? The surveillance industry ('social media' and 'web search')
has been instantly re-purposed for managing home piecework. Unchecked,
this will lead to an uber-i-fication of most other work, the destruction
of universities, the destruction of artists and musicians and human
enjoyment, and the permanent disassembly of cities.
(6) Could there be an awakening?
The big question is whether the corrosive effect on public trust of
rulers could possiblly lead to an awakening. Coming not too long after
the Epstein sleaze, the Hunter Biden sleaze could, in the best of all
possible worlds, begin tempt people to abandon both sides. I know this
is unrealistic, but one can dream.
Of course, nothing is exactly as it
appears. Hunter Biden's crony, Bevan Cooney, is
currently
being transferred between jails, only brifely visible in the news
on Oct 19-20. Nothing to see there. But the strangest story is what
supposedly happened to the Biden disk drive after it was given to the FBI
who did nothing with it for half a year. A copy was then supposedly given
to Rudy Giuliani (!) who, together with Bernard Kerik (!!), delivered it
to the Delaware police department, the same police department that handled
Anthony Weiner's laptop. The Delaware PD then turned it back over to the
FBI, who supposedly already had it 9 months ago. From the memory hole,
remember that Giuliani was running the 9/11 response from the 'command
center' in, uh, building 7. And Kerik was NYC police commissioner during
9/11, pardoned by Trump on Feb 18, 2020 for accepting but not reporting
a $250,000 interest-free "loan" from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer
(whose vast holding include major defense contractors) during a four-day
trip to Israel two weeks before 9/11. Kerik was also part of the Iraqi
Coalition Provisional Authority set up to run US-destroyed Iraq, and
was nominated (but turned down) for head of 'Homeland Security' in 2004.
I agree with Scott Creighton that, despite the their veracity, the
actual *source* of the laptop videos is obscure, in a Snowden kind
of way. For example, the videos could easily have been collected off
of the iPhone they were recorded on via its data connection to big tech.
Years ago, Claudia and I bought a lowly iPod touch a wifi connection but
no cellular transceiver. We put an iPhoto collection on it and clicked,
'don't save a copy in the cloud'. Nevertheless, looking as the internet
traffic leaving our London apartment, we could see the whole thing
being uploaded anyway to somewhere, in some cases, even with the iPod
wifi apparently 'turned off'. The emotional pull of the obviously real
videos distracts the mind's attention from the murky mechanism by which
they came to be presented to the pubic's eye.
To even the most casual observer, the media and big tech are obviously
strongly biased against Trump in favor of the doddering Biden.
But consider what would have happened *without* that. Trump might
have drawn too far ahead to make it appear that there was a 'contest'.
Without a 'contest', there is danger of the proles beginning to look
behind the curtain.
But in conclusion, it's worth remembering that when the public begins
to lose trust or feels that the regime is not providing safety or basic
services, regimes can fall quickly. Think of Ceausecu's last speech.
He was executed only 5 days later. Or go back to the sudden and
unexpected dissolution of the Soviet Union (the CIA, among others, was
very surprised); Gorbachev was house-arrested, but then the August 1991
coup fell apart when the people and the army refused to follow orders.
Dissolution was complete just 6 months later. Testosterone is dropping
1% per year. Time to fight back before it's too late and we all get
'dark wintered'!
[Oct29'20]
Fear, science, and policy
Back in the 90's there was a clothing brand, No Fear, started by
twin-brother race car drivers. I know, No Fear is *so* last year.
Actually, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a while ago, back in
Feb 2011. In 2020, we need a new logo - simply, "Fear". It works on
a tee-shirt, mask, or bumper sticker.
Fear is why you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.
Fear is always available to use. Fear is a powerful way to make policy.
Here again is the full insightful quote about fear from Hermann Goering:
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it
is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people
don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter
in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a
country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag
the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a
parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you
have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace
makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It
works the same in any country."
The amazing thing is that fear, conveyed economically by words and
cartoons, was capable of driving "some poor slob" off of his farm into
battle where there is a good chance he will have a limb ripped off
in a spray of sharp, high velocity metal fragments, ending up tossed
through the air like a rag doll into a muddy pool, bleeding to death.
But also, as Goering says, the other amazing thing about fear is that
it *always works* the same way, whether democratic, parliamentary,
fascist, or communist. Now we merely have better covid cartoons and
more attractive talking heads to catapult the fear.
Trying to talk sense to our friends and other scientists about covid, I
have developed (even) more respect and insight into fear as a policy tool.
Of course, scientists have fear, too. For a homely example, the other
day I was doing a little programming in order to make a figure for a
colleague's grant. At one point, I started getting weird, half-correct
results, from a function I thought I had thoroughly debugged. I could
palpably feel the fear creeping in around the edges of my brain. Was my
entire code base faulty? Poorly-designed and ill-conceived (goes without
saying :-} )? Distributed to unsuspecting users and friends who would
then besmirch my reputation (such as it is)? So I browsed the web to
distract myself. Then, finally, I went back to discover I had merely
swapped the order of two arguments in a function.
Fear is always there and can never go away. The best antidote is to
take a hold of it consciously, and bring it into the foreground, rather
than letting it hang out hidden, in the walls. That reminds me of a
long-forgotten childhood fear that evil spirits - dark purified gaseous
essence of evil - were somehow hiding out inside the hollow gray metal
pillars in our basement that supported our two story house. At night,
they could drift upwards via connection to the interior of the walls,
into the wall alongside my bed on the second floor. Just consciously
monitor fear, while reading the web. Read about economics, or covid,
or the war in Syria, or Bill Gates. Fear is your friend, when you grab
and hold it with your conscious mind.
Science has made it possible to overcome fear, like the year-long fear
that engulfed Salem Massachusetts in 1692, which resulted in the execution
by hanging and pressing-to-death of 19 people. But this doesn't mean,
as already noted, that scientists don't have fear. It's just that
innumerable scientists have managed to have kept it in check by regular
mental hygiene in order to build up an enormous edifice of fear-free
human knowledge.
That's why it's terrifying (yeah, fear again) for
me to behold the bizarre Lysenkoism-like state of
post-covid science. The most recent example is the
Danish
randomized controlled trial of masks and covid. This,
unbelievably, is the *first* real/useful scientific study
of masks and covid! Of course, there is a bunch of nonsense
science that has flooded the journals, for example, using dummy
heads and masks and small non-viral particles in an
aquarium or putting
masks on hamsters (well, in between 2 aquariums of hamsters), or various
dubious correlational studies. Those studies involve 'scientific
behavior', in a dress-up costume sense. And given a lot of money,
they might be able to figure out, for example, whether masks actually
nebulize small droplets into much tinier, more dangerous particles.
But those studies are almost completely irrelevant for policy compared
to a real world test where some real people randomly wear masks, others
don't, and we see who gets covid. Frighteningly, the *only*, friggin,
real study of masks-and-covid now *can't get published*, probably because
it came up with the 'wrong' answer. That's pure Lysenkoism!
We are literally living through a worldwide Salem witch craze (
et
tu, Richard Heinberg?!, but very glad to see
Chris
Martenson finally got his head straight after his
original hysteria, and old Jean Laherrere was
never
fooled). Many scientists currently believe in the covid witches.
Despite the fact that it was scientifically obvious that this *wasn't*
the Plague or the 1918 flu, *back in April*, many scientists who should
know better have continued to bow down to the covid religion (tho not
religious, I prefer real religions). Scientists are now literally
dismantling science before our eyes, in response to giant dumpsters
of grant money that is being shoveled their way (e.g.,
here), in the service
of biomedical martial law that is being constructed by international
big pharma and big surveillance and Bill Gates, an ugly, thieving,
inept *programmer*.
The only way out of this catastrophe, is to go back to 'no fear'.
There have been many previous episodes of fear where people eventually
gained back their equilibrium. We can do it again. We have to clear
the mind fog in order to begin to deal with really big problems like
adapting to the decline in net available energy needed to power industrial
civilization. Bummer about Richard Heinberg, who has written sensibly
on that topic.
[Oct29'20]
Covidworld
Yesterday, a Department of Justice official confirmed that the FBI
had opened an ongoing criminal money-laundering investigation into
Hunter Biden and his associates *last year*. I went to Google "News".
All the top stories were about covid cases. So I did a quick search for
"Biden FBI". Stunningly, it came up with nothing. This is covidworld.
[Oct31'20]
One of many good comments calling out the now innumerable
COVID scare stories
published daily by 'kept woman' ziohedge, from kleptomistic:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
!!!CALIFORNIA HAS 916,918 CONFIRMED CASES OF COVID-19!!!
We are all going to die!
Wait a minute....
CALIFORNIA
40,000,000 = population of California
17,571 = Covid-19 deaths
4,705 = 26% of Covid-19 deaths were in "skilled nursing facilities" (SNFs).
If you live in a SNF, you are at the end of your life. The common flu and
pneumonia runs through SNFs every year killing significant numbers. People
in SNFs are no longer part of the functioning society... they don't
work, shop, etc... their life is over. My condolences to the families,
but we cannot wreck the financial lives of 100's of millions to save
these folks. Lock down the SNFs, take extreme caution, sure, but that's
all we can do.
12,866 = number of people outside of SNFs that died of Covid-19.
12,400 = number of common flu deaths in 2000 which was a high year.
14,508 = adjusted flu deaths in 2000 considering the 17% increase in
CA's population from 2000 to 2019
10,736 = 14,508 x .74 = likely number of common flu deaths in California,
outside of care facilities, in the "bad flu year" of 2000.
2,130 = 12,866 - 10,736 = excess deaths in California from Covid-19.
2,130 PEOPLE!
.00005 of the population
WRECK THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY OVER THIS NUMBER?
Plus, we have no idea of the health of these 2,130. They didn't live in
an SNF, but were they in really bad shape? Hospice folks? I don't think
it's unreasonable to say 50% of them had one foot in the grave...so we
could really be talking about 1,065 people in California.
https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/SNFsCOVID_19.aspx
https://www.livestories.com/statistics/california/influenza-flu-pneumonia-deaths-mortality
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
But don't forget the point of this whole psyop. Tessa Lena
has an good essay, "The 'Great Reset' for Dummies"
here
and Helen Buyniski (Helen of desTroy)
here.
[Nov05'20]
Look behind the curtain
The contested election (after months of intentionally fake polls),
probably ending up in the supreme court with what Pelosi calls an
"illegitimate justice" may have been planned all along in order
to incite a 'color revolution' civil war followed by martial
law and economic collapse. Check out the trailer for
Songbird, designed to terrify the
proles into submission, because it's only barely fiction. The shenanigans
around the counting will have the effect of deligitimizing future
elections.
Despite not a *single* mention in the main-sewer media, but also
the supposedly alt media, the real driving force for all this is the
relentless reduction in net energy (amount of energy available to use
after subtracting energy used to get it). Fracking seemed a 'success'
by the fact that it increased supply so much that it crashed oil prices.
But the frackers were *never able to make net money*. This means that
their energy return on *energy* investment was quite poor compared to
traditional oil, closer than ever to break even.
To take a small example of the things that nobody thinks about (but should
be thinking about), each person on the earth, including the 80 million
new people this year, uses an average of 2 tons of concrete *per year*.
We are currently higher on the hog In the US, and we use even more tons
each per year. Wind and solar (3-4% of *total* energy supply worldwide,
which hasn't even covered yearly increases) doesn't cut it for cooking
limestone in a furnace to make concrete. Industrial civilization doesn't
work without concrete.
As I said back in April, I think we are witnessing an
*intentional* oligarch-driven collapse of economies, crushing
of small businesses, and upward transfer of wealth across
the world, which will result in harsh austerity to match
forever-from-now declining available net energy. See
Nate
Hagens Nov 2 article for some graphs.
I freely admit that even though I was already worried about peak net
energy almost 20 years ago, I never managed to draw an accurate picture
of what peak oil 2020 would actually look like.
[Nov08'20]
Ruptured reality
Several days ago, mainstream teevee news stations almost simultaneously
cut off
a live feed of a standing president's speech to 'fact check' it
(
here
is a clip from a different network). Along with recent
censorship of the president on twitter, this has turned a
new
corner in rupturing reality in a direction that we in
the US used to make fun of as only occurring in totalitarian
societies and banana republics (who had the power to roll out this
decision simultaneously across multiple networks/corporations?).
For some detailed background information on how votes are
reported and 'counted', this interivew with Russell Ramsland is
well
worth watching. Finally, take a look at this
twitter
approved narrative: "We have to collectively burn down the
Republican Party. We have to level them. Because if there are
survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will
[elect a president] again". It is true that the electoral map
electoral
map looks amazingly different if only certain
sub-populations were to have voted :-} (see also
Matt
Taibbi on this topic).
Just to clarify, (1) I still regard myself as extreme left, (2)
of course Trump hired the same criminal bankers as Obama did, (3)
Trump's main accomplishment was to cut corporate taxes and taxes for the
ultrarich, and (4) the entire election reality show *is always* designed
as a powerful psychological operation to distract from what's going on
behind the curtain. It is also worth noting that under Trump, *no* new
wars were started compared to under 'peace-prize' Obama, when wars were
started in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Yemen (and wars continued in Iraq
and Afghanistan), trashing their countries and destroying the lives of
millions of people there (see also Glenn Greenwald on this topic
here,
but who still can't dare to also include "Obama" in his
title, though Obama is in the text). Perhaps the less
new wars thing was merely imperial overreach and pushback
finally kicking in; we will have to wait to see what happens
when and if the neocons reassert power under preznit Harris.
Finally, with regard to point (4) above, here is a possible
scenario
for post-election chaos (see also
this section of Whitney Webb's
video from last week on intelligence company/agency election chaos
simulations).
But the 'new look' of the mainstream media is more disturbing than
usual, all in its own right. Today, on a lark, I googled "Newsom
slapped down in court crickets from mainstream media" (no quotes)
and I hilariously got back "It looks like there aren't many great
matches for your search". I was going after coverage of the
recent
court decision, now already 6 days old, that declared Newsom's
8-month-long abuse of power unconstitutional and that placed a
permanent injunction against the Governor which prevents him from
unilaterally making or changing state law moving forward. Despite
its relevance for the daily annoyances of the continuing lockdown,
this received almost no coverage outside of the LA Times article.
Even then, like the fawning followup coverage (e.g., theverge)
of why it was critical for all mainsteam media feeds to censor a
standing president's speech in order to 'fact check' it, the almost
non-existent follow-up coverage of Newsom's court defeat merely
wondered how much longer Newsom's 8-month-long one-man rule
would
go on (presumably forever, since it's not 'newsworthy').
For now, the internet still more or less works. It remains possible,
with diligence, to find reports on censored real-world events
like the absolutely enormous anti-lockdown protest that
just
occurred in Leipzig. And email is not yet routinely censored
or 'fact checked' in flight (though this has occasionally occurred
via Proofpoint with my school email), and is mostly just surveilled.
Phone calls, now virtually all over cellular networks rather than wire,
and the internet, are also merely surveilled, but not yet routinely
'fact checked' or selectively blocked.
However, it is a short step from here to overt filtering, social credit
surveillance, and live 'fact checking' and black-hole-ing of direct
personal communication, as already rolled out by CIAbook and twitter. As
young people have become more accustomed to overt surveillance and direct
interference in their personal communication by billionaire-controlled
tech/surveillance companies, these interferences are becoming more like
measures that were rapidly introduced after 9/11, like having to always
take off your shoes at the airport. As time goes on, only older people
who remember the way the world used to work will still get angry at this
direct interference in simply talking to someone else. Younger people
will simply accept thoughtcrime as part of their 'reality', like maybe
their phone giving them a buzz when they say something that's not allowed.
The lockdown-induced transfer of even more face-to-face communication
onto surveilled and controlled conduits will further normalize direct
corporate control and enforcement of acceptable thought.
Human freedom, such as it is, is now being more rapidly curtailed than
ever before, on an jaw-dropping, worldwide basis. We all - young and
old - need to fight back before freedom is largely gone and the Covid-21
mask police are banging on the door. One hundred years ago, it was
already possible to see where we were headed (HG Wells, EM Forster, Aldous
Huxley, Orwell). More than ever, we need to look behind the curtain now.
This is *not* about Trump vs. Biden or so-called 'left' vs. so-called
'right', or even mainly about the actual crooked vote shenanigans.
We have to keep our eyes on the ball!
A small transnational cabal of bankers, corporate heads,
extra-governmental policy makers (the modern equivalents of Rhodes'
Round Table Group), and powerful families are now doing a controlled
demolition of the worldwide economy, the so-called great reset. They have
been totally up front about their methods and intents for many decades,
if you know where to look (e.g., Carroll Quigley). Just scrape the
'election' muck out of your head and read books or text on the intertubes.
The principle cause (in the Aristotelian sense) is the inexorable decline
in available net energy. Along the way, the goal is to impoverish, and
physically and mentally imprison most of the world's population and even
reduce the population so that these sociopathic individuals can maintain
their ill-gotten gains, but above all, their control of everybody else.
We must fight the new normal before it is truly too late and the real
attrition begins.
Finally, for some good, mean-spirited cheer,
after I was trying to be serious, see
Gray Mirror (Curtis Yarvin) and
Pepe
Escobar.
[Nov12'20]
'At the doorstep', trying to keep a clear head
Here is a worthwhile interview with
Vanessa
Beeley on the (public!) intelligence chatter (e.g.,
James
Woolsey [CIA, DarkWinter'01], and
Peter
Pry ['covid is nothing compared to EMP']) in early 2020 on the
possibility of an "EMP". This could be simulated (e.g., by more
localized power grid sabotage). This would then add to covid chaos plus
election chaos plus race war chaos to completely entrance the proles, as
described by Elizabeth "we are at the doorstep of another 9/11"
Neumann
from DHS. Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway) has
a good summary of possible election chaos scenarios
here.
Of course, all complete guesswork, based on partial, contaminated
information. As I have gotten older, I have become less sure of
my ability to fight through the disinformation hurricane, just
today discovering (a small thing) that this iconic
chimpanzee with
an AK-47 video was actually made in 2011 as part of a
viral marketing campaign for Rise of the Planet of the Apes
using a chimpanzee actor (!). The problem is that there is a
finite amount of time to search and learn. Now multiply small
misdirections by a billion to get some idea of the magnitude of the
problem, esp. for more important things.
[Update: here is a
well-written post by @perceptualflaws from two years ago on related
themes - thanks J!].
To get through the transition in better shape, the most critical
thing it to keep one's mental composure and detachment intact.
Science fiction is forever trying to characterize 'emotion' and
'feeling' as the special sauce that makes a human vs. a robot.
Forget about emotion. Emotion is the special sauce that is used
to undermine rational linguistic thought. Bernays explained how a
century ago. There are five critically interacting big-picture things
that have to be calmly held in mind *at the same time* to make any
sense of what is happening: (1) net energy decline in the face of 85% of
total energy from fossil fuels, (2) what rebuildable energy is
realistically capable of
(wind and solar currently 3% of total energy), (3) how money currently
works, (4) the mechanics of technocratic/surveillance/biosecurity reset,
and (5) population/food/climate. That's hard to do without having your
head explode. It's much easier to say 'oil companies bad'. But that's
just mind bait and misdirection (as you pick up your Amazon package,
ordered one evening using coal- and methane-powered internet and servers,
delivered by bunker oil and diesel over roads made of oil, eating your
dinner salad grown using fertilizer made from natural gas). Finally,
it's critical for older farts who have been more times through the
real world wringer to connect with younger people. Here is a
good
interview with G. Edward Griffin on doing just that (inspiring words
near the end, I know, emotion).
How much individuals will be able to affect the nature of our ride over
peak net energy is debatable. Currently, we are still doing our best
to increase complexity. The great reset plans for tremendous increases
in complexity. For example, here is a nice animation of the
stuff
that we have already put up into near-Earth space,
all orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour, all before
new
plans to put up tens of thousands of new 4G and 5G satellites, some
with 100 by 100 foot electronically aim-able phased-array antennas.
However, energy constraints are beginning to chip away at attempts
at further increasing complexity. I see it in the broken asphalt/oil
pavement I cycle over every day. I see it when brand new 5G networks have
to be shut down to save energy (remember, frequency equals energy).
Net energy constraints are a safety valve on how complete a dystopia
will be able to be constructed (the coming together of points (1), (2),
and (4) above). Already 100 years ago, science fiction writers could
clearly see where we were heading, socially. But they also envisioned
flying cars (originally, model T's), which never appeared (of course,
we did get flying cars: they are called 'helicopters'). Better animation
has given us endless visions of multi-megawatt machines muscling around
the stylishly dingy remains of an advanced civilization (I always wonder
why if there are so many free megawatts available for shiny tech toys,
how come none are left for street sweepers?). I freely admit that I am
counting on net energy constraints to block the full implementation of the
worst mechanical, surveillance, and biosecurity nightmares that writers
have long envisioned, but more importantly, that businessmen, scientists,
and engineers are currently feverishly constructing. I still hope there
is the possibility of reasonably humane path through coming bottleneck.
[Nov18'20]
It's not normal
In October 2020, Claudia wrote the lyrics and music
to a fine anti-lockdown song, "It's Not Normal".
We made a recording of it, available as an
mp3 soundtrack,
a
youtube
video (while it lasts) or a
bitchute video. Claudia
on vocals and acoustic guitar, Marty on electric guitar and bass.
[Nov27'20]
Happy SnitchGiving
We seem to have entered a strange holding pattern. I noticed that we have
been seeing less of Mr. Creepy (the guy in this fine BGPuppet
video) in the main
sewer news, and more of the Strangelove-ian Klaus Schwab. Perhaps this
was because the main sewer media was been getting back some serious
hating on Mr. Bill Gates and decided to temporarily cool it. But Klaus
is even worse - a caricature of a sociopathic technocrat, with horrible
'optics' for Americans. It might even prompt some people to look up
the Nuremburg code against forced medical treatments drawn up after WWII.
But backing out to the larger picture, we seem to
have entered a strange holding pattern. The disputed
election now seems weirdly distant, despite
obvious
irregularities also summarized
here.
For example, the vote totals to the nearest million (and corresponding
percentage of the population) for the previous ten elections were:
1980 - 85 million (37%)
1984 - 92 million (39%)
1988 - 91 million (37%)
1992 - 104 million (40%)
1996 - 95 million (35%)
2000 - 104 million (37%)
2004 - 121 million (41%)
2008 - 129 million (43%)
2012 - 126 million (40%)
2016 - 129 million (40%)
The current election vote totals and percent showed an unusually large
jump, corresponding to the largest percent turnout since WWII:
2020 - 154 million (46%)
There has never been a previous voting pattern like this
time around, where the incumbent substantially increased
their votes (Trump got 11 million more votes this time than
last time), had long 'coattails' (Republican gains in state
and federal legislatures), but then lost. Also, Biden
*lost*
black voters everywhere except in Detroit, Philadelphia, and
Milwaukee, the cities that decided the election. Observing those things
doesn't mean I 'like Trump' (or that I 'like Biden'!).
The lockdowns are beginning to be reinstated here and there, but there
has been relatively little strong pushback so far. People seem to be
tired and in a trance. Perhaps the trance has something to do with
the fact that the stock market has zoomed up to 30,000. It certainly
looks like a dangerous blow-off top, but FOMO, the fear of missing out,
continues to drive it up.
But what happens next? There have been simulation exercises such
as the Transition Integrity Project. Some of these 'simulations'
have had an uncanny way of coming to pass in the real world
(e.g., Peter Power and 7/7). But there are so many moving
parts now, possibly including internecine struggle between
DoD and CIA (even with unconfirmed reports of Special Forces
possibly dying in combat with CIA forces! - described/denied
here
in the Military Times) that I really don't know what to expect.
An enormous, long overdue stock market crash in the next few months,
in combination with unrest surrounding election investigations and court
cases might suddenly snap people out of their stupor, perhaps leading to
riots, and perhaps then to the imposition of full martial law. Or maybe,
depressingly, it's merely masks forever, endless vaccine threats forever,
and a rapidly encroaching dystopian biosecurity/surveillance state.
Happy SnitchGiving!
[Nov30'20]
Follow the science
In Science magazine (Oct 30), there was the now-usual editorial
complaining about Republicans being anti-science. Then in the news
section, there was an laudatory article about how Gilead's remdesivir
just got approved by the FDA as the *first* official Covid-19 drug.
Remdesivir was previously on an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
Remdesivir, strongly supported by the vile Fauxi (who has worked closely
with Gilead), was shown in recent clinical trials to have *no* significant
effect on time of hospitalization or death. Of course, there was no
mention of vitamin D in the Science news section, which was shown in a
Spanish randomized controlled trial to reduce progression to the ICU by
a factor of 20x (that would be a 2000% improvement). That would be the
same Fauxi that outsourced gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses
to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the NIH institute he directs
($3.7 million). Cr@p like this makes me embarrassed to be a scientist.
[Update Dec05: a few weeks later Science magazine finally got around
to reporting the no-effect remdesivir trial. Telling, this was titled
"A bad look for remdesivir". It's just a "bad look", haha, because the
*science* has no power to undo the billions of public dollars allocated
to this failed drug, a tiny fraction of which could have been directed
toward vitamin D, which actually does work.]
The critical reason that Science magazine and the pharma/medical
corporation complex has to keep cheap effective drugs out of people's
hands (e.g., by arranging for pharmacies to actually refusing to
fill certain prescriptions) is that other expensive drugs of dubious
usefulness (like remdesivir initially) can be approved for emergency use
authorization, which requires that there be no other possible 'approved'
treatment for the same problem (vitamin D is not approved). Luckily,
you can still buy vitamin D (for now) and take it yourself without having
to go through the 'medical' system.
[Dec05'20]
We must fight the descent into 'covid world'
The rupture with reality continues. Here in San Diego, we are being
locked down again because the 'ICUs are overflowing'. It turns out
the real story is that ICU capacity here has been reduced for 'social
distancing', which increases percent occupancy. But this also misses
the fact that ICUs *always* fill up this time of year, since more people
*always* get sick and die this time of year, and since ICUs are *designed
and intended* to fill up this time of year! In fact, it's a financial
disaster for the hospitals if the expensive-to-maintain ICUs
*aren't* filled to capacity!;
they are even designed to be occasionally *overfilled*. Finally, most
people in ICUs are *not* even in there for 'covid'!
And to keep this in perspective, remember that covid 'positive'
is determined with PCR tests that have cycle thresholds turned up
way past what even the vile medical puppet Fauxi suggests is correct
for detecting an actual infection. Here is a comprehensive
new
paper with almost 4000 subjects that attempted to culture virus
from subjects 'positive' at different cycle thresholds. 'Positives'
requiring a cycle threshold of 35 were *100%* false positive.
'Positives' at a cycle threshold of 25 were still about *50%* false
positive. Amazingly in the US and EU, the PCR rest is run well
beyond this, to 40 or even 45 amplification cycles. Our society is
being destroyed by functionall illiterate 'health administrators'
who can't read scientific papers. And these 'positives' assume that
the primers and probes in the test were properly designed (
they most
certainly weren't!)
Because of financial incentives, cash-strapped
hospitals are increasingly turning from "health care"
(really mostly sick-care from bad diet) to "
covid
care" (report from an anonymous M.D.). Together with
PCR tests 'turned up to 11', this is a self-amplifying
disaster that will be increasingly hard to escape from. The
vaccine
rollout won't help. Assuming the
minus 70
concoction manages to not kill too many people, and assuming that
reporting on side effects and deaths are efficiently censored by the
'fact checkers', hospitals will have little incentive going forward
to forgo classifying as many admissions as possible as 'covid' given
existing financial incentives. This will be fine with big pharma and it
will increase the social pressure from the sheep for an endless future
series of dystopian forced medical treatments to 'cure' the never-ending
periodic 'covid' ICU overflows.
James Bovard had a good article
here
documenting the lockdown nonsense in Maryland, describing how padlocked
public schools have resulted in 350% to 600% increase in black and latino
failure rates in mathematics and English (no effect on whites and asians).
This recalls how "Black lives matter" protests selectively put the torch
to black-owned businesses, now being scooped up for dimes on the dollar as
'distressed properties' by billionaire harpies.
The responsibilty for this ever-darkening nightmare should be placed
solidly at the feet of the 'Good Germans' who have made it possible by
meekly and fearfully submitting. I just attended a zoom meeting that was
about all the ways in which the university is planning to improve racial
'equity'. Not a word about how lockdowns are disastrously increasing
inequity by transferring *trillions* of dollars to billionaires and
punishing poor people. Instead, the problem was how to deal with the
huge number of new unprepared applicants that have resulted from the
university having removed the requirement to report test results,
in order to increase 'equity'. Accepting increasingly (see above)
unprepared students is certain to increase eventual drop-out and failure
rates of disadvantaged students, while still allowing the university to
collect their tuition payments.
One of the arguments about 'racial equity' that really makes me want
to puke is when 'leftists' solemnly tell me they want to make sure that
disadvantaged people get the vaccine first and that it is not only
given to rich people. Maybe that's why only 15% of blacks are willing
to take the covid vaccine (while that number is about about 50% for the
general population), oh, I don't know, maybe something to do with blacks'
previous 'experience' with nazi doctors. Perhaps that's why poor black
people are being offered a $1500 'stimulus check' to take the vaccine.
The level of disconnection of many people from reality seriously disturbs
me. The people who can still think must organize resistance right now -
or die slaves.
[Dec12'20]
That other rupture
The evidence of worse-than-usual election fraud is
clear to any objective observer. However, there are
layers of deception piled on top of that obvious fact.
Ronald Thomas West has a good, just updated, overview
here.
The weirdest thing is to get a handle on the probable factions, roughly
'CIA' versus 'Pentagon', but also including out-of-place 'CIA'-aligned
generals and 'Pentagon'-aligned apocalytic christians at the 'CIA'.
There are multiple suites of fraud-capable software, not just Dominion
('CIA'), but also ES&S ('Pentagon'). Then mix in Sidney Powell
(more honest) vs. '9/11' Giuliani/Kerik (saboteurs). Now add in the
psyop stuff about 'Russia did it' versus 'China (and Iran!) did it'.
Then add in the narcissist ego-maniac Trump, being plied by both
sides, and the Biden crime family, headed by Dementia Joe. Finally,
broadcast all of this out in a confusing fashion to the divided public.
Despite my seemingly light-hearted presentation, this is a
deadly game (the
hitman came back at the end of the video after injuring the driver,
a MI election whistleblower, but then finally left).
The latest event was the Supreme Court turning down consideration of
a lawsuit ("plaintiffs have no standing") of a dispute between states
(about 17 states joined the lawsuit with about 25 states coming out
against). By contrast, Article III, section 2 of the Constitution
clearly states that the Supreme Court's power extends among other
things "to Controversies between two or more States; between a State
and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States".
Despite this, the Supreme Court decided to punt.
Perhaps down the line, this will turn out to have been a bad decision.
The Fed has been continuing 'quantitative easing' (MMT for the ultra
rich), despite the catastrophically increasing polarization of wealth
between rich and poor. The possibility of a rupture in the US population
is higher than it has been before, now mainly kept in check by the covid
psyop, which is, however, finally weakening its grasp over people's minds.
[Dec15'20]
A 'cyberpandemic' false flag on the way?
The wide distribution of reports of 'cyberhacking'
attacks (SolarWinds IT monitoring software
compromised
in the field [Register's 'Russiagate' angle makes me laugh],
Americold food storage hacked, FireEye's white hat cyberattack
software stolen, bank software compromised, yesterday's
google
outage, which turned off the lights in the houses of people
stoopid
enough to install google 'smart' home) suggest the possibility that
a major 'cyberpandemic' false flag could be on the way. This could
serve as a Klaus Schwab 'booster shot', as people's fear of covid is
finally beginning to wane. It could involve attacks on banks, internet
infrastructure, or the grid (Vannessa Beeley video above). People *so*
lazy they can't get up and flip the light switch probably deserve to
cool their heels in the dark from time to time.
[Dec26'20]
Something went haywire with checking and savings between Nov 17 and Nov 27
From this
St
Louis Fed graph of M1 (roughly, checking accounts) and M2 with the
M1 part removed (roughly, savings accounts), it is clear that a gigantic
amount of money ($1.3 trillion) was transferred out of savings accounts
into checking accounts between Nov 17 and Nov 27. Bills suddenly due as
various protections/stimuli expire? Rich people cashing out of the market
just before its all-time peak? Paying cash-out taxes before expected
changes in the tax code? No transfer remotely similar in magnitude
has occurred over the past 50 years. Whatever it was, it seems to have
stopped in early Dec (but not restored). Nothing yet 'explaining' or
'debunking' this at the top of a google 'search' from the fact checkers
(who are sounding more and more like old-school Soviet propaganda!).
The apparent lack of fear at the incredible reflation of the stock market
and bond bubbles as 'main street' goes broke is, frankly, pretty scary.
It's hard to see how this could go on for very much longer. I know I have
always said that, but maybe it's really true this time :-} . The dollar
has finally begun to slowly drop relative to bitcoin but also other
currencies (e.g., the pound, from a UK hardly in the greatest shape).
This will eventually lead to lower bond prices and higher interest rates,
which the Fed may not be able to suppress, given the size of foreign
investment. The 10-year US treasury yield finally bottomed out in July
at about 0.5% and has slowly risen to just under 1%. Interest rates have
been held artifically far below the real rate of inflation (e.g., food,
housing). A return to even historically low rates could be catastrophic.
But perhaps, this is just a preparation for the introduction of
a new world currency. The open question to me is whether we
will see a continued gradual levelization of the US relative
to the rest of the world, or whether some large instability
will suddenly get out of hand. I'm sure that many different
scenarios have already been gamed, and 'mere' chaos may not
prevent a planetary-wide monetary lockdown as outlined by
this
Catherine Austin Fitts video from happening (just ignore the stuff
about an injected 'operating system' - she is fanstastic on money but
she doesn't know biology).
[Dec31'20]
They Showed Their Faces
Claudia was on a roll and wrote another powerful fight-the-power
song, "They Showed Their Faces", available as a
youtube video or a
bitchute video.
Claudia on vocals and acoustic guitar, Marty on electric guitar and bass.
We have to push back against the creeping Nazification of the entire
planet. Nazification by degrees with no pushback is a sure road to ruin.
'First, they came for the outdoor diners, but I wasn't an outdoor diner'.
The covid psyop/coup has transferred more than $110 billion dollars ($0.11
trillion dollars) to that oligarch puke Bezos (equivalent to the $120
billion in publicly funded emergency unemployment benefits just approved).
Every purchase from Amazon is a vote for him! Stop voting for Bezos!
Get over your fear, gather your courage, and fight back before it's
too late!
[Jan02'21]
Duelling spam filters
As more and more university functions have been outsourced, the results
have sometimes been blackly humorous, in a former Soviet Union kind
of way. Some of my emails go through UCSD, which has outsourced their
email support to Microsoft. Microsoft, in turn, outsourced their spam
filtering to ProofPoint. For the most part, this works OK, though a
few months ago, one of my outgoing emails on a 'forbidden topic' was
black-holed by ProofPoint and removed from my outbox (I managed to get
it through their 'forbidden' filter by merely zipping the text).
But a few days ago, I noticed that all my outgoing emails to Claudia
were suddenly bouncing. After digging through logs, I discovered
the clusterf--k reason: Claudia's server's SpamCop had blacklisted
the ProofPoint spam filter servers! As you might imagine, it's hard
to who to complain to about this with so many intervening 'levels' of
responsibility. It would be funny if it didn't seem like a dark sign
of things to come.
[Jan03'21]
New Brown Lockdown
I read another absolutely hallucinatory article in Science about how we
will 'de-carbonize' by 2035. It was so bad, I won't dignify it with
a link. The level of denial about the realities of human energy use
and declining net energy return on energy investment was mind boggling.
The fact that virtually no one has mentioned energy this whole wretched
year is also mind boggling.
The real numbers are easily accessible
in a few seconds from the web (e.g., from
EIA
here). Going back to 2010 (in the US), we used about 58 quads of
fossil fuel (a 'quad' is quadrillion Btu), about 8 quads of 'renewable'
and 8 quads of nuclear. In 2019, we used about *81* quads of fossil
fuel (an increase of 23 quads or 40%), while nuclear stayed the same and
"rewewable" (including hydropower) went from about 8 quads to 11 quads
(an increase of 3.2 quads, also a 40% increase, but only 1/7 the size
of the 40% increase in fossil fuels). In 2019, fossil fuel was 80%
of our total energy while wind+solar was a mere 3.5% of our total.
The rate of increase in fossil fuel use has itself increased over the
past decade, and this is easily visible in the Mauna Loa CO2 graph.
It is blindingly obvious that: (1) we are *accelerating* our 'carbonizing'
(e.g., making tons of solar panels out of coal in China), (2) that growth
in 'renewable' energy isn't anywhere close to keeping up, (3) that we have
moved to fossil fuel sources with smaller and smaller net energy (e.g.,
fracking, part of the reason for the acceleration in total energy use
documented above), and (4) wind and solar have an even smaller energy
return on energy investment than bottom-of-the-barrel fossil fuels,
which is why they remain substantially more expensive (once storage is
included, to be able to make real world comparisons with fossil fuels).
However, that was 2019. In 2020, covid world has put a moderate dent
in the rate of increase, mainly by reducing oil consumption for flying
and driving (but not oil consumption for container ships and trains and
trucks and growing food and heating and natural gas for charging Teslas!).
There has been a lot of talk of 'reset' and 'build back better' and
'new green deal' supposedly because 'no longer blocked by Trump'.
Unfortunately, that is almost complete nonsense. The problem is that
building a whole bunch of new stuff takes a lot of net energy. The fatal
problem with that hope is that storable high net energy sources are
getting ever and ever scarcer.
In order to logically choose the best path of action, it's first critical
to focus on data, not hope. As I've been saying since March 2020,
the primary point of the forever lockdowns is to *crush energy usage*.
A side effect was to transfer $1 trillion to sick f__ks like Gates
and Bezos. But that's not the main point. I think the main point is to
permanently reduce the energy footprint of everyone else from here on out.
Intermittent 'renewable' (rebuildable) energy isn't vaguely capable of
replacing fossil fuels, either in terms of net energy, how rapidly it
could be ramped up, or how rapidly storage could be constructed (that is,
mined, manufactured, transported, installed, serviced).
The Great Reset is not about building back better. It's about trying to
permanently crush energy use of the bottom 99%. That's why the 'virus
is mutating'. That's why the world-spanning totalitarian apparatus
*continues* to be constructed before our eyes. Note that it's not that it
wasn't being constructed before; it's just a little more obvious now to
people who can see past the covid trance (e.g., non-removeable
slave bracelets for children).
Lockdowns *will* be forever if people
don't start to fight back in earnest. As
Paul
Craig Roberts (!) says, we have to literally take out the oligarchs
now or forever live as slaves. My point is that we *also* have to fight
back without unrealistic fantasies about energy.
[Jan09'21]
Capitol demonstration not a 'Reichstag fire' false flag
Though I am left, I find myself in partial
agreement with the analysis of alt-right
Brandon
Smith who argued a few days ago that the Capitol demonstration
was *not* a false flag Reichstag fire (where was the fire? ragtag
BLM demos set zillions of raging fires, but there was no fire
here with an enormously larger demo!). With a *million* people
surrounding the Capitol, there was virtually no violence except for
a panicked policeman killing an unarmed female demonstrator and 3
heart attacks and one dead policeman. [Update: Jan11:
analysis
of Ashli Babbit shooting]. Some desks were
messed up and someone stole a podium (go
here
for a similar perspective from the left). That's a 'coup'?! The military
taking out/killing Salvador Allende in Chile and rounding up thousands
of dissidents into torture stadiums - now *that's* what I would call
a coup! The stark contrast between the Mighty Wurlitzer's 'coup' and
the easily visible reality is probably disconcerting even to so-called
'leftists'. Similarly the ham-handed coordinated censoring of Parler,
Trump's accounts, and so on, by Apple, Amazon AWS, Facebook, Twitter,
and email servers must be generating some indigestion among 'Democrats'.
It is so obviously the 'Great firewall of China' coming home to roost.
I know many that accept the censorship and lockdowns are 'Good Americans',
but some are aware on both the left and the right, and may not be able
to be tricked into supporting martial law.
Of course, there have been immediate moves, telegraphed since Spring
2020, to institute new 'domestic terrorism' laws and a full-on dystopian
biosecurity state. However, these are being rolled out in a situation
that is quite different than, say, after the 9/11. A decent chunk
of people can already see through the propaganda. The grass roots
organizations that generated a million people at the Capitol are not
going to go away when Trump goes away.
The next shoe to drop could be a market crash together with increasing
long-term interest rates (bonds, mortgage; 10-year treasuries are up from
0.5% to 1.0% over the past few months), all happening under conditions of
record unemployment, inflation, homelessness, suicides, food insecurity,
and staggering upward transfers of wealth. There has been substantial
pushback against the covid vaccine propaganda, with half of frontline
healthcare workers turning it down. After the most extensive covid
vaccination program in the entire world, Israel just locked down for
a third time, 'because covid' - after the unprecedented vaccination
effort, covid actually got *worse*. People will begin to see the point
is control, not protection. But if there is a big crash, the covid
lockdowns and mask orders may get lost in the commotion. For better
or worse, things are probably just starting to hot up. It's important
not to overestimate the foresight and power of the new feudal lords.
Of course they are powerful; but they still greatly prefer consent,
and they are beginning to lose it.
[Jan13'21]
Purge vs. crash
The sudden increase in censorship, and
the calls for blacklists and purges as described by
Jonathan
Turley should greatly disturb
any student of history (Facebook just blocked
Ron
Paul of all people!). The big question is how far in the general
direction of Stalinism will this all go? Will it be spread evenly
across all states? Though I have previously written that the current
mood sometimes reminded me of the Red Guard or of Lysenkoism, it was a
colorful exaggeration in the spirit of, 'it would be a really bad idea
to go any further in that direction'. Now it looks like we *are* going
to continue in that direction.
The long term arc of the next few decades of world history is easy
to predict. As energy sources with high *net* energy continue
to be depleted, the future will obviously have to *de*-complexify;
increasing complexity requires increased energy, and as available net
energy gradually wanes, the future will gradually become less complex.
The American empire will slowly be dismantled.
But trying to predict the details of what might happen in the US in
the shorter term (year to year) is a lot more difficult. Take the
covid psyop. There are so many interacting threads. It is obviously
being used to try to clamp down people's behavior and standard of living
in a 'Great Reset' way. But it also has its own 'quagmire' dynamics,
as tinpot health dictators become reluctant to let go of their newfound,
puffed-up importance, and as they defend their sunk costs (and especially
the terrible costs of the lockdown that have been borne by children).
Similarly, there are the people who have been convinced that covid is
the Black Death, and who won't easily lose that fear. Then there is
the dynamics of how long people will continue to respond to the wall
to wall fear daily blared out by the Mighty Wurlitzer in the face of a
not-that-remarkable death count (e.g., Sweden's deaths were similar to
2015; Florida ended the lockdown and nothing bad happened). Yet another
factor is the everyday greed and machinations of big pharma, slavering
over the prospect of being paid to force vaccinate the entire world every
few months. Finally, there is the explosive potential of the bottom
half of the population whose prospects have been crushed by the lockdown,
while trillions of dollars has been simultaneously transferred upward..
I expected that last factor to have come into play sooner. With unemployment
spiking up again, it's amazing the streets are still so quiet.
But the thing I would really like to foresee is what I started out with.
How far will we move this year in the direction of outright Stalinism?
From time to time, I smell my own fear, not of covid, but of other
hominins, in all their fearsome chimpanzee-plus-language splendor,
enforcing the rules of 'the Party'. Though the number of people who
read my repetitive public rants is tiny, I sometimes think about about
the wisdom of public posts. For example, Mark Crispin Miller was taken
down by his administration for 'crimes' no worse than mine. I have
posted links to the same studies on masks that he did - the very ones
that were used by his Dean to cancel his popular Propaganda course.
However, at this point, I still feel that the endlessly postponed crash
of the stock, bond, and real estate bubbles could be an important
new ingredient that has not yet been considered in the witches brew
described above. We are supposedly 'out' of the recession. There are
huge new orders for trucks, the price of shipping is skyrocketing,
real estate is on a tear, and new inflationary bailouts are on the way.
The general feeling is that massive creation of new credit cannot fail to
find its way into the various bubbles like it has over the past decade.
It's seems difficult to bet against that. But on balance, I still think
there is a good chance that the ginormous bubbles will begin to pop,
especially if long term interest rates continue to creep up. The Fed
has some control over interest rates, but it is good to remember that
*most* money is not created by the Fed. The Fed creates bank reserves
from the void, but commercial banks then use the created-from-the-void
reserves to create most of the money that is in use (from the void again,
at the moment of each new loan/bond). But it's important to remember
that most borrowing can't be forced.
If the bubbles begin to pop, perhaps this may help distract attention from
all-covid-all-the-time as well as from censorship, blacklist, and purges.
Perhaps Twitter's and Facebook's stocks plummetting after executing
their purges is a sign of things to come. I know, 'crash kills purge'
is a complete shot in the dark, but underneath my general doomerishness
is a fundamentally cheery disposition. I'm still guessing that Soviet
style 'psychiatric' hospitals and re-education camps for dissidents like
me are not yet on the near horizon.
The latest censorship moves have made it clear that 'live by the
cloud', is also 'die by the cloud'. This will motivate transition
to more healthy self-containedness, robustness, and decentralization.
Remember, the cloud was always: "We're going to cut off your legs and
give you a great electric wheel chair and all you have to do is pay us
a fee for special batteries". Who knew they could suddenly refuse to
sell you the special batteries? Time to reattach your legs! Also time
to plan ahead. There are many additional modalities of censorship that
have not yet been exercised. As people being to migrate outside the cloud
and outside the increasingly Stalinist social media, we may begin to see
more direct censorship of web pages or email by DNS, https certificates,
or directly by packet identity over the internet 'wires'. It's not yet
widely done, but it could be on the way. Eventually, free discussions
may need to migrate to slower, lower bandwidth, but more free 'wires'.
Don't sweat the bandwidth. Words are more powerful and much more useful
than movies - words require miniscule bandwidth compared to movies.
[Jan16'21]
College turning into dystopian nightmare foreseen by Orwell 70 years ago
Take a look at
this
PDF describing how 'remote learning cheating monitoring' is
being implemented at a Cal State university. Of course, roughly
similar functional constraints apply to in-class exams, but they are
implemented by humans, and critically, they are not applied to your
private home environment. You go into a public space to take an exam
and you are expected to stay at your desk and not cheat.
By introducing Big Brother as a regular experience at home, people are
gradually being accustomed to overt, invasive, punishing 24/7 monitoring.
Alexa recording everything you say in order to 'help' you, because you
are so lazy you can't raise a finger to click a computer menu to get
some music, is not that different. But the rollout of in-your-face Big
Brother lockdowns within the home is another step toward 24/7 dystopia.
Just imagine all the other daily 'work from home' activities that could
be similarly instrumented! For example, why not use this to increase
attentiveness at remote faculty meetings? I am thankful I am near
retirement, but feel badly for those left behind.
[Jan16'21]
25,000 troops in DC to protect virtual inauguration
25,000 troops have been deployed to Washington D.C. to
protect the *virtual* inauguration inside the 'Green Zone'
(!). Couldn't they have used virtual troops? :-} That compares
with 1/10 that number of US troops currently in Afghanistan
and in Iraq. What are they expecting/planning? And magazines
not
required, perhaps because of reports Biden fears assassination
from Republican troops (tho National Guard deployed in previous
years to LA were also magazine-less presumably to avoid unncessary
carnage)! That's why we will all need AOC's new proposed
re-education
camps.
[Jan21'21]
Keeping your head screwed on
The problem right now is keeping your head screwed on tight so that you
can think straight in order to make rational big-picture decisions in
your own life (e.g., jobs, moves). That is extremely difficult when
there is a constant stream of aggravating and emotionally provoking news
that has the potential to seriously destabilize your thought process.
Here are some helpful suggestions for how to negotiate the shoals.
Your friends repeat something to you like, "It's the first time I've
been able to breathe in 4 years". Just say, good, because breathing
is crucial.
Biden is back to parrotting his earpiece ("
Salute the
marines"). You say, this is no doubt because he was mentally
drained from having just written 50 executive orders that day.
Hours after Biden's inauguration, the
WHO
suddenly decides to advise health officials to report the PCR cycle
threshold (Ct) and warns about PCR tests with too high cycle thresholds
(i.e., all the ones done up to this point) can incorrectly indicate
that someone is infectious (e.g., 100% false positives for 'positives'
requiring 35 cycles). Though this is something anyone with basic
scientific knowledge of molecular biology technology knew from (before)
the very beginning, say, I'm glad they finally agree with me.
Many the of 30,000 troops deployed to
Washington D.C. to protect the inauguration of
the
most popular president in history are now maybe going to be
staying
around longer. But then the bad optics of all the needless
barricades, razor wire, and troops got the troops dumped with their
sleeping bags into a parking garage, then in Trump's hotel lobby.
That turned out to not be great optics either. You could say, don't
you think it would be better to just give them new uniforms and leave
them there permanently as a Praetorian guard? This will stall for time
while they look up 'Praetorian' (the Roman emperor's personal guards).
Another
new
video of ridiculously obvious election fraud during the audit of a
key precinct in Michigan emerges. You say, yeah, it looks bad, but I
wonder what happened elsewhere.
An
unheathily
obese doctor is appointed national Assistant Health
Director after previously recently releasing instructions
on a state government website describing how to
safely
attend a 'large gathering' (AKA orgy) in the time of covid.
You say I dunno, but maybe orgies with masks are safer than dining
inside restaurants or going to church, and besides, it's critical not
to discriminate against the sexual preferences of orgy-goers, ya think?
As the 'domestic terrorism', Patriot Act 2.0 meme is
rolled
out after having been telegraphed since the
beginning
of the year, you see censorship
rapidly increasing, and you see the
former
Cocaine Import Agency director explaining how the
intel community is now rapidly moving against the "new
insurgency, including even libertarians" (first they
came for the libertarians, but I wasn't a libertarian,
etc). Even the co-author of "Manufacturing Consent",
Noam
Chomsky, is on board (let it all hang out, man). Or maybe it was
the Facebook and Youtube video, carefully vetted by their community
guidelines, from Dan Winslow, explaining who will need to be purged:
"They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs... They are
your children's teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor's
offices, and many are police officers and soldiers" ("Are you now
or have you ever been a member of ..."). It's true this could lead
to a sinking feeling that you might suddenly lose your job, or that
you might get sentenced to mind numbing hours of laptop-video-policed
online re-education if someone notices that your thinking isn't right
and reports you, or that you might eventually run afoul of the
mask police,
when they're eventually rolled out here. The correct response here is,
yes, but these things will still take some time to be set up, so there
is still room for maneuver and resistance over the next few years.
Though he writes from a more right-wing perspective than me (I still
consider myself far-left), Tom Luongo has the right spirit
here.
[Jan30'21]
GameStop psyop
From
Pam
Martens and Russ Martens, giant asset manager BlackRock owned 9.2
million shares, or roughly a 13% stake in GameStop on Dec 31, 2020;
and Ryan Cohen's RC Ventures held a 13% stake in GameStop. Both of
these positions are potentially worth billions in profit. And
Dark Pools owned by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase,
Morgan Stanley, and Credit made tens of thousands of trades
in GameStop. 5-count felon JPMorgan Chase probably made almost
1/5
of a billion dollars on GameStop trades on Thursday, Jan 28.
And don't forget Elon Musk getting in on the game. This is clearly
being used as a fake populist spectacle.
This will let people feel good about the little guy supposedly getting
back at wall street, but unless everyone withdraws from the game, for
example, by crashing the economy by suddenly stopping buying stuff,
or until the rules of money creation by big banks are changed, and the
ridiculously arcane methods by which debt is rehypothecated multiple times
and manipulated for profit in a giant pyramid scheme, the end result will
merely be a continuation of wealth polarization to previously unheard of
proportions. The sociopaths who run the complicated criminal financial
enterprises will remain hidden and untouchable after this 'feel good'
show passes. As with Bear Steans, the real hidden story is the financial
hyenas tearing up a few of their own for massive profit; there must have
been billions in buying by high frequency traders or big banks to keep
the price up.
Here is a
mind-numbing
word salad (zerohedge cribbed this mostly from Compound248 on twitter)
that introduces some of the ugly, unproductive,
money-skimming complexity under the surface of 'buying
stock' (e.g., intermediaries buying risky options by
borrowing on margin). All of this ridiculous, needless,
insane,
parasitic, money-skimming complexity costs energy that could be used for
much more productive ends and eventually will have to go away. But the
money sociopaths won't stop until there is an explosion of hatred and
revulsion toward them at a time when people have nothing left to lose, and
are willing to countenance really tearing the whole stinking edifice down.
We are not there yet.
[Feb08'21]
We can win
A few days ago, Google/Youtube censored a video of a Senate hearing
with medical doctor Pierre Kory's emotional testimony on the amazing
effectiveness of ivermectin in treating covid, citing 23 peer-reviewed
randomized controlled studies, *all* positive (this is an unheard-of
consensus result in medical research meta-analyses), on the basis that
the video violated community guidelines. The video had gotten up to 8
million views (for a Senate hearing, no less). Today, Facebook
announced
they will censor any claims that: "(1) COVID-19 is man-made or
manufactured, (2) vaccines are not effective at preventing the
disease they are meant to protect against, (3) It's safer to get
the disease than to get the vaccine, and (4) vaccines are toxic,
dangerous or cause autism". They have some work to do since a
strong
majority of Americans believe it came from a lab. Also today,
twitter erased the popular and informative account of Michael (Yardley)
Yeadon (former Pfizer exec, now very concerned about the safety of the
mRNA vaccine).
The censors' brazen audacity is unsettling for a thinking scientist.
But censorship is not guaranteed to work. Despite almost a year of
the mainslime media continuously screeching out the fear, right now, a
solid 24% of all Americans say whey will never get the covid vaccine if
they can avoid it. A full *half* of frontline health care workers have
turned it down. It has been impossible to completely censor the fact
that most COVID deaths could have been (and still can be!) prevented with
cheap, unpatented, readily available medicines (vitamin D, ivermectin,
azithromycin, zinc, budesonide, HCQ) taken before it has gotten out
of hand. More and more people are learning that makers of vaccines,
by shocking contrast with any other drug, are completely protected from
any liability for harms these products may cause. More and more people
are finding out about the secret 'vaccine court' (funded by a tax on
every vaccine shot!). The side effects are leaking through to online
before the censors can get there to 'fact check' and erase them all.
Although big pharma, the FDA, and the CDC have moved mountains to prevent
any study of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids from ever being done,
such
studies are finally beginning to leak out. The decade-long
sleazy history of NIH-supported (Fauci) gain-of-function manipulation
of bat coronaviruses in the US and China, using the very features
thought to make covid more contagious, has become better known.
For example, see these two recent, excellent layperson summaries of
the science and the NIH grant funding text from Steve Hilton
here and
here,
with paper references. Or check out how the
third lockdown in Israel combined with the fastest
vaccine rollout in the world failed to reduce
cases
and hospitalizations, now at near record
levels. A similar correlation between the vaccine
rollout and increased old people covid deaths is
now
emerging worldwide.
None of these things will be unlearned after people have
have opened their eyes. Google/youtube censoring a Senate
hearing has bad optics; even the Wall Street Journal
took
notice. Many other copies of the Senate hearing video remain. Google
makes it a little difficult to find them (of course!), but Google doesn't
(yet) control c-span, so a quick search on duckduckgo will
find
a copy. The emergency suspension of Paul Thomas' medical license
for publishing a peer-reviewed paper won't be able to erase his research
results (yet!). The health care workers who treat covid, and who see that
only a small fraction of the ICU patients are there for covid, and who
administer the vaccines, and who are daily prevented from using valuable
treatments under threat of being fired, will never unlearn these things.
The great reset may still fail. Biden threatening Federal prosecutions
for taking off your mask while hiking in a national park is OK with
many of the sheep. But there is a solid chunk of people for whom a
totalitarian great reset is really *not* OK - I would estimate at least
30% of the American population spread across both traditional 'right',
'left', and 'independent'. These people will gradually disengage from
the fenced-in playpens of facebook/instagram/twitter, and may even begin
to avoid amazon, walmart, etc. They are not going to change their
minds or go away unless they are forcibly confined to concentration
camps of the kind previously known from Soviet Russia or Maoist China.
Google/youtube/facebook/mainslime media is looking more and more like the
old Soviet Pravda (for those of us old enough to know what that means!).
In it's heyday, no one went to Pravda ("Truth") to find out the truth;
Russians went there to find out what was OK to say in public.
The big question is whether the sheep (currently more of them on
the so-called 'left' than on the so-called 'right') will approve
of US concentration camps for dissidents, or counterinsurgency
operations within the US against people who think the 'wrong' way,
as mooted by a former Cocaine Import Agency spook in the
NYT.
I'm still thinking that more people will come to their senses before
those things begin to be rolled out in earnest (but that doesn't stop me
from looking over my shoulder :-} ).
It's critical that anti-totalitarian people on the 'left' and 'right' find
unemotional common cause against the sinister technocratic oligarchs,
especially as the increased stress of the eventual popping of the
uber-bubble and the grinding simplification caused by reduced net energy
unfold over the next few years. Another wild card is the destabilizing
possibility that antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) could cause a large
number of excess deaths when a new strain of covid arrives next fall
(what occurred with all previous attempts at a SARS-1 vaccine).
Our entire just-in-time, 3-days-away-from-bare-shelves existence
depends on the cooperation of the little people who man the
fossil fuel machines that deliver everything and grow our food.
The Great Reset can always be stopped by The Great Refusal. The
likely
permanent razor wire and troops around our pitiful Washington DC
"Green Zone" expresses *their* fear. Whose coup?!
[Feb28'21]
The real Matrix
I remember watching the Matrix or the Star Trek holodeck (and many
previous movie and written versions) and harrumphing about plausibility.
First, the entire premiss of the Matrix is false - there is no way
you can get out *more* energy from a human than you put in; biology
and thermodynamics fundamentally don't/can't work that way! But even
more irritating to me was the idea that it would *ever* be possible
to get vaguely close to generating a convincing alternate reality at
the sensorimotor level in real time. Simulating convincing objects,
object interactions, and sensorimotor data for vision, somatosensation,
audition, taste, smell, interoreception, and the motor system of millions
of simultaneous actors is a preposterous idea. After enormous increases
in computational power, we can't simulate the weather, even at a very
coarse scale, past 10 days. The computational power that would be
required to accurately and continuously simulate the Newtonian world in
real time for multiple actors and then transduce all of that in real time
into neural impulses interfacing with visual, somatosensory, auditory,
etc stimulation of real human beings will forever remain utterly beyond
our grasp.
But as with many things in my life, my aspie-like focus on the hard core
details has partially blinded me to the real Matrix (Matrices) that I
live in. Who needs a sensorimotor Matrix when the 'narrative Matrix'
is much easier to implement and just as effective? It's not that the
hard core details are unimportant. There are many hard core details in
the computer chips, each containing billions of parts, that deliver the
narrative matrix to us all. But the narrative matrix was in place long
before computer chips came on the scene. I now have more respect for its
amazing power - its ability to continuously maintain an alternate reality.
Unlike the sensorimotor Matrix in the movie, the narrative Matrix
doesn't have to be anywhere near as good since it operates at a higher,
more abstract level. Because of the tendency to become habituated to
background assumptions, it's much harder to see it than it would be to
recognize a low quality sensorimotor Matrix. It comes temporarily into
view best when you move into a different field without the baggage of
having worked in that field for a long time.
The diet Matrix
For me, a particularly clear example was the science of diet and health,
something I had paid little scientific attention to. At the end of 2016,
I finally came across the work of Walter Kempner (b. 1903) and Denis
Burkitt (b. 1911), which was already all published in the scientific
literature by 1950. Though this research has been systematically
suppressed in main stream medicine and health, it's still accessible
to anyone with access to a physical library (a substantial portion of
their work is still not accessible online). By 1950, Kempner, Burkitt,
and many others had scientifically and clinically figured out the main
points of a healthy human diet. Of course, the basic facts that eating
a too-rich diet causes most of our modern human diseases was long
known before modern science addressed it! But Kempner, Burkitt, and
many others were among the first to experimentally address this, and to
show that all of these diseases can be not only stabilized, but rapidly
reversed by reverting to a low-calorie-density, starchy, fiber-y diet
very low in meat and refined oils - essentially, a 'real-poor-person'
diet (most poor people today eat the diet of the Medieval nobility,
and have their same diseases to show for it).
Kempner, for example, cured type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high
lipids, reversed atherosclerotic heart disease, diabetic retinopathy,
and obesity simply by feeding people rice (white rice!) and fruit.
This was *already* documented in the scientific literature with 18,000
human subjects by 1950. The amazing fact that type 2 diabetes can almost
instantly be cured by feeding people *carbohydrates* and cutting out the
oil/fat remains to this day hidden by the mainstream narrative matrix.
The diet cure is so rapid (1-2 weeks) and subjects' blood sugar so
normalized that modern subjects have to greatly reduce or go off
their insulin or metformin to avoid passing out from low blood sugar
(from the body becoming sensitive to insulin once again as a result of
eating the correct human diet). A drug with these kinds of effects,
which could rapidly cure diabetes and high blood pressure, reverse
atherosclerotic heart disease and diabetic retinopathy over a year,
which was dirt cheap, and with *only* positive 'side effects' (e.g.,
cures erectile dysfunction, helps with multiple autoimmune diseases,
greatly reduces chance of Alzheimer's) would have been the blockbuster
drug of all time. This blockbuster 'drug' is (scientifically) 70 years
old and still hardly known by anybody.
For example, you won't find a trace of this reality at the National
Diabetes Association website, where instead you will see 'healthy'
example meals of cheese and fish and chicken (modern chicken has 10x
the number of calories from fat that chicken had around 1900) and
'healthy oil'. We live in an alternate reality where diabetics are
told to avoid potatoes and fruit because they contain carbohydrates.
It is true that the detailed mechanisms by which a fatty, low-fiber, low
vegetable diet causes insulin insensitivity (intramyocellular lipids) were
only more recently discovered (in the last two decades). But like quantum
mechanics quickly leading to the nuclear bomb, the main outlines of how
to fix the human chronic diseases that consume most of the resources in
our bloated first world 'health care' system were crystal clear by *1950*.
We have lived in the diet Matrix for 70 years. Despite easy internet
access to the science. Despite sensible popular books on the topic.
Big pharma, big hospitals, big 'chemical' (herbicides, GMO seeds),
and big ag have persistent control of the diet narrative. It doesn't
matter that the actual truth persists around the margins. There is,
of course an important second main reason why the diet Matrix could have
been maintained against reality for 70 years, namely, 'the market'; it
is very easy for the limbic system to get addicted to an overly rich,
overly meaty, fat-heavy, sugary and salty, and vegetable-, fruit-, and
starch-light diet. It works exactly the same way in rats as humans.
It's called a 'rich diet' precisely because it's what rich people always
gravitated to.
The covid Matrix
A more troubling case is the covid Matrix. The scale of the current
world-churning totalitarian lockdown foisted upon us all with the covid
psyop is more fearsome than anything that has happened since WWII.
But the outlines of the scam were already put in place decades before,
with the HIV and AIDS operation in the early 1980's. The AIDS Matrix
still persists until this day, with sensible articles questioning the
dogma *still* subject to cancellation. Let's first take a short detour.
Some of the strange facts associated with HIV-is-the-main-cause-of-AIDS
hypothesis are: (1) the HIV virus was never isolated from sick patients
using standard EM methods (sound familiar?), (2) AIDS is 'diagnosed'
with a PCR test 'turned up to 11' (sound familiar?), over the strenuous
objections of Nobel-prize-winning Kary Mullis who invented PCR, (3) in
combination with point 2, the 'rules' were suddenly changed, just for
HIV: if you had antibodies, you were infected, not protected! (4) Gallo
'accidentally' stole his Nobel-winning RNA sequences from Montagnier,
(5) AZT, an expensive, highly toxic, nucleotide-chain-terminating,
immune-system-destroying, *failed* leukemia chemotherapy agent never
intended for chronic treatment, was 'pulled out of retirement' for
AIDS, but then shown to be worse than nothing when given chronically
(cf. expensive remdesivir, originally for Ebola, where is completely
failed to help with covid), (6) AIDS and HIV never spread into the
heterosexual community in the US, even to partners of infected people,
(7) AIDS never exploded across Africa like it was predicted to do,
(8) HIV never followed the infectivity pattern (periodic peaks) of
*any* other virus that has ever been examined, (9) HIV supposedly
somehow routinely 'caused' utterly different diseases in different
places (Kaposi's sarcoma, cytomegalovirus, and mycoplasmas in the US,
but tuberculosis and malnutrition in Africa), (compare, dying of a
heart attack with a positive covid test), (10) a successful vaccine
was never made after almost a *trillion* dollar, 35 year investment,
(11) there have been excellent muck-raking documentaries about all of
this, but there effect has been minimized, (12) Fraudci himself was
involved from the beginning (!). None of this is to deny the large
loss of life, esp. early in the epidemic, before the bathhouses had been
cleaned up, or that tuberculosis in an immune-suppressed person (e.g.,
immune suppression from taking chronic AZT!) in Africa can be deadly.
Despite all that, you can *still* be cancelled today for disputing that
'HIV is the main cause of AIDS' Matrix (e.g., this common sense
review
of the issue was
expunged
from the literature 5 years
after publication!). As Jon Rappaport has
skillfully
argued, the central con is that there in 'only one thing'.
But back to the covid Matrix, let's consider some of the
most amazing recent data from Israel on the results of the
covid
vaccine rollout. Israel has served as a giant, human guinea pig trial
for Pfizer's experimental mRNA vaccine, with half of the population now
injected with that single agent. The data are stunning, yet the obvious
conclusions have been completely filtered out by the covid Matrix,
even though the data are accessible to many.
As the vaccination campaign got off the ground, the result was a huge
increace in 'covid' deaths in Israel, equal to the total number of deaths
that had occurred from 'covid' up to that point! Prior to the vaccine,
'covid' deaths had been declining. Some were old people (cf. Norway,
Gibraltar), but strikingly, the new 'covid' deaths that occurred after
the vaccine included a larger percentage of young people, unlike the age
distribution in Israel before the vaccine, or in any other country for
that matter. After this 'successful' vaccine campaign, 76% of the new
Covid-19 cases were under age 39; 40% of critical patients are under 60.
Of course, hardly any Gaza Palestinians, considered untermenschen,
were given the vaccine. And instead of a new peak in Covid deaths, the
Palestinian control group continued to experience a reduction in 'covid'
deaths to almost nothing, all while many were living densely packed into
the largest open-air prison on earth. Another group where critical
'covid' cases increased sharply was in pregnant women, which could
be related to syncytin-1/spike similarities (for background, go
here
and
here).
Haim Yativ estimates (article
here)
that during the initial 5 weeks of the initial vaccination rollout, about
*40 times* more elderly died from the vaccine than from the disease itself
(that number for younger people was *260 times* greater death from the
vaccine than the disease).
This is stunning data, one of the clearest direct tests of
the usefulness of vaccination. It made things worse. A
very
similar spike in 'covid' deaths occurred in the UK within a month of
the start of the vaccination campaign, after deaths had previously been
*declining*. An obvious hypothesis is that this is antibody-dependent
enhancement (ADE), previously seen with all the attempts to make
a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1. Another possibility is that a somewhat
'leaky' vaccine (because it focuses on only one viral protein) is
causing the evolution of increased virulence and shedding (PDF
here
or video
here).
Though Bossche is suspiciously over-the-top with doom (and thus
is likely catapulting the covid psyop 'fear of variants' in
the service of big pharma), it's worth noting that the mechanism
he is talking about *has* previously been a problem with
chicken
vaccines for chicken-deadly Marek's disease (PBS,
2015), which led to the banning of some chicken
vaccines (infected animals culled instead). Here is an
experimental
paper demonstrating this effect.
Yet, the covid Matrix is *so* strong, the *outright failure* in Israel
(and the UK) is being used to force vaccine passports, doxing and social
ostracizing of people resisting the vaccine, virtually pinning labels
on people (the "Green Pass") to keep the 'untouchables' out of
public
venues! - in Israel! As with diet, the narrative Matrix only works
together with a limbic factor - in this case, fear. Reality *can* be
overridden - like the stunning reality that an unvaccinated child in
Africa has a higher chance of surviving their first year than a fully
vaccinated child in the US.
Perhaps the most amazing fact about the 'vaccine' is that there has
never in history been a clinical vaccine trial where the primary outcome
of the trial was the reduction in two common symptoms, where *both* of
these symptoms were standard adverse reactions to the vaccine, thus,
allowing ignoring those symptoms in the vaccinated arm of the trial.
Yet the covid Matrix is so strong that this emperor with no clothes is
never challenged in public.
At least with the diet Matrix, we are free to eat what we want even
if it differs from what most other people are eating. We are not
force-fed an overly rich diet. However, there is a real possibility
that covid 'vaccines' will be annually (or even twice annually) forced
upon us all, a contravention of the Nuremburg Principles against forced
medical treatments, under pain of complete social ostracization, or even
placement in a quarantine camp. But outside of the camp, you may still
need to wear or clean your 'smart mask' when your personal surveillance
device tells you to do so, under pain of banishment from ever being
able to go outside your house. Or maybe you'll have to walk through a
'disinfection pod' to get into a store or breathe 'quat' nanoparticles
from the ventilation system in your place of work. On the positive side,
a substantial proportion of the US population, at least one quarter,
is strongly against all of these things.
How it all works out, I still think, will depend in the short term
on how and when the 'everything bubble' pops, whether a new middle
east war is started, and what happens to oil prices. Longer term
interest rates, though still very low, have been relentlessly
rising; the new plan to manufacture $1.9 trillion from the void
could keep up the pressure, despite continuous and substantial bond
purchases by the Fed, which lower interest rates. It is important
to note that interest rates have increased despite the fact that the
recent staggering spike in the M1 money supply is due to
securities purchases
by the Fed.
When interest rate increases filter into the housing market and
the buy-your-own-stock 'market', everything has the potential
to turn sour quickly. Then there is the problem of a possible
2008-like spike in oil prices, or a new war in the middle east.
These shocks may have the effect of snapping people out of their Covid
Derangement Syndrome, which can then go into the DSM (one can always
hope :-} ). I could easily have the causality relations between the
imposition of the totalitarian covid Matrix and everything bubble and
its popping mixed up - see for example, this darker summary by
Clive
Maund.
But on the slightly longer term, the problem
of declining net energy (excellent summary
here)
will continuously block any attempt to re-expand or even maintain
complexity, with a large number of sequelae that are difficult to
predict. For example, slavery may expand, which was ubiquitous in
human 'culture', dating back to the third millenium BC, only mostly
ending with the discovery of fossil fuels. According to
Dmitri Orlov [video],
before US fracking collapsed, it had spent about $1 trillion and made
only $0.7 trillion; that is a clear indicator of the magnitude of the net
energy problem. Like the eventual popping of the 'everything bubble',
austerity will have the effect of refocusing people away from the covid
Matrix, unfortunately, by displacing it with something worse.
I always like to end on a more positive note, so on the
bright side, the initial decline in available net energy will
be gradual :-} And don't miss this uplifting article from
Jeffrey
A. Tucker.
[Mar10'21]
1984 and Idiocracy got together and had a child
The combination of Idiocray and totalitarian medical
tyranny is seriously unsettling. First, Idiocracy.
This clip of Biden haplessly trying to follow his earpiece is
mind
boggling. While announcing two new female generals, he can't remember
the name of his host, or of the Pentagon (!); and then he explains how the
new military will be making 'maternity flight suits'. First, there is
the elder abuse of a dementia patient supposedly elected by the largest
ever increment in turnout. But then, the narrative prepared for him!
'Maternity flight suits' so pregnant women can more comfortably bomb the
untermenschen?! 'Saturday Night Live' has been overtaken by reality!
It's hard to imagine how the sorry state of Biden's brain on a bad day
like today will be able to remain even partially hidden from the world
for the next four years. It's worth remembering, however, that Reagan's
Alzheimer's got pretty bad (tho only toward the end of his second term);
and the servile official press never took note there either.
But now, put that circus together with rapidly descending
vaccine police state, first rolled out in Israel. 50%
of Israelis were vaccinated, which resulted in a
record
spike in 'covid' deaths - as many deaths as had occurred in
the previous year from 'covid' prior to the vaccine. But that
was immediately followed by a 'Green Pass', with the unvaccinated
denied access to many venues. Check out the green, '
vaccinated-only'
beach chairs (I would have found a left link but the so-called 'left'
has censored it).
Today, it was announced that the sports stadium in San Diego is opening,
but only for the vaccinated. Though, I have never been to the stadium
and wouldn't miss not being able to go, the goal is to make it seem
inevitable that before long, you won't be able to go to the supermarket
and get food without the latest vaccine. We are being taken physically
hostage like cattle by vicious and amoral big pharma and big tech in a
way that was unimaginable a year ago. Here is an excellent review of
how bad big pharma
*already was* before covid! We must shake off the fog and rebel.
Great awakening, not reset.
Update Mar11: 'Biden' just gave a speech featuring the sentence: "We
will issue further guidance on what you can and cannot do once fully
vaccinated". I guess the *un*vaccinated just get to stay in prison
forever. Resist! At this rate, if you don't voluntarily get vaccinated,
you might be forcefully vaccinated with one of the leftover Astra Zeneca
batch, the one based on a chimpanzee adenovirus that can cause blood
clots and so was temporarily banned in the EU. Hmmm... mass *injection*
of a chimpanzee nasal/respiratory virus genetically modified to contain
a single covid protein sequence in its DNA into the human bloodstream
for the first time - what could possibly go wrong?
[Mar31'21]
Biomedical apartheid
I am generally an upbeat doomer. However, over the past few months,
the looming prospect of medical apartheid has really begun to disturb
me, esp. after hearing Simone Gold's most recent talk (video
here). As the $1.5
billion fund in the 'Biden' (the collective, not the potted plant)
stimulus bill for advertising to overcome 'vaccine hesitancy' kicks into
high gear (the largest advertising campaign in history - Update: now $4
billion!), the unvaccinated are increasingly being portrayed in media
and social media as filthy, immoral, subhumans who are endangering the
lives of the rest of the right-thinking human race. There are increasing
calls to deny the unvaccinated basic human rights.
This is not about science, epidemiology, or virology but rather
about reaching down into our non-verbal chimpanzee brains upon which
our language system rides around on top of, using methods originally
developed by Edward Bernays in the early 20th century.
CJ Hopkins, a US expat playwrite living in Berlin took
the words out of my mouth in an excellent piece
here.
Also, the new group Freedom Israel has a short video
here illustrating
that Israel (!) has gone the furthest down this path of any country.
To keep their "Green Pass", Israelis may have to get
4 shots every
year.
Despite the gloom, however, I refuse . . . to
give up sarcasm :-} . Be sure to get your vac
because the skin-peeling-off reaction is rare (pics
here
and
here).
But it's not just the filthy unvaccinated untermenschen that need to go
into the camps. We will *all* need to go there because the vac doesn't
stop infection or transmission or death, as demonstrated by '
breakthrough
cases' in a number of states including
Florida
and
Michigan.
We must therefore make the whole country one happy holding camp - for
the curve that *never* flattens! All your body are belong to us.
But seriously, we have a monster net-energy problem staring us in the
face over the next two decades. If we are going to have any chance
of responding adaptively to this most crucial juncture of all time for
humanity, we are going to need people that can *think* and *debate*, not
comply. Instead, with half of the population alienated by an over-the-top
one-sided media, and by massive one-sided censorship of social media, we
are essentially seeing the beginnings of 'ethnic cleansing' in response.
But that's only a short term 'solution'.
[Apr06'21]
Sledgehammer science and medicine
The principal conceptual framework of big pharma is to patent
a single-point-of-contact, usually injectable, drug, designed to
strongly suppress or elevate a single node in the unbelievably complex
meshwork of interactions between the state of genes, proteins, and
gene-control elements in individual cells, each with a complete copy
of the genome. There is also the state of the incredibly diverse
microbiome and the microvirome to consider, too. The only reason
that single-point-of-contact drugs work *at all* is that the amazing
equilibrium-reestablishing powers of these interacting biological systems,
which fixes many of the imbalances caused by strongly depressing or
elevating a single node.
For example, statins block HMG-CoA reductase,
which after 27 additional steps (diagram
here)
yields cholesterol, a key component of the cell membrane of every
neuron in your body. A large number of the intermediate steps generate
biological molecules that are used for other things than cholesterol.
Many bodies can adapt to this insult; but others suffer debilitating
muscle cramps, and muscle damage and wasting, or brain malfunction and
brain damage (e.g., memory loss).
Conceptually, it appears as if the drug has 'fixed' something when in
fact, it was only a crude sledgehammer. The overwhelming importance of
the equilibrium-reestablishing biology is conceptually (and monetarily)
invisible. 'Cholesterol' is not even the biggest problem; high blood
lipids (including cholesterol) is mainly a sign that the body has detected
massive inflammation in the arterial intima (lining of the arteries),
which is almost always the result of incorrect diet (not enough plants,
too much animal protein/fat, too much purified oil). Turning down
cholesterol with the sledgehammer statin approach isn't even vaguely
similar to (or vaguely as effective as!) turning down inflammation
(and cholesterol) by fixing diet.
An analogous argument explains how the body manages to make it through an
mRNA vaccine mostly in one piece. Normally, each cell in the body has
a complex pattern of gene regulation, which is different in different
cell types and also in different cells of the same type depending on
their local environments. Injecting a single enabled (poly-A tail) and
unnaturally-stable mRNA (pseudouridine) within an inflammatory PEG-ylated
lipid nanoparticle that can potentially get it into *every* cell in the
body (e.g., into neurons) and bludgeon each cell into inappropriately
expressing the same partial spike protein is potientially a catastrophe.
For example, injecting the bare spike protein into a mouse is quite
toxic itself and gets into the mouse brain. The miraculous fact that
most people can make it through this assault is a testament to the
powerful regenerative and homeostatic properties of living cytoplasm.
It remains to be seen what the longer term effects are (One rat: "You
getting the vaccine?". The other rat: "Nah, I'll wait until they finish
the human trials").
Once again, the big pharma product is given all the credit for a
'specific' cure, when in fact, the 'cure' is sloppy and ham-handed.
The fact that most humans survive the treatment then gives big pharma
license to try again and again.
A final example is CRISPR-Cas9, the massively hyped 'gene-editing
technique of the future' (the technique used by a rogue scientist used to
edit twin human embyros that were actually born). The glossy advertising
copy is that this method allows inserting sequences into specific genes
to 'fix' them. The reality is that CRISPR-Cas9 causes double-stranded
breaks in DNA. Complex systems within each cell allows it to detect
this and activate DNA repair mechanisms, which are then hijacked with
homolgous donor DNA to introduce intended mutations. Last month in
Science magazine, there was breathless coverage of how CRISPR is
just about ready to 'fix' Wolfram syndrome, a single gene mutation.
The reality is that CRISPR-Cas9 induces
massive
'collateral damage', causing many unintended small inserts, but also
sometimes deleting large sections of chromosomes and causing chromosomal
translocations. The reason that the mice and human cell lines (already
cancerous and already aneuploid) survive is because they are incredibly
resilient (e.g., having two chromosomes so when a gene on one is damaged,
the other can still work or be upregulated). As with the previous two
examples, the idea that it is really possible to have a single point of
contact is an conceptual illusion.
The take-home point of all three examples is one that has often been made
by William Wimsatt, about 'biases from reductionist research strategies'.
Although it is often scientifically productive to use reductionist
'single point of contact' strategies, it's critically important to step
back constantly and remember how the the whole system actually works.
[Apr14'21]
Burning losers, and some winners
Burning Man is planning to require proof of vaccination. How
revolutionary it will be to 'burn in safety'! What losers! Here are
some healthy diet people who were never losers: Pam Popper, Jeff Nelson,
Doug Lisle, Alan Goldhammer. And here are some other people who took
more time to figure it out, but finally did: Pennyforyourthoughts,
Paul Craig Roberts, Raul Ilargi Meijer, John Day. Finally, it's only
fitting that Wretchen Witchmer, the lockdown queen, is now saddled with
the highest per capita number of covid problems (cases, deaths) of *any*
state in the entire country!
[Apr17'21]
How to prevent the nightmare scenario
There is already data out there (UK, Israel, Gibraltar, now US) showing
so-called 'breakthrough' infections of covid in fully vaccinated
people, including many deaths. This is consistent with the expected
antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) or pathogenic priming, that was
previously seen with *all* vaccine candidates in animal studies done with
SARS CoV-1, where animals challenged with a SARS CoV-1 infection after
vaccination faired *worse* than unvaccinated animals in *every* case.
There are virtually no published animal studies looking for this with
SARS CoV-2 vaccines (I only came across one study with a few macaque
monkeys, but difficult to assess since SARS CoV-2 doesn't make macaque
monkey sick).
If the SARS CoV-2 vaccines turn out to be like every single SARS CoV-1
vaccine candidate, we might expect a large outbreak of 'covid-21'
this fall or winter. In fact, that is exactly what is predicted
in the latest SAGE report from the UK (point 32 in PDF
here).
We have to plan ahead, folks! This will immediately be attributed to a
new 'variant', blasted out over the Mighty Wurlitzer (Twitter-litzer!).
This will be used to implement two things: (1) a third top-up vaccination,
with the prospect of top-up vaccinations every 6 months, forever, and
(2) an attack on the unvaccinated, as the filthy 'yellow star' people
who supposedly caused it. This is a true nightmare scenario that could
quickly descend into concentration camps or forced vaccination.
The only way to prevent this is to have enough unvaccinated people
remaining, who are mentally strong enough to resist the onslaught
of the $4.5 billion dollar vaccination propaganda campaign now being
rolled out, so that a control group - and decent statistics - will be
available to determine whether vaccination helped or hurt. Time is
getting short. Patti Smith got the jab and Mick Jagger makes fun of
'conspiracy theorists' :-Q (that's a tongue sticking out at him). For
example, the EU is currently in talks with Pfizer to buy 4 mRNA shots
for *every person* in the EU (1.8 billion doses). We *must* stop this
from happening in the US.
[Jun18'21]
An unnecessarily steep net energy cliff may be here soon
Though I have been seriously disturbed by many 'good Americans'
approving shockingly totalitarian forced medical treatments, as I have
mentioned many times, declining net energy is an even bigger, and even
more invisible problem, right on our doorsteps. The happy talk about
electric cars, wind turbines, and 'they are hiding all this great tech,
which will/can save us' misses the fact that 'renewable' energy is not
even vaguely close to a drop-in replacement for fossil fuels.
The basic numbers about how industrial civilization uses fossil fuel
are easily available on the internet. Here are the main points. We get
about 85% of total energy from fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas).
That percentage *has not changed at all*, as seemingly large amounts of
'renewable' (rebuildable) energy has been added. 'Renewable' energy now
accounts for only 3-4% of total energy use, and that percentage has barely
budged because total energy use has continued upward. In fact, all the
solar cells in the world have not even covered *growth* in energy use.
Despite all the hype about electric cars, solar, and wind, there
hasn't been a trace of reduction in the rate of increase CO2
output. In fact, over the past decade, the slope of CO2 output
has actually *increased*. This is because manufacturing, now in
the case of the US largely outsourced to China and surrounding,
mostly uses fossil fuels, and the world is manufacturing
more stuff. Solar cells are mostly made out of coal in China and
transported here by bunker fuel and diesel. During 2020, China
constructed
a new coal power plant *every week* (73 gigawatts of new coal power,
5 times as much as any other country, roughly equivalent to *all* the
solar electric capacity ever installed in the US) - to make, among other
things, more solar cells and electric car batteries. Every human on
the planet, on average, uses 2 tons of concrete per year. None of it is
made with solar and wind; it is made by cooking limestone at 2,700 deg
F in fossil fuel powered ovens, and then grinding the cooled, rock-hard
'clinker' result into a powder.
As a result of this utter conceptual disconnect between
energy reality and energy 'talk', we are setting ourselves up
for a more catastrophic than necessary energy cliff. This is
because the anti-oil happy talk is partially responsible for a
huge
drop in capital expenditure for oil exploration. The average
person, not thinking about how their Amazon tchotchke was manufactured
and delivered to them, with virtually every step on the way to their
doorstep (industrial furnaces, mining, packaging, and transportation)
critically dependent on fossil fuel, will say, great, stick it to the
oil companies. They will then conveniently forget about 'oil companies
bad' while filling up their gas tank, or when they plug in their electric
car to the grid at night (entirely run by fossil fuel), or when they get
on a plane powered by kerosine, or turn on their electric or gas stove,
or heat or airconditioning in the evening (all fossil fuel).
The unnecessarily steep energy cliff could come into view
over the next year (or two) as depletion of existing fracked
wells continues and when Saudi may not be not able to make
up the difference. A spike in oil prices (perhaps
already underway)
would of course motivate the frackers to dust off their drilling
equipment. But there is an unavoidable delay, during which all
hell could break loose, given the delicate, preposterously inflated,
'everything bubble'. It's worth remembering that the last oil price spike
(to $140/barrel) in the summer of 2008 was strongly correlated with the
2008 crash and may have been a major contributing cause.
[Jul24'21]
How we burned in the camps later
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have
been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make
an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to
say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for
example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city,
people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at
every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase,
but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set
up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes,
hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would
very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and,
notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have
ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more
we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply
deserved everything that happened afterward." - - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
The Gulag Archipelago.
The French have the right idea - the entire protective detail of the
President of France, The Republican Guard, have all resigned, forcing
Macron to scramble for protection.
Update: Jul 29: More excellent
ideas from the French: a Paris city administration building was sprayed with horse shit
from a large hose by French farmers (in 2014, we need a reprise!).
The French have a great verb, s'emmerder, with meanings ranging from
annoyance to FU. Translated literally, "je t'emmerder" (FU) roughly
means something like I cover you in shit :-} ).
[Aug04'21]
Is the covid operation finally foundering?
Perhaps it was because I watched the colorful "The Fifth Element"
and then went and read some news, but I'm starting to get the feeling
that the covid operation is faltering. Maybe it was seeing Peter
Hotez like a cartoon character tyrant ranting about how it was a
'hate
crime' to question Lord Fauci :-} . Or seeing the absurd and blackly
hilarious spectacle of the Taliban blowing into town - with masks (?!).
Or maybe it was Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA
'vaccines', getting dumped *again* from LinkedIn, probably
because he just reasonably pointed out that
universal
vaccination with leaky vacines is a very bad idea - because of
the danger of creating something analogous to an extra virulent form of
Marek's disease in humans. Marek's disease is a viral chicken disease
that was made more virulent by a leaky vaccine. The debacle forced
killing all vaccinated flocks and forced the withdrawal of the Marek's
disease vaccine. Malone supports confining vaccination to those actually
at risk of covid.
As the censorship is being jacked up all around (Mercola was just
forced by personal threats to take down all the useful part of
his 25 years of content), the internet still allows people ways
around it that weren't possible 40 years ago. As the official
media and 'health' administrators stories gets more and more
Kafkesque, I'm hoping it may slow the approach toward
concentration camps
for the unvaccinated. If you think I am exaggerating,
check
out this statement from Paul Louis Street, an editor of the supposedly
'left' Counterpunch magazine, started by the late Alexander Cockburn,
which I used to read! A chunk of the 'left' has truly turned into
fascist totalitarians - by their own description! Finally, on the
positive side, we are seeing glimmers of very welcome pushback
from
the so-far somnolent left.
[Aug13'21]
Friday the 13th
The grinding worldwide totalitarian lockdown has depressingly
lumbered toward a 'Great Nazi Reset'. And many 'Good
Americans' are trying to studiously avoid seeing the obvious
signs of a Weimar-like disaster ahead (like the
new House
bill to block the unvaccinated from flying, or the LA ordinance to try
prevent the unvaccinated from going into grocery stores), and have instead
concentrated on distractions. Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger turned
'girlie man' on masks and says "screw your freedom" (scheisse!; but
German
graffiti really let's it all hang out (yikes!).
However, I think things could
turn
around quickly here. Take a look at
the latest polls of American
consumer sentiment here,
which has crashed *below* the lows at the beginning of the COVID
operation. This suggests the possibility that large changes could
be right around the corner. Or look at the execrable Newsom, now
neck-and-neck in the recall polls, even given that there are no attractive
replacements. The insane continued inflation of the stock/bond/housing
bubble is looking so scary that a minor cut or scratch could lead to a
straight vertical down discontinuity in the next few months. As many
have previously noted, greed-FOMO-madness often goes on somewhat longer
that one expects. However, it *never* goes on forever.
Here is a pithy video on the criminal behavior going
on behind the scenes at hospitals, from an
occupational therapist
in Hawaii, who has sometimes worked in Kalihi in Oahu, the valley
where my father was born :-} Thinking of my father makes me think of the
old folk song, "Which side are you on?", which my father used to play
for me as a kid. Everyone has a personal moral choice to make: resist
or collaborate! Here is another extraordinarily brave ICU nurse
explaining
how we are being lied to about COVID. And finally,
Peter McCullough 'tells it like it is' in a
a
cogent 2 minutes here that all should watch.
When the inevitable economic crash comes, of course, there
will be an attempt to blame it on the unvaccinated. However,
common sense may prevail, since even the CDC now admits that
the vaccines have failed. Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the
Oxford Vaccine Group (AstraZeneca) just publicly said
[vaccine-induced]
"herd immunity is *not* possibility"! Or look at
the latest data from Israel. Natural infection is
spectacularly
more effective than vaccine-induced protection - 40% of new COVID
patients were vaccinated compared to just 1% of those infected previously
(natural immunity). And more and more brave doctors like
Dr. Dan
Stock are coming forward to speak the truth (scrubbed
from youtube in a few days, now probably only temporarily on
jack twitface, where it quickly got 6M views; a rumble backup is
here).
The vaccines don't prevent infection by, or transmission of, the Delta
variant; in fact, the Delta viral load in *vaccinated* is a stunning
250x
as high as in *unvaccinated* infected with original
variants. As many predicted, that was caused by the virus
spike protein evolving against the leaky vaccine - not by the
unvaccinated.
[Update Aug17: Take a look at this amazing
illustration of what happened to virus genetic diversity
when genetically-identical vaccines were rolled out worldwide!
Thtis is analogous to antibiotic resistance. It's evolution
101.] Another recent study showed that symptomatic
people with positive PCR (Ct < 25) shed live virus
irrespective
of vaccination status. The current (sic) 'pandemic' is not a
pandemic of the unvaccinated, but rather a pandemic caused by vaccination!
The fake 95% (or 99%!) 'pandemic of the vaccinated' numbers comes from:
(1) starting counting deaths in late Dec 2020 when vaccinations were
minimal, combined with (2) counting any death that occurred in a person
up to before 2 weeks after their *second shot* as an 'unvaccinated'
death, so all the vaccine-induced deaths get dumped into 'unvaccinated'.
More worrying for the vaccination jihad, there have been hints of
antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), a well-known possibility from
the very beginning, since ADE occurred in *all* previous (animal)
trials of coronavirus vaccines, including all candidate vaccines for the
original SARS-CoV-1. For ADE and covid, see this study on the
infection-enhancing
properties of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in Journal of Infection.
The authors wonder aloud whether this could be a serious risk for mass
vaccination. The finding is that *non*-neutralizing, vaccine-induced
antibodies have *higher* affinity for the spike protein and actually
*enhance* disease when compared to the natural-infection-elicited
*neutralizing* antibodies that have *lower* affinity for the spike protein
and actually *stop* disease. Better binding can be part of the mechanism
of ADE. Biology could care less about corporate vaccine propaganda.
Finally, the vaccines don't even prevent serious symptoms -
e.g., the majority of the covid-hospitalized in Israel were
vaccinated, and the death rates of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated
were similar in the UK (the latest PDF report from the UK is
here
- go to two rightmost columns of Table 5 to see the vac/unvac comparisons,
where you find almost twice as many deaths in the *vaccinated*). That
pattern is likely to be repeated here in a few months, and may become
visible, even given the CDC's fraud of stopping counting breakthrough
cases in the vaccinated, while still reporting cases in the unvaccinated.
On the positive side, however, despite the ridiculous fear porn,
the
Delta variant is far less deadly, exactly as one would have
expected from typical patterns of virus evolution. As Robert
W. Malone says, the 'noble lie' is slowly but surely being dismantled
in plain sight. The lied-to now just have to man up and
face
reality. Take heart! After the US spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan,
the entire fake edifice collapsed in just a few days. The vaccine
emperor here wears no clothes; a quick collapse of the great reset could
happen here.
To finish with a joke stolen from a Samuel Vimes comment,
Fact Cheka (hah!) Snopes' cofounder is suspended for
for
mass plagiarism and staff revolts.
[Aug18'21]
Keep our eyes on the prize
In an
Official:
Letter to the Resident, the Australian government has informed its
people that it is building a "Centre for National Resilience" for them in
Melbourne, a quarantine camp where you can manditorily relax. The caring
health Taliban are following the science: "The Centre's design will be
informated by public health and infection control experts". Also, "The
Centre will have dedicated onsite amenities to support strong infection
prevention and control by reducing the need for external services and
staff to access the facility". No word yet on provisions for showers.
The goal of things like that (or
or
this for that matter) has nothing to do with 'covid'
or health. Rather, the goal is to scare people all over the
world into an all-encompaassing digital currency system where
a world central bank will record and control all transactions,
have complete control over them, including the ability to cancel
anyone's money, at any time, for any transaction. That is the
real motivation behind so-called 'vaccine passports'. Here is a
good
video summary from Catherine Austin Fitts.
A worldwide totalitarian system currently being constructed to radically
centralize control of the entire world. The controlled demolition
of small businesses throughout the world by the covid operation is
a key step along the way. Catherine's key point is that we are all
participating in building this centralized, humanity-strangling control
system that includes big pharma, big tech, and large banks. We have to
stop financing our common enemy and building our own prison. If even 10%
stopped collaborating, we could bring this down! We must all hang together
or we will surely hang separately! - Benjamin Franklin.
[Aug23'21]
FDA undermines public confidence in health care
After a 'stellar' performance by the industry-funded FDA just a few months
ago, when they approved a $60,000/year Alzheimer's drug (aducanumab)
that showed zero clinical benefits, after their scientific advisory
committee voted unanimously *against* its approval, the FDA just approved
the Pfizer clot shot, which by any measure is orders of magnitude more
deadly than any previous vaccine that has ever been generally rolled
out. There was no public hearing or release of data that supported
the decision was made. The unprecedented swiftness of the approval,
6 months from rollout, long before Phase 3 clinical trials have ended
(late 2022 or 2023), has completely upended procedures that were put in
place more than a half-century ago to avoid atrocities like thalidomide
(though atrocities like Vioxx, which killed roughly 100K people before
being withdrawn still occurred). The FDA approval occurred under
the direction of Janet Woodcock, who is conveniently resigning as of
Nov 15. All previous rules for rational behavior are now null and void.
We shouldn't be surprised if people begin to act accordingly.
Now that drugs can be approved without expensive Phase 3 trials, there
will be a stampede of big pharma companies slavering at the door of
the FDA, who will be only too happy to accommodate them. This will
go down in history as a black day for pubic health that will
seriously undermine public trust in the medical system. This is
a
new low for the FDA. The bleak future of an
endless
parade of forced medical treatments is coming into focus.
Hard to say what's ahead. If the recent hints of ADE (antibody-dependent
enhancement AKA vaccine-enhanced infection) are supported by
new data, this will mean the evolutionary 'adaptive landscape'
for the virus has changed. John Day makes this excellent point
here.
For a more technical expositions, see the excellent
Directed
evolution by Kevin McKernan. See also
leaky
vaccines, super-spreads, and variant acceleration by el gato malo.
The existence of vaccine-induced antibodies that enhance infection may
result in viral evolution that targets the vaccinated while sparing the
less-infectable unvaccinated. As John Day says, keep an eye on the data
coming out from Israel. Bummer, man. That result undermines the whole
reason to get the vaccine in the first place. This may explain why the
covid gestapo seems so utterly desperate to try to remove all traces
of an unvaccinated control group (they already eliminated/vaccinated
the control group in their 'clinical trial' after just a few months) .
I don't think they will succeed.
Meryl Nass
points
out that once the vaccine is licensed, Pfizer will be exposed to
liability, since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act only
applied to vaccines on the pedi schedule or CDC-directed for pregnant
women. Thus, Pfizer may try to continue to use the EUA doses while having
the public think they are the not-yet-manufactured 'Comirnaty' (same or
similar physically, mainly distinguished by the legal difference!) in
order to avoid liability. Given the totality of regulatory capture by
big pharma, however, it's probably only a matter of time until a liability
shield for Comirnaty is granted. After all, Pfizer demanded Argentinian
military bases as collateral for the EUA rollout. Wake up peeps!
[Update: Aug30: The initial assessment above of the hard-to-read
legal wording of the approval by Nass, Malone, and Kennedy has been
criticized in an article in the Bezos-owned WaPo by Glenn
Kessler, who argues that Comirnaty *is* covered under the PREP act,
and therefore, is already shielded from liability. The weasel wording
of the approval remains very confusing.]
[Update: Sep01: The FDA, in an unreported meeting, after the
resignations of two long time members
explicitly removed liability from Comirnaty].
[Sep01'21]
You will own nothing *and* you will be injected monthly to maintain your 'health'
The fruits of the $4 billion dollar ad campaign to convince the sheeple of
the US that every human on earth needs to be injected with gene-therapy
mRNA in order to be 'healthy' are obvious by listening to a few minutes
of Pravda/CNN/NPR, if you can stand to do it without gagging.
But as the news of leaky vaccines leaks out, with the injected faithful
catching 'covid' anyway, along with the stunning revelation that the human
immune system can actually function better *without* an injection, along
with the fact that the injected are just as infectious (or sometimes
250x
as infectious!) as the uninjected, a certain ennui has descended
upon the health 'care' faithful. For example, KISS dutifully
injected themselves, banned uninjected from their concerts, paid
for an expensive covid 'health bubble team' - and then got 'covid'
- in the middle of the freaking summer! The most vaccinated
county in America, Marin county at 98%, is undergoing a covid
breakout. Heavily injected and boostered Israel now has the
highest
per capita number of covid infections
in the world; they are experiencing a
pandemic
of the vaccinated. Injection effectiveness is
down to 65%
in a high injected (83%) population of health care worker in San Diego
(the article mindlessly suggests fixing this with more masks, lockdowns,
and tests).
The dejected injected are embarrassingly
realizing they may have turned themselves into dastardly
asymptomatic super-spreaders. The whole case for vaccine
passports has been demolished. Darwinian evolution of viruses is
what it is, and evolution could care care less about politics;
forced
universal vaccination into an ongoing epidemic with a narrowly
focused single-protein approach (there are 29 proteins in SARS-CoV-2)
was simply a terrible strategy.
The frightened faculty desperately clamouring for Biden to deliver their
warp-speed injections, but 'done right', are now beginning to realize
that they have unintentionally been inducted into a new lifelong plan of
'in-body artificial mRNA gene therapy immunity as a booster subscription
service' (Tessa Lena). Pfizer is now working on a twice-a-day COVID
pill that must be taken alongside the injections (I was thinking
anti-coagulant, but supposedly it's a protease inhibitor, and what?
no anti-covid suppositories?). Get the new 5-gallon family size Pfizer
vaccine at Costco! (Babylon Bee). And while many people are currently
going along with the ever more strangling tentacles of cell-phone based
'health' tyranny like good little Eichmann's, they are nevertheless
discomfited. Consumer confidence is cratering. All the promises of
'normal life returning after the injection' are being dashed. Some of
the triple-injected are already re-infected and dying less than a month
after the enforced rollout. Even the rage at the uninjected doesn't
make them feel better thinking about their darkening, constrained future.
The burning question now is whether the sheeple can now be scared
once again back into submission merely by a steaming pile of
'lamb'-da
or 'moo' booga-booga, so that they will go along like domesticated animals
and get all their kids injected off-label. But perhaps they are starting
to grow a little wise about the constant variants? Maybe 'leftists'
are starting to get annoyed at a doddering Chomsky, who knows nothing
about biology, telling them that the uninjected need to be isolated from
society? Or the double-think ACLU explaining how forced injections are a
'victory' for civil liberties?! We shall see. The CDC is predicting
an 'outbreak' of polio-like 'multisystem inflammatory syndrome' in
children 5-12 this Fall. How do they know? (pay no attention to the
safe and effective injection behind the curtain, and doncha know,
MIS is *completely* different than other vaccine-caused things like
Guillain-Barre syndrome. Right.). They don't call it the Center for
Disease Creation for nothing!
[Sep12'21]
Understanding and dismantling psyops in real time
The Off-Guardian just published a well-written piece on "
Covid's
willing executioners", by a psychologist, which rehearses well-worn
arguments on how people can relatively easily be coerced into regarding
other fellow humans as less human than themselves (Milgram at Yale,
or the Stanford Prison Experiment). The conscious, science and
engineering understanding of how to control people using fear and
greed is now a full century old (Tavistock Institute, Bernays, etc),
though these methods go back to the beginning of 'high civilization',
when farming grain permitted taxation and first supported armies big
enough to capture slaves (see Against the Grain, 2017, by James C. Scott).
We have also known for over a century that human language, the
second
coming of a symbol-using system (the first being the DNA and
protein-based system in every living cell), rides around on a chimpanzee
brain chassis. If a common chimpanzee troop comes across another troop
trying to encroach on their territory, under conditions of stress (e.g.,
a primate researcher provisioning the animals with a heavenly amount of
bananas, fruit of the gods, initially unbeknownst to the researchers at a
site that just happened to be inside one of the troops' territories) one
troop has been documented to hunt down and completely wipe out the other
troop (Jane Goodall). The concept of the 'other' long predates humans.
Of course, bonobos are somewhat different and would probably nervously
have sex with the other troop in a conflict situation. And humans are
natively way more monogamous than any typical chimpanzee troop (either
common or bonobo), where no chimpanzee father has ever known who his
kids are (probably an adaptation to avoid infanticide). Thus, it is
hazardous to make direct analogies. But the basic emotional hardware
of the 'other' and of 'cooties' very likely still functions the same way.
So the Off-Guardian piece tells me nothing new. The analogy in the
title was to Hitler's willing executioners. There has been a spate of
similar highly publicized (e.g., MSNBC) hate pieces on why we should
drone the unvaccinated (white supremacists, Trump supporters, etc),
or put them in concentration camps, or deny them medical treatment.
The piece in Off-Guardian, by contrast, was apparently written from an
in-group perspective, so you might at first be tempted to read it with
your guard down.
But what is a piece like this really on about? I think it is designed
to do exactly the same thing that the hate pieces are designed to do!
They are designed simply to scare straight thinking people into thinking
in a non-rational manner!
It's important to keep our eyes on the ball. As real data about
vaccine safety and effectiveness dribbles out, many of the people who
were frightened into taking it are beginning to experience cognitive
dissonance, despite the 24/7 onslaught of $4.5 billion dollar jihad
against 'vaccine hesitancy'. Karl Denninger has done a
simple
analysis of the most recent UK data, which shows that for
people 40-79, being vaccinated actually makes it
*more*
likely for you to get Covid-19, and thus spread it (N.B.:
this is *negative* effectiveness - that is, less than zero percent
effective). We are a few months behind the UK and Israel in our
arc of vaccination, but as the effectiveness of the vaccine fades,
and the 'enhanced infection' aspect of ADE (as opposed to the
enhanced disease aspect of ADE) starts to unfold, just as many of
us predicted almost 2 years ago, it is turning out that it's Grampa
Joe Dementia who's trying to kill granny! The hard data on
vaccine
failure is getting clearer and clearer every day.
None of this is to make light of rifts in families and friendships
engineered by this psyop (from a comment on a Denninger article:
"My family on both sides has written me off because I will not join the
church of the cranial blood clot"). But we must not forget that the psyop
and the smell of fear is directed at us, just as much as it is directed
at keeping the mindless teevee watchers' minds in a state of fearful
irrationality, as the cogntive dissonance begins to grow. The mindless
teevee watchers and NYT readers have now all heard through the grapevine
of many people injured or killed by the vaccines. Or maybe they read
one of many thousands of online accounts. For example, here is
a
recent random one from reddit, where commenters realize by sharing
experiences that the vaccines themselves are sometimes causing 'long
covid'.
This may not dislodge some people's faith, even after
a
life partner has been struck down. But, most people
will take some pause after a glance at the latest
yearly VAERS
data (downloaded Sep 10, 2021), which makes it clear
that there is some real carnage out there. There are
facts
on the ground glaringly obvious to frontline nurses that explain why
a lot of nurses are refusing the vaccine, even if it means losing their
job. These experimental vaccines are at least 30-50x more deadly than
any previous vaccine in history. Frightened people also unconsciously
know that it is morally wrong to vaccinate healthy young people where
the risk-benefit ratio is clearly unfavorable for them (all risk, no
benefit), mainly in order to save the elderly obese, who make up 80%
of the covid casualties in the US. The critical consideration here is
that mostly subconscious cognitive dissonance is a moderating companion
to mostly subconscious fear.
The faithful are now also constantly hearing about 'boosters'. Boosters
weren't in the original plan of flatten the curve, get the vaccine, and
move on. Boosters are causing massive amount of cognitive dissonance for
the vaccinated. The only possible explanation for boosters is that
the vaccine doesn't work. There is no other explanation, even
for a scared, mindless teevee watcher. Despite the nooz having
pretended for a year that the natural immune system doesn't exist,
the fact that natural immunity turns out to 10x as effective
as vaccine-induced immunity has crept in around the edges,
even in the daily sermon from the Center for Disease Creation.
The wheels are coming off the bus to such an extent that
CNN
has had to respond [25s vid].
A final addition to the witches' brew is the everything bubble.
It is looking like the Fed may have decided that it's time, once
again, to 'shear the muppets' over the next 6 months. Everyone
is all in - just like they always are before a bubble pops.
It's certainly gone on longer (8 years longer, to be precise :-}
) than I was expecting; but it never goes on forever. The brain
basis of fear and greed will never go away. When the bubble pops,
this will of course cause more fear. But it will also withdraw
some 'fear juice' from the covid operation. Take a look at
the
state of the labor market on which Joe Dementia is imposing an
injection requirement - twice the previous record number of job openings!
It's the most distorted labor market ever.
So, let's keep our eyes on the ball and not lose our rationality
in the same way. In public, it's not worth messing with
trying to describe 'science' to frightened people because they
won't be able to reason rationally about it. Better to enhance
already-growing cognitive dissonance indirectly; dontcha know
Costco
has a new 5-gallon family-size Pfizer vaccine
deal? (Babylon Bee). Or just
make
fun of the angry grampa. There will be an endless parade of 'red
meat' stories about the 'new civil war'. Just ignore them and say no,
firmly and confidently. "I was just carrying out orders" is not a legal
defense for medical workers or university health adminstrators. The UK
just dropped vaccine passports this weekend perhaps because they know
the vaccine is no longer working. That may eventually happen here, too.
There is no time to lose with paralyzing fear. A
world-spanning
prison digital prison is rapidly being erected around us by little
Eichmanns, all directed by corporate and government overlords that
currently do not have enough fear. Vaccine passports are just another
brick in the wall, and they could eaily be reintroduced on the occasion
of another crisis (e.g., if ADE shows up this winter). It's critical
to keep our eyes open because the bad guys are not fated to win.
I think they are overplaying their hand, which is showing a little
desperation/fear. From now on, it is increasingly going to be a race
between digital prison construction and resource/energy depletion (you
can't have a digital prison without a working grid). In that context,
small, directed resistance efforts made by moderately large numbers of
people can change the outcome. We must make *them* feel fear.
[Oct03'21]
NYC used to be cool!
As a sometime jazz guitar player, I used to look up to NYC as the center
of the jazz world. Now NYC has turned into the most uncool place I can
think of! After frontline nurses and doctors risked their lives working
with covid patients for a year without the vaccine, these former heros
are now being unceremoniously fired and then even denied the possibility
of receiving unemployment after being fired (!) because they don't
want the vac, oh, I don't know, maybe after seeing what it has done
to people coming into their emergency rooms? New York City is shameful
and disgusting. New York sucks. Unfortunately, California is trying to
outdo New York by mandating the clot shot for children before even the
vile pharma-funded worms at the FDA have even approved it for children.
Things like this may explain why more people left beautiful California
last year for the first time in modern history.
[Oct11'21]
The pace is quickening - the next 6 months is critical
The pace of controlled demolition of industrial civilization seems to
be quickening. Over the past few months, the Bank of Japan has
stopped
'printing money' - the BoJ's balance sheet of $6.4 trillion
dollars (up from $1.4 trillion in 2013) is finally starting to decline.
The incredible increase in credit in the China property market is looking
to contract if President Xi avoids bailing out Evergrande (in order to
avoid even more moral hazard). As inflation rages, interest rates are
(finally!) beginning to creep upward across the world. The shrieking
about unvaccinated terrorists is in crescendo. We have had unusual
rolling network blackouts (Facebook). In India and China, there have
been major rolling electrical blackouts. China even booted out all
the wasteful bitcoin miners! (some have brought their warehouses of
nvidia cards to the US west coast). The price of oil is increasing.
There are impending natural gas shortages in the EU. This is leading
to shortages of fertilizer (both nitrogen and phosphorus). That will
lead to food shortages. The high price of natural gas in the US (150%
increase in price) has led to increased coal usage. Peak oil (and coal,
and natural gas) never went away.
It is always hard to predict the future,
but the next six months could be challenging
(dark winter), with the 'mysterious' (really?) rash of
deadly
"sudden illness" in healthy people. The largest-of-all-time
upward
transfer of wealth that has occurred under the cover of the covid
psyop may now be followed by an *even larger* upward transfer of
wealth as the people at the top with money swoop in to buy soon-to-be
distressed assets. This could result in the conditions for revolution.
On the positive side, the coming together of air traffic controllers,
Amtrak workers, and Southwest workers is fantastic, even if it has been
completely censored from the mainstream media. Two weeks to flatten
the tyranny. If real pushback like this continues, we might be able to
halt the Great Purge before it is too late.
[Nov10'21]
Health doesn't come from the barrels of a thousand syringes
Background. Pseudouridine is a nucleoside (base + sugar) that occurs
naturally in biological cells and is used sparingly (as a nucleotide =
base + sugar + phosphate) for stabilizing various RNA structures such
as tRNA. The uracil base is flipped 180 deg and attached to the sugar
by a C as opposed to the standard N. The mRNA vaccines swap *all* the
uridines out for (unnatural) N-methyl pseudouridine because in 2005, it
was discovered that doing this allows injected mRNA to avoid activating
Toll-like receptors, which would otherwise immediately signal cells to
break down the foreign mRNA (because cells need to defend themselves
against foreign genetic information to stay healthy).
So I just read this unsettling paper in Science magazine
about a new dystopian 'platform' for generating 'medical'
oligonucleotides (short mRNA-like sequences):
A P(V)
platform for oligonucleotide synthesis, that uses sulfur in the
phosphate backbone in addition to 'locked nucleotides' (a ribose with an
extra short loop). The P(V) in the title means chemistry using 5 bonds
on the phosphorus as in finished biological nucleic acids. Here is
a quote from the paper: "Oligonucleotides with native phosphodiester
linkages have poor pharmacokinetics and are rapidly degraded by nucleases,
but their use is invaluable in routine molecular biology and diagnostic
settings". How about 'invaluable for life'?! Their dystopian goal is to
be able to synthesize and inject all sorts of different short artificial,
artificially long-lived informational RNA and DNA sequences into humans
that will be difficult for the body to degrade and eliminate.
The great majority of human diseases supposedly 'treated' by our bloated
so-called 'health' care system (e.g., artery and heart disease, diabetes,
hypertension, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, breast, prostate, colon,
pancreatic, and esophageal cancer, erectile dysfunction, and many others)
are mainly caused by dietary excess, not 'genes'. The rates of those
diseases have skyrocketed in India and China as they rapidly adopted
a rich western diet that displaced their healthy, low-calorie-density,
starchy, high-vegetable, low purified oil, low meat/fish, low dairy diet.
These diseases are not 'genetic'; Indian and Chinese genes haven't
changed over the last 20 years. The new rich diet has escalated the
chance of a stroke after the age of 25 in China to a stunning 40%,
surpassing even the terrible stroke rate in the US.
The new plan is to try to 'fix' these diseases of excess by clumsily
hacking not-very-well-understood native genetic information and native
genetic information *control* systems using artifical nucleotide strings.
This, despite the generalized failure of gene therapy to completely
fix even *one* single-gene defect (!), much less fix the amazingly more
complicated set of problems induced by an overly rich diet, which involve
modulation of a majority of our 20,000 or so genes.
The idea that health comes from the barrel of
a
thousand syringes (Dr. Lee Merritt) is laughable if it wasn't being
rammed down our throats by despicable, sociopathic CEOs like monster
Albert Bourla who have categorized people like me as 'criminals' because
we don't want to get force-injected with an endless parade of their
poison death shots for his f---ing personal profit, as brought to us by
our fascist media (fascism: the coming together of government and large
corporations, now on a supranational scale) courtesy of a $4.5 billion
dollar publically-funded drug/vaccine propaganda campaign. And now we
have a brand new platform for multiplying the genetic 'therapy' 'vaccine'
catastrophe -
the
most deadly 'vaccine' rollout in history - by a thousand. The mRNA
'vaccines' have already killed over 100,000 people just in the US and
maimed many more. Albert Bourla is a filthy money scumbag who has refused
to take his own poison death shot. I sincerely hope he eventually gets
dragged before a new Nuremberg tribunal and hung.
[Nov15'21]
Overcoming the zombie apocalyse
The hypnosis of 30% of America (along with another 40%
just going along to avoid conflict), is an amazing and
fearsome sight to behold. But it is strongly reminiscent
of previous historical episodes. Here is a transcription
of an excellent interview with Professor Mattias Desmet (
transcription
of Fuellmich interview here) on media-driven "Mass formation".
Desmet argues that four things are required: (1) isolation of people
and interruption of social bonds, (2) lack of meaningfulness in life,
(3) free floating anxiety, (4) free floating psychological discontent.
All of these things were building up well before the covid psyop began.
The result is to utterly undermine simple, common sense reasoning, so
that obvious non-sequiturs are simply accepted in an anxious literally
hypnotized state, as a solution to their terrible anxiety. Intelligence
is no protection; in fact there are actually a *higher* proportion of
the anxious hypnotized amongst the intelligensia than amongst janitors!
Here are some example of completely non-sensensical thought patterns:
(1) The vaccine is not working because the unvaccinated haven't taken it
(2) The vaccine no longer works, so we need to take a booster that is
the same as the original
(3) The vaccine doesn't stop transmission, so we must vaccinate/banish
the unvaccinated
(4) Children don't get/transmit covid, so we must vaccinate them to
protect old people
(5) Vaccinated can transmit, so vaccinate/quarantine unvaxxed
to protect immune deficient
(6) The unvaccinated are white supremacists, even though more of them
are black
There is no need for nanobots, graphene, or internet-connected
implants to create a mental Matrix. Newspapers are plenty good enough.
Of course, the global reach of electronic media and corporate-mediated
and censored interpersonal communication (Twitter, Facebook) has allowed
this historically familiar form of madness to more uniformly blanket
the entire world than ever before.
Historical parallels are not meant to minimize the size of the problem.
On the positive side, a solid one-third of the population is now immune
to the propaganda. There is still a chance that the propaganda-immune
one-third can pull us out of this before things get worse. In previous
instances of this kind of group madness, things have usually gotten worse.
We're not there yet. There is time to pull back from the precipice.
[Dec05'21]
Genetic therapy to make tick bites itchy
I just read a puff piece in the front matter of Science magazine ("it's
a beautiful study", "stunning technology", "very promising results",
"a really cool thing", blah blah). The editorials and most of the front
half of the magazine have now turned into 'all vaccines all the time',
along with screeds trying to repair Peter Daszak's reputation. This new
piece was about a new genetic therapy
'vaccine'
for Lyme disease.
A large number of antigens and proteins (19) from the saliva from ticks
that transmit Lyme disease were re-coded back into mRNA and then injected
as a 'vaccine' into hamsters, causing the hamsters to synthesize the
tick saliva proteins within many of their cells in order to stimulate
antibody production. The hamsters were then challenged with Lyme-disease
carrying ticks.
There was very little difference between the rate of infection of the
vaccinated and unvaccinated hamsters! However, the tick bites became
inflamed and itchy in the vaccinated. Trying to salavage something
from this failed result with an invasive genetic therapy 'vaccine', the
new bizarre 'plan' is that the strong immune/allergic reaction to the
tick saliva proteins would cause inflammation at the site of the bite,
which would them alert the bitten human to seek medical attention.
It is truly horrifying to see invasive genetic therapy like this
tossed off as a new 'innovative solution' to Lyme disease. Like covid,
Lyme disease was probably a bioweapon, accidentally released from the
bioweapons facility on Plum Island, which is just off the coast from Lyme,
Connecticut, the site of the original American Lyme disease outbreak.
The escaped bioweapon ticks likely contained a weaponized version of
Borrelia but probably also Ricksettia and Babesia. Lyme disease had long
been known in Europe (before the Plum Island leak); but it was much less
of a chronic disease problem. For example, Otzi, the Iceman, a robust
man hiking the Alps 5300 years ago (killed by an arrow head lodged in
his upper chest, then frozen into a glacier), showed evidence of Lyme
bacteria infection.
The idea that it is a good idea to express 19 proteins and antigens from
tick saliva in a variety of cell types across the entire human body
is absolutely staggering. It took a year of research to discover the
terrible toxicity to the heart, blood vessels, neurons, and ovaries of
the bare covid spike protein being expressed all over the human body.
Now multiply that by 19. Now imagine strong immune reactions to bites
from other arthropods (mosquitoes, spiders) that have related proteins in
their saliva. The only slightly non-rah-rah commenters merely suggested
adding even more mRNA sequences, in order to cause cells all over the body
to express proteins from the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia, itself,
to the complex genetic therapy witches' brew. Now imagine neurons and
blood vessels producing Lyme spirochete proteins.
This insanity must be stopped. 'Medical' research has gone completely
off the rails.
[Feb19'22]
Most so-called 'left' academics have turned into contemptible fascists
Throughout my life, I conceived of myself as far left, and still do.
I never thought that at the end of my academic career I would have
developed such utter contempt and disgust at the sight and smell of my
fellow so-called 'left' academic colleagues.
The combination of: (1) pitiful, self-aggrandizing fear of the virus,
(2) religious-like support for liability-free big pharma, for utterly
compromised 'regulatory' agenices, and for Fauci, who, incredibly,
paid for the creation of this bioweapon, and then killed half a million
people in the US alone by a two year campaign trying to prevent the
use of early, effective, cheap, safe, already-existing treatments, and
providing hospitals with cash rewards for ventilators and the failed,
kidney-damaging, deadly Ebola drug, remdesivir ("run-death-is-near"),
and finally, (3) support for the largest upward transfer of wealth
in human history via lockdowns and BLM-facilitated takedown of small
businesses - - has turned the so-called 'left' into a vile, frightening,
totalitarian monster.
I think back to white academics attending MLK celebrations, doing
their obligatory 'we shall overcome' sing-a-longs. What do they think
MLK would have thought of vaccine mandate apartheid?? Or the massive
lockdown-caused impoverishment of the underclass? Not a chance MLK
would have been on their side! Fu** that kind of 'left'.
The telltale signs of harm are becoming too overwhelming to ignore.
Insurance companies don't lie when it comes to them having to pay
out extra money for non-old people unexpectedly dying of 'non-covid'.
The US insurance industry signal is appearing elsewhere (e.g.,
in Germany). Funeral company stocks
are now outperforming the S&P. Some of the 'left' is now trying
to pretend that they were skeptical all along, as athletes (and comics)
are dropping like flies. In fact, they were/are *collaborators*, in
the *exact* sense of WWII. The main outlines of the scam were obvious
to any thinking person with an internet connection by March of 2020.
The 'left' supported sociopathic oligarch billionaires Albert Bourla
and Stephane Bancel running rushed, fraudulent trials. They supported
these oligarch billionaires executing agreements forcing countries
to pledge their military bases as collateral against liabiity for
inevitable harm from the genetic therapy 'vaccines'. They supported
guaranteeing preposterously large public payments to these private
companies. For example, Trudeau pre-ordered 8 vaccine doses per
person per year in Canada; Robert Malone says 'the Turd' has
major family
financial interests in a company making the cationic lipid for
the genetic vaccines). The 'left' supported all the pronoucements
of the vaccine company known as the 'CDC' and the big pharma
committee known as the 'FDA'. They supported the *wrong* side,
the evil side, the killing side. There are only two sides:
they
picked the fascist side.
How many young college students did older academics kill (or do massive
heart damage to) by forcing vacccines onto them with almost all risk
and no benefit for them? For shame, you fearful unhealthy 'woke'
academics, hiding in your zoom caves, having the underclass deliver
everything to you! Academics have supported massively damaging and
abusing children across the world. There has been a 20%-25% drop
in IQ and other developmental milestones (see Fig. 2 from
PDF
here) in the US as a result of ineffective, deadly lockdowns and
child mask idiocy. Most now want to force vaccinations onto childern
who have even more to lose than college students. The main purpose of
force-vaccinating children for covid is that if the covid vaccination can
get onto the ever widening childhood vaccine schedule, the 'currently
unavailiable' FDA-approved Comirnaty will inherit liability protection
which it *currently does not have* (which is why to this day, you can
only get an EUA vaccine in the US, not Comirnaty).
The so-called 'left' is utterly disgusting and morally bankrupt.
They have supported a classical definition of corporate fascism.
If *that* is 'left', I want nothing to do with it for the rest of my life.
[Mar16'22]
Little scientific Eichmanns - time to wake up!
There was a
puff
piece in Science magazine on the creation, long hinted at, of a new
'health' DARPA (defense advanced research projects agency), originally
called HARPA, but perhaps that sounded too close to the terrible menace
this new agency represents.
On days like this, it feels like science has died. The "little scientific
Eichmanns" fastidiously constructing our totalitarian future need to
look up from their desks and see the bigger picture.
Unfortunately, the bait of another billion in funding, with promise of
billions more, will attract 'scientific researchers' like flies to sh$t.
I am afraid they won't realize what hell they have participated in
constructing until it's too late and they end up hauled off themselves.
I know it's easy for me to get on my high horse at the end of my career
when I can look forward to no longer having to write grants; but there
is still some choice of funding source.
Unfortunately, I think the only thing that really has the power to stop
this totalitarian slide is declining net energy, which will lead to less
reliable power for Skynet and soon, declining food supply. I wish that
wasn't true, but scientists have become so mentally weak now, I doubt
there will be a peep out of them, all the way to full metal 1984.
The Science article was a great example of the extent to which science
writers have been captured. The so-called 'questions' from the science
writer included such gems as "but is $1 billion enough?" and "but wouldn't
it be better if this was a agency outside the NIH better able to take
risks? (with health?!)" Sheesh!
[May10'22]
Calm before the storm?
Although calling current situation 'calm' (e.g., see Sri Lanka) is a
bit strange, there are so many simultaneous 'Wile E. Coyote' situations
happening now that I'm feeling pretty anxious. Just a few vignettes.
(1) An old French lady in our neighborhood recently died (not too
long after getting vac'd, of a suddenly aggressive pancreatic cancer).
Flippers bought her house for $1.2M, then after a superfast quick and
dirty upgrade, sold it for almost $2M, both sales by the same real estate
(agent who was probably working with the flippers). It's basically a
1950's 2BR house. Interest rates have doubled over the past few months.
This means that the same mortgage payment buys a house that is 35%
less expensive. Something will soon break (tho perhaps not with higher
end houses bought for cash by people with several million in the bank).
(2) The stock market remains ridiculously inflated with tiny pullbacks
being called 'crashes'. The much larger bond market also remains
ridiculously inflated with interest rates increasing there, too. Again,
something has to break soon. As inflation has spiked, the half of the
population that lives paycheck to paycheck in the US have massively
increased their credit card balances in *just a few months* to make
up the difference. How long can this go on? (longer than I expect,
I'm sure, but not for that much longer!). This will lead to instability.
(3) Vac'd people are getting constantly reinfected with covid (I know
from my poor students and relatives). Stephen "Stupid" Colbert just got
infected with covid for the second time this month. Because the vac
is non-sterilizing - and in fact enhances infection, unlike with real
sterilizing herd immunity - this means that the virus is continuing
to massively reproduce, which means by definition, that the virus is
continuing to mutate and evolve. Current strains are less virulent,
but with massive Darwinian selection, that could change on a dime with
glycosylation of a few key sites that affect the N-terminal domain.
We are in a completely unprecendented situation where as a result
of vac'ing the whole world with a single protein during a pandemic,
we have exerted stupendously uniform selection pressure on the virus
to overcome the overly-specific vaccine. But then, original antigenic
sin is preventing previously vac'd organisms from responding adaptively
to a new spike sequence - that would be the original dystopian plan
of monthly family pack 'vacs'. That is, when vac'd with the mRNA
for a new spike variant, the previously vac'd just make more Wuhan
strain antibodies, which would be the ones that now enhance infection
(it's not like there weren't many warnings (e.g., my
post from Sep 2020
above).
(4) The bizarre parallel MSM universe of 'Russia losing in Ukraine',
like a horrific real world version of Monty Python's black knight skit,
seems set to run into reality in the next month or two. The biolabs
under the Azovstal steel plant may even come to light before long.
[Update: May 20] The Congress has just dumped $40 billion into a hopeless
're-nazification' plan. That's almost an entire NIH's worth of money,
equivalent to the *entire* Russian military budget! Unanimously supported
by the so-called 'left', the squad, virtually all of it to be skimmed
(Zelensky needs another $30 million dollar mansion).
(5) Seeing the food-related riots in Sri Lanka (PM's house
just
got burned down today) together with fertilizer shortages and
impending food production shortages suggests yet another strong predictor
of coming instability.
(6) The EU seems to be planning to commit hara kiri at the request of
the neocons running the US foreign policy section of the Joe Dementia
administration. Germany gets half of its natural gas and diesel from
Russia. The US couldn't possibly make up that gas or diesel supply
(with liquified gas that incidentally costs 50% more because of large
energy losses from liquification compared to a pipeline). Today,
Ukraine cut off one of the Russian gas pipelines, still transiting
gas through Ukraine on the way to the EU. It boggles the mind how
unbelievably naive or just plain stupid EU politicians are about energy.
The German economy would completely collapse with 50% less gas and diesel.
Something will have to give before the lights go off and industry shuts
down (no wind and solar at night).
So, all I can say is 'yikes'. I sure hope all hell doesn't break loose,
but I'm trying to plan ahead accordingly.
[Jun08'22]
Tin foil body suit
Tesla automotive has gone back to including radar with the release of
new radar chips. Perhaps this was the plan all along and they were
just waiting for chip developement when they previously announced their
supposedly superior 'computer-vision-only' approach. Computer-vision-only
has problems with poor visibility and dirty lenses. The new car radars
are either 25 GHz or 77-79 GHz.
In contrast to a cell phone, a car has access to a lot more electrical
oomph for driving the RF transmitter. Now imagine a busy street of
'green' carz, each continuously screaming out 79 GHz RF, much of which
might be coming out of phased-array antennas capable of concentrating
the RF into a beam with much higher local energy density.
Maybe it's time to put on the tin-foil body suit before taking a stroll
through city streets to the hip urban restaurant!
As the covid operation begins to unravel, I have written almost nothing.
Though I long for some - any! - kind of punishment/karma for the creeps
who created this thing - the US and Chinese military, Fauci, Gates, Bourla
and all the pitiful, compromised 'little Eichmann' scientists and doctors
and 'health' administrators who implemented the various stages in this
worldwide human catastrophe - the feeling of 'I told you so' has drifted
toward an unhealthy 'go f--- yourself'. Now I just hope they all choke
on their kompromat. Watch out for 'sudden adult death syndrome' (hah!).
A simple graph (directly from the CDC) of the bottom line -
excess deaths - shows that the
whole operation has been a complete failure (well, charitably assuming
that *that* wasn't the intent from the beginning).
Creepier and creepier things have begun to leak out
through pinholes in the body bags. For example, check out 26
lethal documented cases of a weird, almost instantaneous form of
Creutzfeldt-Jakob
spongiform encephalopathy that occurred within 10 days of an
injection. That's about the normal yearly total, all concentrated into
1-2 weeks after the spikeshot.
Or perhaps my problem is seeing too many up-close personal pics of the
horrific real-life version of Monty Python's 'Black Knight' sketch on
Simplicius76, engineered since before 2014 by the small band of neocon
pr$cks (and c#nts) who have stuck their heads back out of the woodwork
once they caught smell of the Biden thing. Or watching the EU commit
seppuku. Or maybe I'm expecting that the EU will avoid the worst disaster
by stealing/outbidding Africa's oil and transferring the disaster to there.
It's all dreadful.
Or perhaps 'moneypox' got me down. Robin Monotti gets the win for "I
can’t believe it’s monkey-pox season already and I haven’t even
taken my Ukrainian decorations down!". Welcome to 'Event 202'! (yes,
there was a 'table top' event exactly a year ago predicting a pox
outbreak in May 2022). Virtually all the monkeypox cases came out of
gay sex festivals like Gay Pride Maspalomas Gran Canaria where men have
sex with large numbers of other men. So the Center for Disease Creation
gathered up and examined all the data . . . and suggested mask mandates
to counter the new threat (not condoms?? not a Canary islands lockdown
next May??) - for a virus known *not* to be transmitted through the air.
On the positive side, the ridiculous CDC mask suggestion was silently
withdrawn after it got laughed at.
Finally, for better or worse, it is now clear that peak oil occurred in
2018. That turned out to be a full 10 years later than I had originally
expected back around 2003, mostly the result of rapidly depleting tight
oil fracking, which I never expected would expand so greatly (and contract
just as quickly). The utter unreality of discussions about how 'green'
energy will replace fossil fuels has, if anything, gotten even further
from reality. A few simple clicks on basic EIA graphs shows that wind
and solar constitute only a tiny fraction of world energy supply (~3%).
Fossil fuel accounts for the same fraction of world total energy supply
that it did over the past 30 years! All wind and solar hasn't even
covered growth in world energy use! As I had suspected years ago, we
are sailing crazily over the peak in net energy without the slightest
public understanding or discussion of what is actually going on during
the largest transition in human history. Money is simply an easily
counterfeit-able proxy (by fractional researve money creation) for energy.
You can print as much money as you like; but you can't 'print energy'.
Continuous 'sustainable' growth is impossible. Hard rains are
soon
falling.
[Jun16'22]
No longer calm: storm
Bank runs may be happening this week in China (people's account access
being blocked via vaccine passports). Crypto is flopping downward.
The stock market is now having larger drops after each small rally
(the latest rally was due to the Fed hiking interest rates by 0.75%!).
Bonds are crashing (that is, interest rates are spiking - e.g.,
1YR treasuries are now 3%
when they were 2% just two weeks ago!). The preposterously inflated
housing bubble now seems to finally be popping (but oil cannot go down
yet because of inelastic demand for 'the spice' that is the lifeblood
of industrial civilization, not to mention food production). Half of
France's nuclear power plants are down with nuclear generation at lowest
in three decades. Put this together with sanctions against Russian
uranium, titanium, oil, and natural gas. Wile E. Coyote is beginning
to plummet.
It would have been preferrable to not have ridiculously inflated all
of these things in the first place - except perhaps for the price of
globally limited fossil fuel, in order to dampen the final drawdown.
But the 40 year progression to the zero interest rate regime plus the
more recent 'quantitative easing' virtually guaranteed the blowing of
the biggest bubble in history. In another 6 months or a year, investors
with deep cash pockets will be able swoop in and once again grab assets
from regular people at (comparatively) bargain prices, grabbing even
more stuff from the bottom 2/3 of the population. The bubble and crash
are not mirror images of each other; ultra rich ubermenschen win in both
cases, and the untermeschen lose in both cases.
The policies of the so-called 'left' support all of this! The 'left'
has changed sides! An armed assassin is caught by the FBI at
2AM outside a Supreme Court justice's house (Nicholas Roske was
upset at the upcoming abortion ruling and a possible new ruling
strengthening gun rights!). Amazingly, *half* of Democratic men
under 50 support assassination of political opponents. The 'left' now supports massive upward
transfer of assets to super rich people (what the lockdowns achieved,
and what the post-bubble crash will now magnify)! The main result of BLM
demonstrations/burnings has been a massive increase in black-on-black
crime (with a death toll that is hugely bigger than the toll of police
killings of blacks). Judge the so-called 'left' by their actions and
their results, *not* by what they say!
[Jun24'22]
Updated summary of the covid 'vaccine' clusterf$ck
Why has the public health response to covid been such a disaster?
Here are the 10 main reasons for this ongoing clusterf$ck. Finally,
finally, the Overton window is beginning to move and tiny rays of
truth are starting to leak out of the censored main stream media sewer.
Let us hope this can continue to a point where there is a surge of public
outrage that can motivate bringing the perpetrators to justice.
(1) Covid was likely an accidental (or
intentional) release of a virus that was
engineered
to extremely efficiently infect humans. This 'research' - at
the
University of North Carolina, at Wuhan, at the Lugar Center in
(former soviet) Georgia, in Ukraine in level 3 biolabs funded by Obama
in 2010, and in many other laboratories - was all done with the stated
purpose of 'helping' us to defend against such things. But, in reality,
this 'research' was merely offensive bioweapon development continuing
under a more palatable rebranding. The furin cleavage site
not found in
any of the most closely related corona viruses was a major 'tell',
immediately obvious to any self-respecting virologist/molecular biologist
- like David Baltimore, the former president of Caltech. Having a
furin cleavage site enhances the ability of the virus to get into a
cell. In addition, the virus was probably passaged through humanized
mice or ferrets in order to optimize binding to the human ACE2 receptor
(which differs from the bat ACE2 receptor). This was a second 'tell'
- that the initial strain was somehow better pre-adapted to bind to the
human ACE2 receptor than to the ACE2 receptor in the animal it supposedly
came from. However, despite all this, the infection fatality ratio was
known from the beginning (the infected 'petri dish' Diamond Princess
cruise ship at the beginning of 2020) to be comparable to a bad flu,
before all the lethal 'treatments' (remdesivir, ventilators, midazolam,
opiates, paralytics) had had a chance to be deployed on the hapless
victims.
(2) We did worldwide lockdowns of healthy people, which virtually all
respected senior immunologists strongly advised against. Locking down
children was child abuse; it has severely impacted their IQ, language and
social development, mental health, and immune system development across
the world. WHO advised against lockdowns before the covid coup got into
high gear. By keeping people and children inside, their vitamin D levels
were lowered and normal immune system stimulation and biocommunication
was prevented. This is known from experiments in animals to suppress the
immune system and make organisms more susceptible to multiple diseases,
but also paradoxically, sometimes make animals more susceptible to
inflammamtory immune overreactions.
(3) A worldwide vaccination campaign was rolled out *during* a pandemic.
Vaccines are not designed for this. They are supposed to be used
*before* or *after* a pandemic to avoid the chance of evolutionary
immune escape when the virus is making trillions of copies of itself.
Vaccinating during an outbreak is a well known 'no-no' in the animal
vaccination community (e.g., chicken farm vaccinators).
(4) The covid vaccines are leaky. This means that they suppress symptoms
(well at least initially they did!), but without stopping replication
and transmission. Ongoing replication and transmission means rapid viral
*evolution*. The leaky vaccine has essentially *created* the dreaded
'asymptomatic spreaders' that didn't exist before the vaccination program.
Reducing symptoms by reducing the immune response (see below) is a *bug*,
not a feature; it means the virus takes longer to clear, allowing more
viral evolution (around the vaccine-induced antibodies).
(5) The mRNA 'vaccines' only code for a single protein, the cell-surface
spike glycoprotein. But there are 28 proteins in the virus. The spike
protein is also the protein that evolves the most rapidly since it
is on the surface. There are other viral proteins - such as the
nucleocapsid protein - that have a lot more evolutionary constraints.
The nucleocapsid protein has to complex with the viral RNA, which always
has the same shape, so it is not as free to evolve around an antibody
directed against it. Having antibodies to these other viral proteins
is one reason why natural infection generates more robust immunity.
(6) All the vaccines use the same sequence from the now extinct original
Wuhan strain. You might think it would be good to update the sequence.
This was tried experimentally by Pfizer and Moderna and they are planning
to try to release new vaccines soon containing sequences from more recent
variants (N.B.: all current vaccines still use the extinct original
strain sequence). However, adding the more recent strains *didn't help*
(this of course won't stop these products from being released or stop
the government from dumping additional billions of tax dollars into
Pfizer and Moderna).
The reason that that didn't work is
'original antigenic sin'
(OAS) also known as "immune imprinting", originally recognized
with flu vaccines in the 1960's. When the new strain vaccine is
injected, the body says 'close enough for jazz', and simply turns on
memory T-cells to produce antibodies to the original extinct strain
rather than generating new antibodies, which is an energy consuming
process that takes 7-10 days, which the body will avoid if possible.
In many cases this strategy will work just fine since some previous
antibodies are directed against epitopes (small region of protein that
antibodies bind to) that are under stronger evolutionary constraints,
and which won't have changed shape. However, when the induced
antibodies are all against a single, rapidly evolving spike protein
induced by the mRNA 'vaccines', this fails. It is not known how long
how covid "original antigenic sin" lasts; but in the case of other
viruses, the effect has been shown to be lifelong. It is now
definitely
occurring with the covid 'vaccines'.
By using the exact same sequence across the world *during* an outbreak
with a leaky vaccine that targets only one protein (points 3-6 above),
we have perfectly optimized the conditions for immune escape by focusing
all evolutionary pressure on the spike protein. This wouldn't occur
with natural immunity since every person would normally develop slightly
different arrays of antibodies to multiple viral proteins.
(7) Another reason that this is different is that this is the first
coronavirus vaccine (if you call the mRNA gene therapy things
a 'vaccine') that has ever been tried on humans. *All* previous
attempts at a coronavirus vaccine candidate were failures in animal
experiments. *All* of them resulted in "antibody-enhanced infection"
(AEI) or "antibody-dependent enhancement" (ADE) where "enhancement" means
enhanced disease severity (should be called "antibody-enhanced disease").
In many cases, this resulted in death when vaccinated experimental animals
were confronted with the original virus or a slightly different strain.
This didn't immediately occur with the covid vaccines; but generally
this effect takes six months to a year to develop. In recent months,
the rate of hospitalization and death in vaccinated people has been
increasing and has overtaken that of unvaccinated people.
(8) This is the first time an mRNA gene-therapy 'vaccine' has been used.
It was actually tech designed for gene therapy, for replacing a missing or
bad gene. Note that it *never* worked for that purpose (!) because using
large enough mRNA doses to make it effective resulted in catastrophic
side effects (e.g., death from the mRNA and the cationic lipid carrier).
After a well-publicized gene therapy death of Jesse Gelsinger in 1999
(an attempt to replace a faulty gene for ornithine transcarbamylase
using a chimpanzee-adenovirus-based gene therapy), the field remained
in the background. Before the current gene therapy 'vaccine', gene
therapy has only been moderately successfully used in four, extremely
restricted circumstances. The previous history of Moderna until now
was one of complete failure - no products, continuous money burn.
A key discovery that reignited interest in the ultimately failed mRNA
gene therapy project was the finding in 2005 that when all the uridines
(U's) in the mRNA were substituted with pseudouridine (psi), this
shut down the innate immune system, protecting the mRNA from being
attacked and destroyed (partly because the pseudouridine blocks RNase's).
Cells really don't like having bare RNA from an unknown source floating
around, which could be up to no good, and will rapidly degrade mRNA,
not only with RNAse, but also via the innate immune system. The innate
immune system (e.g., including 'natural killer cells', also known
as CD8 cells) is contrasted with the adaptive immune system, which
makes new antibodies adapted to specific antigens. The mechanism by
which pseudouridine (and methyl-pseudouridine) shuts down the innate
immune system involves signalling via Toll-like receptors (originally
discovered in fruit flies) that bind to RNA (esp. Toll-like receptors
3, 7, and 8). The resulting reduced immune surveillance is thought to
explain vaccine-induced reactivation of dormant retroviruses (e.g., HSV,
HZV, VZV, EBV, CMV - N.B.: HZV looks like monkeypox) and (re)activation of
aggressive cancers. This vaccine-induced effect can be straighforwardly
measured as a 'low white blood cell count' in a blood test. It is
not known how long the pseudouridine-induced suppression of the innate
immune system lasts. This immune suppression may also partly explain the
'effectiveness' of this non-sterilizing 'vaccine', via suppression of
cytokine storm.
Another unusual 'feature' of pseudouridine is that it is a
'universal base', which means
it can base-pair with *any* other nucleotide. This results in substantial
errors during translation of the vaccine mRNA, including early termination
of the spike protein chain. This means the actual protein outputs of
the gene-therapy 'vaccine' is unknown, and different than the spike
protein produced by the Wuhan strain virus (also, it is unknown whether
the pseudouridine bases get accidentally reused). Another 'vaccine'
innovation that causes early protein translation termination is codon
optimization (where any redundant codon is substituted with GC/CG where
possible); abnormally high amounts of G in RNA sequences can cause
the formation of G-quadraplex 'knots' which can stall the ribosome,
and which can bind to amyloidogenic proteins.
(9) The bare SARS-CoV-2 engineered bioweapon spike protein, on its
own, without a virus or any RNA, turned out to be surprisingly toxic,
in several different ways. It causes clots, esp. when it gets mounted
into the arterial endothelial cells or when the S1 subunit breaks off
(at the furin cleavage site). In the case of the vaccine, it can also
do this by virtue of its 'membrane mount' - a sequence at the base of the
spike that has repeated, spaced 'oily' amino acids so that transmembrane
helices will mount it into the cell membrane (oily inside, polar outside)
so that it sticks out of the transfected cell and makes it look infected,
and hence a target for the immune system. Once the spike has been
cleaved into two parts, the top part can get past the blood brain barrier.
Because the lipid nanoparticle delivery mechanism of the mRNA 'vaccines'
have a much wider bodily distribution than any virus, especially if it
is accidentally injected into a vein or artery, many cells, such as the
endothelial cells that line arteries can be rapidly transfected.
Small amounts of the lipid nanoparticles even get past the blood-brain
barrier. When the anti-spike protein immune response is finally ramped
up (e.g., after the first injection, or when an already-immune person
gets the mRNA 'vaccination'), this can result in widespread immune
destruction of the endothelial cells lining the circulatory system.
This is particularly a problem on subsequent doses and 'boosters'.
The resulting immune system-caused damage to endothelial cells may lead
to the generation of large, rubbery, calcified, light-colored
atherosclerotic-like
'clots' that are now being found in unprecendentedly large numbers
of dead bodies by embalmers.
Another completely independent effect relevant to cancer is that the
SARS-CoV-2
spike protein inhibits the BRCA1 (breast cancer preventing
gene) and the 53BP1 gene, which both code for DNA repair proteins.
This may be another reason, beyond suppression of the innate
immune system, for an upsurge in aggressive cancers after the
'vaccination' gene therapy. For a (hopefully overly!) dark
perspective on what might happen, see the letter from '
Parrhesia'.
Finally, the recent large vaccine-associated
drops in birth rate in heavily vaccinated
Taiwan
and Germany, if confirmed over the next 6 months, may
be the unfortunate realization of worries in early 2020 before
the vaccine rollout of yet a third bad effect - - possible
cross-reactivity
between the vaccine anti-spike antibodies and placental syncytin-1
(human placental syncytin-1 evolved from a human retrovirus cell fusion
protein). Note that the viral infection itself in 2020 didn't seem to
have this effect, perhaps because (i) the gene-therapy 'vaccine' lipid
nanoparticles tend to collect in the ovaries and testes, unlike a natural
infection, and (ii) the stable pseudouridine mRNA gets transcribed for
much longer than viral mRNA from a natural infection does, causing higher
titers of potentially autoimmune antibodies.
(10) Finally, the criminal prevention and censoring of independently
discovered treatments for covid (vitamin C and D, ivermectin, HCQ,
fluvoxamine, azithromycin, anticoagulants, budesonide) along with the
mandating and hospital-incentivizing of toxic treatments (remdesivir,
opiates, powerful GABA-A agonists, ventilators, paralytics) greatly
increased the worldwide covid death toll, perhaps even beyond that due to
'vaccine' lethality. In some cases (remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug,
deteremined to be too toxic to treat the much more deadly Ebola),
this strongly recalled the disastrous early treatments of AIDS with
high doses of the toxic, failed chemotherapy drug, AZT, which literally
causes AIDS by destroying dividing cells in the immune system. It was
even orchestrated by the same sociopathic NIH director.
(11) Summary. I think the proper term for what has occurred is
a clusterf$ck. We are now in a situation where normal herd
immunity has been sabotaged by using a single-gene, leaky
vaccine, across the entire world, during a pandemic. In the US,
in the middle of summer, the case rate is closing in on
highest
ever recorded. Prevalence is now beginning to swamp less virulence.
A similar situation occurred previously with the vaccine for Marek's
disease in chickens, in 2015. In that case, the solution was to
exterminate all the infected chicken flocks and start from scratch with
a brand new vaccine.
The current covid 'vaccines' are by far, the most lethal vaccines in
all of huamn vaccine history, as is obvious from this
VAERS graph of yearly deaths
from all vaccines. Mind-bogglingly, the CDC recently said, in response
to a FOIA request, that it has *not* consulted the VAERS database to
look for vaccine harms, supposedly because this is the job of the FDA,
which has (also!) been completely captured by the big pharma companies
that it supposedly regulates.
Using a conservative underreporting factor, it is likely that the
vaccine has killed a minumum of 100,000 up to as many as a quarter of a
million people in the US alone. It has injured many more. The
death
rate is *increasing* as the vaccination campaign goes on.
That massive death toll would only have been acceptable if
the 'vaccine' actually blocked infection and transmission
(it doesn't), *and* if covid was much more lethal that is it
(the actual pre-vaccination infection fatality ratio is
0.095%
for age 0-70, less than many seasonal 'flus'.
By examining the
CDC graph
of excess deaths, it is obvious that the mandated gene therapy has
utterly failed. The final 'bottom line' for any health policy is excess
mortality. Excess mortality was actually considerably worse *after* the
introduction of the vaccine than when covid was supposedly 'raging' before
the vaccine, in 2020. This new wave of deaths, mostly *not* from covid,
is now showing up in many life insurance companies' data, where
deaths
of working age people have exploded, preposterously
labeled "sudden adult death syndrome". As the 'vaccines'
start to be given to children, casket manufacturers have seen
unprecedented rise in
bulk orders for child-sized coffins. It will be an interesting fight
between big pharma and big insurance. Big insurance is actually bigger
than big pharma.
This is the biggest public health care catastrophe in history.
Trust in the 'health' care system has been severely undermined.
There has been an insane push to approve the gene therapy 'vaccines'
for children under 5. The reason is that if big pharma can add these
toxic gene-therapy drugs to the childhood vaccine schedule, they will
gain liability for Comirnaty (which is why to this day, you can only
get the mRNA-and-lipid-nanoparticle-identical EUA covid 'vaccine',
which has liability protection because of the supposed 'emergency'
via the PREP act). Vaccinating children could have even more
catastrophic effects, permanently damaging the crucial *development*
of their innate immune systems (as opposed to merely suppressing a
normally-developed innate immune system in an adult).
The people and corporations who carried this
out *must* be brought to justice, in order to avoid
ever having them do this to us again. Big pharma is
already
planning to combine lipid nanoparticle delivery with explicit CRISPR
DNA gene-editing. This technocratic nightmare must be stopped now.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[update: 02Sep'23] Over the past year, Kevin McKernan
(biotech guy from the original human genome project) got a hold of some
vials of Pfizer and Moderna 'vaccine' from anonymous donors, originally
intending to use them as a convenient source of RNA. In the process
of sequencing it, however, he found that it was contaminated with a
lot of double-standed DNA in the form of plasmids that were used in
the manufacturing process. The original trial vaccines were made by
directly synthesizing DNA, then making RNA from the DNA with a cell-free
assay. However, the actually-rolled-out vaccines were made by a different
virtually untested process (only tested on about 200 people). In order
to get pounds of DNA, which would have been prohibitively expensive
to directly chemically manufacture, Pfizer and Moderna used bacterial
plasmids, Pfizer with a nuclear-localizing SV40 promoter and enhancer
(binds to transcription factors) and antibiotic resistance genes
(standard procedure for selecting transfected bacteria) along with the
spike sequence to amplify the vaccine DNA in bacteria, then made RNA
from that DNA with the same cell-free translation assay, then supposedly
removed the DNA plasmids (and other left-over bacteria such as toxic
lipopolysaccharides) before injecting it. However, McKernan found several
orders of magnitude more DNA in the vials than was supposed to be there
(e.g., up to 5-20% as much DNA as mRNA; N.B.: the DNA limits were set
for bare DNA and don't account for the protection from degradation as
a result of being inside lipid nanoparticles). Here is his
brief
presentation to the VRBPAC Advisory Committee (which was of
course ignored in their rubber stamp approval of the vaccines for
children). Nuclear incorporation of the plasmid DNA containing
the SV40 nuclear-localizing promoter (gene ON switch) and spike
DNA (much more stable and long-lasting than spike RNA) may have
something to do with reports of turbo cancer, as well as with the
recent disturbing discovery by Brogna et al. that half of vaccinated
have vaccine-specific spike in their blood at 6 months (
PDF
here). This compounds problems already noted above of (8)
pseudouridine in vaccine mRNA suppressing the innate immune system via
Toll-like receptors and (9) spike inhibiting BRCA1 and p53 DNA repair
enzymes. Finally, it turns out that the other strand of the plasmid,
amazingly, has a long open reading frame that might be translated into
a protein of unknown function if the DNA accidentally gets incorporated.
[Jul07'22]
Tide may be turning on the little health Eichmanns
San Diego has fired 22% of its police force for refusing to take a
gene-therapy vaccine against an extinct strain of covid. The current
vaccines all actually *increase* the chance of getting infected with the
latest strains (antibody-enhanced infection, AEI) as a result of the virus
have evolving around the leaky, single-protein, vaccine that was uniformly
injected into people across the world. In addition to being ineffective,
this vaccine is the
most
deadly in all of vaccine history. The latest data from early
vaccinated and highly vaccinated countries also suggests that there has
been a concomitant catastrophic loss of fertility due to the 'vaccine',
hopefully temporary. These are simple facts that anyone with half a
scientific brain can find out with a careful internet search.
These policies have been implemented by 'little health Eichmanns' who are
probably currently in the position of doubling down because they realize
that their decisions have turned out to be incorrect. In Austria, there
was the blackly humorous sight of the main health minister criticizing
doctors for not having obtained informed consent by explaining the
possibility of vaccine injury before giving people the spike shots.
This would be the same health minister who had previously threatening
the jobs of these same doctors if they did that very thing.
The tide may be
beginning
to
turn.
As more and more people realize what has been done to them, there
may be an explosive change in population awareness. Think Ceausescu.
Together with the ongoing economic contraction and the permanent from
here shortages of fossil fuel (mainly due to depletion, not policy),
the potential for extreme social instability is rising.
[Aug08'22]
It *did* have to turn out this way
I just read this article in my paper version of Science magazine (behind a
paywall online), where sleep-walking scientists giddily describe fiddling
with a Cas9-like bacterial double-stranded DNA cutter/editor:
Structural basis
for RNA-guided DNA cleavage by IscB-ωRNA and mechanistic comparison
with Cas9
From their conclusion: "On the application side, there has been a
strong interest to miniaturize Cas9-based genome editors (23-27) into
mature delivery tools, such as the adenovirus-associated virus (AAV)
vectors. . . . By peeking into nature's winning solutions, we gain a
fresh starting point to develop a new generation of powerful genome
editing tools, packageable into AAV."
Adenovirus-associated viruses are Dependoparvoviruses, which infect
primates and humans. Just what I'm sure you were all waiting for,
'a mature delivery tool containing a double-stranded DNA editor'!
When I read stuff like this, it makes me feel a little less sorrow
for the inevitable reduction in complexity and knowledge that will
accompany fossil fuel rundown. :-{ I'm sure the military has already
experimented with pasting genome editors into bioweapons, of course,
all in the service of 'protecting' us, because 'you never know what
nature might do'. Hmmm. Nature has had about 4 billion years and
hasn't ever pasted a Cas9 like genome editor into a dependoparvovirus,
but hey, it might do it next week, right?
Ironically, the passing of regulations condemning and penalizing
bioweapons research has effectively resulted in a massive *increase*
in bioweapons research, all under the guise of 'protecting us against
zoonotic diseases'. The number of BSL3 and BSL4 labs skyrocketed *after*
the bioweapons treaty was put into place, e.g., in Ukraine.
The problem with any new tech, is that the military gets to try it out
first (fission, fission bombs, fusion bombs, GPS, nuclear jets - that
last one didn't work out so well). There is no way to stop this kind
of 'progress'. The language-based evolution of knowledge
is analogous to biological
evolution; the human language brain operating system is the second
coming of intentionality, layered upon the first coming of a symbol-using
system with intentionality at the origin of life.
I have come, reluctantly over the years, to fully appreciate the
similarities with biological evolution. Biological evolution
goes as fast as it can until something restrains it, like the lack
of food, or a meteorite. It is much the same with language based
evolution. Those same constraints apply to us, since our second coming
of a symbolic-representation system (language) can only ride around on
a chimpanzee chassis.
I wish it didn't have to have turned out this way. But my
logical mind tells me that it *did* have to turn out this
way. Stephen Ericson captures the emotion exactly
here
in just a few words.
[Oct18'22]
Are they actually *trying* to kill more vaccinated?
Sometimes people in the know just come right out
and say it to your face - like Ricky Gervais' amazing
monologue
on Hollywood pedophilia at the 2020 Golden Globes. Or consider the
CDC's latest rubber-stamp plan (ACIP meeting Thursday, you can
comment
here) to add the covid vaccines to the childhood schedule
after only a few percent of the population decided to get their
kids covid-vaccinated. The real point of this is to give the
EUA mRNA covid 'vaccines' permanent liability coverage (for adults!).
In your face. That's the way I feel about the following
virology
paper released this Oct 14 by Chen et al. (2020), that has been
making the rounds in alternative media.
A well-funded group of so-called 'scientists' who have access to BSL
level 3 and level 4 containment labs at Boston University, partly funded
by NIAID (Fauci), decided to graft an Omicron spike onto an ancestral
Wuhan virus 'chassis'. It was known that the Omicron spike, which
branched off *before* the original Wuhan strain (perhaps it was another
lab leak) resulted in orders of magnitude better infectiousness than
the original Wuhan strain. On the other hand, the original Wuhan virus
'chassis' has a predilection for lower respiratory tract infection,
which results in greater lethality, by contrast with the much less
toxic Omicron, which selectively infects nasal passages and the upper
respiratory tract. This difference in lethality seems to arise from
something other than the spike protein. The chimeric virus was 80%
lethal to humanized mice, in contrast to Omicron, which only causes a
mild disease in the same K18-hACE2 mice (it's worth keeping in mind that
the original covid strains were 100% lethal in mice). The NIH paid $128
million to complete this "Nazi biowarfare death science lab" (accurate
descriptive name from law professor Francis Boyle, who filed an
unsuccessful
lawsuit in 2006 to halt its funding and construction).
As Karl Denninger
has pointed out,
this looks for all the world like a plot to kill more vaccinated!
The mRNA 'vaccines' have a number of shortcomings. First, because they
were widely used *during* on ongoing epidemic combined with the fact
that they targetted only one protein from a now extinct strain, they
generated massive evolutionary pressure on that protein (spike), which has
resulted in immune escape. Second, because of immune imprinting (original
antigenic sin), updated spike variants (the latest 'bivalent' booster)
often result in reactivation of existing spike antibodies to Wuhan spike
from memory T-cells rather than the metabolically expensive generation of
anti-Omicron-spike antibodies (and, even if the hapless injectee does made
antibodies anew, the extinct Wuhan spike is still in there to compete with
the Omicron spike! WTF?). Third, a month or two after a booster, efficacy
turns negative (antibody-enhanced infection). All of this was predicted
by any reasonably intelligent person capable of reading the scientific
literature in 2020, well before the so-called 'vaccines' were rolled out
(e.g.,
see
above). But this also suggests that vaccinated people would be
at greater risk from this lab-created monstrosity, which would have been
extremely unlikely to have occurred naturally, given that the original
Wuhan strains are long extinct.
Unvaccinated people who have been infected, by contrast, will have
developed broader protection to repeat infection because they will have
generated antibodies to additional non-spike epitopes (e.g., antibodies to
the nucleocapsid protein, which evolves slower than spike). They will
also have less innate immune suppression from constant injections
of N-methyl pseudouridine-containing 'vaccine', which causes immune
suppression via Toll-like receptors.
This looks for all the world like a bioweapon designed to target
the vaccinated (a binary weapon when combined with the vaccine).
The in-your-face way the study was presented give me the willies.
It's obviously an expensive, NIH/NIAID Fauci-funded, gain-of-function
research project done in the highest level containment facilities (only a
handful [13] of BSL-4 facilities in the US). The paper contains a clear
recipe so that another lab could recreate this. It's worth noting that
humans are harder to kill than humanized mice. However, we also have
no data on what the effects of mRNA 'vaccination' or previous infection
are on the lethality of this lab monstrosity are, so it's difficult to
make firm predictions on what might happen if it were to 'leak'.
Finally, there is a weird echo of Geert Vanden Bossche's scenario where
immune escape and greater Omicron infectivity leads to the paradoxical
evolution of more lethal lower respiratory cell-fusion-based pathology
(normally viruses evolve toward less lethality). His scenario did not
involve release of gain-of-function concoctions. But perhaps he knows
something he is not saying.
[Update]: Michael Nevradakis just wrote a good article at
CHD with more background information about the Boston lab
here.
Whether this psyop-like event turns out to be real or not, its importance
is the 'in your face', the 'we can do whatever the f--k we want' aspect.
[Oct19'22]
Comment to CDC/ACIP meeting to add covid vaccine to childhood schedule
Using the mRNA lipid nanoparticle covid vaccines on children is virtually
all risk and no benefit for them. Children are not at risk from covid. It
is preposterous to add these dangerous vaccines to the childhood vaccine
schedule (not to mention as a yearly shot!). The great majority of parents
have concluded as much, which is reflected by the fact that only a few
percent of children have been brought in for even a single vaccination;
parents are well aware of obvious risk of these experimental vaccines
pose to their children's health.
Therefore, using simple logic, the rush to add covid vaccines to the
childhood schedule is almost certainly being driven by big pharma in
order to avoid liability for the well-documented harms of these vaccine
in *adults*. A simple search of the VAERS database using the keyword
"death" - something the CDC was apparently incapable of doing, despite
hosting the database (!) - shows that the covid mRNA lipid nanoparticle
vaccines are *by far* the most deadly vaccines every rolled out since
the VAERS was set up over 30 years ago, having resulted in
several orders of magnitude
more yearly deaths than any other vaccine.
Currently, big pharma has liability protection for adult vaccine harms
because of the emergency use authorization (EUA). Despite Comirnaty being
approved, it has not been available because the approved product is *not*
protected from liability for harms to adults. If the covid vaccines
are added to the childhood schedule, they will not benefit children.
The only logical reason to do this is to grant liability protection to
big pharma for *adult* vaccine-caused harms, via the peculiar law that
grants this liability protection to any vaccine on the childhood schedule.
Approving all-risk/no-benefit vaccines for children in order to protect
big pharma from adult harm liability is basically institutionalized murder
of children for the purpose of protecting the profits of big pharma.
It is utterly morally repugnant.
I expect that this comment will have no effect, since the CDC and FDA
are both completely captured by big pharma as a result of both of them
getting much of their funding from big pharma. I am hoping that if
there is enough public outrage, that these captured institutions can be
torn down and reconstituted in order to protect human rights instead of
protecting corporate big pharma 'rights'.
[Dec28'22]
It's not like we didn't try to warn you
Over the past two weeks, a group of new studies have come out showing that
the experimental genetic therapy coronavirus have turned out to be even
worse than we already knew. The worries that many of us expressed several
years ago, about force-injecting an untested genetic therapy into billions
of people, have turned out, unfortunately, to have been prescient.
The first study, from
The Cleveland Clinic by NK Shrestha et al (2022) was a large (50,000
subject) study in a clinical setting. First, have a look at their amazing
Fig 2 reproduced
here.
In it, you can clearly see that 3x vaxxed people have 3x the infection
rate of completely unvaxxed people. Because of the massive censorship
of the science surrounding vaccines, the Orwellian conclusion could
only merely be: "This study found that the current bivalent vaccines
were about 30% effective overall in protecting against infection with
SARS-CoV-2", rather than "This study found that the vaccines strongly
enhanced infection with current strains of SARS-CoV-2".
The second study in
New England Journal
of Medicine showed that vaccination of previously infected children
destroyed their existing defense against re-infection (their Figure 1C and
Figure 1D reproduced
here).
Their even more Orwellian, science censorship-controlled conclusion was
"The rapid decline in protection against omicron infection that was
conferred by vaccination and previous infection provides support for
booster vaccination". Really??!
Perhaps the most disturbing third
new report
showed how repeated vaccinations with mRNA gene-therapy vaccines
(but interestingly, not adenovirus based gene-therapy vaccines, or
other traditional vaccines) results in massive amplification of IgG4
antibodies (which bind/cover antigens, like peanut proteins, that
should be tolerated, and have the general function of dialing down
the inflammatory immune response), while simultaneously downregulating
IgG1,2,3 antibodies (the ones that signal the body to actually neutralize
the infection). This means that the vaccines are damaging the immune
response to SARS-CoV-2 by convincing the immune system to tolerate
it, rather than to attack it, which could lead to chronic infections
and speeded evolution of the virus. This is consistent with the fact
that coronavirus levels in sewage in highly vaccinated countries are
the highest they have ever been. The Orwellian conclusions in this
case were: "These findings may have consequences for the choice and
timing of vaccination regimens using mRNA vaccines, including future
booster immunizations against SARS-CoV-2". How about a 'vaccination
regimen' where you never get vaccinated, eh? :-} Here are two excellently
detailed articles discussing the background to this new paper by
Rintrah and
Dr Ah Kahn Syed
(both pseudonyms).
Finally,
a
detailed study of one of the only officially allowed antiviral
treatments, Merck's mutagenic chemotherapy-like Molnupiravir, showed that
its use resulted in the rapid accrual of hundreds of SARS-CoV-2 mutations
in immunocompromised patients during persistent infections. That is,
this mutagen rapidly accelerated the evolution of the virus in the space
of a few weeks, all while keeping the patients infected and infectious.
Adding these new findings on top of unprecedentedly high rates of
'vaccine'-caused (1) myocarditis (permanent heart muscle damage),
(2) clotting disorders (amyloid-like clots, thrombocytopenia), (3)
neuro-autoimmune diseases, (4) suppression of the innate immune system
by the effects of methyl-pseudouridine on Toll-like receptors,
(5) spike-protein-mediated suppression of double-stranded
DNA repair enzymes (BRCA1 and 53BP1 gene), which can promote
cancer, and (6) interference with female and male
fertility,
and (7) continuing increased all-cause mortality and disability rates,
we are in the middle by far the biggest 'vaccine' (actually, experimental
gene-therapy-caused) clusterf$ck in human medical history.
On the positive side, people are gradually waking up to the true magnitude
of the disaster, as evidenced by the small number of people (about 15%)
who have gotten the well-advertised and even mandated bivalent booster,
as well the even smaller number of people who have vaccinated their
young children. Many people who unquestioningly accepted all vaccines as
'safe and effective' are now beginning to doubt the safety and efficacy of
*other* vaccines, and are slowly becoming aware of the terrible perverse
incentives created by the 1986 vaccine liability shield.
We need an avalanche of lawsuits, damages, and jail time - not amnesty.
We must do everything possible to prevent the last 3 years from being
memory-holed.
[Apr10'23]
Descending into madness pretending everything is OK
I'm starting to post again after the distraction of my retirement followed
by two moves in three months. It's hard to know where to start.
The harms of the forced vaccination program have become
more and more apparent to the general population. A recent
Rasmussen
poll stunningly showed - across party lines - that Americans know as
many people who have died from the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine
as died from the disease itself. Many authorities across the world
are busily trying to downplay their role in the diastrous last 3 years,
especially as it becomes apparent that excess mortality seems to have
been permanently raised (and fertility permanently impaired) after the
worldwide forced vaccination program. The CDC has backed off of mandates,
but is still cowardly going after the ones least likely to be able to
refuse - doctors, nurses, pregnant women, and infants (my former employer
SDSU has not gotten the message and criminally still requires all students
be vaccinated for covid, despite clear evidence of ongoing cardiovascular
harm for this population). Going after doctors and nurses has the added
'benefit' of weeding out all the refuseniks (any medical refuseniks
still standing are continuously hounded by CDC-supported
harpies).
Naomi Wolf does an excellent job
here
documenting the pusillanimous zoom-class 'intelligensia' who studiously
pretend nothing happened - that they didn't threaten the unvaccinated with
camps or suggest keeping them out of food stores (the doddering Chomsky,
of all people!).
In the aftermath of the lockdown, people gained 10-15 pounds, took more
opiates (and died more from opiates), took more stimulants (4% of the
entire population is now on Adderall), and generally got markedly less
healthy and less social. I just got a plaintive note from one of my
former departments from students trying to set up an 'in-person day'
because nobody is around the department anymore. By retreating almost
entirely into the corporation-controlled 'social media', people have
become even more mentally passive, pliable, and Weimar-like (tho the
Weimar Lite beer campaign went over like a lead balloon :-} ).
CJ Hopkins had a
very
insightful essay on how the Western 'left' and 'right' *both* seemed
to have changed sides in certain key respects. The left has embraced
fascism - the coming together of big corporations and big government,
while the right has been the main source of opposition to the new normal
lockdown and mandates. The 'right' has literally become anti-capitalist
(anti-Pfizer and against Pfizer's control of the 'nooz'. It's sort of
endearing that they can only manage to call this 'anti-communist'!
In order to keep the charade of there being some meaningful difference
between the official Democratic 'left' and Republican 'right',
the preposterous Kafkaesque Trump indictment has lumbered onto the
scene. There are 17 pairs of charges that there was a false entry in
business records together with the entry being made with the intent to
commit or conceal another crime - but those other crimes are nowhere
specified!! This is a legal joke designed merely to keep people on both
sides distractedly and animatedly playing the game while 'real work'
(for example, central bank digital currencies, CBDC's) gets done behind
the scenes. Trans is used the same way (a trans day of vengence with a
knife
and red fingernails). Idiocracy has gone live.
The Russia/Ukraine/gas-pipeline operations cannot be understood without
considering the background of the 2014 Maidan coup and the 8-year internal
war against Russian Ukrainians that led up to the Russian response.
The US propaganda about Russia losing in the Ukraine war has become
so detached from the reality of the horrifying losses inflicted on the
Ukraine army by the Russians that we have 'gone full Orwell'. About a
month ago, the Russians likely destroyed a deep underground bunker in
Lviv containing a NATO command center with substantial staff from Europe
and the US with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. It was completely expunged
from the news, so the only way to find out about it now if you're lucky
(if you don't know where to look from memory) is to google it and
skip a few pages down past the 'fact checkers' that now always sort
to the top.
[Update: 15Apr'23: In just 5 days since this post, the
Ukraine war was completely expunged from the 'nooz'. Together with the
Ellsberg-Pentagon-papers-like 'leak', this may reflect the beginning of
internal pushback from inside the military against the neocon crazies]
The attempt to bankrupt Russia with sanctions, the simple theft of a
third of a billion in overseas Russian bank deposits, and the Russian
gas pipeline bombing has backfired badly, with Russia doing fine and
the rest of the world slowly but surely rotating away from the dollar
as a reserve currency (who wants all their deposits seized if they
do something the US doesn't like?). The US has drained its strategic
petroleum reserve to a decades-low level with no bad effect on Russia.
The reserve now contains only 18 days of US oil usage (the US uses
about 20 million barrels of oil a day). The turn away from the dollar
will likely require the Fed to keep raising interest rates to keep the
dollar attractive, but at the cost of making paying for oil with dollars
more dear. The US/UK directed pipeline bombing was a direct attack by
the US/UK on the economies of Europe. It's mind boggling to see most
of the EU official media also 'go full Orwell' as the US goes for their
energy jugular, and then sells them liquified US gas at 2-3x the price
of Russian gas to partially plug the sucking wound.
Meanwhile back in the US, the very moderate normalization of interest
rates to around 5% (still historically low) has destabilized banks,
many of which have unhedged longer term bond investments now being
hurt by higher interest rates (as interest rates rise, banks will lose
money if they have to sell low interest long bonds before they mature).
Higher interest rates are especially a problem with commercial real estate
debt where re-financing costs are more regular than with residential
real estate. In the residential real estate market, the increase in
mortgage rates has removed sellers from the market because many have
now locked in very low interest rate mortgages that will prevent them
buying a comparable house somewhere else with today's higher rates.
Note that this removes the same number of buyers from the market, so
the real estate market has markedly slowed down (though prices have only
clearly moderated so far in the most grossly inflated markets like San
Francisco). Prices still remain grossly inflated relative to salaries,
putting houses completely out of reach for many younger people.
There have been no major changes in net energy rundown. It's still
inexorably running down; 'renewables' (re-buildables) remain intermittent
with no prospects for meaningful amounts of energy storage; 'renewables'
are still providing only 3-4% of total world energy use, which has not
even covered the last decade of growth in total energy use; fracking is
still *energy* intensive and still depletes super-rapidly; Saudi is
still running down closer and closer to the game-over point when the
gas-filled seawater pumped down under the small fraction of remaining
oil finally hits the intake pipes; fossil fuel still accounts for 80-85%
of total energy. The usual distortions/waste due to short-term financial
games continue - for example, as rising oil prices send frackers back to
work, they have also been producing extra methane that they don't want,
which has temporarily crashed the price of methane.
The bifurcation between the 'energy
system' and the 'money system' is
growing.
Money is, at base, a proxy for energy. Energy is more basic than
money; you can't print energy. In the past, there was an extremely high
correlation between world GDP and world energy use. As high net energy
resources run down, total available energy is just topping out and will
soon be going down. However, money shows no sign of going down. As the
mismatch between energy and money increases, more and more money will be
chasing after less and less created-by-energy assets. Another thread is
the beginnings of the real unravelling of the petrodollar, long predicted,
but now in play (e.g., Kenya buying oil from Saudi with Kenya currency).
Eventually, something will break. That will probably be an opportunity
for international banks to try to introduce a globe-spanning CBDC digital
slave grid money system, which must be opposed at all costs.
Meanwhile, the new green deal people have also 'gone full Orwell'
demonstrating not even the vaguest understanding of the unearthly
(literally) mass of minerals and metals that would be required. Backing
up a 1GW intermittent power plant to lithium batteries for a hundred
hours (a bare minimum to cover week-to-week variation) would require
half of the world's current yearly lithium production (it takes about
100 barrels of oil to manufacture a lithium battery capable of holding
one barrel of oil's worth of energy, which of course has to come from
somewhere else). Or consider that a 3 MW wind turbine requires almost 5
*tons* of new copper. Offshore wind farms use 10 tons of copper per MW.
B.F. Randall has an excellent series of illustrated tweets on
how we get
copper - N.B.: wind and solar power are not involved. Mining uses
6.2% of total world energy consumption. For a comprehensive overview
of just how dire these resource problems are, see the excellent talk
by
Simon
Michaux and the recent overview with references by
Andrew
Nikiforuk.
This information is out there for any 'renewable energy advisor' to read.
None of the new green deal people in the US or the EU seem to have done
their most basic engineering homework - something any physical scientist
or mining engineer reading the internet could do in a few months.
One wonders what these guys do during their 'work day'? (maybe steal
women's luggage off the conveyor belt? :-} ). Maybe what the 4/5 of
Twitter workers that were fired were doing? (perhaps that explains why
firing most of the company didn't seem to have any visible effect on
daily operations). Again, it reminds me of Idiocracy.
It's clear from the above that many things are simultaneously going
pear-shaped, as I used to say, when I was back in the UK. Especially
worrying is the prospect of truly totalitarian central bank digital
currencies, which could be introduced as a quick fix after some new
catastrophic 'credit crunch'. There are so many balls in the air
(energy, money, trade, war, bioweapons, propaganda) that I find it
completely impossible to guess what distraction might happen next.
Some possibilities are another bigger war, a new 'pandemic' plus new
forced medical treatment, or bigger bank runs. You might think that
people would see through a pandemic propaganda re-run; but I think back to
how many times the cheesy 'chemical weapons' propaganda was successfully
'catapulted' ten years ago.
Perhaps there is still the possibility that a fiercely mentally resistant
hard core of people - the ones who didn't cave in the Asch and Milgram
experiments - might reject CBDC's or a new war or new 'pandemic',
and give courage to the majority of people that normally just go along and
follow orders. But it's a difficult assignment. Once you objectively
load your mind with all of the above problems, which few people can do
(Tom Murphy at UCSD has pretty much arrived at this stage of
"enlightenment"),
it's hard to keep it from exploding. That's why I'm currently reading
about how to construct a spinning electron that doesn't explode from
self-repulsion. Just kidding, sort of. Carry on.
[May07'23]
Spike is bad, but accidental IV injection of LNP's is the real general problem
It was apparent, soon after molecular biologists
began
experimenting with the SAR-CoV-2 spike protein, that the spike
protein was toxic to the endothelium, all on its own, without a
replicating virus. Later research showed additional spike badness
- the spike gets past the nuclear membrane where it
interferes with the BRCA1
and 53BP1 genes, both of which code for DNA repair proteins (the
industry-controlled science censorship complex managed to get this
peer-reviewed paper withdrawn, after it was published). This could
be related to the increase in aggressive cancers reported after the
vaccination campaign picked up speed.
But the bad effects of spike in the context of
mRNA 'vaccination' are probably mostly the result of
unintentional intravenous (IV) (as opposed to intramuscular, IM)
injection, a hypothesis first forcefully put forward by
Marc
Girardot (linked above, second 'r' there
finally :-} ) and recently highlighted by
Kevin
McKernan in the context of vaccine damage to retinal circulation.
Accidental intravenous injection (estimated to be between one in 30 up to
1 in 15 injections) exposes the endothelium to a blast (bolus) of LNP's
(lipid nanoparticles), which will penetrate the walls of endothelial cells
throughout the body, exposing them to eventual body-wide immune attack
on the vasculature. The LNP's can even cross the blood-brain barrier.
People often underestimate how rapidly intravenously injected substances
get taken up. I remember reading a study 30 years ago showing that a
liver virus ends up all in the liver just 60 seconds after intravenous
injections into a rodent. The blast of LNP transfection could be almost
as fast in the case of accidental intravenous injection. Though there
are other factors (batch-wise sloppy manufacturing practice) the bolus
theory likely explains why the majority of people get through the LNP
injections without major event (slow LNP uptake concentrated around the
intramuscular injection site), while a minority are damaged or killed.
The current feverish big money plan of big pharma together
with big government and big banking is to roll out mRNA LNP
vaccines for everything under the sun. This has *already*
been in play in industrial animal rearing for human food.
Though many of the new in-progress human 'vaccines' do not involve
spike protein, they may end up being just as lethal as the
unprecedentedly
lethal covid mRNA vaccines. If the 'bolus theory' is correct, it
won't help that the new mRNA is not coding for spike; many different
proteins could be a problem if the mRNA for them gets painted into cells
across the entire endothelium by the LNP's.
Just say no! Big pharma just wants to make money and big government
is sending them boatloads of cash, while simultaneously mandating the
use of the products. Big pharma has complete immunity from liability
for any child (or adult!) they kill, as a result of the 1986 National
Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. As long as they don't kill more than
1 in 1000, life is good for them. Caveat emptor! Remember, as an
individual getting repeated LNP shots, you have to to divide that 1000
denominator by how many shots you get! Do you feel lucky, uh, person?
Don't be an unlucky chump!
[Aug17'23]
Out of sync
[17 Aug 2023 email to the SDSU Health Service]
SDSU is one of only about 100 universities out of 2,679 four-year
colleges and universities that refuse to let go of COVID vaccine mandates.
This is completely at odds with the science!
(1) The vaccines are ineffective against infection, and after
a few months, actually *increase* the chance of infection relative
to unvaccinated.
(2) The vaccines are non-sterilizing, which means that the
vaccines do *not* prevent transmission and may actually increase
transmission by suppressing symptoms.
(3) The vaccines have well documented cardiac toxicity, esp. in
healthy people (a shocking 1 out of 35 subjects had an elevated cardiac
troponin test in a recent Swiss study of medical workers, predominantly
occurring in females).
(4) The vaccines are contaminated with bacterial plasmids
at levels 20 to 100 times beyond safe levels (Kevin McKernan). The
plasmids are there because they are used to amplifiy the DNA during the
manufacture of the mRNA and were not properly removed during vaccine
manufacturing. These plasmids contain a nuclear-localizing SV40 promoter
as well as antibiotic resistance genes, which present obvious health
risks.
At this point, the mandate seems utterly unsupported and by
scientific evidence, and positively harmful. When will rationality
finally be restored?
- - Marty Sereno
- - Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Director SDSU MRI center
[Sep13'23]
Why spike gain-of-function and leak/release obscure our 2 real problems
As JJ Couey has made several similar points at much
greater length (see his excellent videos at
Gigaohm Biological).
Let's start with our two real current problems (two main talking
points), then afterward examine why a lot of the alternative press has
gotten bogged down in a bunch of interesting facts that are, however,
a distraction from our current war situation.
Real Problem #1: the 'treatment' protocols were way more deadly than covid
The first real problem is the cover-up of the fact that *the*
major cause of death during the covid 'pandemic' psyop were the
deadly 'treatment' protocols, not the covid virus.
These are *still* in place in many hospitals, along with financial
incentives from the PREP act related lockdown money hose for
hospitals to use them ($39K bonus for using a ventilator, up to
$250K bonus for a 'covid' death, 20%-of-bill total bill bonus if
hospital uses remdesivir). See, for example, Sasha Latypova's
Aug
2023 experience rescuing an 80 year old relative from
what she claims was a DOD-administrated 'covid care floor'
provided by Highland Hospital in Rochester NY. Also see "
Before
they scrub this history". Here are the main things responsible for
excess deaths in 2020 and after, particularly in hospitals operating
under the HHS PREP Act (original version 2005):
- isolation of victim, removal of communication devices
- forced remdesivir (failed Ebola drug causes kidney failure, which fills lungs with fluid)
- ventilators (lung infections, also see sedation/paralysis, antibiotic use below)
- prevention of standard antibiotic use for lung infections
- prevention of standard steroid use for pneumonia cytokine storm (budesonide)
- opiates/paralytics/antipsychotics (req'd to stop struggle during ventilation)
- midazolam (bargefuls of powerful GABAa sedative rolled out in UK 'care' homes)
- prevention of standard hydration (e.g., Sasha Latypova's Aug 2023 experience!)
- denial of patient's current medication (ibid)
- prevention of early use of ivermectin, vitamin D, zinc, nasal irrigation
Strong support for this thesis is that the whole covid
'pandemic' didn't have any of the normal excess deaths patterns
consistent with infectious spread of a respiratory virus (see
Denis
Rancourt et al., 2023). The excess deaths fatality risk ratios are
relatively uniform across age, across all states in the US. This is
completely inconsistent with the well-documented infection fatality
ratio for covid which increases exponentially with age.
The large spikes in the number of excess deaths are
inconsistent with the actual pre-vaccination infection
fatality ratio, which turned out to be tiny (see
Pezzullo,
Ioannidis et al., 2022):
0.095% for age 0-70. Incidentally,
this was obvious from the very beginning with the demonstrated low
mortality in the 'petri dish' covid-infected Diamond Princess cruise
ship held in port for weeks, filled with infected not-very-healthy cruise
people. The low overall infection fatality ratio in the pre-vaccination
period was *less* than many seasonal flus. It was incapable of explaining
the huge spikes in excess deaths.
Since the majority of the excess deaths (pre-vaccine) came from the
'treatment', it's absolutely critical that we stop this kind of
'treatment' from ever happening again. This is going to be diffcult
since this 'treatment' was rolled out under military-directed,
emergency measures and laws that are completely different from the
rules and regulations that hospitals normally work under - completely
different in legal liability, informed consent (none required) (see
Katherine Watt), and driven by powerful perverse monetary incentives.
If we don't recognize this, it is going to happen again under the cover
of the next new 'emergency'.
Real problem #2: many new toxic LNP/modRNA injections are in preparation
First, let's quickly review just how toxic the existing
LNP mRNA shots were/are. 'Building on' several decades of
failure and evidence of toxicity of mRNA-based gene therapy,
the first large scale rollout of LNP mRNA covid 'vaccines'
strongly confirmed the fact that these injections are
orders
of magnitude more deadly than all previous vaccines *put
together* (because they are not vaccines). On top of that, they
don't work. They don't prevent infection, transmission, or severe
hospitalization. The most straightforward way to see this complete
and utter failure is the simple observation that all-cause mortality
in many countries went *up* after the mRNA shots were rolled out,
percentage-wise the most in 20-40 year olds; here is
data
from the CDC. The same thing occurred in the UK, where current
excess mortality remains elevated even more than in the US. The utter
failure of the LNP mRNA injections was even more striking in Australia
and NZ where there was essentially no covid or covid deaths before the
'vaccine'. Then *after* the mRNA injections were rolled out there, there
was a massive uptick in excess mortality, still currently elevated.
The elevation is explainable because toxic LNP mRNA shots have been
added to toxic covid 'treatments'.
The monetary impetus for the new 'platform' is that compared to the old
style method of manufacturing vaccines by growing viruses in giant vats
of immortalized mammalian cell lines (cancer cells), the mRNA vaccine
manufacturing process is much cheaper - esp. since the emergency use
authorizations allow companies to sidestep good manufacturing practice
(GMP) regulations.
The main reason *all* LNP mRNA genetic therapy 'vaccines' are so dangerous
is that they essentially turn any cell they enter into a target for
the immune system. If the LNP mRNA gets accidentally injected into
circulation, which happens so some extent a few percent of the time, they
will immediately get taken up by endothelial cells, eventually resulting
in autoimmune attack on the insides of blood vessels throughout the body,
with obviously bad consequences. This feature is common to all LNP mRNA
genetic 'therapy' or 'vaccines'.
Another likely reason they are dangerous is that they are contaminated
with plasmids leftovers from the E coli-based DNA amplification needed
to generate pounds of DNA (from which the mRNA can be manufactured by
a cell-free method). One reason the DNA survives the DNAse treatment
is that pseudouridine is much 'stickier' than uridine (i.e., the double
stranded melting temperature increases) and binds to the complementary
DNA plasmid, forming a triple helix, protecting it from the DNAse.
These plasmids contain an undocumented (by Pfizer) SV40 promoter and
enhancer (a switch to turn on the vaccine gene). However, the SV40
promoter and enhancer are also "nuclear-localizing" because they bind
transcription factors, which means that they can help get the gene
seqeuence in the plasmid get into the nucleus of a cell; the LNP's get
the mRNA payload into the cytoplasm, but are less likely to get past
the double membrane around the cell nucleus. This is precisely why the
SV40 promoter has been widely used in DNA gene therapy - in order to
get plasmids containing 'therapy' genes into the nucleus! (see
summary
here). A recent study found that almost 50% of injectees have
some mRNA vaccine-specific spike (as distinguished from 'natural' covid
spike by mass spectrometry) still circulating in their blood
6
months later. This might have come from reverse translation of the
long lasting modRNA. But it could also have come from plasmids that got
into bacteria and been replicated there or LNP delivered DNA fragments
that got incorporated into the nuclear genetic material.
With that context, we can now focus on our second real problem.
Big government (DOD/NIH/CDC/FDA) and big pharma are now feverishly
working together on a
frighteningly large pile of new gene-therapy
injections based on the lipid nanoparticle (LNP) and modified mRNA
gene-therapy 'platform'. Like the covid vaccine, all of these are gene
therapy, not 'vaccines' in any sense of the word. There is a massive
amount of money behind this (cf. fracking a decade ago). A large number
of these 'vaccines' (literally gain-of-function bioweapons) are *already*
in clinical trials, including mRNA genetic therapy for influenza (many
strains), RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), HIV, Zika, SARS 'classic'
(SARS-1), genital herpes, tetanus, pertussis, Epstein-Barr virus, malaria,
among others. Add to this the 'bright' idea of adding mRNA for proteins
from the complement system (C3d) involved in cell killing (the complement
cascade, which makes holes in cells targetted by the immune system)
as an adjuvant to further aggravate the immune system to allow lower
mRNA doses. This directly tampers with a critical piece of powerful
machinery in the innate immune system with yet more unknown consequences.
Add to the above a slew of cancer LNP mRNA genetic-therapy 'vaccines'
for melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and so on. Analogous to the situation
with the covid scare, cancer here provides the fear factor necessary
to convince people to take these dangerous and completely experimental
and untested injections (cf. toxic chemotherapy). These cancer genetic
therapy 'vaccines' are already being marketed to treat the turbo cancers
caused by the covid genetic therapy 'vaccines'.
Each one of these injections will be subject to the same occasional
intravenous injection, 'painting' and transfecting the endothelium
(and the ovaries and testes, where empty LNP's selectively go) with
infectious LNP's, and potentially exposing these and other 'self' bodily
tissues to autoimmune attack. Each one of these injections may 'only'
kill or severely injure 1 in a 1000 people. But if everyone is getting
10 of these a year, every year, then we're talking some real carnage.
It's not known what happens to the injected cationic lipds (they are not
metabolize-able and probably stick around and could help other RNA's
get into other cells). The metabolic fate of methyl pseudouridine
is similarly unknown and the individual pseudourodyl nucleotides are
probably reused. Since pseudouridine is the 'universal' base, which
sloppily base-pairs with anything, this could cause translation errors
in other proteins.
Without massive pushback, this witches brew of hundreds of new LNP genetic
therapy shots will be rolled out, mandated, and many will be added
to the childhood vaccine schedule by the FDA, which has turned into a
subsidiary of big pharma. These many new 'warp speeds' will soon connect
to the federal money fire hose that just pumped almost $2 billion via the
CDC, another subsidiary of big pharma, in June 2023 into a pre-order of
revamped covid 'vaccines' for the predicted 'September covid outbreak'.
This is a self-amplifying disaster - the damage from mRNA LNP injections
will be used as further justification for more injections (see long
'covid'). The real bioweapon slash gain-of-function is the shot.
Why gain-of-function, spike toxicity, and lab leaks - all true! - are now distractions
But now, let's look at gain-of-function, spike toxicity, and lab leaks
(or intentional release). After the passage of the international
Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act in 1989, gain-of-function bioweapons
'research' exploded, with many new BSL 3 and 4 containment labs built
in the US and throughout US military-related installation throughout
the world. Anyone 'shocked' by this simply hasn't read the literature.
There is a long history of messing around with the furin cleavage site.
The possibility of unintentional leaks as well as intentional tests are
both foregone conclusions.
But to review points made forcefully by JJ Couey, coronaviruses (and many
other viruses) were never very good bioweapons. The viral polymerase
(single-stranded RNA-dependent RNA polymerase) make lots of mistakes and
often terminates early, so RNA virus infections consist of huge swarms
of mutated, almost entirely non-functional particles that rapidly evolve
toward less virulence. Because of this, in practice, virus researchers
have taken a wild sample of viruses, which would otherwise rapidly evolve
in cell culture, and then clone one of them into complementary DNA (cDNA),
which is stable, easy to accurately replicate and amplify, and thus,
easier to study as a fixed "thing" than the actual reality of the viral
swarm of slight variants that actually occurs naturally.
JJ Couey has suggested that the unprecedentally detailed virus
'phylogenies' that massive injections of research money have generated
for the first time in such detail, probably reflect widespread release
(accidental or otherwise) of artificially constructed infectious clones -
that is, the kind of thing that you actually study in the lab by making
RNA copies from your cDNA clone. This may explain such weird anomalies
as the 'outbreak' confined to the Iranian parliament (!) that didn't
spread, or outbreaks in an extremely localized part of northern Italy
that didn't spread, or the 'outbreak' in NYC, which didn't even spread
to any of the surrounding communities.
Then there was the President of Tanzania, John Magufuli, 61, who just
happened to die perhaps of 'covid' after he turned down a Pfizer deal.
Or Pierre Nkurunziza, President of the Republic of Burundi, 55, a former
soccer player, who opposed lockdowns, which were instituted immediately
after his death), or Ambrose Dlamini, 52, president of Eswatini, where
a plan to vaccinate the entire population was instituted a few weeks
after his death.
As any decent bioweapons guy knows, viruses are pretty useless as
bioweapons, esp. for causing spread. The real 'bioweapons' are the LNP
mRNA shots and covid 'treatments'. Excess deaths are strongly correlated
with vaccination rate and with the availability of 'modern' 'treatments'.
Now what about engineered spike toxcitiy? Isn't that important to focus
on? Yes, it's true that the engineered spike is bad. Antibodies to it
may interact with syncytin-1 messing up the placenta; spike may inhibit
DNA repair enzymes (BRC1, p53); it may cause clotting all on its own;
it may damage the endothelium all on its own; it may damage the heart
all on its own, even without the immune system. But the critical thing
to keep in mind is that just getting rid of spike won't solve the *much
bigger* problem of the whole infernal LNP pseudouridine-substituted mRNA
'platform'. The fundamental evil is that go-everywhere-LNP modified-mRNA
- *whatever payload it is carrying* - will turn cells all over the body
into targets for the immune system. It will also cause cells all over
the body and brain to express the coded protein. There is no way to fix
that 'platform'. It's fundamentally flawed. And it's currently, right
now, getting injections (hah) of billions of dollars every month from the
fascist coming together of big government (HHS/NIH), big pharma, big tech,
big banking, and big venture capital. *That's* the giant locomotive
bearing down upon us. It powerfully reminds me of the inevitability
of war in autumn 2002 when the US miltary began a 6 month operation to
transport all the troops and materiel to the mideast in preparation for
the second 2003 Iraq war; by late 2002, resistance was already futile,
and the antiwar demonstrations essentially came after the facts where
already on the ground.
[Update: Sep20'23] Even the 'vaccine' DNA plasmid contamination
discussed above is turning into a red herring in the sense that it
can be used to argue 'all we have to do is fix the contamination
and then the platform will be great'. Take a look at
Phillip Buckhaults'
testimony. He 'loves' the platform, got vaccinated 3 times,
vaccinated his daughters, and can't wait to see it rolled out for
everything under the sun. Just have to fix the DNA contamination,
and then it's jabs away. Ick.
[Update: Sep28'23] See (!)
"9/11 is going to drive
all future vaccine research towards DNA", from a book intro by Phil
Felgner in 2003 (from Mark Kulacz).
Finally, some fun!
Now that I've made my talking points, a little fun. With JJ
Couey's idea of 'infectious clones' in mind (as the prime movers
behind the phylogenies and possibly also well localized virulent
outbreaks), I came across a new interesting paper on the unnatural
'evolution' of SARS-CoV-2 variants by Tanaka and Miyazawa (2023)
that
can be found
on Zenodo here (the data sets backing it up can be
found here).
It's unreviewed and in Zenodo (whatever). But it seems to clearly show:
(1) an unusually low number of synonymous mutations (mutations that don't
change the amino acid - beceause of the redundancy of the genetic code)
compared to non-synonymous mutations (like a genetic engineer would
introduce since they *do* change the amino acid) in the spike protein
(none in Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Mu variants, and only one each in
Lambda and Omicron variants compared to 30-35 non-synonymous), and (2)
that there are weird perfect reversion mutations so that each different
strain has just one mutation missing.
I am a novice at sequence analysis and I don't know how unusual this
might be in the phylogeny of other viruse swarms. However, because of
the insane amount of money dumped into covid biology, it is likely that
there are probably no other cases studied in this much detail with which
to compare. Also, it seems like someone could have done this analysis
a while ago, when 'science' went all-covid, all the time (there was an
Oct 2020 report on weird syn/non-syn. ratios from Li-Meng Yan
here).
At first glance, this appears to be smoking gun evidence for the release,
accidental or otherwise, of a pile of infectious clones! I originally
saw this via the first and only post by a new anon substack,
psmi.
Perhaps, this is yet another diversion/mental manipulation (!) to distract
us from paying attention to the two main points above?
[Mar12'24]
Generalized debt vs. energy
Just skimmed this video from Chris Martenson interviewing
Dr. Susanne Trimbath
about an extension of what used to be called 'naked shorts' (I
first heard/wrote about 'naked shorts' about 20 years ago
here). The general
idea is the 'market makers' sell more shares (or bonds) than actually
exist as stock certificates or paper bonds.
Chris claims to be 'shocked' by this. His 'shock' reminds me of Captain
Renault in Casablanca: "I am shocked that there is gambling going on in
this establishment". It looks to me like something quite analogous to
standard debt. When a bank makes a loan, they generate the money for
the loan from the void and then set against it the collateral (e.g.,
the house), which they can then seize if the loan isn't repaid, while
charging interest on the loan-money-from-the-void. When the loan is paid
back, the created-from-the-void money then disappears back into the void.
However, the total amount of debt typically increases over time, so this
means that the disappearing-into-the-void process is routinely swamped
by the creation-from-the-void process.
But think about the actual world. At any moment, there are a certain
number of houses. When the money is created for a loan to buy a house,
it's not like the house, which ends up as collateral on the banks books,
was also created - it was already there. Selling more stocks or bonds
than actually exist as stock certificates, etc. is a fundamentally similar
operation of creating more money-like-things than existed before the sale
of the non-existent thing.
Regardless of what you think of privately-owned banks' ability to create
(to essentially counterfeit) money and then charge interest on it,
this system fundamentally depends on growth to 'work'. There must be a
continuously increasing amount of real stuff, so that enough new money
can be created in order to pay the interest on the previously created
money. Since money creation isn't directly tied to real-stuff-creation,
there is also the temptation to create too much money relative to stuff,
resulting in hyperinflation and this of course has repeatedly happened
when money creation got ahead of stuff creation.
However, the most critical things that most economists ignore is that
energy is required to create new things. For example, training large AI
models can consume a substantial portion of the output of a power plant.
Similarly, building houses requires logging, making concrete, steel,
glass, drywall, refrigerators, etc., all of which require large amount
of energy. The final puzzle piece is that extracting energy itself
requires energy, the amount of which varies with the richness of the
energy resource. This applies equally to 'renewable' or more properly,
'rebuildable' energy.
The energy return on energy investment for 'rebuildable' energy is
actually *less* than the energy return on energy investment for fossil
fuels, which still supply about 80% of our total energy (electricity is
only 20% of total energy usage). The reason this isn't as apparent as it
should be is that prices for 'rebuildable' energy are artificially kept
too low because energy storage isn't included, which would be required
to make intermittent rebuildable wind and solar actually equivalent to
storable, anytime-dispatchable fossil fuel. Once storage is included,
rebuildable energy is several times as expensive *in energy terms*
as fossil fuel, even given the ever-dwindling energy return on energy
investment from remaining fossil fuel deposits.
So what does this have to do with 'naked shorts generalized'? What is
clearly happening now is that our ability to continue to grow (make
new things), required to keep a money-created-from-the-void system
more or less stable, is coming to an end as the energy cost of energy
inexorably increases. However, the money changers are still creating
money as before. In fact, there is more than 50% more money now than
there was just in 2020. Of course, this has similarities to many previous
episodes where too much money gets temporarily created, causing localized
hyperinflation and localized collapse.
What's different now is that the possibility of continuous growth is
ending worldwide. 'Rebuildable' energy is not even vaguely close to being
able to sustain continuous growth, or even keep up maintenance on the
amount of currently existing stuff. But since money creation is divorced
from energy-requiring 'stuff creation', the feedback loop is faulty.
We will likely experience a bumpy series of inflation-then-collapse
cycles, with each one collapsing back to less total money than the
previous one - assuming the collapses aren't too complete. We have
to go back to the collapse of the Roman empire (or the Mayan empire)
to see something similar - except this time, it will be earth-wide.
It's a worrisome picture that many consider too dark for general
consumption or understanding. In the past, I would have next written
something like "C'mon just suck it up, and let's get to work!". Over the
years, I see that only old farts with limited lifetime remaining will
be able to consciously come to terms with this, so I suppose, there is
no good reason to even write about it :-/
Recent US: (latest blog entries scroll up)
mRNA is a class one carcinogen by Ian Brighthope
How much damage have vaccines done to society? by A Midwestern Doctor (excellent summary)
[Many other hospital-caused 'covid' deaths were like this one - doctors and nurses should be penalized for causing deaths] by Michael Nevradakis
Vaccines are the main cause of chronic diseases by Steve Kirsch
The allegory of the damaged ship by Jessica Hockett
Ethical boundaries in medical decision-making can be blurred by circumstances by Jonathan Engler and Jessica Hockett (Aug 2023)
The new eugenics movement - part 2 by Dr. Ah Kahn Syed (pseudonym)
Telling the truth about our future by Art Berman
Cthulhu looks right by Isaac Simpson
Sudden cardiac death in younger persons up 66% (21 sigma) by Ethical Skeptic
Have we reached a turning point in the war on Palestinians? [this was to cover up simultaneous Al-Shifa Hospital massacre] by Larry Johnson
78% of US slaveowners were jewish by Mads Palsvig
New survey confirms that vaccines are, by far, the #1 cause of chronic disease in Ameria by Steve Kirsch
Moderna developing mRNA vaccines for diseases linked to COVID shots by John-Michael Dumais
Fire, then ice: our deflationary future by Charles Hugh Smith
Morbidly obese Green Party candidate demands fresh lockdowns/injections, enforced by military [we live in clown world] by Ben Bartee
[Trump's Izzy position: finish the genocide, but don't show it on teevee] by Dave DeCamp
Richat structure (igneous dome eroded to rings, upper right) Google Maps
Richat structure in broader context (far left) Google Maps
Lockdown: never ever forget by Jeffrey A. Tucker (see Mar 2020
AP news report on Carlson/Trump meeting)
Rational policy over panic Garrett W. Brown and David Bell
The century of evidence that vaccines cause sudden infant deaths by A Midwestern Doctor
Clash of the Titans by Hal Turner (read at bottom)
In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States, March 11-18, 2024 by Mark Crispin Miller
Huge increase in cancer in 2021 (z=11.8) and 2022 (z=16.5) in age 15-44 by Alegria et al. (2024)
Penalty and interest free loans available to refugees entering US [started in 1958, but repayment now not required] United States Refugee Admissions Program
[bank failures extremely low] by Wolf Richter
[CDC FOIA release of doc on relation between vax and heart disease: all 148 pages completely redacted] by Liam Edgar [on MSN!]
Manufacturing consent: the border fiasco and the "smart wall" by Whitney Webb
Globalists plan to impose CBDC on unsuspecting Americans thru stable coins by Whitney Webb
The jewish roots of the Gaza rampage Mike Whitney interview of Ron Unz
217 jabs or legal jousting? by Kevin McKernan
[sue the bastards] by Steve Kirsch
[sheesh - the murdered student is at fault b/c migrant did it!] By Katherine Donlevy and Yaron Steinbuch
Income needed to afford a home in the US has soared by 80% since 2020 ziohedge
Childhood vaccine schedule led to 'greatest decline in public health in human history' Hooker, Bigtree from Johnson hearing - by Michael Nevradakis
FamotiGate and
Everything you wanted to know about secret biolabs in Ukraine
by Sasha Latypova [go Sasha!]
Government admission: Biden parole flights create security ‘vulnerabilities’ at U.S. airports by Todd Bensman
Policy review: the nature of the events of the Covid era by PANDA
Scooby Doo mystery update [long vid] by JJ Couey [go Jonathan!]
Aspirin contributed to mortalities of 1918-1919 Spanish influenza, and more by Russ Winter
[peak net energy is NOW] by L. Delannoy et al. (2021)
The tremendous material and energy toll of the digital economy review of G Pitron (2023) by Alice Friedemann
[classic poison-the-well! key truths mixed with fake white-hat Qanon] Steve Pieczenik
Greg Hunter gets shredded - 'there is no right versus left' [7 min vid] interview with Catherine Austin Fitts
3/4 Energy-backed world, 4/4 Supply constraints masquerading as demand destruction by Dissident Thoughts/Quoth the Raven [I
said this back in Apr 2020]
The rapidly emerging rule of tyranny in the west by Paul Craig Roberts
[Pfizer vaccine applied to cancer cell lines then washed/propagated results in integration into cellular DNA] by Kevin McKernan
Ontario Canada woman paralyzed by vaccine offered euthansia but no vac injury compensation the Canadian Independent
Airport vs. border Viral New NYC
Embalmers are continuing to find mysterious clots in the vaccinated by A Midwestern Doctor
Turbo brain cancer due to University COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the United States by Dr. William Makis
"We're working to improve these kinds of depictions" [black Vikings, Caucasian males/couples impossible, black and asian Nazis ziohedge
Interview w/Sasha Latypova (see min 40+: plasmids maybe not "inadvertent")
Transplacental transmission of the COVID-19 vaccine mRNA: evidence from placental, maternal and cord blood analyses post-vaccination [PDF] [the authors applaud 'prenatal therapy'] by Lin et al. (2024)
Coming up for air: controlled opposition by Amazing Polly
A study of molecular mimicry and immunological cross-reativity between hepatitis B surface antigen and myelin mimics [almost all US babies get hepB vac in first day of life] by Bogdanos et al. (2005)
What can a multiple sclerosis charity teach us about medical propaganda? by A Midwestern Doctor
Defusing the derivatives time bomb: some proposed solutions by Ellen Brown
"Inhalable" [bioengineered] self-spreading vaccines that spread like a virus ICAN
Better white coats for doctors [pic] by Gavin Nascimento
Inside the chaos of Robert F. Kennedy Jr's campaign [former CIA Amaryllis Fox Kennedy replaced campaign manager Dennis Kucinich when he resigned after Kennedy supported Gaza genocide] by Charlie Spiering (Daily Mail)
Collapse in San Francisco Cryptogon
What is the Democrats' playbook? by Paul Craig Roberts
NIH in early 2022 abruptly stopped responding to people injured by COVID shots by Michael Nevradakis
[study hall on history of virology relevant to present] by JJ Couey
I think I understand why Bhattacharya wanted shots in elderly arms now ... by Sage Hana
Jeffrey Epstein was a fake billionaire set up by intelligence services 60 min Australia (2019)
-->
biden's socialist border bait is destorying the u.s. by Kyle Young
The FBI's 'dancing Israeli' investigation reveals Israel foreknowledge of 9/11 by Russ Winter
[it's bad when Biden has lost 'The View"]
[academics disgust me - forcing medical treatments is 'left'???] California Faculty Association forcing vaccines on students
Covid was classified a national security threat by the US government/DOD on Feb 4, 2020 by Sasha Latypova
The data is now now in: lockdown "deaths of despair" rocketed upward by Toby Rogers
Potential perturbation of the ionosphere by megaconstellations and corresponding artificial re-entry plasma dust [PDF] by S. Solter-Hunt
What we are not being told about the border by Kyle Young
What powerful force is preventing the United States from defending its borders? by Paul Craig Roberts
War on Gaza: Fate of ambulance team sent to rescue five-year-old girl unknown by By Mohammed Qreiqe in Gaza and Katherine Hearst and Heba Nasser
All US job gains since 2018 to non-native-born workers ziohedge
Massachesetts StateHouse Testimony in support of bill on bodily autonomy and family integrity by John Beaudoin
How to fake pandemics in 4 easy steps, Part 1 and
Part 2 by Sasha Latypova
What the nurses saw: 'Covid' deaths were mainly from the deadly protocols precis of book by Ken McCarthy
[IL-76 carrying Ukrainian POW's brought down by Patriot missile] by IntelSlava
No doubt about it: the COVID vaccines cause dementia [1000x worse than any previous vaccine]
It took me a long time to face what I knew to be true about 9/11 by William Hurt, Nov 2021, reposted on his passing
Medicine has been fully militarized by Clayton J. Baker, MD
Ben Shapiro contributed $100-500K to Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society [migrant resettlement/trafficking aid] by Shane Trejo
[repeat injections of spike mRNA genetic therapy, but NOT spike protein vaccines, causes IgG4 tolerization] by Kalkeri et al. (2024) [N.B.: Novovax-funded, so possible conflict of interest]
COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: lessons learned from the registrational trials and global vaccination campaign - we need a moratorium on their use by M.N. Mead, S. Senneff et al. (2024)
Presentation to Doctors for COVID ethids international by JJ Couey
Covid mRNA vaccines required no safety oversight - part 2 by Debbie Lerman
(see also
part 1)
Make DEFUSE real again by JJ Couey
Order out of chaos - vol 1: the B-thing by a wayward winchester
Are you aware of what is happening in the wake of the Maui wildfire by theoldermillennial.1
Bret Weinstein exposed: hardcore lockdown & vaccine proponent by 2nd smartest guy
Huge proportion of internet is AI-generated slime by Maggie Harrison
The little known weird trick: you can train the sheep to scare themselves by Sasha Latypova
[knowingly or unknowingly catapulting the propaganda as the 'trusted dissident' for the next psyop] by Kevin McKernan
Phony Covid dissidents - beware the dream team by Amazing Polly
['Medicine' has gone utterly freaking mad] Unintended consequences of invoking the "natural" in breastfeeding promotion by Jessica Martucci, Anne Barnhill, American Academy of Pediatrics
[most recent PREP act: we must not fall for more of the same!] by Sasha Latypova
[bizarre scenes as city cement trucks blocked from filling tunnels with concrete] by Lauren Witzke
Texas seizes control of border city park
Parents fume after students at James Madison High forced to learn remotely while school housed asylum seekers by Natalie Duddridge
Illegal immigrants per month just surpassed native births by Elon Musk
This is how they will cancel the 2024 election [vid] interview with Whitney Webb
A Christmas messag eon aliens, demons and the grifters trying to fool us by Scott Creighton
Shadid Bolsen on the Billionaires' revolution by Scott Creighton
They've been planning this cyber attack for years interview with Whitney Webb
[N@zi covid doctors in WA - hospital horror] by Gerald Braude and ICWA
Statins stimulate atherosclerosis and heart failure: pharmacological mechanisms [PDF] by Okuyama et al. (2015)
Pfizer investment to treat TURBO CANCERS caused by their mRNA vaccines by William Makis
It was never about a virus anyway by Dr. Ah Kahn Syed (Oct 2023)
Never forget the "Nobody is safe" people by Matt Orfalea
Covid hospital murders by Harold Saive
The Green Transition will not work as planned, what might we do instead? by Simon Michaux
Fired ICU nurse speaks out on COVID protocols, vaccine injuries by John-Michael Dumais
Shale oil and the slurping sound: 1/2 to 2/3 of remaining oil reserves are within a few hundred miles of Israel by Art Berman
[paramedic reporting on what he saw [e.g., "emergency appendectomies, so many of them"] by Harry Fisher
The West agonises over an 'atrocity upsurge' while backing Israel's genocide in Gaza by Jonathan Cook
Israel's onslaught drags U.S. jewish life into the abyss by Philip Weiss
The [frame]shift is about to hit the fan by Kevin McKernan
Safe and effective with just a few minor side effects by Drwelch
[Did GOP fear offending Ken Griffin? by Adam Townsend
[Pseudo-uridine causes frame shift errors, which then cause spurious antibodies to the frame-shifted products, which cause autoimmune problems - but luckily no adverse outcomes, hah!] by Mulroney et al., 2023
Biden amin openly threatening Americans over Ukraine by Tucker Carlson
War crimes and atrocity-hoaxes in the Israel/Gaza conflict by Ron Unz
Making hyper-entitled students feel safe on Ivy League campuses by Max Blumenthal
US secretary of state Antony Blinken is yet another in a long line of made men by Thomas Muller
The SV40 promoter in the Pfizer vaccine is known to bind to the Tumor Suppressor Gene p53 by Kevin McKernan
MEGA and Wasabi can screw you if they/someone doesn't like what you say by Steve Kirsch
Kevin McKernan loses entire databsae of research after NZ health service obtains an injunction to prevent sharing of leaked Covid vax health data by Rebekah Barnett
"The killing of George Floyd" was a gigantic lie that actually killed Minneapolis, while helping keep us all at one another's throats by Mark Crispin Miller
WEF false flag coming in 2024 interview with Whitney Webb
Data from US Medicare and the New Zealand Ministry of Health show, beyond any doubt, that the COVID vaccines have killed 10 million worldwide by Steve Kirsch
Fake obituaries are being created to taint "died suddenly" reporting by Dr. William Makis
The guy who 'debunked' PizzaGate arrested for child porn with kids as young as 3 by Matt Wallace
[recycled plastic much more toxic than virgin plastic] by Carmona et al. (2023)
[a sequence in Moderna vax was originally patented to cause clotting in hemophiliacs - they're not trying to kill you, honest] by Kevin McKernan
Fentanyl: chemical warfare on a scale on one wants to admit by Jon Rappoport
Dr. Mike Yeadon: "I'm being censored by what I thought was our own side" by Lioness of Judah Ministry
'Hyperprogressive' cancers due to COVID vaccine-caused IgG4 antibodies by Igor Chudov
[artist's work rejected because panel thought it was AI - now you have to prove you are human] by Lewin Day
Symbolic pics of the month Nov 2023 by Vigilant Citizen
What do institutional investors of Pfizer know? by Evans
Israel's genocideal intent in its own words [short vid] 5Pillars
[come and fight WW3 for Israel - no vax required!] by Hal Turner
Pilot warns of airline industry disaster due to COVID-19 vaccines (Squawk 7700 Alerts up 386% in 2023) by William Makis
The Anthony Fauci-Bobby Kennedy pro wrestling fake family feud: it's one big club and you ain't in it by Sage Hana
How many times did Zionist RFK Jr ride on Epsteins Lolita Express? by Brian Shilhavy
Stop the genocide in Gaza seemorerocks
Saving a life by John Day
[child freed from the rubble] Khadija
Could it be the Fed's Mega-QE created to much liquidity [debt-created money] that tightening doesn't work ntil this excess gets burned up? by Wolf Richter
House votes to censure 66% of Americans for antisemitic support of ceasefire The Onion
The covid ventilator disaster: was the US to blame? by Martin Neil
The Epstein-Maxwell kompromat operation likely ensnared thousands by Russ Winter
What will happen if the Northern front opens up [2 min vid] by Scott Ritter
[the vaccine caused 2-3x more deaths than hospital covid 'treatment'] by Ben
[on the spider-silk-like ORF (open reading frame) in the vaccine plasmid DNA contamination] by Jessica Rose
[the mystery complementary-strand ORF (open-reading frame) in the covid vaccine plasmid DNA contamination is not accidental] by Kevin McKernan
Nuclear bomb map shows impact if Biden's new weapon dropped on Russia Newsweek (!)
Israeli MoH data released in March 2023 proves the vaccines are killing people by Steve Kirsch
Chronicles of an unvaccinated leftist by Filipe Rafaeli
The depopulation bomb by Clayton J. Baker
The great federal centralisation Phinance Technologies
Syrians and Africans overwhelmed border patrol here last night by Jeff Rainforth
'Excess mortality' continuing surge causes concerns [insurance industry rag w/hilarious scare quotes and no mention of vaccine] by Doug Bailey
Death by vaccine [massive spike in 25-44 year old all-cause mortality after 2021 mandates]
Pfizer deliberately deceived regulators by Brenda Baletti
Pfizer is going down and it was likely planned by Maria Gutschi
The fake antivaxxer victory, Part 1 by Mathew Crawford
[using mod-mRNA LNP's to make antibodies after Supreme Court kills monoclonal antibody patent] by JJ Couey
[transfection of isolated cardiomyocytes by modified mRNA 'vaccines' with no immune system present seriously damages them w/24 hour delay] Schreckenberg et al. (2023)
The great taking: how they can own it all by Ellen Brown
JFK Jr. dumps [Israel-critical] Dennis Kucinich as campaign manager and hires CIA agent as replacement by sage hana
Sodium [sulfur] batteries by Alice Friedemann
On the subject of turbo cancers by Marian Laderoute
Breast cancer stage 4: very young age, triple negative, new mothers: features of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine turbo cancer; 30 cases by Dr. WIlliam Makis
US, Israeli lawmakers call for genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by Dave DeCamp
Keep cool, recognize the psyop by Sovereign Brah
[beware CO2 pipelines] by Julia Simon (2020)
No lives saved by C19 vaccines, signed: the real science by Robin Monotti
"Something is VERY WRONG HERE" by Efrat Fenigson
The birth of modern Pharma fascism by Toby Rogers
With this latest psy-op pushing everybody's buttons, it matters more than ever that we keep our heads, and ask, "what really happened"? by Mark Crispin Miller
What's really happening in Israel by David Icke
Mini-me update [LNP + spike 3x better nuclear localization of [contaminant] DNA]
Windbaggery by Doomberg
Hunter Biden raided daughter's college funds for $20K to buy hookers and blow ziohedge
Anti Ukraine war activists arrested at Bernie Sanders office CODEPINK
Our revolting elites by Charles Hugh Smith
Reports from the front lines - part 5 by Pierre Kory
2 + 2 = 5: we didn't force anyone to do anything by Kevin Kiley
Human trafficking: Kyle Seraphin speaks with “migrant hotel” NGO whistleblower Carlos Arellano: Transcript by A.S. Martin
5 ways to skin a (genetically modified) cat by Dr. Ah Khan Syed (pseudonym)
Class-action lawsuit filed against Remdesiver manufacturer over alleged deceptive practices by 2nd smartest
PSYOP-MUSK activated to attack PSYOP-19 after most of the damage has already been done by 2nd smartest
Denis Rancourt and Peter McCullough (excellent!) interivew by JJ Couey
The CIA and the elephant in the room by Moneycircus
[truly sick humor: Nobel prize for suppressing the immune systems of 2/3 of the world's people] NBC
[heart damage assessed by PET F-FDG uptake [4.8 vs 3.3] detected in all vaccinated up to max post-vac time tested = 6 months] by Nakahara et al. (2023)
[Sweden was right] Mortality Watch
Rafting with Ebola [short sensible vid] by Mark Kulasz
[quasi-species swarm vs. Vanden Bossche] by JJ Couey
Lab origin of COVID-19 was covered up to "vaccinate the world", in an arsonist-firefighter plot by Igor Chudov
Discussing sex is no longer allowed at Anthropology conferences by Elizabeth Weiss
NYC Spring 2020: emergency department/outpatient deaths by Jessica Hockett
[CDC just discontinued updating this useful graph Sept 27, 2023] CDC
[CDC discontinued updating this useful graph May 2023] CDC
In Doppelganger, Naomi Klein scapegoats Naomi Wolf for the sins of Klein's father by Toby Rogers
Reports from the front line of the vaccine catastrophe by Pierre Kory
RFK Jr interview with Leah Wilson by Meryl Nass
Fauci and the CIA: a new explanation emerges by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Is World War III about to start? Part II: Are the military-industrial complex and deep state driving us to war? by Richard C. Cook
JJ Couey channel by Jonathan J Couey
Mark Kulacz' bitchute channel by Mark Kulacz
When shelter becomes a speculative asset, society unravels by Charles Hugh Smith
The New Normal Progressive is the New Right by Phil Shannon
[just read the title and the comments] ziohedge
Our system is collapsing in real time [Swiss Carlson interview] by Urs Gehriger
The great demoralization by Jeffrey A. Tucker
[CDC is shutting down this convenient all-cause-mortality graph Sep 2023 (so you have to download and plot excel files)] CDC
[CDC shut down this convenient graph of vaccination rate in May 2023 after throwing out almost half of modRNA/LNP doses] CDC
The post-truth economy by Tim Morgan
We're reaching levels of corporate cringe previously considered to be impossible by Larua Wendel
[Democrats are not more left than Republicans] by Jim Kavanaugh
Nearly a third of Gen Z favors the government installing surveillance cameras in homes by Emily Ekins and Jordan Gyg
How did the experts turn everything upside down? by Bret Swanson (excellent summary)
[Bill Gates made one-third of a billion dollars on Pfizer stock purchased just before the 'pandemic']
Reverse the races by John LeFevre
Did liberalism fail? by Toby Rogers
There's gonna be a war in Montana by Isaac Simpson
A message to a trusted friend, who is struggling to accept that what is happening is intentional by Michael Yeadon
Ukraine is being annihilated interview with Col. Douglas Macgregor
Autopsy confirms infant died from over-vaccination by Jennifer Margulis
This is some real dark ages sh$t [6 min in] by Scott Creighton
X turns down emergency request from US gov't to activate Starlink over Crimea by Elon Musk
Where is the proof that over 37,000 people died in New York City in 11 weeks? by Jessica Hockett
Comments on Robert Malone LNP video by JJ Couey (must watch)
John Kiriakou [JJ educates John!] interiew by JJ Couey
Infectious clone by JJ Couey (Apr 2023)
The only thing we have to fear is extinction itself by James George Jatras
American Monetary Institute Stephen Zarlenga (1941-2017)
A consumer credit cycle has begun by Steven Vannelli
Oregon hospital refuses care to cancer patient for criticizing gender ideology [and for the 'health crime' of refusing 're-education' training] by Yudi Sherman
Would you like a side order of dysentery? by Karl Denninger
RFK Jr. on the Pfizer clinical trial The Vigilant Fox
[1 in 1000 chance of POTS after vac - but see how they pitch it!: "In medicine, sometimes you make the correct choice, but bad things still happen"] JAMA
Hawai'i's deep state billionaires by Moneycircus
Rethinking the Lakoff thesis after the events of the last three years by Toby Rogers
Bridges v. Houston Methodist Hospital [2021 ruling] by Katherine Watt
Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses [masks *don't* prevent respiratory infections] Jefferson et al. (2023) Cochrane literature review
Disaster terrorism in Maui by Mathew Crawford
Hopping mad [but naive on net energy situation!] by Spartacus
[half of vaccinated have vaccine-specific spike in blood at 6 months!] [PDF] Brogna et al. (2023)
Not-so-secret billionaire utopia in California faces major hurdles as 'renderings' emerge ziohedge
Modern medicine’s great controversy [30 min vid] by Peter McCullough
Possible toxicity of chronic carbon dioxide exposure associated with face mask use, particularly in pregnant women, children and adolescents – A scoping review [PDF] by K. Kisielinski et al. (2023)
160 people arrested on arson charges for Greek wildfires for which the media previously said climate change was to blame by Paul Sacca
['science' like this makes me ashamed to have been a scientist] by Jules Bernstein
Mr Warp speed backflip: we will not comply Team Trump [amusing X warnings :-}]
The free speech Twitter psyop by CJ Hopkins
I stopped worrying about tyranny by Celia Farber
Zwijgen als Toestemmen 24 Aug 2023 by JJ Couey
Grand theft corona by Mark Ochhinski
Addressing the tough ones, Part 2 by Karl Denninger
Why it ALL is SO difficult to address by Karl Denninger
Most likely Putin didn't kill Prigozhin, Nuland did over Niger interference by Scott Creighton
[there is only one 'side': the real gain of function experiment is the vaccine] by Sasha Latypova
The African origin of the slave trade by Paul Craig Roberts
The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty will increase man-made pandemics by Meryl Nass
German courts are going full dystopia by Off-Guardian
UK doctors presentation by JJ Couey
[the amazing effectiveness of ivermectin in Peru] Chamie et al. (2023)
Satanic, sinking West is still so sexy by Linh Dinh
The man-made origins of Lyme disease by Peter Paradise
Early onsent dementia is being caused by the COVID vaccine (~25x increase) by Steve Kirsch
Health program or military program? by Michael Nevradakis
Debt ceiling nonsense by Jim Kavanagh
Donald Trump; controlled opposition and the Democrat party's best friend by CJ Evans
Care home massacres, remdesivir and COVID "Vaccines" - which killed the most? by Joel Smalley
Please make them stop this insanity of using nearly all newborns as guinea pigs [monoclonal RSV antibodies]
Degenerative AI in education by Ben Williamson
[vac hit rate about 1 in 1000] by Steve Kirsch
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga volcanic eruption of Jan 2022 explains short term global warming NASA
What's actually happening at the US-Mexico border is mind blowing [18 min vid] Dore interview with RFK Jr
Was the response to COIVD effectively a coup by the Western Intelligence Community [yes, but not 'unwitting'] by Michael P. Senger
[Sept 2021 document that hit all the main points] by Spartacus
The second literal coming of Hitler by CJ Hopkins
COVID jabs were a CIA operation to depopulate the world by Dr. Robert Malone
Everything wrong with the capitol riots in 889 angles - Act 2 by Wooz News
Why are the big banks targetting COVID dissidents? [b/c Alzheimer's, obesity drugs!] A Midwestern Doctor
[Hunter Biden case judge has to redirect all inquiries to herself to prevent Biden team from again trying to trick court clerks by impersonation!] US District Judge Maryellen Noreika
New permanent White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR) [they're planning to do it again, even bigger] White House
mRNA/gene therapy technology: futile, deadly, but hugely profitable - Part 1by Sasha Latypova
One in 35 [myocardial damage] by Dr. John Campbell
JPMorgan Chase debanks Dr. Mercola's business including employees and their family by Andreas Wailzer
AI tools like Chat GPT are built on mass copyright infringement by Zainab Choudhry
[Hunter Biden's lawyers trick clerk into removing GOP materials from docket] by Miranda Devine
The undumpable Biden by Paul Gottfried (paleoconservative, read anyway)
Stay as out-of-date as p ossible on the CDC-recommented biochemical weapons schedule [up-to-date review of horrible actual laws in place] by Katherine Watt
Covid's origins and the death of trust by Matt Taibbi
Covid origins scientist denounces reporting on his messages as a "conspiracy theory" by Alex Gutentag et al.
Top scientists misled Congress about covid origins, newly released email and messages show by Alex Gutentag, L. Woodhouse, M. Shellenberger, and M. Taibbi
Is the CDC total blind to all the adverse events from the COVID vaccines? [yes] by Steve Kirsch
A letter of warning to young woke people [PDF] by James Lindsay
[got vac for honeymoon travel, got myocarditis, turbo cancer, paralysis] from Dr. William Makis
"Fully vaccinated" covid 'advisor' MD [gets covid], passes out in bathwoom, wakes up in pool of blood with fractured neck [and subdural hematoma], blames shower steam, [gets mutation-causing Paxlovid] and urges people to "get vaccinated" by Celia Farber
Population with a disability, 16 years and over [5-10 sigma vax damage break-out] St Louis Fed
Best picture 2024: yes, Sound oF Freedom should be an Oscar contender by Sasha Stone
The Sound of Freedom is hard to watch. Here's why we need to see it anyway by Marie Hawthorne
Life in a year by tythefisch
Almost half of millennials want jail time for "misgendering" by Jonathan Turley
American domestic bioterrorism program [scroll down to bottom for summary] by Katherine Watt
Everything is permitted by Darryl Cooper
'Ghost of crisis past' re-appears: Bank Of England warns of "financial stability risks" from Treasury Basis trades ziohedge
Population with a diasability break out [Fed data] - it's not covid St Louis Fed
"Since 2009 US corporations have spent more than $7 trillion on stock buybacks"
[imagine if that had been spent on infrastructure instead - banks make investment decisions that are deadly for humanity] by Visual Capitalist
Last 3YR in one sentence: Tony Fauci developed a weaponized virus and then suppressed treatments in order to create the market for a trillion dollar vaccine by Toby Rogers
Incoming [disability spikes] by Karl Denninger
2 + 2 = 5 by Brendan O'Neill (scroll down to see 2 + 2 = 5 straight from the
CDC)
The violent purging of womanhood by Brendan O'Neill
Large power transformers [avg age: 40Y, e.g., 250 tons] vulnerable to geomagnetic disturbance by Alice Friedmann
Jeffrey Epstein offers insights into the crime syndicate swamp by Russ Winter
Prions: one of these things is not like the others [good news!]/ by Adam Gaertner
Dr. Paul Offit lets us know 'the Experts' have officially lost their minds by Madhava Setty MD
Biden banga wanga ding dong [14s Biden video] by Larry Johnson
Chestfeed this! by Audra Facinelli
All dreams end: the collapse of Keynesian economics by Charles Hugh Smith
Go see "Sound of Freedom"! by Mickey Z.
Lancet study [preprint] on covid vaccine autopsies frinds 74% were caused by vaccine - study is removed within 24 hours [before review] by Will Jones
CISA was behind the attempt to control your thoughts, speech, and life the Browstone Institute
Rebellion, not retreat by Aaron Kheriaty
A wild conspiratorial fanstastical view of world politics: might it be true?by Richard C. Cook (Challenger Disaster guy)
Make or break fork in the road ahead by Charles Hugh Smith
Is the Conversion of IgG1/3 to IgG4 a GOOD or BAD Thing? by Marian Laderoute
Use promo code "bigguy" to get 10% off! Henry Makow
Batch-dependent safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine [evidence for 30% placebos - 0 adverse vs. 1 in 10 for bad batches] by Schmeling et al. (2023)
There was no pandemic by Denis Rancourt
Patriot Front unmasked as Feds pretending to be white supremacists, to help the state crack down on (what they call) "the right" — the latest twist on Operation Gladio, which did that to the left
Will AI eat itself? by Dhanshree Shripad Shenwai
Hubbert's peak is finally here by Tim Morgan
Summary of everything and quick links by Sasha Latypova
If they try to gaslight you with their data, simply respond with better data by Steve Kirsch
Karl Marx on the "evil" of "life" under constant medical "tutelage" (and the comparable evil of press censorship) by Mark Crispin Miller
Nation's first elected transgeender state rep. arrested on child porn charges Daily Wire
Biden administration rewards school lockdown champion with Homeland Security role by Paul Joseph Watson
US Navy detected Titan implosion on Sunday, but Biden admin only released news on Thursday after Hunter plea deal and whistleblower reports released by PostMillenial
Beware the skeeters [just the main points] by Spartacus
Kennedy denies Zionist deliberate ethnic cleansing of Palestinians [good demonstration of hierarchy of power] by Vanessa Beeley
How did someone like me get shadow-banned? by Charles Hugh Smith
Joe Biden and John Fetterman may be way cooler than you think! by Mark Crispin Miller
Mark Crispin Miller's lawsuit against NYU/Covid empire has one last round by Celia Farber
It's disgraceful that this individual remains at large by Dr. Simon Goddek
Kevin McKernan at the VRBPAC 4 min
[study of 50K people at the Cleveland Clinic: being up to date on covid vaccines INCREASES chance of getting covid] Shrestha et al. (2023)
How the Nobel Prize summit sold out on real science by Alliance for Natural Health International
Would you accept toddlers as your pilots? How about 5% of vaccine injections off-protocol? by Marc Girardot
A chaotic re-sorting [Kennedy a "right-wing MAGA conspiracy theorist!?] by Alastair Crooke
Did Chinese military fund secret coronavirus research in Wuhan without US knoledge? 'Not plausible', expert says [now that's more like it!] by Brenda Baletti
So, COVID-19 is a bioweapon after all, the Times explains [gatekeeper alert] by Igor Chudov
NYC's first 'safe drug vending machine' is replenished with [free!] Narcan, fentanyl [test] strips and condoms... but no more crack pipes after residents ransacked first stash in 24 hours by C. Aoraha and J. Smith
Iran was right about that "Great Satan" thing by A.J. Smuskiewicz
IgG4 antibodies induced by repeated vaccination may generate immune tolerance to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein by Uversky, Makis et al. (2023)
I investigated the city where every drug is legal Tyler Oliveira
Just calm down about ChatGPT-4 already interview with Rod Brooks
There is no political left by Toby Rogerss
The war on reality revisited by CJ Hopkins
Corporate media bias [the poll he used to demonstrate bias didn't even include Kennedy, hah!] by Glenn Greenwald
The unvaccinated [never forget] by Matt Orfalea
[government officials (DARPA and DIA) showed that the Andersen et al. "natural origins" paper was B.S. in May 2020]
Rivisiting 9/11: Proof the Israeli government knew by The Space Worm
PSYOP-MUSK welcomes WEF "penetrator" puppet Linda Yaccarino as new CEO of Twitter by 2nd smartest
A novel [the only!] Human RNA ligase est.2023 [maybe operates on vac RNA??] by Kevin MkKernan
[record of media demonization of the unvaccinated: we won't forget] by Micheal Krieger
[mRNA swine vaccines were rolled out in 2018: safety studies in 2020/2021 showed 3% died, 3% became lame, 7% became anorexic!] by Joselph Mercola
Shining a light on tetanus by Stand for Health Freedom
The unrecognized threat of human augmentation by Spartacus
Fed data: upward step function in working age disabilities begins mid-2021, coincident with mandates St Louis Fed
Bitchute and Twitter censored my Allen TX shooting video by Scott Creighton
Fail-proofing your police state. Part 2 by Helen of Destroy
Chomsky's ties to Jeffrey Epstein - and suspected 9/11 mastermind Ehud Barak - exposed by Kevin Barrett
What is in the Pfizer documents? Is Naomi Wolf gatekeeping on eugenics and the true culprits? by Etienne de la Boetie2
Who runs the world? - organized crime's front groups and secret societies by Etienne de la Boetie2
Where did all the "trust the science" people go? by JP Sears
Elon Musk: why does the media misrepresent interracial crime 'to such an extreme degree'? by Chris Menahan
[vax doubles chance of retinal vascular occlusion - it's the LNP bolus, not spike-specific!] by Li et al. (2023)
A deadly day in the ER by Daniel Nagase MD
What's scarier than skynet? woke skynet by el gato malo
America, the single-opinion cult by Matt Taibbi
Visibility filtering 101 by CJ Hopkins
Dual funeral industry testimony reveals abnormalities - Winnepeg day 1 by NationalCitizensInquiryCA
Videos of 'New French Revolution' Southfront
Fox news, Tucker Carlson, and the American empire by Swiss Policy Research
A modern day witch trial by Toby Rogers
3 crises - wars, bank failure and censorship by Moneycircus
Biden administration facilitates sex trafficking and rape of immigrant children Florida grand jury reports by Josh Miller
The great divide by CJ Hopkins
"Bill, the tank's batteries are dead again. Get out that really long extension cord" ziohedge
Fox News gets $2/month/household ($2.5 billion) whether they watch or not by TheZMan
Catastrophic increase in ambulance callouts for heart attacks in young people starting in 2021 by Kevin Bass
News blackout in effect: the Michael Morell story is disposed of by press janitors by Matt Taibbi
Tranissaries: the trans movement’s striking parallels to a dark and forgotten practice in the Ottoman Empire by Revolver
Moderna contracts - Part 1: plain looting by the Government and Moderna by Sasha Latypova
Don't be a sucker by A Midwestern Doctor
The honest doctor's story made national television by A Midwestern Doctor
What is RFK Jr's doomed campaign REALLY ABOUT by Scott Creighton
Sweden birthrate feb 2023: still no stork by el gato malo
Novel vaccine technologies in veterinary medicine [first, they came for the animals, but I [thought I] wasn't an animal]
Cancer mortality update week 11/12 in 2023 by Ethical Skeptic
Forgiveness? I don't think so by Jim Quinn
The empty downtown - a new normal by Katharina Buchholz
[pseudouridine RNA sticks extremely well to DNA, subverting endonucleases - vs vaccine trial mRNA, which was not generated from plasmids, but from linear DNA attached to magnetic beads! also explains why plasmids were so hard to remove!] by Kevin McKernan
A Twitter files requiem by CJ Hopkins
['Long COVID' is probably mostly 'long MASK'] by Kisielinski et al. (2023)
The rising chorus of renewable energy skeptics by Andrew Nikiforuk
The simple story of civilization by Tom Murphy
Counterfeit world - part three - hubris by Tim Watkins
A.I. is B.S. by Adam Conover
John Lee Pettimore: mine tailings - there's nothing "green" about "green energy" by B.F. Randall
Don't let them memory-hole this by Jeffery A. Tucker
Huge veterans study: COVID and flu vaccines are useless at preventing hospitalization by Igor Chudov
Crisis update - bank runs as pretect for financial lockdown by Moneycircus
The tragedy of the Brooklyn literary scene by Naomi Wolf
The unredacted Fauci-Farrar emails of Feb 1-2, 2020. Ron Fouchier tells us 6 reasons the genome does not look natural, and 6 ways to shoot each one down by Meryl Nass
Snowden and controlled opposition by Mr. E (Dec2021)
ChatGPT defames Jonathan Turley by Jonathan Turley
Trump indictment and national divorce by Karl Denninger
Newly released autism prevalence estimates show that the iatrogenocide is expanding by Toby Rogers
Courts follow culture - and the culture is shifting by Mary Holland
310,000 excess deaths in population ages 25-64 from vaccine review of Phinance report
ChatGPT talks to Wolfram/Mathematica by Stephen Wolfram
Ralph Baric's description of the perfect "perfect bioweapon" sounds awfully similar to SARS-CoV-2 by Igor Chudov
The great covid-19 lie machine: Stanford, the Virality Project, and the censorship of "true stories" by Matt Taibbi
Mattresses, social media, smart phones, and failure of the Fed by Mish Shedlock
1 in 36 kids (4% of males) have autism, CDC says — critics slam agency’s failure to investigate causes by Brenda Baletti
How they convinced Trump to lock down by Jim Quinn
'Simply obscene': FDA approves fourth COVID shot for infants and kids under 5
GPT-4 also accepts text and images as input to generate text output OpenAI
Western allopathic medicine is a giant Asch conformity experiment by Toby Rogers
'Heartbreaking': pharma eyes exponential growth in multi-billion market for autism drugs by Brenda Baletti
Bill passed by House and Senate to declassify COVID origins documents may be attempt to frame China, experts warn Michael Nevradakis
None of these have proof of a natural origin by Dan Sirotkin
The greatest lie told during covid: pandemics are dangerous to modern societies by el gato malo
It was our DoD who contracted Pfizer and Moderna - same framework as for weapons procurement SpartaJustice
It was a Pentagon project by Robert Kennedy Jr
'No doubt' Fauci [*and* esp. DoD] funded gain-of-function research that likely led to pandemic, former CDC director tells lawmakers by Michael Nevradakis
USAID [CIA] sponsors program to go find [sic] the next pandemic virus and fiddle with it by Meryl Nass
Pfizer and Moderna bivalent vaccines contain 20-35% expression vector and are transformation competent in E.coli [scheisse!] by Kevin McKernan
How HIV/AIDS foretold the covid crisis by Mark Crispin Miller
[rare combo: understanding covid psyop in context of energy depletion] by Fast Eddy
Homogenizing herd level antigenic fixation [good May2022 post I missed - hope it doesn't turn out this way!] by el gato malo
Revealing COVID-19's origins by Spartacus
Fauci wanted universal human separation forever by Jeffery A. Tucker
Worst public health mistakes in history
by Michael Nevradakis
The cure is the disease: Australia's iatrogenic pandemic by Wilson Sy
[uses for computer cycles: lip fillers] by bellalamberttt
[vaccinated w/myocarditis have free circulating spike *not* bound by antibodies]by Yonker et al. (2023)
[Hospitals are losing money: people are wising up and staying home, out of harms way] by Molly Gamble
The artificial sweetener erythritol and cardiovascular event risk ['helping' diabetics with a 'keto' diet'] by Witkowski et al. (2023)
A contagion of cowardice by Jeffrey W. Tucker
[The jokes on you! The SNL audience, who had to be vaccinated to get into the live show, didn't know what to do with the joke, which was almost certainly a NYC-establishment-approved tweak of them!] by Woody Harrelson
Science + politics = political science by el gato malo
[re-purposing giant vats of cancer cells previously used to make vaccines - at least with vaccines, they try to filter out the cancer cells, here, you actually eat them!] by Joe Fassler
[5 experts from Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health [CTEH] die in plane crash at Hillary Clinton airport, on the way to Ohio] by Grant Lancasterand Remington Miller
Why eliminating the FDA and the CDC would probably make the public safer by el gato malo
The medical mafia MUST be destroyed by Karl Denninger
Deep sequencing of the Moderna and Pfizer bivalent vaccine identifies contamination of expression vectors designed for plasmid amplification in bacteria by Kevin McKernan (must-read)
"Pandemic preparedness" - a government protection racket by Sasha Latypova
What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work? by Stephen Wolfram
Hobby club's missing balloon feared shot down by USAF [with $400,000 missile] by Steve Trimble
The surplus energy economy, part 3 by Tim Morgan
The Consent Factory [sage advice on Taibbi's new plan] by CJ Hopkins
Ramping up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can't solve our energy problem by Gail Tverberg
Karma is a b$tch by CovidSteria
American public schools, RIP by Jeffrety A. Tucker
[this study by Fauci would have gotten you kicked off Twitter last year] by Morens, Taubenberger, and Fauci
Letters from the underworld by Sasha Latypova
Why are they doing it? by Sasha Latypova
Violence in some Chicago neighborhoods [tiny % cops] puts young men at greater risk than U.S. troops faced in Iraq, Afghanistan war zones, study finds by Frank Main
The incompetent Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine just had its dumbshit ass handed to it by Paul Craig Roberts
[Pfizer exec chap 2: the HPG axis on twitter, who knew?] Project Veritas
Fast fix for the jabbist mess by Karl Denninger
How to memory-hole a PSYOP by CJ Hopkins
[useful comment (from suspicious source) on balance between infection/scramble/transmission competitions in the wild versus GOF passaging lab] the Antisocial Darwinist
The Sovietization of medical care by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Intent to harm - evidence of the conspiracy to commit mass murder by the US DOD, HHS, Pharma cartel by Sasha Latypova (must-see on end-to-end DoD control of 'vaccine')
Never act on 'science' by Karl Denninger
Directed evolution III: Pfizer doesn't need GOF labs: physicians are prescribing the GOF by Kevin McKernan
Another quick post on "PfizerMutatingVirusGate" by Sasha Latypova
‘Mutate’ COVID via ‘directed evolution’ for company to continue profiting off of vaccines by Project Veritas (which broke 'community guidelines' at
youtube at '750K views' [vs. 12 million on Twitter])
They're not making oil like they used to: stealth peak oil? by Art Berman
Nobody knows what is in the vials by Sasha Latypova
Did West Africa’s ebola outbreak of 2014 have a lab origin? by Sam Husseini and Jonathan Latham
[DoD involvement in the covid operation] interview with Sasha Latypova (must see)
Where did all the workers go? by Bret Swanson
Shaken not purred [vax spike sticks around a lot longer than advertised] by Kevin McKernan
Anti-vaxxers win by Scott Adams
The No. 1 cause of death for under 65's in 2021 - sudden death by Joseph Mercola
CDC finally released its VAERS safety monitoring analysis for COVID vaccines via FOIA by Josh Guetzkow
Lariats and RNA splicing by Kevin McKernan
"Pfizer kills a Black man on live TV and then tells us that we're not supposed to talk about" by Toby Rodgers
Ex Jaguar player who passed today at 38 from a heart attack by TaraBull
The casting couch by Thomas Muller
IgG4 and cancer - a mechanism of action for cancer relapse and onset by Jessica Rose
University of California bails out Blackstone's real estate investment fund by Daniela Gabor
[many vax deaths probably from 9 month "shelf extended" batches] [FOIA 4077 just released] by Jikkyleaks
Covid for 3rd time after 4 booster: "It's not a lie if you believe it" by Dr. Faye Davies
Stop bitching, start building - decentralize peer review to stop it from happening again by Kevin McKernan
Why does Peter Hotez think we are mass murderers? by A Midwestern Doctor
Snowden and controlled opposition by Mr. E
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal arrested for child porn by Jason Pires
Antiviral treatments (Molnupiravir) lead to the rapid accrual of hundreds of SARS-CoV-2 mutations in immunocompromised patients by N.M. Fountain-Jones et al. (2022)
Fed tightening reduces horrendous wealth disparity that QE and interest rate reprepression have wrought by Wolf Richter
[look at Fig. 1 (3x vaxxed have 3x infection rate of unvaxxed) - then look at conclusions! - we are living in Soviet Russia!] NK Shrestha et al. (2022)
[look at Fig1C and Fig1D, then look at the 'conclusions' - astouding!] New England Journal of Medicine
175 years of scholarship down the drain in an instant by Toby Rogers
The year of the gaslighter by CJ Hopkins
One nurse, one shift by one of *those people*
The war in Ukraine [see esp. last 30 min] Michael Vlahos interview with Douglass Macgregor
It wasn't a lab leak, it was intentional - a false dichotomy by Spartacus
Do messenger RNA vaccine induce pathological syncytia? by A. Sfera et al. (2022)
Florida Public Health Integrity Committee against medical tyranny by Jeff Childer
In Aug 2020, the CDC hired contractors to deal with the expected huge wave of VAERS reports - they knew how bad it was *before* it was was rolled out by Josh Guestzkow
Monopolies and cartels are "communism for the rich" by Charles Hugh Smith
FTX, probing gently and launching a cashless society by Moneycircus
Ancient apocalypse and Grham Hancock's 'dangerous ideas' by J.R. Leach
Quasi-species swarms in SARs-CoV-2 [probably lab leak/bioweapon not swarm] by Kevin McKernan (excellent)
The blowback from stripmining labor for 45 years is just beginning by Charles Hugh Smith
We'll tell you as much as Google will let us [about our vac poll] by Rasmussen Reports
Swimming with sharks by CJ Hopkins
Catastrophic contagion - the latest (Oct 2022) 'tabletop exercise' by James Roguski
Senate hearing highlights by Steve Kirsch
Senate COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and safety roundtable Ron Johnson
Conversation with a deep learning chatbot by Spartacus
The monopoly-labor "let it rot" death spiral by Charles Hugh Smith
The tough calculus of emission and the future of EVs by Mark P. Mills
The Twitter files part two by Bari Weiss
"A cautionary tale for everyone": the media mob turn on Taibbi by Jonathan Turley
We are trapped in a Truman show directed by psychopaths by Jim Quinn
The Twitter files by Matt Taibbi
US Dept of Energy official for nuclear waste charged with stealing $2300 Vera Bradley suitcase off of conveyor [think Petronius' Satyricon] ziohedge
No justification for central bank digital currency by Moneycircus
[how the spike protein causes fibrous clots] by D.B. Kell et al. (2022)
What is causing the blood clots from "Died Suddenly"? by A Midwestern Doctor
The final lockdown interview with Aman Jabbi
'Died suddenly' is typical trash from Stew Peters by Josh Guetzkow
More people have 'died suddenly' because they were stressed by anti-vaxxers [but what about climate change?! :-} ] by Mark Crispin Miller
Demographic cliff + let it rot = collapse of global growth by Charles Hugh Smith
The renewable energy transition is failing by Richard Heinberg
He's "died suddenly" Jim! via Jim Stone
The FTX-Alameda nexus Frances Coppola
Long covid MORE likely to happen soon after vaccination [insufficient data for unvax'd] by Igor Chudov
Is RSV another virus from a lab? [probably yes] by The Naked Emperor's Newsletter
Large 'households' voting in Maricopa county
Eventbrite cancels/censors events it doesn't like and pockets all the noney collected by Steve Kirsch
Myocarditis in kids under 18 cases up by over 100x in Canada by Steve Kirsch
The VAERS underreporting factor using VSAFE is 26x [i.e., 32K reported deaths -> ~800,000 vax deaths] OpenVAERS
Canaries in the vaccine coal mine died long ago by Marc Girardot
This is more important than the Fed's rate hikes by Nobody Special Finance
The FTX collapse explained in 99 seconds by Nobody Special Finance
rubes+VC -> FTX -> 40M2DemCampaign -> USMilitaryAid -> Ukraine -> FTX -> Almeda bets -> void -> set stage for "trustworthy" CBDC's [rhymes a little w/Iran/Contra - different party, same MO] by Hal Turner
First RSV emergency [we must stop this sh$t now or it will be lockdowns/mandates/monthly jabs forever!] by Michael Nevradakis
Atlantic: then and now Atlantic
How mature is LNP technology - we've barely scratched the surface by Joomi
'Cause Unknown' by Dan KarbZ
Reports of miscarriage/stillbirth by year OpenVAERS
Association between vaccines and excess mortality getting stronger by Igor Chudov
The military purpose behind the flu vaccination campaigns InformedChoiceWA
[on Andersen on the Washburne paper] [scroll up to top] by Guy Gadboit
The totality of the circumstances surrounding SARS-CoV-2 emergence by Alex Washburne (excellent)
Throwing down the gauntlet on Bucha by Scott Ritter
What we might learn about this next election from what happened on November 22, 1963 by Mark Crispin Miller
[Joe Dementia sniffing yet another kid] Pink Panther
This is how a Hollywood trainer speaks to a far more influential black celebrity when we get out of llne by Ye
MSNBC meltdown: "Our children will be arrested and conceviably killed" if the GOP wins midterm elections by Jonathan Turley
My friends are dying of heart attacks by John Leake
Same as the old boss Scott Ritter interview by George Galloway
Cockamamie story by Jim Kunstler
Amnesty? Absolutely NOT by Karl Denninger
"You murderous hypocrites": outrage ensuse after The Atlantic suggests "amnesty" for pandemic authoritarians ziohedge
Comment on Atlantic article proposing amnesty for covid policy dictators by Matthew Peterson
"Analysis of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic": the official story takes shape by Alexis Baden-Mayer
Limited hangout Senate minority report by Meryl Nass
Dr. Peter McCullough is being progressively stripped of his medical credentials by Steve Kirsch
mRNA vaccine injure the heart of ALL vaccine recipients and cause myocarditis in up to 1 in 27, study find by Will Jones
Pelosi attack suspect was a psychotic homeless addict estranged from his pedofile lover and their children by Michael Shellenberger
Houston, the CDC has a problem, part 2 by Ethical Skeptic
Why mRNA vacs are different [interesting about human RNA UTR addition after main spike code] by Dr. Ah Kahn Syed
See how six just dropped dead by Mark Crispin Miller
[Facebook spend $56 billion on stock buybacks in less than 2 years] by Wolf Richter
Twitter CEO, CFO, and top censor escorted out [entertaining! - but remember, this is same CIA contractor Tuscan solar roof psyop Musk] ziohedge
Wolf howl by Celia Farber
Is "renewable energy" renewable? by B.R. Randall
Wind/solar/battery proponents are completely out of touch with copper mining and production/
by B.R. Randall
The end of the "growth" road by Charles Hugh Smith
A Wellesley student speaks out by Anon
A deep dive on TypeIIs Restriction enzymes by Kevin McKernan
'Antiwar' 'progressives' cave after 24 hours - there is only one party: the war part by Glenn Greenwald
Sudden adult death syndromw - 'the only thing we know for sure is that it's not the vaccine', riiiight by Aussie Fighter
What scares you more? by John Leake
Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2 [PDF] by V. Bruttel, A. Washburne, and A. VanDongen (2022)
Like all frauds I have seen they can't stop and won't stop until they are forced to stop . . . Only massive public outcry can stop this by Edward Dowd
Short (just 16 bars!) masterful solo from Adrian Belew Talking Heads Live Dortmund 1980
Cancer is at a 9-sigma rise. The CDC has panicked over it enough to risk fraud to cover it up by Ethical Skeptic
Smoking gun proof CDC is now, post 'system upgrade', unilaterally shifting cancer UCoD (underlying cause of death) deaths to Covid UCoD deaths by Ethical Skeptic
In hit piece on Florida Surgeon General, editor of Science hold try to role of 'useful idiot' by Josh Mitteldorf
Return of the bond vigilantes sent shockwaves around the globe by Wolf Richter
'Insane': Boston researchers create 'more lethal' strain of COVID by Michael Nevradakis
Humans as bioreactors by Spartacus
[criminal 'scientists' put omicron spike on extinct, ancestral Wuhan chassis in BSL4 lab resulting in 80% mortality with lower respiratory targetting in humanized mice] by Chen et al., (2022)
Doug Brignole "died suddenly" by Gort Baringa
What the data tells us [PDF talk slides] by Steve Kirsh
Private business jets demanding unvaccinated pilots by RedPillLed
[1000 of the 2600 Patrick Henry High School students in highly vaccinated San Diego out sick with repiratory illnesses] by Paul Sisson
To AOC: "You ran as an outsider yet you voted to start this war in Ukraine" AOC town hall
WW3, clown-world edition by Capitalist Eric
Markets are expecting the Federal Reserve to save them - it's not going to happen by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Are the kids OK? [the video that got Dr. Peter McCullough banished from twitter forever] Vaccine Safety Research Foundation
Inside a San Francisco drug den by Tony Hall
Basically 'Biden' is saying that domestic producers are more evil than Venezuela's Nicholas Maduro by John Todd
The US government's vast new privatized censorship regime by Jenin Younes
We blew it: malinvestment and the plundering of productive assets by Charles Hugh Smith (excellent summary)
Very lucrative surgeries by JP Sears
My war, in memoriam, Fleabaggs by Frank Hooper
The morning after by CJ Hopkins
Nursing the Nerf [full fax dose by body weight in breast milk] by Kevin McKernan
Peter Daszak's EcoHealth was just awarded another NIH grant to study bat coronaviruses by Quoth the Raven
Society must be defen-estrated by Toby Rogers
My "wealth disparity monitor:" QT, rate hikes, and dropping stocks and bonds by Wolf Richter
The [inserted] furin cleavage site, fibrosis, and oncogenesis by Walter Chestnut
FBI misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million in cash by Michael Finnegan
How the grid works, why a distributed grid won't work excerpts from M. Angwin, The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid
Red Dawn: watching a batch of covid commercials by Celia Farber
The highly guarded 'dark ruth' burried beneath the Martha'a Vineyard saga Revolver News (right-wing, read anyway)
Why is the 'Federal' [private, not Federal] Reserve collapsing the economy?2nd smartest guy
The 'COVID protocol': hospital collects half a million dollars to kill a 'covid' patient by Paul Alexander (from anon doc)
Should we talk about the sigma nine plus unicorns? by Jan Wellmann
After watching this powerful presentation on the failure and harms of the covid vaccine, the San Diego city council almost unanimously voted, without comment, to extending the covid state of emergency/mandates. Science is truly dead. by Dr. Scot Youngblood
It's mostly the vax, not the 'Great Resignation' by Edward Dowd
There's something wrong with Disney's "Little Demon" and its executive producer, Dan Harmon by Vigilant Citizen
'Fauci knows' he funded gain-of-function research, 'misled Congress', former CDC director says by Greg Piper
Nerf in mouth disease by Kevin McKernan
Why I'm an abolitionist by Toby Rogers
Dr. Ashish Jha should be fired by Steve Kirsch
The political bankruptcy of the alternative media by Ron Unz (pro-covid-vax, read anyway :-} )
COVID-19 vaccine boosters for young adults: a risk-benefit assessment and five ethical arguments against mandates at universities by Bardosh, Krug, Hoeg et al (2022)
When and how can vaccine particles hurt you? - a visualization exercise by Marc Girardot
Accidental IV injection is real: every heard of "Tren cough"? by Marc Girardot
What is the cause of increased mortality rates? by Joseph Mercola
Mattias Desmet demoralizes the freedom movement - mass hypnosis expert or Trojan horse by Peter Breggin and Ginger Breggin
Effects of vaccination and previous infection on Omicron infections in children [compare Fig 1C and 1D: covid vaccines erase infection-derived immunity in children] by D-Y Lin et al. (2022)
I now have an informant deep inside the CDC by Steve Kirsch
[the war on terror comes home exactly as predicted: Guantanamo DC] by Patricia Tolson
The 9/11 "double-corss" conspiracy theory by Laurent Guyenot
A vocal minority of biased scientists by Gilles Demaneuf
The Federal Reserve is a suicide bomber by Brandon Smith
[new convenient editing sites in SARS-CoV2 not found in predecessors - not thanks to Darwin] by Tony Van Dongen
The high-speed, bivalent COVID boosters are here by Meryl Nass
Biden's world and how it ends by Karen Kwiatkowski
The case for a new American civil war by Dmitri Orlov
The say nothing phase of the fourth turning by Jim Quinn
Vaclav Smil: Rapid decarbonization is a fastasy by Russ Mitchell
The global energy crunch by Charles Hugh Smith
Embalmers have been finding numerous long fibrous clots that lack post-mortem characteristics [view source] by Enrico Triogoso
Explaining the "Hospitalization paradox" by Chris Masterjohn (Feb 2022, excellent, I missed this)
[if cholesterol trials were designed like the covid vaccine trials, they would have defined success as lowering cholesterol [cf. neg PCR test] without lowering death from heart attacks [cf. death from covid-like symptoms with neg PCR test]] Chris Masterjohn discussion with Mathew Crawford
Political and hero partisonship weakens the cause of liberty: a selectively data-driven story by Mathew Crawford
new Peter McCullough interview by Infowars
SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence [you don't say! from 2015] by Menachery, Baric, et al. (2015)
[Claudia's songs posted!] by Mark Crispin Miller
So you're all worried about fascism huh? by Scott Creighton
Who owns who? by Dr. Ah Kahn Syed
The Nobel Prize that was given to a scientist primarily for not being Bob Gallo. He did not believe HIV was the cause of AIDS, and In 1997, he made a full confession (if you read carefully) by Celia Farber
Ask a scientist [humor vid from 2014!] by Liam Scheff
[-70 freezers are for keeping lipid nanoparticles from becoming toxic lipid microparticles] by Kevin McKernan
[innate immune system can be suppressed by bare, no-mRNA lipid nanoparticles] Bouteau et al. (2022)
Here's how the vaccine is causing those weird "blood clots" by Steve Kirsch
It was Birx. All Birx by Debbie Lerman
Our Preznit threatens to bomb the deplorables by Karl Denninger
NIH silently adds ivermectin to treatment guidelines [!] [vicious little Eichmanns getting worried about pitchforks?] nih.gov
Correcting misinformation about SARS-CoV-2 whole genome sequencing by Jeremy R. Hammond
The reasons for redacting the document are . . . redacted Brad Heath
Jeffrey Sachs on the Covid origins cover-up by Ron Unz
Too little, too late: WSJ tries to save face on failed COVID policies by
Madhava Setty
80% of Americans think Hunter Biden laptop cover-up changed election outcome by Paul Sperry
Two mutations [forming a protease cleavage site] were critical for bat-to-human transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus [funny one just appeared in covid despite no related coronaviruses having it] Ralph Baric, Zhengli Shi, et al (2015)
Houston, we have a problem (part 1 of 3) by The Ethical Skeptic
Silenced healthcare workers speak out publicly for the first time by Steve Kirsch
Everyone is chaning jerseys. What now? by el gato malo
Biden personally authorized FBI raid by Space Worms
Covid vaccine quacks and charlatans promoting "Ba.5 booster" by Igor Chudov
"Hunter Biden literally could have had the corpses of children in his basement (on his laptop) - I would not have cared" [during the lead up to the election] by Sam Harris (philosopher of neuroscience)
[PDF: see table 5.7 of this actuarial report covering ~80% of insurance industry showing mandate death spike]
[cancer spike from CDC data] by Ethical Skeptic (article forthcoming)
Defense sec[y Lloyd Austin, who led charge to ban unvaxxed from military, sick with covid for the second time by Chris Menahan
The deeply strange case of Anne Heche by Celia Farber
Spike induced blood clotting is different by Dr. Ryan Cole
Is the spike protein acting as a prion with regard to hemoglobin molecules?
Robot murder dogs have arrived by Joseph Mercola
Not a single arrest by the FBI or DOJ of the scumbags who went to Epstein’s pedo island. That tells you everything you need to know by Catturd
Why aren't docs seeing vaccine injuries? Because they aren't looking! by Steve Kirsch
Just as the CDC pretends to have backed off, the NHS reveals (to just a few) what's really coming at us in the fall: "The biggest vaccination drive in history" by Mark Crispin Miller
A secular look the the digital antichrist by Brandon Smith (alt-right, excellent/read anyway, it's an ongoing war against us
[pulling a large clot out of a live, working heart - vid, not for squeamish] Rense
There are mutated versions of spike in the Vax [patients] but not the virual infect patients by Kevin McKernan
When the biodefense experts at Johns Hopkins war you off ACAM-2000 vaccine for monkeypox, you know it is a really BAD vaccine by Meryl Nass
CDC completely reverses course. It's over! by Chris Martenson
Welcome to the Hotez gain of function by el gato malo
FBI raids Mar-A-Lago to kick off winter of our discontent by Scott Creighton
"No one at the White House was given a heads up" [about the FBI raid] [what a weird irrelevant fake reality show designed to create havoc!] WH Press Sec
It's perfectly unsuspicious that the lawyer who defended Jeffrey Epstein is the judge who signed the sealed warrant for the FBI raid on Trump's home US Ministry of Truth
Fourteen young Canadian docs die after getting the shot. Normally would be ~0 over 30 years by Steve Kirsch
I'm not an animal; I'm a human being by Stephen Ericson
The Jynneos label reveals various unpleasant truths: up to to 20 micrograms chicken DNA, 0.5 milligrams of chicken protein per dose, considertable cardiac effects by Meryl Nass
Are monkeypox vaccines safe and effective? [your choice: 1 in 157 mycarditis from vaccinia or 1 in 10 elevated troponin from Jynneos] by Igor Chudov
The sickening quickening by James Kunstler
Monkeypox by Geert Vanden Bossche
This is Lysenkoism: "The safety profile of the mRNA-based vaccines is an undeniable fact. . . . Clinicians should remain alert to report any potentially aggressive manifestations [of cancer] emerging in the context of mRNA COVID-19 vaccination" by M.-A. Zamfir et al (2022)
Are Federal student loans even "loans?" by Wolf Richter
40% increase in all-cause deaths in 2021 (must be ABV, anything but vaccine :-} ) KUSI News (Feb 2022)
Father speaks to pharamcist by Wholistic
Congress is not allowed to know about top secret gain of function research committee by Stave Watson
2022 preamble to Chap 5 of Silent killers (1984) by Dr. Kevin Stillwagon
Hunter Biden's 'sexually inappropriate' relationship with his 14-year-old niece by KanekoaTheGreat
This was the last one to go down: protections against hospitalization and death by Dr. Peter McCullough
Global mRNA vaccine genocide 2021-2022 with testimonies from the victims and medical staff by Towards the Light
"The unvaccinated were the smart ones" health care worker
What comes after the collapse of the progressive regulatory state? by Toby Rogers
Gaslight of the Gods, part VIII: allegory of the Plague by Charles Rixey
Why do local law enforcement officers side with hospitals and nursing home in conflicts with patients, patients' family members and pastoral care providers?by Katherine Watt
Tumor suppressor protein p53 and BRCA related cancers by DoorlessCarp
[vaccine-caused 'long covid' probably from persistent spike protein] Bruce K. Patterson et al. (2022)
Welcome to Gilead by Dr. Ah Kahn Syed (pseudonym)
Nerfing the abstract by Kevin McKernan
They are not like us by Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin
The national tragedy of Huntrer Biden's laptop by Lee Smith
[that Tucker is now allowed to say this on Pfizer support Fox shows that the worm is turning] Tucker Carlson
Unvaccinated fans can attend the U Open. Why can't Novak Djokovic? Newsweek!
Trans messaging is too sophisticated to be the work of a small sexual minority dealing with severe health issues by Toby Rogers
Stay at home orders had zero effect CDC county-wise data
Questioning reality by TheZMan (right-wing, read anyway)
"We're going to be focusing mostly on climate change . . . it's going to be like the new COVID" [CNN tech director] by Paresh Vyas
Why electric cars are a fraud by Johan Eddebo
Schiff files amendment to NDAA (now passed) that will conceal any info collected by U.S. military from congressional investigations or court proceedings by Julie Kelly
[start at minute 13] Interview with Kevin McKernan amazing interview from Dec 12, 2021 (hadn't seen this!!)
One to one: betterway conference interview [short vid] interview1 with Dr. Ryan Cole
A lipid nanoparticle + a gene is a nuclear bomb - vax causes terrible harm everywhere including brain [short vid] interview2 with Dr. Ryan Cole
Adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines and measures to prevent them by Kenji Yamamoto, The Lancet
Seven major effects of COVID-19 [policy!] on parents, students, and schools by Bruno V. Manno
Thinking through possible future scenarios by Katherine Watt
Throwing the vaxx companies under the bus: evidence emerges by el gato malo
Gazprom declares force majeure, will halt gas flows to Germany indefinitely [war on the way?] ziohedge
How to fix a broken medical system by Steve Kirsch
A perpetual pandemic is on the way thanks to planned New COVID-19 vaccines and FDA's insanity by James Lyons-Weiler
Superantigenic character of an insert unique to SARS-CoV-2 spike supported by skewed TCR repertoire in patients with hyperinflammaion by Cheng et al. (2020) (see also Cheng et al. below)
The modified spike protein is dangerous for very specific reasons by Jessica Rose
Censorship's new purpose: avoiding responsibility by Igor Chudov
Paramedics speak out by Matthew Horwood
I know what you did last summer (and fall) by Alex Berenson
Professional guitarist, vocalist Jeff Diamond loses 8 fingers and vocal ability after Jansen shot [short vid] interiew by Bobby Kennedy
Talk/transcript on (1)
the history and (2)
the nature
of the virus - by Spartacus
The end of the industrial age by John Michael Greer
The "safe and effecgive" narrative is falling apart by Steve Kirsch
The landfill economy by Charles Hugh Smith
American domestic bioterrorism program by Katherine Watt (excellent, comprehensive)
comment on "Weaponization of biotech" by Spartacus by Katherine Watt
On how things might unfold after a critical mass understands by Katherine Watt
Deleted web pages show Obama led effort in 2010 to build a level-3 containment Ukraine-based bioLab by Natalie Winters
Somebody had to say it by Jim Breuer (great performance!)
Peer reviewed medical papers of covid vaccine injuries [1000+] by covidvaccineinjuries.com
Austrian health minister and medical profession dispute responsibility for massive covid "vaccine" deaths and health damage by Paul Craig Roberts
Another life insurance CEO reveals deaths are up 40% among working people by 2nd smartest guy in the world
The little protein translated from the Pfizer code last ORF contains B lymphocyte antigen CD20 - may disable response to real covid] by Le Biochimiste
FDA/CDC loves your children by Winston Smith
"I'm pretty convinced it [covid] came out of US lab biotechnology" [in yo face] by Jeffrey Sachs
Dear S.: a letter to my ex-pat sister in wake of the Uvalde murders by David
Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA vaccination in randomized trials [vac risk outweighs risk of covid hospitalization] by j. Fraiman, P. Doshi et al. (2022)
E. Warren: abortion clinics in tents at the edges of national parks [!?] Caroline Kitchener
A 3.7% rate of myocarditis in our latest survey of vac'd Americans by Steve Kirsch
Big pharma desperate to get COVID shots on childhood schedule before 'emergency' ends by Joseph Mercola
WHO behind FDA scheme to skip all future clinical trials for COVID vaccines by Toby Rogers
Sunday Church of Scott: yes it exists and we made it by Scott Creighton
Laurel canyon: military intelligence family background of the iconic 60s countercultura rock stars [summary of the late Dave McGowan]
RochelleWalensky/ClareCraig
WashingtonDC deploys 10 pallets of bricks in front of Repubican Nat. Comm. HQ, blocks from Supreme Court by Hal Turner
There's been a 44% increase in death rate in just under a year of reporting according to the CDC by Jessica Rose
The Fed's austerity program to reduce wages by Michael Hudson
CDC director describes the rigorous science behind [7 min vid] stkirsch
Can vaccines be dangerous to pregnant women? - a credible mechanism of action bt Marc Girardot
"We need more money to plan for the second pandemic. There's going to be another pandemic" by Joe Biden
CDC admits it never monitored VAERS for COVID vaccine safety signals [fire them!] by Josh Guetzkow
Leaked EMA emails/docs [rats, sinking ship]
Google response to query: "How are shitty people created" Google 21 June 2022
[staggering fraud/deceit in young child Pfizer covid trial] Dr. Clare Craig
by Sam Dodson
"Well that escalated quickly!" [leaking hydaulic fluid over aluminum extruder] bu Subasgar Kumareswaran
The E-Team WTC 'art' project travelhome
A lipid nanoparticle + a gene is a nuclear bomb interview with Ryan Cole
[Pfizer doc: 800 withdrew from trial, incl. some deaths] Pfizer FOIA
"Highest death rates in the history of the life insurance business" by Margaret Menge
Justin Bieber: "The vaccine ruined my life" [sue Pfizer!] by Jason Pires
Toby Rogers on the VRBPAC meeting Jun 14, 2022 stkirsch
Pfizer admits to fraud in court by stkirsch
Are we looking at weaponized amyloidoisis? by Jessica Rose
Amyloid and hydrogel formation of a peptide sequence from a coronavirus spike protein [oh great :-{ ] by V. Castelletto and I.W. Hamley (2022)
Proud of yourselves? by Jim Kunstler
Two graphs of
VAERS and
excess deaths that definitely illustrate the magnitude of the public health disaster
Apartment companies saw net income spike 57% last year thanks to rising rents [for doing nothing] ziohedge
Why I'm 99% certain that Justin Bieber's facial paralysis was caused by the COVID vaccine by Steve Kirsch
Modern media emulate victorian debasement by el gato malo
Pfizer quietly admits it will never manufacture original FDA approved COVID vaccines [Cominarty, the one without CARES liability protection] by Jordan Schachtel
Washington-ologists needed! - what the John Allen situation means by Gonzalo Lira
Mom who ran into Uvalde school during shooting to save her kids said police were more aggressive with her than the shooter by J.D. Heyes
"Mostly peaceful" man found outside Brett Kavanaugh's house at 2 AM ziohedge
Dozens of reasons why solar power can't replace [declining!] fossil fuels [just the facts - now we decide how to proceed] by Alice Friedemann
72% of Americans are now refusing v@c [first dose, second dose, or booster] Andrew Wakefield
NYT proposes skipping human clinical trials for future mRNA vaccines by Alex Berenson
What is going on here? Tucker Carlson
[I don't like Trump but imagine the presstitues if this had been Trump's son] ziohedge
Least affordable housing market in 16 years - mortgage holders gained $2.8 trillion in tappable equity over the past 12 months Mish Shedlock
Who needs data when you have regulatory capture? by Toby Rogers
Evidence of the crime of democide by Edward Dowd
[mother who was inside school: not a single cop anywhere inside school] via jim stone
Strange bedfellows revisited by Scott Creighton
"Good morning class, say hello to Marcia, our taser-equipped stun drone!" ziohedge
The FDA's proposed "Future Framework" is the worst idea in the history of public health by Toby Rogers
Monkey pox update by Robert W. Malone
Defending sovereignty: the fight of our lifetime by Robert W. Malone
Vaccinated women by Etana Hecht
A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus by N.L. Harrison and J.D. Sachs (2022) PNAS
Nurses preparing for the monkeypox pandemic by UltraBae
[Reverse repos spike above $2 trillion *a day*] by Edward Dowd
[Wuhan lab gain-of-function paper on monkeypox viruses (MPXV's)] by Yang et al. (2022)
Fool me twice, shame on me! - I can't believe it's monkey-pox season already and I haven't even taken my Ukrainian decorations down - Robin Monotti by Mike Whitney
[big pharm knew the jab blocks nucleocapsid antibodies after infection - it was a business plan!] by Karl Denninger
The monkeypox scenario below was run last year. Notice dates of hypothetical attack. It's a plan. by Edward Dowd
The US initiates state control of food supply by Money Circus
Event 202: what are smallpox pandemic simulations foreshadowing? by BlueApples
This captures the absurdity and deceit of our current discourse by Glenn Greenwald
SARS-CoV2 spike protein is a toxin by Robert W. Malone
Biden's 'disinfo' board paused, 'Scary Poppins' drafts resignation ziohedge
FDA approves boosters for 5-11 year olds by el gato malo
An aluminium adjuvant in a vaccine is an acute exposure to aluminium by Christopher Exley
[after 5 months, the Pfizer vaccine *increases* chance of infection in children and adolsecents] JAMA
Monetary madness among the central bankers by David Stockman
Addendum: Summary by Spartacus
[just-in-time massacre] by Scott Creighton
Covid vaccines have failed by Alex Berenson
Massive stock market leverage unwinds amid brutal bloodletting by Wolf Richter
[the squad unanimously votes for the man] by Glenn Greenwald
COVID vaccine injury ends surgeon's 20-year career by Susan C. Olmstead
Biden disinformation czar demands power to edit other people's tweets by Paul Joseph Watson
COVID vac's for kids under 6 won't have to meet 50% efficacy standard, FDA official says by Megan Redshaw
The rise of the new norml Reich by CJ Hopkins
Poor virus-neutralizing capacity in highly C-19 vaccinated populations could soon lead to a fulminant spread of SARS-CoV-2 super variants that are highly infectious and highly virulent in vaccinees while being fully resistant to all existing and future spike-based C-19 vaccines [PDF] by Geert Vanden Bossche (9 May 2022)
Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave by Sun et al., (2022) [see pusillanimous editor comments]
[black abortion rate is 3-5x white abortion rate] Jones and Jerman (2017)
What happens when complexity unravels? by Charles Hugh Smith
Fully vaccinated gorilla dies of multiple organ failure by Igor Chudov
Elon Musk isn't a threat to society's health. All billionaires are by Jonathan Cook
Omicron is not what was initially considered a mysterious blessing - and why re-vaccination with updated spike will make things worse by Geert Vanden Bossche
Did the Moderna trial data predict the 'pandemic of the vaccinated'? by Madhava Setty, M.D.
We are all rats in a cage - being shocked. Learn how to spot it. by Chris Martenson
A lot of Americans don't want those shots by Meryl Nass
The Bangladesh mask study a Bayesian perspective - no discernable effect by Norman Fenton
Respiratory viruses infect huge numbers of people all the time, and nobody cared about this until 2020 by Eugyppius
Cyprus: 'mystery' killer causes bigger jump in excess mortality in 2021 than COVID [see Fig. 1] by Avraam et al., 2022)
The new minister of truth's previous job [short vid] the Daily Caller
[Twitter's head censor's $17-million-a-year job at risk] [just a puff story - I don't think anything will change] ziohedge
Is there any EVIDENCE that old people should get the shot? by Steve Kirsch
It doesn't work, and is now proved by Karl Denninger
Hospital CEO's and senior doctors, surgeons offered fake vaccine cards by Dr. Paul Alexander
"FOI'd Pfizer doc describing dangerous self-amplifying mRNA v@c, BNT162c, with details redacted, containing a RNA-dep RNA polymerase [replicase] gene] [PDF] Pfizer, 12 Aug 2020
[Biden asks for $33 billion for Ukraine - 5x Ukraine's military budget and 1/2 the NIH budget by Dave DeCamp
The Twitter takeover will collapse into mere rebranding by Johan Eddebo
[unfortunately, original antigenic sin is true] by Follmann et al., (2022)
US 2021 coal production estimates to rise 14.5% on year: EIA by Tyler Godwinand Valarie Jackson (from Jul 2021)
Food shortage - by design by Justus R. Hope MD
ADE update - review by We Are Change Chicago (extensive paper references)
There's something terribly wrong with "Euphoria" [fentanyl ad] by Vigilant Citizen
American Airlines pilot suffers severe cardiac arrest 6 minutes after landing plane, blames COVID vaccine by Debra Heine
California's medical 'misinformation' crusade could cost lives by Allysia Finley
COVID Requiem Aeternam [the COVID death rate is *higher* after mass vaccinations] by Joel Smalley
Beware of the fact-checkers [Stalinism USA] by Leonard Goodman
Trying to read the tea leaves by Meryl Nass
Math proficiency rates show [catastrophic] impact of prologned school closures by Josh Stevenson
Eeeeew! Elon $1M-per-day-for-750-years Musk (but this is funny)
A moratorium on mRNA 'vaccines' is needed by Byram W. Bridle
A robot-guided Tesla on auto-summon crashes into $3M private jet on Earth Day by Phylan
Interview with Josh Yoder: AA pilot who had vac-induced heart attack immediately after landing plane by Steve Kirsch
Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs by Seneff, Nigh, Kyriakopoulos, and McCullough (2022)
Loving servitude [cartoon] by Edward Dowd
CDC-Z by WilliamBanzai7
Why so many middle-aged deaths in 2021? by Genevieve Briand
SARS-CoV-2 spike gene evolved in humans and then shortly in rats while the rest of its genome in horseshoe bats and then in treeshrews by J. Flegr et al. (2022)
[lipids in gene therapy shots highly inflammatory] by S. Ndeupen et al., (2021)
A couple of thoughts on big numbers by Charles Hugh Smith
Absolute proof: the Gp-120 sequences prove beyond all doubt that "COVID-19" was man-made Dr. Ah Kahn Syed (read his responses in comments, too)
The COVID vaccine narrative has taken on so much water, the powers that be have stopped bailing - but what's next? by Meryl Nass
Debt saturation: off the cliff we go by Charles Hugh Smith
Have we killed the medical profession? by Tom Renz
US DoD awarded a contract for 'COVID-19 Research' in Ukraine 3 months before Covid was known to even exist the Daily Expose [entry in database still accessible
start here]
Twitter's chickens come home to roost by Matt Taibbi
Ages 0-44 excess mortality 2019-2022 by Kelly Brown
6 double standard public health officials used to justify COVID vaccines by Madhava Setty
You cannot boost your way through COVID by Joseph Mercola
So you'd like a functional nation? by Karl Denninger [he overestimates fossil fuel reserves, esp. coal]
[Snake oil water psyop to distract from Ukie bioweapon labs: N.B.: Mike Adams sells water purifiers :-} ] by Clif High
The COVID lies by Dr. Michael Yeadon
[Boston 2013 test already showed that most Americans will accept any degree of lockdown] by Remnant
Former CDC director: bird flu is the real pandemic - covid19 was just practice [3min vid]
Col. Douglas Macgregor on Bucha massacre [immed. deconstruction of false flag] [ong vid] Big Tip Tony
[CDC doc concerned about "threats to vaccines", not myocarditis threats to young people] [PDF] Vaccine Confidence and Demand Tean, Insights Unit
The spike protein is the "amyloid" being deposited and inducing amyloidoses by Walter M. Chestnut
[VAERS search results for covid vax deaths - currently 26K] VAERS
[the target of this 'novelty' [not1] of outright lying is *you*, not Russia] NBCNEWS
Crash positions by Capitalist Eric
The media is ignoring these two events which could cause economic collapse by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway!)
"The third leech isn't working? Better give him another booster leech" by Edward Dowd
[Jack Maxey fled to Switzerland to release laptop material - Biden being taken down] by Josh Boswell (Jim Stone posted 1 laptop pic and his site was taken down in 1 day)
In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States, Mar29-Apr4 by Mark Crispin Miller
For freak's sake, people, even the crash test dummies are nervous by Charles Hugh Smith
Is there a long emergency plan for peak oil? [no] by Alice Friedemann
[the desperation of *Vanity Fair* dumping Fauci] by Katherine Eban
The dollar dethroned: we have reached the end of monetary policy as we all once knew it by Quoth the Raven
[a single pseudouridine can affect RNA splicing; vax mRNA has *every* U replaced by psi] by N.M. Marinez et al. (2022)
[new 'normal': 15 top flight tennis players at Miami Open withdraw in middle of games because 'not feeling well', incl both favorites] Yahoo sports
Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins dead at 50: the inside story on what likely caused his death by Steve Kirsch
Covid-19 deep dive part V: human traffickers by Spartacus
['late gadolinium enhancement' in kids' hearts indicating perment heart damage from vaccine-induced myopericarditis] J. Schauer et al. (2022)
The FBI Cyber Chief can't find Hunter Biden's laptop Rep. Matt Gaetz
When is mRNA not really mRNA? by Robert Malone
[hospitals' in patient revenue declines 20% during Omicron - trans.: people are losing trust in the medical system] by Alia Paavola
DuckDuckGo destroys brand by embracing censorship by Joseph Mercola
How to BLAST your way to the truth [Dec 2021 re-linked - useful comments] by Ah Kahn Syed
Statement on Bacillus Anthracis SARS-CoV-2 research Pittwire (sounds safe, eh?)
Are there hidden genes in DNA/RNA vaccines? [more on anti-sense ORFs accidentally [?] created by codon optimization] by C.A. Beaudoin
[big anti-sense ORF in Pfizer overlapping spike, but not in Moderna] by James Lyons-Weiler
Root cause of COVID-19? Biotechnology's dirty secret: contamination by Vinu Arumugham (April 2020)
Zelenko/Ardis death threats from Pfizer [start 6 min, finish 20 min]
The rate of change is the signal [good summary of Dowd] by Etana Hecht
The final frontier: Pfizer takes aim at 6 month old babies by Celia Farber
Springtime for GloboCap by CJ Hopkins
The press on its dying bed by Moneycircus
[over 2% of total US exports by money is blood, harvested from 150 million poor - more cash than from soybeans!] Observatory of Economic Complexity
Jack Maxey interview about Hunter Biden's laptop by John-Henry Westen
Jack Maxey Metabiota files
Pentagon-Ukraine bio labs: the Hunter Biden connection by Freddie Ponton
Implications of refinery closures for homeland security and critical infrastructure safety by Alice Friedemann
Why is it wo hard to compensate people for serious vaccine injury? by David Charbonneau
[Leana Wen cancelled for spouting common sense[!}] by Ramon Tomey
"In the event of a draft . . ." Selective Service Twitter
This is a new America by Steve Kirsch
Department of Justice advertises for tort lawyers who can get Top Secret clearance to defend HHS in the secret vaccine court DOJ
Why to the "vaccinated" want a war with Russian, while the "unvaccinated" don't? by Mark Crispin Miller
What is killing the millenials? by Jessica Rose
How healthcare became sickcare by Charles Hugh Smith (excellent insider letter)
"Meet the quarantine stations" CDC Quarantine and Isolation website
America, you're about to be poor by Gonzalo Lira
Drivers of excess mortality by Milo Mac
[meme: vaxxed sheep defends Ukrainian freedom]
A deeper dive into mind control by Spartacus (long, lots of refs)
The ins and out of whose money is it anyway? by Tom Luongo
Child abuse: 'I just want them to stop transing the children' by Ben Bartee
War, smoke and mirrors by Johan Eddebo
Hunter Biden's laptop repairman harassed, nearly bankrupt by Jon Levine
Referee whistles may be cause of sudden increase in heart problems: "experts" by Capitalist Exploits
More than one-third of Americans would risk nuclear war over Ukraine [] Pew poll
Immune imprinting, breadth of variant recognition, and germinal center response in human sARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination [vac mRNA in lymph nodes for months]] by Roltgen et al. 2022
Counterinsurgency, PSYOPS, and the military origins of the internet by Dustin Broadbery
Those who chose shaming over science by Gabrielle Bauer
An update on the evolution of central bank digital currencies by Viable Opposition
Excess death percentage by Milo Mac
Edward Dowd on future recession, shocking findings in the CDC covid data and democide by Alexandra Bruce
How does it feel to be vindicated? Depressing and demoralizing by Robert W. Malone
Drs. Walensky and Offit: it's all in good fun by Thomas Harrington
Covid vaccines have been a Vietnam war for millenials - 60,000 dead interview with Edward Dowd
Who changed the scientific conclusion of a paper that could have saved millions FLCCC Alliance
[DuckDuckGo gone] by Gabriel Weinberg
Restaurants now requiring proof of Ukraine support by The Babylon Bee
The only non-totalitarian solution to resource scarcity: decentralized degrowth by Charles Hugh Smith
The most reckless Fed ever by Wolf Richter
The Orwellian mechanics of modern propaganda by Johan Eddebo
World war III has already started and it's an economic war by Brandon Smith
Variant specific boosters fail to elicit variant specific response [b/c original antigenic sin] by el gato malo
Adverse reactions to COVID vaccines I have come across A Midwestern Doctor
Moderna patented key COVID spike protein sequence in 2016 [orig Fronters in Virology paper link below] by Joseph Mercola
Biden's 'test to treat' plan a windfall for Pfizer, Merck - bu bad for patients
This year's sudden war is a distraction from the bigger war they've planned, for years, to wage against us all by Mark Crispin Miller
Snoqualmie Valley marines testing masks with bear spray USMC Science
The [environmental] truth about electric cars by Andrew Orlowski
Instructions for suviving a nuclear explosion in the time of COVID-19 by Viable Opposition
Where's Fauci? by Jordan Schachtel
Katie Meye, 'larger-than-life' Stanford women's soccer captain, dies aged 22 [no cause of death - because this happens all thet time, riiight] The Guardian
Heart problems, COVID infection, long COVID, and COVID vaccines: micro blood clots connect by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Vax mRNA longevity in blood [at least a month!] by Kevin McKernan
Corporate media blames everything other than vaxxes for exploding heart attack rates by Ben Bartee
Pelosi gets off on "Breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits" [WTF?!] State of the Union Address
Biden: "Pootin may surround Kiev with tanks, but he'll never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people" State of the Union Address
MSH3 homology and potential recombination link to SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site [the 19 BP toxic insert all the Scripps guys immed. recognized as artificial] by Ambate, Varshney et al (2022)
Covid vaccines: the next Vioxx? by Swiss Policy Research
[Pelosi was in Israel on Friday]
Intracellular reverse transcription of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 in vitro in human liver cell line [wasn't supposed to happen - N.B.: just in vitro here] by Alden et al. (2022)
Is science dead? by Steve Kirsch
Did the 'science' change? by el gato malo
Pfizer & Moderna investors run for the exits by Justus R. Hope, M.D. (pseudonym)
[doddering Francis Collins gets his public-enemy number one Malone and Mercola mixed up!] by Joseph Mercola
Hallucinations, nightmares, despair, longing for human contact by 52 year old woman who narrowly escaped
Environmental outcomes of the US reneweable fuel standard [corn ethanol as bad as fossil fuel] by Tyler J. Lark et al. (2022)
How to BLAST your way to the truth about the origins of COVID-19 by Dr. Ah Hahn Syed {excellent, Dec 2021)
Covid, vaccine, HIV and VAIDS by Igor Chudov
No one would ever accept permanent fever... So, why accept permanently high antibodies? It's a "Death Zone"! by Marc Girardot
[utter failure of vac plus boosters visible in excess deaths] CDC
Regulatory capture in the age of COVID-19 by The Worm
Former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd calls FRAUD, predicts bankruptcy for Moderna and Pfizer: "An all cause mortality endpoint should have topped this thing in its tracks, and it didn't." by Celia Farber
"A recurring fountain of revenue" - 'Biden' planning constant shots project veritas [guy spills beans trying to get into her pants]
The Pentagon's RESPONSE to the explosive DOD medical data is an even bigger story than the data by Daniel Horowitz
Johns Hopkins professor blasts his OWN college and the MSM or not publicizing study that found COVID lockdowns only reduced deaths by 0.2% because it doesn't fit their narrative by Adam Manno et al.
A sample of injectable medication tragedies in the US during my lifetime. This is what happens when you combine the desire for speed with policiticed regulators by Meryl Nass
New Nuclear Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition Deputy part of the 'pup community' by Paul Joseph Watson
Wanna hear a doctor speak some serious truth about the epidemic of jersey switchgin? by el gato malo
Even the pandemic's wrongest magazine has had enough by Alex Bereneson
[sometimes, they *really are* trying to kill you!] via Jim Stone
Vaccine injuries in the DOD and the attempted cover-up by Chief
Whistleblowers share DOD medical data [DMED] that blow vaccine safety debate wide open by Daniel Horowitz
[myocarditis: not rare, not mild] by Tawney Buettner
CDC "pivoting its language" on vaccination status by Kit Knightly
In praise of lawn darts by el gato malo
300% increase in cancer in military DMED database in 2021 by Tom Renz
[magical thinking climate change activist shocked that battery chemistry differs from fossil fuel chemistry] by Heidi Harmon (former mayor of San Luis Obispo
Neil Young demands Spotify throw Joe Rogan off [people are googling "Who is Neil Young"] ziohedge
Until this data is produced, STFU by Karl Denninger
Bad moon rising, Part 2 by Jim Quinn
"Human augmentation the dawn of a new paradigm" [stop these sociopaths!] by Robert W. Malone
[escaped monkeys en route to CDC quarantine facility captured - what's next: Nipah? Marburg? Williamsport Sun-Gazette
A catastrophic moral crime ["When you've lost Bill Maher, you're done" - K Denninger] Bari Weiss and Bill Maher
Shame on Australia for rejection science - world's tennis great is already immune to COVID by Hooman Noorchashm
They suddenly care about (Ukraine's) border Tucker Carlson
Gavin Newsom demands answers from whoever's in charge of California Babylon Bee
[container train rolling over trash from looted containers in LA - see what happens when you don't waar enough masks?] stillgray
The Omicron hypothesis - part 2 by Mathew Crawford
'Financial rebellion' with Catherine Austin Fitts
Assessment of C-band [part of 5G} mobile telecommunications interference impact on low range radar altimeter operations [PDF] Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics
Is there anything more creepy than a guy that looks like a hippie and talks like a Fed? Tucker Carlson
[perverse incentives! - shades of Monty Python's 'Live Organ Donor'] anon CA nurse on Stew Peters (for actual gory [heh] details of payment details, see
this PDF)
When will energy prices come down? [never] Adam Taggart interiew with Art Berman
The climate-change trip to Abilene by Art Berman
The war on treatment is fiercer now than even covid itself by Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Yearly VAERS deaths from all vaccines: 2000 through end of 2021 [PDF] data downloaded from VAERS Dec 24, 2021
Five ways that people refused to be fooled by Lockdown Madness by Paul Frijters, Gigi Foster and Michael Baker
The last days of the Covidian cult by CJ Hopkins
[there, I fixed the ad for you] by man up already
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on early child cognitive development [PDF] by S.C.L. Deoni et al. (2021) scroll down to Fig. 2, Aug 2021
Unelected health tyrant finally out in Rhode Island [] by TTBikeFit
America is a hospital by Jon Rappoport
Poll finds close to half of Democratic voters want COVID internment camps for the unvaccinated [but thankfully, 71% overall are opposed] by Steve Watson
The lab leak: Farrar gets a burner phone by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Leftists [sic] are not the rebels they think they are - they are the empire by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Excellent letter from UChicago students The Chicago Thinker
SCOTUS rules healthcare workers are the only people who can't make decisions about their own health Babylon Bee
Mass formation: deployed on you after over 200 years of study by Robert W. Malone
Looters ransack trains at downtown LA sorting depot and leave COVID tests and pharma drugs littered along the tracks by Tommy Taylor
Beyond the Great Reset - 10 official documents on human -machine hybrids by Joe Allen
Vaccine efficacy and social duty by el gato malo
But we have to do SOMETHING! by Karl Denninger
Mystery surround FAA order to halt all west coast air traffic after North Korean missile launch by Tyler Rogoway
[questions about Malone et al.] State of the Nation (don't agree with everything, read anyway)
Do not comply! FFFFS sake! [go, Claudia!] Cabin Talk
Boosters are over by Alex Berenson
SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and neurodegenerative disease by Stephanie Seneff (informative article from Jun 2021)
Meryl Nass license suspension hearing, ordered to psychiatric treatment [totalitarian sh*t is getting real!] by Kevin Miller
Released emails show early Fauci, Collins briefing that likely source was lab release, from serial passage or direct insertion response to Congressional inquiry by Comer and Jordan (docs on scribd)
Reflections on the Supreme Court oral arguments in the OSHA vaccine mandate case by Toby Rodgers
[worrisome, tho HT is always over the top] by Hal Turner
[Maine goes after Meryl Nass' medical license] by Meryl Nass
Get the courts out of science by Jeffrey A. Tucker
COVID fanaticism is on full tilt this week by Simon Black
The statement nobody made by Karl Denninger
Supreme Court judges spar over vaccine mandates, twitter erupts over false claims by Megan Redshaw
More bad news on Covid vaccine and myocarditis in men under 40 - even as more colleges [like SDSU!] require booster shots for students by Alex Berenson (paper
PDF here)
Theranos: the Fyre festival of biotech by Russ Winter
How do tyrants make people act against their own interests? by Tessa Lena
Insurance companies report 40% increase in premature non-COVID deaths [and celebtrate new ability to raise premiums] CHD
How to verify for yourself that over 150,000 Americans have been killed by the COVID vaccines by Steve Kirsch
Shall we drop calls or airplanes? - airlines and wireless companies fight over 5G activation by MoA - overweight smoker, good on planes/737MAX, bad on covid op, gets boostered today)
More harm than good [excellent vid on the Pfizer trial that got Malone censored] by Canadian Covid Care Alliance
The 40% increased deaths and increased disabilities, revealed by the CEO of an Indianapolis insurance company, is huge. And then there is Kaiser by Meryl Nass
Differences [RNA folding] in vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 replication derived mRNA by Kevin McKernan, A.M. Kyriakopoulos, and P.A. McCullough
21/22 by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Just say no! [worked even in NYC, a loser city filled w/many servile sheep trying to turn it into Australia!] by Eric Bascome
Biden approval at 36% The Trafalgar Group
They said they would slow the spread by Jeffrey A. Tucker
What if the largest experiment on human beings in history is a failure? by Robert W. Malone
Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64 [should be 750K, now 1M] by Margaret Menge
A pharmacist speaks, remembering Fauci's AZT putsch by Celia Farber
Why do leaders deny peak oil and limits to growth? by Alice Friedemann
Stop testing for a cold by Alex Berenson
Reverse repos reach $2 trillion [per day, mostly in and out]: main way Fed is suppressing interest rates [started Apr 2021] St Louis Fed
Hospital death camps exposed by Justus R. Hope, M.D. (pseudonym)
Appendix of vac-pushing JAMA article showing extremely modest effect of vac on hospitalization - see eTable 4 [PDF]
Welcome to reality. And f*** all y'all for pretending you didn't know by Ben Shapiro (former vac mandate guy, trying to keep the illusion of two sides)
Ghislaine's jury falls for the coverup by Paul Craig Roberts
Crime syndicate system control: sexual entrapment operations by Thomas Muller
Calling You (sung by the composer, from the 1987 film Baghdad Cafe) by Bob Telson
[if you every wondered what you would have done as a doctor under the Nazis, now you know!] by Steve Kirsch
Lieber case: crossed wires and parallel lines my Moneycircus
LOL: CNN lost another 38% of viewers in 2021 by Steve Watson
Differences in vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 replication derived mRNA: implications for cell biology and future disease [vac-specific RNA folding!] by K. KcKernan et al., (2021)
My promise to Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna by Alex Berenson
Vaccine don't stop Covid hospitalizations or deaths by Alex Berenson
AIDS and the revival of the Duesberg hypothesis by Ron Unz (finally coming around!)
How fanatics took over the world by Jeffrey A. Tucker (Nov 15)
The zoom class gets covid by Jeffrey A. Tucker
The viciousness of tribalism by el gato malo
Out patient treatments for covid-19 reviewed by Joseph Mercola
Actually, Scott Adams . . . by Karl Denninger
Overwhelming numbers of heart attacks, clotting, strokes by Joel Kilpatrick
[Soviet style memory hole alive in the USA] by Steve Kirsch
The Fed's catch-22 taper is a weapon, not a policy error by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Yet another independent study confirms over 150K Americans killed by the COVID vaccines [3x Vietnam combat deaths] by Steve Kirsch
Omicron has cracked open the Overton window by Robert W. Malone
A note to my well-credentialed friends by Thomas Harrington
[Moderna=Pfizer: sequenced from circulating plasma RNA 5 days after dose! - still there at 28 days] by Jikky Kjj
A path will rise to meet us by Charles Eisenstein
A peek inside my inbox by Steve Kirsch
The FDA is working with the post office to confiscate packages containing ivermectin by Aaron Siri
[all in a day's work for Francis Collins, the head of the NIH] by J. Bhattacharya
SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative, RaTG13, was generated from a bat transcriptome not a fecal swab: implications for the origin of COVID-19 by Steven E. Massey
How bad is my batch? [app] by Craig Paardekooper
Death by alphabet - Moderna batch codes and associated death [utterly different than flu vac] by Craig Paardekooper
Stocks don't need more alarm bells by Wolf Richter
COVID vaccination and age-stratified all-cause mortality risk [~160K US vac deaths to Aug 2021] by S. Pantazos and H. Seligmann (2021)
Another reason not to jab the children: Omicron by Robert Malone (vaxxed, anti-vax, vax inventor!)
Energy and human ambitions on a finite planet [free ebook] by Thomas W. Murphy
Illinois health care employees will seek damages from shot mandates Liberty Council
The bluechecks really are THIS scared by Alex Berenson
Proceeding without plans by Dr. John Day
Your mask protects my vaccine by el gato malo
Why liability protection for vaccine makers is a terrible idea bt Steve Kirsch
Comirnaty, liability, and how the HHS Conspiracy lies, cheats and steals from the public to hide vaccine injuries and useful treatments by Meryl Nass
[CDC consumed by covid monomania, has stopped consideration/approval of everything else - there is only one disease!] by el gato malo
US mega-corporations rush to abandon vax mandate by Daniel McAdams
ACTION ALERT: protect Americans' rights to medical freedom CHD
Has the EIA massively overestimated the potential of US shale? [yes] by Kurt Cobb
Omicron has a disabling proline mutation in [probably engineered] Staphylococcus Enterotoxin B epitope in SARS-CoV-2 spike, maybe inhibiting cytokine storm by Kevin McKernan
Is a Minsky moment at hand? by Russ Winter
The air coming out by James Howard Kunstler
When the light bulb comes on by THOR
Janet Mills activates Maine National Guard [many unvaccinated!] to staff hospitals 'overwhelmed by COVID-19' [trans: because we fired the unvaccinated nurses] by Caitlin Andrews
NOW it is time by Karl Denninger
Illinois bill proposes to strip unvaxxed of their health insurance by Kit Knightly
Mein Cough by WilliamBanzai7
Debate is over folks; facts came in by Karl Denninger
Vaccine Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (VAIDS): 'We should anticipate seeing this immune erosion more widely' by AFLDS
Hospitals' incentive payments for covid-19 by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D.
Vaccine batches vary in toxicity and are distributed to unsuspecting Americans in coordination by three companies by James Hill, MD
The full secularization of the doctrine of original sin by Thomas Harrington
1 in 2680 young men develop acute myocarditis/pericarditis in adolescents following Comirnaty vaccination in Hong Kong by Robert W. Malone
Mainstream economists are struggling to hide the incoming economic collapse by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
A grin without a cat [sophisticated fear porn?] by Dan Sirotkin (quasispecies reviews
here and
here)
Billions of people are affected by this and they don't realize it [13 min vid] by Robert Malone
In memory of JFK: The first US president to be declared a terrorist and threat to national security by Cynthia Chung
Mostly successful take off (minor water damage, runs like new) ziohedge
Released Pfizer FOIA docs: "How this product wasn't taken off the shelf within the first month is beyond me!" by Gal Shalev
The epidemiological relevance of the COVID-19-vaccinated population is increasing [translation: 'the vac has utterly failed'] by Gunter Kampf
[MSNBC producer describes how they were 'just like trying to respectfully intimidate the jury'] ziohedge
After licensing board threatens disciplinary action, Maine physician asks board to define COVID 'misinformation' by Meryl Nass
New Twitter CEO bans all citizen journalism on his first day [just don't use!] by Lucan Nolan
Mass psychosis After Skool (Aug 2021)
[graphene increase cellular permeability by compromising phosphlipid membrane integrity] by Buskaran et al. (2021)
Long-term persistence of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein: evidence and implication by doctors4covidethics
The limits of computer modeling and the limits of science by Josh Mitteldorf
Court blocks Biden healthcare worker vaccine mandate in 10 states by Alison Durkee
Democrats casting doubt on the vaccines in 2020 [2 min vid]
The polio story by Forrest Maready (2018, summary of his book)
Jack Ruby: Israel's smoking gun by Laurent Guyenot
Why aren't healthcare workers speaking out about the catastrophe caused by the vaccines? by Steve Kirsch
Greatest safety signal in the 31 year history of VAERS by OpenVAERS
Robert F. Kennedy interview (Nov 15) [excellent 53 min] interview by Tucker Carlson
ER doctor gives chilling account of unusual vaccine-induced illness by Mike Whitney
Let's talk about collapse to prevent it by Charles Hugh Smith
Want 11% -> 25% heart attack risk? by Karl Denninger
Reminder of what they said and the lies they told Anonymous UK Citizen
Why we must arrest drug addicts: rehab or jail works [e.g., Portugal] by Michael Shellenberger
Acute coronary syndrome biomarkers significantly increase after mRNA COVID-19 vaccine by S.R. Gundry
Biden has been quietly selling America's strategic petroleum reserves to China since February by Goodyear Mercury
[good comment at el gato malo, missing only declining energy return on energy investment] by Allen
All of a sudden, the media's no longer interested in blaming COVID on political ideology by IM
[MSNBC banned from trial after employee runs red light trying to follow jury bus, probably to doxx jurors ziohedge
Bricks in Kenosha? Again? by Starfire Codes
An now, the bad news by Karl Denninger
Nearly every single human gene can be 'linked' to cancer by Dan Robitzski
[Beaverton boy suddenly falls ill "in the nurse's office" from mysterious "large mass in brain" and immediately dies] by Camila Orti (Soviet-style propaganda writer)
FDA asks federal judge to grant it until the year 2076 to fully release Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine data by Aaron Siri
Another humorous substack panic by Matt Taibbi
[make coal great again: coal price/demand boom under Biden] ziohedge
Flu rips through [N.B.: fully covid vaccinated!] University of Michigan campus, bringing CDC to Ann Arbor by Kristen Jordan Shamus (flu already Oct/Nov? vac immune suppression?!)
The vaccine can compromise pre-existing (e.g., anti-RNA-polymerase) infection preventing immunity by Karl Denninger
Over a 60x increase in pro sports adverse events since the vacines rolled out by Steve Kirsh
Why Biden's vaccine mandate hasn't delivered the promised results by Gilbert Berdine, MD
Pfizer's covid injection destroyed US mountain biking champion's entire life, career by ethanh
Watch as "epidemic of the unvaccinated" becomes "booster refusal killing the double jabbed" el gato malo
Final warning from Michael Granata: 56-year-old California man dead 10 weeks after Moderna mRNA TheCOVIDBlog
CDC admits crushing rights of naturally immune without proof they transmit the virus by Aaron Siri
8 min speech to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting 11/02/21 by Dr. Scot A. Youngblood (must see)
Up to approx. $113 million of oral TPOXX [smallpox
anti-viral] targeted for delivery to the US Gov
in the 4th quarter Yahoo Finance (WTF?! also
Bill
Gates smallpox warning and
FBI finds investigates unauthorized smallpox vials at Merck Philadelphia lab)
Elon Musk and his brother sell $5 billion in Tesla share past week [rats, sinking ship] ziohedge
One brave ICU physician reporting covid-19 vaccine injuries leads to a dozen more by Aaron Siri
"I won't cry at your funeral" cardiologist has . . . funeral TheCOVIDBlog
Kamala Harris less popular than Dick Cheney [previous record holder] by Steve Watson
Biden's vaccine mandate is falling apart! by Ron Paul
Re-analysis of VAERS lots suggesting underreporting increased after April 2021 by Tourist
Simpsons doctor visit (aired 15 years ago - impossible today)
Why do liberals support lockdowns, masks, and vaxxes? by Mark Oshinskie (ex-Democrat)
Visual representation of number of vaccines a 2019 baby will receive [pic] by Lee Merritt
Gavin Newsom is out of sight likely because he has Bell's Palsy from
his booster shot [reappears Nov 9 looking mostly OK/recovered, still some left-side weakness] by Steve Kirsch (looks like
sub-Q?)
CDC will now try to impose universal Hepatitis B vaccination of adults - the elites are making war on us by Meryl Nass
[Newsom AWOL for 2 weeks after 3rd shot: this shows "it's working"] ziohedge
Arming the public with important information - Nov 2021 [40 min vid] by David Martin
What you need to know about Comirnaty - FDA, boosters, and the CDC Meryl Nass interview
5 concerns about SARS-CoV2 biology: a call to pause, deliberate and revise policy [PDF] by Jonathan J. Couey and Piper L. Stover (good scientific summary)
Pfizer "vaccine": kill 200 to 'save' one? by Kit Knightly (summary of Toby Rodgers article)
[Gavin should take 5 more mix and match boosters] ziohedge
[job force and job openings: large (2%) drop in people working since 2020] St. Louis Fed
'Brought to you by Pfizer': Pharma giant spends more on ads, news sponsorships, than research by Michael Nevradakis
When half a million Americans died and nobody noticed by Alexander Cockburn (April 2012, on Vioxx)
Excess deaths point to depopulation agenda [numbers not big enough so far, but frequent 'boosters' could 'help'] by Mike Whitney
[container ships waiting in Port of Los Angeles represent 1 month behind] ziohedge
The rehearsal is over by Charles Eisenstein
Brink of totalitarianism [25min vid] Daniela Cambone interview of G. Edward Griffin
Watching the deliberate takedown of America by Russ Winter
Resist now or we're finished The Burning Platform
5-year-olds soon have to show vaccine cards in San Francisco by Victoria Colliver
Genomic epidemiology of covid by Nextstrain
The sex traffickers on America's police forces by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
Here's the real reason Comirnaty is not available [and why the focus on kids] by Steve Kirsch (must read)
Vaccine-injured are discarded by Megan Redshaw
The covid vaccine is a government bioweapons "antidote" gone awry by Paul Cottrell
[Straight from the oligarchs' mouths: no energy for you] by J.D. Heyes
Revenge of the real world by Charles Hugh Smith
Uh, that's not a conspiracy theory [lethal vaccine lots] by Karl Denninger (must read)
[In Dec 2019, Section 351(i)(1) of Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 262(i)(1)) amended by striking "(except any chemically synthesized polypeptide)" from definition of "biological product" by Robert L. Kinney
[the raw power of the Matrix - see end] by Tell the Truth2
Nipah virus vector sequences in COVID-19 patient samples sequences by the Wuhan Institute of VIrology [a leak? N.B.: Nipah is a BL4 virus] [PDF] by Steven C. Quay et al. (2021)
(New normal) Winter is coming by CJ Hopkins
The greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elites in history by Carol Roth
"Interest rates are going to bonkers" Michael Pento interviewed by Greg Hunter
Letter from ICU physician Patricia Lee to FDA and CDC [PDF] by Patricia Lee
I said it would collapse; IT IS by Karl Denniger
Suspended medical ethics professor Aaron Kheriaty on vaccine coercion, risks, and natural immunity: Part 1 by Aaron Kheriaty
[covid vaccines *suppress* the immune system, *raise* Hemoglobin A1c for at least 3 months (sheesh!)] by J Liu, J. Wang, . . . and Z. Liu (2021)
[literal Nazi doctor - if this is 'health' care, I don't want any] by eribbs
FDA agrees to use childrenn in deadly experiments instead of dogs by Exavier Saskagoochie
['muscle spasms' that cancelled Celine Dion's vaccinated-only concert series not due to vaccine] by R. Ghosh, fact-checker
Questions you need to answer before approving the COVID vaccines for any age group [140 slide PDF] by Steve Kirsch
The most deadly vax in history: VAERS vaccine-related death reports by year [data to Oct 22] VAERS
Joe Dementia to Pope: "You're the famous African-American baseball player in America" [not fake]
40% of the bull market is due solely to buybacks by Lance Roberts
Letter to the FDA by Meryl Nass
I have been through this before by Anne Bauer
Why are so many in the US now so sick? by el gato malo
Scientist whose wife was injured by COVID vaccine tells FDA: 'Please do not give this to kids' by Megan Redshaw
Any society that uses children to shield adults from harm has entirely lost its moral bearings by Aaron Kheriaty
The age of extermination by Dr. John Day
FDA panel endorses Pfizer shots for 5- to 11-year-olds, experts say vaccine for kids is 'unnecessary, premature and will do more harm than good' by Megan Redshaw
"We're never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it [to *your* kids]" - Dr. Eric Ruben, FDA panel by Kevin McKernan
Manufacturing consent . . . for medical apartheid? Chomsky proposes starving out unvaccinated to get them to submit by Neil Clark
200,000+ grannies, no Problem. A few puppies? by Karl Denninger
The folly of our universal vaccination campaign by Eugyppius
The madhouse of democracy by TheZMan (right wing, read anyway)
[as vac'd deaths go up, time to redefine fully vaccinated] by Kit Knightly
Ecohealth strikes back at NIH: they *did* report ziohedge
Physicians and the vaccine tyranny by Blaise Edwards, MD
40% of all Covid deaths in America last week were vaccinated by Steve Deace
Why the CDC ignores natural immunity by Aaron Kheriaty
Experimental mRNA transfections using rare and immuno-ablating pseudouridines by Kevin McKernan
Longer conversations by Dr. John Day
Dementia pugilistica? Clown world today
Ventura county (CA) nurses blow the whistle on crisis in local health care by Joel Kilpatrick
The most deadly vax in history: VAERS vaccine-related death reports by year [data to Oct 15] VAERS
Covid vaccine will keep you from acquiring full immunity even when you are infected and recover by Alex Berenson
[outright scientific censorship! - also rm'd from web.archive.org] by Jessica Rose and Peter A. McCullough
[NIH removed definition of "gain-of-function" research - that should fix it, eh?] by Jeremy Redfern
Martial law to be declared - the war has just begun interview of G. Edward Griffin by Josh Sigurdson
[current efficacy against infection in US: Moderna 64%, Pfizer 50%, J&J, 3%] [PDF] by Cohn et al., (2021)
[Chaff from Francis Collins, head of the NIH, soon retiring, in response to serious accusations from Richard H. Ebright] by Francis S. Collins (Ebright
tweet here)
COVID-19: The Spartacus Letter [PDF 14p plus refs] [bump to top] by anonymous
COVID deaths before and after vaccination programs by Joel Smalley (Sep26)
The end of the dream by John Michael Greer
That untraversed land by John Michael Greer
Where stuff comes from by Doomberg
Proof that the CDC is lying to the world about COVID vaccine safety by Steve Kirsch
[this has crossed a red line - childhood covid vacs are all risk and no benefit for kids] ziohedge
This is not a conflict of interest [pipe] by Whitney Webb
TikTok threatens to censor "Let's Go Brandon" rap song for 'bullying'? by Paul Joseph Watson
[spike protein contains unique insert resembling lung-inflaming staphylcoccal enterotoxin B] by M.-H. Cheng et al (2021)
How to make lemonade from diarrhea by Kevin McKernan
New ways to get riddled with spike by Fynn-derella
[mRNA vaccination *does* result in shedding of spike-coated exosomes! - jabbed can exhale spike] by Bansal et al., (2021)
Pfizer, Moderna to rake in $93 billion [1/10 of a *trillion*] in 2022 by Megan Redshaw
Go down gardening by Dr. John Day (last day at work - originally the 1970's "The People's Free Clinic" - for vaccine non-compliance changed at last minute to illegally prescribing ivermectin)
Mystery deaths rising with vaccine rate [to 1/6 of total deaths at 3200/week!] by Question Everything (CDC data table
here)
A report on myocarditis [web backup of Oct1-published article removed by Elsevier] by J. Rose and P.A. McCullough
FDA and CDC ignore damning report that over 90% of a hospital's admissions were vaccinated for Covid-19 and no one was reporting this to VAERS by Aaron Siri
David Martin on vax-pushing CEOs [vid] interview by Mike Adams
Leana Wen's covid audition during the Boston Bombing by Wake up from COVID
Chap11: The FDA's BIG mistake [vid] by Steve Kirsch
Estimating the number of COVID vaccine deaths in America [PDF] by Steve Kirsch Jssica Rose, Matheew Crawford (last update, Oct 8, 2021)
Convicted by Dr. John Day
COVID vaccine mandates are killing aviation, healthcare, other critical services. Is it intentional? by Children's Health Defense Team
Chicago prosecutors reject charges in deadly gang shootout because 'mutual combat' [!] by Tom Schuba
Pandemic [not!] wiped out entire savings of 20% of US households [it wasn't rich-peoplehouseholds, which *added* $1 trillion in savings] ziohedge
Artificial tyranny project by Dr. John Day (last month on his decades-long job)
lion awake by el gato malo
Between 100-200 members of Congress and their families & staffers have been treated with IVM & our I-MASK+ protocol for COVID. NO hospitalizations [but *your* grandma can't have it] by Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care
Will vaccine-linked deaths rise sharply this winter? by Mike Whitney
Are leaky vaccine driving delta? by el gato malo
Fauci and some scientists discuss how they need a disruptive event such as flu like virus out of China to get around decades of approval for a new vaccine technology - in October 2019 Melissa Tate
Vaccine-immune interactions and booster shots [PDF] Doctors for Covid Ethics
Science closes in on Covid's origins by Richard Muller and Steven Quay, WSJ
In support of southwest employees by el gato malo
The Dyatlov Pass mystery and the DOJ's classification of dissident Parents as terrorists. Related? Yes. by Scott Creighton
Robert Malone: Physicians are being "hunted" for speaking out by press and medical boards by Paul Joseph Watson
Healthy young mother dies of vaccine-induced blood clot, then Twitter censors her obituary by Megan Redshaw
Winning the war against therapeutic nihilism: trusted treatments vs untested novel therapies [great information filled talk!] by Peter McCullough
['smart' fridges] ziohedge (I warned about these years ago. See the
end of
Aneuploidy
More on the missing Biden EO and the missing vaccine mandate by Jon Rappoport
Robert Malone's IP banned from reading the New England Journal of Medicine by Justus R. Hope
Through the eye of a needle: an eco-heterodox perspective on the renewable energy transition by Megan K. Siebert and William E. Rees (2021)
CDC allows hospitals to classify dead vaxxed people as "unvaccinated" by Crack Newz
Imagine still believing any of this is about a virus by el gato malo
US state with highest vaxx rate sees surge in COVID cases ziohedge
How many people have died from COVID? Nobody really knows by Joseph Mercola
Supply collapse by Karl Denninger
An incovenient truth about AI by Rodney Brooks
Dr. McCullough lecture on the sate of COVID treatment DoctorTed
[Reporter: the crowd is saying "Let's Go Brandon"! riiiight!] by Jewish Deplorable
[good doctor John Day is fired] by John Day
Charging station fire by Deplorable Richie
Rand Paul destroys Xavier Becerra go Ron Paul!
While everyone cheers soaring "wealth", American social order is unraveling by Charles Hugh Smith
NYC restauranteurs: business down 40 to 60 percent due to vaccine mandate by Enrico Trigoso
We are being lied to our deaths by Paul Craig Roberts
Safety signals for COVID vaccines are loud and clea. Why is nobody listening? by Josh Guetzkow
Intravenous injection of vac can induce acute myopericarditis in mice by C. Li et al. 2021
And now here is some news by John Ward
Peak cringe Colbert
"Kids shouldn't get a f*cking [COVID] vaccine" J and J employee
A self-fulfilling prophecy: systematic collapse and pandemic simulation [good history, but missing a prime cause: the decline in net energy] by Fabio Vighi
NY gov confirms National Guard will fill in for fired healthcare workers who reefuse vax [weren't they heros last year?] ziohedge
COVID-19: The Spartacus Letter [PDF 14p plus refs] by anonymous
[new NY gov Kathy Hochul proposes replacing health care workers who refuse to get the vac with National Guard - you like a ventilator with that, SIR]by Jack Phillips
Affidavit of Ltc. Thersa Long M.D. in support of a motion for a preliminary injunction order by Patrick Byrne
Biologists rethink the logic behind molecular signals by Philip Ball
The emperor has no clothes: COVID math doesn't add up CHD
VAERS vaccine-related death reports by year [data to Sept 17] VAERS
Confirmation of vaccine-associated mortality by Mathew Crawford
Pulmonary nurse Albert Spence for 31 years testifies how he unknowingly killed patients following covid protocols by Health Impact News
[Walensky's overrule: "follow the science" - except when politics trumps science] by Glenn Greenwald
"It's a ghost town" [Chicago] by Mark Glennon
Jen Psaki employed by Israeli spy firm [but only $5K payment to her reported] ziohedge
[a doctor's story: if you get injured by a vaccine, sayonara - you're on your own] by Magan Redshaw
The conversation of corona by Eugyppius (Germany)
Direct evolution II: Gates got your tongue? by Kevan McKernan
Street level experience by John Day, MD
"Blow-darting African Americans is where we're going" [Part 2] Veritas with FDA economist Taylor Lee
Winter is coming by el gato malo
[riot police in Melbourne firing tear gas and rubber bullets [3% lethality] on demo] Voice for Victoria, Avi Yemini
White house aides prevent US reporters from asking questions Alex Salvi
Why do doctors go along with COVID panic porn and CDC prescriptions? by Ted Noel
Pfizer assures that vaccine is almost as safe for kids as COVID Babylon Bee
Odds increase that SARS CoV-2 was lab made [summary of leaked grant below] by Chris Martenson
How EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated on a dangerous [2018, DARPA] bat coronavirus project [incl. inserting human-specific furin cleavage site into spike inside aerosolized skin-penetrating particles!] Drastic Research
[entering a hospital without a full legal team in tow can be dangerous] by fynnderella
Medical cruelty and loving attention by Mathew Crawford
[delivered in the gentle hands of the 'intensivists'] by Amazing Polly
Physician's assistant Deborah Conrad: VAERS whistleblower the Highwire
Washington State government stealth edits job posting to remove "strike team" from covid quarantine camp ad by Mike Adams
Many San Diego PD officers say they would rather quit than comply with vaccine mandate by David Hernandez
Conquered by a fake pandemic by Paul Craig Roberts
Kensington Ave, Philadelphia, Aug 2021 [we spent several $trillion killing Afghans when our cities look like this] by kimgary
Officials [e.g., Elizabeth Warren] demand ban on Dr. Mercola book by Joseph Mercola
A hinge moment of history by Mark Steyn
[Quarantine Strike Force: as a whole-food plant based guy, never thought I would link to a Shawn Baker vid!] by Shawn Baker, keto guy
Sirens blaring at Democratic headquarters as black women expresses unapproved opinion by Babylon Bee
How did we get to a place where such outrages seem "normal"? by el gato malo
Proteins that contaminate influenza vaccines have high homology to SARS-CoV-2 proteins thus increasing risk of severe COVID-19 disease and mortality by Vinu Arumugham
Local Detroit ABC TV asks for stories of unvaxxed dying from COVID - gets over 180K responses of vaccine injured and dead instead by Brian Shilhavy
Young Fraudcistein by WilliamBanzai7
Conspiracy theorists were right; it IS a poison death shot by Mike Whitney
Actually, it all makes sense ziohedge
FDA panel votes against approving vaccine boosters [but allows for ill-defined 'high risk'?] by el gato malo
Drug induced thrombocytopenia [in up to 25% of acutely ill patients!] by G.P. Visentin and C.Y. Liu (2021)
Vaccine passports: why bother if shots don't prevent infection, transmission? by Joseph Mercola
CDC continues dishonest vaccine, COVID data reporting to hide danger of COVID jabs by Joseph Mercola
Vaccinated man just wishes there was something that could protect him from COVID Babylon Bee
Universities forcing "vaccination" on their students, faculties, and staff are functioning more like death camps than like schools by Mark Crispin Miller
[excellent tweet :-} ] by Nicki Minaj
Something else missing by Sundance
[EPIC takedown of CNN's Don Lemon - wheels finally starting to come off the covid operation bus ?! ] by Nicki Minaj (23 million Twitter, 155 million Instagram) of all people, might wake up the sheep!
[Ballgate summary at bottom of page] by Sorcha Faal
The meaning of the FDA resignations by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Robert W. Malone: the truth about vaccines and COVID [excellent] Jimmy Dore interview (he mostly stays out of the way)
WXYZ-TV Facebook request backfires: revenge of the vaccine injured by Steve Kirsch
The snake-oil salesmen and the COVID-Zero Con: A classic bait-and-switch for a lifetime of booster shots (immunity as a service) by Julius Ruechel
The vaccinated superspreader hypothesis el gato malo (see also
Joel Smalley - twitter censored main Smalley post but left thread)
Majority of Americans oppose jab mandates by David McLoone
[20x increase in endometrial cancer post-shot, corresponding decline in natural killer CD8 cells] by Ryan Cole, MD
How states and communities can fight back by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
A little epiphany about the plannedemic by Axel Savage
[starts with excellent video of nurse whistleblowers] The Crowhouse
The real reason behind everything by Cris Vleck
Why 'vaccinated covid deaths/hospitalizations" are being counted incorrectlyby el gato malo
1600+ reports of hair loss following COVID-19 shots by Celeste McGovern
The false 'pandemic of the unvaccinated' narrative by Meryl Nass, MD
The masking of the servant class by Glenn Greenwald
I will never trust another doctor by Randi Pinkerton (from a long line of doctors and nurses!)
COVID-19/11 by Catherine Austin Fitts
The global landscape on vaccine ID passports part 4: Blockchained by Corey Digs (superb, esp. conclusion: "HARD STOP: it's time to man up"
The false 'pandemic of the unvaccinated' narrative by Meryl Nass, MD
The masking of the servant class by Glenn Greenwald
I will never trust another doctor by Randi Pinkerton (from a long line of doctors and nurses!)
COVID-19/11 by Catherine Austin Fitts
The global landscape on vaccine ID passports part 4: Blockchained by Corey Digs (superb, esp. conclusion: "HARD STOP: it's time to man up"
How to escape from a sick society by Academy of Ideas
"We need to be . . more scary to the public" hospital admins talking dirty
CHD responds to Biden's 'declaration of war against the unvaccinated' by Mary Holland
A majority a vaccine-recipients afterwards have blood clots, some with permanent damage [10 min] by Dr. Charles Hoffe (nice visualizations)
The 'Delta variant' is vaccine injuries anon nurse w/Stew Peters
Scientific panel determines that most people don't need boosters by P. Krause et al. (2021) Lancet
Stadiums: one place crowds of people can't be censored ziohedge
Covid's willing executioners [N.B.: this is a scare piece designed to frighten straight thinking people, not enlighten them] by Todd Hayen
These dangers loom over fragile US economy in next 12 months by Brandon Smith (alt-'right' but read anyway)
The paradox of turnkey totalitarianism by Max Borders
[teenage boys much more likely to be injured by vaccine than COVID] [PDF] by T.B. Hoeg et al (2021)
Did the polio vaxx really cure polio? by Suzanne Humphries (2012 talk)
Estimating the number killed [PDF] by Steve Kirsch
Quick take on the biden speech by el gato malo
The physics of high rise building collapses by Steven Jones, R. Korel, A. Szamboti, and T. Walker (2016)
46,000 missing trusses and
Act 4 - WTC7 and flight 93
by Scott Creigton (reposts from 2009)
Demystifying 9/11: Izzy and the tactics of mistake by Alan Sabrosky (repost of Sept 2010 interview)
The dancing Izzy's by Whitney Webb (slight update from 2019)
9/11 was an Izzy job by Laurent Guyenot (repost of Sept 2018)
VAERS vaccine-related death reports by year [Sept 10] VAERS
Ethics prof gives a heartbreaking final lesson on refusing vaccine, just before being fired by Julie Ponesse
Never in my life . . . by Karl Denninger (best comment: "My family
on both sides has written me off because I will not join the church of
the cranial blood clot."
Hail Fauci [don't miss 1:50 :-} ] by Andre Artunes (from Portugal!)
Propaganda in the covid era with Mark Crispin Miller interview by Whitney Webb
Psaki smiles and runs away from "What happened to my body, my choice when it comes to vaccinations?" Sep 9 presser
New details emerge about coronavirus research at Chinese lab by Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl
They will reap what they sowed by Jim Quinn
Resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in a highly vaccinated health systems workforce [in San Diego!] by Keehner et al. (2021) NEJM
"Nothing to hide", a poor excuse to justify surveillance by Bruce Wilds
The powerful case against the COVID mRNA vaccine by Paul Craig Roberts (excellent summary!)
Rutgers bars unvaccinated student from attending virtual classes by Lee Brown
Is it possible to avoid heart damage from the COVID vaccines? Or do all COVID-vaccinated people have some myocarditis? by Colleen Huber MD
A generation of American men give up on college by Douglas Belkin
You cowards are responsible for what's coming by Whats Her Face
Vaccine failure and the way out by Eugyppius
Here's WHY they killed your grandmother by Karl Denninger
Social media [plus lockdown!] may be increasing cases of [higher than Tourette's-disability] new-onset [TikTok] tics by Kathrin LaFaver, MD and Tamara Milka Pringsheim, MD (May, 2021)
[an investment banker figures it out] by James Rickards
Vaccine questions, Part 1 and
Part
2 by Robert W. Malone
Excellent comment1
and
comment2 on Greenwald article by Joopy
S
Steve Kirsch comment to the FDA ACIP meeting [PDF] by Steve Kirsch
The Covidian Cult (part III) by CJ Hopkins
Nurse shortages in CA reaching crisis point [b/c some won't take clot shot after seeing how 'works', and some have seen how well mandated withholding of early treatment 'works'] by Kristen Hwang (have to read about San Diego from news in Bakersfield!)
Having the state force citizens to inject their bodies with a medicine they don't want is a 'victory for civil liberties' actually, says the ACLU by Glenn Greenwald
The 'cure' for COVID - a global takedown of the 99% - has proven far worse than the disease Children's Health Defense Team
[twice as many people shot in San Francisco so SF suggests paying criminals up to $500 a month to not shoot each other - building on the 'success' of the 'OK to steal if under $1000 a day' program] by Michael Barba
"In-body artificial immunity as a service" by Tessa Lena
Google Scholar unbelievably memory-holes Peter McCullough, one of the most cited authors on successf treatments for COVID by Kevin McKernan
ACIP vote yesterday after deceitful CDC briefings removes liability from Comirnaty, opening the door to mandates by Meryl Nass
Don't sign up for a lifetime of gene therapy! by Alex Berenson
Objective risk of covid by Justin Hart
Worldwide vaccination passport specification from the WHO WHO, 27 Aug 2021
Roaring Creutzfeldt-Jakob 3 months after vac (case report submitted to American College of Physicians Journal) by Megan Redshaw (VAERS report
here)
Media begins mocking Americans for believing their propaganda by Chris Menahan
"This may be why hospitals are refusing to use
effective COVID treatments like vitamin D, ivermectin,
hydroxychloroquine" by Kathy Dopp (DHHS amendment
here
Dr. Robert Malone calls out CDC for using hope rather than data by Robert W. Malone
Why we should stop vaccinating now before the *vaccine* (not natural immunity) selects for more deadly variants by Geert Vanden Bossche
Costco introduces new 5-gallon family size Pfizer vaccine by Babylon Bee
Comorbidly obese: the effect of covid policy on our children's health by el gato malo
The case for COVID vaccine passports was just demolished by Jon Miltimore
Why so many Americans reject legal due process in the age of covid by Ryan McMaken
[fearporn from UCSD doc vs. real numbers] by Jimmy Jeans
COVID-19 vaccines proven to cause more harm then good based on pivotal clinical trial data analyzed using the proper scientific endpoint, "all cause severe morbidity" [PDF] by J. Bart Classen
Delta scam by Jim Quinn
Don't black lives matter if those "vaccines" take them? by Mark Crispin Miller
Pregnant woman denied heart exam due to "vaccine" status by Lady Amina
Why vaccine passports must be rejected by Joseph Mercola
Biden falls asleep talking to Naftali Bennett via Wildman_AZ
Goodbye Twitter by Alex Berenson
[Twitter intern/code vs. Science magazine] by Eli Klein
'Pfizer+' monthly booster subscription program announced the Babylon Bee
Cook County judge strips mother of parental rights over vaccination status by Dane Placko
[first-dose trend from the CDC: beginning in August, the fear is finally failing!] CDC
Weakening evil by Dr. John Day
Emperor Pfizer explaining why he doesn't need to get the vaccine by Albert Bourla
Best comment of the day - "How about a vaccine IV drip?" by Robert W. Malone
From chimpanzees to children: the origins of RSV - respiratory syncytial virus by Lyn Redwood
With a "left press" like this, who needs fascist media? by Mark Crispin Miller
Justin Trudeau chased out of town: "You can take my dose up your @ss!"
The whole thing stinks by Techno Fog
Does the FDA think these data justify the first full approval of a covid-19 vaccine? [all data used stopped at mid-March!] by Peter Doshi, BMJ editorial
Sean Penn bans unvaccinated from seeing his movie [no need, man!] by Sean Adl-Tabatabai
Psaki actually calls the pandemic a "plandemic" at Aug 25 presser Jen Psaki
[Banker President Yellen?] by Tom Luongo (conservative, read anyway)
Opposing tyranny: it's time to suit up or shut up by el gato malo
[Excellent, broad-ranging testimony from Dr. Christina Parks on Michigan House Bill 4471] Aug 19
Pfizer scheme to churn out 'variant-specific' vaccines will lead to more variants, experts warn by Megan Redshaw
Even mainstream media is now asking big questions about covid vaccines [that would suspend a Twitter account] ziohedge
Living in the age of covid: "The power of the powerless" by Michael Rectenwald
Pfizer seeking full indemnification by Robert W. Malone
[The FDA and the CDC are completely broken!] by Meryl Nass
The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant is poised to acquire complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines [PDF, explains ADE mechanism] by Y. Liu et al (2021)
FSA Covid vaccine "approval" - Dr. Robert Malone has compiled a laundry list of concerns from multiple sources regarding the validity of the so-called approval by Meryl Nass
The horror of Australia's tyrannical COVID lockdowns [we must stop this from happening here!] by Professor Jason S. Black
Fully vaccinated healthcare workers carry 251 times viral load, pose threat to unvaccinated patients, co-workers by Peter A. McCullough
Dangerous territory ahead by Joseph Mercola
The most monstrously overstimulated economy and markets ever by Wolf Richter
[fixing problems with vaccines that are already so perfect that they don't cause problems . . . with another vaccine - genius!] [PDF] by Wang et al. (2021)
Are the FDA and Pfizer-BiNTech scamming us with a license-in-name only? by Meryl Nass
Could it be a population reduction plot after all? by Paul Craig Roberts
From shots to clots by Joel S. Hirschhorn
*Intravenous* injection of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine can induce acute myopericarditis in mouse model by Li et al. (2021)
"I can't think of anyone better to lead this operation than than uh uh uh uh Chris. well of the Fema" official transcript of the Biden presser from facebook POTUS (!)
The more masks fail, the more we need them by IM
The real story behind collapsing supply chains and what it means for you by Doug Casey (conservative, read anyway)
The Fed says, let me squeeze your dollars 5 basis points at a time [RRP interest rate: 0.0% to 0.05%] by Tom Luongo (conservative, read anyway)
Big pharma eye next childhood vaccine cash cow - mRNA vaccines for RSV by Children's Health Defense Team
"You've got to be real scared and desperate to play the race card against the brother from South Central" Larry Elder tweet on LA Times' "Elder is Black face of white supremacy"
GM expands Bolt [electric vehicle] recall to all remaining (73K) vehicles, $1 billion charge) ziohedge
Hawaii hospitalizations up 850% despite longest mask mandates and highest vac rates - so let's focus instead on forcing masks on 2 yaer olds by Alex Berenson
Is the mandate a controlled demolition of many moving parts in the healthcare system? by Meryl Nass
We have 'leaky vaccines' that can cause ADE [3 min vid] interview with Drs. Robert Malone and Kevin Homer
Antibodies in vaccinated undetectable at 5 months [5 min vid] interivew with Drs. Robert Malone and Kevin Homer
Imminent FDA approval for vaccine with 39% effectiveness against infection [7 min vid] interview with Robet Malone
Let me tell you a story . . . by Karl Denninger
How Russians crushed Moscow's vaccine passports in just 3 weeks by Humans Are Free
Biden admin not mandating COVID vaccines for White House staff by Brooke SIngman
The CDC's own graph shows COVID excess deaths basically stopped at end of Feb 2021, when very few were vaxxed [scroll down] CDC excess deaths
California mail-in ballots show recall-Newsom votes through strategically-placed hole mail-in envelope by Michael Knowles
Biden's team launches laughable false flag Cletus truck bomber by The Salty Cracker
"Patsy" behind Capitol threat told Feds his "bomb" was "Built by y'all's people," "The people y'all had in the military" by Chris Menahan
BlackRock takes command by Joyce Nelson (Jul 2020)
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein induces paracrine senescence [affects telomeres] and leukocyte adhesion in endothelial cells by K. Meyer, T. Patra, Vijayamahantesh, and R. Ray (2021)
The Afghanistan exit debacle: incompetence, distraction or something more sinister? by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Colbert sucks: here's the real deal from San Diego Board of Supervisors meeting
[google took down excellent and measured Penny For Your Thoughts Blog] by censorship
Estimating vaccine-induced mortality, part 1 by Mathew Crawford
Refuse ALL fear narratives by Catte Black
We are witnessing intentional medical genocide by Dr. Bryan Ardis (Aug1)
[false flag on schedule!] bomb threat, supposedly photo'd walking to school . . . right by fupa mama
Covid will prevail as long as the known cures are against protocol by Paul Craig Roberts
Diesel is finite. Trucks are the bedrock of civilization. So where are the battery electric trucks? by Alice Friedemann
Where is all this going? by Meryl Nass
Newsom sells Marin County mansion for $5.9 million with tight recall election just days away by Joseph Weber
Massive fraud in reporting vaccine injuries by Jon Rappoport
Financial regime change by Dr. John Day (heartbreaking end to post)
Middle school Taliban, sorry, teacher: "I am ready to say let them die". "If we're lucky we can cut out 30% of the population that votes the wrong way" by Jeanine Reiter Kolkemo
[a planeload of anti-Taliban (AntiTa?] fighters, sorry refugees, on their way to a city near you! - no doubt female AntiTa safely on separate flights]
[the 'Biden' admin says it won't yet (!) prevent unvaccinated people from traveling between states] AP, Aug 13
The houses of dead and crooked souls by Edward Curtin
[stunning, must-see illustration of how the *vaccines* appear to have generated the variants] by BJ
Through the eye of a needle: an eco-heterodox perspective on the renewable energy transition by Megan K. Seibert and William E. Rees (2021)
Why the global economy is unraveling by Charles Hugh Smith
Resurgence of respirary syncytial virus (RSV) infections during 2021 'COVID-19' pandemic, Tokyo by Andrew Bostom
Lies behind the 'pandemic of unvaxxed' by Joseph Mercola
COVID-19 injection campaign violates bioethics laws by Joseph Mercola
A message from Tom Hanks' son [wait for it - funny!] by Chet Hanks
In the crosshairs by Dr. John Day
Children born during the pandemic have lower IQs, US study finds by Natalie Grover
Who watches the Watchmen? - Fauci's 'noble lie' exposed by Charles Rixey
Snopes suspends co-founder for mass plagiarism, staff revolts ziohedge
Gaslighting, a covid love story by Alex Berenson
[the insanity of criminal health dictators gone completely mad - Nuremberg II will come] by Louisa Clary
Pulmonary parenchymal changes in COVID-19 survivors [no permanent lung damage] [PDF] by Diaz et al., 2021, Annals of Thoracic Surgery
[pithy 10 min vid from an occupational therapist in Hawaii - works in Kalihi, where my father was born] by Abrien Aguirre [now early Sept fired from his job]
Why do some people support tyranny while others defy it? by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
American consumer sentiment crashes below covid crisi lows [I see pitchforks] ziohedge
When science is silenced - the story of COVID vaccines [video] by Robert W. Malone
"He's f*cking up his chances for a Nobel Prize" - Stan Gromkowski, "I made a choice" - Robert W. Malone by Robert W. Malone (a true scientific hero)
Infection-enhancing anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies recognize both the original Wuhan/D614G strain and Delta variants. A potential risk for mass vaccination? [mechanof of ADE to Delta in vaccinated] by Nouara Yahi, Henri Chahinian, Jacques Fantini (2021)
We are at the stage called: Pfizermectin by Kevin McKernan
Delta variant far less deadly than previous variants by TrialSite Staff
Dr. Makary says natural immunity is more effective (7x!) than vaccine immunity [data from Israel, b/c US won't release it] by Nicole Silverio
Only we can save ourselves from techno-hell by Ben Bartee
[another stolen Hunter Biden sex laptop reveals yet more national security threats] by Josh Boswell
The most vaccine-hesitant group of all? PhDs by Unherd
An open letter to the person who gave me COVID by Thomas E. Woods
The folly of ruling out a collapse by John P. Hussman
Maersk Q2 rates up 63% versus pre-COVID. Global demans up only 3% by Greg Miller
No herd immunity. Rampant transmission. Get the treatments that work, during the first few days of illness. Don't wait by Meryl Nass
We're all in this together, but when you follow their adivce and you're injured by a vaccine, you're on your own by Megan Redshaw
[unnecessary closing of public schools has been a catastrophe for poor Chicago Blacks] by Cara Ding
Mt. Vernon (Ohio) school board meeting by Dr. Dan Stock, MD
My decision not to get vaccinated does not affect anyone else's health. Full stop. by Emily Miller
We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads by Rand Paul
[the interconnections we are up against] by Ray Armat
Mob morality and the unvaxxed by Charles Eisenstein
How the plague of corruption is killing mankind [only up for 2 days] by Joseph Mercola
University spends $50,000 Removing "racist" boulder from campus ziohedge
"Remote accessible ballots for eligible voters [i.e., all voters] Orange County Ballot Options
Liberals praise DeBlasio for barring 65% of Black NYC residents from society The Babylon Bee
Right now this is the only issue that matters. Everything else can wait by Scott Creighton
Physician speaks out against 'vaccine mandeates for all' - esp. children and those with natural immunity by Megan Redshaw (plus, he's also Marty :-} )
CDC director makes case vaccination passports are futile by Sundance (conservative, read anyway)
Joe Rogan: "One step closer to dictatorship" ziohedge
"I wasn't allowed to buy grocerices today" [possible fake, excellent message!]
[masks are only for the proles] ziohedge
160 out of 700 San Francisco sheriffs' deputies threaten to resign due to mandatory COVID-19 vaccine by Enrico Trigoso
The astonishing hubris of a global experimental vaccine by Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia)
[The Federation of State Medical Boards AKA Physician Intimidation Board on 'misinformation'] by Jackie Drees
Vaccine stories from doctors Medscape
Medical insanity, as described by an MD by Matt Bettag, MD
[the overall covid infection-fatality ratio is 0.15% - 99.85% survive] by John Ioannidis
We will not comply! by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Biden team's misguided and deadly COVID-19 vaccine strategy by Robert W. Malone and Peter Navarro
Why so many Americans are refusing to get vaccinated by Vaccine Truth
Resist. They can't arrest us all transcript of Rand Paul interview
While the heard slumbers, risk is rocketing higher by Charles Hugh Smith
Cuomo assures public he always kept mask on while sexually harassing women The Babylon Bee
Media protection racket hides Joe Biden's comically bizarre [frightening?] gaffes at CNN town hall by Jack Houghton (Jul 23)
COVID-19 disease, womens' predominant non-heparin vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia and Kounis Syndrome: a passepartout cytokine storm interplay by N.G. Kounis, Robert W. Malone et al. (2021)
"Universal vaccination with leaky vacines is a very bad idea" by Robert W. Malone (kicked off LinkedIn *again*)
Stop being naive: this is 21st century warfare by Ben Bartee
Forced medicine: the new frontier in coercion by Jeffery A. Tucker
"First they came for Mercola" by Joseph Mercola
Covid-19 natural immunity compared to vaccine-induced immunity: the definitive summary by Sharyl Attkisson
Jail all unvaccinated adults! by Mark Dice talking to Karens in San Diego
[I'm guessing (and hoping!) the 'Delta lockdown' is disinfo] by Mike Adams
Failed vaccine narrative by John Day (doctor in Austin)
[4 days to put out the blaze in 1.5 out of the ~75 thirteen ton batteries in Australian Tesla Megapack grid battery] ziohedge
Vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals have similar viral loads in communities with a high prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant by K.K. Riemersma et al.
Masks masquerading as ScienceTM by Kevin McKernan (excellent, from Oct 2020)
Think this through with me (excellent slide-by-slide thread!) by Robert W. Malone (inventor of mRNA vac who took it himself)
Some beach goers in San Diego sign petition to arrest and jail all unvaccinated adults [vid] experiment by Mark Dice (right wing, watch anyway)
I called the CDC to ask about the shots [humor!] sent to Meryl Nass
Why would you institute get tough policies and mandates exactly when the data show the vaccines are very leaky? by Meryl Nass
A-10 warthogs are about to operate from a US highway for the first time by Thomas Newdick
Facebook 'factcheckers' funded by vaccine companies mockingjay2021
Push back America - do not comply [short vid] via Jim Stone
Covid truth-telling hero Dr. Peter McCullough sued for $1 million by previous hospital employer to wrongfully intimidate him by Elizabeth Hart
Why don't billionaires pay the same high tax rates the rest of us pay? by Charles Hugh Smith
Deep dive into COVID info-filled Dr. Robert Malone interview (try to ignore Peter Navarro's interruptions)
Cascade of consequences Burning Platform
What's REALLY behind the war on home ownership? by Kit Knightly
Cartman back to school [relinked] South Park, Oct 2020
The covid scam is unraveling by Paul Craig Roberts
Twitter suspends science writer after he posts results of Pfizer clinical test by Jonathan Turley
Follow the science by Zuby
Open letter on COVID [short vid] by Dr. Craig M. Wax
[medical workers who can look at this graph and say no 'safety signal' are not trustworthy] VAERS deaths by year
Why are globalists and governments so desperate for 100% vaccination rates? by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
WaPo's big CDC scoop on Delta variant in the vaccinated in unintelligible. Was it meant to be? by Meryl Nass
Omaha zoo won't chance vaccinating its *animals* (!) h/t Alex Berenson
'The war has changed': internal CDC document urges new messaging, warns delta infection likely more severe WaPo gov't approved propaganda, so mainly just more fear porn
The insecurity industry by Edward Snowden
[yuck, if true, worse than I expected] Spike protein is still circulating 5 months from vaccination in 100% of patients tested by Vaccine Truth
"This is precisely what one would see if antibody dependent enhancement was happening" Robert Malone interivew
Michael Rappaport sings a new tune (but 5 or 10 boosters should protect him from the unvaccinated hordes) by Michael Rappoport
[horrifying new report from a frontline nurse from Maryland] Constract
Adverse events reported followimg COVID-19 vaccinations - a very strong safety signal by Josh Guetzkow
Experts ask to see data behind new policies [CDC refuses] by Joel Achenbach, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ben Guarino and Carolyn Y. Johnson
Space 'tourism'? by Karl Denninger
For the first time in human history, we can transmit a disease we don't have to those who are immunized against it! Dr. Lidiya Angelova
[snopes says Depends are unproven] Joe Dementia
Newsom panics, pulls kids from summer camp after maskless photo of son surfaces ziohedge
The CDC's hysterical Delta flip-flop may be its final undoing by Jeffrey Tucker
Defining away vaccine safety signals by Mathew Crawford
Let them eat masks by William Banzai
COVID vaccines producing symptoms of Parkinson's, other neurodegenerative disorders by CHD Team
Latest data on COVID-19 vaccinations by race/ethnicity (only 9% of Blacks have received one dose) KFF
Pack those trains for your freedom by Kevin McKernan
CDC will withdraw EUA for common SARS-CoV-2 PCR test on Dec 2021 [b/c it can't distinguish SARS-CoV-2 from influenza] CDC
"Annual or more frequent boosters will be necessary, and receipt of boosters will be required" [PDF] UC COVID-19 vaccination policy (final)
Here is how you do the Big Lie by Meryl Nass
Woman loses both legs and both hands following second Pfizer shot by Brian Shilhavy
Johns Hopkins study found zero COVID deaths among healthy kids by Audrey Unverferth
The will of love by John Day
The CDC stopped tracking most COVID-19 cases in vaccinated people. That makes it hard to know how dangerous Delta really is by Aria Bendix (yahoo!)
Joe Dementia crushing it by Tom Elliott
In all of my publishing career, I've never seen a paper get edited 5 years later to remove references and flip the meaning of critical sentences by Kevin McKernan
Do the vaccinated become a breeding ground for COVID mutations? - we are being set up for a vaccine treadmill! by Dr. Joseph Mercola
"I did not have sexual relations with that spike protein" by Kevin McKernan
The emperor has no clothes: finding the courage to break the spell by Julius Ruechel
Pfizer adolescent risk-benefit calculations based on official CDC data by Robert W. Malone
The end of the industrial age is set in concrete by Tom Lewis
The truth about vaccines that the CDC doesn't want you to know by Vaccine Truth
A vaccinated Foo Fighter tests positive for covid, so concert that unvaxxed were banned from gets cancelled [ :-Q ha ha!] by Tony
The propaganda war and how to fight it by CJ Hopkins
Risk of ADE highest during waning phase of vaccine-induced immune response by Robert W. Malone
Die from the COVID vaccine? That's how you know it's working by Sandra Chou
Jul 19 45K whistleblower deposition PDF [her claim from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data] from complete Tom Renz filing
(
full PDF here)
[Jul 18: Southern CA-submitted Tom Renz lawsuit with CDC whistleblower: at least 45K vaccine deaths] by AtLeastDirTryn
Variant roulette by Mathew Crawford
Probable misclassification of vaccine deaths at COVID-19 deaths by Mathew Crawford
['side
effects'] reported by medical professionals and
queencitydom
Los Angeles County and the End of Science by IM
"So, I guess I have to say this. I am not suicidal" by Robert W. Malone
(because of
this threat)
How 2021 in the USA feels like 1990 in the USSR (at least to one who sees the one, and saw the other) by Vladimir Golstein
Kathleen Sebelius: unvaccinated shouldn't be allowed to work or have access their children [short vid] CNN OutFront
NIH COVID-19 panel member received massive windfall from not recommending ivermectin by Peter Yim
Government lawyers threaten Dr. Noorchashm by Jenin Younes (Leftylockdownskeptic)
[this black life (offscreen) should matter, too] by Amanda Woods, Joe Marino, and Jason Beeferman
[what kind of cognitive dissonance is required to look at this graph and say that no 'safety signal' is visible?] VAERS deaths by year
Vaccine strike force plan stinks of desperation by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
UC mandates COVID-19 vaccinations and will bar most students [and faculty] without them from campus by Teresa Watanabe and Colleen Shalby
The approaching storm by CJ Hopkins
New Normal [short vid] by Tom Nicholson
Fun with science [short vid] by Tom Nicholson
"8.0-hour course to provide knowledge necessary for planning for situations requiring isolation and quarantine of a large portion of a local, rural population The Center for Rural Development, for DHS certification
Because no animal reservoir has been found for SARS-CoV-2, it cannot properly be termed a zoonosis by Meryl Nass
Vaccines, reasons for concern, part 3 by Alex Berenson
The war on freedom: how tyranny overran the United States by Emanuel Pastreich
The Fauci/COVID-10 dossier [PDF] by David E. Martin
Asha Logos calls for a revived culture as the pathway forward by Russ Winter
College students suing over [CA] State Universities' vaccine mandates by Katy Grimes
Sneak attack: Congress likely to give Covid vaccine mfrs a liability waiver that will cover them after the EUAs are gone by Meryl Nass
When you've been reduced to explaining vaccines aren't a war crime, the narrative is not going your way . . . by Alex Berenson
[big moves in the bond market - deflation dead ahead?] St Louis Fed
[FDA updates to EUA Vaccine Fact Sheet] by Robert W. Malone
"Ignore no soliciting signs, use your script": vaccine door-knocking documents revealed ziohedge
COVID vaccine approval by FDA: battle is on by Joel S. Hirschhorn
[Dark Horse podcast that was censored - condensed to 1 hour] by Brett Weinstein, Robert Malone, and Steve Kirsch
A conspiracy to murder by Paul Craig Roberts
Number of reported covid cases among fully vaccinated continues to climb by Megan Redshaw
Robert W. Malone interview (transcription) by Jan Jekielek
As evidence grows that vaccines do not protect against infection, the case for granting priviledges to the vaccinated collapses by Will Jones
Mucosal immunity in COVID-19: a neglected but critical aspect of SARS infection by Michael W. Russell et al., 2020
Why did traffic accidents spike as drivers left roads? by Peter C. Earle
[Windows 11: the panopticon arrives] by Anthony Garreffa
How college COVID vaccine mandates put students in danger by Bortom, Kheriaty, McCullough, Risch, Cretella, and Bradley
Why the adenovirus-based and mRNA-based vaccines *are* gene therapy-based vaccines by Robert W. Malone
Covidian creed by Graeme MacQueen
'Staggering' doubling of Type 2 diabetes in kids during pandemic by Miriam E. Tucker
Jul 4th: Sorry, America, you lost me by Charles Hugh Smith
Travesties. Government breaking the law, pulling out all the stops to vaccinate our children. Disgusting. We have to stop this by Meryl Nass
2020: a propaganda masterpiece [video] by Mark Crispin Miller
Who is Robert Malone? by WhatsHerFace
Covid vaccination of pregnant women an "atrocity" and "shameful" [vid] interview w/Dr. Peter McCullough
Experimental assessment of carbon dioxide content in inhaled air with or without face masks in healthy children - a randomized clinical trial [CO2 levels reach 6x legal job limit level after 6 min] by Walach et al., 2021, JAMA
[The inventor of mRNA vaccines gets locked out of his Linked In account for . . . talking about mRNA vaccines, then edited out of wikipedia - can't make this sh*t up!] by Robert W. Malone
A century from now concrete will be nothing but rubble by Alice Friedemann
[Study reveals (despite misleading abstract) that 82% of first and second trimester pregnancies were terminated by the covid vaccine!] by Mike Adams (
original NEJM paper here)
Hosed by Tim Knight
Steven Quay June 30 House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee testimony [13 min]
Natural immunity vs Covid-19 vaccine-induced immunity by Marc Girardot
[reverse-repo hits $1 trillion a day - partially explained by quarter end] St Louis Fed
Panic porn dressed up as science ziohedge
[Earliest-outbreak SARS-CoV-2 spike binds to human ACE2 better than pangolin or bat ACE2] by S. Piplani et al, 2021
The MSM/CDC's logic by Hooman Noorchashm
Emergence of immune escape at dominant SARS CoV-2 killer T-cell epitope [looks like vaccine escape] by G. Dolton et al, 2021
The case of ivermectin (snip from Weinstein and Kory) on Joe Rogan
A deeper analysis of data presented by CDC to ACIP to hide huge rates of children's myocarditis and gain approval of childhood Covid vaccinations by Meryl Nass
What a college education delivers by Kevin McKernan
CDC senior scientist to CDC's head of immunization (document) by Sharyl Attkisson
America's social order is unraveling by Charles Hugh Smith
Well look, I mean he has made clear . . . . the answer is, eccentially Biden on Sky News Australia
Students sue over California university's COVID vaccine mandate, saying shots could harm them by Sam Stanton
TL; DR: Math is hard by Alex Berenson
California medical board hears testimony in trial of physician who risks losing license for writing vaccine medical exemptions by Greg Glaser
De Santis signs bill that continues to allow law enforcement personnel to use "any means necessary" to force vaccinate an individual Florida 2021 bill number 2006
How COVID lockdowns failed to protect the vulnerable and instead fattened up the laptop privileged 'café latt' class by Paul Elias Alexander
Pedaling for videos, refrigerators, hot water and . . . by Katie Singer
COVID: The three men who own corporate America by Jon Rappoport
Is the danger covid or the vaccine? by Paul Craig Roberts
UPDATE: Peter Hotez admits he fabricated false attack against me by Sharyl Attkisson
[another mRNA vaccine inventor, Luigi Warren from Moderna, is censored by Twitter] interview of Luigi Warren with Nick Hudson on Jerm Warfare
85 million people have since SARS-CoV-2 first emerged. The virus accounts for ~4% of those deaths, average age ~80 by Alex Berenson
American Airlines cuts some flights [N.B.: during increased demand] to avoid potential strains [??] by Alison Sider
Powell just launched $2 trillion in "heat-seeking missiles": Zoltan explains how the Fed started the next repo crisis ziohedge
Manufacturing (new normal) "reality" by CJ Hopkins
Physician: Fanatacism - not science - governs CDC's aggressive push to vaccinate even those with natural immunity by CHD team
Spike protein is very dangerous [15 min excerpt from below still up on youtube]
Lipid nanoparticles are strongly concentrated in the ovaries and bone marrow [15 min excerpt from below still up on youtube]
How to save the word, in three easy steps [bitchute] Bret Weinstein, Robert Malone (mRNA vaccine inventor), Steve Kirsch [quickly scrubbed from youtube]
The Kirsch report: "we're going to show you proof that there are over 25,000 excess deatha and most all of those are due to the vaccine by Celia Farber
University of California decides to force covid vaccination before full FDA approval [N.B.: press release only, could not find UC document!] KCRA
[Baric signed Moderna contract regarding delivery of "mRNA-coronavirus vaccine candidates on 12 Dec 2019] by Bobby Rajesh Malhotra
Are the Covid-19 vaccine "safe and effective"? by Steve Kirsch
Spike protein is very dangerous, it's cytotoxic discussion w/Robert Malone (inventor of mRNA tech), Steve Kirsch, Bret Weinstein
The mechanisms of action of Ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2: An evidence-based clinical review article by Asiya Kamber Zaidi and Puya Dehgane-Mobaraki, 2021
Covid is an oncogenic disease of iron metabolism caused by the spike protein by Walter W. Chestnut
SARS-CoV-2 proteins binds heme and hemoglobin by G.C. Lechga et al., 2021
Cell phones: the elephant in the room by Edward Curtin
Somone Scott, Oct 7, 2001 - June 11, 2021 by Alex Berenson
"We have to stop it" link to Fuellmich/McCullough
CDC whistleblower: 25,800 US vaccine deaths by Steve Kirsch
"mmmm - a pangolin kissed a turtle?" by Jon Stewart
Biden in the headlights C-SPAN
No safety signals? (one wonders what kind of 'safety signal' might make the FDA take notice!) latest VAERS data
Covid vaccine and depopulation - the beginning of the trail by Jon Rappoport
How a respected pediatrician lost his medical license - because he supported informed consent by Jeremy R. Hammond
Surveillance tech in San Diego County California [one of the densest in the world] by Electronic Frontier Foundation
Pol-theta reverse transcribes RNA and promotes RNA-templated DNA repair by G. Chandramouly et al., 2021 (i.e., can act as reverse transcriptase to convert (m)RNA into DNA)
The FDA 'doesn't see a signal here'!!! [image] data downloaded from VAERS, June 11, 2021
Democrats are infected by a virus, but it's not COVID - it's fear by Brad Polumbo
The NYT wanted "others" to take on the virus by Jeffrey Tucker
Third member of prestigious FDA panel as resigned [after FDA approves drug afterunanimous panel 'no' vote'] by Erin Snodgrass
[excerpts from David E. Martin interview] London Real, Aug 2020
Blogging the FDA meeting on pedi Covid vaccine licensure/authorization by Meryl Nass
[Excellent exerpts from Peter McCullough] interview by John Leake
Blackrock is buying house out from under the middle class - *this* is the Great Reset by CulturalHusbandry
Congratulations, elitists: liberals and conservatives do have common interests now by Matt Taibbi
Mass protests can end vaccine passports by Joseph Mercola
Why we petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year by Linda Wastila et al. (27 in total)
Vaccine practice payment schedules create perverse incentives for unnecessary medical procedures - at what cost to patients? [foregoing 'admin fee' is $1 million loss for pediatric practice] by James Lyons-Weiler and Paul Thomas
Virologist who told Fauci SARS-CoV-2 'potentially engineered' just nuked his Twitter account ziohedge
All VAERS deaths: 2020 reduction (less child vacs!), then 2021 covid vac catastrophe [pic]
A couple of things about inflation by Charles Hugh Smith
Twitter suspends Naomi Wolf for tweets opposing vac RT
Crime of the century [video] Bret Weinstein interviews Pierre Kory
Tyranny of the ladle by James C. Scott (2012)
[majority of Americans think virus is lab leak, almost one-quarter think on purpose] by Kaathy Frankovic
The real conspirators who lied about Covid's origin, funded fraudulent trials of therapeutics, and controlled the Covid pandemic are the top public health leaders by Meryl Nass
[leak control at FaceBook] Disclose.tv
'Medical Jim Crow as come to America' by Torothy Cummings McLean
Ex-CDC director Redfield says he received death threats from fellow scientists over COVID-19 theory by Jordan Williams
Resist, refuse, reject by Mike Whitney
[they're not called 'presstitutes' for nothing] by Nicolle Wallace
What did I say? by Karl Denninger
2020 exploded the myth about left wing love of the poor by Jeffrey Tucker
Why the minimum wage should be $18/hour by Charles Hugh Smith (same age as me)
Stop with the 'China virus' disinfo: Rona came from Lugar Center under DoD contract by Scott Creighton
[Dr. Peter McCullough interview - best one!] [video] interview by John Leake
(
bitchute copy)
All VAERS deaths: 2020 reduction (less child vacs!), then 2021 covid vac catastrophe [pic]
Vax fanatics may have destroyed the blood supply by Kevin McKernan
OK, bank reserves; let's do this one more time by Jeffrey P. Snider
Vaccine deaths in the USA have increased 27-fold over the average seen in the previous decade by Leo Taylor
Circulating SARS-CoV-2 vaccine antigen detected in the plasma of mRNA-1273 vaccine recipients by A.F. Ogata et al. (2021)
[warning of possible false flag] by Mike Adams
It's now okay to say "the virus" was concosted in a lab by Josh Mitteldorf
Unthinkable thoughts by Josh Mitteldorf
"The greatest malpractice and malfeasance in the history of medicine and public health" interview of Dr. Peter McCullough [banned from youtube]
Sorry doc, never again by Karl Denninger
The cover-up continues: the truth about Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Jeffrey Epstein by Whitey Webb
News reporter talks about police reform as gunshots ring out at George Floyd Square by Paul Joseph Watson
America's public health system is utterly corrupt by Paul Craig Roberts
COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness - the elephant (not) in the room by P. Olliaro, E. Eorreele, and M. Vaillant (2021)
OSHA abruptly reverses course, says emploers will not be liable for COVID vaccine injuries after all [all institutions have been 'regulatory captured'!] by Megan Redshaw
10 "good news" stories you probably missed by Mike Whitney
Dr. Lee Merritt interview [excellent] by Mike Adams
Postmates robot in the wild of downtown LA by ziohedge
Unusual mid-quarter spike in reverse repos ($0.3 trillion/day from Fed 'pawning' securities in order to obtain short-term cash, which drains that cash from economy) St Louis Fed
Christiane Northrup interview [excellent] by Mike Adams
COVID as a bioweapon [from journal-neo.org, shut down today]
THe coming apotheosis of the banks by Tom Luongo
Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease Timothy Cardozo and Ronald Veazey (2021)
Let's demand a recount . . . of COVID deaths by Thomas T. Siler, M.D.
The Johnson and Johnson (Janssen) Covid-19 vaccine is being manufactured by the anthrax vaccine company. This is its history [amazing!] by Meryl Nass
What we know - and may never know - about COVID vaccines [vid] by Children's Health Defense Team
Stock market leverage hits WTF high by Wolf Richter
How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up "vaccine effectivement" by Kit Knightly
AI mid-2021. Self-driving car meets reality by Filip Piekniewski
Uniformed troops go to bars and 7-Eleven in Dallas to randomly vaccinate "younger crowd" ziohedge
[safety data sheet for SM-102, Moderna vac contains 2 mg of it - PDF] Cayman Chemical
Moderna clinical trail [first posted: Feb 25, 2020!] clinicaltrials.gov
How public health agencies are manufacturing uncertainty about early COVID-19 therapeutics - and why by Dr. Pierre Kory
Frontiers in Pharmacology rejected ivermectin paper after accepting it, then publishes nonsensical paper on hydroxychloroquine by Meryl Nass
The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 reprograms both adaptive and innate immune responses [not all good] by Fohse et al, 2021
The 8th day therapy for COVID-19 by Dr. Shankara Chetty
Trump's war with his generals by Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu
The secret: money 'printing' help rich people, not poor people by Sven Henrich
The credit card hustle by the Banks and the Fed hits rough spot by Wolf Richter
71% of people ages 17 to 24 are ineligible to join the military because of obesity, lack of high school diploma, or a criminal record [N.B. I'm not pro military!] by Roxana Tiron
CovidVaccinated [thought processes] Reddit
Superparamagnetic nanoparticle delivery of DNA vaccine by Fatin Nawwab Al-Deen et al, 2014
Stanford single-dose [ferritin] nanoparticle vaccine for COVID-19 by Taylor Kubota
A SARS-CoV-2 ferritin nanoparticle vaccine elicits broad immunity by Ramya Dwivedi (original DoD paper
PDF here)
[magnets sticking ?? ferritin already there ?? it would be too far away ??]
[Kaspersky: pipeline hackers may be CIA] RT
Pandemic: follow the real money, the unthinkable amount of money by Job Rappoport
Coronavirus likely originated in a Chinese lab . . . But the real villains are right here in America by Revolver News (right-wing, overly Amero-centric, worth reading anyway)
Debunking the debunking of VAERS by Bretigne Shaffer
Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycosylation reveals shedding of a vaccine candidate [PDF] by J. Brun et al, 2020
Overnight reverse repos (i.e., Fed 'pawns' its assets to big banks - equals bank bailouts) spike in April and May St. Louis Fed (last time this happened was Mar 2020)
M1 and BASE on same scale [I remember when I thought BASE looked vertical in 2008 . . .] St Louis Fed
Anthony Fauci's NIAID, as of 2020, has been funding an entirely separate "gain of function" Zika virus research program with the Wuhan Institute of Virologyby Dr. Lawrence Sellin
Before deciding, see this first, Part 1 and
Part 2 by Dr. Reid
Sheftall
New details reveal Fauci, media coverup of lab leak hypothesis [11 min vid on Wade article] Saagar Enjeti
What is wrong with the covid PCR test [pic, bump to top] Jaafar et al. (2020) annotated
Rand Paul shreds Fauci [7 min vid: "I did not have scientific relations with that lab"] The Hill
The psychology of QE is FAR more important than any amount of it by Mish Shedlock
CDC limits review of vaccinated but infected; draws concern by Elaine Chen
Sereno letter to the California Faculty Association [PDF]
Is light tight oil getting lighter? by Mike Shellman
How the world's energy problem has been hidden by Gail Tverberg
Dr. Lee Merritt interview by Mike Adams
OSHA imposes new guidance for employer-required COVID-19 vaccines by Jeff Yoders
This Biden proposal could make the US a "digital dictatorship" by Whitney Webb
[Peter Hotez' unhinged rant in Nature] is because
they are losing!
Review of the emerging evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ivermectin in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19 by Pierre Kory et al., 2021
[making a VAERS report: on-the-ground experience] by John Day
New report sheds light on vaccine doomsday cult by Mike Whitney
The origin of COVID [N.B: no data presented ruling out US origin] by Nicholas Wade
Lysenko would have been proud [my annotation] Salk Institute Press Release
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein impairs endothelial function via downregulation of ACE2 by Y. Lei et al., 2021
Tucker Carlson: how many Americans have died after taking COVID vaccines Children's Health Defense (bizarre times for Carlson to be one of few actual reporters on teevee!)
COVID shot killing large numbers, warning top COVID doc Peter McCullough by Alex Newman
There are THREE studies; all showing serious harm by Karl Denninger
Center for Food Safety sues NIH over unlawfully keeping secret federal funding of research creating new more virulent pandemic viruses by Center for Food Safety
Tracing the origins: COVID-10 is not naturally-occurring by Dr. Lawrence Sellin (look what we already knew in June 2020)
Who's Lysenko-ing now? by Karen Kwiatkowski
Vaccinated people shedding and spreading genetic disaster to unvaccinated women? [asymptomatic infection hoax comes back to bite the hoaxers :-} ] by Jon Rapoport
How California created the Homelessness Industrial Complex [vid] interivew with Scott Silverman
Scientists are working on vaccines that spread like a disease. What could possibly go wrong? by Filippa Lentzos and Guy Reeves
All inflation is transitory: the Fed will be late again by Lance Roberts
Do vaccines make us healthier? by Informed
ConsentXpress (original scientific papers
#1
here,
#2
here, and
#3
here); Dec 2020 filing PDF
here).
[One *year* after alternative media reported the story . . .] [vid] Josh Rogin on Joe Rogan
Separating rumor from fact on Covid-19's origin by Sharyl Attkisson
SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T cell recognition [PDF] by A. Nelde et al.
Science catches up - and burns you all by Karl Denninger [orig paper above]
The shaky foundations of LA's housing 'entitlement' for the homeless by Christopher F. Rufo
[Utterly preposterous!] "One set of rules for me, another for thee" by el gato malo
It's a perfect time to sell a home to FOMO driven buyers by Wolf Richter
[probable reason why 25% of SoCal sea lions have cancer] by Lauren Wood
CDC now recommends wearing a seat belt even when you're outside the car The Babylon Bee
NY Post removes fake image of "COVID Deaths" after being busted on social media [short vid] by Coronavirus Plushie
[Joe Dementia threatens to cancel 4th of July if not enough sheeple get vaccinated] by Steven Nelson
What is thin priviledge? [first they came for . . . :-} ] by Adele Jackson Gibson (Good Housekeeping)
"MSM: They're running out of people who want to be euthanized, er, immunized" Thor the deplorable
No doctor, you're wrong: it's 100x worse by Karl Denninger
What is wrong with the covid PCR test [pic] Jaafar et al. (2020) annotated
Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine: European and United States reporting systems flag SEVERE safety issues by Unite4Truth
Moderna Covid-19 vaccine: European and United States reporting systems flag SEVERE safety issues by Unite4Truth
VAERS: breastfeeding five-month old infant dies of clotting disorder one day after mother receives second pfizer shot by Alex Berenson
Triumph of the woke mob by David Stockman (convervative, read anyway for numbers, analysis)
Signs that 2021 rioters will be attacking and buring wealthy neighborhoods by Thomas Lifson
Yale public health professor suggests 60% of new COVID-19 patients have received the vaccine by Dorothy Cummings McLean
Damning data hands up an indictment by Karl Denninger
[6 min vid] [Tesla is testing/refining their software by killing real humans] by John Mark Gray
The Israeli People Committee's April report on the lethal impact of vaccinations by Gilad Atzmon
Denying the demonic by Edward Curtin
Latest VAERS data show reports of blood clotting disorders after all three emergency use authorization vaccines by Megan Redshaw
[nanoscale brain-machine interfaces] Charles Lieber Research Group
COVID is sustainable, equitable, inclusinve, racially biased and climate aware by Makie Freeman
I refuse to stand by while my students are indoctrinated by Paul Rossi
Globalists will need another crisis in America as their reset agenda fails by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
A quick walk through Kensington Ave Philadelphia by HoodTime
Is it possible to create a virus in the laboratory
without a trace? crucial 14 Sept 2020 Presa Diretta
interview with Ralph Baric (in Italian, translation
here)
Experimental vaccines and spike proteins by Karl Denninger
Peter Breggin: globalists are using COVID-19 to 'crush the spirit' of mankind [video] by John-Henry Westen
'It is still not safe to go outside', says Fauci's head in a jar in year 2739 The Babylon Bee
[Amazon self-modifying books] by Alex Berenson
Biden's latest Wile-e-Coyote scheme to fix border crisis: paying would-be illegals to stay home by Monica Showalter
Neanderthals vs. science @ianmSC from healthdata.gov
[This is *not* healthy - this is covid] not the bee
[Imagine the reporting if the races had been reversed] USA Today
Only the vaccinated evacuated from volcanic eruption on St. Vincent CBS
Journey to the end of San Pedro Bay by M.N. Gordon
Is a Cultural Revolution brewing in America? by Charles Hugh Smith
Why half of America - including healthcare professionals - are refusing experimental COVID-19 shots, Part One and
Part Two by Ana Wolpin
Big tech's greatest threat by Robert Epstein
"Get out, get out!" people power from Vancouver
Assessing and strengthening the manufacturing and defense industrial base and supply chain reliliency of the United States [PDF] Interagency task force in fulfillment of Exec Ord 13806 (Sept 2018)
The assassination of US Sen. Paul Wellstone by Russ Winter
Motorcyclist who identifies as a bicyclist sets cycling world record Babymon Bee
Vaccines are the new 'purity test' by Joseph Mercola
60 minutes releases exclusive secret photos of Ron DeSantis clubbing baby seals with Hitler The Babylon Bee
On the miserable necessity of doing censorship stories in pairs by Matt Taibbi
Book review of bright green lies by Alice Friedemann
Assessing and strengthening the manufacturing and defense industrial base and supply chain reliliency of the United States [PDF] Interagency task force in fulfillment of Exec Ord 13806 (Sept 2018)
Motorcyclist who identifies as a bicyclist sets cycling world record Babymon Bee
Vaccines are the new 'purity test' by Joseph Mercola
60 minutes releases exclusive secret photos of Ron DeSantis clubbing baby seals with Hitler The Babylon Bee
On the miserable necessity of doing censorship stories in pairs by Matt Taibbi
Book review of "Bright Green Lies" by Alice Friedemann
[Teacher posts her vac pic, dies 4 days later, vac post posthumously removed from Facebook timeline]
California's failed response to COVID by Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard)
The SPARS pandemic 2025-2028 [PDF] The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, from October 2017
Out of this property, you Nazis! (street pastor, Artur Pawlowski boots cops without a warrant out of his church during Passover service in Calgary, Canada)
Americans wake up! Outlaw technocrats are stealing our democracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Treasury-Fed-Treasury circularity comment by cas127
Powell in WSJ op-ed: "I truly believe that we [the rich] will emerge from this crisis stronger and better as we [the rich] have done so often before" by Wolf Richter
Explosive surge of mortgages for 'second homes': housing bubble math by Wolf Richter
Buttigieg helps solve global warming by pretending to cycle by Dinesh D'Souza
Covid mistakes [excellent video] by Dr. Ryan Cole
Global detection of DNA repair outcomes induced by CRISPR-Cas9 [massive collateral damage] by M. Liu et al.
US dollar's status as dominant 'global reserve currency' drops to 25-year low by Wolf Richter
Masks have no basis in science by Emily Burns (fantastic post! look at all the graphs)
Anti-lockdown scientists challenge theories of Geert Vanden Bossche, though vaccine 'global catastrophe' not ruled out by Patrick Delaney
Vaccine passport platform is identical to China's social credit system [2 min vid] by Naomi Wolf
Teacher's union official fights for air while arguing case for mandatory face masks America's Frontline Doctors
They're not even trying to make sense now by Patrick Armstrong
States report growing number of COVID cases among fully vaccinated by Megan Redshaw
American farce: the Biden news conference by The European
Print out your own FREE vaccine passport here! The Babylon Bee
Dozens in central Florida contract COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated by Louis Bolden
[luckily, skin-peeling-off reactions are extremely rare] by Jackie Salo, and
here by Luke Andrews
How entire populations are coerced into complying with nonsensical mandates by Lee Merritt
Covid vaccine nonsense by P. Jerome
Former Pfizer VP to AFLDS: entirely possible this will be used for massive-scale depopulation by Mordechai Sones
SF tries to buy itself an arts scene by @boriquagato
"Another senseless mass helicopter killing" [from the comments] ziohedge
Right up our alley [video] by jaybyrdfilms
[CNN: murder of South Asian DC Uber eats driver an 'accident'] by Glenn Greenwald
NYC judge removes 6 year-old mother because the didn't wear a mask while dropping her off at school by Cassandra Fairbanks
[former CDC director Robert Redfield says covid from lab escape] CNN interview by Sanjay Gupta
Biden post-mortem: Cheat sheets and a trip into an alternate reality ziohedge
Tesla's "full self-driving" is just laughably bad by Mack Hogan
Master con artist by Financelot
Border agent gives insider account of over-crowded facilities by Charlotte Cuthbertson
[don't vaccinate people who have had COVID] by Hooman Noorchashm
Financial system fake La La Land [video] Mark Skidmore interview by Greg Hunter (2021)
$21 trillion unaccounted for at the Pentagon by Lawrence
Kotlikoff and Mark Skidemore, Forbes 2017, documentation
here
We need a great rebalancing by Charles Hugh Smith
[kids in covid cages - 'but they're kinder gentler Democratic cages, right?'] ziohedge
What parents should know by CHD
Never lockdowns, never again by Jeffrey Tucker
New M1 Abrams tanks to come equipped with changing tables by Bayblon Bee
Enough is enough by el gato malo
Geert Vanden Bossche: conspiracy theorist, conspirator or prophet? by Rob Verkerk
[Holy green screen, Batman? Disgruntled video editor? Purposeful Q-like bait?] orig clip
here,
a different hand/mic view
here)
[Biden: $1.5 billion dollar bribe to pitch vaccination] by Lev Facher
3 million masks a minute by Megan Redshaw
The 'not-so-hidden agenda' behind Bossche's concern over COVID mass vaccination by Rosemary Frei
The Chinese military, its links to US funding, and the laboratory origin of COVID-19 by Dr. Lawrence Sellin
If you don't collect the adverse event data, and you don't know the side effect rates, you can keep the data-free experimental vaccinations going by Meryl Nass
The Biden-Noem smackdown: "Imposter" Joe meets Kristi "The Lionhearted" by Mike Whitney
Bill Gates' Global AIDS Fund provided with [minimum of!] $3.5 billion from coronavirus stimulus package by Richard Moorhead
The 12 or 13 largest banks got trillions from the Fed's repo loans in 2020 by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The art of survival, Taoism and the warring states by Charles Hugh Smith (2008)
Before COVID, Gates planned social media censorship of vaccine safety advocates with Pharma, CDC, Media, China, and CIA by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (excellent article)
[Hank Aaron, now Marvin Hagler] [google search filters this out!] by Boxing World News
The biggest COVID-19 vaccine skeptics? Frontline health care workers by Lawrence Solomon
Go Eugenio! a comedian asks Fraudci the crucial questions the entire servile press has studiously avoided asking him for a *whole year*! [video] by Eugenio Derbez
The cannibalization is complete by Charles Hugh Smith
This chicken vaccine makes its virus more dangerous by Nsikan Akpan (PBS, 2015)
What's behind the surge in M1 money supply by Mish Shedlock
[M1, Fed-owned total, Fed-owned securities] St Louis FED
Censorship kills: the shunning of a COVID therapy by Dr. Pierre Kory
Perspectives on the pandemic [video] by Journeyman Pictures
Scott Atlas: the last word by Dr. Scott Atlas
[Biden: 'maternity flight suits' so pregnant women can bomb people? Who needs SNL?!] by Gabriel Keane
Biden 'explains' the Covid bill and then
forgets
the name of the Pentagon while explaining
new advances for women in the form of
"maternity
flight suits" after getting severely confused while talking to a
'green' hardware guy, panicking the
handlers who immediately shoo out the press, so . . . wear your mask
Cuomo's crash and burn has nothing to do with his serial sexual misconduct by State of the Nation
Cui bono? The COVID-19 'conspiracy' [long, good] by Simon Elmer
CALLED IT: WaPo calls anti-vaxxers "domestic terrorists" by Kit Knightly
[VAERS deaths updates remove previous reports] Albert Benavides
Too busy frontrunning inflation, nobody sees the deflationary tsunami by Charles Hugh Smith
[the Fauci/NIH/China gain-of-function problem is so obvious, even the Bezos Post agrees a real investigation is needed - to cover it up] by editorial
The US conspiracy to hide the origin of the COVID-10 pandemic by Dr. Lawrence Sellin
The war on 'misinformation' claims to victims: truth and the right to treatment by Mary Beth Pfeiffer
Is Gardasil vaccine linked to record birth rate declines? [46% drop in teen births 2007-2015] by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Progressive surprised to learn he can still wear a mask even witout the government forcing him to The Babylon Bee
When yields rise, narratives fail by Tom Luongo
San Antonio woman leaks cerebrospinal fluid after receiving covid nasal swab [Nazi nurse punctured her cribriform plate!] by Robyn Oguinye
The CDC is actually a vaccine company [video] by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Review of scientific reports of harms caused by face masks, up to February 2021 by Denis Rancourt
FBI admits no firearms were seized during capitol 'insurrection' [or shots fired, except for apparent killing by police] by Chris Menahan
When does this travesty of a mockery of a sham finally implode? by Charles Hugh Smith
Faux-leftist lunacy by Mark Crispin Miller
A 10-point rebuttal of Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihans's "vaccine apartheid" by Kathy Dopp
Lockdowns could reshape American politics for a generation, or several by Jeffrey A. Tucker (uplifting article!)
What "normal" are we returning to? The depression nobody dares to acknowledge by Charles Hugh Smith
The zombie apocalypse is here [video] by Dollar Vigilante
Matt Meyer Berkeley Federation of Teachers President blocks public school opening while sending his own kid to in-person private school since June 2020 video by Guerilla Momz
[now it's 'bear spray' after the 'unplugged incubator babies' 'bludgeoned to death with fire extinguisher' story is debunked] ziohedge
San Francisco in the time of COVID [video] by Pater Santenello
The war against Covid-19 by Edward Hadas
Gilead raked in $2.8 billion from remdesivir in 2020 [90% gross profit margin] by Bob Herman
Dr. Ralph Baric signed agreement to test Moderna/NIAID-owned mRNA vaccine on *Dec 12, 2019* by Dr. Lawrence Sellin (original doc
here)
On the lack of high-profile opinion-leaders for the corona anti-panic side: Why? Peering into "Covid" as a social phenomenon by E.H. Hail
ER sees surge of seniors after vac [anon nurse interview] by John C.A. Manley
Hunter Biden smuggled strippers into the Swedish Embassy [and was forced to acknowledge paternity] Great Game India
Why rare and valuable metals are not recycled by Alice Friedemann
Interview with Simone Gold [video - describes her FBI swat team arrest at end]
By putting big pharma's patents before patients, doctors will further erode trust in experts by Jonathan Cook
Biden is the reincarnation of Russia's "goofy drunk" president Boris Yeltsinby Niccolo Soldo
Pornography is what the end of the world looks like by Chris Hedges
[they are punking the entire human race, but esp. the tuba player] band practice at Wenatchee High
[The Lancet tries to do a 'Surgisphere' on vitamin D] [video] by Dr. Alex Vasquez
Almost a year later, there's still no evidence showing governments can control the spread of Covid-19 by Anthony Rozmajzl
How does all of this end? by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Why I believe that covid derangement syndrome is real by Donald J. Boudreaux
Informed consent - it this fundamental right being respected? [no] by Alliance for Natural Health
Calling the holding of central banks "assets" is a travesty by Egon von Greyerz (goldbug, read anyway)
Just charts of demographics by Chris Hamilton
Whistleblower at Smith college resigns over racism by Bari Weiss
The ZeroCovid movement by Jenin Younes
America's future is in the hands of woefully inept cretins at a time when creativity and innovation are needed more than ever by Helen Buyniski
Google/Youtube censors Ohio Stands Up attorney Thomas Renz's testimony before the Ohio legislature [PDF] Ohio Stands Up
Emergency use authorization for regular nanoparticle triethylene glycol indoor fumigation of buildings in Tennessee and Georgia EPA
"A lotta people don't know how to register..." even better remake of Ricky_Taylor_ original
Are we lighting the fuse of an autoimmune time bomb? by Rob Verkerk
Breaking study sheds more light on whether an RNA vaccine can permanently alter DNA by Doug Corrigan
"Pandemic precautions" left some Texas shelters closed as homeless froze to death ziohedge
What poisoned America? by Charles Hugh Smith
Critics must be silenced for billionaires to keep profitting from the pandemic by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Opening the CIA's can of worms by Edward Curtin (excellent)
This guy is in charge now by Steve Watson
The greatest bubble of all time? by Charles Hugh Smith
Social war in the Synopticon by TheZMan (right wing, read anyway)
[the prison hell prepared for kids returning to 'school' - school board's response: you must take down that video] by Katherine Phillips
Transwomen athlete crashing female sports will only hurt the game by Robert Bridge
The journalistic tattletale and censorship industry suffers several well-deserved blows by Glenn Greenwald
New York Times retracts story claiming capital officer Brian Sicknick was killed in riot ["He dreamed of being a police officer, then was killed by a pro-Trump mob"] by Richard Moorhead
What REALLY got Gina Carano cancelled by Kit Knightly
National media pushes vaccine misinformation - coroner's office never saw Hank Aaron's body by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
RFK, Jr. responds to Instagram's removal of his account Children's Health Defense
How those who die following Covid shots are treated in the media by Celia Farber
The fragility of microchips by Alice Friedemann
Jazz musician Chick Corea dies BBC
Imperfect vaccination can enhance the transmission of highly virulent pathogens by Andrew F. Read et al, (2015)
Does the US still have an economy? by Paul Craig Roberts
Media lays out plan to 'deprogram' Trump supporters from their 'extremist' views by Chris Menahan
Could spike protein in Moderna, Pfizer vaccines cause blood clots, brain inflammation and heart attacks? by Lyn Redwood (bare spike crosses blood-brain barrier paper
here)
The war on domestic terror by CJ Hopkins
Bill Gates and neo-feudalism: a closer look at Farmer Bill by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (this excellent article got his 800,000 follower account banned on Instagram after Bezos' Wapo demanded censorship)
[every language, same madness - if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes truth] from Ivor Cummins
"This time isn't different" by Lance Roberts
[Star Trek touch screens suck for 'real work'] Popular Mechanics
The last squeeze by Tessa Lena
Investing in life by John Day
"I guess we're all done, f**k it" by Wooz News
Youtube censors Senate testimony from doctor on possible (sic) Covid drug by Jonathan Turley
Lockdowns have depleted capital in all forms by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Masking America's greatest natural monuments by James Bovard
Calling for an "American Ministry of Truth": the US media's dystopian "2021" by Stephen Lendman
Explosives missing from Southern California Marine Corps base by Daniel Payne
Big (300K) jump in CDC all-cause deaths from
Dec
30 (2.9M) to
Jan
06 (3.2M) (maybe normal update?)
Canada: covid detainment facilites go from 'conspiracy theory' to official govt policy in 3 months by Mat Agorist
The globalists are gonna need a bigger virus as economic fraud is exposed by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Domestic terror is a government without constraints by Mark E. Jeftovic
"If you're planning a deplorable US wedding, maybe best to assign a guests to keep an eye out for drones" by Glenn Greenwald
[former Pakistan/Afghanistan CIA station chief describes how Americans who "dont trust NPR or the NYT" are like Al-Qaeda and need to be hunted down by counterinsurgency teams] by Robert Grenier (from NPR, National Propaganda Radio)
Naked short selling: the truth is much worse than you have been told by James Stafford
Rise of the oligarchy by William M. Briggs
Autism - the most glaring aspect of the deterioration of health among our kids? by Anne Dachel
The long-term impact of the COVID-19 unemployment shock on life expectancy and mortality rates by Francesco Bianchi, Giada Bianchi, and Dongho Song
Have 400,000 Americans died of Covid-19 by Celia Farber
BLM nominated for new Nobel 'mostly peaceful' prize The Babylon Bee
The glory of going viral - a fraud promoted by big tech by Bruce Wilds
The inanity of RNA vaccines for COVID-19 by Pierre Lescaudron
Alberta woman held in indefinite detention after flight despite negative COVID test Buffalo Tribune
The pandemic that changed nothing by Leila Mechoui and Alexander Davidson (interesting perspective on why no class war yet)
GameStop promoter Keith Gill was no "amateur" trader; he held sophisticated trading license and worked in the finance industry by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Gamestop shares: Dark pools owned by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, UBS, et al, have made tens of thousands of trades by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Janet Yellen accepted $810,000 in speaking fees from Citadel, owner of Robinhood and an investor in Melvin Capital, which shorted GME, with Bernanke on their staff by Jessica Grace
The treatment of viral diseases: has the truth been suppressed for decades? [PDF] by Lee Merritt
Fourth turning detonation part 2 by James Quinn
WallStreetBets proves the system is rigged Mark E. Jeftovic
Immunological danger of COVID vaccines in recently convalescent and azyptomatic carriers by Hooman Noorchashm
GameStop by TheZMan
Will the truth on COVID restrictions prevail? by Scott W. Atlas
Taking stock of a most violent year by Heather MacDonald
Trump's unpardonable pardons by Philip Giraldi
Distributed strengths by John Day
The covid police are coming for your @ss: couldn't we find some federal land...? by Kyle Lamb
Considering a ballooning at-risk elderly population and pandemic by Chris Hamilton
CHD appeals to US Supreme Court to stop New York from excluding kids with medical examptions for vaccines from online education by Sujata S. Gibson
That's all folks! by CJ Hopkins
Did Larry King receive an experimental COVID shot just before his death? by Brian Shilhavy
Everything is broken by Charles Hugh Smith
Trade-offs by TheZMan (right wing, read anyway)
Democratic party in Oregon blames 'Republican attacks' after Antifa smashed its HQ by Steve Watson
And this is how to apply your mask by Poppy (2017)
We don't need a majority comment by Solitarius Electrum
The great covid class war by Alex Gutentag (excellent)
Simone Gold's eloquent talk censored from youtube by Simone Gold (
FBI charges were just filed against her for merely daring to be in Washington D.C.)
181 dead in the U.S. during 2 week period from experimental COVID injections by Brian Shilhavy
The reset hitting warp speed under Biden [video - I miss the text] by Scott Creighton (but he's dead wrong in ignoring the importance of diet on health :-} )
Twenty reasons mandatory face masks are unsafe, ineffective, and immoral by John C.A. Manley
How soon will the Left eat their own? by John Rappoport
The bluffing equilibrium [video] by Glenn Loury
Brief humor:
Now hiring and
Earpiece fail by golephish
The WHO finally updates its COVID-19 testing policy... one hour after Biden's inauguration by Stacey Lennox
"Go and make your own artificial intelligence" The Babylon Bee
Noam Chomsky, co-author of Manufacturing Consent, has now become an outright propaganda operative by Mark Crispin Miller
The new domestic war on terror is coming by Glenn Greenwald
[you can't go to church or dine in a restaurant, but here are instructions for safely attending an *orgy*, from our new Assistant Secretary of Health!] Pennsylvania Department of Health
Leftists call for new "secret police" force to spy on Trump supporters by Paul Joseph Watson
Population health, human capital bonds, and black America by Alison McDowell
During MI audit: "What I need for you to do right now . . ." Michigan Secretary of State Official
Viral #TrumpsNewArmy video is liberals at their craziest and scariest by Caitlin Johnstone
Adverse events following MMRV vaccine [passive injury reporting system is utterly inadequate compared to active monitoring used in this study] by Paolo Bellavite and Alberto Donzelli
[many vaccine doses discarded and unreported, i.e., number of delivered doses overestimated] NBC
All of these patients have had serious underlying illnesses" by Rob Slane
[Okie-dokie - let's avoid going to Canada, eh?] Public Health Agency of Canada
Trump lawyer ousted as law school professor by Matthew Vadum
China health experts call for suspension of COVID vaccines as Norway investigates 33 deaths, Germany probes 10 deaths by Children's Health Defense
Why does sleepy joe think we need another $850 billion of transfer payments? by David Stockman (convervative, read anyway for numbers, N.B.: average wildly underestimates catastrophe for bottom half of population, small businesses)
Security theatre? National Guard 'protecting' US Capitol pictured without magazines in their rifles by Chris Menahan
"We are out here supporting the local BLM scene" by a Boogaloo Boy
AOC proposes funding to deprogram white supremacists by Carl Campanile
Assessing mandatory stay-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of COVID-19 by Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, and John P.A. Ioannidis
RFK, Jr. to NPR's Terry Gross: 'I urge you to correct the reccord' by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Don't fall for the tall tales by Paul Craig Roberts
Q-Anon bears striking resemblance to psy-op from 1920s known as "Operation Trust" by Chris Menahan
Hunder Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: the impact on US government policy and related concerns [PDF] US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Military helicopters in urban warfare training exercises over LA [scare the proles] by Joseph Trevithick
Social media posts from vaccine recipients [video] by 99Percent
Videos
one and
two of body convulsion 'side effects' from covid vaccine (N.B.: mRNA can cross the blood-brain barrier)
Sedition and insurgents by Ronald Thomas West
[Antifa threats cause Powell's bookstore in Portland to grovel and temporarily close] by Emily Powell
America's biggest owner of farmland is now Bill Gates by Ariel Shapiro
Techno-democracy by TheZMan (right-wing, read anyway)
CNN's Jade Sacker penetrating the Capitol with BLM/Antifa: "you're not recording this, are you?" [uuhh, yeah he was] @amuse
Cancel yourself by Michael Krieger
Big tech's purge is only beginning . . . for them by Tom Luongo
The liberal-left has gone fully illiberal by Jenin Younes
Peter Daszak's EcoHealth Alliance has hidden almost $40 million in Pentagon funding and militarized pandemic science by Sam Husseini
Could flu vaccine increase COVID risk? by Dr. Joseph Mercola
The great social silencing by Kalev Leetaru
How silicon valley, in a show of monopolistic force, destroyed Parler by Glenn Greenwald
['Tolerant' PBS lawyer laughing about how Homeland Security will take children from 'intolerant' Trump supporters] Project Veritas
The war on terror comes home by Ron Paul
Covid-19 outbreak at Auburn nursing home kills 24 [simultaneous with vaccination so can't tell covid vs. covid+vax vs. vax] by James T. Mulder
Are you ready for total (ideological) war? by CJ Hopkins
Polarization, then a crash: Michael Hudson on the rentier economy intervw with Michael Hudson
I was at the Washington DC "Save America" rally by Cat McGuire (left)
Conservatives should be proud of the raid on Capitol hill by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
False flag at th Capitol: it's all about the effects and the after-shocks [propaganda 101 by Jon Rappoport
"Antifa" is a red herring by Mark Crispin Miller
"The storming of the Capitol": America's Reichstag fire? by Kit Knightly
Moment Ashli Babbitt was shot ziohedge
The opening act of the new "war on domestic terror" [video] Ryan Cristian interview with Whitney Webb (excellent)
The Capitol message by Ronald Thomas West
To the people of lockdown California: it's jailbreak time by Jon Rappoport
Questions about the chaos by Michael Snyder
Evidence that Antifa was, in fact, involved today by Mark Crispin Miller
Why did the world react so hysterically to covid? by Sebastian Rushworth
NY state assembly bill A416 by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
"Trump supporters" (allegedly) storm the capitol Off-Guardian
Civil war, medical discrimination, spy satellite and cyborgs! How 2021 could make us yearn for 2020 by Helen Buyniski
Catastrophe is all around us by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Covid is an orchestration for serving an agenda - the destruction of freedom by Paul Craig Roberts (excellent advice from a wise old guy who was initially scared but figured it out!)
Pfizer and Moderna's '95% effective' vaccines - We need more details and the raw data by Peter Doshi
Face masks and the study of violence by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
Covid "mutation" stories show that the lockdown are designed to last forever by Brandon Smith
The threat of authoritariansism in the US is very real, and has nothing to do with Trump by Glenn Greenwald
Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening by Michael Lesher
[smells like teen spirit, but who tapes off bricks before painting graffiti?! it's a psyop!] by ziohedge
Children of the Great Reset [video] by Jeff C. (RIP)
[up to half of CA health care worker refuse covid vaccine] by Colleen Shalby et al.
PA lawmakers: numbers don't add up, certification of Presidential results premature and in error by Russ Diamond, Frank Ryan et al. (Republican PA State Representatives)
UK woman arrested for filming inside empty hospital [violated privacy of the non-existent patients?] by Paul Joseph Watson
Why lockdowns spread bugs faster than liberty by William M. Briggs
The American revolution was a culture war by Ryan McMaken
[screening of 10 million residents shows asymptomatic transmission, the rationale behind lockdowns, quarantines, and masks for healthy people, doesn't occur] by S. Cao et al., Nature Communications
What is the Great Reset? Part I: reduced expectations and bio-techno-feudalism by Michael Rectenwald
Controlled domolition 2.0, Part 8: "Dark Halo" cyber attack, a test run for the coming planned "Cyber Pandemic" by ERBN
The year Big Tech became the Ministry of Truth by Fraser Myers
Does Nashville bombing signal a CIA vs NSA war? by Brabantian
[Tonopah files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy] by Ashe Schow
Illegal vendors are overtaking NYC by Melanie Gray
Dollar cash supply [M1, checking accounts] rockets 25% [$1.3 trillion] in just two weeks by Austrolib
Developers of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine tied to UK eugenics movements by Jeremy Loffredo and Whitney Webb
Engineering contagion: UPMC, corona-thrax, and "the darkest winter" by Whitney Webb
Let them eat Covid [pic] by WilliamBanzai7
Friends and family by John Day
The "new confederacy"? Yes, it's time for conservatives to unit against the globalist reset by Brandon Smith (alt-right, definitely read anyway, excellent)
Western public health officials are intentionally withholding life-saving safe treatments for Covid by Paul Craig Roberts
Simple math shows Biden claims 13 million more votes than there were eligible cvoters [the already inflated 'turnout' would have had to be inflated to ridiculous levels to make this math work] by Joe Hoft
More psychotic blindness on "the left" by Mark Crispin Miller
Overdose deaths [621] far outpace COVID-19 deaths [173] in San Francisco Associated Press
AP
Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine trigger [not that] rare allergic reactions by Jop de Vrieze
Reinstate WWII-era excess profits tax on large corporations seeing windfall profits from pandemic to help small business recovery by Tulsi Gabbard
Pork city (5600 pages long) ziohedge
[WHO comes clean on PCR tests, 9 months too late] WHO
What Joe Biden's electoral college "victory" really means by Kit Knightly
Whose afraid of Glenn Greenwald by Todd Smith
Reinstate WWII-era excess profits tax on large corporations seeing windfall profits from pandemic to help small business recovery by Tulsi Gabbard
Pork city (5600 pages long) ziohedge
[WHO comes clean on PCR tests, 9 months too late] WHO
What Joe Biden's electoral college "victory" really means by Kit Knightly
Whose afraid of Glenn Greenwald by Todd Smith
[the care and washing of the brain] by Sara Gonzales
Big-picure look at current pandemic beneficiaries by Children's Health Defense Team
Unstable oil prices on the way [my better title!] by Charles Hugh Smith
If you though 2020 was bad, watch what happens in 2021: the pandemic is just a distraction from the upcoming economic collapse by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Michigan vote fraud witness assassination attempt [home surveillance video] by Uwantsun
$1 trillion wealth gain by 651 US billionaires since mid-March by Americans for Tax Fairness
The Power/Haspel CIA/USA election news (2) by Ronald Thomas West
SCOTUS showdown over stolen election 2020 by Stephen Lendman
Welcome to the U.S.S.A.'s banquet of consequences by Charles Hugh Smith
Declaration of 305th military intelligence analyst on Dominion network [PDF] evidence document filed Nov 25, 2020 in Texas
COVID vaccine - history matters by John Rappoport
Sausage making at the FDA: how human cancer cells got into vaccines by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Pfizer COVID vaccine trial shows alarming evidence of pathogenic priming in older adults by James Lyons-Weiler and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
With news of Hunter Biden's criminal probe, recall the media outlets that peddled the "Russian disinformation" lie by Glenn Greenwald
"I can't keep doing this" [video] by Pierre Kory, M.D.
Texas opens a huge can of worms, but nobody in the media will cover it by Michael Every
Where's the Hitler? by CJ Hopkins
Food lines grow miles long as politicians break rules to dine at fancy restaurants, take vacations by Matt Agorist
COVID lockdowns are the most selfish act of the most selfish generation [N.B.: I'm a boomer here who opposed lockdown from the very beginning!] by Libby Emmons
Correlation between 3790 quantitative polymerase chain reaction-positives samples and positive cell cultures by R. Jaafar et al., Clinical Infectious Diseases
[one PCR graph to rule them all: 'positive' tests with cycle thresholds over 35 are all false positive, US PCR tests are run up to ct=40!] by R. Jaafar et al;, Clinical Infection Diseases
Media scare-stories about hospitals are panic porn clickbait by el gato malo
Groundbreaking study shows unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children by Alix Mayer
Bomb attack on Michigan Trump supporter's house ziohedge
Bizarre explosion crash in George kills Harrison Deal [he was dating Gov. Kemp's daughter, this was 1 day after Kemp agreed to election investigation] Johns Creek Post (more pics
here)
The great reset: the final assault on the living planet by Cory Morningstar
Firm that owns Dominion voting systems received $400 million from Swiss bank account funded by Chinese government and companies before election by Summit News
Second major CA sheriff openly rebels against Newsom lockdown ziohedge
[the CDC finally found a cure for the flu: the coronavirus!] CDC
Florida requires reporting cycle threshold [finally, some common scientific sense!] ziohedge
The Theragripper [check out the Q-tip picture, I know I've always wanted a leaky gut] by Patrick Smith
[MD: 'healthcare' has become 'covid care', since that's what pays] by Charles Hugh Smith
Absolute proof that covid19 vaccine safety translational research is fraudulent by James Lyons-Weiler
Speech to PA Medical Freedom Press conference [Oct 2020] by Jame Lyons-Weiler (excellent speech)
Covid regulations in Loco Moco by James Bovard
The coming "cyber pandemic" And 'virus mimicking' nanotech and the COVID vaccine manipulation by Derrick Broze
Transcript of Trump's censored Dec 2 speech Rev (worth reading, even if
you despise Trump, or both Trump and Biden and think elections are a sham like me)
A (fairly) complete list of (some of) the most significant claims of 2020 election miscounts, errors or fraud by Sharyl Attkisson
Head of Pfizer Research: Covid vaccine is female sterilization by Wolfgang Wodarg and Michael Yeadon (letter PDF
here; background
here)
Pfizer and Moderna's "95% effective" vaccines - let's be cautious and first see the full data by Peter Doshi, BMJ
The elitists who control you [video] by JP Sears
What spiritual people are like this election [video] by JP Sears
Covid misclassification: what do the data suggest? by Gilbert G. Berdine, MD
Dr. Flip Flop: a timeline of Fauci's school reopening positions by Jordan Schachtel
[batch of about 600,000 Pennsylvania votes that went 99.4% for Biden - ignored by MSM] [video] Pennsylvania State Legislature
America's future is liberal fascism sporting a smiley shirt and armed with a syringe by Robert Bridge
The proof is in [good list of references] by Paul Craig Roberts
The US Constitution goes to court by Brett Redmayne-Titley
Breggin blows the whistle on pandemic fearmongering [PDF transcript] interiew by Joseph Mercola
We have immune systems, New York Times reveals by Jeffrey A. Tucker
The Powell/Haspel CIA/USA election news by Ronald Thomas West
The real plan is for a dark century by Gary D. Barnett
Declaration of Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia [PDF] Filed 11/25/2020 (summary
here)
Moral decay leads to collapse by Charles Hugh Smith
Relative incidence of office visits and cumulative rates of billed diagnoses along the axis of vaccination by James Lyons-Weiler and Paul Thomas
We haven't seen this much suffering on Thanksgiving since the Great Depression of the 1930's by Michael Snyder
How the new media taught us to love censorship, hate journalism review of Sharyl Attkisson's "Slanted"
A US color revolution 'comes home to roost' in the 2020 Election by Max Parry
Youtube attempts to silence the Mises Institute [removes 1.5 million view Tom Woods talk] by Jeff Deist
Corbett pulls a Kokesh [video] by Scott Creighton (agreed! organize/demos, not solitary suicide)
Happy Snitchgiving by Daisy Luther
[twitter blocks retweeting Georgia lawsuit pdf and this twitter link generates warning "this link may be unsafe" - hah! by B. Kemp et al.
Emperor Cuomo declared US Supreme Court ruling against him 'irrelevant' ziohedge
The Johns Hopkins, CDC plan to mask medical experimentation on minorities as "racial justice" by Jeremy Loffredo and Whitney Webb
The one chart that predicts our future by Charles Hugh Smith
A pandemic future may contain a triangulation of attacks by Janet Phelan
America's economy cannot survive another lockdown, and the cult of the reset knos it by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
2020 election: could Trumps' claims have merit? by Elliot Alderson
The blizzard of bogus 'journalism' on covid by Jeffrey A. Tucker
[why bother with peer review? Fakebook 'fact checkers' trump science!] by ziohedge
[election chaos was scripted, martial law ready to go] by Stuart Davies (must read)
Whitney Webb interview on operation warp speed by Joseph Mercola
"If the first lockdown worked, why do we need a second one? If the first lockdown *didn't* work, why would we do a second one?" by Kevin Sorbo
"The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public" [video] by Dr. Roger Hodkinson (CEO of company that manufactures COVID tests!)
NY Times says "Great Reset" is a "Conspiracy Theory" on same day World Economic Forus celebrates it by Paul Joseph Watson
[what passes for "the left" is a grave danger to American democracy] by T.P. Wilkinson
Americans are finally growing weary of lockdowns by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Even a military-enforced quarantine can't stop the virus, study reveals by jeffrey A. Tucker
Why covid-19 testing is a tragic waste by Joseph Mercola
How to fake the success of the COVID vaccine by Jon Rappoport
Southpark pandemic special - it was covid-related! [video] Southpark
Outgoing Syria envoy admits concealing actual larger number of troops in Syria from Trump Katie Bo Williams
US-UK intel agencies declare cyberwar on independent media [back to samizdat!] by Whitney Webb
Biden will have the most diverse, intersectional cabinet of mass murderers ever assembled by Caitlin Johnstone
Get ready for chaos regardless of who ends up in the White House by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
COVID vaccine revelation sinks like a stone, disappears by Jon Rappoport
Transitioning to global fascism at warp speed by Scott Creighton
Pfizer's CEO dumps 62% of his stock on COVID vaccine annoucement by ziohedge
Fraud in Detroit [video from last-minute-cancelled Hannity interviewee Melissa Carone] Redpill78
Of color revolutions: foreign and ... domestic? the first 72 hours [comprehensive summary] by Brett Redmayne-Titley
[uplifting Zach Bush conversation] [video] interview by Bruce Lipton
[Martenson finally got his head straight on the covid psyop! excellent!] by Chris Martenson
The real resistance by Brendan O'Neill
Anomalies in publications on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 by Alina Chan
Chaos IS the plan by James Corbett
Dispatches from the war: vote fraud, lawyers, COVID vaccine, Biden plan, police powers, the Constitution by Jon Rappoport
Time series analysis of aberrant voting patterns by APhilosophae for anon
(fixed data link
here)
"Hey Siri, how old is the president?" [video] [apparently now fixed]
[possible scenario for post-election chaos/show] by Mike Adams
Reflections on the late election by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror AKA Mencius Moldbug
#4: principles of any next regime by Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror AKA Mencius Moldbug
Interview with Russell Ramsland on electronic vote fraud [must watch] by L. Todd Wood
Censoring Donald Trump is more dangerous to democracy than anything he could ever say by Kit Knightly
Denis Rancourt interview [Nov 4 video] by Dan Dicks
There is undeniable mathematical evidence the election is being stolen [N.B.: I consider myself far left] The Red Elephants
Why does Biden have so many more votes than democrat senators in swing states? by ziohedge
I am done by OHMama
The technological blueprint for the future by Viable Opposition
Weird "live" victory speech from an empty podium? [video - read the comments] by Bloomberg QuickTake: Now
The greatest bubble of all time by Charles Hugh Smith
Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism wasn't a cult of personality by Ramin Mazaheri
Banana follies: the mother of all color revolutions by Pepe Escobar
Meet Norm Eisen by Revolver (Sept 9, right wing, read anyway)
A whole lot of anomalies on election night by Mark Crispin Miller
DC law would give vaccine decisions to kids 11 or older without parents' knowledge or consent by National Vaccine Information Center
Fantasy democracy: US election 2020 by Stephen Lendman
Breaking down the mechanics of the oligarch's great reset [video] by John Bush
'216th week of lockdown' - new COVID film Songbird scares the hell out of people because it may not be entirely fiction by GMI reporter
Shredding journalistic credibility Chris Hedges interview of Matt Taibbi
That mask is giving you lung cancer by Guy Crittenden (25-year editor, HazMat Management)
Death by lockdown by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Hard truths about the things that won't change by John W. Whitehead
Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren't designed to tell us by Peter Doshi, BMJ
Hours before election: Mueuller investigation confirms Russiagate was a hoax by ziohedge
UN Agenda 2030 [video] by Rosa Koire (30 May 2019)
The man who could be America's next president in two days [only in UK press] by Chris Pleasance
['The shielding approach in humanitarian settings' - covid concentration camps] CDC document, July 26, 2020
The glaring irony of Tucker Carlson's UPS story and Greenwald inteview [video] by Scott Creighton (excellent!)
[businesses battening down the hatches] by ziohedge
[vaccine makers are planning to inject so much squalene into the world's population that it will deplete the ocean of sharks] by Dick Russell
Rapid identification of measles virus vaccine genotype by real-time PCR [73 of 194 measles cases were from vaccine] by Filicia Roy et al. (2015)
Apparent paradox [sic] of measles infections in immunized persons by Gregory A. Poland and Robert M. Jacobson (1994)
Measles deaths vs. measles vaccine deaths, 2003-2017 [video] by Dr. Alvin H. Moss
So the Steele Dossier that kicked off 4 years of Russiagate hysteria among the US ruling class was cooked up by two Russian alcoholics from Perm by Mark Ames
Election special: pre-planned 2020 election chaos and the "New 9/11" [video] by Ryan Christian and Whitney Webb
[co-founder of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, resigns from it after editors refuse to publish Biden criticism] by Glen Greenwald
"Et tu, Richard?" [what a disappointment!] by Richard Heinberg
The fact-free COVID dystopia [video] by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
The live-dead qRT-PCR problem, the testing industrial complex, and its impact on society by Kevin McKernan (excellent, informative)
COVID-19: rethinking the lockdown groupthink by Ari Joffe
Facts about Covid-19 [Oct update] by Swiss Policy Research
Why I'm not surprised by Jon Rappoport
NIAID contract obligate Pentagon to buy 500,000,000 doses of Moderna's COVID vaccine for $9 billion [2 doses per citizen] by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Who deserves your trust? by Stacey Rodun
The last days of the Trumpian Reich by C.J. Hopkins
Anthony Fauci: 40 years of lies from AZT to remdesivir by Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter
Follow the science - 1.2 million COVID deaths edition by Mark Jeftovic
[excellent Pam Popper interview] [video] Aug 20
[Cell culture only identifies infective covid when PCR cycle threshold is *under* 32 - vs. ridiculous Drosten test at 45 cycles! - it's a casedemic!] by K. Basile et al.
International message for freedom and hope [video] by Robert F. Kennedy
One America News with Rudy Giuliani - "If I have these photographs, China has these photographs" [video] Chanel Rion
Report on Biden activities with China relayed by Balding's World
Stick to data and science to end the lockdowns by Mark Jeftovic
"Important for your physical security" @BHARATIYASEEKER
"I got your back, brother" from Cynthia McKinney
How expert worship is ruining science by Pasha Kamyshev
[US lockdown may have led to 100,000 excess deaths] CDC
[Gruesome Newsom does Christmas] [video] by Liz Wheeler
Does this CDC report actually show that mask wearers are 17x more likely to get COVID-19 - No [read to end!] by John C.A. Manley
Truth-tellers get killed by Finian Cunningham
Scott Atlas: I'm disgusted and dismayed [video] interview with Scott Atlas (have to go to UK!)
[the real election-changers] ziohedge
[Cooney contemplating 'suicide'?] ziohedge
Last American Vagabond, Whitney Webb's great show, taken down by youtube by Mark Crispin Miller
LA Italian restaurant defies Newsom by Brian Shilhavy
The Boss seems not to know what's happening in Australia by Mark Crispin Miller
[crack pipe photo location: from iPhone location data inserted into image file header] by 'Jim Stone'
What killed Michael Brown? by Shelby Steele (
cancel/uncancel
by Amazon Prime)
Can lockdowns really stop death? by Stacey Rudin
Court records show google gives keyword searches of innocent people to cops by Matt Agorist
"But there's a bigger bomb if you fire him" ziohedge
White house expert Scott Atlas censored by Twitter by David Marcus
My keynote uninvited from biodesign-conference by Michael Levitt (Nobel prize winner)
We are in a truly Orwellian culture: Amazon yanks Covid-19 skeptic's book for ominously vague 'content violations' by Helen Buyniski
The 2020 election bamboozle by John W. Whitehead
Something is very wrong with Hunter Biden emails story [video] by Scott Creighton
Blatant censorship [youtube purges for just today took down 5 channels I follow] by Marc Slavo
An evidence based scientific analysis of why masks are ineffective, unnecessary, and harmful by Jim Meehan, MD (ophthalmic surgeon)
[Canada constructing generalized internment camps for COVID-21] [video, text] by truthonthewind
Defending academic freedom in the time of COVID [video] interview with Mark Crispin Miller
Ten elements of the false COVID narrative (last 5) by Josh Mitteldorf
Of Amazon we should be afraid, very afraid! by Bruce Wilds
On page 39: "Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available..." FDA (Federal Drug Administration)
Seal Team 6 [poison-the-well disinfo: the long-dead OBL in Iran is preposterous, but Seal Team 6 *was* killed] Next News Network
Incorporated America by TheZMan (right-wing, read anyway)
Billionaire's media: the smearing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr by Joyce Nelson
Police killings more likely in agencies that get military gear (ya think?) by Chris Joyner and Nick Thieme
Socially-distanced prom: we are being punked as a species by Paul Josephs Watson
Face masks, lies, damn lies, and public health officials: "A growing body of evidence" by Denis G. Rancourt
California mandates all food must be consumed through IV to ensure masks are never removed The Babylon Bee
[California governor suggests pulling your shorts up between wipes] by Caitlin O'Kane
Lockdowns may have had little effect on COVID-19 spread by Jay W. Richards, William M. Briggs & Douglas Axe
What will it take? by Eric Goodman
Financialization and the road to zero by ICE-9 (long, comprehensive, excellent)
Cerebrospinal fluid leak after nasal swab testing for coronavirus disease 2019 C.B. Sullivan et al., JAMA
The flu vaccine is bad medicine by Jim Meehanby Jim Meehan
Covid-19 vaccine protocols reveal that trials are designed to succeed by William A. Haseltine
Lockdown: the new totalitarianism by Jeffrey A. Tucker (excellent!)
Will the pandemic panic card win in 2020? [SARS-NoV-3] by James Bovard
What does the Fed see heading at big banks? by Wolf Richter
[star cyclist suspended for tweeting "Bye/thumbs up" b/c it supported Trump] zerohedge
[Paul Craig Roberts finally comes to his senses!] by Paul Craig Roberts
[google: squalene gulf war syndrome] Sky news
Gates, Kissinger, and our dystopian future by Mike Whitney
Do NYT headline writers believe their headlines? by John Tamny
BLM founder arrested after spending $200K of donations on dining, entertainment, clothing, furniture, and [natch!] a home security system ziohedge
"It's hydrosonic. I call it super-duper" [not quadraphonic?]
Betrayal, infuriating betrayal by Mike Whitney
Inferno and the "fourth circle": the American empire and the 2020 Pandemic [the pharmadollar!] by Dr. T.P. Wilkinson
Proud Boys (Contras) and Antifa (YPG) promise a conflict today in Portland by Scott Creighton
The core of a totalitarian society is the politicization of everything by Charles Hugh Smith
COVID vaccines: part one: the failure, part two: the devious trick by Jon Rappoport
These coronavirus trials don't answer the one question we need to know by Peter Doshi and Eric Topol (the NYT: as usual, 6 months after it really counted)
[this is an American Gladio slash color revolution! c'mon 'left', read history and wake the f-- up before it's too late!] ziohedge
Flynn case: FBI analysts bought insurance fearing they'd be sued for misconduct by John Solomon
What if preventing collapse isn't profitable? by Richard Heinberg
COVID world - Resist! by Iain Davis
The silent exodus nobody sees: leaving work forever by Charles Hugh Smith
Fed preparing digital dollars by ziohege
COVID-19 evidence is lacking for 2 meter distancing by Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford
Retract The Lancet's (and WHO funded) published study on mask wearing [not a single RCT out of 29 'studies'!] by Andrew Gutmann
[what our lockdown has done to them] by Peter Goodman et al. (the NYT weighs in with truth: as usual, about 6 months after *it really mattered*
We need a radically different approach to the pandemic and our economy as a whole Interview with Katherine Yih and Martin Kukkdorff, Jacobin
[new COVID vaccine injury court - see section XiV: countermeasures injury compensating program] Federal Register
[Cui bono: why mostly closed hospitals coded so many as 'covid'] by Ayla Ellison (Apr 14, 2020)
The war on populism: the final act [I'm still guessing Trump may win] by C.J. Hopkins
Riots return to Portland [no arrests] by
BLM's war on the deplorables by Mike Whitney
[the filth that rule us] by Tom Leonard
In this Red Dawn, who invaded whom? by Jeffrey A. Tucker
[two natural gas pipelines explode over the past 2 days: #1 in Piedmont, Oklahoma and
#2 in Fort Smith, Arkansas
DFW and TimesRecord
Isn't it obvious we need a new system? by Charles Hugh Smith
2021: the year of the deadliest vaccine by Gary D. Barnett
Yes, 2021 could be worse by Robert E. Wright
[Portland riots suddenly stop, perhaps in preparation for Sept 17 'white house siege', now changed to 50 days of improv jazz?! [gordelpus] Adbusters (Canadian!)
State-by-state breakdown of fedearl aid per COVID-19 case by Ayla Ellison
[Zerologon: a symptom of Tainter-ian collapse by complexity] by Dan Goodin
The wind has changed direction by John Rappoport
Youtube censors white house health advisor Scott Atlas [frightening] by AIER Staff
We say no! Children's Health Defense
Dear Jerry and James: you're both wrong about New York by R.J.
COVID-19 as an early warning for vaccine mandates by Davis Taylor
[70 doses of 16 vaccines by age 18, 150 lifetime doses] CDC
Financial pain from lockdown 'much, much worse' than expected [incorrect title from NPR fixed!] by Joe Neel
What really happened in Berlin? by Senta Depuydt
11,000 college student 'C19 cases' resulted in 0 hospitalizations by Andrew Bostom
Is BLM the mask behind which the oligarchs operate? by Mike Whitney
MKULTRA and the CIA's war on the human mind by Jason Morgan
[coronavirus positives from tests using 30+ cycles, i.e., all tests, *aren't* infective!] [PDF]
Law and order howling [the real problem is the war on drugs] by David Stockman
Injunction lawsuit filed against the University of California by Childrens' Health Defense
[psychological warfare news from the main-sewer media: 'we said 35% of athletes get covid-19 myocarditis but actually 0% got it']
"Bipartisan" Washington insiders reveal their plan for chaos if Trump wins the election by Whitney Webb
What's gone wrong with left liberalism and lockdowns? by Jenin Younes (excellent!)
The dancing Israelis: FBI docs shed light on apparentMossad foreknowledge of 9/11 attacks by Whitney Webb (Sep 2019, updated)
The covid-19 catastrophe by Antony Davies and James R. Harrigan
The failed experiment of covid lockdowns: new data suggest that social distancing and reopening havn't determined the spread by Donald L. Luskin
Public health lessons learned from biases in coronavirus mortality overestimation - AKA "worst miscalculation in the history of humanity" [PDF] by Ronald B. Brown
New revelations on the COVID death count [video] by J.P. Sears
[NYT tries to come clean, 6 months too late 'lies of our Times'] by Apoorva Mandavilli
[tests have way to many false positives: there are no 'asymptomatic carriers'] CDC
An American journey: 1635 arrival to 2020 U.S. catastrophe by Richard C. Cook
State [Hawaii] closes both direction of H-3 freeway for COVID-19 surge testing by HNN staff
Creating perverse asymmetries to extort the "little guy": the special "screw you" of junk bond bailouts by Zeus Yiamouyiannis
Tales from America's covid college campuses [a tragedy] by Jordan Schachtel
America's metastasizing class wars by Charles Hugh Smith
Current electoral college prediction [posted Mary 2, 2020, N.B.: he correctly predicted 2016 well in advance] by Helmut Norpath
Mapping Minneapolis Minnesota riot damage by Solari report
[we tax labor but subsidize automation] by Christopher Mims
Everyone wore masks during the 1918 pandemic. They were useless by Penny for your thoughts
From lockdown to police state by Ellen Brown
Hollywood film producer talking truth [video] by John Paul Rice (cf.
Ronald Bernard
part 1 of 5)
Inflation (and how it *not* what happens next) zerohedge
The federal reserve for dummies by Olde Reb
[alyssa milano and the karen mask brigade trumps bin laden 'killer'] zerohedge
Will fewer blacks vote for "Jailer Joe" Biden than Hillary?? by Mike Whitney
Coronacrisis turns buyback billionaires into the trillion-dollar dozen by Dave Haggith
The lockdown: Qui bono? by 24bitwarrior
The mainstream media is the enabler of American dysfunction by Philip Giraldi
Governments are faking is, and copying each other by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Fear fatigue is more dangerous than COVID-19 by Jeffrey I. Barke, MD
Push back [video] by Carlos Zapata
[do it for 'patriotism', else we'll garnish your wages and make it hard for you to get food] by Dr. Michael Lederman, Maxwell J. Mehlman and Dr. Stuart Youngner
If you are reading this you might be a conspiracy theorist by John Steppling
The invention of false reality: fixation on one cause by John Rappoport
Censorship claims another victim: honest-journalism giant, Del Bigree's "The Highwire" by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Google is now a pharmaceutical company by Fed Up Democrat
The press that cried wolf by Matt Taibbi
The new normal: citizens in charge - make Americans free again Pam Poppper (great resource site!)
The empire will strike back by Charles Hugh Smith
Coronavirus lockdowns usher in the new Roaring '20s by Allysia Finley
What will not recover: trust in government and science by Jeffrey A. Tucker
The Federal Reserve for dummies by Olde Reb
History will judge the hysteria by Prof. Udi Qimron
Why Americans should adopt the Sweden model on Covid-19 by Gilbert G. Berdine, MD
Stipulated order proving CDC has no studies to support claim that vaccines given in first 6 months of life do not cause autism by Informed Consent Action Network (Mar 05, 2020 ruling)
[Adam Haner (who was trying to help a transgender person!), caught in a Reginald Denny moment in Portland -- a perfect distraction for the ongoing implementation of scientific dictatorship] by Chief Chuck Lovell
It's do-or-die deep state: either strangle the stock market rally now or cede the election to Trump by Charles Hugh Smith
Face masks pose serious risks to the healthy by Russel Blaylock
Findings about masks by Arthur Fristenberg
CHD will sue the University of California over mandatory flu vaccine policy Children's Health Defense
Shadow Gate [video, good quality poison-the-well-ish disinfo, Mos
sad not mentioned] by Millie Weaver (Weaver arrested w/husband
on Fri, her kids taken, shyster Tore who uploaded, unhassled)
Summary of valid points: How ex-CIA Brennan, Gen. Jim Jones, and other
former gov't insiders privatized NSA-developed tracking and siphoning
software with offshore data storage for plausible deniability (go
here after
YT censor).
The only way to be healthy in 2020 by J.P. Sears
How to be a woke white person by J.P. Sears
Joe Biden vs. freedom [video] by Tony Heller
5 things to know about US vice president candidate Kamala Harris The Times of Israel
The new normal is denormalization by Charles Hugh Smith
Impossible foods model of monopoly capitalism raises another 200M by Pre IPO Swap
How banker run foundations are shaping the world Norman Dodd Reece interviewed by G. Edward Griffin (~1982)
[Wisconson requires face masks for Zoom meetings: time to revolt!] by T.J. Macias
We are training an entire generation of children to live in fear [video] by West LA adolescent child psychiatrist
How video and onoine reading is undermining cognition by Prof. Robert Abele
Noel Rose, who demonstrated autoimmunity exists, dies at 92by Amanda Heidt
We need to change our COVID-19 strategy by Gail Tverberg
We need a principled anti-lockdown movement Tucker
Coronavirus is the new 'terrorism' by Dr. Ron Paul
The end of the beginning by TheZMan (right-wing, read anyway)
The spies who hijacked America by Steven P. Schrage
6 questions an honest, intelligent reporter would ask Dr. Fauci about COVID-19 by Stacey Lennox
The credit card phenomenon by Wolf Richter
Invasion of the new normals by C.J. Hopkins
The covid-19 exit strategy by Del Bigtree
Madness in Melbourne by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Falling into the abyss between Wall street and Main street by Charles Hugh Smith
81% of Black Americans want police to retain local presence by Lydia Saad
Vaccine distribution will be 'joint venture' between CDC and Pentagon by Sarah Owerhohle
The spreading feeling "This is all happening by design" by Bruce Wilds
Why so many cities are paralyzed by John Rubino
My view from the trenches [how to fix retail] by John E. McNellis
[NIH clinical trial testing intervention messages designed to influence people's intention to get covid vaccine] NIH
[6 good comments on the unrest] by Concept Politico (non-native English speaker)
Dispatches from the war: New York, Trump, physical freaks by Jon Rappoport (rocks!)
One nation under house arrest by John W. Whitehead
Norwegian flag mistaken for Confederate flag removed AP
Two months since the riots, and still no "national conversation" by Michael Tracey
[doctor's video instantly censored from youtube, Dr. Simone Gold now fired] America's frontline doctors
COVID trauma-based mind control by Jon Rappoport
[Seattle radio host demo supporter changes tune after his own sh$t gets burned] by 'cat dad' Paul Gallant
Why college is never coming back by Stephen McBride
Inequality is America's monster id by Charles Hugh Smith
The COVID-19 pandemic third wave by Viable Opposition
[Straight from the CDC's mouth in May 2020: masks don't work] by J. Xiao et al.
Portland airspace shutdown for special security reasons Jul16-Aug16 FAA
The clown cars are fully loaded and Dr. Fauci's is leading the parade by David Stockman
Stop pretending the BLM protests were peaceful by Michael Tracey
[smirking Bill and Melinda Gates: "[the next one after covid] *will* get attention this time" video
[60% "likely" to pursue home schooling options this fall, 30% "very likely" to] by Susan Page
How 36 reporters brought us the twin towers' explosive demolition on 9/11 by Ted Walter and Graeme MacQueen
Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites by Emanuel Goldman (The Lancet)
NBC contributor who documented harrowing battle with Covid-19 NEVER had the virus RT
What is the real purpose of the lockdowns? by Renee Parsons
[I work and love higher education: but this cannot end well] graph notes by Charles Hugh Smith
[emergency use authorization for double-strength propofol for covid anesthesia] FDA
[John Hardie 2016 review on face masks censored from scientific literature!] by John Hardie
[here it comes: NEJM suggests employment suspension for covid vaccine refusal] by Mello et al.
Second wave? Not even close by J.B. Handley
Does the handling of the coronavirus by our government amount to torture? by Amazing Polly
Citigroup borrows at 0.35% from the Fed then charges consumers 27.4% on credit cards by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Covid deaths in Canada by John C.A. Manley
Why we should not be concerned about increasing covid-19 cases in Texas by Edward Peter Stringham
Independent journalist tours cities destroyed by BLM riots by Chris Menahan
Murder by lockdown by Jon Rappoport
An interesting juncture in history by Charles Hugh Smith
MayorJenny: from 'arts festival' to 'end the chaos' by James Altucher
The real pandemic was a nursing home problem by Peter C. Earle
The Covid-BLM diversion: "shock therapy" behind a smokescreen of hysteria and racial incitement by Mike Whitney
The second round: not as easy as the first by Ryan McMaken
Boiling point by Jim Quinn (right-wing, read anyway)
The media is lying about the 'second wave' by Dr. Ron Paul
Social credit scores are already here by Derrick Broze
Soylent green is people and COVID-19 is old people by John Rappoport
Some universities are about to be "walking dead" [video] interview with Scott Galloway (May 25)
David Stockman on what could happen if the Fed loses control International man
The bankruptcy of the American left by Chris Hedges
Fewer children dying during covid? Highwire
[The median infection/fatality ratio for people under 70 is 0.04%] [PDF] by John Ioannidis
Covid-19 has turned public health into a lethal patient-killing experimental endeavor by Vera Sharav
Where in the reopening are we? by zerohedge
The mother of all debt traps [video] interview with Catherine Austin Fitts
"Excess deaths" reported in Alberta and British Columbia not linked to covid by Penny for your thoughts
[Sudden drop in US infant death began with lockdown: possibly due to non-hospitalization, e.g., vaccination pause] by Amy Becker and Mark Blaxill
Everything you think you know about the coronavirus [excellent summary] by Joe Quinn
Antifa/BLM's covid-approved protests. Why Seattle? - Part 1 and
Part 2 by Penny for your thoughts
The Fed's Paycheck Protection Program gave a tiny NJ bank $5.3 billion - 9 percent of all the money it's spent thus far by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
[The 2001 Patriot Act gave] the Federal Reserve its own police force [!] by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
[Popular Mechanics goes full Taliban] by James Stout
The Fed's Grand Bargain has finally imploded by Charles Hugh Smith
Policing the police: the impact of "pattern-or-practice" investigations on crime [PDF] by Tanaya Devi and Roland G. Fryer Jr.
White America, Black America, the set-up and the con by John Rappoport
For this to slip would be the end of empire by Alastair Crooke
The American press is destroying itself by Matt Taibbi
CA Berkeley history professor's ppen letter against BLM, police brutality and cultural orthodoxy purportedly written by anonymous UC Berkeley history professor
Covid hysteria and the groomers of the virus patrol by David Stockman
Nurse blows whistle on New York 'epicenter' hospital killing huge numbers of virus-free blacks with sedatives, ventilation by Marko Marjanovic (
another copy in case google/youtube censors)
Politicized science: Lancet, NEJM retract studies on HCQ by Celia Farber
BGPuppetShot by Willy G.'s dystopian future (May 12)
"Give us your soy" #SeallteAutonomousZone
The worst literal Hitler ever by C.J. Hopkins
There's an actual playbook for everything happening right now and the US wrote it by Daisy Luther
Crash #2? by Sven Henrich
[why a national super grid won't be built] by Alice Friedemann
Asymptomatic coronavirus patients aren't spreading new infections WHO says CNBC
Coronavirus shows why we need separation of medicine and state! by Ron Paul
Sadistic riot cops shoot innocent wheelchair-bound homeless man in the head by Matt Agorist
3 ways lockdowns paved the way for these riots by Ryan McMaken
18 murders in 24 hours: inside the most violent day in 60 years in Chicago by Tom Schuba, Sam Charles, and Matthew Hendrickson
Moving toward martial law by Edward Curtin
America's cops have an out of control kill rate (against all colors and creeds) by Edward Peter Stringham
What lies ahead: destabilizing social stratification by Charles Hugh Smith
Three ways lockdowns paved the way for these riots by Ryan McMaken
This is not a revolution. It's a blueprint for locking down the nation by John W. Whitehead
Violence across America - the world is watching by Jon Rappoport
The Minneapolis putsch by C.J. Hopkins
[Burn that sh*t down, but hey, not my sh*t!] by Chris Martin Palmer
Protestors criticized for looting businesses without forming private equity firm first The Onion
How the illusion is built by Jon Rappoport
The "hot zone" theory of new frightening diseases by Jon Rappoport
A report on [bacterial!] antimeningitis vaccination and observations on agglutinins in the blood of chronic meningococcuscarriers [PDF] by Frederick L. Gates (1918)
Nobody takes the renewable energy transition seriously by Richard Heinberg
New screen deal by Naomi Klein
COVID-19 vaccination: what the plan looks like by Jon Rappoport
The lockdown has turned American into a despotic cash-strapped basket-case by Mike Whitney
What would Cool Hand Luke and Virgil Hilts do? by Jim Quinn (right-wing, read anyway)
Why didn't the 1958 and 1918 pandemics destroy the economy? Hint: it's the lockdowns by Ryan McMaken
Florida ruled to be in violation of science for not having more people die The Babylon Bee
It doesn't matter what you think, reality is what it is by Bruce Wilds
A decade in the making by Children's Health Defense Team
Should you get tested for COVID-19? by Chris Campbell
Wartime messaging: for the love of unity by John Rappoport
The digital opiate by TheZMan
How lockdowns are in the tradition of Civil War surgeons by James Bovard
[Russiagate finally completely collapses] by Ray McGovern
[shutdown eliminates $12 billion in California 'green' funding] by Adam Beam
The Absurd (and sometimes creepy) ways businesses are enforcing social distancing by Daisy Luther
Is the lockdown the greatest policy disaster in US history? by Mike Whitney
Virtual epidemic, virtual culture, prince of darkness by Jon Rappoport
[Trump names GlaxoSmithKine vaccine czar, military to help with ApiJect, "injection map"] by Mike Adams (slowing waking up!)
Big tech is turning hospitals into real-time surveillance centers by mapi
Weekly all-cause deaths [N.B.: not cumulative: it *is* similar to the 2017-2018 flu] by CDC (scroll down on page)
Predominant role of bacterial pneumonia as a cause of death in pandemic influenza: implications for pandemic influenza preparedness by D.M. Morens, J.K. Taubenberger, and A.S. Fauci (2008)
The American genie - engineering a catastrophe by David Macilwain
The sickness in our food supply by Michael Pollan
Democrats have abandoned civil liberties by Matt Taibbi
As corporations adapt to COVID-19 economy, the working-class prepares for a paradigm shift by Raul Diego
How states turned nursing hoe into slaughterhouses by forcing them to admit discharged covid-19 patients by Jon Miltimore (libertarian, read anyway)
And they're gone! The obscenity of Dr. Fauci's Jobs-mageddon by David Stockman
The Cal State University system is making a huge mistake by Shane Ralston
Psyop covid-19: under house arrest by Dr. Pascal Sacre
Supervisor Jim Desmond says San Diego has only had 'six pure' coronavirus deaths [of 190 total] by Joshua Emerson Smith (compare: 350 San Diego flu deaths in 2017-2018]
[DOD funds manufacturing 500 million prefilled vaccine syringes by 2021] www.defense.gov
Coronavirus and dodgy death numbers by F. William Engdahl
[CDC paper: asymptomatic transmission over-hypped] by Z. Du et al.
Fourth turning accelerating towards climax by Jim Quinn (right-wing, read anyway)
The Chinese system comes to America by John Rappoport
The Fed is fueling a revolt that it cannot control by Charles Hugh Smith
COVID: breathing ventilators, New York, death rate by Jon Rappoport
$100 billion House Bill 6666 introduced - COVID-19 testing, reaching, and contacting everyone (TRACE) act introduced by Illinois congressman Bobby Rush
Collapse of the labor market in 5 charts by Wolf Richter
ER doctors: where are the heart attacks and strokes? by Will Stone and Elly Yu
Ex-marine chiropractor from San Diego non-violently talks Sacramento riot police to stand down wow! completely ignored by media! a Mario Savio from the right! truth to power!
Californians liberate Venice beach from the COVID rouge by Marko Marjanovic
Plandemic trailer Mikki Willis interview with Judy Mikovits
Unemployment kills: the longer lockdowns last, the worse it will get by Ryan McMaken
Complete medical mismanagement by Nicole Sirotek, video re-uploaded by Olivier1985
The ministry of Covid compliance reminder by Sundance
Massive unemployment surge creates challenges ahead by Bruce Wilds
41 US states lost more people to 2018 flu than to Covid-19 by Marko Marjanovic
Camel's nose under tent of space militarization by SouthFront (channel just censored by youtube)
Harry Vox on 2010 Rockerfeller 'Lockstep scenario' by Paul DeRienzo interview, NYC, Oct 2014 (Rockerfeller doc
here)
Lockdowns ending but politics still rule by Tom Luongo (right-wing, read anyway)
[Taibbi lacking cajones!] by Matt Taibbi
Where has the regular flu gone? by Allen
President Kushner by John Day [get the antibody test and tell us!]
(see his
comment
on own post, N.B. he's a doctor)
Covid 19 patients are being murdered by 'Karlee Sunshine' for anon NY nurse
[this was censored after a few days - it's a heart-breaking description
from an anonymous NYC ICU nurse, narrated by her friend, a licensed
nurse practitioner, describing how patients were separated from their
loved ones, then sign their life away to be put on a ventilator, alone,
with an 80% death rate, while doctors like Cameron Kyle-Sidell reassigned
after warning that this was really not a good idea.]
Game over for oil, the economy is next by Art Berman
I've worked in the coronavirus front line - and I say it's time to start opening up by Dr. Daniel G. Murphy
The Dengvaxia disaster was twenty years in the making - what will happen with a rushed COVID-10 vaccine? by Children's Health Defense
[Daniel W. Erickson COVID-19 briefing below, re-re-posted after youtube scrubbed re-uploaded copies] by off-guardian
[Daniel W. Erickson COVID-19 briefing below, re-posted after youtube scrubbed original] by Unquoted
Dr.
Daniel W. Erickson COVID-19 briefing, Part 1 and
Part 2 from 23 ABC News
KERO (hostile questioners)
The real hoax: reporter caught on tape by Del Bigtree
Covid: the projection of a mass illusion by Jon Rappoport
Techno-tyranny: how the US national security state is using coronavirus to fulfull an Orwellian vision by Whitney Webb
De Blasio's social distancing tip line flooded with penis photos by nypost
The trickle-up bailout by Matt Taibbi
The Covid-19 magjc trick by Andrew Kaufman
This is the culmination of a 20 year project comment by Pft
Burning down the house by James Quinn
Why did hundreds of CEOs resign just before the world started going absolutely crazy? by Michael Snyder
Are we brewing a new feudalisms? Yes. by Paul Craig Roberts
A message to the pod people wearing [tin-foil!] masks by Jon Rappoport
The idiocracy experiment by Robert E. Wright
Unemployment to soar as small business firings start [bailout money gone after reaching 6%!] by Bruce Wilds
For the first time ever, Fed will monetize *double* total treasury issuance by zerohedge
Massive deflation ahead by Charles Hugh Smith
As the bottom 60% lose lives and livelihoods the Fed and the top 10% cheer market rebound by Charles Hugh Smith
[big pharma lines up at the new covid trough] Scripps Research
Will it be an inflationary or deflationary depression? [deflationary] by Doug Casey
The remarkable doctor A. Fauci by F. William Engdahl
#FireFauci should be the ralling cry for a generation by Tom Luongo
[excellent comment on Rappoport article] by Low Voltage
If you don't know what freedom is, better figure it out now by Jon Rappoport
[covid19, ventilators, perverse incentives] by Jon Rappoport
The use and abuse of MMT by Michael Hudson, Dirk Bezemer, Steve Keen, and T. Sabri Oncu
"It's a complete abomination" says Wall street money manager about hedge funds applying for bailouts from small-business recovery funds by Mark DeCambre
No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito by Dan Sirotkin
American workers get a 4-month safety net; wall street gets a 4 to 5-year bailout by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Army's Seattle field hosptial closes after 3 days without treating a single patient by Richard Sisk
Long pitchforks and water cannons by Gary at MacroMonitor
[vulture capital and hospitals - remember the names] by Matt Stoller
Why private equity is cutting doctor pay and organizing our pandemic response by Matt Stoller
The New York Fed, owned by multinational banks, is nationalizing capital markets by Pam Marten and Russ Martens
The covid-19 'lockdowns' are what twenty-first-century mob rule looks like by Ryan McMaken
Doctors say ventilators overused for covid-19 by Sharon Begley
[Mar24: new CDC rules for reporting COVID-19 deaths - test not required] [1pg-PDF] CDC
Huge 2.2 trillion dollar bill fails most small businesses by Bruce Wilds
[why doesn't the 'news' (hah) show you this chart from the CDC - to Apr 2] CDC
Viruses and exosomes interview with Andrew Kauffman
Does covid-19 really cause ARDS??!! [youtube] by Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell, NYC ICU physician
Man arrested for breaking social distancing rules by, uh, paddle boarding alone StationGossip
Why is Oregon still on lockdown? [scrubbed from Medium after 50K views, deleted from google cache] by Professor Hinkley
Manufactured pandemic by Julian Rose (anon. medical scientist - common sense from March 27)
Fed's balance sheet blasts to $5.8 trillion; suggests Fed is back to bailing out foreign banks along with Wall Street by Pam Marens and Russ Martens
Real world or simulation [youtube] by Amazing Polly (right-wing, view anyway)
["afraid of ghosts" - youtube] by Dana Ashlie
The corona crisis [youtube] by Sucharit Bhakdi (a good man!)
[flatten the curve is a doesn't make sense] by Maria Chikina and Wesley Pegden
Draconian lockdown powers: it's a slippery slope from handwashing to house arrest by John Whitehead
[for profit hospitals cut pay of frontline physicians and nurses] by Khaleda Rahman
All roads lead to dark winter by Whitney Webb and Raul Diego
Digital scarlet letters [youtube] by Scott Creighton
Is this COVID-19 or COVID-1984? [youtube] by Carey Wedler
[innocent 'editing' mistake: overwhelmed 'NYC' hospital was actually in Italy] by Jim Hoft
[MoA comment] by Stonebird
My Carona by Papa Bakes (Feb 28!)
Perspectives on the pandemic interview with John Ioannidis
The propaganda of terror and fear: a lesson from recent history by Piers Robinson
The downgrade massacre has started by Wolf Richter
Stop the $6 trillion coronavirus corporate coup! by Matt Stoller
Assembling a wind turbine [this 20-year, 1700-ton, 2.3 MW device *used* a lot of fossil fuel] by MidAmerican Energy Company
"It's all fake!" - locked-down Wuhan residents heckling a Chinese official with some good-old-fashioned 'American spirit' :-} ] by QINGSHAN (Mar 6)
[looking for Bellevue's 'pop-up morgue' :-} ] by Jason Goodman
Pandemics: history and prevention [how to breed superviruses in trenches and factory farms] by Michael Greger (2008)
Coronavirus could infect privacy and civil liberties forever by Simon Chandler
Strictly by the numbers, the coronavirus does not register as a dire global crisis by Richard Schabas
Helicopter money for wall street by Wolf Richter
Why the unemployment spike is even more horrid than it appears by Wolf Richter
Will coronavirus hysteria open door to full-blown martial law in America? by Robert Bridge
We're living in 12 monkeys truthstream media
"We're in a live exercise here..." Mike Pompeo presser
For first time in history, Fed to make billions in loans to bin and small businesses by Pan Martens and Russ Martens
A sustainable solution by Dave Haggith
"It's a big club and you ain't in it" [the Fed just gave big banks $500 billion] by Wolf Richter
Fed announces program for Wall Street banks to pledge plunging stocks to get trillions in loans at 1/4% interest by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Why are people who should know better buying the covid19 hype? by Catte Black
The CDC sentnovel coronavirus testing kits to Florida. They might not work by Ben Conarck
Sylicylates and pandemic influenza mortality by Karen M. Starko (2009)
A propaganda master advises the prez by John Rapopport
Massachusetts 2020 exit poll versus reported vote count by Theodore de Macedo Soares
Bush dropped 70,000 bombs, Obama dropped 100,000 bombs, and Trump is already up to 72,000 in just 3 years by Matt Agorist
Class: the word the elites want you to forget by Chris Hedges
Demand for Fed's repo loans surges past $100 billion a day as 10Y treasury hits lowest rate in 149 years by Pan Martens and Russ Martens
Damn! Will the zombie virus apocalypse never come? by Jon Rappoport
Jamie Dimon's remarks on the 'Discount Window' by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Subcomandante Bloomberg by C.J. Hopkins
[poor people are subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles by rich people] by Tsvetana Paraskova
Bloomberg's poll numbers show the power of billionaire narrative control by Caitlin Johnstone
Financial feudalism by Michael Krieger
Op-ed: dems should do the sensible thing and nominate a moderate rapacious psychopath by Caitlin Johnstone
Jeff Bezos spent more on this house in Beverly Hills than Amazon has paid so far in federal corporate income tax for 2019 by Andrew keshner and Jacob Passy
Oligarch buys political party - seeks to become president by b
Why does Bloomberg get a pass? by Laura Bassett
Are you now or have you ever been a believer in biological sex? by Bruce Lesnick
Money is no object by Bruce Lesnick (Jan 2019)
Who owns the Federal Reserve? by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh (Dec 2015)
Ignoring the elephant at Gitmo by Kevin Ryan
America is an oligarchy trying to screw you out of every penny you have by Larry Wilkerson
Will spotify ruin podcasting? by Matt Stoller
Flashback Friday: the protein-combing myth by Michael Greger
The Fed has a dangerous repo problem by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Bats, gene editing and bioweapons: recent DARPA experiments raise concerns amid coronavirus outbreak by Whitney Webb
Biden is really pro-labor? by Daniel Lazare
The establishment doesn't fear Trump, and it doesn't fear Bernie. It fears you by Caitlin Johnstone
One world digital dictatorship by Soren Korsgaard
Market top? [Union Pacific cuts 17% workers, planning 8% next year, revenue and income down 10%, $3 billion in new loans to help buy $6 billion of its shares: stock hits new high by Wolf Richter
Fire did not cause building 7's collapse on 9/11 by J. Leroy Hulsey et al.
A fraud-monetization system with a money-printing unit called the New York Fed by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
After blowing $43 billion on share-buybacks in 6 years, Boeing scrambles to borrow $10 billion on top of $9.5 billion by Wolf Richter
Der Fuhrer Mike Pence and the Ides of March by Ronald Thomas West
After killing of Iran's Soleimani, narrative control on social media is getting worse [i.e. more restrictive] by Eva Bartlett
Capitalism in America: how a dismal decimal is robbing Americans blind by Jon Hellevig
[here's who to lynch -- Re: prev question] by Pan Martens and Russ Martens
[PeakProsperity comment: we don't know who to lynch] by sand puppy
Are the Fed's repo loans being repaid by wall street's trading houses or just rolled over and over by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Boston area professor fired after anti-Trump Facebook posting [satire now illegal in academia!] by Dan Conway
Charcoal for the high heat needed in manufacturing after peak oil by Alice Friedemann
[prosecutors: Epstein cell surveillance video accidentally deleted] by "monkeys fly out of my butt"
The Fed can't reverse the decline of financialization and globalization by Charles Hugh Smith (excellent summary)
How does the porn industry actually make money today by Fight the New Drug
Internet users who call for attacking other countries will now be enlisted in the military automatically The Babylon Bee (sarc!)
How long will it take for the US to collapse? by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway [N.B.: of course, I don't agree with everything])
"Corbyn-ize him!" by Philip Weiss
2019 - the year of manufactured hysteria by C.J. Hopkins
Man sentenced to 16 years in prison for burning churche's pride flag by Madison Dibble (cf: average US murder sentence: 20 years)
The final act by Dmitri Orlov
The New York Fed is keeping JPMorgan's secrets close to its chest by Pam and Russ Martens
The crazy events of the past month by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Symbolic pics of the month 12/19 by Vigilant Citizen
A "market" that need $1 trillion in panic-money-printing by the Fed to stave of implosion is not a market by Charles Hugh Smith
Humanity at the crossroads by Larry Romanoff
China's high-speed trains by Larry Romanoff
Epstein's sexual blackmail operation interview with Ari Ben-Manashe
I disagree, and fairly strongly by John Chuckman
Repo-market turmoil: staring into the financial abyss by Tuomas Malinen
Whay "this sucker is going down" by Charles Hugh Smith
BIS offers explanation of what really happened on repocalypse day [banks fearingproblems with hedge funds] by zerohedge
Harvesting the blood of America's poor: the latest stage of capitalism by Alan Macleod
Costs are spiraling out of control [amazing physicians and administrators graph!] by Charles Hugh Smith
One in two homeless people may have experienced a head injury in their lifetime by Thandi Fletcher
The Tesla triangulator by Nukazooka
[2 megawatt grid storage battery explodes injuring 9 -- one of first two installed out of 400 planned] by Ryan Randazzo (April 2019)
Ultrasound: a new bibliography by Jim West
[private data breach for 1.2 billion people] from
peopledata by Vinny Troia
The real bombshell of the impeachment hearings by Ron Paul (libertarian, read anyway)
The collapse of civilization [wrong order! more probable: money then energy then climate] by Nafeez Adhmed
"Intra-day bankruptcy": A 2008 email from the Fed provides insight into today’s overnight repo scare [I could barely understand it] by Pam and Russ Martens
The disturbing front men for the Fed's 3 trillion and counting Wall Street bailout by Pam and Russ Martens
Pitfalls of a pit bull russophobe by Ray McGovern
Elizabeth Warren endorses Trump's economic war on Venezuela, soft-pedals far-right Bolivia coup [contrast Tulsi Gabbard] by Ben Norton
Is the San Francisco sh*tuation out of control? by renthop
Trump vs. Warren and the fake battle against the elites by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
[8 sensible minutes from Tulsi Gabbard] Tulsi Gabbard
Introducing the Encyclosphere by Larry Sanger
Americans are moving at the lowest rate on record by Sabrina Tavernise
The dirty secret of capitalism by Nick Hanauer (2019)
Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs" by Nick Hanauer (2012 relinked)
Interview with Dr. Michael Magee interview by Richard D. Wolff
Economic update: the US's profit-driven medicine with Richard D. Wolff
Medicare-for-all "socialism" [it's not real socialism] is just another racket by Charles Hugh Smith
I lived through CIA torture. Everyone else can catch the movie [N.B.: policy of *both* Dem and Repub!] by Ahmed Rabbani
Peak oil demand is now by Tim Watkins (very good article)
Checkmated by HAL: how technology is making the world a better place for machines to live in by Jasun Horsley
The Fed's big lie by Pam and Russ Martens
The Fed's repo bailout and JP Morgans 38 trading floors [mostly outside US] by Pam and Russ Martens
Death by oligarchy by Chris Hedges
The world has gone mad and the system is broken by Ray Dalio [from the horse's mouth - director of the worlds largest hedge fund]
When did Tulsi Gabbard become a Russian asset? [her votes are almost as pro-war as the rest of Congress] by Eric Zeusse
What's Joker's joke? by Edward Curtin
The ministry of wiki truth by C.J. Hopkins
Tulsi Gabbard on the View: when politicians use their service as cover by Scott Creighton
Mist showers by Kris De Decker
New bubbles, mounting debt: preparing for the coming crisis by Ben Reynolds
How do power lines cause wildfires? Texas Wildfire Mitigation Project
Thanks to a soviet navy captain -- we survived 1962 by Ray McGovern
Robach: 'We had everything three years ago' Project Veritas
How the internet is killing the planet by Alex Kimani
Celebrating the Day of the Dead by David Hammond
Fed's latest plan for bailing out Wall Street banks: let them overdraft their accounts at the Fed by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Police owe nothing to man whose home they blew up by Bobby Allyn
"What are we becoming... pirates?" [becoming?] by Barry R. McCaffrey (retired general)
Leveraged loans: "a growing risk of credit accidents" [Depends?] by zerohedge
Yeah it's still water by Ben Hunt
Everyone is a Russian agent by Matt Taibbi
[assurances from the Warren campaign] by Michael Arria
When Democrats used to indict plutocrats by Matt Stoller
Why private equity should not exist by Matt Stoller
[competent summary of the net energy problem] by Rice Farmer
LifeLog [cancelled the same month Facebook was founded] 2003 DARPA request for proposals
Geopolitical signals of economic crisis abound by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
A consensus of collapse by Kyle Mackie
How to lose the last 10 pounds [much broader-ranging than title] interview with Doug Lisle (A+ performance!)
All-inclusive 3D human cortical spheroid formation kit [only $1480]
Wealth identity politics by Caitlin Johnstone
Will the fracking revolution peak before ever making any money? by Justin Mikulka
['Havana' syndrome probably caused by Canada fumigating their own diplomats with pesticides... because 'Zika']
Email from Paul Chefurka Humptydumptytribe
The carbon trap by Paul Chefurka by Alice Friedemann
How Bill Clinton and American financiers armed China by Matt Stoller
Make recessions great again by Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert
WeWork: never forget [WW shareholders bought buildings then leased them to WW...] Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert
[former intel official on Epstein and the Maxwells] by Whitney Webb
Trump cannot be anti-globalist while working with global elites by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
The end of super imperialism by T. Sabri Oncu
[PDF] Robot-assisted colpectomy by Groenman et al. (2017)
Adrift and afraid, Seattle's outraged NIMBY needs someone to blame by Katie Wilson
On the motives behind whistleblower-gate by b
CNBC anchor says building 7 a 'controlled implosion' by AE911Truth
Using forged emails, 'progressive' journalists smear their own for challenging Syria groupthink by Alexander Rubinstein
The case against quantum computing by Mikhail Dyakonov (Nov 2018)
With $1.4 trillion in excess reserves, how can there be a problem with overnight funding? by Mish Shedlock
When you are in, you can't get out by Julie K. Brown
Green work deal by John Day
Is We Work a fraud? by Henry Hawksberry
Blame the pilots by Peter Lemme
What is energy denial? by Don Fitz
Trump fires Yosemite Sam by b
Wind energy waste problem [the fiberglass resin blades] by Christina Stella
[inhaling vaporized radiator fluid and diacetyl not a good idea? who'd 'have thunk...] and
[editorial] NEJM
Green New Deal V1 - urgency and oil production constraint by Tad Patzek
Perversion of justice by Julie K. Brown (Dec 2018)
[Joseph Recarey dies 'after a short illness' -- also see article above] by Tim Brown
[Orwellian 'precrime' software supposedly to prevent 'mass shootings' by Whitney Webb
[the bond price bubble, now causing negative interest rates, is going to blow up][N.B.: bond market much bigger than stock market] by David Stockman
Bankrupt and irrelevant: the presidential debates and four recent studies on Pentagon spending by Pierre Sprey [consulted on F-16 design], Chuck Spinney, and Winslow T. Wheeler
A structural reevaluation of the collapse of World Trade Center 7 by J. Leroy Hulsey, Z. Quan, and F. Xiao
[Parkinson's disease can begin in the gut] by N. Van Den Berge et al.
Here's what I'm worried about, and it's not a recession by Wolf Richter
Debunking the drug war interview with Douglas Valentine
Fifty shades of Epstein by Hope Kesselring
Financial vandalism of low and negative-yield bonds wreck pension funds by Mish Shedlock
Joan Lasenby on applications of geometric algebra in engineering interview
How Elon Musk fooled investors, bilked taxpayers, and gambled Tesla to save Solar City by Bethany McLean
America's debt burden will fuel the next crisis by Lance Roberts
The genesis and evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton relationship by Whitney Webb
[Amazon fires overall about average this year -- not a good thing] NASA
La danse mossad: Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein by Jennifer Matsui
[self-parking Tesla goes rogue in Puerto Rico] Tu Noticia PR
How can a company lose $5.2 billion on $3.2 billion in revenue? Uber shows how by Wolf Richter
This is the same pattern the Fed followed before the Great Depression by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Mega group, Maxwells, and Mossad by Whitney Webb
American Gladio by Ronald Thomas West
[tardigrades unintentionally released on the Moon join 100 bags of poop already there] by Ashley Yeager
Is the rise in Lyme disease due to weaponized ticks? interview with Kris Newby
Precognition: "...happened at the Walmart in Horizon, I'm not sure what time this tweet went out, however, OK here it is, at 3 PM, well that's, that hasn't happened yet, OK so today is the 3rd..." KFOX 14 El Paso
Bond black hole [25% of global investment grade debt (=$14T) has a negative interest rate] by John Ainger
Don't be surprised when the Jeffrey Epstein smoke clears by Penny for your thoughts
America's collapse: #2 in a series by Paul Craig Roberts
America's voters want to remain deceived by Eric Zuesse
[Wexner/VictoriasSecret gives power of attorney to Epstein in 1991 at age of 53?!] pdf
The CIA as organized crime Whitney Webb interview of Doug Valentine
The 2001 anthrax deception Antony C. Black reviews Graeme MacQueen's book
[pesticides *and* polio viruses] by Forrest Maready
Jeffrey Epstein, Trump's mentor and the dark secrets of the Reagan era by Whitney Webb
Lawsuit outs Ellen Ratner as source for Seth Rich information by Ty Clevenger
If you think everything's OK, you're nuts by Chris Martenson
Pinker, Epstein, soldier, spy [Pinker flew on the Lolita Express!] by Colleen Flaherty
Government by blackmail by Whitney Webb
[majority of dems (219 to 16) and minority of repugs (65 to 132) approve obscene $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget] by Jake Johnson
Green new deal IV - any other paths by Tad Patzek
I got it: nothing matters by Wolf Richter
Pronographic democracy by Linh Dinh
A rare opportunity to focus on the sociopathic highest echelons of US society cozy lunch pic:
[Dersh, JE, Robert Trivers, and Larry Summers] by Michael Krieger
[Harvard Crimson puff piece on JE after he gave them money] by Jaquelyn M. Scharnick (2003)
The corrupt system will never police itself by Brandon Smith
The honey trap on E 71st by Eric Margolis
Where lyme disease came from and why it eludes treatment book review by David Swanson
Hidden in plain sight [the origin of Jeffrey Epstein] by Whitney Webb
['dumping Treasuries' caused by people needing 'euro/chino' dollars doesn't cause expected rise in interest rate] by Jeffrey Snider
Is Tulsi Gabbard qualified? by David Swanson
Free money socialism by Sven Henrich
Former shale gas [N.B.: gas, not tight oil] CEO says fracking revolution has been 'a disaster' for drillers, investors by Sharon Kelly
The story of the Gorgon Stare by Sharon Weinberger
Where does your plastic go? by Erin McCormick et al.
Prominent exostosis projecting from the occipital squama more substantial and prevalent on young adults than older age groups ['text neck'] by David Shahar and Mark G.L. Sayers
Do you know who your iPhone is talking to? by Geoffrey A. Fowler
How Mueller + Barr = Trump's reelection by Ronald Thomas West
[strike the Yelp] by Zachary Crockett
[the rare elements in iPhones can't be recycled] by Alice Friedemann
[big monetary disturbance begins 29 May 2019: 1-year T-bill rate graph] St Louis Fed
[*average* amount borrowed to buy new car now over $32K!] by Phil LeBeau
Water fasting can save your life by Alan Goldhamer (enjoyable 2015 talk)
Olive oil is *not* 'heart-healthy' Pritikin.com
This startup pays humans to remotely operate "driverless" cars by Kristin Houser
The US army asked Twitter how service has impacted people by Caitlin Johnstone
[CNN's 'inside Trump's air force one' article headed by 'cool' pic of Kennedy leaving air force one just before he was assassinated] by Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Kiptak
What is the significance of the [new dancing pics]? by Scott Creighton
Honest rates by James Grant
The normalization and institutionalization of fraud by Charles Hugh Smith
Not happening soon Cryptogon
[wordpress take-down] Jon Rappoport's blog
The power of plants & overthrowing our broken healthcare system by Pam Popper (excellent wide-ranging articulate interview)
Fed launches 'rate peg instead of QE' trial balloon for next crisis by Wolf Richter
American wars are off the charts under Donald Trump by Tom Engelhardt
The liberal embrace of war by Matt Taibbi
Utility scale energy storage has a [really!] long way to go to make renewables possible by Alice Friedemann
Bezos reveals his ugly vision for the world he's trying to rule by Cailtlin Johnstone
My own industrial collapse, part 2 by David Rovics
America, you are fired! by Dmitri Orlov
The shale boom is about to go bust by Nick Cunningham
The rise of surveillance capitalism review by Katie Fitzpatrick
Interest on Excess Reserves *minus* Effective Fed Funds Rate St Louis Fed
Countries with "free tuition" often have fewer college graduates by Ryan McMaken (libertarian, read anyway)
Effects of dairy on health (not good) by Neil Barnard (2017, excellent)
[Rachel Maddow take-down] Aaron Mate twitter thread
We are fast approaching the point where banks run out of liquidity by zerohedge
On contact: Russiagate & Mueller report w/Aaron Mate Chris Hedges interview of Aaron Mate
The misery of working at Amazon (2013, in the UK) by Cameron Brady-Turner
Generating adversarial patches against YOLOv2 by Simen Thys, Wiebe Van Ranst, and Toon Goedeme
Media condemns Julian Assange for reckless exposure of how they could be spending their time the Onion
Using manure for fertilizer in the future -- it won't be easy by Alice Friedemann (excellent summary of 3 books)
Google disables Press TV's youtube account by PressTV
The Intercept bars co-founder from meeting after Snowden archive shutdown by Maxwell Tani
Helium users are at the mercy of suppliers by David Kramer
Solve this or you solve nothing, Part 1 and
Part 2 by Tim Watkins (excellent summary of the main points)
Streaming an album has a higher carbon footprint than buying an album by Pete Markiewicz
The C-eye-eh takeover of America in the 1960's is the story of our times by Edward Curtin, review of Lisa Pease
China's social credit system -- it's coming here by Marin Katusa
Lawsuit claims FBI knowingly hi evidence from Congress of explosives used on 911 by Matt Agorist
The Fed's controlled demolition of the economy is almost complete by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
[example of below] Smithsonian
Want to save the planet? Stop trying to be its friend by Matthew Prior
It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD by Matt Taibbi
Trump is going to repeat this until Nov 2020. Thanks, MSNBC by Caitlin Johnstone
Billions in Toronto real estate bought anonymously, with funds of unknown origin by Stephen Punwasi
Robert Mueller prayer candles Devotional Democracy (I had to google to discover these weren't intended to be ironic!)
The Mueller report is in. They were wrong. We were right. by Caitlin Johnstone
Boeing's MAX8 by Bisbonian
A modified Ponzi scheme: 78% of Tesla operating cash flow has come from customerdeposits zerohedge
[Colbert’s most blatant establishment rim job] by Caitlin Johnstone
When green 'fixes' actually increase the carbon footprint review of Rice et al., 2019
The house is on fire by Richard Heinberg
Bicycle friendly for everyone by Ann Lusk
Saving fuel: making combat vehicles lighter extracts of NRC report by Alice Friedemann
The words and deeds of social imperialists by Glen Ford
Why US cities are becoming more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians by John Rennie Short
"You can't handle the criticism, can you?" by Media Lens
Scurrying fascist cockroaches by John Steppling [mixed, some good parts]
"Foam-brained human livestock" Caitlin Johnstone :-}
Homeless encampments and luxury apartments by Charles Hugh Smith
The internet of sh$t twitter
The Brave New World comes to California Circuit Insight ("Isn't it time someone created a simple email newsletter providing knowledge, vision and wisdom for the circuit board assembly professional?")
Why the DNC was not hacked by the Russians by William Binney and Larry Johnson (former NSA and CIA)
Many of today's most-owned stocks are Ponzi schemes by Tan Liu
The siege of Venezuela and the travails of empire by Jim Kavanagh
How Trump's attacks on Venezuela triggered a revolution in Haiti by Kim Ives
The making of Juan Guaido: how the US regime change laboratory created Venezuela's coup leader by Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal
[transcript of interview w/human worm Donald Luskin] by S
2019: the three trends that matter by Charles Hugh Smith
The energy trap by Tom Murphy (2011 -- concise description of our main problem)
From horsepower to horse power by Alice Friedemann
Bury a friend vigilant citizen
Pussy John Bolton and his codpiece mustache: examining the freak show by Fred Reed
Tulsi Gabbard is driving the MSM bat shit crazy by Caitlin Johnstone
The quiet death of the gig economy by Michael K. Spencer
Debt exhaustion by Charles Hugh Smith
How Ring and Rekognition set the stage for consumer generated mass surveillance by Jevan Hutson
[the majority of Amazon's profits come from AWS, not e-commerce] by Therese Poletti
The single stupidest argument in the entire stupid salad of Russiagate by Caitlin Johnstone
The silence on Wall Street's Dark Pools is deafening by Pam Martens
[not explained in a concrete enough way for me to fully understand] by Dave Haggith
Westpoint talk: brain is the battlefield by James Giordano
[for Roberta Walker: why we need to spend a tiny fraction of the stupid amount of money spent on carz to make safer separated bike lanes!] bike accident
Collapse is already here [the collapse will not be televised] by Chris Martenson
How to safely make it through the 21st century by Hannes Kunz
The false promise of shale oil interview with Art Berman
On "endless cultural war" interview with Linh Dinh
The Trump-Russia scam by b
The shale oil revolution actually reflects a nation in decline by Chris Martenson
The war on populism by C.J. Hopkins
A majority of Americans do not believe the official story by Paul Craig Roberts
Reporter [the excellent William Arkin] quits NBC citing network's support for endless war by Caitlin Johnstone
2019: the beginning of the end by Adam Taggart
[he's probably an old guy like me :-} ] by Walter Map
The vocabulary of economic deception Bonny Faulkner interview of Michael Hudson
[don't eat right, just get one of these implanted] by Yao et al.
Trump commits to "indefinite" occupation of Syria [a real problem vs. Russiagate nonsense] zerohedge
For the beautiful earth [see also comments] by Tad Patzek
Is 5G the asbestos of the 21st century? interview with John C. Dvorak, recently fired from PCMag
41 reasons why wind power can not replace fossil fuels by Alice Friedemann
Parker Drilling Bankruptcy by Wolf Richter
American dissidents by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
A kingdom from dust [long] by Mark Arax, Trent Davis Bailey, Denise Nestor
['leveraged loans' -- great name, eh? -- tank, e.g., to companies that make equipment for frackers...] zerohedge
"After a deluded gunman, [laugh], assassinated President Kennedy..." Bush Sr speaking at Gerald Ford's funeral
Will Uber survive the next decade? by Yves Smith
Thoughts on the future of world oil production by Jean Laherrere
Amazon CamperForce [people who can only afford to live in campers] amazon
HuffPost's attack on academic integrity, truth, and justice by Elias Davidson
Manufacturing truth by C.J. Hopkins
If you murdered a bunch of people, mass murder is your single defining legacy by Caitlin Johnstone
Mainstream media finally reporting [only 11 years too late] by Matt Agorist
"Taxpayer money" threatens Medicare-for-all (and every other social program) by Jim Kavanagh [fine article from Sept18 that I just came across]
[55 years ago, and today] by Graeme MacQueen
Don't get distracted by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read it anyway)
How a future Trump cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime by Julie K. Brown
The left case against open borders by Angela Nagle
Trump presidency: results and perspectives by James Petras
The case for degrowth by Philippe Gauthier
The coming crash in 2020 from high diesel prices for cleaner emission of oceangoing ships by Alice Friedemann
The [not] circular economy by Kris De Decker
The 'war party' wins the midterm elections by Federico Pieraccini
The starch solution by John McDougall (2015)
Oceania is at war with fascism by C.J. Hopkins
Rescuing the banks instead of the economy by Michael Hudson
How to maliciously smear your critics (and not get away with it) by C.J. Hopkins
Putin Nazi paranoia by C.J. Hopkins
The clear legal basis that vaccines cause autism by J.B. Handley, Jr.
What is the future of new housing? by Chris Hamilton
[tar sands: this super ugly bottom-of-the-barrel 'oil' provides 7% of US-ians daily coil gulp] by Andrew Nikiforuk
[the military-industrial-information-systems complex clamps down] by Todd Bone
Shale fail by Kurt Cobb
The death of algal biofuel by Robert Rapier
Tesla's financials by Wolf Richter
Politico report says Russiagaters should prepare to kiss my ass by Caitlin Johnstone
[Silicon Valley unicorns suffer richly-deserved 'narrative stain'] by Ben Hunt
"Baby your time is up" [
or live, on 911, natch] [catchy, hear the lyrics straight from the MKUltra's horse's mouth!]
How capitalism torched the planet and left it a smoking fascist greenhouse by Umair Haque
"Let's give banks free money" by Mike Shedlock
[not in the cloud but actually here] by wikileaks
God mode unlocked [irrelevant: only demo on 2003 Via C3 x86 chip] by Christopher Domas
My sinister battle with Brett Kavanaugh over the truth by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The 400-year untold history of class in America review of Nancy Isenberg book by Alice Friedemann
[insightful comment on WolfStreet article on wild rent increases] by Max
Please share this post when I die by Phil Gaimon
Shale plays will not cause the next financial crisis by Art Berman
Driverless cars and the cult of technology by Andy Singer
[richies block 5G rollout -- only the proles must be irradiated] by Danny Crichton
Security alerts,disabled fire alarms, and unused elevators by Shoestring 9/11
Niels Harrit on the terror war lie James Corbett interview with Niels Harrit
The 'death disruption' industry by Nick Whigham
Be careful of what you ask for by Jim Kavanagh
Here's how we ended up with predatory, parasitic elites by Charles Hugh Smith
Tribute to John McCain [then return to programming] by Jimmy Dore
Telltale signs of imperial decline by Charles Hugh Smith
[Fuku-Onofre: the subcontractors will take care of it] by Carey Wedler
[wow -- Scott Creighton taken down by wordpress!]
[the military-industrial-information-complex] zerohedege
USA temperature: can I sucker you? by Tamino
The fracking industry is cannibalizing its own production by Justin Mikulka
Silicon valley engineers fear they created a monster by Susan Fowler
Bunker mentality by Robert Bridge
[$&^*@^# -- we need moar zero interest because... there is still room to transfer *even more* wealth upward?!?!? wrong billionaire in control? scheisse!] by Elizabeth Warren
Ban share buybacks by Ryan Cooper
Facebook doesn't sell your data, it sells your attention by Qriously
The $2.5 trillion reason we can't relay on batteries to clean up the grid by James Temple
Time for some climate honesty by Chris Martenson
More on LTO economics in the Bakken [2009-2018: net $36 billion in the hole] by Rune Likvern
Physicians aren't 'burning out'. They're suffering from moral injury by Simon G. Talbot and Wendy Dean
Feeding insurrection by John Day
Parking has eaten American cities (20x as many parking spaces per acre as households per acre) by Richard Florida
A walk along skid row by Dan Morain
Russiagate is like 9/11, except it's made of pure narrative by Caitlin Johnstone
Tech alert by Sven Henrich
US media losing its mind over Trump-Putin press conference [as Russiagate fizzles out] by Joe Lauria
Survival of the richest by Douglas Rushkoff
[1 second after getting elected, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scrubs her site of antiwar stance] by Sameera Khan
Can climate change be stopped by turning air into gasoline? [uhh, no] by David Fridley and Richard Heinberg
[remember, policing is less dangerous than logging, fishing, piloting,
roofing, garbage collection, mining, truck driving, farming, power line installation, construction work] by Matt Agorist
#OpICE is a destabilization campaign by Scott Creighton
The Senate just gave the Pentagon an $82 *billion* boost. That's more money than Russia's entire military budget by Eric Boehm
Renewable EROI must include storage, low capacity factor, wide boundaries by Alice Friedemann
Where are the girls? by Matt Agorist
Maddow goes full "incubator babies" by Scott Creighton
The insanity of the American anti-Trump, pro-war left [sic] by 21wire
What's going on with trucking and rail? by Wolf Richter [amazing he doesn't relate this to energy costs!]
This is the week that the drone surveillance state became real by Dave Gershgorn
The story of Paul Wellstone's suspected assassination by Joachim Hagopian
Religion saves 'The Americans' by Ramin Mazaheri
What if Babchenko had decided to remain dead? by Catte
Wandering in the desert: what went wrong by Kyle Mackie
Make being an idiot great again by Kyle Mackie
[Google's "ethically principled"/fairtrade/grass-fed/carbon-neutral... Skynet] Cryptogon
Capital confusion by James H. Nolt
End of stimulus? by Chris Martenson
The US shale oil ponzi scheme explained by Steve St. Angelo
The mask is slipping by Caitlin Johnstone (excellent!)
Making excuses for Russiagate [because it can't go without saying, I don't approve of Trump] by Daniel Lazare
Yelling "fire!" but no one moves by Mary Fricker (RepoWatch)
Best-selling drugs over 25 years by Angus Liu
How Wall Street enabled the fracking 'revolution' that's losing billions by Justin Mikulka
Why I think the stock market cannot crash in 2018 by Wolf Richter
The growth of incarceration in the US [by far, the most in the world] summary by Alice Friedemann
Are NBC and CNN paying off top spies who leaked info with on-air jobs? by Lee Smith
MINIX: Intel's hidden in-chip operating system by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Nov 2017)
What is MINIX? the most popular operating system in the world by Bryan Lunduke (Nov 2017)
[The IME in ring minus 3: below the level of the operating system: a network stack, file system, USB driver, web server!] by Ronald Minnich, Google (Oct 2017)
time=39sec: "We do not have a broken window" Las Vegas Review-Journal
time=55sec: "Standby, we've got curtains open on a window that's not broken" Las Vegas Review-Journal
Police cadets quit, expose dept training cops to view public as "cockroaches" they're at war with by Jack Burns
Bronze age redux: on debt, clean slates and what the ancients have to teach U by Michael Hudson
Economic growth considered through the lens of energy consumption and changing populations by Chris Hamilton (finally, on the key: energy!)
Nikki Haley voted most popular US politician (yikes) middle east monitor
A most sordid profession by Fred Reed
The state of our pension funds by Catherine Austin Fitts
"Is this really where we are as a country?" by Tom Siebert
Capitalism is not the [biggest!] problem by Cameron Pike (interesting, I don't agree with half of it)
Chaco earth by Chris Hedges
The great American fracking bubble by Justin Mikulka
"Our lawsuit lays out, in no uncertain terms, that the nation should never under any circumstances move on from the 2016 election result" the Onion
On the criminal referral of Comey by Ray McGovern
What happens to a one-industry town when the one industry is the military? by Dahr Jamail
5G and the internet of things by Paul Heroux
Passover 2018 - London vs Gaza by Gilad Atzmon
CNN by tuesdaynightbuzz
The Donald's blind squirrel nails an acorn by David Stockman
How we got Bolton by Caitlyn Johnstone (rocks)
Sinclair's script for stations by D
Dear America: please stop this shit. Signed, the rest of the world by Caitlin Johnstone
Evolutionary dead-ends xraymike
'Hostiles' and Hollywod's untold story by Jada Thacker (excellent)
Universal commodification by Lawrence Davidson
How they sold the Iraq war by Jeffrey St. Clair
Six things we can learn about US plutacracy by looking at Jeff Bezos by Caitlyn Johnstone
Whisky Tango Foxtrot by Dr. D
[you go torture, girl] [Update: don't fall for well-poisoning: just because she got there after the most infamous waterboarding doesn't cancel the fact that she ran a torture place] by zerohedge
Organic pest control by North Columbia Farms
New US record-level oil production! Peak oil theory disproven! Not. by Richard Heinberg
The accidental president was not our failure... he was theirs... and don't you forget it by Scott Creighton (a good one!)
If police don't have to protect the public, what good are they? [plumbing is more dangerous than policing] by John W. Whitehead
Killing a parasite - cancelling student debt, part 1 by Gaius Publius
Youtube has purged the American Everyman by Politicore
Prestigious science journals struggle to reach even average reliability by Bjorn Brembs
[from 3 or 4 Gladio's ago...] by Lorraine Day (2016)
'The plant paradox' by Steven Gundry -- a commentary by T. Colin Campbell (Aug 2017)
[Florida shooter in full body armor] ABC interview with Stacy Lippel
Life without retirement [2000->2017: 3%->12% over-65's in workforce; 1990->2016: 11%->50% single homeless over 50] by Alana Semuels
An emphatic example shows how deeply the US establishment considers war a permanent and unquestionable situation by failedevolution
Modern Soviet crop reports by Chris Martenson
[advice for both right and left -- behold the endpoint of identity politics] interview with Selco
[meth dealers now accept credit; 240 *tons* of meth seized at Arizona/CA/TX border; goes well with opiods] by Frances Robles
[What is to be done? the University of Chicago suggests: reintroduce slavery] by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl
"Russian hacking", a dangerous delusion by Kit Knightly
The bond vigilantes saddle up their Shetland ponies -- apparently by Bill Mitchell
Rising debt + rising rates by Sven Henrich
Indiscriminate dumping of stocks [hedge funds? cf. AIG?] by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The war on dissent by C.J. Hopkins
[sick stuff that looks just like the decline of the Roman empire] by John W. Whitehead
Why is Nicaragua's homicide rate so far below that of its Central American neighbors? by Roberto Lovato
Sentiment by Adam Taggart
More than just one cockroach by Simon Black
How to be a crook by Larken Rose (2012)
Why is the shale industry still not profitable? by Nick Cunningham
The CIA and the media by James Tracy (excellent 2015 article)
Behind the money curtain by Jim Kavanagh (excellent article)
The future remains all about oil interview with Art Berman
Classic Raimondo clap-trap by Pablo Novi
Big Twitter by Andre Damon
Google and Apple buses attacked in SF NBC, Marianne Favro
Paddock was just a normal, everyday illegal arms dealer by Scott Creighton
Pierre Omidyar's campaign to neuter wikileaks by Whitney Webb
California homeless problem (bike video) News Revolt
Twilight of the American courts by John W. Whitehead
Massive flu outbreak? by Jon Rappoport
[twitter has hired 300-400 people to catalogue your d*ck pics] by James O'Keefe
[BMI is like 'calories in' - it's the first principal component] by Evelyn
[American police state: teacher questioning superintendent's outsize raise knocked down and arrested after complying with cop's ridiculous order to leave] by Matt Agorist
Democrats vote to give Trump vast warrantless spying power by Glen Greenwald
Tesla's coming bankruptcy [ignore nonsense on oil/gas at end of article] by the bull pen
Trump isn't another Hitler. He's another Obama [unusually excellent article] by Caitlin Johnstone
[JANET/C-eye-eh terminal on other side of Las Vegas shooting field from MandalayBay] by Chris Leadbeater
Koshering the 9/11 truth movement by Gilad Atzmon
Earth gifts 2 by John Weber
From Snowden to Russia-gate by b
What happens when a Russiagate skeptic debates a professional Russiagater by Caitlin Johnson
Big data is like big tobacco - we've centralized all our data to the "Zuckerberg" (=C-eye-eh) by Mar Masson Maack (Jun 2017)
Riding the blockchain train zerohedge
Shades of 1928 by Steve Ludlum
Dangers of EMP exaggerated by Alice Friedemann
What will the tax law do to over-indebted corporate America? [see "Justme" comment] by Wolf Richter
The depression of the 1930s was an energy crisis [an interesting new tack!] by Gail Tverberg
A video game analogy to our energy predicament [Gail's main point, compactly stated] by Gail Tverbeg
As the draconian tax bill ascends, the Jill Stein story is the last volley of the Russian "collusion" distraction by Scott Creighton
[how low we have fallen when our 'bulwark' against nuclear war is... Tillerson] by Stephen F. Cohen
[used as a psyop to show that people approve their own police state] by Jeffrey Robinson
Secured by NSA-designed encryption or backdoored? by Mohit Kumar
[latest Russiagate fake news self-debunked within hours] by Glen Greenwald
[university students' weekly plasma donations for income] by Francisca Benitez
Marx, robotics and the collapse of profits by Charles Hugh Smith
[American farmers are committing suicide at 2x the rate of veterans] by Debbie Weingarten
Russia banned from Olympics for killing our terrorists in Syria by Scott Creighton
Plunder capitalism by Paul Craig Roberts
The occult archetype called vaccinationby Jon Rappoport
Flynn was trying to influence the Russians, not the other way around by Caitlin Johnstone
[judge in Epstein pedo trial won't allow X-rated questions into evidence -- money talks] by Jane Musgrave
Why did we start farming? Steven Mithen review of James C. Scott "Against the Grain"
AI has already taken over, it's called the corporation by Jeremy Lent
Given the laws of physics, can the Tesla semi really go 500 miles? by Alice Friedemann
[too bad he wasn't taken down for catapulting
chemical weapons propaganda on Syria] see my
Nov 2016 post
Bezos, the WAPO, Edeleman and staying out of policy matters by Phil Butler
Tesla approaches terminal decline by Andreas Hopf
Fake news on Russia and other official enemies by Edward Herman (RIP)
[repug tax reform: lower taxes for millionaires, raise taxes for... graduate students?!] by Rachel Becker
Slaughterbots by Future of Life Institute
How to instantly prove (or disprove) Russian hacking of US elections by washingtons blog
Garth Davis rocks the bimbo 'Doctors' Happy Healthy
Vegans
[too bad Garth couldn't have injected this
fat-shaming
video that got John McDougall fired from a 2016 San Francisco obesity
conference :-}, which is only missing low carb 'heavies' (he-he) Lustig,
Taubes, and Eades, who had to wear a girdle for his 'healthy' low-carb
cooking show).
Gerard Butler, Gene Simmons, and Pee Wee Herman help raise $53.8 million for the IDF by Adam Horowitz
[bad reviews of your stoopid paper? so sue 'em] by Chris Mooney
Army of spies by Ronan Farrow (now in fear for his life)
What happens when you propagandize a nation into supporting mass murder by Caitlin Johnstone
[people getting rich selling diet books are fair game] by John McDougall
The web began dying in 2014, here's how by Andre Staltz
Running out of room by Adam Taggart
Two more Vegas survivors die in bizarre ways zerohedge
The Russia inflence story just crashed into the Israel influence story by Philip Weiss
The harmful effects of Antifa by Diana Johnstone
[cell phone use is killing more cyclists and pedestrians - 22% increase in 2 years]]
[fixer extraordinaire! - 9/11, BP-well-blowout, SandyHook, BostonBombing, Sandusky, OrlandoPulse, and now LasVegas] by Scott Creighton
[new Texas law: no Houston hurricane relief if you boycott Israel] Ha'aretz
Google escalates blacklisting of left-wing web sites and journalists by Andre Damon
[why peak net energy is good thing] by David Axe
[risk to life greater for US civilians than US soldiers] by b
The choreography of human dignity by Caoimhghin O Croidheain
Antifa in theory and in practice by Diana Johnstone
CNN claims Russia used Pokemon Go to meddle in US election by Scott Creighton
Hollywood elite blacklisted me because I got raped Neon Nettle
2017 Eminem is basically Rachel Maddow in a hoodie by Caitlin Johnstone
What about Weinstein's public offenses? by David Swanson
Mandalay Bay disputes the LVMPD's new revised timeline by Scott Creighton
[good pics of SkyVue towers] by Mad Tea Show
[multiple shooters, nearby] by Misha Usunov (0ct 3 upload)
Flatliners by Sven Henrich
Forensic acoustic proof of second shooter in the Las Vegas massacre [sensible, no ref to audio sample] by Mike Adams
Iraq vet opinion on Las Vegas shooting by Frater Oculus (Oct 5)
Two more videos with audio of two simultaneous shooters
one and
two by Joe Quinn
[security guard appears to draw and fire weapon in crowd] aftershock14250
[mass casualty training event at Nellis AFB 2 days before] by Jared Keller
[multiple shooters possible -- would require real investigation] by Jon Rappoport
Taxi cab recording suggests multiple shooter locations by Scott Creighton
You're being used [should be "you're being played" :-} ] by Jon Rappoport
Inactivation of porcine endogenous retrovirus [PERVs] in pigs using CRISPR-Cas9 [preparing for organ zenotransplants -- eeeeww] by Dong Niu et al., Science
PDF of Jul10,2017 Federal 'vaccine court' judgement ruling SIDS case caused by DTaP+IPV+PCV+rotavirus+HepB vaccine [including disclaimer: "I have not concluded that vaccines present a substantial risk of SIDS"] United States Court of Federal Claims (has paid out $3.5 billion in non-legally-binding judgments)
Wedge politics by Caitlin Johnstone
As powerful as ever by Philip Weiss
Spies, Hollywood and the neocons team up to create new war propaganda firm by Caitlin Johnstone
Why Hillary can't just shut up by Caitlin Johnstone
Anti-Trumpism doesn't include anti-war by Ajamu Baraka
Incompetent espionage by Ronald Thomas West
Russian colonel who saved the world from all-out nuclear war dies at 77 by Iain Thomson
The NYT's yellow journalism on Russia by Robert Parry
A letter to my American friends [epic rant] by vineyard saker (Andrei Kaevsky)
Left, you have been duped by Richard Hugus
Lyme disease and Plum Island by Melissa Dykes
Solving 9-11 by Christopher Bollyn
[China to copy insane US ethanol plan -- see Alice Friedemann immed below] Reuters
Peak soil 2017 by Alice Friedemann
DACA dies, sort of: right wing flaps wildly: our precious bodily fluids are safe by Fred Reed
Civics by Brian Littlefair
The media is the villain for creating a world dumb enough for Trump -- the presidency has become the ultimate ratings bonanza by Matt Taibbi
How long can we adapt? by Alice Friedemann
The Nixon coup by Dean Henderson
Jackson Hole and the Appalachians by Raul Ilargi Meijer
78% of [working] Americans live paycheck to paycheck by Jessica Dickler
There's no app for that by Richard Heinberg
Why climate change isn't our biggest environmental problem, and why technology won't save us by Richard Heinberg
You're being played by Charles Hugh Smith
[savers have handed banks roughly $2 trillion] by Wolf Richter
Banking in the shadows by Mary Fricker (RepoWatch)
Mnuchin's trophy wife blasted after Instagram spat goes viral by zerohedge
"Glad we could pay for your little getaway -- #deplorable" by James Wilkinson
CIA 'torture psychologists' [paid $80 million by CIA] avoid trial with secret settlement AFP
[patent for veterinary vaccine adjuvants including among many other oils, 'turtle oil'!] by Roger H. Ruehling, Brianna Ford, Biomune Company
BBC insults [84-year-old!] T. Colin Campbell T. Colin Campbell interview
The "self-driving car" is only an oxymoron by Tom Lewis
[ACLU confirms that police were given stand-down orders in Charlottesville]by Matt Agorist
Our broken economy in one simple chart by David Leonhardt
Out economoy's toxic inequality by Charles Hugh Smith
Watch destablization assets link fake nazis with folks who oppose the Syrian regime change program by Scott Creighton
Nope, they NOT coming to get us... by Pete Markiewicz
[friendly neighborhood skynet - youtube] by Google
[friendly neighborhood skynet - Seattle] by Tyler Rogoway and Joseph Trevithick
Productivity and debt by Raul Ilargi Meijer
The "Dusenberry Effect" in the US economy by Gary Evans (not the oil one)
Google censors the real left by Bruce A. Dixon
"My fish got a bad case of bronchitis" by WrdNrdGrl
[completely un-understandable repo word salad] by Jeffrey Snider
Why did everyone stop talking about population and immigration? by Alice Friedemann
[90% of American men overfat] by P.B. Maffetone, I. Rivera-Dominguez and P.B. Laursen
Seymour Hersh phone call discussing wikileaks DNC leaks, Seth Rich, and FBI report in conversation with Ed Butowsky, recorded and leaked by Butowsky
Fool's gold by Sven Henrich
Our brave new 'markets' [I see! flash crashes are when the bots *withdraw*!] by Chris Martenson
[script kiddies at the car wash] by Kim Zetter
[sick f*cks trying to 'make more money on health care' get hammered - good riddance, scum] zerohedge
[new text of re-branded insane Iran/Russia bill passed by House] US Congress
McBrain Ian56
[text of insane new Iran/Russia bill just passed by Senate] US Congress
Missing money inverts by Jeffrey Snider
We are now in the frightening endgame by Egon von Greyerz
My university treated me like a criminal over a joke by Trent Bertrand
Trump appoints former Goldman Sachs globalist vulture capitalist by Scott Creighton
Questions by Joseph Y. Calhoun
I read the news today, oh boy by Raul Meijer Ilargi
[California to bail out Tesla] by Wolf Richter
Synthesizing Obama [what backprop can do with a faster processor] by Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven Seitz, and Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman
CIA agent 'confesses on deathbed' -- no confirmation, probably disinfo, new 'early B7 thermite' meme] by Baxter Dmitry
Donald Jr./Russia narrative destroyed by The Truth Factory
[ER doctor tweet] by Rob Delaney
The excess reserves overhang -- more important than ever by Taps Coogan
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy induces breast cancer metastasis through a TMEM-mediated mechanism by George S. Karagiannis et al.
Eating our way to disease by Chris Hedges
[Honduras-bound military plane explodes in mid-air over Mississippi] by Regina F. Graham
Marine task force deploys to Central America [Honduras] by US Southern Command (1 Jun 2017)
Comparison of energy efficiency and CO2 of gasoline and electric vehicles [EV's actually ~30 mpg, Prius is better] by Willem Post [N.B.: good engineer who doesn't know any geology]
So this one time at a journalism conference... by Heather Bryant
Why wall street should be viewed as a major national threat by Pan Martens and Russ Martens
Shale gas is not a revolution by Art Berman
Fake obesity experts by VegSource (2013 video)
[the video that got McDougall fired from the SF obesity conference]
Dr. McDougall - you're fired! Jeff Nelson (2016 video)
Amazon is trying to control the underlying infrastructure of our economy by Stacy Mitchell
American Pravda [illicit Project Veritas recording of CNN producer John Bonifield] Project Veritas
Why Jacobson and Delucchi's renewable scheme is a delusional fantasy by Alice Friedemann
The wheels come off Uber by Susan Webber
Plaintiffs file motion for protection in DNC fraud lawsuit by Zach Haller
US gov't proves loyalty to ISIS as bill to 'stop arming terrorists' gets only 13 supporters by Matt Agorist
Gauging the economic impact of Uber by Andrew Zaitlin
[bizarre Pacific bloom of pyrosomes] by Craig Welch
[Nonsense from the Wall Street Journal on oil -- an 'export boom' in a time when the US imports 47% of its oil!] by Art Berman
[not nearly enough batteries -- but with a lot more, it would work!] by Roger Andrews
California hits the solar wall by Alice Friedemann
Can we wee a bubble if we're inside the bubble? by Charles Hugh Smith
The fourth industrial revolution is fueled by oil [and coal!] by Irina Slav
Why the markets are overdue for a gigantic bust by Chris Martenson
Tesla's VP of solar products: competitors are, "kind of fwcked" by Kevin Flaherty
Why back to the land failed by Alice Friedemann, 2011
GMOs, glyphosate and infertility 2015 interview with Dr. Don Huber (worth listening to wise, old guys -- only 289 views + one shill comment :-{ )
GMOs and glyphosate and their threat to humanity 2014 interview with Dr. Don Huber
Disruptive Tech: electric airplanes could destroy the automotive industry [preposterous article, sensible comments] by Llewellyn King
Stop the insanity by PavewayIV
The significance of the head-chopper photo by Scott Creighton
No exit by James Howard Kunstler
Excess tomato emergency by John Day
"Still not enough" Matt Wuerker cartoon
New US residental solar capacity additions drop 17% by Joshua S. Hill
Strong natural gas prices and tight supply in 2017 [shale gas now 2/3 of US supply!] by Art Berman
Fast and furious by Jim Kavanagh
Hanford's nuclear option by Joshua Frank
Seth Rich, Craig Murray and the national security state by Mike Whitney
[Seth Rich stable after GSW surgery] by rhotYJAg (anon, claiming to be DC surgery resident, correct jargon, no confirmation, possibly poison-pizza)
CIA documents expose failed US torture methods by Ken Klippenstein and Joseph Hickman
Slums by Lebbeus Woods (2011)
Stephen Cohen: assault on Trump is national security threat interview by Tucker Carlson [N.B.: linking/agreeing w/this doesn't means I 'like Trump']
[while describing fascism, his only complaint is 'not enough growf'...] by David P. Goldman
Where Americans think North Korea is (overall 36% correct, post-grads 53%?!) NYT
Making sense of the "super fuse" scare by vineyard saker
[fiddling while Rome burns] by zerohedge
Cheap LG lithium batteries (0.16 kWh at 37V for $1.25) by Jehu Garcia
Comey fired for lying to Congress about clintonemail.com backup by Scott Creighton
The Yates/Clapper hearing proves "truth is treason in an empire of lies" by Scott Creighton
Half of Canadians have $200 or less in savings by zerohedge
[just a few oil and gas wells for ya...] by Kevin Hamm
All the plenary's men video by Best Evidence
[gas tax increase: about f---ing time! reuters
[spending down, except on RV's -- boomers w/too much money? boomers w/not enough? prepper madness? zerohedge
US student loan implosion [only 3% borrowers defaulting, but those have borrowed over 100K] by ironman
The trumpening accelerates by Scott Creighton
Defining labor economics [N.B.: 2008+ shrinkage in economy approx. corr. w/peak 'real' oil] by Jeffrey Snider
Juggling live hand grenades by Richard Heinberg
[amazing graph of growth of physicians vs. administrators] by Charles Hugh Smith
America is regressing into a developing nation for most people by Lynn Parramore
[spiking margin debt, probably approaching $1 trillion] by Wolf Richter
[retail stores, now failing, are *cheaper* to run than online stores] by Courtney Reagan
[study of my daily bike commute -- my 'tolerance demographic' is 'strong and fearless'] by Jeff Kucharksi
Who are we? by John Weber
Mother of all fake news [N.B.: it's for US-ians, not NK-ians] by Scott Creighton
Haley at AIPAC [MIGA] by Brandon Turbeville
The left's descent to fascism by Charles Hugh Smith
Entrepreneurship in the social and solidarity economy by Brian Davey
[vault 7 tools, private contractors, and you] by G.H. Eliason
[Trump-Bartiromo freak show] the real fly
America in the age of hypocrisy, hubris, and greed by jesse
[Tesla ponzi not inexplicable] by Wolf Richter
The commodification of education by Steve Keen
A heightened sense of vulnerability by Charles Hugh Smith
A critical assessment of the equal-environment assumption of the twin method for schizophrenia by R. Fosse, J. Joseph, and K. Richardson
The search for schizophrenia genes by Jonathan Leo
Renewable energy will not support economic growth [2015 -- see astoundingly clueless comments] by Richard Heinberg
Ungovernable country by Sven Henrich
No evidence required by Mike Whitney
Pentagon exercises free rein in global military escalation by Bill Van Auken
[pharmacy benefit managers: descent into pure parasitism] by David Dayen
Capitalism, not robots by Stephen Hawking
Despair by John Day
What's confusing you is the nature of their game by washington's blog
Doubt by Sven Henrich
['deaths of despair' crisis in America looks like early '90's Russia] by business insider
Wall street first by Michael Hudson
[first person] Hyper-reality by Keiichi Matsuda
[third person] She who measures by Veljko Popovic
[I always wanted to look at ads when I'm searching for a file...] by Kevin Flaherty
The United States of cognitive dissonance by C.J. Hopkins
Shale cost reductions are 10% technology and 90% industry bust by Art Berman
C-eye-eh in factory fresh iPhones ca. 2008 wiki leaks
Linh Dinh interview by Chris Hedges
Americans support increasing budget of most wasterful Federal department by Eric Zeusse
Down the collapse rabbit hole by reverse engineer
Dangerous risks [skip article, see comments by nyolci and goshawks] by Scott Humor
Banks are evil by Adam Taggart
Rule by thieves by John W. Whitehead
The whole point of the internet of broken things by washington's blog
Thanks to Obama doing away with habeas corpus, protesters can now be held indefinitely without trial by King Donald the Rich by Scott Creighton
Retirement interview with Michael Hudson
Snake oil from the NYT by b
'Twas capitalism that killed capitalism by Jeremy Grantham
The skeleton key to the rise of Trump by Dale Beran
The rich already have a universal basic income by Matt Bruenig
Carryn Owens' big moment by Scott Creighton
GE, Intel, AT&T team up to put cameras, mics in San Diego Reuters
US military megacity pacification by Scott Creighton
Exxon end game by Jeffrey St. Clair
Goose-stepping our way toward pink revolution by C.J. Hopkins
[Flynn timeline] by Carl Herman
[Cancel debt or face a Dark Age] by Michael Hudson
The blame game by reverse engineer
Fumbling toward collapse by James Kunstler
Opiod epidemic [80% of world opiods are consumed in the US] by Susan Webber
Odds-makers, C-eye-eh and treason by Ronald Thomas West
Rotting city on the Hill by Scott Creighton
[rain/drought update/history] by Bob Henson
The mother of all financial bubbles by Chris Martenson
Fake news and conflicts of interest by Sarah R. Runge
Spy vs. spy Victurus Libertas DHS person interview
The rise of the weaponized AI propaganda machine by Berit Anderson
Do taxes cover the cost to maintain our street? by Alice Friedemann
[the irony of hedgies disliking uncertainty -- supposedly their whole reason for being...] zerohedge
Trump forced to fire Flynn by Scott Creighton
Facebook link to Kucinich interview interview
[Trump caves -- some truth, overly melodramatic, Yeltstrump was not 'last hope', anti-Trump but esp. anti-Russian] by vineyard saker
Is Trump the new Boris Yeltsin? by Max Keiser
Oroville spillways compromised [good summary] by Bob Henson
[a privatized infrastructure program wouldn't have touched this] by Kriston Capps
The cell by Ronald Thomas West [incl's links to abiotic oil nonsense, and Linkin Park, blech...]
The uber-lie [pretty similar to the way I think] by Richard Heinberg
Trump blurts out the truth [the US, not Putin has done most of the bombing] by Bill Van Auken
[the world as The Onion: Trump upsets John Yoo, the torture guy!] by John Yoo
The archaeology of Detroit through Google Street View www.goobingdetroit.com
Fake resistance by Scott Creighton
More road potholes cause FedEx to use twice as many tires as they did 20 years ago by Leslie Josephs
Keystone pipeline is a risky bet on higher oil prices by Art Berman
President Trump's pro-globalist actions speak lounder than words by Joachim Hagopian
Denver cop resists magic document's awesome power by rancid honeytrap
Unrest is the only growth industry left by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Why our system is broken: cheap credit is king by Charles Hugh Smith [okie-dokie, 'cept no mention of net energy!]
Goldmanizing Donald Trump by Nomi Prins
Wanna know why trump didn't tell Sec. Mattis? [I'm still somewhat unconvinced] by Scott Creighton
What's really behind Trump's '7 countries'? [interesting, not fully convincing, Trump doesn't seem that smart] by Scott Creighton
How great the fall can be by John Michael Greer
Populism with an inhuman face by Jeffrey St. Clair
Hatred in our divided nation by James F
Trump killed the TPP? Bullshit by Scott Creighton
The protected privileged establishment vs. the working class by Charles Hugh Smith [decent analysis, missing key role US military terrorism in world economics]
Bullshit in the age of big data by Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West
The collapse of the left by Charles Hugh Smith
One does not hate when one can despise by Derrick Jensen
Despite OPEC production cut, another year of low oil prices is likely by Art Berman
The hate that dare not speak its name by John Michael Greer
Highway spending is eating the budget by Tony Dutzik
4 reasons Trump will quit by David Macaray
"Side hustle" as a sign of the apocalypse by Matt Ruby
8 men have as much wealth at half of the world [3.5 billion people] by Joseph Jankowski
Peter Michael Ketcham (NIST mathematician 1997-2011) on NIST investigation ae911truth
PDF: 2003 report for Deutsche Bank: iron-rich spherules made up 6% of dust in Deutsche Bank building next to WTC RJ Lee Group
Is Trump already finished? by Paul Craig Roberts [finally coming to his senses!]
Ten aircraft carriers aligned in a row by Paul Craig Roberts [good info, ignore PCR's right-ish pecadillos]
James Mattis [was on Theranos board] is a war criminal by Dahr Jamail
When fear comes by Chris Hedges
Jared Kushner fired me over Israel ten years ago by Philip Weiss
['PodShare' -- kewl name for a $1500/month bunk bed without a curtains because of ridiculous home/apt prices to support banks] by Kirsten Dirksen
The Trump bubble by Mike Whitney
Can Uber ever deliver? (part 6) by Hubert Horan
How is the facebook android app so diabolical? by Kevin Flaherty
The government didn't install cmaeras and microphones in our homes. We did. by Rick Falkvinge
Throwing rocks at the google bus Douglas Rushkoff (TODO: incl/ack impending energy problem)
Automated payment transaction tax The APT tax
There is no point of no return by Jada Thacker
Guns and chipotle by mybudget360
China has massive lead in high speed rail (in 10 years) wikipedia
Trump won because he is a fake by Brandon Smith (alt-right -- goes without saying I don't agree with everything)
[big business is big brother] by Scott Creighton
Derivatives problems by Pam and Russ Martens
Curing your clown-like car habit by mr money mustache (2013 rant)
The US prepares to sell off its oil reserves by Nick Cunningham
How I came to understand the CIA by Douglas Valentine
[stock buyback parasitism failing] by Wolf Richter
The pathology of trolls by Gilad Atzmon
[congress gives anti-aircraft missiles to ISIS -- what could go wrong?] by norwood
Fed revises reverse repo terms zerohedge
Ghost banning on social media by Peter Lavelle
Extinction is the end game by xraymike
Manufacturing normality by C.J. Hopkins
What has gone wrong with oil prices, debt, and GDP growth? by Gail Tverberg
[in 2015, US opiate-related deaths exceeded gun murders]
What is plagiarism? by Daniel Hopsicker
Why no one will even try to tame the US healthcare monster by Wolf Richter
The dangerous deception [Nov 25] by F. William Engdahl
Notes from "The pwerhouse: inside the invention of a battery to save the world" by Alice Friedemann
Vancouver housing market freeze by Wolf Richter
Understanding false claims about Uber's innovation and competitive advantages -- part 3 by Hubert Horan
[the 'swamp flea' swarm has simply jumped off the dead carcass of Hillary unto Trump -- grope and change] zerohedge
Of billionaires, globalists, and generals: President Trump's "miracle of Chile" cabinet takes shape by Scott Creighton
Companies clamor for cheap labor, Fed delivers by Wolf Richter
What's ahead in the Trump hate wars by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Permian giant oil field would lose $500 billion at today's prices by Art Berman
[transmissible vaccines: what could possibly go wrong?] by Megan Scudellari
This isn't going to work by Mike Whitney
Stop screeching about Trump: we are already a corporatist/fascist state by Scott Creighton
Ties that bind by reverse engineer
I would love to share in your incredulity by Thomas S. Harrington
Donald Trump wants to make the 1% even richer Michael Hudson interview
[some truth leaks through at naked capitalism] by fiver
[fake newsweek] by Walker Bragman and Shane Ryan [Oct 19]
Fake news about Trump continues by b
How half of America lost its f**king mind [written before election on 12 Oct 2016] by David Wong
The technosphere hiccups by Dmitri Orlov
The post virtual reality sadness by Tobias van Schneider
Poor liberals: you have nobody to blame but yourselves by David Penner
F your partisan "anti-racism" ohtarzie
Launching America's purple revolution by Wayne Madsen
The big split by John Steppling
Surging bond yields signalling pain not growth by Guy Manno
The Trump ploy by Linh Dinh
I want the left to see it. Please just see it [excellent] by Scott Creighton
You have the right to vote by Linh Dinh
Media hate-baiting by Scott Creighton
Hey Clinton fake-left dems by Scott Creighton
Beyond the numbers [2004-2014] -- people not in the labor force: whay aren't they working? by Stephen Hipple
Hillary's Big Tent is Obama's Grand Bargain on steroids by Glen Ford
[arctic sea ice animation 1984-2016 incl age of ice] NASA Goddard
Tim Kaine's unlikely biography by Daniel Hopsicker
These blast points on Hillary's campaign -- only the deep state is so precise [but Trump doesn't seem that anti-neocon to me] by Charles Hugh Smith
[WP/scientists 'bewildered' Zika psyop doesn't cause microcephaly, don't mention other causes like tdap+pregnancy and/or pyriproxyfen] by Dom Phillips and Nick Miroff
[cryptome: takes one to know one] by Sott Creighton
How power works by Chris Hedges
Citigroup exec gave Obama recommendation of Hillary for Secy of State and Eric Holder for Department of Justice by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The sharing economy is creating a Dickensian world by Satyajit Das
[the Druid woke up on the wrong side of the bed!] by John Michael Greer
The honesty and courage of Jill Stein by John V. Walsh
At the low end, homeowners are even more leveraged than they were during the bubble by Andrea Riquier
As wikileaks access to internet is severed, new clinton email bombshell emerges by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
It's time we divest from the pipelines -- the pipelines of film and television by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen
What's in a word by deathbycar
[the most important world trade documents are secret -- not mentioned once by Trumpillory] by Jon Queally
[why the US oil storage inventories -- now 'towering' at 1 month US usage -- are probably overestimated] by Matt Mushalik and Art Berman
Oops -- a world war! [avoided for now] by Dmitri Orlov
As it was always scripted by John Steppling
Max Blumenthal finds Abby Martin not guilty of 9/11 truth by Greg M
Internet privacy, funded by spooks by Yasha Levine
"Do not resist" -- movie review by Radley Balko
[man arrested at library talk for asking wrong question, then talk organizer defending him hauled off too] by Chip Gibbons
Comment on scientific 'growf' by David McFadden
The evil isn't lesser by Eric Draitser
Why oil prices will rise more and sooner than most believe by David Yager
Exploring the gap between business-as-usual and utter doom by Richard Heinberg
Shit happens by Marc Lewis
Does free college threaten US all-volunteer military? by Peter Van Buren
[Harvard scientists are cheap to buy! -- you can get one for just $16K] by C.E. Kearns, L.A. Schmidt, and S.A. Glantz
[nice diagram of the BP/GulfOfMexico/Macondo/DeepwaterHorizon oil well that blew out in 2010] by BK Lim
The pain you feel by Joe Brewer
California could hit the solar wall [for reference: I am not as pessimistic as Alice] by Alice Friedemann
Bicycles could have been by froggman
Inventory of existing conditions by froggman
What am I? (first of an 8-part series) by froggman
Life in outer space fantasies by Dave Cohen
What are our "best minds" doing? by Dave Cohen
Dead nation walking by Paul Craig Roberts
A thousand balls of flame by Dmitri Orlov
Equipping the future ["They are very careful around bicycles. I like that"] by John Day
What became of the left? by Paul Craig Roberts
Millenials are simply poor by Samantha Allen
What would Hunter Thompson do? by Jeffrey St. Clair
William Beale 1928-2016 (wimbi) obit
The Srebrenica massacre was a gigantic political fraud by Edward S. Herman (2013)
I'm a black ex-cop by Redditt Hudson
[the dancing Orlandos -- see comments] Orlando Country Sherrifs Dept
Blame austerity not immigration by Danny Dorling
Maidan Dallas (two blocks from the grassy knoll, ended with robot bomb!) by Scott Creighton
Labels the Ruling Class Preservation Society
Negative interest rates coming by Dmitri Orlov
[it's finally got a vestibulo-ocular system and could easily carry a gun] Boston Dynamics
Victims paymaster brought in [did 9/11, Virginia Tech, BP, Penn State, Aurora, Boston, Newtown] by Scott Creighton
State [NC] bans third party solar to protect corporate masters -- effectively killing homegronw renewable energy by Justin Gardner
Interview with David Steele Max Keiser (Mar 2015)
Something is going on by Justin Raimondo (right wing antiwar, some good points)
[carrying the injured part of the way back to the scene of the crime] by Jody Paulson
[green screen crying mom] by Scott Creighton
Orlando shooting dad a longtime CI A asset by Daniel Hopsicker
Radical chic and the US military by Justin Raimondo [a link doesn't mean I agree with everying in it]
Your job is to make it to the exits before they do by Dmitri Orlov
Hillary comes out as the war party candidate by Diana Johnstone
The US regime by Jeffrey Phillips (Nov 2015)
The human geomone project -- write by Jef D. Boeke et al.
Abandoned malls and vaporwave [the music is terrible!] by triggerexpert
False hope by Jay Taber
[back to the future: 1/4 of prisoners in 18th cent English prisons died of 'Gaol Fever' [=typhus] -- *per year*] by Spencer Woodman
[takes one to know one: war criminal awards another a prize]
Abrupt climate change: past, present, and future by James White (2014)
The stark realities of baked in catastrophes by xraymike
Next big crash coming [ignore the stuff on how gold will help :-} ] by SRSrocco
Who are the "We"? by reverse engineer
NIRP canceled! by Dmitri Orlov
Dear 'skeptics,' bash homeopathy and bigfoot less, mammograms and war more by John Horgan
[probably an external explosion] by Scott Creighton
How much net energy return is needed to prevent collapse? review of Lambert and Hall by Alice Friedemann
Door to door book review by Alice Friedemann
You won't like downsizing by Norman Padgett (Feb 2016)
[Theranos and the mighty Wurlitzer! -- see esp. end where rats leaving sinking ship] by Bruce Quinn
Egypt air and naval exercises by Scott Creighton
How much net energy return is needed to prevent collapse? review of Lambert and Hall by Alice Friedemann
Door to door book review by Alice Friedemann
You won't like downsizing by Norman Padgett (Feb 2016)
[Theranos and the mighty Wurlitzer! -- see esp. end where rats leaving sinking ship] by Bruce Quinn
Egypt air and naval exercises by Scott Creighton
The two faces of facebook zerohedge
Sanders supporters may not vote Hillary, but republicans [19%] will by Scott Creighton
Food system shock by Jeff Masters
21st century greater depression by Paul Majchrowicz
The real legacy of the regressive Barack Obama by Scott Creighton
The Fed sends a frightening letter to JPMorgan and corporate media yawns by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
The real reason by washington's blog
[great comment on the cloud] by Greg
["when will they run out of cash? when their hedges burn off"] by Wolf Richter
[the internet of not-your-thingz] by Kit Walsh
Uncut interview with Del Bigtree [director censored Tribeca film] youtube
Is US shale oil and gas production peaking? [yes] by Tad Patzek
University of California adopts policy linking anti-zionism to anti-semitism by Robert Mackey
The oil price -- some (Mar-16) observations and thoughts by Rune Likvern
Oil prices should fall, possibly hard by Art Berman
[young flee 'full retard' housing prices in Vancouver]
Harm/benefit analysis by Dmitri Orlov
[the effects of search result order on cognition and memory] by Robert Epstein
Surveillance capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff
[an utterly soul-destroying article about engineered pop music] Wharton
Trump-Sanders 2016 by Norman Ball
Central banks are about the leave fiat addicted stock markets in agony by Brandon Smith
The revenge of the lower classes and the rise of American fascism by Chris Hedges
So much for politics... by Dmitri Orlov (two in a row!)
The Technospheratu hypothesis by Dmitri Orlov
[see graph at bottom as gauge of recent Chinese capital flight] zerohedge
Less than enthusiastic by Paul Heft
John Young on Snowden by Tim Shorrock
The Faustian folly of QE by Steve Keen
Green? renewable? sustainable? by John Weber
Electrical constraint and inequality by John Weber
Thirty theses by Jason Godesky (2006)
You call this progress? by Tom Murphy (Oct2015)
The physics of energy and the cconomy by Gail Tverberg
My chicken of an EV by Tom Murphy (Sep2015)
Drinking the electric kool-aid [a not disinterested party -- lawyer for energy companies -- fails to see why we should do it anyway!] by Steve Huntoon
Collapse of shale gas production has begun by Steve St Angelo
Medical nemesis revisited by Bruce Levine
Zika: biggest news service in America absolutely clueless by Jon Rappoport
/
Luxury yacht of Microsoft's co-founder rips up 80% of endangered coral reef in Caribbean RT
Nature Rx by Nature Rx
Navy uses US citizens as pawns in domestic war games by Dahr Jamail
The deflation monster has arrived by Chris Martenson
Donald Trump jam Right Side Broadcasting Network
The ignored Rickman by Joe Giambrone
USA fibbing about the boats that IRan grabbed liveleak
Collapse early, collapse often by Dmitri Orlov
Who own the Fed? by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Law, order and social suicide by Robert C. Koehler
systemd's kid cousin come to stay IgnorantGuru (May2015)
What me worry about peak oil? by Art Berman
Meanwhile, over at the "New York" stock exchange... many lasers zerohedge
"Nobody could have possibly seen this comming" zerohedge
When the end of the bubble begins by David Stockman (my 3rd link to mr. trickle down...)
Econmic growth: how it works by Gail Tverberg
They're taking all of it by Christopher Ingraham (Sept 2014)
Why self-driving cars must be programmed to kill MIT technology review
SICARIO and America's dark new frontier [mind training for liberals] by lorenzoae
The price of the internet of things will be a vague dread of a malicious world by Marcelo Rinesi
[real info about trends in oil in storage] by John Kemp
[companies are cannibalizing themselves for the benefit of super rich people] by Karen Brettell, David Gaffen, and David Rohde
How sustainable is stored sunlight? by Kris De Decker
Rebound, backfire, and the Jevons Paradox by Tim Garrett (2014)
The physics of long-run global economic growth by Tim Garrett (2014)
[post-modern 'greens'] by Christopher Ketcham
For one of the wars I lost by Jack Balkwill
Looking back 10 years after peak oil by Verwimp
Overlooking the obvious with Noami Klein by Craig Collins
What does "going green" mean? by Dave Cohen
Shrinking the technosphere: iii by Dmitri Orlov
Shrinking the technosphere: ii by Dmitri Orlov
[cop called to help with glass cut, aims at dog, hits 4-year-old in leg, gets back in car and drives away] by Jonathan Vankin
[hi-tech effluents of oh so green San Franciscans] by Armando Flavio
Tick Tick Tick by James Howard Kunstler
No joy in Mudville by Dave Cohen
Climate change for adults by Dave Cohen
[out of control cops not even disciplined from Hebron, Indiana] cop dashcam
They come from Planet Klepto by Best Evidence
Marines test Google's latest military robot Martyn Williams
Pubic school students are the new inmates by John W. Whitehead
[police need to buy malpractice insurance, not have taxpayers bail them out] excellent suggestion in comments!
How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem by Gail Tverberg
The failure of fiat money by Adrian Kuzminski (2014)
The financial-industrial revolution's origin and destiny by Adrian Kuzminski
Parasites have devoured their hosts -- your retirement plan and the US economy by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Where is Neo? by Paul Craig Roberts
What if the "crash" is rigged? by Charles Hugh Smith
[domestic drones armed with rubber bullets and tasers] by Justin Glawe
Breaking the fear factor by Peter Koenig
Panic or blip? by Mike Whitney
[Fed policy and prostitution] SouthBay Research
Mile markers by John Whitehead
Tactics for taking down the police state by John Whitehead
[14 cops keeping Twitter safe from a one-legged homeless man] by Chaedria LaBouvier
Slow poison Ezekiel Kweku
Wall street Ponzi at work David Stockman (yes, I linked to
Mr. g*d@mn Trickle Down again)
Why humans need to ban artificially intelligent weapons by Bryan W. Roberts
[recent robots] MIT
The social costs of capitalism by Paul Craig Roberts (Reagan admin guy!)
Liberals and the new McCarthyism by Derrick Jensen
China [stays in] currency war zerohedge (also see
this comment)
Helium waste and 19th century logging by Kowality Jesus
Windows 10 is possiblhy the worst spyware ever made by Andy Patrizio
Billionaire blowhard exposes fake political system by Mike Whitney
Who runs the Fed? by Timothy A. Canova
[another pre-report I didn't know about] [posted 2008]
California megaflood [of 1861] by B. Lynn Ingran (2012)
The oceans are coming? by reverse engineer
Theory of power and organizational dynamics by Dave Pollard
The death of Sandra Bland (from Naperville!) by Henry A. Giroux
Inequality and growth by Dave Cohen
College is wildly exploitative by David Masciotra
Common ways to die by Daniel Drew
[why US police kill more people in one month than British police have killed in the entire 20th century] by Chris Hedges
Texas Natgas Massacre [relevant to natgas peaker plants for solar and wind]by Keith Schaefer
Marriage-backed securities by Daniel Drew
142 movie sequels currently in the works by Simon Brew and Rob Leane
End of the oil age by Norman Pagett
Asymptomatic transmission [by vaccinated carriers] and the resurgence of Bordetella pertussis by Benjamin Althouse and Samual Scarpino
Jade Helm psy op by Jay Dyer
Lethal autonomous weapons systems by Stuart Russell
Washington blows itself up by F. William Engdahl
Phoenix in the homeland by Douglas Valentine
A nation of snitches by Chris Hedges
Achilles heel by Dmitri Orlov
"Seymour Hersh was once one of the good guys" by Scott Creighton
Why we have an oversupply of almost everything by Gail Tverberg
Death squads in blue by Wayne Madsen
The Baltimore riots didn't start the way you think by Sam Brodey and Jenna McLaughlin
[a money face] by Bob Flanagan
The big lie: 5.6% unemployment by Jim Clifton
How Washington's assassination policy failed by Andrew Cockburn
[American strategy of tension] by Scott Creighton
The history and science of color revolutions, part 2 by Brandon Turbeville (24 Mar 2014)
"To be honest..." "something is very wrong" by Chris Martenson
Acting jobs available by Scott Creighton
Solar devices industrial infrastructure by John Weber
What Blackstone said by Wolf Richter
The future of freedom [catapulting underwear and Boston?] (long) interview with William Binney
Financialization equals insecurity by Charles Hugh Smith
From the nonprofit industrial complex with love by Cory Morningstar
Warren Buffett -- slumlord by Michael Krieger
American police killed more people in March (111) than the entire UK police have killed since 1900 (52) by Shaun King
Letting a warmonger rant [in the NY Slimes] by Lawrence Davidson
White supremacy and magic paper ohtarzie
Conversation with John Kiriakou by Douglas Valentine
[humans much worse than chimps] by Seymour M. Hersh
Police in the US kill citizens at over 70 times the rate of other first-world nations [e.g., 1000/year in US vs. 1/year in UK] by Matt Agorist
Only less will do by Richard Heinberg
The Fed give a giant FU to working class Americans by Thad Beversdorf
An epic battle between interest rates and oil price? by Rune Likvern
Ghosts of 9/11 by Daniel Hopsicker
Former official lied in Boston bombing cover-up by Daniel Hopsicker
[man handcuffed for hour after giving change to homeless man -- N.B. 11K comments on story] Houston news
Parasite [one HFT] turns on parasite [another HFT] zerohedge
The people's court of America by Scott Creighton
What is money and how is it created?--p.1 and
p. 2 by Steve Keen
Boomer doomers [good article, good discussion] reverse engineer
Black site in Chicago by Spencer Ackerman
[FBI pays sex offender 90K to give weapons and terror plan to 2 other mentally ill men] by Anthony Cave and Trevor Aaronson
Burying Vietnam by Christian Appy
Propaganda? What propaganda? I don't see no stinking propaganda! by Scott Creighton
If interest rates go negative by Kenneth Garbade and Jame McAndrews (NYFed)
The end of Guitar Center by Eric Garland
[real life tractor hacking vs. Interstellar] by Kyle Wiens
Beautiful misdirection by thinkst thoughts
The house of Saud by Pepe Escobar
"The customers don't have the f---ing money" by Tom Lewis
Why google made the NSA by Nafeez Ahmed
Kyle isn't the problem. Eastwood is by Scott Creighton
Latest FBI claim of disrupted terror plot deserves scrutiny by Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman
Ruin is our future by Paul Craig Roberts
No charges by Shaun King
David Morgan: oil derivatives explosion double 2008 sub-prime crisis ETF Daily News
Record oil demand even as price of oil declined SRSrocco
The real cause of low oil prices interview with Art Berman
The true relationship between crime and law enforcement by Douglas Valentine
The NYPD by Scott Creighton
[Canadian police gone wild -- break a Samaritan granny's leg, then charge her with assault!] CBC News
[US west coast Fukushima contamination peak likely 2015-16, east Pacific fallout equal to 80's peak from atmospheric testing -- i.e., low but measurable health effect, thousands of early deaths] by John N. Smith et al.
How facebook killed the internet by David Rovics
Final liquidation sale reverse engineer
No one except John Kirakou -- a torture whistleblower! -- is being held accountable for America's torture policy by Peter Van Buren
Citigroup wrote the wall street giveaway the house just approved by Erika Eichelberger
US taxpayers now on the hook for $300 trillion in derivatives zerohedge
Which "We" is this guy talking about? by Robert Barsocchini
[false confessions aren't a mistake -- they are the whole point] washington's blog
Agent provocateur draws gun on crowd after being outed at Berkeley protestsby Scott Creighton
We are a society of captives by Chris Hedges
Rage against the dying of the lights by Tom Lewis
John McCain trying to use NDAA to give Tonto National Forest to a British mining company [bring on "Deepwater Horizon" in the Grand Canyon] by Scott Creighton
[despite progress, Google TM bails on renewable energy] by Ross Koningstein & David Fork
How many police shootings a year? by Wesley Lowery
National one-year [2011] summary police shootings by Jim Fisher
Why don't they save? reverse engineer
Mexico in turmoil
Paper money is unfit for a world of high crime and low inflation [and causes trouble if/when interest rates go negative...] Kenneth Rogoff
The Kafkaesque State of the Union by Scott Creighton
US oil dependency on Middle East has hardly changed since 2007 by Matt Mushalik
The CIA and drugz by Douglas Valentine
President flim-flam by Mike Whitney
No Yellen put? [esp. second to last para relevant to pensions] by Wolf Richter
I've read the NY Mag Omidyar article so you don't have to ohtarzie
The delayed Bakken "Red Queen" by Rune Likvern
Matt Taibbi quits by Scott Creighton
The Ann M. Ravel FEC tempest in a teapot story by Scott Creighton
[but public investment dropping despite record low interest rates] NYT
Electrified car sales stall as buyers back away from hybrids by Charles Fleming
In search of oil realism by D. Ray Long
Windows 10 -- we finally fixed everything Barbarian Capital
Debian is pwned by the NSA IgnorantGuru (Apr2014)
How cryptography affects your life IgnorantGuru (Feb2014)
GTK fesses up -- this ain't for you IgnorantGuru (Jan2014)
Misremembering Gary Webb ohtarzie
The artists' road to serfdom: the commoditization of creative content by Charles Hugh Smith
[upgrade now so ET can phone home...] github
The Intercept's Ryan Devereaux is no Gary Webb ohtarzie
[biggest 'reverse repo' to make banks appear solvent on quarterly report day] zerohedge
Ready or not by Chris Martenson
Low oil prices: sign of a debt bubble collapse? by Gail Tverberg
Thoughts on purchasing power by Steven Ludlum
US academic hit list by Ali Abunimah
Indiana grandmother suffers violent SWAT raid after a neighbor uses her wireless internet policestateusa
['smart' Harvard *ssholes illegally charge poor people 600% interest via offshore company] by Zeke Faux
[cops beat up deaf man for not following verbal orders, get cleared of wrongdoing] by Phil Cross
Soaring oil debt by Andrew Nikiforuk
[going to a demo? watch out for the 'lethal overwatch teams'] by Thomas Gaist
I blame the central banks by Chris Martenson
Provacateur busted throwing briks at Ferguson police yootoob
Smearing a progressive website by Lance Tapley
CNN goes full retard in Ferguson by Scott Creighton
"Magic bullet theory" supporting doc produced Mike Brown autopsy by Scott Creighton
Will they shoot? by Peter Frase
Looters by William Banzai7
Canadian robot producer first to denounce killer robots by Nicholas West
Philip Agee and Edward Snowden: a comparison rancid honeytrap
Ferguson police equipped as though they are occupyng Afghanistan or Iraq RT
Escaping a failed state by Cosme Caal
Justice corrupted by Lawrence Davidson
[total US power consumption peaked in 2006] by Erico Matias
The revival of Mountrail's "old" sweet spots by Rune Likvern
ABC airs Gaza bombing devastation images -- says it's in Israel RT
The emperor's new clothes: the naked truth about the American plice state by John W. Whitehead
Shades of 1930 by Pam Martens
Excluding oil, the US trade deficit has never been worse [ignore Obama bashing -- would have occurred anyway] zerohedge
It was all about the pitchforks by Pam Martens
Greenwald reneges, cryptome cashes in by Scott Creighton
People on the move by Dmitri Orlov
[rioting or plus size Depends?] by Kevin Flaherty
State of the union zerohedge
Stocks fail to soar despite global geopolical risk contagion [snark!] zerohedge
Psaki questioned about Kiev junta phosphorus bombs -- she responds "by Russia?" presser
With Cantor down, which other politicians has Goldman invested in? zerohedge
"Thomas Fallows is no different than any other techie sterilizing San Francisco" indybay
Mine resistant ambush protected military vehicle for ...Indiana
The lies grow more audacious by Paul Craig Roberts
Housing bubble 2 already collapsing for the 99% by Wolf Richter
Ordinary food will be the future of medicine by T Colin Campbell
Why are Russia and China (and Iran) paramount enemies for the US ruling elite? by John V. Walsh
Rachel @Maddow teaches redacting ohtarzie
Subprime [125% interest] business loans securitized and sold by Michael Krieger
Sorry America, Ukraine isn't all about you by Mark Ames [catty as usu.]
Imperial decay ClassWarFilms
[did the Fed fake Belgium buying 30% of its GDP in US treasuries in 3 months?] by Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler
Moneybag logic by Dmitri Orlov
'Caspar' the friendly NSA drone (!) Disney
When $1.2 trillion in foreign bank funds in the US dissipate by Wolf Richter
Explosive hidden leverage threatens to blow up the markets by Wolf Richter
Biggest credit bubble in history cracks by Wolf Richter
This land isn't your land by Peter Van Buren
A critique of Piketty's solution by Charles Hugh Smith
[computer says no -- he's lucky he wasn't black] by Tim Cushing
Pro-Russian mayor of Kharkiv shot in back while swimming [prev target of Swiss govt sanctions] zerohedge
The Strangelove effect by John Pilger
The coming nightmare of wall street-controlled rental markets by Rebecca Burns, Michael Donley and Carmilla Manzanet
[damn, already depressed thinking these very things, and advice no help since already out of the country] by Dmitri Orlov
Albuquerque police execute a homeless man in cold blood cop video
How much war does Washington want? by Paul Craig Roberts
[clearcut caused Snohomish mudslide that kills 100 people] by Mike Baker, Ken Armstrong, and Hal Bernton
Facebook and Monsanto: top shareholder are identical by Jon Rappoport
Fisher outs bubble ben: QE was a massive intended gift to the 1% by Lee Adler
[all Pussy Riot, all the time! -- see Churkin's comments :-} ] Radio Free Europe
[this is what a police state looks like -- time to pull back before it's too late! by Travis Gettys
Target the dollar by Wolf Richter
The age of Homo automotivis by Yves Engler
A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America power by the repo industry by Shawn Musgrave
Glenn Greenwald and the myth of income inequality by Douglas Valentine
Who gets thrown under the bus next time? by Charles Hugh Smith
[this is what a police state looks like -- time to pull back before it's too late! by Travis Gettys
Target the dollar by Wolf Richter
The age of Homo automotivis by Yves Engler
A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America power by the repo industry by Shawn Musgrave
Glenn Greenwald and the myth of income inequality by Douglas Valentine
Who gets thrown under the bus next time? by Charles Hugh Smith
The absorption of matt taibbi by First Look by rancid honeytrap
Imprisoned CIA whistleblower threatened with 'diesel therapy' for his blog by Kevin Gosztola
Ex-cop acquitted of killing homeless man chased out of restaurant by angry residents RT
Omidyar's first look the rancid honeytrap
The exquisitely reengineered frankenstein housing monster by Wolf Richter
['bug' in Google Chrome leaves mic on, sends speech-rec'd text back to website after you have left it] by Mary-Ann Russon
Jobs by Reverse Engineer
Silicon valley by Dave Cohen
No easy way out by Scott Creighton
Risks known early on emerge only after big pharma makes it money by Martha Rosenberg
The fascist origin and essence of privatization by Eric Zuesse
Overthrow the speculators by Chris Hedges
Nsa-Ant-Catalog [the NSA is just a bunch of script kiddies!] scribd
Dense fog turns into toxic smog by Jim Quinn (right-wing, good data)
Bubble 2.0 by Mark Hanson
Vladimir and the Grey Lady by Robert Bonomo
$95 billion in excess liquidity by madbraz
Reverse repos [ZH comment] by madbraz
The logic behind the fed's overnight reverse repo facility by madbraz
The cult of the uniform by Laurence M. Vance (seriously paleo, seriously anti-war!)
Stretch goals by Scott Creighton
Ennui quicksand by Buzzard
[war on drugs gone insane] AP
The origins of the Snowden good whistleblower/bad whistleblower motif rancid honeytrap
Too rich to be punished by Daisy Luther
Cass Sunstein: fixer [excellent article] by Scott Creighton
Crowded [US] spent fuel pools [1/3 US pop. lives within 50 miles of a spent fuel pool] by David Wright
[Argonne nat lab experimental nuclear reactor core explosion from 1954] Argonne
The informants by Trevor Aaronson
HFT algos force institutional investors off-exchange zerohedge
CIA tie reported in Mandela arrest by David Johnston, 1990, NYT
Irradiation of food and packaging: an overview (2004) US FDA
A note on econmic growth by Dave Cohen
[big pharma dukes it out with big food -- inside your brain] by Brian Orelli
Who is watching the watch lists? by Susan Stellin
The nest of the unspeakable by Robert Bonomo
[bankers threaten negative interest rates] zerohedge
The 9/11 consensus points 9/11 consensus panel
[baseband processor OS] by Thom Holwerda
[the NSA on a tear] by Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani
['educational exercises' (indeed!) complete with police evidence-planting] by Tim Cushing
Our invisible revolution by Chris Hedges
[Detroit public pensions cut to 1/6 of their original promised size] by Joseph Lichterman and Bernie Woodall
Brand X by Douglas Valentine
US gov tech: lousy at health care, great at flying death robots by Will Bunch
Let's get this class war started by Chris Hedges
Glenn cashes in by Scott Creighton
Lid comes off Fukushima Daiichi by Andrew Dewit and Christopher Hobson
Two views of our current economic and energy crisis by Gail Tverberg
9 mind-blowing facts about money Washington's blog
Meet former GOP public relations flak by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine
Our oil problems are not over by Gail Tverburg
Breaking American exceptionalism [but I still have no interest in seeing it :-} ] by Pepe Escobar
The sparks of rebellion by Chris Hedges
Seyour Hersh on Obama, NSA, and the 'pathetic' American media [no worse than the beeb!] by
[repost of 6 Aug 2011 translation of interview on Pakistani National TV] by Paul Craig Roberts
Waging progress by Steve Ludlum
The act of killing Chris Hedges article, Scott Creighton intro
[faster than a speeding photon] Nanex
"Peal oil demand" = Peak oil by Richard Heinberg
House votes to 'taper' food stamps [while Fed keeps banker stamps] zerohedge
Never stop running, napalm girl by Ray Jason
The SSRIs line is disinfo by Scott Creighton
[PDF!] The chemical attacks on east Ghouta to justify military right to protect by Mother Agnes Mariam
The real Fukushima danger washington's blog
Top 1% take biggest income slice on record (PDF) by Emmanuel Saez
W T C explosions by Mike Rivero
Siesmic signals emitted from New York on September 11, 2001 [PDF!] by Dr. Andre Rousseau, Nov 2012
Take your drip and stick it the rancid honeytrap
[the loyal Syrian opposition Obama is supporting] USAToday (!), Jan 2013 via the Assyrian International New Agency
[bankers done wild] by Michael Sallah, Debbie Cenziper, and Steven Rich
Flow chart of Common Core by Scott Creighton
This is not our values [children that Obama killed] by Scott Creighton
This war too is a lie by David Swanson
Striking Russia through Syria by Linh Dinh
Depravity redefined: selling US slaughter in Syria by Tony Cartalucci
Is Putin really planning to bomb Saudi? [probably not] by Mark Ames [link unlocked for 1 day]
Stopping Barry O'Bomber's rush to war by Ralph Nader
Why I hate Ubuntu by manu
Lindsay Graham [Repub, South Carolina] predicts nuclear explosion in Charleston Harbor if we don't attack Syria [terr'ists must hate the way of life in Charleston] CBS Charlotte
The debate IS the terrorism by Scott Creighton
Meanwhile, at John Kerry's house 12160
If the British can stop their government from waging war in Syria, why can't we? [indeed!] by Joseph Palermo
Coping skils by Dough Fasching
Who's holding the 'shit-bag' now? by Julian Assange
Welcome to the housing recovery: rents are rising, incomes are falling by Michael Krieger
[utterly preposterous secret 9/11 trial where even defendents not allowed in court]by Carol Rosenberg
SWAT cop says American neighborhoods are "battlefields" as dangerous as Afghanistan by Radley Balko
Reflections on trust by Ken Thompson, 1984
[intense terrahertz pulses cause double-stranded breaks in DNA in human skin tissue, considered as chemotherapy] Titova et al. (2013)
Stumbling blocks to figuring out the real oil limits story by Gail Tverberg
Pathetic little eyes by Scott Creighton
US wars, dehumanization, and me by Brandon Toy
Bradley Manning's statement transcribed by Alexa O'brien
"This American Life" whitewashes US crimes in Central America, wins Peabody Award by Keane Bhatt
[there's nothing that SWAT teams aren't good for!] by pajoly
Communities that abide -- part 4: causes of failure Kropotkin quote
[she swears she didn't make it up -- update: it was the employer!] by Michele Catalano
Hastings crash video should end distraction by Scott Creighton
The warrior state VICE
Rise up or die by Chris Hedges
US oil demand peak was in 2007 by Matt Mushalik
Snowden, Hastings & Barret Brown By Jill Simpson and Jim March
We must grasp reality to build effective resistance interview with Chris Hedges
[comment on out ofband access] by Rob Frei
[zero-based graph of US oil rig count -- *7* times the number of rigs caused a small bump in US oil production] by Stuart Staniford
Communities that abide -- part 3 by Dmitri Orlov
Graphene, the 'miracle material' may be deadly to humans by James Burgess
Obama's expanding surveillance universe by Alfred W. McCoy
Salon interview with Radley Balko
"Once a town gets a SWAT team you want to use it"
interview with Radley Balko
Corporate profits and employment: discontinuity started in 2001 St Louis Fed
Summary of ecology in four parts:
1: plants produce what others eat ,
2: net productivity is zero ,
3: industrial agrofuels not viable ,
4: Macondo blowout childs play compared to industrial agriculture by Tad Patzek
The preemptive revolution to stave off the real one by Scott Creighton
[US 'color' -- hadn't really thought of that!] by John Michael Greer
Insightful comment on obfuscatory article by Null Hypothesis, on Adam Brandt summary
Rich people don't create jobs by Nick Hanauer
NYT warning: trust authorities on Boston bombing, or you're nuts by Russ Baker
I am Bradley Manning iam.bradleymanning.org
Buy the rumor by Steve Ludlum
How Microsoft shattered Gnome's unity with Windows 95 by Liam Proven
Graham Fuller, uncle Ruslan, the CIA and the Boston bombings by F. William Engdahl
[Surly's excellent last week rant] by Surly
Cops beat woman for filming another beating by Ryan Abbott
[Carla del Ponte attacked for outing US sarin false flag in Syria] by Justin Raimondo
Bernanke's neofeudal rentier economy by Charles Hugh Smith
[Muslims most against killing civilians] by Jim Naureckas
"I am getting a little kickback from the Museum and may need to remove the panels to help keep the peace" email to John Young
Meet the Chechens by Dmitri Orlov
[post-9/11 'homeland security' bigger than the New Deal] by Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman
Boston bombers' uncle married daughter of top CIA official by Daniel Hopsicker
FBI's history of handling "terror suspects" live explosives by Tony Cartalucci
FOr the price of the IRaq war, the US could have gotten halfway to a renewable power system by David Roberts
Women's health and children's health by Bill Gardner
Are affordable ground-source heat pumps on the horizon? [no] by Martin Holladay
[Hamilton comes clean] by James Hamilton
More of the same by Steve Ludlum
Terminal capitalism by Roger Baker
Wealth inequality in America by politizane
Peak patriarchy by Guy McPherson
The confiscation scheme planned for US and UK depositors [deposits are now bank stock!] by Ellen Brown
Flash crash (6 Apr 2010) mystery solved Nanex
[bill to prevent helium shortage -- I'm sure the remaining helium will read it carefully...]
States robbing from education to pay for highway expansions [seriously stoopid!] by Angie Schmitt
A truly devastating graph on state higher education spending by Jordan Weissmann
[vaccinate your kid for... anthrax?!] by Reuters
A century from now concrete will be nothing but rubble by Alice Friedemann
When agriculture stop working by Dan Allen
[tapeworm {an insult to tapeworms!} deserts sinking ship] by Katherine Burton, Stephanie Ruhle, and Zaharcy R. Mider
Where there's no government by Dmitri Orlov
Inequality is much worse than you think by pooja
40% of Americans now make less than 1968 minimum wage by Dave Johnson
[the highway of death in a war based on false premises] by Micky Z
Understanding Money, 1996 (clear thinking, summary of original 1994) by John H. Hotson
Charles Murray S.H.A.M.E by Magan Mcardle
Cars and robust cities are fundamentally incompatible by Chris McCahill and Norman Garrick
[PTSD, guilt -- *and* a bunch of people in the homeland looking the other way] by Jacob Hornberger
Losses and liars by Surly
[low inventory explanation #1: banks can now be landlords] Federal Reserve
[low inventory explanation #2: banks can hold foreclosures for 10 years] U.S. Code
The movie "Zero Dark Thirty" wishes it was but isn't by Peter Lee
[some vaccines *are* toxic...] Reuters
[Ran Prieur now says, don't worry, be happy] by Ran Prieur
Torture is trivial in the contect of other crimes by Robert Jensen
How did the gates of hell open in Vietnam? rev by Jonathan Schell
Aaron Swartz keynote speech [transcribed from from May 21, 2012 speech]
"So, just read the card?" the Green Mountain Boys
Helium prices soar as supplies shrink by Anna M. Tinsley
Scientific evidence for WTC collapse by Joel v.d. Reijden
Torture, torture everywhere by Andy Worthington
Extirpation nation by Dan Allen
Ubuntu spyware: what to do? by Richard Stallman
Town, section, range by Tim de Chant
Elites will make Gazans of us all by Chris Hedges
The real danger of "Obamacare": insurance company takeover of health care by Nomi Prins
The fiscal cliff is a mole hill compared to this by Shah Gilani
Petraeus' fall -- late but welcome justice by b
Big coal in big trouble as coal production costs rise by Dave Roberts
The big deal about US energy self-sufficiency by Art E. Berman
Neocon WaPo editors endorse Obama moon of alabama
1976 discussion with M. King Hubbert [compare the intellectual level of this discussion with pitiful modern teevee 'documentaries'] American Hospital Association video
The end of privacy rights -- the Stasi-fication of the US William Binney interview
Is climate change a euphemism for growth? by Mary Logan
Why the American Raj is under siege by Eric Margolis
High-priced fuel syndrome by Gail Tverberg
Systemic destabilization in recent American history by Peter Dale Scott
"Crisis initiation is tough": lobbyist suggests false flag to start Iran war Patrick Clawson
How do you take your poision? by Chris Hedges
The waning of the modern ages by Morris Berman
[sure looks like peak oil for the west] email to Mish from Jame Beck, EIA
The 11th anniversary of 9/11 by Paul Craig Roberts
The uncoolness of doom by old horseman
"It's going to be used for chasing people across the desert" BBC
Sustainable web design by Pete Markiewicz
Could Microsoft be this cunning? by Kevin Flaherty
Man who armed Black Panthers was FBI informant by Seth Rosenfeld
How the American university was kllled in five easy steps by Debra Leigh Scott
Beneath the bottom of the barrel by William Rivers Pitt
Sexual dimorphism, power structures and environmental consequences of human behaviors by A.G. Gelbert
[suddenly, peak oil is common sense 20 years late...] by Greg Gordon
Justice for all by Alison Weir
Malware goes pro by John C. Dvorak
Dire train by Linh Dinh
How the economy works by John Kozy
[we have met the enemy and he is somebody else...] by Nicholaus Arguimbau
[little eichmanns will be "f****g cool" for the homeland, too] by William Grigg
The gentleperson's guide to forum spies by A
Slouching toward Nuremburg? by Morris Berman
The dawn of the great Caifornia energy crash [CA spends 10x as much on public transit as cars] by Gregor Macdonald
Factory farming a Communist plot? by Eric Curren
[marines comming to domestic streets] AP
Sustainable (comic) by Randall Munroe
The movement for involuntary complexity by Dmitri Orlov
The last ASPO conference [see comments] by Luis de Souza
Look at the charts by Henry Blodget
The coup of 2012 by Frank Morales
The new macbook pro: unfixable, unhackable, untenable by Kyle Wiens
Capital controls by Reverse Engineer
Cyber spy program Flame compromises key Microsoft security system by Lee Ferran and Rhonda Schwartz
Zombie apocalypse real-time tracker, disaster preparedness simulation and dispatch form by zerohedge
BBC News uses Iraq photo to illustrate Syrian [Houla] massacre by Hannah Furness
Concepts of money and capital Reverse Engineer
War pigs by Jim Quinn
Cyclops and Rambo by Linh Dinh
Clean energy as culture war by Dave Roberts
[1 professor, 250,000 students] by Kevin Flaherty
Facebook bankers secretly cut Facebook's revenue estimates in middle of IPO roadshow by Henry Blodget
Blown up election by Linh Dinh
[FB: omputer vs. computer] by zerohedge
If cops can't taze a pregnant woman, the terrorists will win by William N. Grigg
The great facebook con by Henry Shivley
The inequality speech that TED won't show you by Jim Tankersley
Idiocy as WMD by Linh Dinh
Cornucopians in space by Gregor Macdonald
My neighbors use too much energy by Tom Murphy
How many people died for you eight-hour day? by Surly
Make love, then war by Linh Dinh
The middle class hasn't disappeared. it's just sliding toward the bottom by Paul Buchheit
Liberals and their situational ethics by Lawrence Davidson
Five reasons why the very rich have NOT earned their money by Paul Buchheit
Know thy enemy by Linh Dinh
U.S. filmaker repeatedly detained at border by Glenn Greenwald
How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses by Naomi Wolf
Scott Henderson trio in Tokyo! [tuned down to Eb] youtube
The eagle and the lion by John Michael Greer
A modest health care proposal by Dmitri Orlov
[3% of boys in Utah are autistic] by Brian Moench
Why baseload power is doomed [and good riddance!] by Chris Nelder
[gang killing by paramilitary police run amok: breathing while black] by Michael Powell
Trained for success, bred to be eaten by Dmitri Orlov
Of God, peak oil and turkeys... by Steve Ludlum
Drunk soldiers have fun by murdering Afghan people [it's not terrorism when we do it -- it's an 'isolated incident'] by b
[copper thieves in Chicago -- burning the furniture] by Ameet Sachdev
Roger Boisjoly dies by Ralph Vartabedian
Stratfor overview wikileaks [by intelligence infighting? -- update: no, the FBI!]
The straw at the bottom of the cliff by Dmitri Orlov
Manipulating reality; hurting democracy by Lawrence Davidson
[coming to a drone near you] by Jeff Hecht
Kurt Haskell's statement by Kurt Haskell
Killing to pop music by Linh Dinh
[US peak oil in one graph -- gasoline deliveries] EIA
Why is gasoline consumption tanking? by Charles Hugh Smith
The cancer in Occupy by Chris Hedges
After the gold rush [shale gas] by Art E. Berman
Bilderberg steering committee member is Ron Paul's biggest campaign donor by Noah Rothman
Unadjusted consumer credit soars by most since peak of credit bubble, Aug07 Tyler Durden
More on Ron Paul by Paul Craig Roberts
[big pharma and the CDC vs. the breasts of the third world] CDC
[cost for one F-35: 1/6 of a *billion* dollars] Russia Today
Last days, last words by John Rember
Bilderberg steering committee member is Ron Paul's biggest campaign donor by Noah Rothman
Unadjusted consumer credit soars by most since peak of credit bubble, Aug07 Tyler Durden
[big pharma and the CDC vs. the breasts of the third world] CDC
[cost for one F-35: 1/6 of a *billion* dollars] Russia Today
Last days, last words by John Rember
[you can buy a cheap whore congress-worm for 5K!] by Lena Groeger
Personal choices in uncertain time by John Day
Why to we ignore the civilians killed in American wars? by John Tirman
Nordic whoring by David Macaray
Fallujah remembered by a US marine by Ross Caputi
war is a crime by David Swanson
[predator drones come to the homeland] by
Each star marks a US military base, but just so we're clear: Iran is threatening us; we're not threatening them by earth_first
America is back on Colbert report
A million gardens by Stan Goff
Meet the reptiles by Mark Ames
Comfortably numb by James Quinn
In case you were wondering why we keep bailing out wall street... by Henry Blodget
['our thing' in Libya] by Franklin Lamb
The first steps in reforming the US financial and tax system by Michael Hudson
Mother nature reveals her energy descent action plan (humor) by Tim Murray
Here's the army ranger the Oakland police attacked [ruptured spleen, internal bleeding] washington's blog
Same sex wedding news [one story all the time] Conan
Hunting witches in the 'war on terror' by Mary Beaudoin
Suburbia death watch by Steve Ludlum
[2-tour Iraq war veteran protestor's skull fractured by Oakland police head shot] by Linette Lopez and Robert Johnson
A recipe for success by Kevin Flaherty
Stranded resources by Tom Murphy
"My wife and Guy are fearless ... I wish I could say the same about myself"by Mike Sliwa
Message to the occupy wall street movement by Pilar
Is it a "colored revolution"? by Michel Chossudovsky
Deomonstrators confront Mayor Bloomberg at Manhattan restaurant dailybail
Architectural myopia: designing for industry, not people by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A Salingaros
[more 'unplugged incubator babies' debunked] CNN
DARPA's ghost in Apple's machine by Kevin Flaherty
Don't be a PV efficency snob by Tom Murphy
[surveillance goes both ways -- let's keep it that way!] dailybail
[Brezinski interview] MSNBC
The colossal deceit known as the underwear bomber case by Lori Holt
The triumph of capitalism: jobless nations by John Kozy
Cowards and presstitutes by Paul Craig Roberts
Microsoft's desperation to catch Apple in the crackpad race to the land of dumb and dumber by Kevin Flaherty
What Solyndra's bankruptcy means for silicon valley solar startups by Todd Woody
A huge housing bargain -- but not for you by Roger Arnold
The FBI vs. antiwar.com by Justin Raimondo
U.S. has nearly doubled air attacks on Libya in past 12 days by Larry Shaughnessy
The twilight of meaning by John Michael Greer
Solving the mystery of WTC7 Architects and Engineers
[WTF Canadians?] by CBC News Canada
Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012 by Paul Farrell
Police say they can detain photogrphers if their photogrphas have 'no apparent esthetic value' by Mike Masnick
Renewable energy zealots must understand 'net energy' by Megan Quinn Bachman
[tasers kill 1 person a week in US] Amnesty 2008
Obama is implementing plans for war throughout the Middle East created 10 years ago by the neocons by Washington's Blog
A nation-sized battery by Tom Murphy
A very secret agent by Chris Cook
10 of today's hottest jobs: proof that America is doomed by Kevin Flaherty
100 MPG on gasoline: could we really? by Tom Murphy
Inside story on the missing tapes by Susan Lindauer
Why do the police have tanks? [enemy combatants in your own home] by Rania Khalek
Captured zeta leader: we've purchased weapons from the US government itselfby Maria Andrade
[we said it *was* about oil in 2003...] AFP
The president, the media, and oil supply by Roger Blanchard
[TSA searches grandma's Depends] by Lauren Sage Reinlie
[go Texas!] by Jim Forsyth
Why I am part of U.S. boat to Gaza by Jane Hirschmann
Gaza and American 'security' by Ray McGovern
Sermon to the sharks by Dmitri Orlov
2010 oil story: drawing down the inventories by Gregora Macdonald
Weiner's progressive defenders blind themselved to the rightwing views that may now ensure his survival by Scott McConnell
Productive vs unproductive: manufacturing vs. financialization [great summary of main points] by Charles Hugh Smith
Rise of the second-string psychopaths by David B. Schwartz
Congressional research service confirms big banks borrowed cash for next to Nothing, then lent it back to the federal government at much higher rates Washington's blog
[creeping police state] SWAT tactics are killing us by William Heuisler
[creeping police state] [home burned down by CS-gas-cannister-shooting police robot directed by heat-sensors and GPS tracking detecting someone inside -- but he got away (!)] by Michael Owens
[creeping police state] another day with the blue shirts in Phoenix rynomaz111
[creeping police state] What were you guys thinking? Why did you kill him? by William Norman Grigg
[creeping police state] [2 burly DC cops slam a drunk *parapelegic* man face down onto the pavement] incognitamundi
He shows the president who's boss [US Congress poses as the Syrian parliament] by Justin Raimondo
The sexual underground of bankers by Danny Schechter
Engineers request permission to speak freely regarding world trade building 7 Washington's blog
Does a CIA "asset" own the bin laden compound? by Joe Wolverton II
Housing in North America: peak oil's primary victim by Gregor Macdonald
[PDF] Still no rigorous hard data for saftey of X-Ray airport passenger scanners by J.W. Sedat et al.
Bin Laden's death won't end war on terror until Americans understand the threat was always us by Susan Lindauer
A deception too far by Michael Rivero
China: the new Bin Laden by Paul Craig Roberts
The agendas behind he Bin Laden news event by Paul Craig Roberts
TSA feels up Miss America youtube
10 doomsday trends America can't survive by Paul B. Farrell
Ikea's third world outsourcing adventure -- in the US by Andrew Leonard
Ten years on the road, part one by Michael Yates
Here's the setup for the con of the decade by Charles Hugh Smith
[hedge fund manager/filth John Paulson earned $5 billion 2010 -- $13 million/day -- and paid only 15% tax -- for doing what?] the Daily Bail
Eyeballing John Rizzo by John Young
[Gerald blowing off some steam :-} ] by Gerald Celente
Super-rich CEOs are killing your retirement by Paul B. Farrell
Will we be able to maintain and replace our energy and transporation infrastructure in a post-peak oil world? by Jeffrey J. Brown
The psychopathology of pop hatred the Daily Bell
"They have the money and we need to get it back" by Henry Blodget
New Civil War erupts led by super-rich, GOP by Paul B. Farrell
"We can be grateful..." by Larry Kudlow, scumbag
Wikileaks, Appelbaum, Lamo, Project Vigilant Anon posted by Alan Taylor
Four time bombs by Paul B. Farrell
[full-power full-body medical X-ray airport scanners/cancer-inducers on the way] by Matt Johnston
A national myth: our rich retirees by Susan Jacoby
Driving mad by Linh Dinh
[no-eat list] by Christopher Elliot
Government back doors by Nate Anderson
Don't let Wisconson divide us ... conservatives and liberal AGREE about the important things Washington's blog
Growing army defections reported in Libya by Jason Ditz
Iraq is no more by David Swanson
The real reason Bernanke funnels trillions into wall street banks by Graham Summers
[71 year old Ray McGovern roughed/cut up by Hillary's thugs, while standing silently at her preposterous talk about 'free speech in Egypt'!] youtube
Brooking's "Which path to Persia?" by Tony Cartalucci
No one curious what CIA is working on at the moment in Egypt? by Jay Janson
Hard lessons from the HuffPost sale by Robert Parry
A walk on the dark side by Mark H. Gaffney
[credit where credit due: 9 freshmen Tea partiers defeat Obomber-supported Patriot Act re-authorization!] by Jason Ditz
Can we do that here? by Johann Hari
The status quo unravels by Steve Ludlum
The US and Europe aren't "the right markets": does big oil have resources to carry out your plan? by Nicholas C. Arguimbau
An immodest proposal by E.R. Bills
How a giant weapons maker became the new Big Brother by William Hartung
Forbes' rich list of nonsense by Michael Tobis and Scott Mandia
[households vs. corporations] Contrary Investory
We're off the rails Malcolm Gladwell video on income inequality
De facto decriminalization of elite financial fraud by William Black
[leaving Las Vegas] by Sartre
De-leveraging with a twist by Steve Keen
'Travelers feel a little safer' seeing rape victim dragged across airport by Polpolice [creeping Stasi state] by Jason Ditz
Review of Susan Lindauer's Extreme Prejudice by Michael Collins
Lawless police state by Linh Dinh
A tale of two websites by Kanomi Blake
Extreme inequality helped cause both the Great Depression and the current economic crisis Washington's Blog
Journalists are all Julian Assange by Robert Parry
Banana republic finance by David Stockman (yup)
Why is Brian Whitaker lying about Israel and cablegate? by b
The naked emperor hails sex by surprise by Pepe Escobar
[Muslims report FBI terrorist... to the FBI] by Jerry Markon
Is Wikileaks a front for the CIA or Mossad? by Richard Spencer, Telegraph
Enabling bullies by Linh Dinh
Keiser interviews Stoneleigh (2nd half) Max Keiser
TSA Gestapo empire by Paul Craig Roberts
Banks' self-dealing super-charged financial crisis [42 million Americans on food stamps and these criminals walk free] Pro Publica
10 ideas to starve the Wall Street Beast by Pam Martens
[decide not to fly because you won't let them touch your penis, and they sue you?!] insert title here
What you don't know about torture CAN hurt you George Washington blog
Plutacracy now by Ashvin Pandurangi
The Bankster's last meal by Glen Ford
[Mark Penn says Obama needs a, uhh, false flag] youtube
The world's greatest ever scramble for resources by Nigel H. Maund
The rally to restore vanity by Mark Ames (+ comment by WE)
Scary new wage data by David Cay Johnston
Interview with Mark Basile on thermite by Richard Gage for ae91truth
Financial warfare and the failure of US military leadership by Damon Vrabel
Tea bagger's slave mentality interview with Mark Ames
[Bankrupt US/UK condemn leaks documenting their invading terrorist style] Wikilieaks
Mulligan mortgages -- the banks' only way out by Gonzalo Lira
Lender Processing Services' DOCX document fabrication price sheet
The mortgage fraud scandal is the biggest in human history by L. Randall Wray
Hacking the low tech future thenextwavefutures
Why do we celebrate Columbus Day? by Eric Kasum
The broken banking system by Ann Pettifor
Wrong turn by Chris Floyd
America's China bashing: a compendium of junk economics by Michael Hudson
"A girl about 10, she's behind the embankment, scared to death.... I think
that one of the positions took her out" by Chris McGreal
Humanity's defining moment -- join us Mish by Damon Vrabel
The iPhone economy by Dave Cohen
The Zapruder film of 9/11 by Daniel Sunjata
[3 billion a year in US tax receipts for "purification"] CBC News, Canada, 2006
The anniversary of 9/11 Washington's Blog
The guns of August by Chalmers Johnson
Why Iran's Jews are better off than Gaza's Palestinians by Mike Whitney
Miserable pursuits by Dmitri Orlov
Heaving into view by Steve Ludlum
From Marx to Goldman Sachs by Michael Hudson
Space and non-space by Nathan Lewis (Oct09)
Commodity ETFs [exchange traded funds]: toxic, deadly, evil by Paul B. Farrell
What a real train system looks like by Nathan Lewis (Dec09)
The problem with bicycles [interesting article, tho I am still pro-bike] by Nathan Lewis
Coping with vomitoxin in wheat [sensible advice: wash and eat] by Gene Logsdon
Project vigilant is a fraud by A to Cryptome
Hollow men of economics by Gregor MacDonald
Hell approaches for us all, but only for an extended period by Michael David White
Like we all didn't know by Gordon Duff
Natural selection, finance, and extinction by Charles Hugh Smith
Terror's self-licking ice cream cone by Ray McGovern
Facebook: no "Palestinian" pages by Jillian York
The one economic chart you should permanently burn into your memory Economic Collapse Blog
The middle class is being systematically wiped out by Michael Snyder
The IMF is coming for your social security by Dean Baker
The case of the missing chart by Steve Ludlum
Con of the decade part 1 by Charles Hugh Smith
What will you do if growth is over? by Nate Hagens
Banksters are coming for your retirement next by Eric Blair
Exclusive footage of deepwater horizon ground zero by Steve Roest
Left leaning despisers of the 9/11 truth movement: do you really believe in miracles? by David Ray Griffin
The military-industrial complex's wins by Melvin A. Goodman
Financial coup d'etat Jesse's Cafe Americain
Response to Stoneleigh's talk by Rob Hopkins and Peter Lipman
Rethinking Iran-contra by Robert Parry
Sultans of swap: BP potentially more devastating than Lehman by Gordon T. Long
Where have all the peaceniks gone? by Cindy Sheehan
[it takes a village -- 10 police officers -- to taze a 86-year-old bedridden woman] by Tim Hull
["Thousand Standing Around" American growth industry: harrassing amputees] by Jill McNeal
What is fascism? by Damon Vvrabel
The CIA/Likud sinking of Jimmy Carter by Robert Parry
Obama's Truman-MacArthur moment by Ray McGovern
General Stanley McTerror by Maximilian Forte
The greatest threat to the western way of life if the western way of life itself by John Kozy
Why, really, was the USS Liberty attacked? by Alan Hart
Checkmate by Dmitri Orlov
[wedding-party slaughterer collapses in Senate hearing] YouTube
Wikileaks founder has Garan massacre video by Philip Shenon
SEC: government destroyed documents regarding pre-9/11 put options Washington's blog
Oil consumption around the world by Barry Ritholtz
[HFT is a scam] Zero Hedge
Act of desperation? by Gordon Duff
The next 9/11 by Maidhc O Cathail
Obama goes with Neocon flow on Iran by Robert Parry
Treat Palestinians like Jews by Robert Scheer
The US is defending not just its closest ally in Israeli raid, but also approach to war by EmptyWheel
What is good medicine? by Michael Horowitz
The really creepy people behind the libertarian-inspired billionaire sea castles by Mark Ames
Cooper Union student loses an eye in West Bank protest by John Del Signore
DKos booking school Fishgrease
Slouching toward despotism by Keith Hazelton
The intractability of the built environment by Gregor Macdonald
[Dalio thinks he's a hyena] by Mark Ames
Despite knowing it had a damaged blowout preventer, BP still cut corners by removing the single more important safety measure [mud] by Washington's blog
Democracy's death spiral from Greece to the United States by Dave DeGraw
1000 point slide compels investigation of wall street casino scam by SmartKnowledgeU
Warning shots: how many do you need? by Guy McPherson
Confessions of a Wall St nihilist by Mark Ames
Is general-purpose personal computing doomed? by Neolander
MPEG-LA -- towards a read-only culture by Eugenia Loli-Queru
Extend and pretend III by Gordon Long
Computerized front running [by useless Wall Street parasites] by Ellen Brown
Defense spending is much greater than you think [~30% total federal budget] by Robert Higgs
But why now? by Mike Whitney
Who would *not* want transparency? Washington's blog
$33 billion dollar tax refund by David DeGraw
A miracle in the Marcellus shale? by Dave Cohen
Farmville by A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz
Manufacturing a Minsky melt-up by Gordon T. Long
Sex and drugs and savings plans by Adrian Ash
Strategic defaults increase consumer spending by Ed Harrison
This is war by Karen Kwiatkowski
It can't possibly be that easy by Stuart Staniford
What is the minumim EROI that a sustainable society must have? Part 3 by David Murphy
[US DOE admits peak oil -- only reported in France] by Richard Heinberg
Fear and loathing in Ohio by Asher Miller
Stop feeding the tapeworms [plus good comment] Washington's Blog
Good-bye by Paul Craig Roberts
Most important chart of the century by Nathan Martin
The health care Hindenburg has landed by Chris Hedges
Toyota hybrid horror hoax by Michael Fumento
How much excess profit does corporate America really need? by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
The Pentagon's runaway budget by Carl Conetta
TV makes you deader by Linda Carroll
Round midnight by Joe Bageant
The future where soda cans have screens by Kevin Flaherty
Industry's parting gifts by Dmitri Orlov
FBI wants records kept of web sited visited *Yawn* by Kevin Flaherty
How secret becomes special by Stan Goff
Digital doomsday by Tom Simonite and Michael Le Page
Depletion of key resources: facts at your fingertips by Peter Goodchild
The sharp dressed man was a government agent by Lori Haskell
Washington's militarized takeover of Haiti by Stephen Lendman
[even far right Gold bugs are worried about wealth concentration] by Stewart Dougherty
Court rules that mass surveillance of Americans is immune from judicial review EFF
The battle for the American soul if over and Jay Leno won by Joe Bageant
Spring food crisis may trigger economic collapse by Michael Hampton (a little hysterical, but 2009 was worst harvest in decades)
2009: the year of the great vampire squid by Catherine Austin Fitts
Conspiracy or cock up by Michael Collins
The meaning of Copenhagen by Richard Heinberg
The unknown war by Steve Ludlum
House-breaking the corporations by John Michael Greer
[personal US Air Force assassination drones] by David Hambling
Avatar -- biggest antiwar film of all time by Gilad Atzmon
Evidence mounts by Gordon Duff
The underwear bomber by Joe Quinn
Immodest proposals by John Michael Greer
The bomb at the heart of the system by John Michael Greer
No coherent opposition by Steve Ludlum
Questions in thwarted US plane bombing by Barry Grey
Thin blue whine by William Norman Grigg
Are the CRU data "suspect"? by Kevin Wood and Eric Steig
Was volatility in the price of oil a cause of the 2008 financial crisis? by Theramus
[IRS audits mom for not making enough money] Danny Westneat
US economic recovery in the era of inelastic oil by Stuart Staniford
The economic crisis and what must be done by Richard C. Cook
A gesture from the invisible hand by John Michael Greer
Cuba orders extreme measures to cut energy use by Marc Frank
Hillary's dope deal by Jeff Huber
Almost $300 billion in housing aid (and only $60 billion of it for renters) by Justin Fox
"Restless va gina syndrome": big pharma's newest fake disease by Terry J. Allen
What is Obama's big gamble? by Steve Ludlum
The case for deflation interview with Stoneleigh
Afghanistan a success -- time to come home! by Karen Kwiatkowski
Message from the gyre by Chris Jordan
Strange bright banners by John Michael Greer
Protesters shout down Ehud Olmert at [University of] Chicago by Clare Murphy
Why the US is not Japan and [why] this is not good news by mybudget360
What's wrong with this picture? Absolutely everything by Nomi Prins
Dangerous unintented consequences by Martin Weiss
Osama bin Laden: dead or alive? by David Ray Griffin
Don't call 911 by Jamie Ross
US income inequality [is] frightening [enlightened richies] by Bruce Judson
Fed buys more than 100% of mortgages issued in 2009 by Chris Martenson
[thank god it's 'retina-safe' -- but is it carbon-neutral?] by Paul Marks
Study prompts provinces [Canada] to rethink flu plan by Patrick White
Grinning robots by Charlie Brooker
Heroic police electro-torture, humiliate double amputee by William Grigg
[SPR conspiracies] by Rob Kirby (sept 11)
[in post peak oil year 1: bicycling to school violates policy] by Andrew J. Bernstein
Interview with Steve Keen [2nd half part2] [and
part3] Max Keiser
Swine flu 2: The Revenge by Kent Sepkowitz
Credit is not created out of excess reserves washingtons blog
[giving money to debtors works better than to creditors] by Steve Keen
Daydreams of destruction by John Michael Greer
[nanny state violent mental] by Christie Blatchford
Sick and wrong by Matt Taibbi
Hunger insurance by Dmitri Orlov
A terrible ambivalence by John Michael Greer
After Obama by David Michael Green
The coming consequences of banking fraud by J.S. Kim
The great American affordability scheme by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Bush's third term by David Swanson
Who won the ideology wars? by David Michael Green
The widening gap by Emily Spence
[coming soon to a 'crowd control' situation near you] by Paul Marks
A great new bull market? by Henry Blodget
This blog [survival acres] is closed Survival Acres
Buckle the heck up! (data-filled, w/key Fed acronyms) Economic Edge
[disgusting excuse-for-a-human tasers mouthy mom and then manufactures speeding charge (thrown out) when manufactured cell phone charge falls through on Jan 31 end-of-month ticket quota day + 800 comments] by John O'Brien
DNA evidence can be fabricated Press TV
Cash-for-clunkers boost Japanese car sales by Bernard Simon
If US health care's so good, why do other people live longer? by Carrie Peyton Dahlberg
Stephen Hawking both British and not dead by Cade Metz
Medicare for all by Ian Welsh
['real men' need child prostitutes] by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Temporary recession or the end of growth? by Richard Heinberg
The best Goldman apology yet by Matt Taibbi
Close encounters with the Pentagon by Robbie Graham and Matthew Alford
How I learned to stop worrying and love Goldman Sachs by Max Keiser
Does America 2009 = Argentina 2001? by Eric Janzen (inflationista)
Sustainable blather by Scott McGuire
The bailout was based on a big fat lie by John Carney
[real warfare destroys your mind] Dave Philipps
You tax dollars at work by John Cook
[anything the police do is justified] AP
[go Marcy Kaptur!] Congress: Hank Paulson BAC-Merrill testimony
[Abu Ghraib comes home] by Tesa Culli
The makings of a police state, part 1 by Sibel Edmonds
The save the Republic, tax the rich by Robert Parry
New, hard evidence of continuing debt collapse by Martin Weiss
Max Keiser interviewing Michael Hudson interview by Max Keiser
Max Keiser on Goldman Sachs interview with Max Keiser
[why you *really* don't want cloud computing] by David Pogue
Legal immunity set for swine flu vaccine makers by Mike Stobbe
Why the NSA-Titter rumor is dumb by Kevin Flaherty
Toward a solution to the debt crisis in California by Ellen Brown
Cruise missile 2008 by John M.
Professor Pileni's resignation as editor-in-chief of the Open Chemical Physics Journal by Niels Harrit
If it isn't Sarah, it'll be somebody like Sarah by David Seaton
'Unscientific America' -- a review by Michael Mann
Forget shorter showers by Derrick Jensen
Largest ground combat operation since the Vietnam war [same policy as Bush] by Rick Rozoff
What the jumps in the U.S. 'savings' rate really means buy Michael Hudson
Does sodomy keep us safe? by Alan Uthman
[even slightly better gas mileage is very hard] by John Ostrower
Touring empire's ruins by Greg Grandin
The Net Hubbert curve: what does it mean? by David Murphy
Definancialisation, deglobalisation, relocalisation by Dimitri Orlov
ACLU-obtained slightly less redacted secret tribunal hearing of a mastermind and 'a computer hard drive' PDF!
What's next for the US economy, or what's left of it? by Bob O'Brien
Elmer Fudd nation by Mark Ames
Readying Americans for dangerous, mandatory vaccinations by Steve Lendman
[RF and optical chips for targetting bombs] Antifascist
[manly-man brawny cop takes down 72-year-old great grandmother with taser] by David Edwards
Migrating from necessity by J.D. Rosendahl
From a failed growth economy to a steady-state economy by Herman Daly
Dark pools by Eric deCarbonnel
Illness, medical bills linked to nearly 2/3 of [US] bankruptcies Eurekalert
[Obama war funding indistinguishable from Bush's -- promises it won't happen again, blah, blah] by Jason Ditz
Grand theft auto by Greg Palast
Place your wagers Contrary Investor
[loathsome bankers trying to claw back charity grants in order to pay obscene bonuses for ...screwing us?] by Parul Tharp
[gold 'exports' and the US trade gap] by Rob Kirby
Time to get rude -- time to get French! by David Macaray
[US in bed again with guy who boils people to supply our Afghanistan 'boyz'] by Deirdre Tynan
Early retirement claims increase dramatically by Mike Dorning
The NAFTA flu by John Ross
Interview with Dr. Harrit gulli.com
Implications of the Ayres Warr model by Ian Schindler
Yet another bogus [stoner!] terror plot by Robert Dreyfuss
Loan reset threat looms til 2012 by Mathew Padilla
Obama unveils his inner Cheney by b
[Obama keeping/legitimizing secret detention without trial] by Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Global margin call by J.D. Rosendahl
Torture by James Keye
Real food is not advertised Michael Pollan interview
Kabuki on the Potomac by Chris Whalen
[CNN ringing the tocsin!?] by William D. Cohan
Hersh details JSOC killings by Jason Ditz
Jesus of suburbia by Jim Quinn
The nature of the current financial crisis by Richard C. Cook
Adventures in post-oil paradise by Peter Goodchild
Greatest heist in monetary history Naomi Klein interview
Osama bin lowrider by Chuck Burr
Is google making us stupid? by Nicholas Carr
Let there be light [Solaren] by Kevin Flaherty
The peak oil crisis: priorities by Tom Whipple
Game theory exposes PPIP as fraudulent by James Keller
The myth of systemic collapse by James Keller
Burning our bridges to the XXI Century by Dmitri Orlov
Banks as bidders and sellers; financial nostalgia by Mike
Bill Moyers interview with William K. Black PBS
Explosives found in World Trade Center Dust [non-technical review of paper below] by Jim Hoffman
paper
Active thermitic material discovered in dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe by Niels H. Harrit et al., 2009, Chemical Physics
War pigs -- cost of a global empire by Jim Quinn
[finally, an informative summary about BASE from econbrowser!] by James Hamilton
I am a banker. SOme of us did not f*ck up by Jerome a Paris
What a mess! by David Chapman
Smearing Tristan Anderson by Jami Tarn
All about gnomes by Elaine Meinel Supkis
The next ten years by Chuck Burr
[almost water self-sufficient in 10 years in Tuscon] by Brad Lancaster
The hijacking of the fourteenth amendment (4 page pdf) by Doug Hammerstrom, 2002
Busted while reporting in Alexandria by Wayne Madsen
Obedience to authority in America by Mike Whitney
Slow growth and deflation by Gary Shilling
Green, as in money by Gar Lipow
Breaking the taboo on Israel's spying efforts on the United States by Christopher Ketcham + comments
Freeman speaks out on his exit by Chas Freeman
Fed refuses to release identity of credit default swap counterparties [the recipient of loot from taxpayers] George Washington
Median home price in Detroit is $7,500 by Joe Weisenthal
Generational theft? by billmon
The language of looting by Michael Hudson
The oligarch's escape plane by Michael Hudson
Social collapse best practices by Dmitri Orlov
A fraud bigger than Madoff by Patrick Cockburn
The economists who missed the housing bubble are coming after your social security by Dean Baker
The Israeli smashing of Gaza and International silence by Ann Wright
A commodity called misery by Joe Bageant
Space crash called "catastrophic" by Vladimir Isachenkov
Obama's awful financial recovery play by Michael Hudson
The insolvency of the Fed by Philipp Bagus and Markus H. Schiml
Bond market calls Fed's bluff by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
How taxpayer finance fantasy wars by Chalmers Johnson
[things not going well for Obama's planned Afghanistan surge] by b
Warm reception to Antarctic warming story Real Climate
Oil rises, oil falls [good, except ignore silly climate link] by Jim Puplava
[scroll to 23 minutes in] 32 min Paul Kanjorski CSPAN interview
Astonishing incongruities by Paul Craig Roberts
Bernanke: game over? by Karl Denninger
Super baaadddd by Bill Bonner
Tasers cause dramatic rise [6-fold] of in-custody sudden deaths by Elizabeth Fernandez
TARP part deux? by Karl Denninger
What, wasn't Ahmad Chalabi available? by Chris Floyd
Perestroika 2.0 Beta by Dmitri Orlov
This land is your land [incl. last verse!] Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger
State of Antarctic: red or blue? RealClimate
To stabilize global banks, first tame [i.e. close down new] credit default swaps by Chris Whalen
Lightning, earthquakes and hurricanes by Jim Willie
Bernard Madoff, the Mafia, and naked short selling by Mark Mitchell
Al Qaeda doesn't exist -- part I,
part II, and
part III
corbett report
Gaza invasion powered by US [$1 billion US taxpayer money spent sending
fuel] by Robert Bryce
That bastion on American socialism by Dmitri Orlov
Homes for the holidays Contrary Investor
The wall street Ponzi scheme called fractional reserve banking by Ellen Brown
Dancing on a precipice by Jesse
Debt balance markers by Russ Winter
[ugly panicked richies] by Michael Shnayerson
Higher wages or bubblenomics by Mike Whitney
[bank scum tell taxpayer bailout-ers to f*ck off -- we should have said that to them before giving them money] AP
An aerial tour by WOW
A ost desperate move by the Fed by Rodrigue Tremblay
[Goldman Sach bailout-receiving criminals pay 1% tax -- arrest them!] by John Byrne
[M3 back to yearly growth rate when official M3 discontinued -- 8%/year] Shadowstats
Senate to middle class: drop dead by Michael Moore
A Ponzi scheme that is bigger than Bernard Madoff's by Mark Mitchell
Suburbs, cites, and sustainability by Lakis Polycarpou
The dark alliance by Gary Webb, 1996
We all failed Gary Webb by Robert Parry
Total defeat for US in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn
Deflation has become inevitable by London Banker
[sometimes they are just pigs] CBS
KopBuster investigators bait Odessa police to illegally raid house by Stephen C. Webster
The radicalization of an American prisoner by George Peter Jr.
The soldiers revolt by Joel Geier
Drawing the future from the past by Channapha Khamvongsa
"A bailout will weaken the automakers!" [cartoon] by Jesse
Obama-cola by Jennifer Matsui
The American car industry: a riposte to the knockers by Eamonn Fingleton
Saving the Big 3 for you and me... by Michael Moore
CNN cuts entire science, tech team [who needs it] by Curtis Brainerd
[a good sign: they're a little scared of us!] by Johnnie L. Roberts
Cloud computing part 4: the rise and fall by Railton Frith
The wages of irrational greed by Jesse
Learning to lead by Dahr Jamail
Max Keiser comments on Obama economic team [video interview]
Thou shalt not crucify labor on this cross of paper money by Antal E. Fekete
Open the books by Ralph Nader
Hope in common by David Graeber
Behind the Citigroup "nationalization" by F. William Engdahl
Citibank thanks America for filling its begging bowl with a royal one finger salute by New York Crank
Crisis? what crisis? by Dave Fryett
Senate hearing on US auto bailout signals new attack on workers by Jerry White
A tsunami of hope or terror? by Alan Kohler
[Mac OS X is morphing into Vista!] by Dan Frommer
Back to the bad old days by London Banker
Let the trials begin! by Douglas Valentine
Flat earth Friedman's wealth is vanishing by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Project for no American Century by George Washington
Who are the architects of economic collapse? by Michel Chossudovsky
Obama's change leaves by the back door by Tom Eley
[cops unknowingly pepper spray their own agents provaceteurs -- tee hee] by Nick Cargo
[these guys just don't learn] by Saijel Kishan
Yes we can (have a depression) by Karl Denninger
KPFA interview [Oct8-15] with Michael Hudson [mp3] by Bonnie Faulkner
The strange case of falling international reserves by Hugo Salinas Price
Wikipedia trying to delete article on Rahm Emanuel's father Wikipedia
Obama faced with security problem at outset of transition process by Wayne Madsen
The last recession by Jerry Silberman
Organized crimes by Carlton Meyer
[looks suspiciously 'helicopter'-like to me] St. Louis Fed
More from the front lines of the financial crisis by Stephen Lendman
The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration by Morton Skorodin
The elections and the responsibility of the intellectual to speak truth to power by James Petras
Wall Street Monsters and Meat (you) by Jim Willie
Why I'm voting for Obama by Douglas Valentine
[yikes -- goldies talking deflation] by Brad Wessels
"One brigade of soldiers cannot establish martial law" by Timothy Gatto
What a real financial collapse looks like (English subtitled video, Argentina)
Columbus day StJohnBeachGuide.com
Rescue for the few, debt slavery for the many by Michael Hudson
Genesis plan now known workable by Karl Denninger
FEMA sources confirm coming martial law [likely disinfo] Wayne Madsen via Palestinian Pundit
Taser creates new crowd control system [all part of 'helping' people in the homeland] by Matt Davis
The weekly report by Mick Phoenix
Cop tries choking to get evidence that doesn't exist Classically Liberal
Saving fat cats is stupid by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Gap risk by Steve from Virginia
The bailout in plain English by Joe Bageant
Not one dime! by Mike Whitney
Financial coup d'etat by Catherine Austin Fitts (3/6)
The natives are restless jesse
We have the money -- if only we didn't waste it on the defense budget by Chalmers Johnson
[mother (and baby!) tasered for not handing over baby to social workers] by Gerry Bellett
Fed pumps additional $630 billion into financial system [not the bailout!] by Scott Lanman and Craig Torres
[the complete elimination of capital markets] by Roger K
[useful description of what interbank lending actually is] by Steve from Virginia
How McCain blew it by Alexander Cockburn
Bailout blues by Richard Heinberg
Cutting the bull by Juan Carlos Arroyo Calderon
Stop the bailout! Save America! by Karl Denninger
Trouble in banktopia by Mike Whitney
Tar pit operation at work by Russ Winter
The Sphinx and the Hijinks by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Buy my sh*tpile, Henry BMSPH
Shantyland by Raul Ilargi Mejier
Adieu, stage 1 collapse! by Dmitri Orlov
Now is the time to resist Wall Street's shock doctrine by Naomi Klein
The Bush Administration's banking rescue plan by Rodrigue Tremblay
Paulson plan to may benefit mostly Goldman, Morgan by Jody Shenn
[the US army -- now 'helping' people at home] by Gina Cavallaro
It's the derivatives, stupid! by Ellen Brown
Lehman's bankruptcy and the hidden $138 billion bailout of JP Morgan by Rob Kirby
You just bought a country by Ilargi and Stoneleigh
Screwed by Mick Phoenix
Can bailout capitalism [sic] work? Seeking Alpha [sic]
[stupid war pundits and armchair sniper moms at Wired] by Gary Brecher
Western capitalist civilization? by Richard C. Cook
Let's not forget the good times Postman Patel
Will McCain-Palin lies hurt them? by Robert Parry
The dress rehearsal is over by Richard Heinberg
The great decline by Glen Ford
Was America attacked by Muslims on 9/11? by David Ray Griffin
Storm troopers at the RNC by Ray McGovern
What does Sarah Palin mean for the left? by Eric Patton
A tactical suggestion for future demonstrations by Eric Patton
How the Chicago boys wrecked the economy interview with Michael Hudson
[this will lead to sabotage] by Stephen Baker
Before ReCreate68 there was Jerry Rubin by rodneykingman
My Palestinian wife by Charley Reese
On Iraq, Biden is worse than McCain by Robert Dreyfuss
[detention camp set up at DNC] CBS
X11 is dead, long live X11 David Taht
The tempo of change by John Michael Greer
What's so heroic about being shot down while bombing innocent civilians? by Liliana Segura
Twilight of the psychopaths by Kevin Barrett
Organized crime nation by Dave Eriqat
[how to make a police state] by Emily Feder
[TSA employee repurposes delicate flight control sensors as ladder during overnight 'security' check] by Joseph Rhee, Brian Ross, and Eric Longabardi
Private property and wealth by James Keye
The great consumer crash of 2009 [excellent data-filled article] by James Quinn
[reverse this: $8 billion to be seized for California universities] by Michael Rothfeld
'Major discovery' from MIT unpractical, and ignores present advances in solar baseload by Joseph Romm
Most corporations in US pay no federal income taxes by Jennifer C. Kerr
Countdown to $200 oil -- oil at $115! by jerome a paris
Information clearing house publisher threatened by Mike Whitney
[tasered handcuffed schizophrenic man was killed by subsequent police beating] by David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Local scientist splits water, saves world, get on TV by JoulesBurn
Why McCain may well win by Robert Parry
How much worse can "It" get? by Steve Keen
Peak oil parenting by Annie the Nanny
Sami El Haj, Al Jazeera journalist, tells his story [see esp. US torture doctors] by Silvia Cattori
Was 9/11 an inside job? [Lockerbie comment weird] by Mark Gaffney
Pimco's McCulley and sustainable home ownership by Karl Denninger
[Canadian 'defense' minister defends his overseas storm trooper baby killers] by Graham Thomson
The military-industrial complex by Chalmers Johnson
[money cockroaches scamper out of banks to buy your farms and grain elevators] george washington
Saudi prisons to replace Guantanamo by Press TV (Iran)
US has bigger problems than the war on terror by Rudy Wittshirk
A supersonic detonation [not a fuel tank explosion] caused the crash of TWA flight 800 NTSB Watch
Status report Richard C. Cook
Multiple birds -- one silver BB by Alan Drake
Nuke-armed paranoids by Gordon Prather
US defends laptop searches at the border by Alexandra Marks
Peak toil peak oil blues
Want some torture with your peanuts? [sounds like an old Star Trek episode] by P. Jeffrey Black and Jeffery Denning
Not for your benefit by Mick Phoenix
The designated suspects by Peter Dale Scott
Running the numbers by Chris Jordan
Bringing Ireland to Baghdad by Gary Brecher
End game by Mick Phoenix
We are entering a two economy society interview with Michael Hudson
The shadow knows Ilargi comments on Alisair Barr piece
Stop nukes by bombing oil wells, neocons suggest by Raed Rafel
SWAT run amok by Vincent Hodgkiss
Bomb Iran? What's to stop us? by Ray McGovern
Most Americans are afraid to feel outrage by Joe Bageant
Gnomic sexual desires fuel inflation fules by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Wired magazine's incoherent truths by raypierre
[Madsen on Apr 29 Carnaby killing] by Wayne Madsen
Democrats back down [keeping their perfect record] by Richard Cowan
Saving science by John Michael Greer [even the Druids like science!]
State of emergency: the final 6 months by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg
The de facto nationalization of the housing bust the economic populist
A new kind of wage slave by Betty Brink
The hidden battle for the world's food system Raj Patel
Researchers fail to reveal full [$1.6 million each!] drug pay by Gardiner Harris and Benedict Carey
Has Obama moved right on Israel? RealNews video by Aijaz Ahmad
What if it's just us? by David Ker Thomson
Traffic! Weather! Sports! Collapse by Dmitri Orlov
Life without airplanes LoTech Magazine
Rich dude suggests pensions get 0% interest by Elaine Meinel Supkis
The nearly unfathomable depths of pentagon corruption by Bob Chapman
[our mass graves contain over 1 million souls] by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail
An immemorial day for the progressive media by cat's dream
Was 9-11 a cover for a coup d'etat? by Ed Encho
What is the earth worth? by ilargi
Food stamps and the un-adjusted economy by Hellasious
The last roundup by Christopher Ketcham
List of 'suicides' by whistle blowers by Ichingcarpenter
[crap microsoft replacement for unix servers strands 800 planes for 3 hours without radio contact after it shuts itself down] by Matthew Broersma
Military or market-driven empire building: 1950-2008 by James Petras
[socialism for the super-rich] by Reggie Middleton
The Pentagon strangles our economy by Chalmers Johnson
The Bear Stearns buy-out... 100% fraud by John Olagues
Deflation in a fiat regime? by Mike Shedlock
Shadow exchanges for the shadow financial system: dark pool jesse
Fourteen points of agreement [pdf!] S.E. Jones et al., 2008
[the similarity to recently instated British practice is remarkable] by Ellen Nakashima and Spencer Hsu
[kinda harsh, coming from a Canadian!] by Peter K. Vickers
The specialization trap by John Michael Greer
The coming war with Iran: it's about the oil, stupid by Joe Lauria
[against hyperinflationary depression] by jesse
The slow burn by Catherine Austin Fitts
Want to save the economy? by Mike Whitney
[growing wealth disparity] by Henry C.K. Liu
Credit default swaps by Ellen Brown
[state farm commercial explaining how to avoid the humiliation of cycling] Streetsblog
Carlyle Group's plan to take over the banking systemby Robert Wegner
Off the reservation? by Karl Denninger
The Collapse Party platform by Dmitri Orlov
[major miscalc] by Gareth Porter
Meet me in Guantanomo (music) Hinrichsen Music 2008
The failure of neoliberalism by Phillip Blond (Jan 08)
Marine mom's eyewitness account of Winter Soldier by Elaine Brower
The Red menace by Iain MacWhiter
Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan try to palm off the derivatives beast onto the US public by Elaine Meinel Supkis
The insanity of Bear Stearns/JPM continues by Karl Denninger (lifelong Republican, voted for Bush twice)
The Fed's bailout: whose money is it? by Richard C. Cook
Iran: danger and opportunity by William R. Polk
The Spanish Inquisition SOTT
How Americans have been misled about WWII by Robert Higgs
[Sunday night: yet new Fed method of printing money] by Lee Adler
Ploughing through the filth by Chris Floyd
[this will be coming to intersections back in the homeland before long] blacklisted news
Positive feedback loops by Genesis
Spitzer's real scandal [from Sept 2007] by Sander Hicks
Our roller coaster ride to hell by Tim Gatto
MTV Holocaust commercials [dual use!: social engineering + lobby] by Kevin Flaherty
Banks face systemic margin call by Walden Siew
The next agriculture? by John Michael Greer
[the year of the rat] by Elaine Meinel Supkis
How Hollywood learned to stop worrying and love the (ticking) time bomb by Scott Horton
Why are we allowing unbridled greed to destroy our childrens' future? by Gary J. Aguirre
Will the American Empire end before it ends the world? by Paul Craig Roberts
The brotherhood of torturers by Karen Greenberg
Fire and rain: the consequences of changing climate on rainfall, wildfire, and agriculture by 'Doug Fir'
x-rated story by Eric H. May
Testy tuesday by Genesis
The terrorists still at ground zero, 7 World Trade Center by Alexander Cockburn
Bonds that untie by Elaine Meinel Supkis
FIRE economy" OK, but... by Genesis
Fed eunuchs reveal true selves in technicolor by Lee Adler
Respect Vietnamese patriots by Jay Janson
[the election plan] by Paul Joseph Watson
Waterboarding for God, with decency and compassion by Ray McGovern
[that's more like it! -- boot 'em out of town] by Darsha Philips
History of seigniorage wealth by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Bush bust by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Does the Brownshirt Party have aces up its sleeve? by Paul Craig Roberts
Tasers are a replacement for talking, not guns by Robyn Doolittle
Primaries by John Chuckman
"I did not have se x with that war" by E.R. Bills
Stimulus plan is a scam to benefit the rich by Sean Olender
Four more American drug planes seized [the CIA's granting agency...] my Danieal Hopsicker
Back up the rabbit hole by John Michael Greer
Trillion dollar secret by John Riley
Judge won't let homeowners buy loans [only richies always win, by law] AP
Global finance and the insanity defense by Pam Martens
Disowned by the ownership society by Naomi Klein
Microsoft panics, overpays for Yahoo by Mike Shedlock
Where did all our deposits go? by Mike Whitney
Which is worse: regulation or de-regulation? by Paul Craig Roberts
[US has killed a minimum of one million Iraqis, excluding Kerbala and Anbar] Reuters
US War Crimes in Indochina in the 1960's by Ralph Schoenman
[John Paulson pockets $4 billion -- $1300 from every American -- for betting in 2006 that US subprime would fall -- it takes a genius, eh?] by Gregory Zuckerman
[what the US still manufactures] by Raquel Dillion
["I apologize..."] by the Chimp Who Can Drive
The US is being scuttled by Herb Ruhs
Mind the ruins by Dimitry Orlov
Florida sees heroes paid by Postman Patel
Review of "Bad Samaritans" by Ha-Joon Chang by Chalmers Johnson
[traveling while British] BBC
How to sink America by Chalmers Johnson
How Wall street blew itself up by Pam Martens
[perfect for your next antiwar march!] by Adam Frucci
[flying while Portuguese -- dang, I'm part Portuguese!] Public Citizen
[Judge Karen decides Guantanamo detainees are not human beings] Presscue Wire Services
Is Bush losing his grip on the military by Chris Gelken
Why the US wants the collapse of Pakistan by John Berlin
Money supply trends are deflationary by Mike Shedlock
The future that wasn't: part 2 by John Michael Greer
Sibel Edmonds speaks to UK Sunday Times by Brad Friedman
Sibel Edmonds case by Lukery
Imperialist propaganda by Chalmers Johnson
Good guys in black hoods by Douglas Valentine
New rule for high profile papers by Gavin Schmidt
The phantom terrorists of the war on terror by Daan de Wit
A solar grand plan by Ken Zweibel, James Mason, and Vasilis Fthenakis
Things that "can't" happen by Mike Shedlock
[possible solution to current indium shortage] DailyTech
US troops head to Pakistan by William Arkin (day before Bhutto assassination)
The third rail of world politics by Kurt Cobb
Housing -- simple as that by Christopher Martenson
Lost [keeping the homeland safe] by Erla Lillendahl
Gold and mortgage failure avalanche by Jim Willie
Reconciling fascism with reality by Pervez Dastoor
Tragicomic mulatto by Emily Raboteau
Are Americans really "better than that?" by Ray McGovern
Daycare paid for with the blood of Iraqi children by Thomas Riggins
Gary Webb's enduring legacy by Robert Parry
Recurring patterns in America's deep event [pdf] by Peter Dale Scott
Our own holocaust denial by Mark Weisbrot
How to be a better slave and avoid being Tased by Marcus Salek
[All our oil problems solved by Brasil find -- not] by Luis de Sousa
The poor. The struggling. The hedge fund managers by Bill Scher
Hi-tech torture by Rosemary Jackowski
Thanksgiving what really happened by Ryan Dawson
China's e-waste nightmare worsening AP
[more children are dying in Iraq now than under sanctions] by Hind al-Safar
[why the US should leave immediately] Independent IE
[higher percentage of subprime in red states] NYT
Virtues of a disorganized resistance
Plan B? by Richard C. Cook
A sick graph by Dan Hahn
[police taser man in a diabetic coma] Dothan Eagle
The American empire is falling with the dollar by Paul Craig Roberts
Bankruptcy law backfires on banks by Robert Wallach
Welcome to year 27 of the Reagan revolution by Mike Whitney
Energizer "D" battery exposed by Mike Adams
Flashback by William Schroder
A world without the rich by Michael Blim
Go ahead on -- start WWIII by Gordon Prather
[taking action, here not there] by Philip Weiss
Criminal accessories Zbignew Zingh
[the road to Iran] by Felicity Arbuthnot
Torture then and now by Fred Morris
[why coerced confessions used to be disallowed] by Steve Bergstein
Why California burns Joseph Cannon
The connection between food supply and energy by Glenn Morton
The future of urban war Nick Turse in atimes
Airstrike kills civilians in Iraq, Pentagon denies everything by Winter Patriot
Taking out the SIV garbage by John Mauldin
The Fed, the discount rate, and the stock market by Tim W. Wood
Housing flameout by Mike Whitney
The Prince by Jeffrey Feldman
Super SIVs by Mike Shedlock
New! Master-liquidity enabler conduit by Alan Hall
Canadian gas -- decline sets it by Libelle
A bill that will allocate (classified) dollars over the next (classified) years to fight flesh-eating (classified) Rep. John Haller
Why? (is GreyZone a doomer) by Grey Zone
[RealClimate vs. Murdock/WSJ] David at RealClimate
How fast can we change? by Robert Rapier
[comcast blocked email containing www.afterdowningstreet.org -- on to samizdat!] by David Swanson
"I'm an old man. Good luck to all of you." by Zeke
Zero emissions needed to avert dangerous warming by Catherine Brahic
[Comment on StoneLeigh's roundup: banks and video games: sub-prime => credit cards] by Matt Kennel
[big banks collude to 'fix' the market] by Carrick Mollenkamp, Ian McDonald, and and Deborah Solomon
[new permission to fly rule proposed] by Wendy M. Grossman
Melting ice cap triggering earthquakes by Paul Brown
Finance roundup Stoneleigh, TheOildrum Canada
[business week explaining how free markets are the problem] by David Bogoslaw
The Portland plan [hopefully disinfo] by Cpt. Eric H. May
Martial law [note: his 'ideal solution' is a military coup!] by Lech Biegalski (original "Solidarity" member, Poland)
Science teacher's brush with police ends in heart attack by John Marzulli
Who want's to bomb Iran? Democrats by Jon Wiener
[if the Repugs can do it, so can the Demoworms -- if they wanted to] Project Filibuster
[poodles trip over each other to line up for the next genocide] by Tim Shipman
Toward an ecotechnic society by John Michael Greer
What can the commodity market tell us about peak oil? by Shunyata
So who's afraid of the Israel lobby? by Ray McGovern
Why not impeachment? by Robert Parry
Ramblings of an old geezer davebygolly comment on Jerome a Paris article
Simulating the quant bloodbath by John Carney
Inflation and the Federal Reserve by Richard C. Cook
The depravity of empire by Arthur Silber
The US Senate votes to partition Iraq. Softly. [how you like the democracy we brung you?] by Reidar Visser
CIA jet used for "rendering" suspects crashes with four tones of cocaine on board by Kevin Flaherty
'A coup has occurred' by Daniel Ellsberg
To grandmother's house we go: peak oil is here by Glenn Morton
The latest betrayal by Senate Democrats by John Walsh
What WWIII may look like by Philiph Giraldi
'Hitler' does New York by Pepe Escobar
Veteran right-libertarian writer murdered [2006] by San Diego police [see incl. 2001 Kreca article] by Todd Brendan Fahey (right-wing libertarian)
Analysts watch, wince as Mexico's oil supply dwindles by David Adams
Lebanese musician Khalife jerked Around by venue by Pitchfork
Fire alarm by Chris Floyd
George W. Bush's thug nation by Robert Parry
Death Machine Fiction Plane
Monetary doves at the point of a gun by Jim Willie
America's hegemonic status slipping away by Paul Craig Roberts
Why the US is really in Iraq by Larry Everest
Corn ethanol and its unintended consequences for California by Juliette Anthony
Cold turkey for financial addiction by James Cumes, John Craig, James Cumes
More Americans support Iraq occupation and mass murder by Kurt Nimmo
9/11 explains the impotence of the antiwar movement by Paul Craig Roberts
The second sighting by Mick P
Bipartisan consensus pushes for Iran attack by Larry Chin
ACC orders commandwide standdown Friday by Bruce Rolfsen
[US-allowed] Government death squads ravaging Baghdad by Dahr Jamail
Why Bush can get away with attacking Iran by Jean Bricmont
[just the main points] VictorInOxford
"Is it really true?" seismobob AKA Glenn Morton
The bases are loaded [over 100 Iraq bases are being consolidated to 6 megabases] video
[as read on DisinfoKos] Maccabee
[the NSA's temporary power problems] by Lewis Page
Technophilia, virtual communities, and the world of ends by Dave Pollard
Bush executive order: Criminializing the antiwar movement [it exists?!] by Michel Choosudovsky
What drives quality of life for seniors? Driving by G. Miller, G. Harris, I. Ferguson
A wake-up call by Paul Craig Roberts
Who to we [the US] owe and how much? by Mike Hewitt
Absurd terrorism theories invade the homeland by Kurt Nimmo
Proof bin Laden tape is 5-year-old, re-released footage by Paul
Joseph Watson
Impeach now by Paul Craig Roberts
[video interview with David Strahan] by George Galloway
The real casus belli: peak oil by David Strahan
Iraq on my mind bz Dahr Jamail
Has Santorum let the cat out of the bag? by Mac McKinney
The obscenity by Stan Goff
Killing 10,000 Iraqis every month by Michael Schwartz
[some Brazilian ethanol produced by slaves] by Vivian Sequera
A letter from Joe Bageant by Cid Yama
The Fed's role in the Bear Stearns meltdown by Mike Whitney
[use less energy, but more mercury] by Mike Adams
[huge cache of non-Muslim explosives luckily 'not enough for act of terrorism'] Winter Patriot
The American culture bomb by Kevin Flaherty
Levitate the Pentagon by Pepe Escobar
US ruling makes server RAM a 'document' [do judges have to pass high school?] by Greg Sandoval
[prison sentences in the US] AFP
Negroponte behind Samarra blast Press TV (Iran)
When the grid dies by Gavin Schmidt
[training people to be drones] by Bill Adler
A depopulation explosion? by John Michael Greer
Responsibility by Ken Benderman
US signals permanent stay in Iraq by Howard LaFranchi
Voices from the American Gulag by Chris Floyd
DePaul denies Finkelstein tenure by Maudlyne Ihejirika and Dave Newbart
Cops planted pot on 92-year old woman they killed in botched drug raid by Rhonda Cook
Bush's palace by Scott Horton
[democrat cowards cave to Bush] CNN
Helmets attract cars [slightly: 12% closer] to cyclists by Nikhil Swaminathan
Leave Inside Iraq
Commander's veto sank threatening Gulf buildup by Gareth Porter
Collateral genocide by Mike Ferner
The moral obligation to lose the war by Robert Shetterly
Where is the US Nimitz? by Michael Klare
The nature of the beast [coming to a 7-11 near you] interview with "Nero"
Unique [scroll to last heading at bottom] by Doug Noland
Atrocity gods by Ashley Howes
An open letter to Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, and Jimmy Carter by Roger Tucker
Levin gives Cheney reason to smirk by Ray McGovern
Where are the lifeboat communities? by John Michael Greer
When leading fund mgr talks, do people listen by econotech
[annual increase of M3(b) is over 10%] nowandfutures.com
Cycles of sustainability by John Michael Greer
[criticize the fuhrer, get on the no-fly list] by Michael Roston
Iran: the threat of a nuclear war by Leonid Ivashov
The general behind the curtain by Xymphora
US military set to retain high ground in space by Railton Frith (free reg. required)
War, energy, banks, and the US dollar by Jim Willie
Fingers of instability, part III [so naive on energy!] by Ty Andros
Innovation in hard times? by Stuart Staniford
High-fivers and art student spies by Christopher Ketcham
The Iraq that George built by Rec
Right to know by James Rothenberg
[dual-use Tivo -- the commenters all love it] by Sharon Weinberger
Review of Nemesis by Stephen Lendeman
Review of EIA oil data for 2006 by Phil Hart
[Obama's new look] by Ali Abunimah
Too much blood by Matt Taibbi
The failure of reason by John Michael Greer
Two theories by William Rice
Americans have lost their country by Paul Craig Roberts
Mr. Porter -- looking back, not in anger, but in error by Postman Patel
Zero degrees of US dollar separation by Jim Willie
Cheney OK after Afghan blast by Alisa Tang
Aerosols: the last frontier by Juliane Fry
Will America face the truth? by Mark H. Gaffney
Guttmann responds to Microsoft's response by Peter Guttmann
Congress' liability in a nuclear strike on Iran by Jorge Hirsch
Warmonger Pipes testifying to Congress by Daniel Levy
3,000 students shut down highway in Santa Barbara by VoteHarder
Killers in the classroom by June Scorza Terpstra
[Geo 'catapults the poisoned well'] by George Monbiot
The 'pod people' and the plane that crashed into the Pentagon by Michael Rivero
The Anglo-American dirty war in Iraq by Chris Floyd
If it ain't Islamic, it ain't terrorism by winter patriot
The fixer by Ken Auletta
[Irvine cop] by R. Scott Moxley
US homework outsourced by Jason Szep
To peak oil, or not to peak oil by David Chapman
Natural gas -- a tale of two markets by Nate Hagens
Why the Gulf countries continue to embrace the doomed dollar by Eckart Woertz
Crude crash is no conundrum by Deepcaster
The Bushes and the truth about Iran by Robert Parry
Challenge article on foundations by Bob Feldman
War signals? by David Lindorff
The center cannot hold by Juan Santos
The end of the "summer of diplomacy": assessing US military options on Iran (pdf) by Sam Gardiner, USAF Colonel (ret.)
Pentagon moves to second-stage planning for Iran strike option by Larisa Alexandrovna [disinfo watch?]
Coffee, tea, or T A T P by Garrison Keillor (but I like the Chile Peppers)
The C I A's pain project Feb 17 interview with Alfred McCoy
Close associate of Atta surfaces in south Pacific by Daniel Hopsicker
Hotel minibar keys open Diebold voting machines by lambert
77% in U.S. unable to learn a lesson by Scott Horton
War is horrible, but... by Robert Higgs
Falling prices may spell relief for consumers? by Paul Krasiel
Hyping Jack No. 2 by Tom Whipple
The day America changed, except me by David E.X.N. Nghiem
[geologic details of the 'Jack' find] by Byron King
[thankfully, the UK is keeping the world safe from cellists] by Mark Rice-Oxley
9/11's dark window to the future by Robert Parry
Everyone loves a parade! by Rob Kirby
Train wreck of the week by Bob Chapman
[coming to a demonstration near you?!] AP
Is American democracy too feeble to deal with 9/11? by Paul Craig Roberts
Most embarrassinng piece of propaganda ever? by Hsing Lee
The sixteen acre ditch by Billmon
The hole in the city's heart by Deborah Sontag
Where was Osama on Sept 11, 2001? by Michel Chossudovsky
EXTRA -- oil discovery saves civiliation! by Jeff Vail
BYU places professor on paid leave by Tad Walch
Experiments to test the "orange glow" hypothesis [Aug31'06] by Steven E. Jones
Diary of the Mexican earthquake by John Ross
[NIST responds, WTC7 report due in 2007] NIST
The US peace movement and Hezbollah by James Brooks
Northern Great Plains falls into Dust Bowl conditions rawstory
[more debunking of ethanol smokescreen that won't die -- from an ethanol guy] by Robert Rapier
Will your neighbors have your back? by shelter from the storm
The battle of Oaxaca by Nancy Davies
Those opposed to nuclear annihilation are appeasers by Glenn Greenwald
Republican guest suggests implementing 'universal service' [trial balloon] by Marie Therese
The real green revolution by Adam Fenderson
[et tu, counterpunch?!] by Maher Osseiran
Neocons are covering their asse(t)s by shelter from the storm
Interview with Chris Cook, originator of the Iranian oil bourse by Chris Vernon
Bush appears more confused than usual (see middle: earpiece?) by bush unplugged
Robert Hirsch scares me out of my wits by Rob Hopkins
[Hollywood is against terr'ism -- whew, I feel safer already] by SMH
Dead man coming by Matt Taibbi
Ehren Watada [a lot braver than the chickenhawks] by Dahr Jamail
[creeping police state] by Jonathan Karp and Laura Meckler
The de-Zionization of the American mind by Jean Bricmont
War against life and liberty based on lies by Scott Horton
Israel asks US to shop rockets with wide blast [disgusting NYT euphemism for real human shredders] by David S. Cloud
What a f***ing crock [some funny comments] by KilgoreTrout
The fragility of microprocessors by Alice Friedemann
The ideology of late imperial America by Jennifer Loewenstein
Bush wants wider war by Robert Parry
Identity politics by billmon
Co caine one bust lifts veil on global narcotics cartel by Daniel Hopsicker
Scott Henderson interview (guitar player) wgg
By all means, let's be honest, Mr. Paulson by Chris Sanders
Sleeping with the enemy by Joe Quinn
Israeli bombing backed by US by not UK/European voters by Tom Baldwin
Israel and the US losing on 3 fronts by Patrick Seale
Plague of plastic chokes the seas by Kenneth R. Weiss
A net energy parable: why is ERoEI important? by Nate Hagens
The triumph of 'crackpot realism' by Alexander Cockburn
[now that we are losing the war, the Dems finally utter a few peeps -- what cowards for not opposing it earlier] Raw Story
A tank of gas, a world of trouble by Paul Salopek (MSM Peak Oil -- good!)
Comments on Steven Johnes article Scholars for 9 1 1 truth
[Rainwater peak oil prophet a co cane import agent?!] by Daniel Hopsicker
Police spies chosen to lead war protest by Demian Bulwa
Cassini-Huygens: lakes on Titan ESA/ISA/NASA
Too late for empire by Jonathan Schell and Tom Engelhardt
Making money by feeding confusion over global warming by Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore
Warming triggers 'dead zone' by Jeff Barnard
Iran: the next war by James Bamford
US rushes bombs to Israel by David Cloud and Helene Cooper
'Why don't you want the fighting to stop?' Rawstory
A war by any other name by Sami Moubayed
Attention deficit Americans are being misled to war by Paul Craig Roberts
Treatment of US suspects at home mirrors that of terror suspects in military custody by Larisa Alexandrovna
Why coal-rich US is seeing record imports by Mark Clayton
[thiomersal safe if you live in a third-world country] by C.J. Clements and and P.B. McIntyre
Keeping the streets of Iraq safe by Jean
Round-tripping by Rob Kirby
Hadji girl by Robert C. Koehler
The reality beneath the flag-waving Paul Craig Roberts
Last stand by Seymour Hersh
People-centered peak oil investment tips by Alan Wartes
Imagine for a moment it was you by qrswave
America's immenent nuclear relapse by Jorge Hirsch
Haditha, My Lai, and the media by Sarah Weber
The high price of American gullibility by Paul Craig Roberts
Torture school by Mark Benjamin
Military resistance, a brief history by Zoltan Grossman
Review of Andre Viljoen (2006) book on growing food in cities by Rob Hopkins
"CNN, the most trusted name in aaaaaaaaahhhhh!!! the Jon Stewart show
FAA stalls release of DC9 records by Daniel Hopsicker
Air conditioning by Stan Cox
[*excellent* ethanol article in Car and Driver!?] by Patrick Bedard
[oildrum comment on article below mentioning unscalable need for gallium] by PaulS
Major step for [US] solar power by Paul Rogers
Killing Iraqi children by Jacob Hornberger
[American gulag] by Avery Walker
[why can't we get more good news?] by Greg Mitchell
Drug warriors push eye-eating fungus Jeremy Bigwood
[scary 'exercise' on Jun 19] by William Arkin
The economics of oofle dust by Chris Shaw
Countless My Lai massacres in Iraq by Dahr Jamail
Amid the respectables in the heartland by Robert Higgs
The alt fuels distraction by Dave Roberts
Why does the N S A engage in mass surveillance of Americans when it's statistically impossible for such spying to detect terrorists? by Floyd Rudmin
Stem cell caution by Richard Hayes
Want this?
Renewable energy: what are the limits? by Ted Trainer (Sep'03 -- reposted w/live link)
[positive news about fusion] by Kurt Kleiner
The mad hatter's war party by Chris Saunders
How massacres become the norm by Dahr Jamail
The lobby and beyond by Michael Neumann
How reliable are those USDA ethanol studies? by Robert Rapier
The war drums are getting louder by Stephen Lendman
Stephen Walt responds [nothing to see here, move along] by Steve Clemons
Expose on Jewish role in US policy is disowned by Richard Beeston
Electrification of transportation as a response to peaking of world oil production by Alan S. Drake
Will the US nuke Iran? [Real video inside this link] by Jorge Hirsch
[other drones already up there] Cnet
[domestic drones planned: will they be armed with missiles?] by Declan McCullagh
[wmv video: Moussaoui wore a 'stun belt' for new testimony] MSNBC
Willy Loman goes to war by Mark Ames
Smoke and monetary policy by Jeff Vail
Energy by Michael Schaefer
[comment on peak college enrollment at theoildrum] by westexas
Why there's no strategy to end this war by Alexander Cockburn
The aging effects of war by Mike Woolley
'Base' US intentions by Jim Lobe
Harvard backs away by Alex Safia
Whatever happened to congress? interview with Chalmers Johnson
The end game by Steve Saville
Food, sustainablilty, and the environmentalists by Tom Philpott
The Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy [pdf] by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt
Too hot for New York by Philip Weiss
The farcical end of the American dream by Robert Fisk
Where do we get such men? by Werther
Iraq vets by S. Brian Willson
The Bush doctrine of nuclear preemption by Greg Moses
[Time describes operation swarmer as photo-op] by Brian Bennett and Al Jallam
[supporting war means supporting baby-killing] by Amer Amery
Largest US airstrike since invasion underway AP
Is another 9/11 in the works? by Paul Craig Roberts
Mexico's ability to export oil [92% of Mexico's exports go to US] by Khebab
Nuclear bunker buster bombs against Iran: this way lies madness by Stephen M. Osborn
US on human rights: laugh yourself to death by Jim Lobe
General Pace to troops by Jorge Hirsch
See Dick loot by Dahr Jamail
Is the Iran oil bourse the casus belli? by F. William Engdahl
Life in a grass house by Kyle
Net energy by William Stanton
The plunge protection team intervention risk indicator by Robert McHugh
LA South Central farm receives 3-day eviction notice by Michael Ruppert
CENTCOM engages bloggeres by Capt. Steve Alvarez, USA
'Torture boy' signals more spying by Robert Parry
Shining light into the abyss by Charles Sullivan
42% of taxes in FY05 went to current and past military activities by FCNL
[US quietly orders $38 million more in DU shells -- $77 million total in last 2 months] by John Byrne
Surely Americans will not put up with this censorship by Katharine Viner
[very interesting history of "town gas"] by Heading Out
Senator Feinstein's war profiteering by Joshua Frank
The night before the bobing: two eyewitnesses by Baghdad Dweller
My name is Randy by Ian Demsky
US reign of terror in Iraq by Simon Assaf
The problem with mercury by Peter Montague
Paying the Iraq bill by Joseph Stiglitz
This presentation may be too graphic by Mary Pitt
Halliburton affiliate tabbed to build immigration jails by Mason Stockstill
COUNTER-INTELPRO : the Black Panther coloring book WhatReallyHappened
The Muslims are coming (again) Lenin's Tomb
Program trading, 1999 to 2006: 19% to 56% by Jesse
Bush SotU address: Iran is a go by Ben Frank
What 3 degrees of global warming really means by Peter Barrett
[2 times the risk for 10 times the profit] ConsumerAffairs.com
Hansen in the NYT RealClimate.org
Debate on climate shifts to issue of irreparable change by Juliet Eilperin
The fallback position Patriot Boy
Polls show many Americans are sumply dumber than Bush by Paul Craig Roberts (Reagan's Asst Secy Treasury)
Public health in a post-petroleum world by G. Daniel Bednarz
57% back hit on Iran [the USian brain is a giant propaganda sponge] by Greg Miller
The nuclear threat at the end of the age of petroleum by Zbignew Zingh
'We must all be prepared to torture' by Fred Branfman
The life and death of an Iraq veteran who could take no more by Andrew Buncombe
Is our time up? by Pat Murphy
Warriors and wusses by Joel Stein (who'd have thunk?!)
Harry Belafonte smacks Wolf Blitzer (2.7M mp3) CNN
Just how dumb to they think we are? by Paul Craig Roberts
LOL -- Bin Laden tape plugs book against his jihad in Afghan-Soviet war by Wayne Madsen
Hillary outflanks Dubya on Iran -- on the right by Robert Dreyfuss
On the origins of dark matter by Brad Setser
America's dark materials [standard numbers are meaningless] the Economist
Pharisee nation by John Dear
Black gold and the US dollar hegemony by Douglas Gnazzo (gold bug, but a great collection of stats)
Hedge funds finance 80% of trade deficit by Ashraf Laidi
Cloudy with a chance of chaos by Eugene Linden
[Ledeen wrote for forged-Niger-docs mag] by Larisa Alexandrovna
History points to higher rates! [opposite prediction from below] by Puru Saxena
Has the Fed already overshot? by Mike Shedlock
[it's starting, just like Iraq] by Carol Giacomo
Countdown to energy war by Jim Willie
Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse? (draft 4.4 -- pics of slag) by Steven E. Jones
Snake oil, carnies, and four flat tires by Rob Kirby
Gag reflex by Chris Floyd
AMERICAblog just bought General Wesley Clark's cell phone records for $89.95 by John Aravosis
Climate shock -- book review of Thin Ice by Kelpie Wilson
[Mogambo Guru discovers peak oil -- but misleading on money creation: M3 virtually linear at 0.6 trillion/year since 1995] by Richard Daughty
The middle class on the precipice by Elizabeth Warren
Torture tactics by Barbara Wolff
Stuff and nonsense by Gordon Prather
Day one -- the war with Iran by Douglas Herman
Is this the miscreats exit in OSTK? by Bob O'Brien
The Fed's money armament is underway by Robert McHugh
My Lai massacre hero dies at 62 BBC
End this evasion on permanent military bases in Iraq by Gary Hart
J Edgar Hoover with supercomputers by Ray McGovern
[failed attempt to plant WMDs] by Larisa Alexandrovna
East Asia under the midday sun by Steven Lachance
Abramoff and Al-Arian by Juan Cole
9-11 -- the gift that keeps on giving bulldog
The Delay-Abramoff money trail by R. Jeffrey Smith
Proud to be an American by PatriotBoy
Saving the net by Doc Searls
'Mrs. Anthrax' released -- no charges [and no MSM comment] by Robert Scheer
The end of exurbia and high noon in the desert [2 great articles] by Dmitri Podborits
Countermeasures for US citizens by John Stanton
What's the fed up to with the money supply? by Robert McHugh
Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse? (draft 3.1) by Steven E. Jones
Why was there molten steel under ground zero? by George Washington
Nuclear deployment for an attack on Iran by Jorge Hirsch
The grand illusion by Rob Kirby
Smile, the Fed hates you by Stirling Newberry
Dead man tells no tales by James Bovard
[even richies have the jitters] by Oliver Ryan
Congress expects up to $1B wartime request [kewl title typo: it's $100B...] by Liz Sidoti
Making payola pay Paul Porter interview
Philly peace protest turns violent by Jay Lassiter
[watch out, Good Americans] by Genevieve Roberts
Destroying the village in order to save it by revcom.us
Greenland, or why you might care about ice physics by Stuart Staniford
American hunger by Julian Edney
Bushlandia in black and white by John Ross
All the news that's fit to buy by Alexander Cockburn
Timing the credit event by Mike Shedlock
Eyewitness: I never heard the word 'bomb' by Siobhan Morrissey
Giving up on New Orleans by Mike Tidwell
What's up Doc? by Rob Kirby
Jimmy Massey, Ron Harris and ambush journalism by Stan Goff
Wag the Damascus? by William Arkin
Italian TV broadcasts report of US us of chemical weapons on civilians DKos
Minimal behavioral adaptation to oil shocks by Stuart Staniford
Why oil intensity changed in the US economy by Stuart Staniford
The costs of war by Stewart Nussbaumer
Woman countersues RIAA for fraud and deceptive business practices by Ryan Paul
The heat death of American dreams by Ed Merta
Doctor's diary heals wounds by David McNeill
The nature of anti-Americanism is changing by Raymond K. Kent
The police state is closer than you think by Paul Craig Roberts
Report: euthanizing right-wing pundits would solve global warming Eyewitness Muse
Bicycle sales boom in US amid rising gas prices AFP
Why are Democrats so dumb? by Xymphora
Miller on a scooter by Xymphora
US insists no plans to invade Venezuela by Christopher Toothaker
Captain Courageous by Chris Floyd
Houston: we have a problem Brushtail
Rumours of deaths greatly exaggerated by Brian Thevenot and Gordon Russell
More dissent, more censorship by Dahr Jamail
Confessions of a hit man by Charlie Reese (self-described 'conservative' that sounds radically left to me)
Torture, morality, and the antiwar movement by Rahul Mahajan
Entire 101st airborne division [20,000] deploying to Iraq NewChannel5 Nashville
Blackwater down by Jeremy Scahill
'You can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood' by Hart Viges
[heh, billmon's heart of darkness] by Billmon
US army plans to bulk-buy anthrax by David Hambling
House republican study committee document by John Byrne
Anti-computer style explained by Tim Crabbe
Was Pentagon tracking Atta just days before 9.11 attack? by Daniel Hopsicker
[the last time methane hydrates melted] Astrobiology Magazine
Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americansby Ryan Parry
Chavez: US plans to invade Venezuela AP
America has fallen to a Jacobin coup by Paul Craig Roberts
Sausage -- looted or not -- puts elderly church leader in prison by Kevin McGill and John Solomon
Overview of photovoltaic solar cells by James Fraser
Oil: geologists vs. economists by Marshall Auerbach
As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories' Cecilia Vega
The H A A R P Race by Chris Sanders
[history of planetary experiments, reposted] by Rosalie Bertell
New Orleans unmasks apartheid, America style by Jason Miller
Apartheid America and the right of return by Xymphora
A god with whom I am not familiar by Tim Wise
[you are on your own] by Parmedics Larry Bradsahw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky
How we survived the flood by Charmaine Neville
I just got back from a FEMA detainment camp by Valhall
The vicious downward cycle of the American economy by Paul Craig Roberts (former Reagan asst treasury secy)
Do you know what it means to lose New Orleans? by Anne Rice
[Funeral director deployed to hurricane region told to expect up to 40,000 bodies] by Clint Confehr
Captain Cracker, failing earnestly by monkeygrinder
Interest rates are headed higher in the long term by Bud Conrad, Jun29
Interest rates are low because of extreme credit expansion by Bud Conrad, Jul19
Everything has gone according to plan posted by China at Lenin's Tomb
Ethnic cleansing in the USA by Xymphora
Starving the beast in the kingdom of fear by Big Gav
Paul Allen's other yacht by Paul Rogat Loeb
The butterfly effect by Stan Goff
Nature is politics by Alexander Cockburn
[armed cutting in line for richies -- scroll to middle] by Mary Foster
It reminds me of Baghdad in the worst of times by Julian Borger
You bet your life by Michael Ruppert
The real news interview with Bigfoot
Lake George by Will Bunch, Attytood
New Orleans and the death of the common good by Chris Floyd
Evil? yes; spineless? no by John Walsh
Bush: war was to stop terrorists from getting oil [you the terr'ist] by Jennifer Loven
Deepwater basins will save us (common misconceptions III) by Bubba
Eyeballing Katrina damage 01 by Cryptome
Bush-Cheney heading for nuclear rendevous at Desert One by Webster Griffin Tarpley
The problem of excessive inequality by Xymphora
[SWAT teams trash drum and bass parties in Utah and the Czech Republic (?!)] Admin
The moral hazard myth by Malcolm Gladwell
[notes from one of the soldiers we 'support'] by J.D. Engelhardt
Peak oil debunked by Matt Savinar
Body part porn and war, part 1 by Helena Cobban
The American economy is destroying itself by Paul Craig Roberts
Psyop in Utah by Charlene Fassa
Containing the antiwar movement by Stan Goff (see Buchanan below)
The Democrats dilemma by Pat Buchanan (see Goff above)
All US military leave has been cancelled by Bob Chapman
Abu Ghraib, satanists, and spoon-benders by Edward Spannaus
Utah ravers treated like terrorists by Apollo
The soldier's revolt in Vietnam by Martin Smith
PV shortage by Robert McLeod
There is such a thing as too late by Ray McGovern
Tot's name to stay on no-fly list by Michael McAuliff
Space weapons by Giuseppe Anzera
[because of 9-11, it's OK to to kill Iraqi kids, as told to the WSJ by a West Point ethics professor] by Greg Jaffe
Intelligent falling the Onion
The plot thickens by Al Martin
Drink-soaked Trotskyite popinjay slimes antiwar mom by Justin Raimondo
Able danger intel exposed "protected" her-oin trafficking by Daniel Hopsicker
"I did not haff outercourse with that woman..." by Joseph Cannon
Bring the troops home now, or face mutiny mparent7777
Sacrifice? count me out by Ted Rall
Why the corporate rich oppose environmentalism by Michael Parenti
[No-fly babies...] by Leslie Miller
Get ready for a wider war by Paul Craig Roberts
The stakes are too high Deliso interview with Sibel Edmonds
Army intel unit exposes massive FBI 9.11 cover-up by Daniel Hopsicker
Basic choices and constraints on long-term energy supplies by Paul B. Weisz[excellent intro, from July 2004]
Bartlett on EMP June 9, 2005 [go Roscoe]
Would you? by Douglas Herman
[Google puts Cindy Sheehan's criticism of Bush's Iraq war behind 'adult' shield] by Cindy Sheehan
Bigger than AIPAC by Robert Dreyfuss
Watching the economy crumble by Paul Craig Roberts
US reportedly planning to boost troop levels to 160,000 in Iraq Wire reports
Peak oil vs. Y2K by Paul Lymath
What have we done? by Dahr Jamail
MTV ad Censored after having been shown only once MTV
67-year-old grandmother tasered for honking her horn gets probation AP
Jim Kunstler's despair by Andrew Nimelman
[you know it's getting bad when Walrat starts to jump ship...] Reuters
Hitler's shadow and the coming storm by John Chuckman
Cheney's plan: nuke Iran by Justin Raimondo
Welcome to Plan B by Jan Lundberg
Don't you dare call it treason by Alexander Cockburn
Producing ethanol and biodiesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy www.physorg.com
The spirit of Nazism by Robert Koehler
Democrats more hawkish than Bush by John Walsh
Plame retaliation by Xymphora
To hell with Judith Miller by Stan Goff
Turd Blossom's stink bomb takes out dazed neoliberals by Larry Chin
[plan to build the Just Desserts Cafe] Freestar Media (anti-gov)
[Puplava expects inflation] by Jim Puplava
Victory and recruitment by Michael Neumann
Exponential Enrons ahead by Kelpie Wilson
Just say Noruba by Arianna Huffington
"Secret" air base for Iraq war started prior to 9-11 by Duke1676
Contract that spawned Guantanamo prisons awarded to Halliburton during Cheney's tenure as CEO by John Byrne
The Fed's at it again -- what do they fear? by Robert McHugh
[where motherboards come from] hexus.net
The Green Republic: a country inside a country by Riverbend
The Downing Street memo by Xymphora
Lie of the century by Michael Rivero
Thomas Friedman's imaginary world by Alexander Cockburn
You gotta ask me nicely, Danny Banality of Evil
[first they came for the mouthy black women with expired licenses, but I wasn't a black woman...] Plam Beach Post
Former CIA director calls for Iraq withdrawal [wake up, you Democrat worms]
Property gone wild by Michael Neumann
Monkey business by Matt Taibbi
[US soldier feels bad about routinely rounding up Iraqi kids to use as human shields] by Mitchell E. Potts
Not free, not fair [I can barely understand this stuff] by John Embry and Andrew Hepburn, Aug'04
[the US currently has 106 military bases in Iraq] by Tom Engelhardt
Gitmo detainees say they were sold by Michelle Faul
What else would you do with a dick in your face? by Rudepundit
Greenspan's inflation-wedgie by Alex Wallenwein
Fine peak oil article from Fishing Facts, 1976 -- embarrasses today's WSJ/LA/NYTimes/Newspeak by George Pazik
Bentagon vs. Newsweak by Ted Lang
Do the people of Iraq have a right to resist occupation? by Jack Smith
A conversation with denial UNplanner
Pirates reprise by Rob Kirby
Not a pretty picture by Sidney Schanberg
[George Galloway knocks pipsqueak Coleman out of the park -- Scots rock!] by George Galloway
How they forged the case against Galloway by Simon Assaf and Charlie Kimber
John Bolton's plane scare by Xymphora
Join the 14 percent club! by Alexander Cockburn
America's right to know by Ralph Nader
Naomi's courage by Michael Neumann
An ethical blank check by Richard Drayton
Rant of the day by YD
Off the charts if Americans knew
It won't stop another war by Joshua Frank
Al Franken is a big fat phony by John Walsh
Chewing raw grubs with the "Nutcracker Man" by Joe Bageant
[Tiger Force military judge does Abu Ghraib] by Newt
On a road to nowhere by UNplanner
NYT minimizes Palestinian deaths by Alison Weir
Oil supply tsunami alert by Kjell Aleklett
[like a roach, he checked in but he didn't check out] by John Byrne
Blinded by the light by Guest at ThisIsRumorControl
An economic 9-11? by Michael Rivero
Saving Saudi Arabia by Xymphora
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett votes no on energy bill global public media
Come on in -- the quicksand's fine the Feral Mettalugist
Emails 'pose threat to IQ' by Martin Wainwright
[the art of subduing a woman in a diabetic coma] by Jason Kravarik
The most important thing you don't know about "Peak Oil" by Steve Lagavulin(cool name)
Abiotic oil from Jon Clarke
Cheap labor and high commodity prices by Xymphora
Draft by Black Commentator
About Rachel Corrie by Arthur Silber
Wartime psyop by Fintan Dunne
Let's drink to the slobbering classes by Joe Bageant
What did April say? by Malcolm Lagauche
The invisible hand by Robert Bell
On messengers and shooting by Athenae
Fingerprints of a con job by Xymphora
The united vegetative states of America by Anwaar Hussain
Domino effect and interdependencies by Norman Church
American Thermidor by Stirling Newberry
Torture Inc. -- America's brutal prisons by Deborah Davies
Even Stephen Roach has it wrong by Peter Schiff
A Trojan jackass for the anti-war movement by Stan Goff
The Pentagon's secret stash by Matt Welch
Scott Ritter interview [interesting, but weak on geology] by Larisa Alexandrovna
"You've been sand-bagged, boy" by Nick Welsh
[it's 'non-lethal' -- the 100+ admitted deaths were 'accidental', man] by Malcolm Lagauche
[outsourcing war] by James C. McKinley
The cavernous divide by Scott Klinger
Feeding tubes for the third world by David Swanson
If Jesus returns, Karl Rove will kill him by Harvey Wasserman
Aramco projects: a closer look [it's happening] by Greg Croft
New undeclared arms race by Michel Chossudovsky
The long fingers of petroleum by oilman2
Secret plans for Iraq's oil by Greg Palast
How do you shoot babies? a warning from Auschwitz by David Edwards
[fine oil presentation from conservative congressman Roscoe Bartlett] US Congressional Rec
US used chemical weapons in Fallujah assault by Doug Lorimer
Bionic US troops go back to war [maybe reporters could get bionic brains, too, when theirs fail] by Sarah Baxter
George, the axe, and the cherry tree by Feral Metallurgist
Mother responds to William Rivers Pitt by Cindy Sheehan
The long road down by John Michael Greer (farmer, druid!)
[even SAIC believes in peak oil now...] NETL/SAIC pdf (1.2M)
[torture] by
How to track a PC anywhere it connects to the Net by Renai LeMay
Arnold vs. the nurses by Alexander Cockburn
The oil factor in Bush's 'war on tyranny' by F. William Enghdahl
[a dual-use dystopia] by David Hambling
It sounds crazy, but... by Ray McGovern
14 characteristics Bushflash.com
Oil outlook 2005 by Matt Simmons
The meaning of "Calm" -- relativity, LA Times style by Alison Weir
[body shrink-wrapper for homeland security] ABC
Uncle Bucky and the rocket-fueled breasts by Bob Harris
I support the occupation of Iraq, but I don't support our troops the Onion (satire, guys)
Letter from an oil exploration insider by Anonymous
Imperial entropy by Kirkpatrick Sale
Philadelphia Inquirer slanders embattled Prof. Gil-White by Jared Israel
Poor, white, and pissed by Joe Bageant
Did Bruce Eberle get Gannon top White House access? by John Byrne
Sex lies and Jeff Gannon by Justin Raimondo
Lessons from Cuba by Pat Murphy
Remarks in Hudson, Jan 8, 2005 by James Kunstler
The American Turkish Council by John Stanton
There are no journalists by Sidney Blumenthal
California's shrinking salad bowl by Deborah Rich
A man called Jeff by John Aravosis
[send CNN a copy of 'Propaganda for Dummies'] bradblog
[maybe tbrnews was right!] rawstory
Third warmest year in a row PhysOrg.com
200 years of American interventions (flash) adbusters
Hiroshima, mon amour by John Chuckman
The eight percent war by Manuel Garcia
Lynne Stewart convicted of collusion with CIA-created terrorists by Kurt Nimmo
It's kind of muddled by Xymphora
Phoney phreedom by Xymphora
If there is no picture, did it happen? by William Marvel
What caused the Permian extinction? by Megan Fellman
[use of lynx web browser considered terrorism!] Cory Doctorow
We've been taken over by a cult by Seymour Hersh
Sounds like terror by Jeff Wells
Two little girls on the road by newt
The white room by H.D.S. Greenway
No. 1? by Michael Ventura
OPEC and Bush 2's new economy rhetoric by Andrew McKillop
Reply to Gilbert Achcar by Alex Callinicos
The anti-war movement and the Iraqi resistance by Sharon Smith
What's new in production by Robert E. Snyder
[US Press: Taliban destroys statues => bad; US bulldozes Babylon => whatever] by Ghali Hassan
["just the deaths fit to print"... by Dave Lindorff
[soon, you'll need a permit to fart, since methane is a greenhouse gas] washingtonvotes
[the war comes back home, just like it did in Vietnam] by Ernesto Cienfuegos
Getting the people behind it by Xymphora
[peak oil reaches Forbes...] by Dan Ackman
Investigate violations of law by Jim McDermott, M.D., and Richard Rapport, M.D.
A mean and unholy ditch by Joe Bageant
Part 2: the center of the doughnut by Andre Gunder Frank
[new uses for doctors] by Gregg Bloche and Jonathan H. Marks
US eyes greater military clout in Asia following tsunami disaster AFP
On lasermania by Doug Ritter
Part 1: Why the emperor has no clothes by Andre Gunder Frank
Where are the images? by Bruce Jackson
[life in prison without the possibility of a *trial* -- wake up kiddies!] Reuters
A government 'op' that went wrong by Jeff Wells
Torture jet by Dana Priest
Forget torture: it's the sex that matters by Paul Craig Roberts
Urban vs. rural sustainability by Toby Hemenway
Blood, oil, and Gary Webb's death rigorousintuition.blogspot.com
Market edges close to breaking points by George Littell
The cost of war (for the invaders) Memory Hole
[The LA times can't bring themselves to say 'torture' even when the Iraqi dies] by Richard A. Serrano
Israelis compare pullout plan to Holocaust by Josef Federman
Houston, we have a problem by Rahul Mahajan
[eye to eye with our glorious invasion] cryptome
David Cobb and Medea Benjamin: losers of the left by f500k
Gary Webb -- do what he did by Al Giordano
Getting in touch with your inner terrorist by Michael Neumann
The material basis of accumulation by Stan Goff
White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software by Wayne Madsen [disinfo watch]
Icarus over Iraq by Tom Engelhardt
Running out of bubbles to blow by Jay Taylor (gold looney)
Hope you capsize and get eaten by sharks by Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers
[how our hard-won understanding of the visual system is put to 'good' use...] by Noah Schachtman
Renewable energy: what are the limits? by Ted Trainer
Interview with an antiwar veteran by Derek Seidman
And on the other hand... a felafel? by Alexander Cockburn
Why I hate thanksgiving by Mitchel Cohen and Peter Linebaugh
Face the music: time to oppose our troop's actions by Joshua Frank
The energy challenge 2004 -- petroleum by Murray Duffin
The energy challenge 2004 -- solar by Murray Duffin
The priviledge of running free deficits by Stan Goff
Private Boston-based jet used to transport US prisoners for outsourced electric torture from Sunday Times
US$ health warning! Will devalution help energy transition? by Andrew McKillop
The last gasp of U.S. hegemony by Kevin Rafferty (a former managing editor for the World Bank)
Reality check by Adam Porter
[dollar vs. euro, from a goldie] by Alex Wallenwein
Torture and cinema by Stan Goff
Varieties of cluster bombs www.againstbombing.com
Interview with Iraq veteran Jimmy Massey by Jeff Riedel
New democrat outreach program by Commandante Camembert
We're all Israelis now by Mark LeVine
Don't say we didn't warn you by Alexander Cockburn
Why they won by Thomas Frank
A patriot falls eXile.ru
Can't we all just get along? by Ben Tripp
Two causes by Xymphora
Damn politics, let's dance by Pepe Escobar
Energy transition and final energy crisis by Andrew McKillop
Real men don't let other men bomb civilians by Rosemarie Jackowski
Osama's endorsement by John Chuckman
Bin Laden continues to earn his pay by Xymphora
Kerrycrats and the war by Alexander Cockburn
Voice of the white house tbrnews
Bush quietly signs corporate tax-cut bill AP
Wealth of a white nation by the Black Commentator
Money, money, money by Stan Goff
You can't blame Nader for this by Alexander Cockburn
America's perfect storm by Jeff Berg (from Canada)
The US Invasion of Iraq by Stephen Zunes
A courtroom speech by Rosemarie Jackowski
[wmv video: Jon Stewart on Crossfire: total spectrum dominance!] Crossfire
Views of the most important international energy agencies by W. Zittel, J. Schindler
Our future BforB
Empire of insanity by Greg Bates
Not there (QT video) by Operation Truth
Face to face with the American C I A by Merle L. Pribbenow
Who took Ahimsa exactly? by Indymedia
Free Judith Miller! by Xymphora
Hawk vs. hawk by Bob Dreyfuss
Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons program by Keay Davidson
2007 explained by Powerless New Zealand
['enduring bases' -- see upper right: why we're in Iraq] by John Pike
[what a WSJ reporter thinks but can't write -- at least in the WSJ!] by Greg Mitchell
The end of the age of oil by David Goodstein
Embedded in a media fantasy by William Bowles
Toilets vs. life as we know it by Joe and Margaret Anderson
Draft plans tbrnews
Lucy Ramirez by Xymphora
Why Americans back the war by James Carrol
[finally, an sorta antiwar speech from Kerry -- but still Iraqicization and 'coalition' fantasies] by John Kerry
Thoughts on the oil bubble by Alex Wilson
Eclipsed by William Greider
Fight back! by Wayne Madsen
[wave height is now 42 feet (!) at Gulf Buoy 4204] Buoy 42040
Peak oil -- a perfect storm (and comments) by Dr Strangelove
Wake up and smell the jungle rot by Stan Goff
[T*** flower is sure good at what he does] by Xymphora
Reality is off the table by Alexander Cockburn
Running out the clock by Noam Schreiber
Barbarians past the gates by Richard Alan Leach
Quit f***ing around by Becky Burgwin
Chechnya gripped by Stalinist terror, or where do suicide bombers come fromby Alice Berenfeld
Federal deficit reality by Walter Williams
What the world should know by Douglas Valentine
Media miss story of biggest pay cut in historyby David Swanson
The stench of doom by Alexander Cockburn
Guantanamo on the Hudson nypress
Why does Wall Street continue to look down on renewable energy? by Rana Foroohar
Huge anti-Bush march by Grant McCool
Alliances and the American election by Gabriel Kolko
An ordinary view of extra-ordinary times by Wanda Fish
Play it backward by John L. Hess
Oil boom and doom by Scott Patterson
The trouble with electing Caesar by John Chuckman
US to halt [non-superconducting] nuclear fusion project [helium-dependent continues] New Scientist
Kerry on Iraq by Xymphora
Kerry's "Energy Plan" by Stan Goff
[GM plants increase profits, not productivity] by F. William Engdahl
Voice of the white house tbr news
Collape due in 2005? by F. William Engdahl
What The 9/11 Commission Report Ignores: The CIA-Al Qaeda Connection WSWS editorial
What would you do? by Steven Soldz
Empire building is nasty work by Richard Erlich
DHS's NICC Calls Cryptome Cryptome
Terrorism and the election by Wayne Madsen
Backstabbers! by Mark Ames
The impenetrable wall by Xymphora
Nine more reasons the party's over by Richard Heinberg
Ten steps to a sustainable energy future by Rudolf Rechsteiner (Swiss MP -- compare to our 'representatives')
Beware the liberal war on terror by Dave Stratman
Marlon Brando by Dave Zirin
Not far enough by Joseph Cannon
Jurassic park, pseudo-events and prisons by Stan Goff
Let's accelerate and stay ahead of oil's peak by Michael Bendzela
1000 days of continuous cover-up by Daniel Hopsicker
Shoveling coal for Satan by Matt Taibbi (go Matt!)
Activists visit Iraq by Samara Kalk Derby
Understanding the US war state (2003) by John McMurtry
[mein kampf from a spook] by Kevin Drum
Thrill is gone Vincent Suetos, Kellog-Brown Root employee
Update to timeline by Paul Thompson
NMCC ops director asked for substitute on 9-10 Tom Flocco
The only choice is the war party by Kurt Nimmo
[time to 'pull' Bush?] by Julian Coman
Spite the vote by Mark Ames
Tripod II and FEMA -- lack of response explained by Michael Ruppert
Reagan's passing by Juan Cole
[bile for the bilious] by Jim Kunstler
Anything that flies on anything that moves by Chris Floyd
[com vs. org] 911 review
[Pentagon evidence review] Richard Stanley and Jerry Russell
Supporting our troops by Steven T. Banko, former troop
The WTC impacts by Eric Salter
Anti-war movement -- part 1 by Sherman Skolnick
TiVO-lution by Matt Tiabbi
[return of the road warrior] by Douglas Herman
Rapid climate change Physics Today
What's the question? by William Blum
The end of oil and the end of America by Robert Freeman
The oil we eat by Richard Manning
Luckily for us by Stan Cox
And now for something really dangerous by Tom Engelhardt
Microsoft launches damage control after code leaks by Galit Yemini
Reading the consumer mind by Douglas Rushkoff
How privatization sterilizes culture Michael Hudson interview by Standard Schaefer
"Anybody But Bush": The big abdication by Patrick Donavan
Druggie Bushie Xymphora
The house shows its hand by Chris Sanders
SOTUS Bush
[Cheney's approval rating is 20%] by Jim Lobe
[politically correct storm-troopers] ABC
[you know it's serious when the greed+money guys say it] Fortune
The defense budget is bigger than you think by Robert Higgs
Lunacy by Dom Stasi
Food poisoning as background noise by Richard Manning
Whitey on the moon by Gil Scott-Heron
[luckily, we've long been interested in 'solar energy'] by Rosalie Bertell, Gray nun (go Rosalie!)
[paths to growth in 2003] by Nick Beams
The digital imprimatur by John Walker
[Spook poets] by Jeet Heer
FAQ regarding "Where is the money?" www.whereisthemoney.org
Where is the collateral? by Chris Sanders
This is not America by Michelle Goldberg
Microsoft running on microsoft again by Ashlee Vance
American people "snuff" another bunch of kids by Bill Morgan
Vietnam -- how the soldiers stopped the war Traveling soldier
The king of dirt by Wayne Madsen
Merchants of pain by Jim Lobe
The cross of iron by Conn Hallinan
Unions are the answer by Standard Schaeffer
They're coming by Jan Lundberg
Wag the turkey by Wayne Madsen
Why I hate Thanksgiving by Mitchel Cohen
The Miami Model by Jeremy Scahill
Walmart is not a business: it is an economic disease by Richard Freeman and Arthur Ticknor
Into the dungeon by Sarah Shields
Men and porn the Guardian
Chipping away at your privacy by Howard Wolinsky
Hold on to your humanity by Stan Goff (first-rate)
[Outsourcing torture] by Olivia Ward
They can take you away and tell no one by Elaine Cassel
What they did to me (an employee at mathworks) by Maher Arar
Mini nukes for terrorist cities by Paul Craig Roberts
Now that the group-sex shoe is on the right-wing foot by Patsy Baye
[I don't want my tax dollars supporting people like this, and I certainly don't look forward to meeting them on the street...] by Gregg Zoroya
Reversing reality by Sarah Weir
Rush the junkie the exile
Tough minded liberal by Mark Hand
Circus maximus by Chris Lloyd
The emperor has no clothes by Robert Byrd
[Chumps] yuricareport
RFID zeitgeist by Howard Rheingold
[Right vs. ultra-right] by Xymphora
All the president's votes by Andrew Gumbel
The day of the locust by Mike Davis
Welcome to Arnold, King for a day by Alexander Cockburn
The democrats messed up; Arnold had help by Stuart Nusbaumer
America needs thorazine! exile.ru
Just answer the question by Doug Newman
Arnold unplugged -- Hasta la vista to $9 billion by Greg Palast
Raise taxes or cut military spending Carlton Meyer, Magazine of Future Warfare
Arnold after dark Counterpunch
[Food fight] by Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Lying about sex is an impeachable offence; lying the nation into war apparently is not by Eric Margolis
How the dominance of Microsoft's products poses a risk to security by Dan Geer
[The 'terminator' gene for songs] by Charles Haddad
The RIAA nails a 12-year-old girl by Ashlee Vance
'Trusted Computing' FAQ [AKA Palladium, AKA making the Chinese pay for software, AKA welcome to their machine] by Ross Anderson
Functionally insane Americans by David McGowan
Controlling the news by Walter Storch
The Bush admin's desperation is showing by Bev Conover
US tech industry staff decimated [literally] in offshore stampede by Drew Cullen
The Times scoops that melted by Jack Shafer
Growing prison population (with decreasing crime) growing problem for states by Curt Anderson
American feudalism pushhamburger.com
National news picking up by Renee Downing
Hope through anarchy by John Stanton
The soldiers of ward 57 by Anne Hull and Tamara Jones
The founders and the fedayeen by Mary Beth Norton
Can the real reason for war be this crass? by Mano Singham
Hydrogen cars are not a good idea UC Berkeley
The coming financial reality (II) S. Schaefer interview w/M. Hudson
Financing the War, Financing the World (I) S. Schaefer interview w/M. Hudson
Friday, July 11, 2003 by Xymphora
The death of Jim Hatfield by David Cogswell
Snowball effect on a soggy economy by Dan Monkerud
Are we the new Nazis? by Douglas Herman
When the Phoenix comes home to roost by Douglas Valentine
Software bullet is sought by Andrew Ross Sorkin
San Francisco paper fires antiwar [technology!] reporter Marge Holland
Sugar water apple censors Miles Davis by Andrew Orlowski
US back in nuclear bomb making business LA Times
Poor Sean Hannity by Charley Reese
Today show goes dark on Tim Robbins [cool move guys!] by Steve Rosenbaum
Washington needs to stop being fiscally irresponsible by John Crudele
I was only asking by Michael Wolff
[This list will be harder to fix than your credit record] EPIC
The world after Iraq by Robert L. Hutchings
The self-healing, self-hopping mine by Ashlee Vance
[Producer fired for German/American analogy] zap2it
New Yorkers most affected by 9-11 least likely to support war Dan Mihalopoulos
[Plunge protection team] by Martin Crutsinger
Police injure protesters and onlookers by Martha Mendoza
Dealing with change by Philip Abelson
[California school crisis seen from the UK] by Andrew Gumbel
"Lots of tanks, but no air conditioning" by Margaret Atwood
SF police play catch-up by Joe Garofoli and Jim Herron Zamora
Deficit hits $193 billion in 5 months by Jeannine Aversa
Surveillance nation by Dan Farmer and Charles C. Mann
In the grip of a permanent war economy by Seymour Melman
Marine life by Allen Gunderson
[Install solar panels raises your taxes] by John Woolfolk
What about three-strikes-and-you're-out for corporate criminals? by Lee Drutman
Self loathing on the high court the Black Commentator
Clear Channel: Songs that shouldn't be played by newspeakdictionary
Niche market by Jon Margolis
Prison nation by Paul Street
Bi-directional Total Poindexter Awareness by Andrew Orlowski
US Deficit 97 billion in first 4 months by Jeannine Aversa
A nation divided by Robert Fisk
Tens of Bush supporters take to the streets Betty Bowers
Microsoft's secret plot
Rich people and their level of greed by Molly Ivins
Aesop's fables Comstock
Cut his mic! on O'Reilly
A world without water (June 2002) by Ginger Adams Otis
The hidden holocaust by Michael Parenti
The space shuttle must be stopped by Greg Easterbrook
That's entertainment by James Davis
The Space Age Born Of The Cold War Is Over by Bruce Moomaw
Why do mean-spirited shows lure Americans? by Bruce Kluger
Equal opportunity death merchant by John Stanton
The electrocuting water cannon (and you thought demonstrating was for sissies) by George Smith
Largest [yearly] loss in US history ($0.1 trillion) by SafeMoneyReport
[Microsoft does not apply its own patches to its own buggy software] by John Leyden
[The technology formerly known as Palladium...] by John Lettice
Kahlo's missing withered leg by Marta Russell
Gold to be re-monetized by James Sinclair
Stop Palladium now by nyfairuse
Belly of the bear by Richard Russell
Supremes back Disney and pigopolists vs. science and culture by Andrew Orlowski
RFID tags by Decaln McCullagh
Blame yourself by Michael Neumann
Reverse garbage pull by Chris Lydgate and Nick Budnick
CIA interrogation/torture manual 1963
I'll take forward command post any day... by Pierre Tristam
The super-rich by Michael Parenti
Banking bunkum by Henry C K Liu
Is this really happening? by Mahbubul Karin (Sohel)
You have no right to remain silent by Joanne Mariner
[A brand is as 'good' as a religion] by Leander Kahney
Polls show Arabs and Jews agree by Josh Ruebner and Rania Awwad
Shoot citizens, ask questions, then get a lawyer (maybe) by Charles Sheehan-Miles
Antiwar Sierra club threatened with disbandment by Sierra club by Miguel Bustillo
[Get the male child, or else his relatives] by Justin Huggler
Night of the living dead by John Chuckman
The unbearable whiteness of being (Republican) by Ruy Teixeira
Interview with a draft resister by Chris
Talk radio by Thom Hartmann
Spank the donkey by Steve Perry
Pod Pelosi by Arianna Huffington
[The watch list: and you thought mistakes on your credit record were a pain...]
He's baaaaack! by Tommy Denton
It's the empire, stupid by anti-empire
Improved performance by Bob Feldman
Airline blacklists for leftists by salon
Of TCPA, Palladium and Werner von Braun by John Lettice
The invisible hand made visible by Doug Saunders
The natural history of the rich by Richard Conniff
[Theater of the absurd: environmental impact statement for laser weapons flown on Boeing 747's] Missile Defense Agency
Capitalism might work if we had a spare planet or two by Stan Cox
A year of the 'War on Terror' by Alexander Cockburn
Now that's class warfare by Molly Ivins
PBS purge by Thomas Greene
The Powell trap by Norman Solomon
The price of life by Andrew Chang
Our boys on ship by Roland Watson and Glen Owen
A stuckist net by Andrew Orlowski
The collapse of the inverse pyramids by Adam Barth
What is your post-Palladium future? by Andrew Orlowski
Memo to the right wing: it's class warfare out there by Molly Ivins
Show us the money! by TheDailyEnron
Patio Man and the Sprawl People by
Economists in denial by Mark Weisbrot
Can Jeff Gerth save the white house? by Alexander Cockburn
[Stasi-land!] by Ellen Sorokin
[No expects the Spanish Inquisition] by Ritt Goldstein
3d graphics world shaken by patent claims by Matthew Broersma
The corporate ethics red herring by Matt Vidal
Too much in the hands of too few by Carol Goar
Microsoft stakes IP claims on OpenGL by Andrew Orlowski
Palladium summary by Seth Schoen
Let me through, I'm a proctologist by Tom Shields
Leaving our children behind by Heather Wokusch
Verispy Supercomm 2002
What the flag means to me by S. Brian Willson
The crooks in the white house by Alexander Cockburn
Cracks in the facade of civic religion by Joseph Stromberg
[non-war-related rich people more important] Wake up signals by Paul Craig Roberts
[war machine more important] Eagle has crash landed by Immanuel Wallerstein
MS security patch EULA gives Billg admin privileges on your box by Thomas C. Greene
Economic inequality in US by Huck Gutman
Corporate pyramid scheme by Bob Hiler
In defense of Martha by Leslie Savan
[Apple execs stock dumps] by May Wong
IE(eeeeeee) by Rob Flickenger
Palladium trust machine by Thomas C. Greene
Vietnam and Kerrey by AP
Northwest diary by Alexander Cockburn
Study blames 18,000 [yearly] deaths in USA on lack of insurance by Steve Sternberg
Neither Enron nor deregulation by Robert C. Hinkley
'Metal Storm' [our scientists and tax dollars at work]
A tale of two massacres by David Edwards
Log cabin to white house? Not any more by Will Hutton
Bush aides met plotter before Chavez coup by Rupert Cornwell
Silicon valley's spy game by Jeffrey Rosen
The flawed calculus of torture by Jef Raskin (the Mac!)
All cell phones to get GPS! by Chris Kanaracus
Dear loathsome trade hacks by Don Henley
Empire abroad, prisons at home by Paul Street
Identity card delusions by Simson Garfinkel
The nightmare of Word by Rob Landley
New windows "filesystem" by James Treleaven
American International Group (AIG) the Economist
A year of living dangerously by Thomas Croft
Anti-americanism blamed on college teachers by Ellen Sorokin
Unmanageable bloaot by Stephen Roach
U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms by Paul Richter
Nothing personal by Bruce Headlam
[Death of OpenGL?!] by Andrew Orlowski
Sign 'em up! by Bowen Smith
Enron Contributions to Current Members of House of (may take a minute to load...)
Testimony of Frank Partnoy US Senate
Brosnahan for the defense by Larry Chin
It wasn't a shortage, it was a shakedown by FTCR
Debt collection, not reconstruction real priority of Afghan 'reconstruction' by Yoichi Shimatsu
Enron may spark the revolt of the professionals James Galbraith
Lying on Top by Dean Baker
Memo To Washington: We Can Handle The Truth by Arianna Huffington
Giving that fish a running start by Peter Kinder
Hurts so good by John Balzar
There are more Enrons out there by William Greider
Crony Capitalism, USA by Paul Krugman
Bush gets Layed by Pratap Chatterjee
We can put an end to Word attachments by Richard Stallman
American Torture Prisons by Julian Borger
It's the economy, and it's going to be stupid by Mark Weisbrot
Justice, Texas style by Molly Ivins
Public Money, Private Code by Jeffrey Benner
Discrediting Linux by Thomas C. Greene
Microsoft Pyramid Update by Bill Parrish (Nov 28)
Microsoft Pyramid Update by Bill Parrish (Nov 28)
Now who's the rogue state? FAS link
The Bankers' Vision is Limited by Mary Midgley
We Must Refuse to be Enemies by Penny Rosenwasser
When Persuasion Doesn't Work, Use Force... by George Monbiot
Manhattan's Milosevic by James Ridgeway
Gore Vidal and Timothy McVeigh (!) by Fiachra Gibbons
[On the Attack on the USS Liberty 34 years ago] by James Bamford
How Dare We? by Michael Coren, Edmonton Sun
Hiroshima Mon Amour by Justin Raimondo, www.antiwar.com
Less (and more closed) ERs now than at the beginning of the boom by Peter Gosselin
Powell and My Lai Reuters
Clear Channel (yeah right) by Eric Boehlert
In Hunt for Scandal, The Media Ignore Sanctions by Drew Hamre
Bush's Poor Understanding of the World by Charley Reese (former GW supporter)
Do Our Souls Sleep Too Well? by Nathan Johnson
America's War Crimes by Conn Hallinan
New Genetics' Drain on Public Health by Robert Pollack
Why the Latest Decision was not Favorable to Microsoft by R. Bork and K. Starr (!)
US Greenhouse Gas Emissions Way Up, Rest of the World Down by Elizabeth Shogren
The Biggest Women's Issue by Marie Cocco
Who's the Victim Here? by John R. MacArthur
MS masters NC mind-set by Nicholas Petreley
Security Geek Developing WinXP Raw Socket Exploit by Thomas C. Greene
Microsoft Before the Earthquake by Eben Moglen
Learn About War by James Glaser
Things You Can't Say In America by Alexander Cockburn
File Downloader Spying by Steve Gibson
Orwell Was Right by Dennis E. Powell
The Price of Occupation by Anthony Lewis
Nuns in Jail by David Rossie
Microsoft Exec: Open Source is a Cancer (heh!) by Sun Times, Chicago
Kerrey to Thanh Phong Villagers: Shit Happens! by Matt Taibbi
The Rights of Government to... by John Balzar
Drill, Grill, and Chill by Maureen Dowd
Reality Check by Ted Rall
"I'd rather listen to Newton than to (Microsoft's anti-Open-Source)
Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but
despite that he stinks up the room less." --Linux Torvalds, SiliconValley.com
Politial Prisoners in the US--29 Years in Solitary Confinement for a Crime Not Committed by Seth Sandronsky
Torvalds Responds to Microsoft Open Source Attack by Linux Torvalds
Shocked Over Kerrey? It's How We Fought the War by Alexander Cockburn
Republican Arsenic and Democratic Arsenic--Cut the Crap on Nader by Michael Moore
A New Nuclear Bomb for 'Non-Russian' Targets by Walter Pincus
Orwell, Collateral Damage, and Timothy McVeigh by Hussein Ibish
Real Violence and Timothy McVeigh by Alexander Cockburn
Return to Madness by Harvey Wasserman
[Objective C not Java on Mac OS X] by Aaron Hillegass
China Is Not an Enemy and Shouldn't Be Provoked by William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune
Flip the Script by Tony Karon
[Why The Mojave Wind Farms are Turned Off During an Energy Crisis] by Mark Riley
The Coming War in Who Wll Control Software Development by FreeDevelopers.net
GNUstep, the open source OpenStep by Goerges Tarbouriech
How much is enough? by Amitai Etizioni
[From the horses mouth] by CNET
IBM withdraws CPRM for hard drives proposal by Andrew Orlowski
CPRM, Round 2by Andrew Orlowski
Sub's fatal move staged for civilians, US admitsby Michael Millett
Pry Loose the Cold, Hard Fingers of the Market's 'Invisible Hand'By
Frederick H. Borsch
Crueland unusual punishment in Florida --Counterpunch
Class Warfare is Over: The Richest Won by Mark Shields
Don't Deny the Brutality of History by Robert Jensen
Understanding the Deregulation Boondoggle by Hauter and Slocum
What's Wrong with Content Protection by John Gilmore
Conservatives and Liberals by David Morris
Shrub by Harvey Wasserman
Power demand last 6 months less than last year (=gouging) by Public Citizen
Bork Him by Mark Weisbrot
Clinton's Economic Legacy by Mark Weisbrot
Everything you ever wanted to know about CPRM by Andrew Orlowski
Dying of Consumption by George Monbiot
Where Were You When They Copy Protected Hard Disks, Daddy? by Andrew Orlowski
Barbarians of our Own Dark Ages by Michael W. Stowell
[Interesting facts about satellites] by Richard Sale
Bipartisanship Spells Trouble by Mark Weisbrot
Fixing the The Legitimacy Gap by Norman Solomon
Bursting Greenspan's Bubble by Mark Weisbrot
Wild Globalization by John Gray, the Guardian of London
Justice Bill by Dennis Roddy
The Best of All Possible Worlds by Cockburn and St Clair
People Can Make A Difference, Even In America by Mark Steel
Will Gore Throw the Election to Bush? by Robert McChesney
(Linus' kernel was 3% and Stallman's code was almost 30% of the original GNU/Linux) by Judy Steed
Nader Again Singled Out For Exclusion From Presidential Debate Premises by www.commondreams.org
Inside the Death House by Bob Herbert
Oil and the Economy by stratfor
Withering Democracy by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Disgrace of the New York Times by Alexander Cockburn
A Not So Academic Oversight by Mokhiber/Weissman
As Clinton Spoke Words Of Hope, The Riot Police Swung Into Action by Doug Saunders
Nixon 'Wrecked Early Peace In Vietnam' (just before 1% win over Humphrey) by Martin Kettle
Subculture Is At Root Of Police Brutality And Bias Cases
by Christopher Cooper
Supreme Anxiety by Counterpunch
This Is A War Of All Worlds by George Monbiot (Manchester Guardian)
A Perfect Day for a Gorilla Suit by Mark Taibbi
The Camus Guy by Mark Ames
The rise and fall of the .com economy by Christopher Hird
Preying for the Artists by Spider Robinson
That Was No War, It Was Homicide - And Still Iraqis Die by John Pilger
The Gulf War Brought Out the Worst in Us by Robert Jensen
Why Diallo Had To Die by Manning Marable
The Jackboot State by CounterPunch
Anarchy Can't Save A World Controlled By Filthy Lucre fine rant by Muriel Gray
Growing Anti-Capitalism Not Going Away by Sunday Herald UK
Israel Redirects Hellfire Missiles 'After US Advice' by Robert Fisk
Hunting Mexican Migrants for Sport by Jan McGirk (UK!)
The Real Microsoft Killer: Open File Format by John Diedrichs
Vietnam: A Retrospective excellent article by Antony C. Black
The Death Penalty for MS by Rob Bos
Free, anonymous information on the anarchists' Net by John Borland, see
also
FreeNet
The Devil's Chair (torture in the US) by Anne-Marie Cusac
We're #1--in prison population by David Ho
The Fed Is Overlooking the Inflationary Effect of CEO Compensation
by John C. Gamboa and Mary Ann Mitchell
'New' and 'Left' Are Not Oxymoronic by Alexander Cockburn
The IMF and the World Bank--interview w/Michel Chossudovsky by Jared Israel
Indy Media DC Coverage by Indy Media
Digital Diploma Mills, Part 4 by David F. Noble
25 Years After End Of Vietnam War: by Bob Buzzanco
Gnutella et al. from the LA Times
Epidermal Marketing by inc.com
What do you want to do? by ftrain.com
Suicide Note by ftrain.com
Life and Libertarians: Beyond Left and Right by Alexander Cockburn
Business Brooks no Interference by Will Hutton
The Thin White Line: Will White Americans Stand
Against Police Brutality? by Farai Chideya
Our Increasing Willingness To Let The Rich Take More And More
From The Poor by Richard Rorty (the philosopher)
Global Warming: Melting of Earth's Ice Cover Reaches New High
by Lisa Mastny
The Target is Russia by Theodore A. Postol
As Robert Cringely might have put it by A.J. Mayo
Return of the Hacker
Medical Rebels by Katherine Finkelstein
"In another instance, when the hospitalization of a psychotic patient
was denied, a psychiatrist told the reviewer, 'I'm going to put her
in an ambulance and send her over to you.' Claim approved."
Who Invited the Pirates? by J.S. Kelly
New Film Challenges Us to Talk Honestly About War by Norman Solomon
What do you do when the money leaves? by Molly Ivins
When Only Giants Run the Media by Robert McChesney
Seattle Diary--It's a Gas, Gas, Gas! by Jeffrey St. Clair
How the Internet ruined San Francisco by Paulina Borsook
Microsoft and 3D Graphics: A Case Study in Suppressing Innovation
and Competition by Alan Akin
2 million inmates, with no solution in sight by Dave Zweifel
Boycott Amazon.com by Richard Stallman
[One major way in which amazon.com is taking over the market
for books is by offering a site
(
here is
an honest explanation from a left publication, the Nation) a percentage
of the sale--as much as 5%--for every book sold that was referred
through that site. This strategy, common with internet business, is
expensive, and Amazon is still not profitable; however, it is worth it
to the venture capitalists who fund Amazon because of the possibility of
coming close to taking over an entire market. It's also obviously not
a strategy available to the 'independent bookseller']
New Film Challenges Us to Talk Honestly About War by Norman Solomon
What do you do when the money leaves? by Molly Ivins
When Only Giants Run the Media by Robert McChesney
Seattle Diary--It's a Gas, Gas, Gas! by Jeffrey St. Clair
How the Internet ruined San Francisco by Paulina Borsook
Microsoft and 3D Graphics: A Case Study in Suppressing Innovation
and Competition by Alan Akin
Why bother? by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Can feminism survive class polarization? by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Post-Microsoft Era posted by Jon Katz
[Total Defeat for Microsoft (!)] by Dan Gilmor
Columbus Day, 1999 by Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly
Panic Attack #1 by Clifford Smith
A Winning Issue that Nobody Wants to Run On by Mark Weisbrot
Extreme US Child Poverty Rises By More Than 400,000 In One Year by Commondreams newswire
EBay Pulls Human Kidney From Internet Auction (bids at $5.7 million) by David Lazarus
Life in the rest of the world
[bits from 2000/2001 -- chronological blog entries from 2002 onward
begin a few pages down]
100,000 civilians have been killed or had limbs torn off by land
mines since the end of the US invasion of South Vietnam.
"It happened during a critical situation for South Korea. We should
not judge these incidents through the standards of peacetime"
-- a retired South Korean admiral commenting on the summary execution
of 2000 civilians suspected of having Communist sympathies.
Once again, war crimes turn out to be just the bad things that
were done by the other guys.
Half (3 billion) of the people on this planet live on
less than 2 dollars a day.
The Arctic ice cap is shrinking by 24,000 sq km every year as
global temperatures
warm.
It is now on average five feet thick compared with nine feet just
30 years ago. In other words, Arctic sea ice lost about
40 per cent
of its volume in less than 30 years. Summary
here.
"I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition
of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a
million individuals, children and adults."
--Denis Halliday, who resigned last year as co-ordinator of humanitarian
relief aid to Iraq after a 34 year career with the UN.
"How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such
punishment for something they have never done?"
--Hans von Sponeck, Halliday's successor, who resigned this year
(from John Pilger
here)
The number of killings per week in Kosovo in the year before the
US/NATO intervention was about 30, approximately equally divided
between Serbs and Albanians. The number of killings per week in
Kosovo in the 4 months after the war has remained virtually
unchanged
at about 30 per week. Now, however, the victims are mostly Serb.
The US and Britain have given and sold huge amounts of military
hardware before and after ($1 billion) the genocide in East Timor in
1975 when over
200,000 people--one-quarter to one-third of the
population at the time--were killed by the Indonesian
military--something that really did warrant the label 'genocide' (in
contrast to what ostensibly prompted the NATO to bomb Yugoslavia). But
even this pales before the results of a US engineered coup against the
Sukarno government in 1965 when almost
1 million Indonesians
(communists, suspected communists, and ethnic Chinese) were slaughtered
by the army and militias ("one of the worst mass murders of the 20th
century" according to the C I A, who was partly responsible for
triggering it). But back to the present, the adminitration finally cut
off military aid, which almost immediately caused Indonesia to accept a
peacekeeping force. It has been suggested we should cut off economic
aid, and maybe even impose sanctions as well. Sanctions have been a
horrible failure in Iraq (see below). In contrast to the situation in
Iraq, however, a cutoff in economic aid to Indonesia (much less
sanctions) has been strongly opposed by multinational corporations, who
would stand to lose big ("When I think of Indonesia--a country on the
equator with 180 million people, a median age of 18, and a Muslim ban
on alcohol--I feel like I know what heaven looks like," --the president
of of Coca-Cola in 1992). Therein, is another powerful lever.
When asked about Iraqi children starving and dying as a result of the
US embargo of food and medicine, US Secretary of State Madelaine
Albright said, "It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is
worth it." Since the Secretary of State made that statement, about
half a million Iraqi's, mostly children, have died. What has been
accomplished that makes the sanctions 'worth it?' --Congresswoman
Cynthia McKinney Fourth Congressional District, Georgia (after a visit
to Iraq) (it is estimated that the 1,000,000 people have died since 1991
as a result of the sanctions; this truly warrants the name genocide)
" The companion volume to Hillary Clinton's
It Takes a Village
turns out to be
It Takes an Air Force... --CounterPunch
It is a little acknowledged fact that Serbia minus Kosovo is now much
more of a multi-ethnic state than Kosovo, which has been ethnically
cleansed of 250,000 Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians under the
'watchful eye' of KFOR.
"International attempts to bring peace to Kosovo
have been confounded by a wave of violence by ethnic Albanians seeking
revenge against Serbs for the 18-month crackdown that left 10,000 dead
and hundreds of thousands displaced before NATO intervened. Most of
the more than 200,000 Kosovo Serbs have fled since NATO troops replaced
Serb forces in the province." (API)
---
Here is an acknowledgement of the current situation; but it is marred
by the typical newspeak/propaganda that fills the supposedly liberal
press. The estimated 10,000 killings and hundreds of thousands of
displacings occurred
after NATO intervened, not before. Furthermore,
recent estimates suggest that even the 10,000 number is perhaps 5 times
the real number. The estimate of the number of deaths (Albanian and
Serb combined) in the 18 months before the NATO intervention is 2000--about
equivalent to the number of civilians killed by NATO.
The US has dropped almost as many bombs on Iraq
in *2000* as it dropped during its entire war on Yugoslavia.
Unfortunately, humans that are 'unpeople', like the Iraqis, rate
even less of a mention in the news when they are blown limb from
limb in their houses, fields, schools, and churches. Even
Scott Ritter
(!) of all people, has complained, for his own reasons.
Since you're, like, the President and stuff, can you, like, set a
country on fire, . . . and then, fly over in a helicopter and say, "I
am the President of the most powerful nation on earth. You must bow
down before me"? Uh-huh-huh, uh-huh-huh, uh-huh-huh, uh-huh-huh . . .
--Butt-Head, in Beavis and Butt-Head
Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Serbia together spend just
over $10 billion on the military, less than U.S. allies such as Israel
and Taiwan. The US spends almost $300 billion on defense each year.
Almost 2,000 people, a large majority Palestinians, including many children
have been killed, and about 20,000 injured in the occupied territories
and in Israel. The only viable rule is: every person's life should
be deemed about as valuable as any other--a Palestinian life is worth
the same as an Israeli life. Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon
engineered by Sharon in 1982 killed about 17,500 civilians--a much
larger number of civilians than were killed by the only side that the
media feels comfortable calling terrorist. Relative numbers count
(see above on the USA's much more horrific terrorist war on Vietnam).
The need for the moderate majority to express themselves is desparately
greater than ever before. Instead, the US has increased the more than
$2 billion a year in military aid it gives to one side--and enforces
the notion that whatever Israel does is acceptable and justifiable and
whatever Palestinians do is wrong.
"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would
never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their
country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to
them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but 2000
years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the
Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one
thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept
that?"
--David Ben-Gurion, 1956, from the memoirs of Nahum Goldman
"We will never forgive the Arabs for forcing our soldiers to kill
them." --Golda Meir
Keeping things in perspective: NASDAQ losses for last year (2 trillion
dollars) were roughly forty times the size of the entire Russian state
budget.
"In terms of the health impacts on the general population in and near
the war zone, the effects of the use of DU munitions pale in comparison
with the other direct and indirect effects of war."
--Steve Fetter and Frank von Hippel
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
An American lawyer we met a few days later just outside Nazareth
commented: "It's like Mississippi 1930 over here. Apartheid. I had no
idea it was like this before I came."
--from
Sean Gonsalves in the Cape Cod Times
The Americans are getting to be like these boring couples who take
their holiday in the same place every year. The Pentagon's official
statement should have read: "We looked at the brochures and thought of
bombing somewhere new like Paraguay or Latvia. But then we thought, 'we
always enjoy bombing Iraq, so what's the point of taking a chance?' We
know the way, we can bomb the same hotel we bomb every year, we can
just relax." --Mark Steel from the Independent, UK
There are estimated to be 27 million slaves in the world today,
more than at any time in human history.
############################################################################
Chronological "World News" Blog Entries -- 2001 until present
############################################################################
[Sep12,'01] From Saudi Arabia? It would be a shame to nuke all that
oil. Trained to fly in Florida? Perhaps too harsh to bomb Miami Beach
(close enough, whatever) for harboring terrorists. Just checked out
of an apartment in San Diego? But I live a few miles away! There are
many calls to squash the ant that so savagely bit our mighty Pentagon
and trade spires. The problem is there are many ants. And you can't
threaten to kill them because they are ready to die (the present culprits
are mostly all dead already). So I guess the only thing left to squash
are dark-faced men and women and children living in poor, dusty cities,
and their not-very-good sewer and water systems--it's hard to bomb them
back to the stone age because they're already there. And we'll no doubt
increase spending on missile defense. Neither will work, but most of
our proud Roman citizens need 10 heads for an American head. Guess the
forgotten 3 million Southeast Asian civilian heads weren't enough.
[Sep13,'01] War is merely terrorism on a much larger scale (see above).
[Sep14,'01] A majority of those surveyed by the New York Times said the United
States should retaliate "even if it means many thousands of innocent
civilians may be killed." (my initial guess was that about 100,000 would
be considered OK). We already have a word for this: terrorism.
[Sep14,'01] O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody
shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the
pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the
guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay
waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the
hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn
them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the
wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of
the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit,
worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied
it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their
lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water
their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their
wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source
of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore
beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
--from "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain
Written during America's crackdown
on the Philippines (1899-1902) which killed 4,600 Americans and almost
300,000 Filipinos, and not published until well after his death (full text
here)
For better or worse we now have a more personal view of what the receiving
end of a 'video-game' war looks like.
[Sep15,'01] The
destruction
of the trade center towers has not reduced the value of
the life of dark-faced humans any more than the 3 million civilians
we killed in Southeast Asia reduced the value of American life.
Should major cities in the US be bombed for harboring Henry Kissinger
and Robert McNamara? No.
The Iraqi declaration about the deaths of 5,000 Americans ("Regardless of
human feelings on what happened yesterday, America is reaping thorns sown
by its rulers in the world") will likely, in the fullness of time, be
eclipsed by Madeleine Albright's declaration that the deaths of 500,000
Iraqi children "is a price worth paying".
We should take our example not from our military and political leaders
shouting "retaliate" and "war" but from the doctors and nurses and medical
students and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the
midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing,
not vengeance but compassion. --Howard Zinn
It is crucial to argue for peace now, as the mechanisms of war are brought
into high gear. There is no moral point in holding off protests out
of respect for the current victims. There is no better time to stop
the creation of more similarly innocent victims. Kudos to
Madonna
Since both sides tread the path to war under the banner of holiness,
the holy might make some effort to bar the way. --Simon Jenkins,
There are 285 million people in North America, 140 million people in
Pakistan, 27 million people in Afghanistan, 6 million people in Israel,
(and 1,300 million people in China).
Americans are finally waking to the uncomfortable fact of how a large
part of the world views us--as a rich, attractive, self-interested, Roman
empire--now greviously wounded and gearing up its biggest-in-the-world
Darth Vader military to drop endless tons of anti-personnel bombs on
civilians in one of the poorest countries in the world. We will come
off looking like the civilians working on the Death Star. The Afghans
on the street shaking their fist at us will lose this one, bigtime.
They didn't do it, and bombing them won't help our cause, except to make
some Americans feel good (cf. another widely-publicized celebration).
Instead of 20 more billion for war (undoubtedly just the first cash
injection), and bailing out airline executives (as a reward for firing
25% of their work force!) how about giving some of that money to the
victim's families? The 40 billion would have come out to almost 7
million per family.
The
Clear Channel radio network (which is the largest owner of radio
stations in the US) issued a list of songs that shouldn't be
played, which included things like "Morning Has Broken", "Peace Train",
"War (what is it good for)", John Lennon's "Imagine", and any song
by "Rage Against the Machine".
The very bases where bin Laden's legendary Qaeda network is centered were
built with covert C I A funding hardly more than 15 years ago. The US is
just as much a party to 'harboring terrorism' as the hapless Afghans
living under the Taliban. No one, however, suggests we carry out a
surgical strike on the C I A for its partial responsibility. And no
one even suggests firing the people who thought it was a good idea
at the time. Instead we hear that we shouldn't restrain the C I A from
'fighting dirty'. Well, they did 'fight dirty'. They gave about
3 billion (tax) dollars to the anti-Soviet freedom fighters and helped
them build the training camps we're now bombing. That seems to have been
a big part of the problem.
"While the huge support in opinion polls for military action indicates
a collective amnesia of our moral tradition, the hypocrisy it exposes
in the west's claim to moral superiority is not lost on the Muslim
world. Violence is a powerful form of communication, as Mohamed Atta and
his colleagues understood: we all knew from their choice of targets what
they were saying about US economic and military domination. So what will
be the message of the US-led coalition, made up of the most powerful
nations on earth, in attacking one of the poorest, a country of ruins,
refugees, a legacy of a cold-war playground?" --Madeleine Bunting,
The Guardian, UK
How come no discussion about how 'the market' failed to deliver
adequate airport security because it outsourced it to minimum
wage, no-benefits, fast-food-restaurant-like companies with huge
turnover?
Millions of starving civilians, now with about 100 infected with an
Ebola-like virus, held off by armed guards at the Afghanistan border,
waiting to be killed--looks bad, is bad, guys.
"In interviews, opposition leaders stress their determination to join
the battle against terrorism, though those speaking English usually
pronounce the word as 'tourism'. 'I have been fighting against tourism
in Afghanistan for 24 years,' one commander told us stoutly." --Patrick
Cockburn, from northern Afghanistan
George W Bush founded the
Arbusto
Energy oil company in Texas in the 1970's. Salem Bin Laden (brother of
Osama) may have invested money in it then (Salem died in a light plane
crash in 1983).
A recent poll indicates that 63 percent of Americans believe that strikes
on Afghanistan will increase the threat of terrorist attacks. But most
still want them anyway. Working at reducing wealth disparities, ending
economic sanctions against Iraq, and getting out of Saudi Arabia is much
more likely to reduce terrorism than killing our former bin Laden allies.
Only a small group of ultra lefties support those three (anti-war libertarians
support the last two).
"Personally I don't think and have never thought that we should
discontinue support of Israel. I am very critical of [US] policy towards
Israel but that's in part because I think it's very harmful to the people
of Israel... What we should do, I think, is join what has been a very
broad international consensus for about 25 years now, which calls for
a two state settlement on the internationally recognized borders (that
means pre-June 1967) in recognizing the rights and guaranteeing the
security of all states in the region including Israel and a Palestinian
state. --Noam Chomsky.
Just as in the case of Israeli and Palestinians lives, an Iraqi life
(about 6,000 lost per month due to sanctions) is worth the same as an
American life.
Debka.com reports that the US, with the approval of Russia has
moved tactical nuclear weapons to several bases along the border of
Afghanistan.
What cowardly pablum our newswriters regurgitate every time we bomb
someone! What's all this about 'softening' targets when you really mean
'amputating limbs' and 'crushing people to death in falling buildings'.
And not even one tiny peep on the incredible irony that the most
catastrophic failure ever of government intelligence has resulted
in a threefold (!) increase in the confidence of the public in the
same federal government. It's hard to recall that before Sept 11, the
rhetoric was all about dropping taxes (esp. capital gains taxes) further
in order to starve the worthless state into submission. I suppose it's
all somehow related to the ability to believe simultaneously in cell
phones and creationism.
"U.S urges bin Laden to form nation it can attack" -- the Onion.
"The Russians killed at least five times as many Chechens in the days
of the conquest of Grozny, hailed by Clinton, as died in the World
Trade Center, and here we have Bush arm in arm with his soul-bro,
Putin. --Cockburn and St Clair.
The UN's World Food Progam says that just to supply sufficient food
for 400,000 people in northern Afghanistan would require about 1,800
Hercules cargo flights a month--a rate far in excess of the *military*
missions now being flown, and ten thousand times more than packages
of "beans and tomato vinaigrette," (English-only menu) we so kindly
dropped on mine fields earlier this week--the highest altitude food
drop in history. Current UN estimates are that 7.5 million people need
food aid in Afghanistan.
"None of the Anglo-American onslaughts since 1991 can match the cruel
absurdity of this week's bombing of one of the poorest and most ruined
countries in the world by the planet's richest and most powerful state
assisted as ever by its British satrap" --Seumas Milne.
"Why it is that all of these people hate us. It's not because of
freedom. It's not because Britney Spears has a belly button or because
we export hamburgers. They hate us because of things they see us doing to
their part of the world that they definitely do not like." --Edward Peck,
former US Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan's
terrorism task force recently on CNN Crossfire.
"You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent
people to force governments to change their policies; you call this
terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order
to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the
first one who invented this terrorism.... And now you have invented new
ways to kill innocent people. You have so-called economic embargo which
kills nobody other than children and elderly people.... You are the ones
who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars,
and hypocrites." --excerpt from the statement that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef,
one of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, made
to the federal judge at his sentencing hearing.
Expressing critical thought is considered to be favoring the
terrorists. That is what I consider extremely dangerous. -- Vaclav Havel
The peace movement *doesn't* need to change its message. We're up against
the *same old*. Don't cave. The US/British bombing war on Afghanistan
is wrong, will kill and starve people who had absolutely nothing to do
with the horrendous WTC attacks (and many of whom are already starving),
and it won't work, at least for its stated aims of stopping more of
the same. It may have other, additional uses related to the control
of new oil supplies or to a new alliance with Russia against China.
The acknowledgement that the war is unlikely to properly sate American
blood lust has the hawks deparately caterwauling for an assault on Iraq.
Hooray for the brave and sensible anti-war women (Barbara Kingsolver,
Arundhati Roy, Mary Riddell, Barbara Lee)--much better than wimpy male
cavers like Lance Dickie, Marc Cooper, and Chris Hitchens.
Every day over 20,000 people in the world starve to
death according to the UN.
"Office of Homeland Security"? Isn't that what the Department of *Defense*
was supposed to be??
The Chinese are working overtime to manufacture enough flags for all of
our new found patriots.
"The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be
Aramco [the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia] pipelines, an emir,
no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that." --US
diplomat to Ahmed Rashid several years ago.
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder,
rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission,
a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while
incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and
paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells."
--John Flynn, 1944.
"The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the
richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and
sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest
stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and
nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the
genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in
modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers
of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost
deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the
Taliban just isn't in the same league". --Arundhati Roy
CNN and company have switched from 'all-Condit, all the time' to
'all-anthrax, all the time,' -- Ibish and Abunimah, LA Times
"Wealth has never yet sacrificed itself on the altar of patriotism"
-- Bob LaFollette. 80 percent of the benefits in the recent 100
billion dollar Republican anti-terrorism bill will go the top 2 percent
of households and only 2% to unemployed workers.
A good part of modern war consists of pilots in high tech, high altitude
planes dropping high tech, often anti-personnel weapons on undefended
civilian targets like power stations, water treatment plants, food
warehouses, and simple homes in poor countries. As the Afghan hospital
system collapses, terribly wounded civilians have been forced to flee to
Pakistan. Truly disgusting, guys. Not a good plan for the future either.
Do we really want to end up in a day where every sewage treatment plant
has to have its own Patriot air defense system? Bombing civilians is
wrong, period. Apologizing and calling it collateral damage doesn't
make it right.
"Attention, noble Afghan people," starts the message broadcast in both
Pashto and Dari. "As you know, the coalition countries have been air
dropping daily humanitarian rations for you. The food ration is enclosed
in yellow plastic bags. They come in the shape of rectangular or long
squares. The food inside the bags is halal and very nutritional. In
areas away from where food has been dropped, cluster bombs will also be
dropped. The colour of these bombs is also yellow. All bombs will explode
when they hit the ground, but in some special circumstances some of the
bombs will not explode." --US radio message broadcast in Afghanistan
-----------------
What a bizarre world we live in where even the slaughter of civilians
can be conducted in a politically correct way. It really turned out like
'1984' after all.
"280 people would have to die of anthrax to equal the risk of driving
50 miles [once] in a car (about one in a million)." --Dr. Ezekiel
Emanuel
"The U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble--the airport,
the power plants, their water facilities [we're already doing that]
and the roads." As far as the civilian population [27 million] of
Afghanistan, [Bill] O'Reilly [in Time] said, "If they don't rise up
against this criminal government, they starve, period."
-----------------
I knew Americans were 'more equal' than other kinds of people but that's
some serious 'more equal'! (about 1 to 5,000).
Various nightmare scenarios now come to mind (e.g., Russian ground troops
hit by nuclear bomb dropped by Pakistani military faction).
"Terrorism is the use of force or the threat of force against civilian
populations to achieve political objectives." --Edward Herman. By this
sensible definition, the war in Afghanistan is terrorism. For example,
Admiral Michael Boyce, Chief of the British Defense Staff, said "The
squeeze [the bombing campaign] will carry on until the people of the
country themselves recognize that this is going to go on until they get
the leadership changed." Compare the lefty Herman's definition to the
one in the recently passed bill:
-----------------
(d) the term "terrorism" means an activity that: (i) involves a violent
act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure;
and (ii) appears to be intended: (A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian
population; (B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation
or coercion; or (C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass
destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
-----------------
It's the same! That's one thing you gotta love about the
politically-correct US. Even in white heat of war hysteria and revenge,
it still can't bring itself to tell it like it is: '"Terrorism" is
when someones tries to intimidate or coerce the civilian populations or
governments in the US, Europe, or Israel by violent means.'
"Bush has told advisors," writes Judy Keen in a USA Today puff piece,
"that he believes confronting the enemy is a chance for him and his fellow
baby boomers to refocus their lives and prove they have the same kind of
valor and commitment their fathers showed in WWII." ... Refocus your life,
bomb a village. Maybe we should bring back the draft--for 50-somethings
sorry they missed out on Vietnam. --Katha Pollitt
"As long as the U.S. keeps killing civilians, it will not differ from
the organizations it is fighting against--the only difference is that
the U.S. apologizes." --Ismet Berkan, editor of Radikal.
"The revolutionaries took over the embassy so rapidly that the
C.I.A. station was not able to effectively destroy all of its documents,
and the Iranians were later able to piece together shredded agency
reports." --James Risen, commenting on how that earlier loss will help
with information recovery from the secret C I A site that was destroyed
next to the WTC. Not surprisingly, Risen forgot to mention that one of
the documents the Iranians were able to piece together was a C I A manual
on how to torture women. Makes me a bit nervous with the talk these
days about the FBI re-considering the use of domestic torture for added
'homeland security'.
Afghanistan is four times the size of South Vietnam, 60 times the size
of Kosovo.
The US bombing initially increased the Taliban's support inside
Afghanistan. Instead of being seen as fundamentalist crazies
who nevertheless rescued the region from total post-Soviet chaos
and slaughter, they are now also heroes--brothers and fathers and
uncles--who stand up with extreme bravery--and with significant cost
in life, limb, and skin--to the fire and shrapnel of the world's
biggest bombing machine. However patriotic one might be here, it
is hard to get that worked up. As Bill Maher says, the Americans
who press the buttons that dispense the flames from on high don't
seem that brave; and brave Americans that may have already lost
limbs
(a foot) on the ground are hidden away to avoid having the American public
turn against the war.
In one year (1996), 9,390 people were killed with handguns in the United
States. Yet no one suggests that we should be considering torture
in gun-related homicide cases. For comparison, in the same year, two
people were killed with handguns in New Zealand 1996, 13 in Australia,
15 in Japan, 30 in Britain.
The US is now dropping bombs (the "Daisy Cutter", also used in Viet Nam)
that use six times the amount of ammonium nitrate explosive that Timothy
McVeigh used in the bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building
in 1995. The planes that drop them have to fly over 6,000 feet to avoid
the shockwave.
"How do you wage war against an entire country to get one man? We were
all sorry to see the loss of so many American lives on September 11. But
why do Americans seem to think that their lives are more valuable than
lives outside their borders? This is what makes people so angry at the
U.S." --Siphiwe Moerane, South African graphics designer.
"Mr Powell US Secretary of State has said that the evidence against bin
Laden and al-Qaeda would not stand up in court. If it won't stand up in
court, how the hell can it justify bombing?" --Dennis Halliday, former
assistant sec'y general of the UN.
Walter Isaascon, chairman of CNN, decided that his reporters were
focussing "too much on the casualties and hardship in Afghanistan,"
and ordered CNN reporters "to make sure people understand that when they
see civilian suffering there, it's in the context of a terrorist attack
that caused enormous suffering in the United States." This argument is
absolutely indistinguishable from the one terrorists use.
Know your enemy. A 1997 UNICEF survey of 300 children in Kabul
revealed that 40% had lost a parent, 2/3rds of them had seen [real]
dead bodies or parts of bodies, and 90% believed they would die during
the conflict. There are 50,000 armed men in Afghanistan and 25,000,000
people. That's 500-to-1.
"Why of course the people don't want war. That is understood. But
after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy,
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. All you have
to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists
for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." --Hermann
Goering at Nuremburg
"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each
one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who had the fortune of being born
on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander,
more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It
is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight,
kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others"
--Emma Goldman.
The bombing was wrong. It should be stopped now, too. Left (and right)
warnings about starvation were valid (and may yet help to avoid it).
The life expectancy of Afghans is 40. The Northern Alliance are every bit
as horrible as the Taliban. Supporting vicious people with guns because
they happen to agree with our present goals didn't work last time.
It is unlikely to work this time. It greatly increased the number
of people killed in a country far from our home. The Taliban and the
Northern Alliance make up a miniscule percentage of the population of
Afghanistan (0.2%). Estimates are that about 5,000 skinny, dark-faced
humans have so far (Nov 16) been killed in Afghanistan by the US war.
Unfortunately, this is probably far from enough for American's 'new
patriots' (cf. 100,000 or so people killed in the first Iraq war).
Killing a lot more people is unlikely, however, to be a good long term
strategy.
"My concern about this order [Presidential decree establishing secret
military trials], not having reviewed every detail, is that it kind
of undercuts the efforts we've been making as a nation to distinguish
ourselves from regimes like the Taliban. It sort of suggests
that when the going gets tough, we don't really believe in our ideals
either." --Professor Jonathan Entin, Case Western Reserve
Soon after Sept 11, Defense (sic) Secretary Rumsfeld said "Victory [over
terrorism] is persuading the American people and the rest of the world
that this is not a quick matter that's going to be over in a month or
a year or even five years." Cool victory, man.
The German 'Greens' have traded peace for power. Time to change the
party name, guys!
[Nov25,'01] The US Air Force helped the Northern Alliance this Sunday
(11/25) kill most of the 500 or so Taliban POWs trapped inside the stone
walls of a fort by dropping bombs on them (30 air strikes) while British
and Northern Alliance troops were shooting at them from the parapets.
Pretty brave, huh? Even the Taliban rarely did stuff that brave. As the
Red Cross started collecting the body parts Wednesday, the Northern
Alliance fighters went around cutting the black cloths they had used to
tie the prisoners' elbows behind their backs (and in some cases, their
big toes together so they couldn't run). Also see latest
Robert Fisk
for only Western report from behind the lines. but this is relatively
benign in the context of recent history--between 1992 and 1996, the
Northern Alliance killed 50,000 people in Kabul.
[Nov26,'01] The lives of soldiers, both theirs and ours, are worth *the
same* as the lives of civilians, theirs and ours. Poor Afghan civilians
are just as innocent and valuable as New Yorker civilians. We will not
be at peace with the world until those equations are actually respected.
The violation of those equations goes much further in explaining 'why
do they hate us' than Britney Spears and McDonalds do.
[Nov27,'01] The problem with the current US war on terror is that it
emphasizes the already obvious truth that people with Kalashnikovs,
tanks, and trenches--however fanatical and brave they may be--are
no match for a giant, high-tech airforce/navy/satellite/electronic
military machine (costing thousands of times as much as the tanks and
Kalashnikovs), in combination with princely economic bribes (billion
dollar debt cancellation). Now, more than ever, it is obvious that
the only true deterrent to American power is a portable nuclear bomb.
Though difficult to make, many already exist, and more are likely to
be made in the coming decades. Our permanent 'Warfare State' should
focus more of its attention on that problem than on boondoggle missile
defense toys.
[Nov28,'01] Today, a proposal was floated to try captured Taliban
in military tribunals on Guam. There was an objection from Guam that
it might hurt their tourist industry. So, another proposal would be to
have the secret tribunals--capable of handing out the death penalty--take
place instead on US Navy ships at sea. However, the Northern Alliance
has slaughtered most of the likely prisoners/suspects (perhaps 2,000),
with tacit US (and Iranian) approval.
Enron workers lost their retirement plans as the company went bankrupt
since the plans were locked up in Enron stock that was frozen by Enron
executives after they sold off their own shares (AKA class war--this after
the Chairman, Kenneth Lay took in $140 million in 2000). The problem,
amazingly, was that the ongoing price gouging (unfavorable long term
contracts for California negotiated at the height of the crisis by
the Gov) was not enough to keep the company afloat after last Spring's
gorgings on 100-times-the-going-rate price spikes...
It's easy to forget that our repulsive Attorney General was beaten -- as
an incumbent, no less -- by a dead man (Mel Carnahan), despite $60,000
in contributions from Enron in Missouri before being elevated by
Bush.
Over last weekend 30 Israeli civilians were killed by suicide bombers
and hundreds were injured. This was accurately reported and condemned
in the world's media as a terrible atrocity. Over the same weekend
200 to 300 Afghan civilians were killed and hundreds more injured by
US bombs in an atrocity that was 10 times worse in terms of the number
of humans butchered. The Afghan civilian deaths were almost completely
suppressed by US media. Humans screamed there, too, but those screams
mostly disappeared forever into the cold night air -- not confirmed,
not seen on TV.
"President Bush's Fascist Tribunals"--the title of an article on the
website of the John Birch Society (!).
Over 200 teachers in Middletown, New Jersey were jailed after going on
strike protesting large increases in health insurance payments (large
for teachers--the cost was $600/year more) for 5 days against a court
order (?!).
[Dec06'01] Bush gives me the
willies,
too.
Unnamed Taleban sources say that the US bombing of Kandahar over the
past two months has killed 10,000 people, mostly Taleban fighters.
In my book, 10,000 US civilians are worth about the same as 10,000 US
servicemen, which are worth about the same as these 10,000 Taleban,
whatever bad things they did while they were alive. Like the 100,000 or
so people killed in the Iraq war, these slaughtered people are invisble.
This kind of invisibility is not a good plan for the future of our shared
world, especially since it was our tax money that went a long way to
creating the Taliban in the first place, and people in countries outside
the US know that.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned
my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him
the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization
should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless
brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how I hate all this, how
despicable and ignorable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be
a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the
cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -- Albert Einstein
Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez, 76, in Basel to conduct for a
music festival, was
dragged sleeping out of his hotel bed by Swiss police because he had
been put on a national list of terrorist suspects for a comment he made
in the 1960's that opera houses should be blown up. After being held
for 3 hours with his passport confiscated, he was released. Better safe
than sorry with those dang foreigners...
The US is currently bombing a starving country with the highest precentage
of disabled persons in the world (land mines, cluster bomblets,
unexploded bombs, war) and a life expectancy under 40. A report by
Marc W. Herold, University of New Hampshire Economics professor finds
that using conservative estimates, about 3,700 civilians--people who had
absolutely nothing to do with 9/11--have been killed in Afghanistan by
U.S. bombs. This is more people than were killed in Kosovo in the year
before we bombed. It's also on top of the deaths of perhaps Afghan
10,000 fighters--the huge majority also with no connection to 9/11.
The number of innocent Afghans driven from their homes by the US bombing
is over half a million--as many as were driven out of Kosovo by Milosevic
when the US bombed there. Hundreds of Afghans are dying of starvation
and freezing to death every day in horrible refugee camps. OK to stop
carnage now, guys? Anything I can think of to stamp out genocidal
thought in our proud land...
Bush is just the biggest warlord.
An Afghan woman living in the caves hear where the Buddha statues
were destroyed (after being driven there last year by the Taliban)
uses tabasco sauce from a food drop to treat a lingering gunshot
wound in her foot.
"When I was crossing the border, I saw Iranian artillery point toward
Afghanistan. When I entered Afghanistan, I saw artillery pointing to
Iran. On the Afghan side of the border I heard that the region's military
commander had called the Iranian consul and told him that their homes were
made of clay, so what did the Iranian guns aim to target? He had said,
"the worst that you can do is bombard our houses and when it rains we will
take the wet mud and build our homes anew. Don't you find it a pity if
our guns destroy your beautiful homes? You can't make glass and iron and
ceramics with rain. Why don't you come and build the road to Herat for
us?" --Mohsen Makhmalbaf, director of the Iranian film, "Kandahar"
Enron+Shrub sure seems a lot worse than Whitewater+Hillary but hardly a
minuscule bleat out of our prostrate press!
After killing almost 4,000 Afghan civilians without even noticing
(but, probably, not Bin Laden) in the course our remote-control attack
on one of the poorest countries in the world, our brave leaders have
been looking for another place to attack. Already-destroyed Iraq,
with 100,000 civilians killed the last time we dropped more than an
all-sides-of-WWII's worth of bombs on their Texas-sized country, and
filled with thousands of dying and deformed kids, has been enthusiatically
suggested as next in line. But there has been reluctance because that
would require perhaps one hundred thousand troops ('only' 20,000 US
troops have been moved to Kuwait et al. so far). So the current plan
seems to be Somalia, which doesn't even have a central government.
The amazingly cowardliness of it all defies belief! Here we are,
with our satellite-controlled-full-spectrum-dominance-Death-Star
$300-billion-a-year military -- and we are afraid to attack any but
the absolutely poorest, least technologically advanced small countries,
safely halfway around the world. Americans sure look attractive to the
rest of the people living on our fine planet because we are so rich.
But it's a kind of disgusting attractiveness as they see us respond to
the call to express our 'patriotism' and 'bravery' by buying more of
the stuff that most people in the world can't afford.
Can it really be a year since we didn't elect George W. Bush
president? Time sure flies when youre going straight to hell.
--Barry Crimmins
When "influential" people in America and other countries were asked
whether America's "scientific and technological innovation" was a major
source of the worldwide popularity of Americans, Americans dismissed it
(32% said it was "a major reason") in comparison to 63% of Europeans
and 86% of Middle Easterners who cited it as a major reason. A majority
of Americans thought we were liked because "the U.S. does a lot of good
around the world", not high on the lists of non-Americans.
The U.S. is trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone
in the world. They don't care about the suffering of the Afghans or how
many people we will lose. And we don't like that. Because Afghans are
now being made to suffer for these Arab fanatics, but we all know who
brought these Arabs to Afghanistan in the 1980s, armed them and gave
them a base. It was the Americans and the C I A. And the Americans who
did this all got medals and good careers, while all these years Afghans
suffered from these Arabs and their allies. Now, when America is attacked,
instead of punishing the Americans who did this, it punishes the Afghans.
--Abdul Haq, anti-Taliban Afghan executed by the Taliban early in the
Amerian war.
Wasn't the goal of our Afghan war to get/kill the perps? -- as opposed
to slaughtering 4,000 civilians and toppling the Taliban so Afghans can
safely listen to American rock music in public? Two short months later,
it looks like the US in only pretending to try to capture/kill bin Laden.
Our government (and Saudi) may very well rather have him around as another
permanent Saddam, useful for justifying weekly bombings of people in
poor countries.
In 'liberated'
Jalalabad
soldier-bandits steal sacks of food-aid food, transport it to hotels, and
feed it at highly inflated prices to deep-pocket western 'reporters'. Ah,
the joys of the 'free' market (i.e., under boundary conditions set by US
government policy). Meanwhile, life is truly grim out in the sticks--tho
completely invisible in the US. A much bigger story in the US press was
that euthanized pet carcasses have sometimes been boiled down for use
in pet food--despite the fact that this represents a miniscule fraction
of the farm animals that are boiled down for human consumption.
"U.S. President George Bush's crusade against terrorism is going
splendidly -- except for a few minor hiccups, such as that Osama bin
Laden and his al-Qaida remain elusive, the Russians have reoccupied half
of Afghanistan, perhaps thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed
by U.S. bombs and India is now threatening war against Pakistan." --Eric
Margolis
[Jan10'02] "Now we are British, we are American. You bomb
from the air and we will find your terrorists for you. Then
we take control of Somalia like the Northern Alliance." -- [
UK
Telegraph] one of our new friends in next-stop-Somalia.
The real-life 'hero' on which Black Hawk Down main character mainly based
is in jail for child molestation and rape, disowned by his wife.
Most major news organizations abided by an order Jan. 11 from Pentagon
officials not to transmit images of masked and chained prisoners in
Afghanistan shot the previous day. "The Geneva Convention prohibits
humiliating, debasing photos," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley. "We need to
be cautious in case there is a legal action somewhere downstream."
The US military has decided to stop 'chasing shadows', having slaughtered
about 4,000 Afghan civilians in the process. However, the bombing
hasn't stopped, and is killing civilians almost every day--accidentally,
of course. I wonder what wonderful Newspeak description of these new
killings we'll get next month. I also hope nobody gets the urge to
'chase shadows' again in a large American city.
US troops massacred an large number of civilians (estimates range
from 500 to 5,000) in Somalia at the time of Black Hawk Down. I guess
child-molester special-forces white-guys (see above) massacring crowds
of black women and children didn't work out as a movie pitch.
"We've found there is a lot of strategic space between a low-intensity
war waged with Pakistan and the nuclear threshold. Therefore, we are
utilizing military options without worrying about the nuclear threshold."
On the other hand, if that turns out to be a miscalculation and Pakistan
initiates the use of nuclear weapons, then India would respond "and
Pakistan would cease to exist." --Indian diplomat as told to Seymour
Hersh. More and more, other countries are thinking just like we have
for decades! Great.
"If Clinton 'choked on a pretzel' while watching a football game alone,
passed out and later flaunted a vivid facial bruise, they'd say that he
was getting a blowjob from one of his girlfriends, got hit by Hillary
with a lamp and then bombed Afghanistan to distract public attention.
With George no one even asks how you can black out from eating a pretzel,
or if the choking caused brain damage. How would they know?" -- Alexander
Cockburn.
US and its allies bravely stormed a Kandahar hospital, killing 6
skinny, injured, armed al-Qaida patients that had been left behind
by retreating Taliban troops. Meanwhile, NPR ignored that report and
instead devoted a loving 10 minute segment to the death, from old age,
of a lion in a god-forsaken Afghan zoo, cruelly injured a decade ago by
a venegeful Taliban whose brother was killed by the lion.
The Pentagon's budget will be increased $48 billion dollars in 2003 to
$380 billion dollars. The increase alone is one and a half times the
entire defense budget of Britain or France. 'Defense' spending in the US
now exceeds the 15 next-largest miliary budgets combined. We're proud
of having kicked ass in one of the poorest, most hungry, most poorly
defended countries in the world. The "axis of evil" countries--Iran,
Iraq and North Korea--have a combined military budget of just $12
billion (that's a 30-to-1 ratio of military spending, us to them).
D'ya think we can be victorious again? They're slightly better fed
(but still hungry).
[Feb01'02] If we insist on dropping tens of millions of these disgusting
things
on other countries, it's just a matter of time before someone, someday,
succeeds in returning the favor.
The 'tall man' hinted at being bin Laden turned out to be a metal
scavenger--somebody so poor he was going places where bombs had been
dropped to pick up the scrap metal to sell (for about $5). He and his
two friends were blown apart and set on fire by a Hellfire missile fired
from a remotely operated drone costing millions of dollars. Blade Runner
time is here today for the worthless people that live outside our fine
empire.
Let Iraq live. Now is the time to stop the preparations for
invading Iraq, which, according to Debka, will occur in a month
or two.
[Feb15'02] Milosevic is on trial for war crimes. But can he beat
this?
(from Esquire, 1963, by R.H.S. Crossman, posted on the right-wing
FreeRepublic.com and followed by flames).
British 'peacekeepers' with night-vision goggles shot a woman in labor
in Kabul in 'self defense' and killed one of her relatives as they tried
to drive her to the hospital. This gets an 'understanding' write-up
(tragic error, etc). That script wouldn't get an understanding write-up
for even a *dog* mother in America. But it's only an Afghan mother -- worth
less than an American dog. Naturally, the British soldier won't have
to face charges in Afghanistan (he was evacuated back to Britain to
avoid this). Naturally. All those who cheer the kiddies with machine
guns in our airports ought to watch out what they ask for.
Danny Pearl's death was unjust and horrible. So, equally, were the
deaths of several thousand Afghan civilians.
"The only place where you and I disagree ... is with regard to
the bombing," Nixon said. "You're so goddamned concerned about
the civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care." --Richard Nixon
talking to Henry Kissinger on the Nixon tapes. Between 2 and 3 million
civilians were killed when the US invaded and bombed South Vietnam and
surrounding countries. Saddam never came vaguely close.
"C. The lessons of Balata were thoroughly assimilated before the
[March 2002] Tulkarm operation. There, the Golani contingents sewed up
the refugee camp by a diversionary tactic: they feigned an attack on
neighboring Nour Shams camp, driving the terrorist heavyweights to escape
into the next-door Tulkarm camp, where they were quickly surrounded. This
time, the Israeli commander cut the camp off from water, electricity
and food supplies and kept ambulances out. Ambulances trying to force
their way into the camp were shot [two ambulance workers killed], even
those on the way to evacuate genuine casualties. On the third day, the
Palestinian resistance collapsed. Among the 1000 men who surrendered
were some 200 top commanders and senior terror activists." [3.5 million
Palestinians live in the occupied territories; the next day, there was
another lethal suicide bomb] -- debka.com
A few years back we were supposed to get a global village, a global
free-trade zone. Now, it looks more like a global free-fire zone.
The British tabloid Daily Mirror reported the announcement of Blair's
forthcoming visit to Bush's Texas ranch under the headline "Howdy Poodle."
House owners will now get 48-hour notice before demolition of their homes
(Ha'aretz). Shades of the new Afghanistan: stonings will now use
smaller rocks -- and your dead body only gets hung up for a half and
hour instead of a whole day. Great.
I believe that Americans are basically decent people. If they
understood that Iraq is not made up of 22 million Saddam Husseins but
made up of 22 million people -- of families, of children, of elderly
parents, families with dreams and hopes and expectations for their
children and themselves -- they would be horrified to realize that the
current killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by the U.S. Air Force, or
what happened in the Gulf War, is being done in their name. --Dennis
Halliday
100,000 people were killed directly by warfare in 1999. 60 percent of
those were in Africa, home to only 10% of the world's population.
Suicide bombers and American soldiers are a lot alike. Both give their
bodies to Old Men of the State. Both kill civilians. The differences
are: (1) American troops have better equipment, (2) they have better odds
of survival, and, most importantly, (3) they kill a *lot* more civilians
(e.g., Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia). In the recent troubles
in Israel, the IDF has killed 5 times as many civilians as the
suicide bomber have. Numbers count.
"If our job is to seize a densely packed refugee camp or take over
the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an (Israeli) officer
to carry out without casualties on both sides, he must before all else
analyse and bring together the lessons of past battles, even -- shocking
though this might appear -- to analyse how the German army operated in
the Warsaw ghetto." -- an Israeli officer quoted in Ma'ariv.
[Mar30,'02] The message coming from Bush and Powell on 3/30/02 is that
when Israeli civilians are killed, it is terrorism, but when Palestinian
civilians are killed (3 times as many), it is understandable, and not
terrorism. Almost every other country in the world (e.g., Europe,
China, Russia, Japan) sees these two kinds of killings as similarly
evil. The fact that the international 'human' shields in the occupied
territories work shows that by definition, Palestinians are less than
human. On 4/1/02, 5 international human shields were hospitalized for
light injuries from shrapnel from gunfire at their feet, but they were
not shot at directly.
[Apr03,'02] In a virtual replay of the public's self-contradictory assessment
of the slaughter in Afghanistan, a large percentage of the US population
sympathizes with Israel and not the Palestinians, supports Israel's
invasion of the West Bank, and then concludes that the recent Israeli
attacks will lead to more suicide bombings.
[Apr04,'02] One can only imagine what would be on the 'Nixon tapes' of
contemporary internal White House discussions about how a 'lousy few
thousand people' killed in the Mideast is getting in the way of our fine
summer plans to slaughter 10,000 (or 100,000) Iraqis. Saddam sends money
and hundreds of Palestinian civilians give up their lives, with the effect
that tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are spared for a few months.
The cold calculus of modern human life.
[Apr05,'02] The IDF tossed stun grenades into a group reporters and cameramen
and then fired rubber bullets at their cars as they left to scare off
the last remaining group of Western TV reporters (NBC and CNN) leaving
only international 'human shields' on cell phones to report things like
the crushing of 4 ambulances by tanks today.
[Apr07,'02] 45% of the Jewish population of Israel now supports
"transfer" -- that is, ethnically cleansing 3 million Arabs from
their homes (such as they are, some for a second time) in the occupied
territories in the West Bank and Gaza. See (conservative)
Derek Copold on why this wouldn't be a strategically sensible
thing to do. Now imagine a similar article in a mainstream American
paper explaining with a straight face to Americans why, morality aside,
ethnically cleansing 3 millions Jews from their homes in Israel would
in fact be a poor policy choice from a strictly military point of view,
despite the fact that a substantial portion of the Arab population
supports it.
[Apr09,'02] When the assault began at 1am, rockets and flares could be seen
streaking through the darkness into the buildings and open spaces of this
dreary, rundown camp. As dawn came, the barrage stopped and loudspeaker
announcements in Arabic told men among the camp)s 6,000 inhabitants:
"Put your hands up and give up. Save your women and children." --
Stephen Farrell, Nablus
[Apr12,'02] Observers estimate that 30% of the Jenin refugee camp, previously
home to 15,000 Palestinians, more than half under 18, has been destroyed
by Israeli bombing and demolition with bulldozers. The demolition and
the burying of bodies in mass graves is still going on today despite
an order of Israel's High Court not to remove the bodies. The refugees
living in the Jenin camp were first "transferred" (ethnically cleansed)
from the coastal region of Haifa in 1948, to make room for the influx
of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The official story is that tens of
thousands fled their homes because they wanted to.
[Apr12,'02] During 1991-2000, Saudi Arabia purchased $33.5 billion in US arms
and other military services, exceeding those of Israel ($18.8 billion),
Egypt ($12.7 billion), Kuwait ($5.5 billion), United Arab Emirates ($1.4
billion), and Bahrain ($1.1 billion), according to the General Accounting
Office--small potatoes, of course, compared to the US, which just decreed
a one-year, $44 billion dollar increase in its 'defense' budget.
[Apr12,'02] Bethlehem University's new Millennium Hall, opened in 2000,
costing $2 million, of which $1.2 million was provided by USAID's ASHA
program (American Schools and Hospitals Abroad), was destroyed by four
TOW missiles, each costing $180,000, provided in aid to the IDF the US
Government. --Amnesty International
[Apr14,'02] Natan Sharansky, Israel's minister of housing, recently (Apr12)
suggested that the Israeli Defense Forces' attack on Jenin was more
restrained than the US campaign in Afghanistan. It will be difficult
to ever count how many died in Jenin since the occupying IDF (30,000
soldiers) has kept the press and ambulances out of the killing fields.
There were 15,000 people in the refugee camp (outside the city of Jenin)
before the invasion -- 47% of them children and old people according to
the previous census. The IDF is currently deciding which of the dead
bodies rotting in the streets were 'gunmen' and is burying them -- no
doubt, along with dead 'gun-children', 'gun-women', and 'gun-old-people'
-- in local mass graves or sending them to burial grounds in Haifa
or the Jordan valley (the traditional place to bury dead terrorists
in unmarked graves). A wide swath of buildings in the center of the
camp were demolished by bulldozers. These mass removals and burials
were approved today by an Israeli High Court ruling, on the condition
that they were required for the 'safety' of the Palestinians. Sadly,
Sharansky's equation has an element of truth to it; the wrongs he speaks
of are similar. The lives of Afghani villagers (an estimated 3-4,000
killed almost exclusively by high-altitude US bombing, also in numbers
that will never be known) are worth about the same as the almost worthless
(by US standards) lives of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp, snuffed
out under buildings collapsed by bulldozers to make room for tanks, by
(US made) Hellfire missiles fired into civilian buildings, or more slowly
in the streets, under the watchful eye of Israeli snipers charged with
keeping ambulances and relatives at bay until enough blood had flowed out.
But Sharansky is wrong to imply that killing low-market-value humans using
a smaller ratio of airpower to troops makes it better than what the US did
to 3-4,000 civilians in Afghanistan. Both are just as much an example of
terrorism as suicide bombings. The low-market-value humans out there are
watching and remembering, even if many 'Good Americans' aren't.
The wolf and the lamb are drinking out of a stream together. The wolf
tells the lamb, "You are spoiling my water." The lamb says, "But the
water is flowing the other way." The wolf says, "It doesn't matter. I'm
going to eat you anyway." -- Turkish proverb.
[Apr15,'02] Muntaha Seraya suffered a miscarriage after being beaten by
Israeli troops when 15 of them invaded her home. Mrs Seraya's husband,
Ali Abu, was forced to serve the troops as a human shield, being
frogmarched through the ruined streets, while soldiers rested their
M-16 rifles on his shoulder and fired. "They were taking me from one
house to another," Mr Seraya, 42, said. While he was outside one home,
an Israeli sniper's bullet shattered his left leg. "They started shouting
[at the sniper], `Why have you done this?' While they were shouting,
they left me bleeding and went away," he said. He spent the next five
days trapped inside the refugee camp before being carried to the hospital
on a ladder. -- by David Blair, from the UK Telegraph, reporting on the
trials and tribulations of low-market-value humans in Jenin
[Apr16,'02] Several recently-raised proposals present reasonable chances for
Israeli-Palestinian and an Israeli-Arab peace, based on the principle
of land for peace. Israel now needs a leader who will grasp these ideas
and lead the majority of its people to recognize that the path to the
realization of the founding fathers' vision lies in a withdrawal to
the 1967 borders. As far as can be determined, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon is not the person to take on this historic role. -- Ha'aretz
editorial
[Apr16,'02] "It [the Jenin refugee camp] is totally destroyed, it looks like
an earthquake has hit it... We have expert people here who have been
in war zones and earthquakes and they say they have never seen anything
like it. It is horrifying beyond belief... It is totally unacceptable
that the government of Israel for 11 days did not allow search and rescue
teams to come." -- Terje Roed-Larsen, UN, on the first visits allowed
to the camp with the Red Cross.
Jacques Chirac -- 19.67%
Jean-Marie Le Pen -- 17.02% (later: 16.9%)
Lionel Jospin -- 17.01% (later: 16.1%)
[Apr25,'02] 60,000 US servicemen died in Vietnam. 60,000 of those who
returned subsequently committed suicide. Social workers estimate as
many as 90% of the Palestinian children in occupied territories like
Gaza suffer from post traumatic stress disorders--from seeing other
children shot in the head while throwing stones at tanks, neighbors houses
bulldozed after accented announcements on a megaphone, F16's screaming
overhead at night, observing the daily humiliation and abuse of their
parents, and so on. Conditions like these lead humans inexorably to a
lot of 'give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death'.
[Apr27,'02] The IDF denies using "human shields" during their West Bank
invasions. The proper term for marching handcuffed civilians through
the streets at gunpoint in front of an invading army, is, apparently,
"guides", according to Captain Jacob Dallal. See how that works in
reverse. 'During an invasion of Haifa, Palestinian policemen marched
handcuffed Israeli civilian "guides" at gunpoint in front of Palestinian
armoured personnel carriers and tanks'.
[Apr27,'02] "People [In Gaza] are certainly preparing for the worst. The
banks report massive withdrawals. Human rights groups are duplicating
their files. Everyone knows what happened to the computerised archives
of the Palestinian ministries in Ramallah and Nablus and Jenin; they
were stolen by the Israeli soldiers because, in the imperishable words
of one Israeli officer: 'Documents have a very important value.'" --
Robert Fisk
[Apr27,'02] "Let them eat broadband instead..." -- Mark Almond
[May11,'02] This week, almost 500 people were killed in southern Sudan by
Ugandan rebels. People in Sudan have such a low value in our fine world
market that a half-an-Intifada's worth of people in one week is not
even news.
[May27,'02] "Well, we could afford to lose, oh, 25 million, but could
they?" -- anonymous Indian official commenting on the prospects of
a nuclear war with Pakistan.
500 people (the world's billionaires) have as much money as the bottom
*half* of all of humanity. That's a hell of a lot more obscene that
the uncovered breast of a statue.
[Jun08,'02] Hopefully, there won't be a nuclear war in asia. The problem, is
that if there is one, despite millions of people dying, life on the planet
will go on. Some weapons won't work, some will have more local effects
than the man on the street expected, and the fallout will be relatively
localized. Then people will think it's not so bad after all.
[Jun08,'02] The oddness of life. In Afghanistan, anesthesia is rarely used
even for things like human limb amputations. In the US, ketamine (the
anesthetic of the third world, when they can get it) is not even approved
for animal surgery.
[Jun15,'02] Looks like the attack on Iraq is on again (more troops in
Kuwait, surveillance drones crashing in Iran, Powell threatening to
resign).
[Jun26,'02] Back from vacation, and things seem crazier than ever! At least
global warming hasn't changed much. Even the direst predictions of
the hundred year outlook on global warming (e.g., sea level increase
of 30 feet) are actually relatively 'moderate' when you compare them to
the complete history of climate on the Earth (e.g., 200 foot sea level
increases, glaciers covering half of Illinois, inland seas covering most
of the continental US, 70% of species extinguished by meteorite hits
and giant lava flows). Which is not to say that the 'moderate' change
on the way won't be painful (flooding all of southern Florida, wrecking
many rich people's seaside homes, mass starvation when all of Indonesia
catches fire from a permanent el Nino, etc). Reasoning in a similar way,
every once in a while, there's a doozy of a storm. These are the events
that account for much of what you see in the geological record--thousands
of years of slow sediment deposition, and then, bam, it all gets gathered
up and plastered into a huge pile one really bad day. Has nothing
to do with global warming--more like bad climatic luck. Right now,
I'm half hoping that we (the US, but, naturally, not the part where I
live :-} ) gets one of those once-in-a-thousand or once-in-ten-thousand
year storms. It probably *won't*, in reality, be attributable to global
warming. But there is no way you will convince US citizens of that.
They will think the bill has finally come due. That's a good thing,
because if the rest of the world ever gets around to using as much
stuff
(energy, meat, fish, sulfuric acid, gasoline, computers, paper, drugs)
per person as we do, non-moderate, meteorite-like things will happen,
and probably very quickly (each American requires 30 acres of land for
overall life support, each European, about 15 acres, and each Burundian,
about 1 acre). The onset and offset of glaciation is now thought to
have sometimes occurred in the space of a few years. That's so short
it's almost within the purview of a business plan!
[Jun30,'02] Polls that we are no longer thought to be winning the war on
'terr-ism' may be the final straw pushes a desparate election-frazzled
administration to start an unprovoked war on Iraq. It will be a
dangerous one, but not only for the unlucky, starved targets of our
fine war machine (and its "leather-toughened marines"--Boot/Kudlow). For
example, Sharon could decide to begin a mass 'transfer' of Palestinians
or a war on Syria under its cover.
[Jul02,'02] The most recent (of four!) Afghanistan wedding bombings turns out
to probably have been an attack that included AC-130 Spectre gunships.
It shows that we're better than Saddam since he kills his own people.
At least we just kill other people's low-market-value people. These air
strikes seem to have been called in by people on the ground. Imagine the
possibilities at home!:
"An air strike on targets in a San Diego suburb went wrong when bad ground
intel from a jealous neighbor about a canyon cave complex resulted in
AC-130 gunships strafing a backyard barbecue, slaughtering 50 guests as
they fled into the night. The guests had set off some fireworks,
stupidly forgetting that they were at war; such mistakes are inevitable,
etc, etc. Unfortunately, most of the people killed were actually Bush
supporters".
The horror of the world's most powerful, most high-tech-ever military
strafing wedding parties in the world's poorest country halfway across
the globe is an obscenity that I fear will be a sad footnote in a future
history of the decline and fall of the American empire.
[Jul05,'02] A record number of American citizens with large net worths (over
$100 million) have become expatriates in the past 6 months. What do these
nervous rats know that you and I don't?
[Jul07,'02] The sad thing about the completely justified opposition to
the coming war on Iraq is that it stems mainly from the fact that
it might be slightly difficult, as opposed to the fact that it's
utterly wrong and immoral, not based on a credible threat to the US,
and a cover for grabbing control of the world's oil assets. Nobody
(man-on-the-street) opposed the war on Afghanistan because it was like the
war on Panama or Grenada--the most powerful/rich/technological against
the least-powerful/completely-unable-to-defend-themselves, and in this
case, halfway across the world even. The soft support for the Iraq war
stems from the fact that starved, embargoed Iraq is less of a complete
steam-roller-able pushover--though it is hardly likely that Iraq could
withstand an assault from a US force assembled over the next 6 months
for more than a few weeks. America the Brave only unanimously supports
ripping flesh with shrapnel and burning skin of low-market-value humans
when the targets have *absolutely* no power--military, economic, or even
the 'power' of possible bad side-effects of their own annihilation--to
fight back. Death star indeed.
[Jul09,'02] The monthly casualty rate in Kashmir and Columbia is greater
than in Palestine, but it is much smaller news. For example, about
3,500 people are killed each year in Columbia in Columbia's 'civil war'
(where the US provides 1 billion a year to one side). Such is the genius
of the invisible hand of the market.
[Jul13,'02] Turkish gov't crisis may (slightly) delay Iraq attack. Who could
have predicted that? Unfortunately, looks like Iraq invasion may happen
anyway. The US appears to have abandoned trying to use Saudi bases and
instead plans to attack from Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan (and Turkey).
[Jul13,'02] The US has recently used a lot of depleted uranium. It is very
heavy, and when added to a shell, the shell penetrates armor better.
It vaporizes on explosion. It is mostly uranium-238, but also contains
variable amounts of other nastier stuff:
Iraq/Kuwait (1991) -- about 500 tons
Bosnia (1994-5) -- about 3 tons
Kosovo (1999) -- about 10 tons
Afghanistan (2001) -- about 750 tons
"In the Middle East, you have to speak the language that is understood --
the language of force. Israel has to do what the British did in Dresden,
what the Americans did in Tora Bora, or what NATO did in Sarejevo.
Why doesn't the Army drop leaflets over the Palestinian territories,
saying, 'We're going to start bombing in three hours,' and whoever wants
to can escape?" -- Michael Kliener, rightist Knesset member
[Jul27,'02] In the occupied territories, 1/5 of children under 5 are suffering
from severe malnutrition (compared to 1/40 in 2000). Almost half of
Palestinian children suffer from anemia.
[Aug01,'02] Two million extremely-low-market-value humans have been killed
in the Democratic Republic of Congo/Rwanda war of the past 4 years.
And that, unbelievably, doesn't count the million or so killed in the
original Rwanda genocide. Hardly a peep from major papers, compared to
what they say about what happens in the Middle East.
[Aug03,'02] US purchases of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserves have
accounted for 50% of the total increase in demand for oil around the
world this year.
[Aug06,'02] 2,000 people have died since 1995 in attempts to cross the
US/Mexico border since the improved border fence and guards were
instituted. Kinda like the Berlin Wall, but more deadly.
[Aug08,'02] The US poodle press is so disgusting! Isn't there even a single
slightly brave mainstream writer out there that can bear to say what they
all know -- that 'taking out Saddam' instead really means the high-tech
slaughter of 100,000 defenseless people, and that doing it is an act of
pure evil? Though it was never reported in the national press, at least
that many Iraqi humans were burnt to a crisp and buried alive by B-52
carpet bombing in the last America war on Iraq while hiding hopelessly
in their desert bunkers. The numbers are so inaccurate, it is possible
that 200,000 were killed. 200,000 humans, that is. Was it worse that
Saddam was supposed to have killed 1/20 that many 'of his own people'?
(note that the US denied the original report, which came out during
the Iraq/Iran war, where we supported Iraq.) I don't see the difference.
A lot more 'of his own people' died horrible deaths at the hands of
Americans. There is no such thing as a war against a president. War
is only against people.
[Aug08,'02] The IMF agreed to lend Brazil $30 billion yesterday after giving
Uruguay an emergency $1.5 billion cash advance last weekend as most of
South America fell into a financial panic.
[Aug08,'02] "The White House residence has private phone lines. This is so
seven layers of government employees don't screen W's calls from his
closest relatives and friends. What if Bush isn't available when the
phone rings. Does he leave an answering machine message -- 'Thank you for
calling. I can't come to the phone right now. But, if you'll leave your
name, phone number, and what corporate crime you've been charged with,
I'll get right back to you.' " -- Walt Brasch
[Aug10,'02] "As long as the occupation continues, resistance in one form
or another is bound to go on. -- Jonathan Steele. Since the 1967
war, Israeli bulldozers have demolished over 9,000 Palestinian homes.
The Israeli high court recently handed down a Kafkesque decision that
says that family members and neighbors of evildoers don't have to be
given even 1 minute's warning before bulldozers demolish their house at
night. Nice to be living in the 'only democracy in the mideast', huh?.
Rather like 'democracy' in ancient Greece -- a great system for the 10%
of the population that could vote.
[Aug12,'02] "If left to its own, Israel will have no choice but to fall
back on a riskier defense which will endanger itself and the world at
large... To enable Israel to abstain from dependence on nuclear arms
calls for $2 to $3 billion per year in U.S. aid." -- Amos Rubin, 1987,
economic adviser to Yitshak Shamir
[Aug17'02] The 'Democrats' are spineless as usual! Instead we see strong
anti-war text and speeches from Dick Armey, Brent Scowcroft, and Henry
Kissinger (!). Isn't *that* enough to shame you 'Democratic' worms
into even a little tentative bleat against the war machine? Instead,
we have the ungainly spectacle of 'Democratic' slugs begging Sharon to
meet with them, too, when he goes on the campaign trail for Jeb Bush (!).
The 'Democrats' are so spineless because they are afraid the war might go
'well' -- that is, kill only 20 US 'boys' in accidents while roasting,
burying-alive, dismembering, and filling with shrapnel a few hundred
thousand Iraqi humans. You worms.
[Aug19'02] Newsweek finally picks up the story on how, under the watchful
eye of our 'boys', the Northern Alliance slowly suffocated 1000 Taliban
prisoners to death inside sealed shipping containers sitting in the desert
sun and then dumped the bodies into a mass grave. That's a third as
many people as died in the towers. Humans like us. In the major radio
and TV US news outlets, however, this story was ignored in favor of a
constantly replayed videotape that suggested that Al-Qaida killed 3 dogs.
It is worse to poison 3 dogs than to slowly suffocate 1000 humans to death
inside sealed shipping containers, as long as the humans are Taliban.
No one took video inside those hot, dark, oxygen-less shipping containers.
So, it's all about market value.
[Aug21'02] The Pope should go to Baghdad right after the start of the war.
Make yourself useful, man!
[Aug29'02] We *must* have the draft back! There are plenty of casual
warmongers. Let them put their own flesh on the line; the warmonger count
always goes down when there is the real possibility that a high-speed
blade of shrapnel might pierce their skull or anus. We need a simple
lottery with absolutely no exceptions (unless you want to leave the
country). Just like at the end of the war on Vietnam. Everybody's so
down on warmonger/draft-dodger politicians because they are always
saying one thing and doing another. Don't be that way! Voting is cheap;
if you really want a war, then vote with your damn body.
[Aug29'02] 39% of the 1.6 million people in Botswana are currently infected
with HIV.
[Aug30'02] USAID reported that 1 in 5 Palestinian children now suffer from
chronic malnutrition (AKA starvation), primarily a result of the Israeli
military siege -- a level equivalent to what is seen in the parts of the
world populated by truly low-market-value humans (e.g., Nigeria, Chad).
This is worse than what is currently seen in Somalia and Bangladesh.
[Sep01'02] There are 33 million cubic km of ice in the Antarctic and Greenland
ice sheets, enough to raise global sea level by about 200 feet. This ice
is in dynamic equilibrium, since in only one year, an amount of snow falls
there that is equivalent to 1/4 of an inch of worldwide sea level rise.
Recent research suggests that conditions at both the Arctic and Antarctic
ice caps are changing rapidly.
[Sep12'02] Bush 'has absolutely no quarrel with the Iraqi people'. That's
why he's now in the process of ordering the deaths of 100,000 of them
(or some other number of 'no interest'). Same cowardly little man who
never got close to a real war himself.
[Sep14'02] George Bush at Harken Energy and Dick Cheney at Halliburton were
*much* worse than Martha Stewart. Don't let them get away!
[Sep20'02] A senior US defense official suggested that, "America wants
Iraqi's to participate in their own liberation". How nice! (else shrapnel
rips your flesh). The US could also help them 'liberate' some of their
extra oil reserves.
[Sep20'02] [Oil-pig US to the world] "They [France and Russia] should be told
that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government,
we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American
[oil] companies work closely with them. If they throw in their lot with
Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade
the new Iraqi [huh?] government to work with them." -- James Woolsey,
former CIA director
[Sep20'02] In Germany, anti-war rocks! A rare note of cheer in these
depressing days of the new millenium.
[Sep20'02] I am so sick and tired of pious pontificating about 'savage'
mustard gas weapons (sold to Iraq by GW's daddy for their war against
Iran). What's so 'unsavage' about a cruise missile, a cluster bomb,
or a good old fashioned gravity-operated 500 pound bomb? They're all
exactly as savage! Those things killed just as many civilians in
Afghanistan as were killed in the trade towers. And the people over
there that that didn't die didn't get anesthetics while their shredded
limbs were being amputated.
[Sep21'02] The translation of "calm" or a "lull in violence in the mideast"
in the US press means 'only Palestinians are being killed.'
[Sep21'02] The US gears up its $1-billion-dollar-a-day military and
propagandas up its lobotomized populace to 'take on' the only kind of
'foe' it is unafraid enough to attack -- an essentially defenseless,
backward country with no air defenses containing millions of non-white
humans that can be safely killed by the tens of thousands from 7 miles up
with no high-market-value humans shedding a tear. The only reason we are
going to invade is because Saddam probably *doesn't* have WMDs. Cowards.
Rot in hell, etc. Today, the only straight talk comes from Robert Byrd
(!)
[Sep24'02] The coming Iraq war, AKA, killing 50,000 - 100,000 Iraqi humans,
and a few American humans, unfortunately, is unlikely to wreck our
economy. It will probably 'only' cost about $50 billion. Not cheap,
but workable. That's the problem. And no doubt we will be able to
recoup some of the loss by taking over (AKA stealing) Iraqi oil assets.
This will, however, take some time. Hopefully enough time for the
anesthetized populace to stir enough to dump out the Bush-child.
[Sep30'02] Crude oil, at end 2001, reserves and production:
---------------------------------------------------------
Saudi Arabia 261.8 billion 8.8 million/day
Iraq 112.5 2.4
UAE 97.8 2.4
Kuwait 96.5 2.1
Iran 89.7 3.7
Venezuela 77.7 3.4
Russia 48.6 7.1
US 30.4 7.7
Libya 29.5 1.4
Mexico 26.9 3.6
---------------------------------------------------------
[this is when I really became aware of peak oil again -- after the 70's]
[Sep30'02] The usual Newspeak. First, it was 35 pounds of weapons-grade
uranium on its way to Iraq (natch) from Turkey. Two days later, it
was 5 *ounces* of weapons-grade uranium on its way to Iraq. Today,
it's not even uranium but lead, and zirconium. Whatever.
[Oct01'02] American non-terrorism in action: Ari Fleischer: Iraqi people
must kill Saddam or we will kill 50,000 or 100,000 Iraqi people, for
their own good, of course.
[Oct02'02] "If we went shopping every time the Americans threatened us,
we would always be at the market," said Taha Mahmud Fatah, 39, a jeweler
in the northern city of Mosul.
[Oct07'02] "Now that your 401(K) statements have been turned into 201(K)
statements and if you want your 201(K) statements to become 101(K)
statements, vote for Republicans in the upcoming election." -- Al
Martin
[Oct15'02] US planes bombed Iraq for the 50th time this year -- this all
'before' the war.
[Oct18'02] The utter bizarreness of the modern world. All this tough
press trash talk about terrorism, 'not letting them win', blah, blah.
Then we have a few explosions in the Philipines and Indonesia, and
the annoucement by North Korea that they are working on a few WMD's.
A small number people were killed by the explosions (at least by the
standards of how many people starve to death every day, or how many people
die of wars in Africa every day)--and these were non-Americans killed in
non-American countries! Suck it up press guys and Paula Zahn's! Get back
to the 'news for parrots' ("An airliner went down today at Heathrow--no
parrots were killed" -- Monty Python). Anyway, a few people get killed,
and the other axis of evil lets out a few peeps (we can't invade North
Korea because Seoul would be destroyed in the process), and then our
behemoth Death Star Rumsfeld military appears to suddenly lurch backward,
the stock market shoots up a thousand points on the non-reported news
of no war for now. Sheesh.
[Oct19'02] Today, senators were warned that there might be Al-Qaeda
snipers on golf courses. Such are the sacrifices we must all make in
order to secure what's left of the planet's oil for our fine and moral
Empire.
[Oct26'02] "Those activists who in the past have gone into Palestine, or
gone into Iraq and said 'Bomb us, we're here, we're white people and
we're here' -- those are fantastic people," -- Arundhati Roy
[Oct26'02] "If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn
missiles. They know we own their country. We own their airspace. ...
We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about
America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot
of oil out there we need." -- General William Looney, the head of the
perpetual U.S.-U.K. Iraq bombing operation, several years ago
[Oct29'02] "I see linkages between someone who is willing to murder his own
people. I hold Saddam Hussein to account and we are going to do that." --
Bush's language organ
[Nov11'02] Ralph Nader didn't make the Democrats lose this time. It's the
Democrats, stupid.
[Nov11'02] Nuclear is back in fashion. US policy now openly talks about
first use. Out a few years ago, in this year. Such short times in the
greater scheme of things. Nuclear fission bombs *are* hard to make,
and fusion bombs even more so. But not so hard; India and Pakistan made
their own. So it's just a matter of time before more countries get them.
It might take another three or four decades -- right about the time when
oil starts to get really scarce. The left often talks as if nuclear bombs
will end the world. In fact, a small fission bomb isn't that damaging.
We already saw what they do in crowded cities in Japan. Bad, yes, but
consider that the number of people killed was 'only' comparable to the
number of Iraqi's the US killed during the first Iraq war, and who cared
about those Iraqi's one bit? Once a fission bomb gets used against
non-white people, we will sort of count the dead, and move on to bigger
and better things. The most un-talked-about potential use of nuclear
weapons that has my first world ass worried is not a suit case bomb in an
American city, but instead someone blowing one up in the upper atmosphere
over the US. This wouldn't kill anyone outright, but it would destroy an
awful lot of electronics, iPod's, SUV ignitions, PowerPoint presentations,
etc. This would require some kind of missile. It wouldn't have to be
very accurate, but it would have to be long range. These are the things
we should worry about -- something that could immediately change our
fine way of life even before the oil runs out!
[Nov16'02] Oil facts (in barrels, reserves numbers stable for decades):
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- total oil used since 1850 -- 900 billion
-- total world reserves remaining -- 970 billion
-- percent oil currently in use discovered before 1973 -- 70%
-- time left, current world usage rate (29 billion/year) -- 33 years
-- time left, US uses only oil still left in US fields -- 3 years
-- time left, US steals and uses all of Iraq's oil by itself -- 15 years
-- time left, whole world uses oil at US's current rate -- 6 years (!)
-- peak US oil production -- 1970
-- peak world oil production -- expected 2004-2007
-- percent US oil used in food production (no pack/refrig/truck/cook) -- 25%
-- physical human work equivalent of energy used to generate US diet for 1 person, 1 day -- 3 weeks
-- oil in US strategic reserves (0.66 billion) -- 1 month US usage
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
figures from
www.eni.it
World consumption increases more than 2% per year; the US uses about 25%
of the total oil used per year but has only 5% of its population; everyone
has a car; there are no practical replacements in sight after many years
of thought by smart people, etc., etc. When oil gets expensive, we
will make hydrogen (energy storage, not energy source) for fuel cells,
using, uhh, what's left of the coal to electrolyze water. Whatever,
boys.
[Nov21'02] Only 13% of Americans between the age of 18 and 24 -- the age of
the people who actually do the killing -- could even find Iraq on a map.
Sounds, bad, but the number only went to 30% when asked to find New
Jersey, so I see why GPS is a, uh, no-brainer.
[Nov23'02] The US spent $13 billion bombing rural Afghanistan and, so
far, about $10 million (that's less than 1/1000 as much) fixing it up.
The low-market-value humans of the world have dutifully taken note of the
carrot/stick ratio. If I was them, I'd start making some sticks.
[Dec03'02] America is the dominant military power because we spend such
an incredible fortune every year on the military. Yet despite all
our flesh-shredding gizmos, we have recently only attacked weakened,
starving countries that are completely unable to defend themselves (e.g.,
Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Iraq). When an empire can only break the
skulls of weaklings, it makes it look weak itself. I hate to think of
the uses to which all out killing toys will be put when the oil *really*
starts running out a few decades from now (see above).
[Dec06'02] "You are a very privileged group of people at Stanford. You are not
going to go to the war. You are not going to fight in Iraq. The people
who are going to have their families go to Iraq are -- truck drivers;
they are guys who work on the railroad trains; they are people who are
bellhops in hotels. But you don't talk to them -- it seems to me that to
try and have an open discussion about the [policies] of the Middle East
and Iraq, you need to consider talking to the people who will be most
intimately involved in such a tragedy of an Iraqi military campaign." --
Robert Fisk on what academics at Stanford can do.
[Dec10'02] The strongest anti-war statement today comes from Jerry
Springer.
[Dec12'02] "To us [in Canada], it's mind-boggling [that the US complains
about arms sales]". The U.S. sells the world's largest volume of
weapons to more countries than anybody else, they have 1.5 million troops
stationed around the world, they spend more than $500 billion a year on
the military budget... they just fought a war against Afghanistan and
they are ready to bomb Iraq. I guess it's not the kind of irony you
laugh at." -- Richard Sanders, Ottawa co-ordinator of the Coalition to
Oppose the Arms Trade
[Dec26'02] One good thing about running out of oil is that it's impossible
to make solar- or wind-powered tanks and fighter jets. China's economy
grew at an 8% rate this year. If they continue to refine their taste
for SUV's, perhaps things will all work out for the best after all.
[Dec26'02] I'm tired of these peecee polls! We see that most Americans
enthusiasm for war with Iraq goes down if even a few hundred Americans
might be killed (though there were a scary 15% or so that supported the
war even with limitless US casualties -- I guess that means that it would
be OK to kill the non-Americans in the world twice). It's good to know
about the casualty averse ones, but why do they always leave out the
questions that weigh killing 100,000 Iraqi troops vs. 1,000,000 Iraqi
troops vs. all the people in Iraqi vs. all the people in Iraq and Syria
vs. all the non-Israelis in the mideast? How else are we going to get
a good estimate of the market value of different kinds of humans in the
discerning eye of our Good Americans?
[Dec26'02] "Dick Cheney Before Cheney Dicks You" -- protest sign
[Dec27'02] Dubya down! Approve -- 55%, Disapprove -- 37% (latest CNN poll,
unreported, natch). Start the war, quick, so Good Americans will like
him better again.
[Dec27'02] Today, the US/UK retaliated against Iraq for shooting down an
unmanned drone flying over their territory with several bombing runs,
which Baghdad claimed killed three civilians and injured 16 others,
and destroyed a mosque. If stuff like this pisses me off, you can
imagine what the other non-American oil-consuming (75% of total world
consumption), fish-eating, steel-using, water-drinking billions think
of it. Are Americans stupid?
[Dec30'02] The US announces it can fight two wars at once with its volunteer
army. The wars in question are against Iraq, struggling after a decade of
sanctions, where bombed sewer plants have led to raw sewage in the street
and in the home, and where we are anyway already bombing every day, and
North Korea, a different kind of basket case that might actually have
one or two nukes. This looks weak guys! We should be able to fight
*ten* countries like that with one hand tied behind our back given how
much we spend compared to the rest of the world. The rest of the world
would be more impressed if we said we could fight two countries with
modern air defenses, a couple of hundred nukes, and a well-fed populace.
Beware the Roman empire with no clothes -- the bully who can only beat
up the weaklings.
2003 ##########################################################
[Jan09'03] During the last Iraq war, US and UK warplanes carried out 890
strikes against electrical power plants and oil installations. I hope
someday, somebody doesn't return the favor.
[Jan15'03] A recent poll says that 50% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein
was responsible for the World Trade Center attacks. 65% say that bin Laden
and Iraq are allied and planning new terrorist acts. Almost 50% say that
some or that most of the September 11 terrorists were Iraqi citizens.
This is why I gradually get more and more misanthropic.
[Jan15'03] The US won't think of messing with the borders of Iraq after
it invades; but killing 125,000 people and injuring 125,000 more in the
process (assuming, charitably, that it's no worse than last time) won't
make the news, or matter in any way to the US. Destroying a border
is more costly on the world's stage than burning, dismembering, and
disemboweling close to a quarter of a million humans. Humans sure suck
when they're ordering somebody else's execution. Remember that.
[Jan19'03] "Some of [the chickenhawks] keenest for war in the Bush
administration -- including Bush, vice-president Dick Cheney,
senior officials Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle -- never served in
Vietnam... (Bush avoided Vietnam by joining the National Guard, and then
failing to show up for guard duty for months at a time). But with the
massive U.S. assault about to be unleashed on enfeebled Iraq, the Pentagon
may have finally found a way to wage a war so safe (for U.S. soldiers)
that even a young George Bush wouldn't have been scared to participate."
-- Linda McQuaig
[Jan22'03] Playing for keeps: "Everyone we spoke to said they would not use
the 34 shelters provided for civilians in Baghdad because of the 1991
bombing of Al-Amarya shelter when 408 out of 422 women and children in
the shelter were burned to death. -- Robert Rodvick in Baghdad
[Jan23'03] This week the all-powerful US pentagon managed to spam all the
Iraqi ISP's off the net. How courageous our military is in denying
Iraqi's their email!
[Jan23'03] "How did our oil get under their sand?" -- peace march sign
[Jan23'03] Bush's approval is down to the level of Clinton during
Monica-time. Tee-hee. But you never get to enjoy seeing the cockroaches
on their backs for long enough: they're undoubtedly cooking up some
'unplugged incubator babies' as we speak.
[Jan25,03] Donald H. Rumsfart responded to a plea from archeaologists to
consider protecting archaelological sites in Iraq by asking for their
locations to be sent to military planners. Incinerating people with
bad coordinates is collateral damage, but bombing archaelogical sites
(most of the good stuff long ago plundered by the Brits and others, and
more recently by looters selling to the West) might be a 'war crime'
according to the Boston Globe. The system can't be fixed.
[Jan25,03] Will the war start sooner now that public support (and the
stock market and the dollar) are plummeting? Maybe next Tues? The US
is planning to launch $1 to $2 billion dollars worth of cruise missiles
into Iraq. This is what you call an attack requiring surgery. Too bad
one can only imagine Rumsfart soiling his shorts, tied down to a chair
in an emergency hospital with doctors amputating limbs and pulling skull
fragments out of brains while the bombs go off in other wings.
[Jan25'03] Military spending in 2003:
--------------------------------------------
United States: $343 billion
Our allies combined: $205 billion
Russia: $60 billion
China: $42 billion
Rogue states (not incl. the US): $14 billion.
--------------------------------------------
[Jan27'03] Today, the only 'democracy' in the Mideast gets ready for an
election by sealing millions of people in their homes under military
occupation (they can't vote anyway).
[Feb01'03] The tragic failure of a 22-year-old space shuttle possibly due
to a too-rapid atmospheric re-entry (possibly indirectly due to greatly
reduced spending on maintenance in recent years at NASA) will cause
Bush's ratings to go up. It will also serve as a full-time distraction
from war preparations.
[Feb03'03] "The intent is to break the will of the species. Iraq is merely a
convenient stage, Saddam Hussein an extremely unfortunate prop." -- the
Black Commentator
[Feb10'03] The Christian Science monitor today had an amazing, Orwellian
editorial
about how Germany and France delivered a "slap in the face" to
Turkey for its 'democratic' (!) action of having a closed parlimentary
decision to support the US war on Iraq, despite more than 90% of its
population being against this very action. Truly, today, war is peace.
Sheesh.
[Feb11'03] Thank god we're only planning to slaughter human shields. For a
moment, I thought they might be people like me. Actually, their slaughter
will be somebody else's fault anyway. Actually, the fact that we are
brave enough to slaughter human shields shows our fortitude, intelligence,
and strength as an American people. We may even demonstrate the extreme
bravery required to use a nuclear weapon, something mere human shields
will be powerless to stop. Like us, the Iraqi human shields have a use
for duct tape -- in their case to avoid their windows shattering when
they are hit by bloody chunks (of other human shields).
[Feb15'03] My speech at the Feb15 downtown San Diego anti-war demonstration
here
[Feb19'03] The village idiot's poll numbers plummet to almost 50-50.
Probably something to do with the 'irrelevant' protests over the weekend
(the largest anti-war demonstrations in human history).
[Feb22'03] The execrable Barry McCaffrey predicts: "If we decide to employ
force, in 21 days it'll be all over. They're not going to believe what
we do to them." Why not try Viagra instead, Barry? It's easier on the
women and children.
[Feb23'03] Pope should go to Baghdad as a high-value human shield!
[Feb27'03] "Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches [i.e., nukes]"
-- Ariel Sharon
[Feb27'03] "That was the most expensive No vote you ever cast." -- senior
American diplomat to the Yemeni ambassador minutes after Yemen voted
against the first Iraq war resolution in 1990. Three days later, a $70
million aid program to one of the world's poorest countries was ended,
resulting in problems with the World Bank, IMF, and the expulsion of
almost a million Yemeni workers from Saudi Arabia (from John Pilger).
A few days ago, even our supine press was not able to suppress derisive
laughter
at Ari Fleischer's mock shock at a question about bribes for
votes, which led to his exit. Sometimes it's the little things in life
that you appreciate the most.
[Feb27'03] If the war goes 'well' (i.e., 'only' slaughters 100,000 Iraqi's,
with lower class American soldiers from San Diego and elsewhere only
dying in accidents while pushing computer buttons) the Bush popularity
ratings -- from Good Americans, most of whom won't see even one picture
of a disembowled kid -- will soar. Can't be repeated enough: Humans sure
suck when they're approving the execution of someone else's kids.
[Mar01'03] Current world oil use: 1 billion barrels every 12 days. Total
world reserves: still about 900 billion.
[Mar01'03] Helen Caldicott has the
same idea!
about a truly high-value human shield that you can't prosecute either.
[Mar03'03] Turkey rocks! The parliament vote was split, but it just
barely ended reflecting the will of the population -- 90% are opposed
to helping the US in its war on Iraq -- and even in the face of a cool
$6 billion dollar US cash bribe. Probably can't stick.
[Mar03'03] Conservative anti-war columnist Charley Reese (see below) says
that once the war starts, he will no longer write anti-war columns.
What tripe! Why does the start of a wrong war make it right? By this
logic, threats to exterminate the Jews should be argued against, but once
the extermination starts, it's time to 'support the troops'. I don't see
it; if the war is wrong, starting it doesn't change anything. If Vietnam
is a model, it's particularly important to protest against the war after
it has already started! The 'support the troops' argument was used back
then in spades. It unduly prolonged that evil, sickening war.
[Mar05,03] Key money facts
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- World gross domestic product -- 43 trillion
-- US gross domestic product -- 10 trillion
-- California gross domestic product -- 1.4 trillion
-- US total federal debt -- 40-45 trillion
-- US federal budget -- 2 trillion
-- US 2004 budget deficit (w/o Iraq & black budgets) -- 0.4 trillion
-- US national debt -- 6.7 trillion
-- US consumer debt -- 1.7 trillion
-- US residential debt -- 6.8 trillion
-- US current account (trade) deficit -- 0.5 trillion
-- foreign ownership of US financial assests -- 8 trillion
-- daily world currency transactions -- 1.5 trillion (80-90% speculative)
-- dollars in circulation -- 3.0 trillion
-- dollar-denominated world trade -- 2/3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Mar09'03] 42 percent of our populace believes that Saddam was personally
responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center (Times/CBS
News survey). Interestingly, this is actually a deduction from the 6
month-long stream of propaganda from our 'news' organizations, very few
of which have explicitly presented evidence for this or even explicitly
made this connection in the nightly delivery of sewage. Of course, 40%
is about the same percentage of us who don't believe in evolution.
We're not troglodytes in every scientific field, however, since we do
believe in cell phones (and by implication, quantum mechanics, theory of
electronic circuits, Maxwell's equations, and so on).
[Mar09'03] One reasonable estimate for the cost of the upcoming attack on
Iraq is about $1000 per US person. That's $2000 that me and my wife
will be paying this month to have teenagers from Camp Pendleton slaughter
Iraqi kids.
[Mar10'03] Today, the 'Democrats' are *so* cowardly about opposing the war,
several have considered suspending public campaigning because the only
people that show up to see these cockroaches are those demanding to
know why they're all groveling before Bush as the world hurtles toward
the cliff.
[Mar11'03] Over 10% of our troops in the Gulf defending our rights whatever
are non-citizens.
[Mar12,03] The current 'yes' votes are from Britain, whose people are
overwhelming against 'yes', and from 3 poor African countries whose aid
and loans we have threatened if they don't say 'yes' (who cares what
*their* populations think). Forget the crocodile tears, you say: we're
rich, we've got the scary tech, so just deal with it. But we've also got
a scary number of targets in our rich homeland, and by occupying the oil
fields that essentially oil-less countries like Europe, India, China,
Japan, and Korea depend on, we're also messing with other rich people
that can afford to have and sell their own scary techs (and dollars).
One day, when the thankless hordes come to pick over the debris of our
empire, they'll return the favor, and not cry either.
[Mar12'03] "We cannot allow Saddam Hussein to continue disarming" --
Freudian slip by Tony Blair.
[Mar12'03] "They come from above, from the air, and will kill us and
destroy us. I can explain to you that we fear this every day and every
night." -- Shelma, 5, Iraq
[Mar13'03] "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. -- Ambrose
Bierce
[Mar14'03] I still marvel every day that 'good Americans' can think that
killing large number of civilians from the air by ripping apart their
bodies with remote-controlled bombs (carefully cleared of politically
incorrect graffiti) is somehow more moral than breaking into their houses
and slashing their throats or machine gunning the parents in front of
their children (then killing the children, too). More altitude does not
make bombing the slightest bit more moral than up-close and personal
slaughter like that at My Lai. Height does not make right. Don't be
a 'good American'. Polls show our 'Good Americans' just want to 'get
it over with' (and also that almost 50% don't even know who Chirac is).
A remote-controlled 'get it over with' massacre of children (45% of Iraqis
are children) is not like house cleaning. It's more like Kerrey having
to call a second young SEAL to come over and help slash the throat of an
old unarmed Vietnamese man when, after Kerrey stabbed him in the kidneys
and twisted the knife, the old man refused to stop trying to resist.
It involves the slightly sweetish smell of warm blood and the roasted
smell of barbecued human flesh.
[Mar17'03] Two days ago, a brave American woman trying to stop a third house
demolition in Gaza from taking place was run over, back and forth, by a
bulldozer, crushing her legs and skull. Her friends dug her mashed body
out of the dirt but she died soon after. There are photos of her standing
up to the giant bulldozer with a megaphone just before her death, like
the Chinese man who rather more successfully stopped the line of tanks
a decade ago. Why is my tax money supporting these atrocities? She was
braver and more of a hero to me than the Universal Soldiers who will soon
be suspending their personal moral judgement and following orders to press
computerized terror launch buttons that send flesh shredding weapons on
their way to a city of 40% children. *She* was an American, too.
[Mar18'03] "How bad do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest
with Saddam Hussein?" -- Bill Maher
[Mar19'03] You don't have to be a hard core leftie (like me) to see many
reasons why this idiot's war -- against the wishes of the entire world
-- is foolhardy. The main reason is that the US relies on a certain
detente with the rest of the world in order to maintain its position
at the top of the world. This requires that the rest of the people
in the world, largely voluntarily, do the following: (1) finance huge
trade deficits with the US, (2) invest massively in the US economy,
(3) buy stuff from other people with dollars, (4) provide low cost labor
overseas to manufacture the things our corporations make money on, (5)
let us use 4 times as much oil as everybody else, (6) send the smartest
people in their country to study, teach, and work in corporations here.
The idiots in command think they can force the world to continue doing
these things and more using overwhelming military might; the main point
is to to shock and awe the *world* this month. The problem with this
plan, mentioned before, is that the attack on Iraq makes us look an awful
lot like a paper tiger. Sure, we will once again vaporize hundreds of
thousands of pitiful sitting-duck Iraqi soldiers; and the Baghdadis
who dread going to sleep because of the monsters that come at night,
will finally get to 'get it over with' and pick through rubble for the
scorched body parts of their loved ones. But the world can also see how
long this setup took. Months and months of shipping people and boats and
planes and tanks and desert command centers over there -- and it's not
even done yet. We spend $400 billion/year on our military; Iraq spends
$1 billion/year. It's probably going to end up costing something like 1/4
of the federal budget to pay for our little splatterfest and occupation.
And the world can see how pathetic this target is -- an essentially
defenseless, starved country, bombed daily (50,000 sorties *since* our
last slaughter there), and with information-gathering inspectors shoved up
every crevice until just Monday, making sure defenses are down. Try to
imagine carrying out a similar inspection, humiliation, and then all-out
attack on the major population centers of virtually any other country
that is involved in numbers 1-6 above. Sure we could 'do' Somalia,
but who cares if Somalia buys their oil in euros or withdraws their
investments in US banks? A full 14% of the population of one of our
'supporters', Spain, views the US favorably. You can imagine what the
numbers are like in the rest of the world where they don't support us.
Time for us Americans to shake off CNN-muzak and *think* through this on
our own before that's not allowed anymore. Stop pretending to be asleep.
These guys are ruining *your* country.
[Mar23,03] An equivalent amount of money to the total budget shortfall facing
states and cities around the country is being spent on the idiotic,
morally decrepit war on Iraq. It's worth repeating: these guys are
ruining our country. They ought to go to Iraq themselves and fight
their own damn war instead of getting low income San Diegans to risk
their lives doing it. Don't fight a rich person's war. The rich should
love it or leave it.
[Mar24,03]
Shock and awe in Basra (man retrieving his injured daughter).
[Mar27,03] The US says it is sending 130,000 more troops to Iraq today after
the completely outgunned Iraqis bravely fought back against overwhelming
odds. Perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi soldiers (AKA people) have been killed
so far, along with about 400 Iraqi civilians, and maybe 200 British and
American troops (many in accidents). All are equally valuable humans in
my book. Meanwhile, the world secretly cheers on David under their breath
against our Goliath, though they know David will fall eventually.
Soon we will be hearing that the failure to win Iraq in two days was all
the fault of lily-livered peaceniks like me who stopped the US from fully
carrying out a Hiroshima-style shock and awe. Been there, done that -- in
Vietnam. Total crap. We killed 2-3 million civilians in South East Asia.
That was well beyond Hiroshima-style shock and awe. We *still* lost.
The only way we could have won there was to have killed most of the 10
million people living in the countryside in South Vietnam (the remainder
of the population -- about 5 million -- were already refugees, mostly
in the cities, and hence already 'pacified'). Guess we weren't man
enough to do that. We got tired out after a mere half-a-Holocaust when
two were needed. It's ironic that the pro-war refrain of the time was
'we can't leave Vietnam because we have to finish the job we started'.
Lily-livered liars.
[Mar27,03] The early stages of this war seem strangely incompentently
handled. What's really going on? Preparing US opinion for Dresden-style
bombing to 'soften up' civilians in Basra, then Baghdad? Some other
disinfo plan if our troops get 'softened up' themselves? Bush being
setup? I don't know.
[Mar27'03] Evidence that the even non-stop propaganda is not completely
effective: an interviewed sixth-grader says: "Bush is going to get us
all killed".
[Mar28'03] "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes
so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; and
you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon
the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop." --
Mario Savio, 1964, Berkeley.
[Mar30'03] "I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didnt they,
like, read about it?" -- Maureen Dowd
[Mar31'03] The US has exhausted half of its stock of cruise missiles, is
now shooting up cars of women and children, bombing farms, shooting the
'chick that was in the way', and is not close to winning the war against
a weak enemy. The world -- for the most part quietly -- takes note of
the spectacle.
[Apr02'03] Web portals report more searches for "al-Jazeera" than for
"sex" after the Qatar news service was knocked off the web this week.
Guess CNN wasn't enough to satisfy the soul.
[Apr03'03] Other forms of pneumonia (non-SARS) kill more than 40,000 North
Americans yearly (over 100 per day). Diarrhea kills 2,200,000 people
worldwide every year (over 6,000 per day!); malaria at least 1,100,000
people/year, sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis) about 40,000 people/year.
SARS has killed about 50 people over several months (death rate of 3%
vs. more than 30% for the Spanish flu). Could all the noise about
SARS (which hasn't killed anybody in the US yet, despite a number of
infections) has to do with our latest bout of 'two months of hate'?
Could RibovirinTM stop it? heh. There is talk of SARS gumming up
the global economy. I guess the 6,000 people that died today from
diarrhea and the 9,000 that died from tuberculosis must be on some
other globe.
[Apr03'03] "I don't think about it as human life" -- an American high-altitude
bomber-boy talking about his human targets (i.e., 'it'). I think we
all know people who think like this: they flew planes into towers full
of people; they didn't think of 'it' as 'human life'.
[Apr04'03] Eyewitnesses at UMass said that a recruiter told adjunct professor
Tony Van Der Meer and a student that they should be shot in the head
for their antiwar views. Luckily, not official US policy (yet).
[Apr05'03] In an LA Times poll today showing broad support for the Iraq
war and substantial support for invading Iran next, the proud American
populace (half of whom believe the 9-11 hijackers were from Iraq) also
thinks that the UN, not the US, should take charge of the reconstruction
effort. The disconnect with reality is stupifying. As the US is busily
making sure Europe and Russia are locked out of 'reconstruction' contracts
(so that they all go to Cheney's croney-capitalism buddies), TV-addled
brains of 'good Americans' are afraid of having to pay for cleaning up
the bloodstains and would rather have the UN mop up the body parts and
fix the water pipes. They ask these poll questions wrong. How about "Do
you support US companies taking over the Iraqi oil fields or do you think
the UN should rebuild Iraq?" Then you'd get the correct answer.
[Apr05'03] Just now, the US dropped a bomb about 300 feet from the Palestine
hotel where virtually all the Western reported are staying. Must have
been another 'stray' like the cruise missile that went to the Kuwait
shopping mall. You never know about these things. Cruise missiles are
so hard to track on radar (not!) that Turkey immediately said we can't
fire any more over their territory; and we didn't know it was off course
(probably because it was on course...). One thing we can be sure about,
however, was that bombing of the Palestine hotel was 'not the result of
hostile fire', but was in fact an accident. I'll drink to that.
[Apr06'03] "Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get
me another pair of hands?"
Ali
asked. "If I don't get a pair of hands
I will commit suicide," he said with tears spilling down his cheeks --
Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, from Baghdad's Kindi hospital. He was fast asleep
when a missile obliterated his home killing his father, pregnant mother,
and brother, burning his chest, and ripping off his arms (Reuters).
[Apr06'03] We (the world) are currently burning more than 4 barrels of oil for
every new barrel discovered. Demand is increasing every year, especially
in the 'non-US' parts of the world. It is obvious to scientists that
the world is heading rapidly toward an energy/raw-materials train wreck.
Peak oil will be here in just a few years. Aldous Huxley said "facts
do not cease to exist because they are ignored". Go US-ians! Maybe you
can beat this rap if you don't worry, be happy, and keep watching Aaron
Brown explain to you how the noose is tightening around 15 years of
oil (if we took all for ourselves).
[Apr06'03] The
shock and awe gallery brought to you by the internet because
the monopoly press censors itself.
[Apr08'03] The slaughter continues. The US bombs Al-Jazeera (after
cyber-attacking its English website and pressuring ISP's to sabotage
it), and then a US tank across the street even fires a tank shell at
the hotel where NPR (National Pentagon Radio) is (of course, not at the
floor where the Americans are). The country holds its tongue, hoping
that Total Poindexter Awareness won't notice them. Economic numbers look
truly scary. The stock market rallies anyway, then falls. US-ians watch
CNN and fiddle.
[Apr08'03] Today, Iraqwar.ru's intelligence source(s) signed off. So I
was listening to AM news radio business hour. No real economic news
in these uncharted waters, but they were instead touting a company that
makes gas masks for pets. World gone wild.
[Apr08'03] "Even if the numbers were higher [than the low numbers reported by
the US], does it make any difference? I think the US casualties are small
-- and this is no wonder. They don't get into real fights. The "ground
forces" just do the work of a dog in a hunt: their only job is it to find
the prey and the "air force finshes the job". The only way to resist
the cowardly tactics of the US is a proper air defence. Neither Iraq
(2003), Afghanistan (2001/2002) or Yugosloavia (1999) had that ability.
Maybe North Korea will be a different story. And they also have the
bomb and missiles that can reach the US troops. -- anonymous post on
Iraqwar.ru
[Apr09'03] Now that our operation is going 'well', we just have to get the
oil without France or Germany or Russia or India or China noticing.
The outcome was not unexpected given that we spend $400 billion/year and
they spend $1 billion/year and have been subject to 10 years of sanctions.
No American will see or pay attention when 100,000 Iraqis perish in
the aftermath as happened in Gulf War I, because the most important
thing is that, for $75 billion, we have taken down the Saddam statues.
Don't mention the oil. The rest of the world will pay attention, however,
and may attempt to take down some of our statues. Prepare for Operation
Continuous War (Syria, etc.). Can you think of a better way to spend
our pensions?
[Apr11'03] In a city where our bombing has killed and injured tens of
thousands of people, the hospital system has virtually collapsed.
Patients whose limbs were amputated with aspirin anesthesia were
abandoned in their blood-soaked beds while virtually all (32) of the
hospitals were looted. The reaction of the US and British governments
has been to attack the news channels for reporting this. Why doesn't
the scumbag Rumsfeld just order a few air strikes on the non-compliant
newspapers and stations? That would teach them for not continuously
re-playing the staged pulldown of the statue by an American tank (in
front of the Palestine hotel, with all the streets blocked off around
by tanks and a handful of expatriate Iraqi's flown in by the Pentagon
to cheer). After all, they only re-played that tape about 250 times.
At least now that the hospitals have been abandoned, we won't have to
studiously avoid looking at pictures available in the foreign press of
screaming kids with their arms ripped off because they'll just die of
gas gangrene in somebody's house. I guess this is what the press means
about 'ending decades of misery'. One wonders if a nuclear bomb would
be more humane.
[Apr12'03] I think the chaos in Badgdad, though heavily filtered by TV --
especially the fact that there are virtually no operating hospitals in the
entire city, all the patients now gone or rotting in no-longer-working
freezers -- is subconsciously giving Americans the willies. The reason
is, despite all the racist talk about 'softening' the enemy's skin and
bones with showers of fire and shrapnel, Americans -- particularly
poorer Americans -- *do* realize that Iraqis are basically standard
issue humans, very similar to themselves. And Americans subconsciously
know that if put in a similar situation, they would probably act in
a similar way. Though the war is not supposed to officially be about
oil, Americans also subconsciously know that it is about oil -- after
all, the oil fields are the only secure places in the entire country.
Americans know, like a bird feeling the unspeakable urge to migrate,
that this can only be the case because we are running out rather quickly.
The world after peak oil will be less and less pretty. Though Americans
might not be able to quote oil reserves numbers, or know exactly how much
oil power can be replaced by wind or nuclear power (not nearly enough,
not nearly quickly enough), or how world trade and food production (e.g.,
fertilizer production), will be impacted by less and less oil, they know
in their still unbroken bones that their future might have something in
common with Iraqis who today smashed 5000 year old vases and trampled
into dust the first written records of humans on this planet.
[Apr14'03] Embedding: the early years -- "No radioactivity in the ruins of
Hiroshima." -- New York Times headline, one month after a fission bomb
was dropped on Hiroshima.
[Apr15'03] On tax day, it's hard to stomach the shear audacity of the
criminals that run our country. First, they use tax money to create the
largest military in the world -- we spend more on the military than all
the rest of the world combined, including the downpayment of $80 billion
in tax money we just made to start this war. Second, we invade a tiny
defenseless country that has been starved by sanctions, bombed daily
by us, and inspected for weapons for more than 10 years, killing 10,000
or so people immediately, cutting off their water and the electricity,
and setting up the deaths of another 50,000 or 100,000 in the aftermath,
like last time. Third, we secure all their oil wells, but allow crowds
to loot virtually every hospital, each one containing scores
of horribly wounded civilians, and every government building, and then
encourage them to loot billions of dollars worth of artifacts from the
museum that holds the first records of human civilization (which will be
sold for a pittance to the underworld of stolen-art dealers, who will
then resell them at a huge markup to Western collectors and museums).
Fourth, we decree that Iraq shall cancel billions in debt to France,
Germany, and Russia because they didn't help us in our military plunder.
Fifth, we install only US companies to rebuild Iraq -- an Iraq now in
even more desperate straits with dysentery and diarrhea (thousands of
times more daily deaths than SARS, worldwide) running amok -- so that
these companies can gulp down billions of additional US tax dollars
as well as billions of dollars worth of oil revenue extracted from
Iraqi oil wells (who needs Sumerian statues when you have McDonalds?).
Anybody who can read can draw the same conclusions -- except of course,
the so-called 'liberal' press. They were all there for the statue
downing and *not one* of them had the balls to show us the long shot of
the deserted square surrounded by US tanks with a few hundred shipped-in
extras performing for their cameras. Instead, they talk only about how
'well' the war went. *Of course* it went well! How could it not have
have, given that we spent $400 billion a year and they spent $1 billion?
As they used to say in the old days, the entire commercial world press
is in bed with the fascist insect.
[Apr30'03] So, how are we all liking our very own occupied territories?
They've only cost us $80 billion for the first six months -- about the
total amount of the deficits in all the 50 (now 51, I guess) states in
the US.
[May01'03] General Garner warns the Iraqis that 'there shall be no
out-of-the-country influences' -- not including, I suppose, the scumbag
himself.
[May13'03] The over-the-counter derivative trade has grown to nearly $200
trillion per year (for comparison, the US federal budget is under 1
trillion per year and the US Gross domestic product is 10 trillion).
This is an enormous amount of speculative, predictive (as opposed to
productive!) money sloshing around every day. The problem with this
is not so much the amount as the possibility of unstable oscillations.
If you choose a time step of integration that is too long when trying
to numerically integrate an equation, your estimate of the behavior
of that equation will oscillate in time, not accurately reflecting
the actual behavior of the equation (in the limit of infinitely small
time steps). There are practical limits to how short of an interval
over which derivatives can by updated. Paradoxically, we may soon see
wild oscillations because people aren't trading *fast enough*, where
fast enough will soon be milliseconds -- trades that are largely out of
human hands.
[May17'03] Since 9-11, we've directly killed two to five times as many
civilians as were killed during 9-11 (e.g., 1700 in Baghdad alone, not
counting people indirectly killed through infrastructure damage) -- for
those civilians own good, of course, and by 'accident'. I'm sure they
all understand why it was necessary to turn auntie into bloody chunks
with a cluster bomb. None of the surviving relatives are likely to hold
a grudge, I'm sure.
[May18'03] Funny how 'al-Qaeda' always goes where all the oil is. Saudi
together with Iraq has almost 40% of the remaining oil in the world.
Complete coincidence, I'm sure.
[May19'03] "You could oversee a bombing mission overseas then break for
dinner with the family" -- Boeing engineer Roy Smith on the new X-45
unmanned bomber. "Well, it's about time. I often think to myself, as
my frozen dinner rotates in the microwave, 'Shouldn't I be blowing the
limbs off of some goddamn foreigners?'" -- Matt Barganier
[May23'03] Not finding Iraqi so-called weapons of mass destruction after
two months of searching turns out not to be a problem; US-ians don't care
that the main supposed reason we killed tens of thousands of people and
spent $80 billion turns out to have been a hoax. Apparently, they're
satisfied with the other hoax about Saddam supporting Osama bin Laden
(and have completely forgotten about the loot and arms the C I A sent Osama
during the previous decade). They're also glad about avenging the 1991
mass graves of Shias (who were encouraged to rise up then by the US, and
who were then abandoned to Saddam's helicopters and artillery) by sending
an equal number of civilians to mass graves, once again. US-ians also
seen unfazed by the acquisition of their very own biggie-sized West Bank.
Go US-ians.
[May26'03] "I think the document is not a good one [the road map plan],
but we have to choose when we battle the US, and now is not the time,"
-- Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (he voted for it).
[Jun11'03] AP reports a minimum of 3,000 civilian casualties in the American
war on Iraq. Only our civilians count. Theirs don't, even when the
reasons we killed them are demonstrably false (Iraq had nothing to do
with 9/11; there were no 'WMDs' there after all). Republican pollster
Frank Luntz explains it this way: "Whether or not they find weapons
of mass destruction doesn't matter, because the rationale for the war
changed. Americans like a good picture. And one photograph of an Iraqi
child kissing a U.S. soldier is more powerful than two months of debate
on the floor of Congress." The world watches and waits. Better hope
our new military tech is as good as they want you to think.
[Jun12'03] The 'roadmap' charade continues. With Palestinian civil society
in ruins, more and more Israeli-only roads and settlements contructed
in occupied territory every hour (using a yearly tranche of 3-4 billion
in US aid directly, plus 10 billion in 'loan' guarantees, many of which
are not expected to be repaid), with a US peace activist squished to
death by a bulldozer without US comment (!), the Israeli government
knows that it is just a matter of time before the dream of greater
Israel becomes a fact on the ground. The only fly in the ointment is
the need to transfer/ethnically cleanse more than 3.5 million worthless
human prisoners/vermin into Jordan, because if the world ever decides ten
years from now that Palestinians should actually get the right to vote,
their ever increasing numbers would then probably result in a Palestinian
president of greater Israel! Ethnic cleansing will go down just fine
with US-ians, so long as it is done in slow motion. The US looked away
when 250,000 Serbs were cleansed from Kosovo in the year after the war
that was undertaken, suppposedly, to stop ethnic cleansing (which only
happened after the start of the war, but whatever).
[Jun26'03] Amnesty International can now visit any prison in Afghanistan,
except, of course, for Bagram, where the US runs its 'torture-lite'
facility.
[Jun28'03] Currently, the US is spending an estimated $4 billion a month to
keep the 200,000 US troops in Iraq and $1 billion a month for a similar
thing in Afghanistan -- and they are likely to be in both places for
years. That's $60 billion a year -- more than we currently spend on
all biological research. Waste of money.
[Jul02'03] "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we
will capture or... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this
country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will
on this country." -- US Iraq Viceroy Paul Bremer
[Jul10'03] Today, a US archaeologist suggests that the US army needs to kill
some looters by firing on them with machine guns from helicopters in
order to stop the loss of priceless artifacts like cuneiform tablets.
Low-market value humans, indeed. Be careful of what you ask for,
lady -- might come home one day.
[Jul11'03] Today, Tony Blair is advised to quit 'before it gets rally nasty'.
Tee hee, mr. poodle. Also today, shrub is getting ready to send troops
to Liberia to deflect growing criticism over no-WMDs-in-Iraq and the
sagging the economy. I not looking forward to the eventual effects of
these costs -- added to the $60 billion a year (!) currently being spent
on Afghanistan and Iraq -- on the dollar, the stock market, the housing
market, the budget for scientific research (natch!), and the coming
energy crunch.
[Jul16'03] What is indisputable is that the C I A new the evidence was fake
early on. Everyone assumes that administration knew that it was fake,
too. But perhaps the administration didn't realize how sloppily fake
it was, and therefore, perhaps it was served up to them as a bait.
[Jul24'03] Two dead brothers -- and today their shot-up pictures -- will
pacify the yahoos for a week, but the $1+ billion per week drain of tax
revenues will continue this week, next week, and all the rest of the
weeks for the next few years. Maybe US-ians will tire of running 5 or 10
percent of their tax dollars down the toilet for the benefit of mr. dick's
corporations, but probably they won't. The oil output of Iraq is still a
small fraction of what it was before the war, and oil prices are as high
as they were during the war (that's actually good for mr. dick). Today,
our Treasury Secretary explained that killing Saddam's sons will improve
our economy. I think he's got something there: I don't know about you,
but the sight of bullet-riddled faces always makes me want to save less,
spend more, buy a new house, and start a small business.
[Jul29'03] Yesterday, US troops slaughtered up to 11 civilians in
a botched Saddam raid in Baghdad. Imagine what you would think if a
force occupying the US -- let's say France -- looking for a George Bush
in hiding (not an unappealing idea!) instead incinerated your crippled
Granny and her grandkids in her car, in a middle class neighborhood,
by firing so many rounds into it that it caught fire, then letting her
and the kids burn to death, then walking away -- all for your own good,
naturally. Your pissed-ness at Frenchmen would undoubtedly extend well
beyond pommes frittes.
[Jul29'03] Iraq has the second largest reserves of oil in the world.
This month, Iraq had to begin importing fuel to overcome a fuel
shortage.
President/King Bush was asked the following question: "Saddam Hussein's
alleged ties to al Qaeda were a key part of your justification for
war. Yet, your own intelligence report, the NIE [National Intelligence
Estimate], defined it as--quote 'low confidence that Saddam would give
weapons to al Qaeda.' Were those links exaggerated to justify war? Or
can you finally offer us some definitive evidence that Saddam was working
with al Qaeda terrorists?" His response was unintelligible, had nothing
remotely to do with the question, yet nobody even snickered. Here is
his response: "Yes, I think, first of all, remember I just said we've
been there for 90 days since the cessation of major military operations.
Now, I know in our world where news comes and goes and there's this kind
of instant -- instant news and you must have done this, you must do that
yesterday, that there's a level of frustration by some in the media. I'm
not suggesting you're frustrated. You don't look frustrated to me at
all. But it's going to take time for us to gather the evidence and analyze
the mounds of evidence, literally, the miles of documents that we have
uncovered." Later he said "I want to remind you, he actually used his
weapons program on his own people at one point in time, which was pretty
tangible evidence." I'd myself would hate to be hit by a weapons program.
The guy's a total dunce -- they told him to say "weapons program" instead
of actual "weapons" and it comes out like this: an emperor with no brain.
But the press people *have* brains. Why don't they have enough balls
to even giggle a little? They could do it as a group, for safety, like
they did with Ari.
[Aug05'03] This year, the maniacs who run this country have decreed a
44% increase in military spending -- in one year. Tell that to the
yahoos.
[Aug06'03] "I wanted to get out of this kicking-in-doors-with-guns kind of
thing," said Hinman, a West Point graduate who was in Panama in 1989,
left the military in 1999, but was ordered back overseas and arrived in
Kuwait in May.
[Aug06'03] The Univ Calif budget was cut by almost half a billion dollars in
this month. The budget for prisons was untouched. The percentage of the
population in jail in the US was flat from 1920 to 1980, when it began
increasing during Reagan-time. It is now 5 (!) times more per capita than
the rock-steady 1920-to-1980 rate. Very stupid planning for the future,
yahoos. People in jail aren't going to save your butts when the climate
starts really heating up, and you run out of oil for your 'Expedition',
and you run out of electricity for your air conditioners.
[Aug07'03] "When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag
over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant
adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family." --
General 'the Occupier' Sanchez. Cool. Politically correct occupation.
Better to civilly invite him to one of Saddam's prison, now working just
like they did in the earlier days, where there are no lawyers and no one
calls home, and *then* beat the crap out of him in private. Similarly,
we used 'firebombs' and not 'napalm' when we were attacking Baghdad
because the otherwise identical 'firebombs' have less benzene, and are
therefore, more environmentally friendly as they turn your skin into
wet charcoal.
[Aug12'03] We are rapidly approaching Vietnam-like conditions in Iraq, now
that every Iraqi is potentially a 'remnant of the Ba'ath party'.
[Aug13'03] Up and up. CEO's now make 500 times what the regular workers do.
Eventually, even the yahoos will get pissed. I always misunderestimate
them, though; perhaps they won't complain until the ratio goes over
10,000 to one. That's still a long way off.
[Aug15'03] "There is no real reason for us to be out here!!!!, We're
protecting the oil is all, and as far as the supposed war ending, it
hasn't. Not when everyday soldiers are still getting mines placed in
front of convoys. Rocket propelled grenades thrown at us." -- email from
US soldier in Iraq.
[Aug25'03] "Numerous commentators have blamed the number of acres
burned in recent years on increased fuels from past fire suppression,
increased fuels from timber cutting, and environmentalist obstructions
to fuel treatments.... But a close look at the data reveal that the
main factor responsible for fires today is drought. When examined on a
decade-by-decade basis, drought is responsible for 98 percent of the
variation in acres burned in each decade from the 1950s through the
1990s." -- Randal O'Toole, Thoreau Institute
[Aug26'03] Danish 'peacekeepers' mistook two unarmed Iraqi fishermen for
'Iraqi thieves' (they're all so shifty), and then shot them both to death
along with one of their own troops. All this for the bargain basement
price $200,000 per year, per 'peacekeeper' -- whata deal! Meanwhile,
back at the crib, the US prison population continues to grow, inexorably.
In a Dept of Justice study last year, one in every 37 US adults was
either currently in prison or had previously been incarcerated (served
a sentence, not just held pending trial). Good work guys, but still
short of a true prison planet. At the current rate of growth, tho,
which has shown no sign of abating since 1980, we just might be able to
get there if we just don't lose our nerve! We have 5% of the world's
population, but we use 25% of the world's oil -- and we imprison 25%
of the world's prisoners.
[Aug27'03] Our 2003 war on Iraq resulted in a large number of fatal
civilian casualties. As a percentage of their population (23 million),
these estimates range from 100,000 to half a million when taken as a
percentage of our population. This doesn't count Iraqi soldiers who
were killed (possibly a larger number). If you support the occupation,
then go over there yourself and dodge the rocket-propelled grenades
while guarding Bremmer so he can smoke Saddam's cigars in Saddam's
air-conditioned palaces. But remember, it's not like Quake: when your
foot gets blown off, the nerve stumps hurt for years, your game is truly
over man, stay-at-home pro-war yahoos won't shed a tear when you hobble
by, and amputees don't get on 'Survivor'.
[Sep10'03] We eventually got out of Vietnam because we lost. It wasn't
because we didn't try. We killed more than 3 million people. We have
lost in Iraq (tho thankfully, having killed less people). We can get
out now, or later. Today it looks like later. That would be a really
bad move, guys. How can we get out now? -- by using ships and planes
(like they used to say when we were in Vietnam)
[Sep14'03] There is a poignant moment, when worry turns to panic. During a
heavy rain, for example, you might be driving when a loud thunder clap
raises the driver's anxiety level a little, but the friends and family
along for the ride don't really notice. Then, you come to a fast running
stream that shouldn't be there in the street, and the conversation
gets a little ragged. You decide to cross, nervous, but in control.
Halfway across, in a flash, things spiral instantly out of control,
and the conversation turns to screams as it becomes matter-of-factly
apparent that it's every man for himself. I feel like the giant Gary
Larson roach in his shower looking at the plugged drain saying "I hate
to think of what's down there..." The earth's ecosystems can't possibly
support raising the huge number of people in the 'rest of the world'
to anywhere near the living standards and per capita energy and water
usage of Americans (Europeans and Japanese are not far behind, relative
to the currently silent majority). This would require something like
a factor of ten or twenty increase in worldwide resource consumption.
Those great masses see us every day, and their demands are increasing.
And the oil, gas, water, fish, wood, and soil resources are all
simultaneously reaching their peak rates of extraction, after which,
the direction is down. I hate to think of what's down there.
[Sep30'03] Crony capitalism rules in Iraq. Crony capitalism is bad for
Thailand and Argentina, but OK for us and vice-president Halliburton.
Well maybe it's not good for us, but it's certainly good for
Halliburton.
[Oct01'03] The rest of the world to the US: you bomb it; you buy it.
In translation, this means: chimp, cheney, and rumsfart bomb it, the
American people buy it. However, now our proud senators are rallying
to reduce the smaller amount of reconstruction aid from the $87 billion
-- leaving, of course, the miliary/oil-field-occupation money intact.
Thank god for congressional oversight. This, however, was shot down
by the Bushies, who need every cent for oil-field-occupation and
Cheney-swill.
[Oct17'03] This week about 80 people were killed in demonstrations against
the government in Bolivia. Low market value humans don't count.
[Oct21'03] Kosovo is now the major conduit of heroin into Europe, courtesy
of the US war on Serbia. Afghanistan has returned to having over half
of its GNP coming from production of opium ($2.3 billion est. receipts,
3/4 of the entire world's opium supply, up from almost nothing, in one
year), courtesy of the US war on Afghanistan. Maybe it's just their
way of saying, thank you.
[Oct27'03] In order to defend against what even U.S. military officers call
'freedom fighters' (!), U.S. military police have, for several months,
been stationed at Baghdad police stations. Large tranches of my US
tax dollars collected so that lower income San Diegans who live north,
south, and east of me can risk their lives and limbs guarding our newly
installed Iraqi police from other disgruntled Iraqis! It's probably
something to do with the 20,000 or so low-market-value people we killed
there earlier this year, and the tripling of the daily death rate reported
by hospitals compared to before the war -- but we're officially not in
the business of counting such insignificances. It is fair to say that
Iraqi deaths were small in number when compared with the holocaust we
engineered in Vietnam. The effect of the continual attacks has been
to temporarily scare off all the global vampires waiting in the wings to
begin feeding upon the injured but still tasty carcass. And sadly, it's
hard to think of another way to keep them at bay. I know it's selfish,
but since I live in San Diego, I would rather have my tax dollars spent
on more fire engines.
"It did not have to happen in this way. Saddam should not have been a
hard act to follow." -- Patrick Cockburn
[Oct30'03] Imagine how
this
might have been written about if it had occurred here: "Jack-booted,
body-armored soldiers of the army occupying the United States fired
automatic weapons on a van of Americans driving on city streets near
San Francisco carrying high tech workers, slaughtering four of the
unarmed occupants and seriously injuring several others. The soldiers
also fired wildly into the cars of several people on their way to work.
More than 20 people have been killed by the occupation army this month
in San Francisco. The deaths were ironic given that the goal of the
occupation army is to take over and sell off the United States high-tech
industry."
[Nov01'03] Weapons of mass destruction are a way of life for us, as
demonstrated by this recent US military definition of "nuclear bonus
effects" -- "desirable damage or casualties produced by the effects
from friendly nuclear weapons that cannot be accurately calculated in
targeting as the uncertainties involved preclude depending on them for
a militarily significant result". Unfortunately, such desirable bonuses
from our friendlies won't help us create any more oil, which still takes
millions of years.
[Nov03'03] "It was a mistake to discount the Iraqi resistance... If someone
invaded Texas, we'd do the same thing." -- Lt. Col. Kim Keslung,
orthopedic surgeon at the US Army base hospital in Baghdad.
[Nov04'03] Oil production in Iraq is hardly over 1 million barrels a day,
Since Iraqis paid low prices for gas before the war, the coalition has
had to import gasoline and sell it at a loss to avoid (even more) unrest.
This is being done by Cheney's chums at Halliburton (isn't that special?),
who are charging American taxpayers $2.65 a gallon and selling it for
less than a tenth that much. There is something amazing about using
American tax money to pay an American company to sell Iraqis gasoline at
a huge loss. It just goes to show that growing the economy has always
been dirty work, but someone's gotta do it.
[Nov15'03] Peak oil might be here; production of several majors actually
dropped in the third quarter against rising prices and sharply increased
investment in exploration. Things are getting a bit bumpy for the US in
Iraq, but there is no way we're going to let loose of our chokehold on the
land around that oil. The talk about a democratic Iraq is hilariously
at odds with the reality that a government elected by anything vaguely
resembling a popular vote would be very unlikely to be friendly to the
US. So the plan this month seems to be: say we are planning to leave,
try to assassinate as many local leaders as possible, and don't leave.
Bush's numbers have stopped going down for the last few weeks, so 10 to 20
(US) losses per week might work for the forseeable future as long as there
are no major 'jackpot' attacks. Even in that case, there could always be
another domestic anthrax scare to 'bring people together', or there could
be an 'event' during Bush's UK visit next week, with the same effect.
And there will probably also be a story about Filipino conjoined twins
being attacked by sharks while having sex through a feeding tube with
Kobe Bryant. Alternatively, we could go back to a short bout of sustained
bombing, which would rally the 'liberal' press around the chimp in less
than an hour. It is true that a similar war plan did fail to work in
the end in Vietnam, despite its execution on an insanely more horrific
scale, with 2 to 3 million Vietnamese civilans slaughtered. And if the
economy tanks, Bush will no doubt be tossed out. But this *is* different
from Vietnam: the US will stay in Iraq for a long time, Democrat or no
Democrat, because of the oil (the great Dean is behind a semi-permanent
stay). As reported in the Economist: "Iraq is a capitalist's dream"
(I'd sure hate to see a capitalist's nightmare).
[Nov19'03] Pat Buchanan (yikes!) agrees with me about the probability
of escalation in order to terrify Iraqis into submission, which will
certainly work, since we have all the bombs and satellites and planes.
The only thing that might head this off in the face of the burst of
patriotism that idiotically but reliably accompanies bombing runs, is
some kind of economic collapse in the US -- a run on the dollar followed
by an interest rate increase, and then a collapse of the stock market
and housing bubbles. I'm not looking forward to either scenario.
[Nov25'03] "Weapons of ass destruction" -- Linda Heard, commenting on the
use of donkeys as missile launchers. Meanwhile, 8,000 people (that's 3
WTC's) died of HIV/AIDS today (and every day this year). This doesn't
matter because they're mostly low-market-value humans in sub-Saharan
Africa.
[Nov28'03] Iraq exported 1-2 MB/day of oil in October 2003 (accounts differ
by a factor of two), which was less than was it was exporting before
the war (2.5-3 MB/day). Much of this is due to pipeline sabotage in
the north, which shows no signs of abating. It also means the US will
likely continue to subsidize Iraqi oil to keep the price low inside Iraq
(that is, to keep the gas lines there from getting even longer than they
already are, in a country with the world's second largest reserves).
It's all about supply and demand, you know.
[Dec06'03] "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money
for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to
help them," -- Colonel Sassaman (in Iraq). Destroy the village to save
it, whatever. The recent clampdown at the Miami FTAA meetings (which
prompted a request for investigation from Amnesty International) looks
like 'fear and violence', lite. Watch out, Amiricans: can get heavier
if it turns out we need 'help' here, too.
[Dec06'03] "The few who understand the system will either be so
interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will
be no opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally
incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages will bear its burden
without complaint." -- Roths child Brothers commenting on the Federal
Reserve.
[Dec10'03] Today, 6 more Afghan babies were slaughtered in a raid (after
we wiped out 9 last week). Luckily, we hear that "the US will not be
deterred by civilian casualties" and that the children "were to blame for
being at the target location". They were crushed to death when the bombs
blew down a brick wall behind which they were hiding (AKA a building)
during a bombing run in the middle of the night. Interesting choice
of words. Seems like that leaves only one kind of weapon that can deter
the US. I'm sure that all the non-US-ians out there that don't have them
yet are trying their best to get them -- before before their children
start getting slaughtered in morally justified accidents. Don't know
about you, but when I was a kid, I was very careful not to play next
to anything with GPS coordinates that might be bombed in the middle of
the night, which explains why I have survived with all my limbs intact.
Those stupid kids (and low-market-value, to boot).
[Dec14'03] There are no Iraqi WMDs. There is no Iraq connection to 9/11.
Saddam is captured. Troops home?? I don't think so, because the
troops are there permanently -- for oil and military bases, not Saddam,
like I said a year ago. The occupation is going according to plan.
The number of troops being killed is acceptable. If Americans are fooled
by a fake turkey (it made more of them think Saddam was behind 9-11!),
they're little heads'll be positively knocked right off by 9 months of
Saddam-is-a-WMD-TV. Unless the economy implodes in the next 6 months or
Saddam dies of a heart attack and a body double can't be found in time,
or another war can't be started soon enough, Bush will win. Then there
will immediately be another war. Stupid US-ians -- not planning for
your future.
[Dec18'03] "9/11 is slated to become one such commodity and Bush's
involvement in the conspiracy is scheduled to become a fetish of power,
accompanied by the sub-conscous sense that, 'If he did allow 9/11 to
happen, he did so for our own good.'" -- Michael Hoffman
[Dec20'03] Just before the second Iraq war, the war-and-sanctions-damaged
Iraqi power grid ran 20 hours per day. Now it runs about 8 hours
per day. After giving reporters a tour, Ahmed Khalid Hussein checked
his watch, and said "I must rush [home] to catch it and perhaps have a
hot shower. The electricity is like a guest that comes and goes very
quickly. We cannot miss it." -- Ahmed Khalid Hussein, chief engineer
Salaam electric substation in north Baghdad.
2004 ##########################################################
[Jan02'04] "Soldiers in Samarra also blew up the house of Talab Saleh, who
is accused of orchestrating attacks against U.S. troops, witnesses said.
They said the troops arrested Saleh's wife and brother and said they
would not be released until Saleh surrenders." -- MSNBC/AP. We are
adopting the highly successful techniques (not!) used by the jackbooted
Israeli occupation army. When you've got them by the *babies*, their
hearts and minds will follow, right? (to paraphrase an old line from
the Vietnam war...)
[Jan06'04] Why can't we ever have a candidate that goes down in flames, but
is a completely straight-talker. Just say, every day, "We are in Iraq
(1) to establish military bases near the oil, (2) skim off tax payer
money into corporations friendly to, or actually part of, the Bush
adiminstration, and, (3) to use revenues from Iraqi oil to pay for this
permanent military occupation. Do you, the American people support
this policy? It is the policy, not only of the Bush administration,
but also of all the major Democratic contenders".
[Jan16'04] "Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that
sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is
a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another." --
Benny Morris, an Israeli historian from the Israeli 'left' (I suppose the
Israeli 'right' is more 'humane' and would just 'put' millions of Arabs
'out of their misery'). Thank god for choice in the 'only democracy in
the mideast' (well, if you don't count the more than 3 million who are
already in a cage and who already can't vote...).
[Jan18'04] The world used another 28 billion barrels of oil last year.
The total Iraq reserves are conventionally estimated to be 112 billion
(4 years, world usage). Iraq has about 12% of total world reserves
(around 1000 billion barrels). The second war on Iraq along with pipeline
sabotage has resulted in a substantial drop (halving) of Iraqi production;
the oil-soaked ghouls who ran the war haven't yet even done a good job
of grabbing the stash. This production loss was almost entirely made
up for by increases in Saudi and Kuwaiti production (where 1/3 of all
remaining oil is), which explains why prices didn't spike and maybe
even went down relative to world currency (oil is currently around
$33/barrel, more than before the war, but the US currency is down 25%).
This all looks a little bleak, but they say things will all work out
because of the wonders of market-driven optimization. When there is no
more oil for the market to 'optimally' distribute (i.e., to give us 5
times our fair share), perhaps the market will find a way to power cars
and planes, and make plastics and fertilizer out of pure greed instead
of petroleum. The electric grid very nearly went down (with forced
rolling blackouts) in the US Northeast during the cold snap last Friday
because of competition between power plants and homes for natural gas.
It wasn't news. Probably, this was less news than Michael Jackson because
of the genius of the news market -- it's smarter than you and I. An often
heard complaint is that lefty people have cried wolf too many times.
Well, I think things have, unfortunately, turned out just like many of
us back in 1970 feared they would. No major alternative energy sources
have been demonstrated these 34 years later. Current world energy
sources are approximately: oil=40%, coal=24%, gas=20%, nuclear=5%,
with renewables still a pittance: hydro=2.3%, wind=0.07%, solar=0.006%.
This is pretty much the same as 1970. The only difference is that total
consumption of non-renewable energy has increased every year (*way* faster
than total alternative energy sources have grown, again, no doubt, due
to the genius of the market). People look at you like you're nuts when
you try to bring it up. I just have one thing to say -- wolf.
[Jan18'04] The total assets of the worlds 500 or so billionaires is now more
than the assets of the poorer half of all humans (3 billion people).
Sounds a lot like cancer: by breaking out from the antiquated social
rules of the cellular world, cancer cells marshal resources and overcome
evolutionarily less fit cells like skin cells, liver cells, and brain
cells. Then, you die.
[Jan30'04] You Brits are sure wussies. Getting rid of two heads of your own
damn BBC, and the reporter, to boot, for *accurately* reporting that the
war on Iraq was based on a fraud! Pusillanimous, poodle, bootlicking
lickspittle toadies, etc., etc. It's embarrassing to see you 'gladly
wearing holes in your tongue licking the shoes of you-know-who...',
to quote your very own Monty Python...
[Feb01'04] 1 billion per day of our tax money is draining into Iraq, and into
the drooling mouths of Dickie's corporate friends. It's seems incredible
that we would spend so much just to help them 'throw off their yoke',
and it is. The oil endgame isn't going to be pretty (keeping the rest
of world, whose energy demand grows every year, from draining the limited
supply of oil), and even Dickie doesn't know exactly how it will work out.
Sometimes, the ornery people have their day, like when they turned on
Mussolini, when best laid plans went awry. This is one problem that
can't be fixed by nuking it.
[Feb01'04] Getting rid of Bush will not fix Peak Oil. Time for all of us to
do some adult thinking.
[Feb06'04] Bush's approval is down to 47% and Cheney is under attack.
This makes for a dangerous, wag-the-dog situation, esp. after 'all ricin,
all the time', seems to have fallen flat. It was too derivative.
At least they could have changed the color of the powder! Don't they
have any decent media guys?
[Feb13'04] Jay Garner predicts that we should only be in Iraq for "the next
few decades", but that we need to increase the size of our force there.
From the horse's mouth. We're planning to be there until the oil runs
out, just like a lot of us said before the war.
[Feb14'04] "It's definitely worse now than before the war. Even at the
height of sanctions, when things were miserable, it wasn't as bad as
this. At least then someone was in control." -- Eman Asim, Ministry of
Health official who oversees Iraq's 185 public hospitals.
[Mar09'04] We're staying in Iraq, but public support is starting to fall,
the gay marriage thing and Martha are starting to wear out and the
turned-out-not-to-be-ricin dust is long forgotten. I have a certain
morbid fascination trying to guess what Rove will come up with, besides
daily 'links to al-Qaeda'. I would have thought they would have sprung
something big sooner, but I suppose there is still a long way to go to
the election, and you have to pace yourself. They should get CIA-da
on the job!
[Mar11'04] Madrid bombing today.
[Mar18'04] Crude oil went above $38/barrel today even as the dollar
improved.
[Mar21'04] The paraplegic Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of Hamas, supported
by Israel against Fatah, was killed today (along with 7 other people)
by a helicopter missile strike on his wheelchair. Sounds like Sharon
is getting desperate. What next? Hope he doesn't pull out his
'matches'.
[Apr11'04 -- travelling] Things not going too well in Iraq. But US-ians
always go for a good revenge-slaughter of civilians for them killing
our mercenaries (about 350 Iraqi civilians killed this week) and that
will tide Boosh over for a bit. However, something's bound to 'wag' if
this keeps up for another month. It looks to me like the resistance is
winning. There are only something like 30,000 actual fighting US soldiers
in Iraq; the rest are support. That's about the same as the resistance.
Kerry will not help. It may even turn out like Lyndon Johnson all over
again, escalating back up to half a million. I predict we will get
*both* a 'wag' *and* Kerry; the 'wag' will provide the impetus to make
it possible for Kerry to escalate.
[May05'04] I *never* manage to predict correctly. The recent ruckus about
the torture photos is *so* Earl Butz-y or James Watt-y, for those who are
old enough to remember their demises (which were not for the bad things
they did before they were dumped). The low-budget porno aspect of it
lends the whole thing such a weird media momentum. I certainly think
that torture is bad, but it's hardly a new policy. And it was worse to
slaughter 500 civilians in Fallujah and then set snipers up to pick off
family members trying to aid the dying. But because those amputations
and exploding body parts (our actually-existing 'people-shredders') never
make it to American video, they don't count -- at all. Sort of like the
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by sanctions. Zero market value.
Just got back from visiting a bunch of castles. I suppose we've made
progress from the time when judges would dispense 2,000 lashes with a
nail-tipped whip when 1,000 was enough to kill you. For example, a
marine colonel recently explained "We don't want to rubblize the city
[Falluja] [because] that will give the enemy more places to hide." But I
don't think there has been enough progress to stop our vicious hominid
selves from stupidly 'rubblizing' our fine planetary house.
[May12'04] Positive for Bush: jobs up, gold down, dollar up, both
presidential candidates support the occupation, Syria sanctions (today);
negative for Bush: occupation still attracting too much attention, oil up
(even before any shock), majority polling antiwar. I was expecting oil
up, a prowar Kerry (cf. Lyndon Johnson), and Syria sanctions, but not
the other five. Thank god another video beheading arrived -- and not
a moment too soon, with Bush polling lower than ever -- to straighten
out my fellow Americans into reaffirming that innocent Iraqi civilians
(the majority of the 10,000 Iraqis in US-controlled prisons, according to
the Red Cross) deserve the torture they are getting. The unfortunate Berg
was wearing a US-issued orange jump suit, and was apparently just released
from several weeeks in Iraqi/US police custody, but what the hey.
[May12'04] "But I do think it was the Lariam [anti-malarial drug]. Nothing
else makes sense. I think chemically, something went wrong. SF
[special forces] guys compartmentalize their lives. His compartments
just broke." -- Laura Howell, wife of special forces serviceman who
shot himself in the head just after she brushed aside his high-powered
handgun as he was about to shoot her in the mouth (she had hidden in
the back yard that night, worried that he was about to kill her and the
kids sleeping upstairs). Wonder why they didn't pick that up in the
clinical trials? Could it be that not enough of their subjects were
'compartmentalized war workers'?
[May13'04] In a few weeks, the dueling snuff videos should put Bush back
on track as the "we're-too-soft-on-beheaders" backlash is cultivated.
The bad turn for the American gulag in Iraq does not seem to have
translated into any additional support for Kerry. In fact, he has
actually *dropped* a few points in the past two weeks! Currently, 57%
of Americans still believe in the press-concocted Osama-Saddam connection
and 67% think Saddam did have WMDs or WMD programs. Kerry may actually
lose if the economy stays about the same for the next 4 months. I have
a bad feeling today about what will happen to the world economy just
after the election, esp. because I think we are close to the first big
peak-oil shock. I'm just recording my prediction, since it seems like
I'm almost always wrong, in an attempt to do better next time.
[May15'04] Today, the UK decides to begin its 'withdrawal' from Iraq
by doubling its ground forces from 7,500 to 15,000. I'd hate to
see what an escalation would look like!
[May18'04] I agree with Xymphora. Amazing as it may sound, the continuing
torture show seems to be helping Bush! It's sent along to us by the same
pusillanimous press that couldn't utter even a tiny peep at the beginning
of the war. I don't believe they are suddenly bolder and braver now.
While talking about withdrawal this week, the US and the UK are actually
*increasing* the number of troops in Iraq (transfers from Korea,
new re-call-ups). However, this would at best be an increase of 25%.
Set against this is that the entire population of 27 million Iraqis is
slowly becoming united against the US. 150,000 troops is not enough to
control the whole country. For comparison, the US had 500,000 troops in
South Vietnam, which had a population of 15 million at the time (5 million
refugees, 10 million people against us), and we were free to carpet bomb
or cluster bomb or napalm or laser-guided bomb (yes we had them back then)
just about anything. But the US doesn't want to control all of Iraq.
The current deployment may in fact be enough to control the places with
the oil ($16 billion exports this year, even with all the interruptions).
14 new US military bases are currently under construction in Iraq.
[May19'04] The Gaza/Rafah slaughter continues under the cover of the Iraq
torture show. Today, brave tank and helicopter pilots
'light up'
a street demonstration with US supplied tank shells and helicopter
missiles, killing 10 marchers, mostly children, and wounding scores. They
were either demonstrating to protest or responding to a demand (or both)
that all males ages 16 to 60 to assemble at schools for interrogation,
complete with buses to take people away. Bush agrees that this was self
defense (from children, presumably, since Palestinians will soon outnumber
Israelis in greater Israel), and then forces a re-write of a UN resolution
complaining about the demolition of hundreds of houses, sometimes with
people still inside. Another day in the life and death of low market
value humans. The flabbergasting result in the US is that Bush's poll
support has firmed up. Good Americans, good Americans...
[May24'04] From reading the US press, it sometimes seems like sexually
humiliating prisoners is worse than killing them, and slaughtering an
entire wedding party -- the bridegroom, 15 kids, the photographer, the
musicians, the donkeys, etc, is OK. The odd thing about this peculiar
American style -- violence OK, sex bad -- is that it dates back hundreds
of years. Who could have predicted back with our founding fathers (they
founded the cities, OK?) that this style would have had such a long
lasting impact through thick and thin, through the invention of coal,
oil, cars, and now cell phones and the internet?
[May24'04] The latest information from Jean Laherrere suggests that natural
gas production won't peak in the world until 2030 (24 years), but will
peak in the US in a few years (oil production peaked in the US in 1970).
However, because natural gas is much more difficult to transport than oil,
this will likely result in large local price fluctuations. The current
best guess for world peak oil production is now 2008. In other news,
the free market has determined, amazingly, that chief executive pay was
still not high enough after all the run-ups in the 90's, and it has soared
168% in the past five years. Job well done, guys!
[May26'04] "People are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid."
-- Paula Zahn ridiculing conservative weapons inspector Scott Ritter
on CNN before the war. Unfortunately, Scott turned out to be correct.
Guess you drank the Kool-Aid, Paula. But hey, your shilling for the man
only cost us a quarter of a trillion dollars (and made you a bundle),
at the cost of 10,000 slaughtered Iraqi civilians, perhaps 20,000 dead
Iraqi soldiers, and 1,500 dead American soldiers and mercs. Paula went
to my high school. If she was 3 years older, and a man, she might have
been drafted for Vietnam. Probably would have been singing a different
tune, then.
[May29'04] 35% of well-head gas is lost creating and transporting LNG
(liquified natural gas). Delivering LNG through our yet-to-be-constructed
set of new terminals is what is planned to save us from the fact that
natural gas production seems to have just peaked in the US.
[May31'04] What's up? Seven US aircraft carriers plus their support ships
going somewhere all at once (half the entire fleet -- more than half if
you consider the carriers that are currently in undergoing repairs).
Reports of a large money injection this month (M3 up $150 billion [=$2
trillion/year]) while talking about raising interest rates to stop
inflation (?). Oil-will-never-run-out propaganda from an oil businessman
(Maugeri) in Newsweek and Science (!). Iraq and Saudi looking worse and
worse, while work on our 14 new military bases in Iraq continues at a
hectic pace (we're sure not blowing $4 billion/month in Iraq fixing Iraqi
power plants...). There is no way the US is leaving those bases behind
(don't mention the oil -- I mentioned it once, but I think I got away
with it), yet the situtation on their street is deteriorating daily.
The chance of a some kind of stunt this month seems high. Then again,
maybe it's just that my lefty brain can never manage to think enough like
a Rove to see that there is a little 9-11 in the Saudi bombings -- i.e.,
they're the kind of thing that actually run the poll numbers back up!
What really runs the poll numbers down is when *nothing* happens, and
people just sit there for a while with no pictures to look at.
[Jun06'04] First there were tanks and bulldozers to prepare the way for
'withdrawal', now this week the Gaza withdrawal plan (held up by arguments
between the far-right and the even-farther-right) is finally approved by
removing the 'withdrawal' part of it, as a wheelchair-bound Palestinian is
killed by two 'warning shots' to the head. Sometimes the Orwellian-ness
of it all takes your breath away.
[Jun07'04] Apparently, the plan with the 7 aircraft carriers and their more
than 100 escort ships is to go to West Africa and scare some Africans
there into giving us their future oil -- i.e., convince them that we can
invade them even while right in the middle of another sloppy occupation.
Still sounds suspicious, since there isn't *that* much oil in Mauritania,
but whatever. And apparently, the huge jump in M3 is unconnected --
some have suggested a way to protect Fannie and Freddie when interest
rates go up. Or perhaps it is to deal with the already existing fallout
of the small uptick. Return on equity has been around 30% this year for
F and F because they 'borrow' (i.e., create money) at near the Fed rate
and then lend it back out at (much higher) market rates. Cool way to
'make' money, eh? But all good things must come to an end.
[Jun11'04] Yesterday, several sites suggest (from newspaper reports) that
all 10 available aircraft carriers are now out to sea, tho not obviously
all going to the same place. Just a stronger summer pulse? Who knows.
Normally, only 2 or 3 are simultaneously deployed during peacetime.
6 carriers were sent to the Gulf for Iraq 2.
[Jun15'04] The next two obvious US moves are against Iran and Saudi, perhaps
initiated by an Israeli strike against Iran or an even bigger disaster
in Saudi. Perhaps all the commotion has something to do that.
[Jun24'04] Today, US military sealed off the Iraqi city of Baquouba after
apparently losing control of it. Hopefully they are not now responding
with a revenge-slaughter like the one that killed 500 to 1,000 civilians
in Falluja a few months back. Bush got interviewed by federal prosecutors
in his 'safe house' for a full hour today (fully clothed, no dogs,
nothing up his butt), and Cheney said FU to Leahy, too.
[Jun25'04] Bush's election polling numbers (tho not approval numbers) have
rebounded (even or beating Kerry now), so all the chaos of the last
few weeks seems to have actually *helped* Bush, as I had predicted and
feared above.
[Jul01'04] Seven of the ten US carrier strike groups currently and
unprecedentedly out to sea may be going to the coast of China
in mid-July. Such a concentration has never before been deployed in
peacetime (or even during our 4 previous victories over weakling countries
-- Iraq1, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq2). China is not a weakling
country. But they can't defend themselves against 7 US carrier strike
groups (perhaps 100 ships, carrying hundreds of planes), at least now.
I can't think of a better way to encourage them to get to work!
[Jul07'04] Now it looks like North Korea may be a likely US target this
summer/early-fall, which might be a better explanation for the 7-carrier
deployment than (just) scaring China.
[Jul08'04] I was listening to NPR (national propaganda radio) this morning,
with Deborah Amos, reporting after just leaving Iraq. In talking about
all the changes after 'sovereignty'. She managed to never once mention
our occupying army (and of course NPR has never uttered a word about the
14 permanent US military bases under construction). She *did* mention
that security had gotten worse each time she went back, and that what
made it hard to report on all the 'good news' was the fact that is was
too dangerous to go to where all the 'good' was being done (thankless
bastards). NPR also reported that a barrage of almost 40 mortars into an
Iraqi national guard headquarters somehow killed 4 US soldiers and wounded
a score (just visiting). But now that the unelected 'Iraqi' government
headed by a C I A asset has been given the right (by who?!) to impose
martial law, as announced by the fine new Iraqi 'minister of justice and
human rights' (cool -- I can just imagine the 'coalition' hack who was
paid to come up with that PC job description), hopefully, 'democracy'
can be gotten back on track. They hate us because we're free, but that
hate should begin to subside once they experience freedom themselves.
Meanwhile, there have been runs on the biggest banks in Russia -- I guess
not important enough to make the morning Marketplace highlights.
[Jul18'04] Blair now says not 400,000 in Iraqi mass graves, but 5,000 --
less than half the number of civilians we killed when we invaded.
Gotcha, stupid people, again -- live and don't learn.
[Jul21'04] "The only way to stomp out the insurgency of the mind would
be to kill the entire population." -- Thomas Neemeyer, head American
intelligence officer 1st Brigade of 1st Infantry Division, commenting
on the process of bringing 'democracy' to the Ramadi region of Iraq.
Hope he doesn't get a chance to decide to bring 'democracy' to my
neighborhood.
[Jul27'04] Only 2 aircraft carriers are apparently in the Pacific now,
in the Tiawan Strait, apparently not 7, as originally predicted in the
Straits Times (link below). This may be different, however, from the
last time we sent carriers to the China coast, because that time they
didn't actually go into the Strait.
[Jul27'04] There are 72 million people in Iran.
[Aug07'04] Iraq is starting to look an much more like Vietnam than I
predicted. The US is losing control of large portions of the country;
the US-installed puppet government relies totally on coercive power
of the US military; this has completely de-legitimized the puppets.
Given the obvious skill displayed in pre-war propaganda, it surprises me
how the occupation seems not to have been very well thought out.
[Aug1'041] The war will end up taking the entire country down the toilet.
I write this as I hear military jets taking off and landing outside
my UCSD window. Kerry will flush, too.
[Aug12'04] The last week of US operations in Iraq have killed a
substantial fraction of the number of people that were killed during
the supposedly-over war itself. As the slaughter in Najaf accelerated
today in preparation for the Republican convention, about 200 people,
many of them civilians, were killed in last 24 hours alone (500 wounded).
We will, of course, 'win', since we have better equipment than the average
Iraqi homeowner, who stupidly neglected to budget for anti-aircraft
missiles to defend against night bombing runs (e.g., 75 dead and 148
wounded from bombing Kut last night, many women and children according to
the local hospitals). We have also taken over the main Najaf hospital
(against the 'rules' of war, of course, but who's in charge here,
eh?) as a 'command center', in order to 'deny cover' to enemy who have
'softened up' limbs and torsos. It's absolutely disgusting, as is the
lack of reporting on it here, and the lack of American street protest.
However, it's also a bad move strategically for US military interests
(our new military bases in their country near the oil), because there
*is* detailed reporting on it over there. Americans only understand
the language of force. The dialogue is beginning. We kill Mehdi army
teenagers and civilians so that Americans will vote for Bush. They kill
US soldiers and Iraqi collaborators so that the US and British invaders
will leave Iraq (their killing has nothing to do with the election since
the two candidates have indistinguishable positions on the war).
[Aug13'04] Muqtada al-Sadr's favorability rating in Iraq was 68% in May
and probabaly much higher now (he may have been injured today in the US
assault on Najaf). Bush's approval rating in the US is under 50%.
[Aug17'04] "Imagine a Muslim army about to bomb the Vatican with the help of
a few Christian mercenaries while the Pope is away, recovering from an
angioplasty in London and silent about the whole drama. This is roughly
what is happening in Najaf, Iraq." -- Pepe Escobar. Probably you'd
be upset at an assault on the Vatican even if you weren't a practicing
Catholic, or even a Catholic at all.
[Aug20'04] Such a blizzard of conflicting (dis)info coming from Iraq the
past few days!
[Aug21'04] 40 percent of all Palestinian males (including children and
the elderly) have spent time in Israeli prisons. I guess that that's
expected in a nation where 'the whole nation is an army' (except, of
course if you're in the Palestinian half of the nation, which means
you can't vote, you can be shot with a tank round without recourse, and
you're basically permanently in prison). Must be bad Palestinian genes
(seems like I heard that one before somewhere, though).
[Aug22'04] The insane slaughter continues with pious debates on whether or
not the US should storm a *building*. Slaughtering humans (probably half
civilians, but what reporter is crazy enough to really find out) from the
air with giant bullets fired from Robocop-like machine guns in AC-130's
is OK/expected/not-news/whatever. When a round hits the building, by
contrast, it is cause for solemn discussion by talking heads. If even
a single one of those giant bullets zinged through their window, the
Wolf Blitzer brigade would be sh*tting their pants. The human race
is sick.
[Aug24'04] "In short, Mr. Bush has done more to electrify the international
Left and give it a sense of common purpose than anyone since Che
Guevara." -- Eric Margolis.
[Aug27'04] August 2004 Najaf summary. Moqtada Al-Sadr and his lower-class
Mahdi teenagers hole up in middle-class Najaf, in and around a shrine
which is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country, and the
nearby 'largest-graveyard-in-the-world'. The US military (a Marines
self-initiative according to one disinfo, but undoubtedly Negroponte
of the central-American-blood-soaked hands) decides to 'bring em on'
and goes on a fierce 3-week attack on Najaf, hours afer Sistani leaves
for the UK, and also on Fallujah, Samarra, and on the Sadr city slum
in Baghdad. In Najaf, this includes occupying the hospital (sometimes
you just have to be creative and break the 'rules' of war), strafing
and burning the center of town and the graveyard with millions of giant
bullets from AC-130's, setting up snipers to keep ambulances away,
and bombing the old city hotels and shops around the shrine so heavily
(e.g., a 2000 pound bomb dropped on a hotel 130 yards from the shrine)
that our brave commanders jovially debate whether it looks more like
Stalingrad, Sarajevo, or Beirut (you get to talk dirty like
this
to reporters when you're on Darth Vader's side). The smell of burnt
flesh, blood, and rotting, unretrieved corpses hangs over the city as the
Mahdi army continues losing ground and people as the tanks roll right up
to the ring of obliterated rubble surrounding the shrine. Sistani,
feeling a little left out, decides to return to Najaf from England
where he had gone just as the conflict was breaking out, telling his
supporters to go ahead of him on his return to the city and occupy
the shrine. Groups of unarmed Sistani supporters who heed the call are
slaughtered (probably a hundred total) by Saddam's old Iraqi police
in Najaf as the police fire into the crowds, and in nearby Hilla and
Kufa and Diwaniyyah while marching to the shrine to stop the bloodshed.
Iraqi police round up, kidnap, and threaten journalists for telling the
wrong side of the story. Sistani, denounced as an Anglo-American agent,
finally arrives in the south (not via the US-controlled Baghdad airport),
and is escorted under British air cover to the shrine, finally ending
the bloodshed. Perhaps 500 to 1,000 Iraqis are slaughtered in and
around Najaf, a majority of them civilians, and more injured in
the fighting. US casualties are minimal (around 10 killed -- a ratio
of 50 or 100 to one). Finally, to commemorate the tragic slaying of an
Italian journalist hostage who had been kidnapped in the fray, the Iraqi
and Italian Olympic soccer teams are allowed to wear black arm bands
by the Olympic committee. The 500 to 1,000 Iraqi people slaughtered
don't count at all compared to one Italian, unfortunately, because of
their extremely low market value, which is, in fact, less than that of
the stone and mosaic walls of the shrine. Those walls were, for the
most part, skillfully avoided by the US military through the use of
remote-controlled, hi-tech weaponry, which 'surgically' burned, flayed,
disemboweled, amputated, and beheaded the unfortunate humans living and
hiding around it. The Americans then pack up and leave, yet another
job well done, of 'liberating' yet another part of a supposedly already
'sovereign country' (and of building 14 permanent military bases there
around all the oil), at the bargain cost of a billion of our tax dollars
per week. A major aerial and ground assault by the US on Fallujah (with
significant US casualties) continues, under the radar (well at least,
until victory is declared there, too, ... again).
[Aug27'04] When oil company economists publishing in Science magazine
(Leonardo Maugeri a few months back) and conspiracy theorists publishing
on the web (Joe Vialls yesterday) agree that Peak Oil is a sham, you
just *know* it must be happening right now :-}
[Aug31'04] "What we are witnessing now is a collision of a financial system
relying on fractional reserve banking, debt-financed growth, and a fiat
currency system with a planet and energy resources that are finite,
limited, and running out. Infinite growth is battling with finite
energ .... I have absolutely no doubt as to which side will win." --
Michael Ruppert
[Sep01'04] The US will stay in Iraq. The main reason we are there is to
build 14 military bases around the oil. Chalmers Johnson is right.
This is where all the money is going (in addition to mercenaries and
security to protect the base builders and the oil, and a few bombing runs
in what has basically become the 'Iraqi triangle'...). This is why there
is little left for reconstruction, despite spending more than $1 billion
there per week. We don't need to control every city for this plan to work
(though we do have to control some). There is such an iron grip over the
media that this straightforward reality never even gets whispered.
[Sep03'04] "The child had to be killed first, and then they killed the
terrorist." -- Mikhail, Russian storm trooper providing a Russian
translation for "we rescued the hostages". Almost 500 people were
killed during this particular 'rescue' (340 dead plus 100 missing).
No doubt, some grisly retaliation (the 'rescue' notwithstanding) is
in the works because Putin has 'let down' the Russian people by 'only'
murdering tens of thousands of Chechen children. Sometimes you just
have to be tough with child-killers to get the job done right (I suppose
that would mean killing 100,000 children of the child-killers because
killing only 20,000 of their children didn't work, correct?).
[Sep07'04] Today it was announced on AM news radio that more invasive
physical searches will be immediately instituted at US airports
because of terr'ists in Beslan, and that nobody will complain because
else the terr'ists have won. Great. Now some airport goon is going
to be sticking his finger up who knows where because the Russians
spent a decade mercilessly slaughtering Chechens (remember Grozny).
Damn Russkies. Sometimes history just comes around and bites you in
the a**, literally.
[Sep12'04] Today it was reported that
a journalist doing a stand-up report was
killed
(screams and his blood spattering the lens) while covering
the aftermath of a firefight that broke out during an American
incursion into a neighborhood in Baghdad in response to 'morning
mortars'. A brave American flying an attack helicopter had fired
several remote control missiles at an unarmed crowd
(BBC video)
that had gathered around a burning US vehicle that had been hit by
a bomb earlier. The pictures of the injured and dying civilians and
photographer are horrific. The slaughter was OK (because the journalist
was Palestinian and the crowd was Iraqi, of negligible market value,
including the two Iraqi kids among the 13 people that were killed,
along with the 61 that were injured), and it was not news here and
certainly not a war crime (there's an election going on, stupid!).
Besides, it turns out the US was actually trying to *help* the Iraqi
crowd, which is why we are in Iraq: "Air support destroyed the Bradley
fighting vehicle to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people" --
US military press statement. Also, they said they were responding to
the crowd firing on them. Also, they said they were trying to destroy
secure communication devices left in the vehicle. Now, imagine an Iraqi
attack helicopter in New York (!) firing a missile at a crowd of unarmed
Americans around a burning Iraqi amoured transport vehicle that had
been tooling around in Manhattan -- in order to 'help' the Americans,
of course -- killing a bunch of them on camera along with a Jewish
reporter covering the fighting. Now *that* would make the news here,
even during an election! Wolf Blitzer would tell us it was a war crime,
maybe even genocide. Over 3,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since
just this April in fighting between insurgents and the US military.
These 3,000 people have absolutely no value compared to the 3,000
people killed in the trade towers, whose value increases every year.
In another comparison, while the US press was focussing on the 1,000th
US soldier death (for the entire war), it ignored the 1,000 Iraqis
(civilians and Mahdi army soldiers) that were killed in Najaf that *week*.
Such contrasts are all part of the infinite wisdom of the market.
[Sep15'04] More civilians have been killed by the US in Afghanistan and
Iraq than were killed in total in *all* 'terrorist events' since 1968
("terrorist event" as defined by the US, which of course, doesn't include
the 2-3 million Southeast Asian civilians killed by the US during the
Vietnam war). War is simply large-scale state-sponsored terrorism using
better equipment that kills more people while providing greater safety
for the empire's soldiers.
Here
is a typical insurgent from Fallujah that survived our latest 'liberation'
of that city. Here are other
insurgents that didn't make it through the 'liberation' of Fallujah
last April.
[Sep23'04] A lot of times on the left, people (myself included) want to
show that while a particular US policy may seem to have a positive
side (getting rid of Saddam [even though we partly created him]),
it actually has a lot of negatives that the right doesn't normally
bother with (slaughtering huge numbers of non-American civilians).
This tend to be the case for situations where the US is wielding its upper
(imperial) hand. By contrast, the situation in Iraq currently is looking
pretty out-of-control and unfixable; the militant right (and left!)
should be scared about the status of our 'upper hand'. The only way to
really permanently "remove the cancer" (a US general's description) in
Fallujah and similar places in Iraq would be: (A) to drop a small nuclear
bomb on it, (B) to 'Dresden' it with conventional bombs, both killing
fifty or a hundred thousand people, or (C) to invade and occupy with
an overwhelming force of ten or twenty thousand troops. But there is a
strong unspoken force deterring the US from doing plan A or B -- a world
financial backlash against the US and US currency that could seriously
destabilize our country -- and plan C is unacceptable to Americans since
it would result in a large number of US casualties ('large' is relative;
in 2004 it means more than ten or twenty American soldiers in a week).
So instead the military is currently planning to just do a 'Najaf' on
Fallujah, right after the election, after 'softening' it up by bombing
for the next month (this week we were bombing construction cranes and
bulldozers there along with women and children). But it is not clear at
this point that plan D will actually work -- as in actually slowing or
stopping the insurrection. A similar approach certainly didn't work in
Vietnam, where we killed *millions* of people; the current 'Najaf' plan
would 'only' kill a few *thousand*. We have the largest, most expensive,
most high-tech, most carrier'd, most satellite'd, most foreign-base'd,
most Darth-Vader-like military in the world (we even have programs to
'own the weather') -- nobody else is remotely close. Despite all that,
we haven't been able to decisively win against a disabled country that
lost a war to us a decade ago, and was then economically strangled and
bombed and inspected into complete defenselessness (no air force, no navy,
no air defense, no WMDs) for a whole decade -- right up until the very
moment of our second invasion and occupation (the inspectors fled a day
or two before the blitz commenced). We haven't even been able to steal
much of the oil yet (we were reduced to stealing a huge chunk of change
from the oil for food program). Iraq -- with 12% of the entire world's
remaining oil reserves -- has unbelievably become a net oil importer.
Be afraid, US wolves: the sheep out there (and I don't mean 'al-Qaeda')
are beginning to see our decayed teeth and arthritic limbs. They are
currently letting us get away with building 14 military bases in Iraq
around the oil. This has been the great success of the war, despite the
poor security outside the bases, maybe even because of it -- if warfare
breaks out between Sunni and Shi'ite and Kurd, there will be less of
a resistance focus on the bases. However, the rest of the world needs
that oil, too; and as things get more crunchy, we should expect less of
a free pass.
[Sep27'04] As predicted above, the US military is continuing to purposefully
slaughter mainly civilians, after shutting off power and water to an
entire cities, while supposedly targetting insurgents, in rebellious
Iraqi towns in order to convince the *civilian population* there to
knuckle under US patrols. There have so far been no protests against
this (aside from Turkey's protest at the Turkmen slaughter in Tal Afar --
which effectively stopped it). As I've said many times before, war is
simply terrorism, using better equipment. Our government is planning
an even more vicious, wholesale bigger-than-9-11 slaughter of Iraqi
civilians right after the election. Protest it today.
[Sep30'04 -- commentary submitted to NPR Morning Edition] "On Wednesday's
Morning Edition (Sept 29, 2004), there was a report about the unrest in
Iraq, a country we invaded and now occupy on the false premises that
Iraq had WMDs and that Iraq was somehow tied to 9-11. Through Eric
Westerfeld, we heard from General Myers that the US is planning
to subdue Fallujah, again. The first time we tried this in April,
2004, we killed around 1000 civilians, only stopping after the rest
of the world responded with outrage to the carnage. The general now
explains how we will have to do it again, but this time more forcefully.
Bombing civilians in order to stop them from supporting the insurgency
is terrorism, plain and simple. This NPR report calmly described the
new plans for killing as many civilians as were killed in 9-11. Why is
the free market value of Iraqi civilians so much less than the market
value of American civilians or American troops? Why does NPR collude in
supporting this valuation? I think history will not look kindly upon
'good Americans' and media outlets such as yourselves that helped to
shape them." -- Martin Sereno.
[Oct02'04] Today, 1/4 of Iraqis depend on rations for food. The
war-supporting right and left might think this means we can still win!
Just cut off their power, water, *and* food, and their hearts and minds
will surely follow, to paraphrase Chuck Colson, who said "when you've
got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow". But Chuck
turned out to be wrong.
[Oct04'04] "Most Israelis recoil at the thought of giving Palestinians equal
rights, understandably fearing that a possible Palestinian majority
will treat Jews the way Jews have treated Palestinians." -- Michael
Tarazi.
[Oct05'04] A majority (41/70) of the dead people brought to Samarra hospital
after US 'precision' strikes last weekend were women and children.
Stop the terror, US-ians. Stop slaughtering women and children in
the name of 'bringing democracy' to them (actually, it turns out that
Samarra and Fallujah don't get to vote anyway in the first election
because they don't support the right guys, and it's for their own good).
Stop killing for peace. Stop killing for the American election.
[Oct06'04] From the horse's mouth: "I don't know something called
International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child
(that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more
dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child's existence infers
that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. I vow
that if I was just an Israeli civilian and I met a Palestinian I would
burn him and I would make him suffer before killing him. With one hit
I've killed 750 Palestinians (in Rafah in 1956). I wanted to encourage
my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian women is a slave
for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what
we shall do but we tell others what they shall do." -- Ariel Sharon,
1956 interview with General Ouze Merham (current prime minister of the
'only democracy in the Mideast'). Bush should be a man, too, and take
proper credit for burning children.
[Oct17'04] Hard to tell what's actually going on in Iraq -- whether the
situation is just difficult for the US, or nearer to serious problems, as
some have suggested. The only information comes from reporters parrotting
military strategy press releases/propaganda to American newspapers
while cooped up in dirty hotel rooms in Baghdad (because it's completely
impossible for Americans and Brits to go outside, which suggests that
the situation has, in fact, continued to deteriorate), a stray phone
call to the BBC from inside Fallujah (enduring a major US assault over
the weekend, surrounded by a US military cordon cutting off food and
water supplies, with the hospitals inside out of medical supplies), and
resistance websites translated from Arabic filled with impossibly high
numbers of successful attacks, but also some video documentation. The US,
of course, has the air power to completely obliterate whole cities; but it
can't easily use it without the possibility of risk to its navy fleets,
which are hard to completely defend against missiles that fly just a few
feet above the water. A pre-election Osiraq-like attack on Iran by Israel
with US carrier basing has been rumored, but that seems unlikely to me,
given the already tenuous Iraq ground situation.
[Oct18'04] Ghawar is dying. All of Saudi may peak by the end of this year.
The whole rest of the world outside of OPEC and the former-Soviet-Union
has already peaked. We will have to drill as fast as we can just
to maintain a reasonable downslope on the decline that never ends.
Looking back, historians of the future (your kids) will find it
unbelievable that there were hardly more than a few offhand words about
oil in the hallucinatory 2004 'campaign season'.
[Oct28'04] A recent Lancet household survey (pdf
here)
of Iraqi households (excluding those in Fallujah, since there were so many
deaths there) conservatively estimates that 100,000 people were killed by
coalition forces (mostly by our Air Force) during and after the second US
war on Iraq. Most of these 100,000 dead people were women and children.
This is perhaps a 75-to-1 ratio of civilians to US troop deaths, which
is not surprising, because -- despite all the crocodile tears about not
giving our storm troopers enough body armor -- civilians have *much*
worse 'equipment' (houses, cars, clothing made out of cotton). I wonder
how US-ians would like it if a gang of Iraqi trailer trash screaming "Go,
go, go" in Arabic broke down their front doors in the middle of the night
'by mistake' (because they got the name wrong because they don't speak
English, or because of a jealous neighbor), and then the troops trashed
the place, terrified the kids, and ripped off their stereos and jewelry,
all in the process of 'helping' those US-ians to be more 'democratic'.
Aside from the fact that we're catching up to, and may have surpassed
Saddam in killing (we're *waaay* past Milosevic), this shows that our
supposed 'precision strikes' were in fact just like all the other the
civilian slaughters that have characterized war in the 20th century.
I don't think we will be leaving Iraq any time soon with either Bush or
Kerry. We will continue to slaughter civilians up until the bitter end
several years from now. I think a major component of our plan in Iraq and
parts of the former Soviet Union is to prevent China and Russia, and to
a lesser extent Europe and Japan from buying/using a lot of Mideast oil.
Needless to say, this is a very dangerous plan which will eventually fail
when the rest of the world finally retaliates economically, and possibly
militarily. Stupid for US-ians not to discuss this more openly. We are
supporting this slaughter with our silence and our taxes. It's immoral
to be a 'good American' and collude with war criminals. The civilian
slaughter in our war on Iraq is a *much* bigger crime than 9-11 --
by a factor of 20!
[Nov03'04] 20% of the world's population has access to running water. As
things wind down, we may end up more like the other 80%.
[Nov05'04] According to our pitiful, pusillanimous press, our brave storm
troopers are "itching" to slaughter whatever of the 300,000 Iraqi humans
who weren't willing or able or allowed to evacuate the killing field of
Fallujah. First, it's not true (they're not itching), second our 'boys'
are about to commit war crimes and they know it (that's why they're not
'itching'), third, I wish the turds who write this offal would go over
there and do a little storm-trooping of their own to help out in this
great crusade (they'd probably vomit all over themselves). Scum.
[Nov07'04] A note from one of our former 'boys' to Rahul Mahajan, in response
to his blog entries on Fallujah (maybe I spoke too generally above -- I
guess *this* guy *would* be "itching" if he were still in the service):
"However, having killed my own number of ragheads and my strong support
of genocide of the Arab race and Muslim religion, stands. These are a
people who have no business living. None of them. Women, children, old
men and any other filthy pig f***er. We should systematically eliminate
them all." I think this reflects the thinking of a substantial chunk
of US-ians: genocide is a dirty job, but someone has to do it to keep
the US-ian herrenvolk safe. Because of my moral values, I don't support
the Iraq war, and I don't support our troops.
[Nov07'04] The invasion of Fallujah begins by the US forces
taking over
the main hospital. Now that's some ballsy strategy. It shows the
bravery of our body armour'd leathernecks, given that we could have more
safely bombed the thing to rubble from the air like we did with the other
Fallujah hospital yesterday. I bet those doctors and injured patients
must have put up a fierce fight, eh?
[Nov09'04] The 'liberal' media coverage of the destruction of Fallujah is just
hallucinatory. We demolished two hospitals with bombs (the second today,
killing 20 medics) and stormed a third hospital (stormed a hospital?!),
handcuffing the doctors because it was the "center of propaganda".
We bombed the power plant, cut off the water supply, sealed the entrances
and exits of the city, and shelled and bombed and strafed (with depleted
uranium bullets) the city center for a month in an effort "to prevent
civilian casualties" and "to reclaim Fallujah for its citizens", causing
200,000 of them to flee (males were not allowed to get out, since they
are defined by the US military as "not civilians"). We are demolishing
Fallujah (including 20 of its 40 mosques) with Christian crosses hanging
from our tank barrels (two different photos distributed by the media) and
cluster (anti-personnel) bomblets and phosphorous bombs in order "to allow
elections to take place there", though any Fallujans that survive and/or
come back to dig out of the rubble and get limbs blown off by unexploded
cluster bomblets might not get to vote if they are too "restive".
Our puppet Allawi, known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a moustache",
declares martial law across Iraq for 60 days in order to -- what else --
"make elections possible". Never mention the fact that no WMDs were found
and no 9-11 connections were found -- the supposed reasons for our war.
Never mention that the war (mostly the bombing) caused 100,000 excess
deaths of mostly civilians (when compared to the last year under
Saddam; this is a much larger number than the number that sent Milosevic
to the Hague). How can you 'liberal' media news writers sleep at night?
You
*know*
of the shooter)..
This
(shocking view of Ali Ismayal's injured left arm before amputation) is
also terrorism (Ali's right arm was amputated, too), the result of the
US bombing his house in Iraq on March 30, 2003, killing all 15 of his
relatives in the house) during the invasion of Iraq in April (report on
civilian casualties from initial invasion
here).
Just because we used a remote-controlled bomb and the pilot got safely
away instead of using an up-close-and-personal blowtorch doesn't make it
not terrorism. The American people approve this because they don't see
it, because the media collaborate by being too afraid to show anything but
sanitized video games. The Lancet study suggests that there have been
100,000 other people dead like Ali's relatives and even more wounded
like Ali, since we invaded, when compared to Iraq under Saddam the
previous year. We're doing this to real humans, including our "boys"
(they're not boys; Ali is a boy). We don't belong in Iraq. We should
get out now.
[Nov26'04] "Coalition forces dropped ordnance during Operation Iraqi
Freedom on legitimate targets. Your family was in an area that was being
legitimately targeted and therefore regrettably harmed." This is the
note that you get if you were one of the 75% of Iraqis that were turned
down for minor compensation after the US slaughtered one or more of your
family members. I wonder how red-state US-ians would respond to a note
like that from an occupying army, of say, Chinese (written in Chinese
and English)?
[Nov29'04] In Israel, the most disturbing revelation in from a series of
recent army misdeeds was footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian
man to play his violin at a checkpoint. Why? Because it disgraced
the memory of the Holocaust. I don't see what the Occupation has
to do with the Holocaust. The Palestinians didn't do the Holocaust.
That forced-violin-playing disgrace turned out to be more disturbing
to Israelis than the reports of a soldier empyting his automatic weapon
into the prone, dead body of a Palestinian schoolgirl. And in that case,
the empyting of an ammunition clip into the already dead girl was found
more disturbing than the shots that actually felled her as she ran in
terror and the shots that killed her as she lay there injured unable
to crawl away. What a weird backwards outrage scale! People sure get
themselves tied in knots explaining away bad things while trying to
feel morally and racially superior.
[Dec01'04] The grisly destruction of Fallujah seems to have 'worked'
strategically for the US since there was much less of outcry than after
the first time. US-ians don't seem to care about a record number of
US soldier deaths (and could care less about thousands of low-value
human deaths). We created quarter of a million refugees in a few
weeks, but, as with Vietnam, half-starved refugees on the run are more
controllable than people living in their hometowns (we created almost
5 million refugees in South Vietnam before finally losing the war).
It also solves the problem about Fallujah voting the wrong way -- now
there's nobody home, so no prob, or they get to go back to Concentration
Camp Fallujah and vote, if they dare venture out onto street. There is
a lot of press noise about the country breaking up and Sunni/Shi'ite
rivalry, which is music to the metallic ears of US military planners.
On the other hand, amazingly, with all the firepower, we still don't
completely control Fallujah -- though we've be able to courageously stop
the Red Crescent from entering, and probably used some kind of napalm,
which is mixture of polystyrene and jet fuel that sticks as it burns
(well, you see, it was an 'improved' napalm [sticks better?], not even
called 'napalm', so not outlawed), showing a degree of desperation.
The situation on many major Iraqi roads seems to be getting worse, and
the Pentagon just announced it is increasing the deployment by 12,000
troops (mainly by keeping people there longer -- again, the American
people won't mind somebody else's kids getting shot up, and they're
probably a foreigner anyway, or the fact that this is more total troops
than were used during the invasion), suggesting that the military may be
getting worried about their supply lines, which are quite long. From this
perspective, the situation seems less favorable for the US.
[Dec03'04] "So far the plan is for most of the city's 250,000 residents
to return in stages and first only a few thousand will be let in.
They'll be fingerprinted, given a retina scan and then an ID card,
which will only allow them to travel around their homes or to nearby aid
centers which are now being built. The Marines will be authorized to
use deadly force against those breaking the rules" -- reporter to Tom
Brokaw yesterday on plans for welcoming Fallujans back to the ruins of
their town (what, no tattoos?). I'm not a black helicopter kind of guy,
but even if you're one of those US-ians who wouldn't object to nuking all
non-US-ians (I wonder what the real percentage is, done in proper Kinsey
style...), this test-run for a police state oughta give you the creeps.
Damn if things aren't turning out just like writers warned with 1984,
Brave New World, Robocop, and Blade Runner.
[Dec06'04] Here are poll numbers on Arab opinion of
America, before and after the Iraq invasion/occupation
(from the Sep04 Defense Science Board Task Force
"they-don't-hate-our-freedoms-they-hate-our-policies" report,
pdf here), from a Zogby poll, taken on April, 2002 and then again on
June, 2004:
-----------------------------------------------
Morocco .... 61% => 81% unfavorable
Saudi ......... 87% => 94%
Jordan ....... 61% => 78%
Lebanon ... 70% => 69%
UAE ......... 87% => 73%
Egypt ........ 76% => 98% (!)
-----------------------------------------------
[Dec07'04] This is a
map
from btselem.org, the Israeli information center for human rights
in the occupied territories, of the Bantustans (red and orange
patches) -- that our supine press calls the 'incipient Palestinian
state' for 'thankless' Palestinians who rejected this 'generous'
offer. Many of the red spots well inside the green line are now
enclosed by 30 foot high concrete walls (detailed wall map
here (1.7M)).
This is a map that virtually no Americans have ever seen because it (and
the giant prison walls) *never* ever get shown on our teevee or pictured
or explained in our papers. The latest part of this apartheid plan is to
make rat tunnels between the dark red parts because Palestinians aren't
allowed anywhere near the network of Israeli-only surface roads
that cover their 'incipient state'. The so-called 'state' is a
basically a large number of prison camps separated by wide swaths of
military-defended territory around the roads, crossable by Palestinians
only through humiliating check points. Cool democracy, where the half
of the population inside the concrete prison camp walls doesn't get
to vote. And we US-ian taxpayers get *all this* for a few billion per
year in grants and another few billion a year in interest free loans.
Furthermore, no one else in the world seems to be paying any attention
to this (are they?).
[Dec10'04] To 'prevent health risks' to civilians returning to
Fallujah, the US military is delaying their return (to a retina-scanned,
let's-see-some-ID-or-you're-shot, forced-work-gangs, rubblized strategic
hamlet paradise), so they won't get rabies from the dogs that have been
eating at thousands of unburied corpses on the street and in collapsed
buildings. How thoughtful and humanitarian we are! Merry Christmas!
Probably, the rest of the world is not paying attention to this, is not
worried about us stealing their oil (since we don't currently get much
oil from the Mideast, but they do), and therefore will continue to invest
the majority of their savings in our currency forever. Yeah.
[Dec14'04] The US transports 25,000 tons of cargo (dominated by fuel
and water) around Iraq every day (a standard 18-wheel US truck has a
gross weight of 40 tons). This week the military announced that it was
increasing the amount carried by planes per day from 100 tons to 450
tons per day, with possible plans to increase this to 1,600 tons a day
(AP). Also, heavy bombing of the destroyed and 'pacified' Fallujah
has resumed. One can only hope that nuclear 'pacification' will not
be required. War is peace. We destroyed the village to save it.
Serious deja vu.
[Dec16'04] Serious fighting continues in Fallujah under an almost complete
and creepy US news blackout. It is a sign of US weakness.
[Dec19'04] If the US barely controls any territory outside of our military
bases in Iraq, one wonders how well we could do if some other non-disabled
oil-purchasing country decided they didn't like us being so close to
'their' oil. Of course we could nuke them, and they could nuke us,
in fine Easter Island style.
[Dec22'04] Given the Dec21 rocket attack or suicide bombing or whatever
in Mosul, it looks like the US doesn't even control the territory
inside their bases very well. The US doesn't have enough troops to
destroy Mosul (2 million) in the way it destroyed Fallujah (300,000).
Our utterly supine press, however, is already beating its chest explaining
how we are being 'manly', and 'cordoning off' this and 'sealing' that.
Before long, we'll pull out our people-shredders and start to 'soften
up' the non-people. But how is that going to prevent the mechanism
of this latest attack? The fact is that the US is so hated now, they
can't trust any Iraqi, yet they require many to work for them inside
every base. We can't 'seal off' the entire country into some kind of
Orwellian retinal-scanned gulag (as much as Wolfowitz might like to)
with only 150,000 troops in a country of 27 million. I suppose the US
war planners are hoping that they can get an Iraqi civil war started
soon, before things get really ugly (for us). Support inside the US for
the war is lower than ever and Bush is back near his lowest approval
ratings, which happened around the time of Fallujah I. A glance at
the stunning, frequently-updated "Approval" polls graph at
pollkatz suggests that we
may be getting perilously close to 'needing' another 'pick-me-up'.
The three previous biggies were 9-11, invade Iraq, and capture Saddam.
Amazingly, almost everything else that happened since 2000 had only tiny
effects on the Bush approval graph, which for the most part goes down
linearly between 'pick-me-ups'. The fact that the Iraq war 'ended' in
June with 'Iraqi sovereignty' did result in a never-before-seen slight
positive linear trend, but most of the wind was taken out of that by
the debates. It looks like Bush was only saved at the last second by
the new 'bin Laden' tape, but the effects of that seem to have already
worn off.
[Dec30'04] The dead Osama promotes the mythical all powerful one-legged
Zarqawi in yet another faked tape, Bush 'responds', and nobody laughs.
Things are starting to look positively Third-Reich-y around here!
I'm not looking forward to what will happen when the first *real* oil
shock comes in 2-3 years. But as I watch my own non-adaptive behavior, my
mind is drawn to a scene from the Eiger Sanction, which was a silly 1975
Clint Eastwood movie, but with great climbing shots from the real Eiger.
Things are going downhill for the climbing party that Clint has joined.
They are hauling up one climber disabled with a head injury bundled
up like a mummy, and there is an approaching storm -- and Clint asks,
"Do you think we'll make it?" The accented response comes, "No, but we
will carry on with style".
[Jan2'05] As part of its 'Gaza withdrawal plan' and under the cover of all
the tsunami disaster porn, Israel today sent 50 tanks and armored vehicles
into Gaza. Eleven Palestinians have been killed in Israeli operations
of the past 5 days, so in our racist media, this qualifies a 'lull in
the violence' as 'the withdrawal continues'. War is peace.
[Jan3'05] The Iraq war is a huge festering mistake. Antiwar types like
myself are sad that it turned out so much like we feared. The pro-war
guys were wrong. We should get some points for foresight. We should
rub it in their face like they rub it in ours. It's costing us almost
1/5 of a billion dollars every day. We're slaughtering mostly civilians.
We will likely eventually lose, but not for want of trying or spending.
We tried really hard to win in Vietnam. We lost. Iraq may be
similar.
[Jan4'05] Doctors entering Fallujah for the first time and searching
1/3 of the neighborhoods have so far discovered 700 women, children,
and elderly men under the rubble of their destroyed houses, including
infants that starved to death after their mothers were killed.
I think the technical word for this is "collateral baby-killing".
This doesn't count the dead buried in mass graves by US military (~400)
and in gardens by Fallujans, or dead bodies under rubble in the other
2/3 of the neighborhoods. One doctor said "It is the most depressing
situation I have ever been in since the war started". The US military, of
course, allows no pictures. This particular disaster porn is off limits,
so that US-ians will continue to 'support our tsunami', and the 'boys'
that implement it. The Good Americans will later whine, "we didn't know
it was happening". That excuse didn't fly the last time, however.
[Jan7'05] "The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they
brought it to my house!" -- recently released Iraqi detainee from Abu
Ghraib commenting on the current state of Iraqi infrastructure (Dahr
Jamail interview). Proabably, it's not a good strategy to alienate the
entire rest of the world; it makes more and more people out there dream
of bringing electricity to Americans' nether regions.
[Jan11'05] "It is clear that by completely destroying this Sunni city,
with the help of a mostly Shia National Guard, the US military has
fanned the seeds of a civil war that is definitely coming. If there are
elections now and the Shia win, that war is certain. The people I spoke
to had no plans to vote. No one I met in those five days had a ballot
paper." -- Ali Fadhil, Iraqi doctor, on visit to Fallujah on Dec 27, from
Jan 11 BBC documentary. This probably wasn't the original US plan, but
it seems in retrospect that it was adopted as an element of policy around
the time of Fallujah I. It looks a little desperate to me, given the
possibility that things could spiral out of control, and since many Shi'a
(e.g., Sadrists) are as anti-American/anti-occupation as Sunnis.
[Jan13'05] In Iraq, the candidates' faces are not only *not* shown on
teevee, but a good number of them are anonymous. They should start
that up here! It would make our election farce so much more enjoyable.
They could officially mention that thing about 'pockets' not voting,
too.
[Jan15'05] The US "government news agencies" never say things like:
"Negotiations will not be possible until the prime minister Sharon reins
in the Israeli gunmen" (like the snipers that injure and kill Palestinian
civilians every week), or that "Israeli militants killed several more
civilians today" (which they just did today). Israeli gunmen have
killed 4 times as many civilians as Palestinian gunmen have. However,
when you are in the army that is sanctioned by our fine "national new
agency", then those 'other' civilians don't count (because they are
untermenschen) and killing the untermenschen is morally justified to
defend the only 'democracy' in the Mideast. The fact that half of the
population of Eretz Israel is imprisoned in a check-pointed, tank-shelled,
house-demolished, helicopter-missiled, Israeli-only-roaded, snipered,
walled-in gulag doesn't count. War is peace.
[Jan15'05] The Ghawar oil field in Saudi, discovered in 1948, is
the world's largest oilfield. 3400 wells have been drilled into it.
It produces 5 million barrels a day (Saudi total production is 10 million,
US total production is 7 million, world usage is 82 million barrels,
all per day). Ghawar is almost empty, and is ready to decline rapidly
when the sea water (pumped in below the oil to keep the pressure up) hits
the last of the pipes still producing oil (most holes are currently used
for injecting sea water). These days a big find of oil is 500 million
barrels. That is one week of world usage, so we need one of these
big finds every week. The current find rate is proprietary business
info, even though it forms the bedrock that supports the continuation
of industrial society. Current guesses are that we are finding 1/4 as
much as we are using. Who cares, whatever, yee-hay, let the scientists
and engineers figure it out.
[Jan17'05] The US has done something on the order of half a trillion
dollars in damage to Iraq. None of this will be paid back. Look at
Fallujah. Absolutely nothing has been fixed. Sporadic fighting there
never ended. Nobody went back to their ruined houses with no electricity,
and streets filled with body parts and sewage. Fallujah will remain
a wasteland for decades. The US may be forced to withdraw from Iraq
if the resistance maintains its current pace and the US is unable to
foment a civil war, or if the maniacs in the Pentagon decide to attack
Iran or Syria. The problem in coordinating the change of attention from
Iraq to Iran. There will have to be some gap so that the silly putty
minds of the US people can be molded around the idea (barring some kind
of 9-11 event, which could stamp them into a new shape in a few days).
We will leave the place an utter shambles, just like we did in Vietnam.
We will probably reinstitute sanctions on Iraq, like we did in Vietnam.
This is how the nation that uses the most resources behaves as the world
inches up to the peak extraction of the Earth's resources. Ugh.
[Jan18'05] Election observers have been
dispatched
to oversee the Iraqi election. Most will do so from Jordan. As Xymphora
says, they must have some pretty good binoculars! Since the majority of
the candidates are anonymous, the vote checking from Jordan will be even
more difficult, but these guys are sharp. Putty-for-brains Americans
aren't laughing at this. What is wrong with you people?
[Jan18'05] The US war on Iraq has actually had the effect of conserving
Iraqi oil resources while running down those of the rest of the world
such as Canada and Mexico, and even Saudi. The effect of running down
the 'friendly' suppliers was amplified by the sanctions we also imposed
on Iran and Libya. It possible that this was part of the original plan
(along with the establishment of military bases in Iraq). Iraq would
be a *real* strategic reserve -- 15 years of current US usage if we hog
it all by ourselves -- not the piddly 1 month US usage in the US reserve
that is currently called "strategic". However, if the US does eventually
have to evacuate, this plan may backfire (for the US).
[Jan20'05] The US military has taken over the largest hospital (7 stories)
in Mosul for use as a 'military headquarters' (bottom paragraph in this
aljazeera
report
) after driving out all the patients and staff. Must all be
part of "getting the vote out" (of town). Are we planning to flatten
Mosul? (the destruction of Fallujah started with the occupation of their
hospital). Also today, a poll showed that putty-for-brains Americans
slightly opposed an attack on Iran by 47% to 42%. An unbelievable 42%
*supported* it, even in light of the ongoing Iraq disaster. And anyway,
as Seymour Hersh has leaked, action against Iran has already started.
The slightly-negative-on-attacking-Iran numbers are similar to Bush's
approval ratings 4 months before the election. It will be easily fixed
with another 'bin Laden' tape or two, without the need for any kind of
big event. I'm really not looking forward to seeing what the putty-brains
get molded into when the peak in oil and gas production starts to bite
in a few years.
[Jan21'05] I think the average teevee-brain American is going to process
the Jan 30 Iraqi 'vote' -- where not only the ballots are secret, but so
are the voting locations and candidate's names (!) -- as a great success.
Since US reporters virtually never even leave their hotel rooms in Baghdad
unless embedded, the US military in conjuction with the monopoly press
will have complete spin control. What is the sound of bombs going off
in Iraq when the US isn't listening? Can't hear them, la-la-la.
[Jan27'05] "Isn't there some 'idiots guide to being a good Vichy
government'?" -- Riverbend, describing a TV interview in which
Iraq's current president's confusion about the possible arrest of
Chalabi.
[Jan30'05]
The election proceeded like the statue-toppling -- a wild success
(except for the C-130-toppling), with the vote counts for anonymous
candidates verified by out-of-the-country observers (remote viewing,
I think), and the turnout was more than 100%. Today, Bill Gates shorted
the dollar at Davos. Just because it seems totally insane for the US to
attack Iran doesn't mean Bush et al. won't do it. The administration
is telegraphing its moves just like it did with Iraq. An Iraq attack
seemed equally implausible right after Afghanistan. The congress won't
stop him. However, this time, I don't see how they can do it without
a draft, because while Afghanistan didn't use up many soldiers' tours
and lives, Iraq has. However, to drag along the stoopid US-ians, 42%
of which amazingly already support an Iran attack (too bad we can't
ship all their butts over there to help out), we'll probably only need
a few new low budget terror videos. That, plus a few months of oldtime
Goebbels, and the putty-for-brains US-ians will be on board, and the
bombing can begin. It's more dangerous than Iraq because Iran has not
already been bombed for a decade and has some modern anti-ship missiles.
Also, it will be an attack on a country that sells oil to our economic
rivals, who might be motivated to provide the Iranians with some halfway
decent air defense tech. Sometimes, it's enough to make you want to see
US-ians hoist on their own petard -- and Iran is going to be a pretty
big petard (that's Elizabethan for IED). The rats of the intelligensia
(I suppose that category includes me) haven't yet started to desert the
sinking US ship, but they're starting to sniff the salt air. The only
'attraction' of the US is more and more its military -- shades of the
decline of the Roman empire.
link
[Feb02'05]
The US is a bit bogged down in Iraq. If things continue their downhill
slide for another 6 months, there may not be enough troops to effectively
attack Iran, even if a majority of the American people can be made to
think that the Iranians need to be bombed by then. Convincing Americans
that a *draft* is needed (sending *their* kids over there) is harder
than merely convincing them to send over poor volunteers and immigrants
looking for green cards. Only another direct attack on America would
make a draft acceptable. The US ships in the Persian gulf are a possible
target. One scenario is that Iran will first be provoked, perhaps by
an Israeli attack. Iran will respond, not by attacking Israel, but
by attacking US ships in the Gulf. This will then provide the needed
momemtum to restart a US draft followed by a US invasion of Iran and
then maybe Syria. The January Seymour Hersh leaks and the Cheney mumbles
about delivering bunker busters to Israel and what they might do with
them are, unfortunately, generally consistent with this idea.
link
[Feb09'05] The Gulf War I story about Iraqi troops popping the
Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators was broadcast around the
world by the "mighty Wurlizter" of the free press. It turned out
to be a complete fabrication, orchestrated to whip the publics'
little minds into shape behind the war. The recent
horror
stories from the Fallujah hospital, about US troops pulling doctors
out of surgery, beating them up, and leaving their patients to die on
the operating table, are available only on the internet (from virtually
the only unembedded US reporter left in Iraq). Unfortunately, they are
probably true. The stated reason for the US attacking and occupying
the hospital was "to stop using the hospital as a propaganda weapon".
I guess you can't play the "mighty Wurlitzer" without killing a few low
market value humans.
[Feb11'05]
The number of children suffering from acute malnutrition (AKA
starvation) in Iraq (7.7%) has now risen above the percentage in Burundi
and Haiti. We have spent an amazing $1 billion dollars a day for the
past two years to bring this about -- a child malnutrition rate even worse
than what our 10 years of sanctions caused. Iraq is currently exporting
about 1.5 million barrels a day of oil. With oil at around $50 dollars
a barrel, if we could steal all of the Iraqi oil proceeds (as opposed to
just a few billion here and there), the 1.5 million barrels a day
would still only amount to 8% of what we are spending daily to build
and defend our 14 permanent Halliburton military bases in Iraq.
The fact that there is no sign that the US is planning to leave anytime
soon suggests to me that the cabal that planned and currently executes
this criminal occupation knows something we don't. If Iraq got it's
production back up to 3.5 million barrels a day, and oil went up to
$300 dollars a barrel, and we stole the entire proceeds, we would break
even (not counting low-value human costs, since those don't exist for
economists). The oil pipeline sabotage would appear at first glance to
make our occupation less profitable. However, since there is virtually
no excess capacity in world oil production now, attacks drive the price
of oil up. From this perspective, oil pipeline sabotage may actually
be *favored* by the US, since it increases oil revenues for the same
amount pumped, and it conserves our putative future 'strategic reserves'
(when we will be 'forced' to use Iraqi oil instead of just selling it).
All this is a little over the heads of 'Good Americans', who can't be
bothered to even learn the difference between million, billion, and
trillion (e.g., the largest pension fund in the nation, CalPERS, for
California Public Employees, holds only $180 billion in total -- *less*
than the amount we've spent in 2 years for this stupid, brutal war).
Some Americans are a little worried about how things are going, but they
generally think we should 'stay the course'. People voted to stay the
course in Hitler's Germany, too. Wrong course, man.
link
[Feb28'05] Last year, the international price of coal doubled as China
expanded its energy use rapidly in 2004. Not to worry, though, since
'there is 200 years of coal left', right? That was a statement made early
in the 20th century using the rate of usage back then. You only use 10%
of your brain, too. The idea of endless coal supplies is total bull.
The peak in coal is at best only a few decades beyond the peak in oil
(which is virtually certain to occur in this decade). And even that
much sooner date for peak coal is probably not bleak enough; it assumes
(1) there will be no peak in oil and gas, and (2) China and India will
immediately cease and desist in their plan to modernize. They are far
from modern now, if you define modern as using a US-sized daily gulp
of energy. In 2002, according to the US Dept of Energy, China used 9%
of the energy we used per capita, and India used an amazing 3% per capita
of what we used.
[Mar03'05] Check out the graphs on slide 15 of the Pemex Outlook PDF (link
below) from the Cantarell oil field. It is currently the second largest
world producer at 2 million barrels/day (=0.7 billion barrels/year),
where global usage is about 82 million barrels/day. More than 2%
of the world's daily oil gulp comes from here. According to Pemex,
Cantarell has about 8 billion barrels left in reserves (world usage
is around 29 billion barrels/year). Pemex says it will peak in 2005
(that is, several years sooner than previously expected).
[Mar05'05] It looks like the US attack on the car of just-released
Giuliana Sgrena may have been intentional. Interestingly, Berlusconi knew
Calipari, the intelligence agent negotiator who was killed in the hail
of US gunfire, and probably approved a large ransom to get her back.
Calipari had also negotiated for the successful release of the two
Simonas, and his wife/widow apparently works for Berlusconi. Two other
agents and Giuliana survived, and said that the car was not traveling
fast, had already passed several Baghdad airport checkpoints, and was
attacked by a patrol, not a checkpoint, in contrast to the bullcrap
presented on CNN et al. La Repubblica also reports that US soldiers
initially prevented first aid by preventing anyone from coming near
the car. There were so many bullets all over the car seat that Giuliana
collected handfuls of them. She may some interesting tales to tell since
she was reporting on survivors of the siege of Fallujah just before she
was kidnapped. Thankfully, she also survived her stay in an American
controlled hospital in Baghdad (there was internet speculation that
she might not). On her return to Italy, she said: "They said they
[her kidnappers] were committed to releasing me, but that I had to be
careful 'because there are Americans who don't want you to go back'."
This hopefully will damage Berlusconi and/or force him to pull
some Italians back from Iraq if the domestic uproar isn't squelched.
She's probably being interrogated in her hospital bed in Rome right now.
I hope she makes it through and talks. Go Giuliana!
[Mar07'05] Two days later, I now agree with Kurt Nimmo's analysis. The US
attack on Sgrena's car was almost certainly intentional, but was probably
not designed to necessarily kill everybody inside. A passenger car is
no match for an armoured vehicle firing high caliber bullets. They could
easily have made sure that everyone in the car died if they had wanted to.
Even though the Italians were on a cell phone to Rome, no one could have
possibly found out what actually happened if they had killed everybody,
given that everyone knows that much of the Baghdad airport road is not
really under US control. Instead, the attack was another instance of the
intimidation of independent journalists -- like the US missile killing of
the Al Jazeera correspondent at the beginning of the war. It
looks like it's working. This leaves Dahr Jamail, who must be
running more scared than usual.
[Mar09'05] Estimates of the recent pro-Syrian protests range from 500,000
to 1.5 million. The anti-Syrian protests drew 70,000 people. There are
3.8 million people in Lebanon. "The anti-Syrian protests were not a
signal that the Lebanese wanted to be like American-occupied Iraq. They
were a signal that the Druze, Maronites and a section of the Sunnis had
agreed to try to push Syria out. It was the US who had invited Syria
into Lebanon in 1976." -- Juan Cole.
[Mar10'05] Things are looking might-y peak-y these days, if you know
what I mean. All righty then. Rome didn't fall in a day, however,
so it's time to plan ahead. Think locally, act locally.
[Mar15'05] Well, looks like the Italian threats against Sgrena to 'watch
what she says' have worked and she changed her story ("I never said that
they wanted to kill me"). Her stories about how the troops said "sh*t"
when they saw that they had shot Calipari (instead of her?), and about
how her supposedly fundamentalist kidnappers turned out to be fans of
Italian soccer and how they shook her woman's hand didn't quite compute
either, but, whatever. At least now, according to the White House, we
can be sure that Italy's decision today to withdraw their troops this
September had nothing to do with Calipari/Sgrena and was due, actually,
to the immense amount of *progress* made to date. Today, there was a
poll of US-ians about Iraq. Two years after the start of the occupation,
56% of them still think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before
the start of the war, and 60% still think that Iraq had something to do
with al-C-I-A-dah. Probably all of them think bin Laden is still alive.
At this rate, most of them would believe that small primates fly out of
my butt if Paula Zahn said so...
[Mar20'05] The value of an Iraqi civilian is about $2,500. This is about
two days pay for a US or British 'security contractor' and two *years*
of wages for an average Iraqi civil servant. $2,500 is what a security
company will pay to surviving family members if a foreign journalist
tracks them down after a routine mistaken slaughter of a civilian
pedestrian or driver in Iraq (see "Shoot first, pay later" below).
The genius of the market has determined that Iraqis are low-market-value
humans. Watch it, US-ians. The genius of the market may eventually
decide *you* need to be re-valued.
[Mar29'05] China may be planning to buy a lot of oil with dollars.
They have about 0.6 trillion dollars, which is equivalent to 11 billion
barrels of oil at today's prices. China's yearly usage is around
2 billion barrels a year (our usage is 20 billion barrels a year).
This is an good move for them. It's a way of getting rid of dollars
that doesn't (immediately) hurt the dollar. The end result is that China
holds less dollars, which have been losing value, while at the same time,
getting oil, which is increasing in value. Advantage China. Meanwhile,
back at the ranch, the California pension fund CALPERS is dumping its
real estate investments.
[Mar29'05] As a result of reading (too much), I feel like I understand
the situation in Iraq moderately well. The US mission in Iraq hasn't
been perfect from the administration's viewpoint, but one main goal
has been achieved. We've established 12 or 14 permanent military bases
around their oil, we're threatening other oil-rich countries in the area
(Iran so it won't try to denominate oil in Euros, Saudi so it won't pull
dollar investments out of the US for better return), and we've lost only
a small number of troops -- only the number of people that die every
single week in car accidents, and since there they're all low-income,
low-political-value Americans of the kind that used to get welfare, they
don't matter in the Rove scheme of things. Read Riverbend to hear about
how Iraqis are now intermittently inundated with American-produced teevee
(the electricity supply is still half of what it was before the war,
when Iraq was under world sanctions). Despite the low domestic ratings
for the war, Rove knows that as oil prices creep ever upward, people
unconsciously and uncomfortably know that Iraq is about oil and the
land around it, and so they won't be able to turn against it with the
same vengeance as they did in Vietnam, and he might eventually even
be able to shove a draft down their throats. But even with a basic
understanding of the situation, there are always things that surprise --
like the UK announcing that they are withdrawing thousands of troops
from Iraq so that they can go to Afghanistan to look for He's-dead-Jim
bin Laden. Who could have predicted this? Most people don't even know
where Afghanistan is anymore. Well, maybe it's because the Brits are
better at geography. What's going on in Afghanistan? Did bin Laden
send Zarqawi a new wooden leg from beyond?
[Apr18'05]
It is hard to dispell a growing
feeling of unreality. Yesterday, Marla Ruzicka, founder of Campaign for
Innocent Victims in Conflict was killed on the Baghdad airport road.
US media says it was a suicide bomb, parrotting the only 'reporters'
on the scene, who came in US armored vehicles, like the one that
defended the airport against Sgrena and Calipari. Meanwhile, at the
150 Shi'ite hostage drama in Madain, Iraq government officials first
reported that Iraqi troops called off their attack after encountering
fierce resistance (Sunday), and then reported that the whole thing was
a hoax (Monday). And as the market begins to tank, gold and oil move
down, too, and the dollar moves up. These last two somehow happen
while oil demand keeps shooting up, as Ghawar and Cantarell peak, and
as the trade deficit lurches up. It's hallucinogenic. The oil move
may paradoxically make businesses cautious to invest in exploration
for fear of the 80's and 90's all over again, and there are already
warnings of this in the financial press. The shortness of business
lookahead never ceases to amaze. Sam Koritz at antiwar.com
responded
to my backtalk on his latest oil piece (getting me another 50 hits on
oil05.pdf thanks
for the link!), but was unmoved by my review of geology and physics,
concluding that oil is not running out now (I agree), and anyway,
the market will fix things when it eventually does (I don't agree).
Here is my response to his response:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Apr 17, 2005
Hi Sam
Oh well, I guess all the graphs failed to instill a healthy fear
of geology and physics.
I'm not opposed to money. The point is that I can imagine two
situations, both of which have money -- high industrial civilization
of the last century powered by fossil fuels (oil/coal/gas), and low
post-industrial civilization with lots of unused concrete surfaces.
I once heard Jim Kunstler ridiculing the idea of an oh-so-green
caller who envisioned "making San Francisco bloom" by getting rid
of the streets and planting more flowers and food. Imagine digging
up the streets by hand in an environmentally correct way. A chain
gang made out of the entire San Francisco population would hardly
put a tiny dent in its pavement supply. No, we'd have to start
now, while fossil-fueled backhoes and dump trucks still run.
Now you would make fun of those people, too, but in a different
way. You are relying on us, the scientists, "to come up with
something -- scientists always do". "Don't worry, be happy". Maybe
we will, maybe we won't. Scientists try to find out how things
actually are. We can't change the laws of nature or the amount of
oil down there, or the maximum speed at which you can pump it out
of small-diameter 4 mile deep boreholes, or the amount of energy
it takes to drill those holes.
It's misleading to think of geology, physics, and engineering as
free one-dimensional variables. Imagine a group of economists in
an airtight room. They might think that if they just breathe harder,
they will increase demand, which will lead to air supply innovation.
Or they just might suffocate. I'm worried we are going to suffocate
ourselves. After Malthus, we more than quadrupled the population,
mainly using fossil fuels. We're in uncharted territory.
You omitted the part of my note about the prospects for fusion,
which is not looking much more practical than it was 20 years ago,
and which currently also relies on a limited supply of fossil helium
for superconducting magnetic containment fields. Helium comes out
of certain oil and gas wells. Keeping a hot-as-the-sun plasma
confined for long periods of time ('long' as in, more than one
second) is currently a major problem, as is feeding new hydrogen
in and bleeding off the various exhaust products. Scientists *might*
figure out how to do this better using mathematical models and test
fusion reactors. Or, it might turn out not to be practical, period,
ever. The market can ask for more stable plasmas. It can't guarantee
them. And it can't guarantee some other handy energy supply if
RF-heated plasmas are never sufficiently stabilized.
My point is, our current market mechanics don't look far enough
into the future. Up until last year, the market decided to disinvest
in renewables and sell off the US strategic helium reserves. Sitting
near the fossil fuel halfway point, this is just insane from a
survival of industrial civilization point of view, or even a survival
of the US point of view. But from a business point of view, it's
completely logical. Who can afford to run a solar business into
the ground when the price of oil is so low?
So, given the current junta, we'll just have to wait until they go
high enough. This will happen soon enough since oil fields number
one (Ghawar, 5%) and number two (Cantarell, 2%) are both right at
the tipping point. I'll feel better when someone sets up a
solar-cell-powered solar-cell-manufacturing plant, if such a thing
is even possible.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
link
[Apr04'05] The one-day drop yesterday in the Japanese stock market
(about 4%) was a loss bigger than the entire economy of Singapore.
This sounds suspiciously like quantum mechanics, where the consciousness
of the observer causes the collapse of the wave packet. "I can't like it"
(to quote a little girl's comment on eating bitter greens).
[Apr21'05] Yesterday, Chomsky discovered peak oil (finally!). Then he
says, "There's a sense in which it's advantageous if the oil peak is
earlier. The reason why is it will compel the world, primarily the
U.S. here, to move toward something like sustainable energy." Sure,
yeah, right. And what "sustainable energy" source does Noam have in
mind? He doesn't say. That's about as informative as Bush saying we
are going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Wind and solar now
weigh in at about *0.07* percent of oil + coal + gas (that's 1/1400).
If we increased the amount of wind and solar power *140-fold*, truly
sustainable energy production would reach 10% of the current fossil
fuel total. I doubt whether sustainable energy will even get to 10%
of our current total. What Chomsky should have said was that this
will eventually put the tank and aircraft carrier guys out of business
(tho unfortunately, not the nuclear missile guys), since the deployed
US military is 70% fuel by weight. But Noam should be more circumspect
about what he wishes on the rest of us.
[May02'05]
[May02'05] Well, thank god, the price of oil dropped a few dollars as the
biggest surplus in more than a year has built up. That means everything
will be OK and industrial civilization won't be ending in 30 years amidst
the conflagrations of worldwide resource wars. For a while there, I was
worried that the 1960's peak in oil discovery was relevant to something or
other, but thankfully, it's back to our regularly scheduled programming.
For example, the Moonie Post says that the US is going to withdraw from
Iraq, now that we've won (again), and they're reconstructed and democratic
(it wasn't about oil, forget about those 14 permanent military bases);
and we won't attack Iran for its nukes or its undemocratic government
(or its oil, whatever), either. The Economist shows this week how we're
not running out of oil, and anyway, scientists will come up with something
when we do, since that's their job (what is the job of economists again?).
I wish these things were true. It's times like this, helplessly watching
the gears turn (better viewed with the internet), that I suppose I
agree with Chomsky. Let's just run the oil down as fast as possible.
Don't bother planning for renewable energy, just careen right off the
cliff (think of it as a way of stimulating innovation for 'soft-landing
solutions'). Then after a short bit of tumbling and innovation, land
hard, in a giant pile of death and destruction (creative, of course) -- a
worldwide compost heap. Something sweet smelling will probably eventually
grow up again. No regrets, except, maybe, as Joe Bageant wrote, from the
cockroaches watching the whole thing: "What a shame, because at the height
of their culture these guys made a damned good peanut butter sandwich."
link
[May04'05] The estimated amount of coal left EIA (Energy Information
Administration) is be 1080 gigatons (~1 teraton), which is probably on the
high side. US reserves are estimated at 270 gigatons. World usage is
estimated at 5.26 gigatons/year. Assuming no yearly increase, and that
all the remaining coal has an EROEI (energy return on energy investment)
ratio bigger than 1.0 (otherwise, it's not an energy *source*), coal
would last 200 years. Assuming a simple 1% yearly increase, coal would
last about 100 years. The rate of increase is likely to be even faster
as population grows, oil and gas deplete, and conversion of coal to gas
and liquids increases (note that these both involve about a 50% energy
loss compared to burning the coal directly). A 2% yearly increase works
out to 75 years. Gregson Vaux from Carnegie Mellon University estimates
that coal will peak (be half consumed) in 2035 when increased usage from
synfuel conversion is included. This is near the predicted world natural
gas peak of 2030 (Jean LaHerrere).
[May05'05] Mafkarat al-Islam reports that American troops sealed all
entrances to the city of al-Hadithah Thursday, dropped pamphlets from
helicopters threatening that the 'grace period' was over, ordered all
people to hand over weapons, and cut off the water supply, electricity,
and telephones. It's good to know that our $2.8 billion a week in
tax money is going to the good cause of spreading democracy, and, what
do you call it?, nation building.
[May08'05] Today on page 3 of the Sunday print
LA Times, in an article by Rania Abouzeid (article
here but pic only in print version), there is a picture of
supporters of returning Lebanese Maronite Christian Gen. Michel
Aoun, fronted by what must be the exact same photogenic,
V-for-victory-hand-sign young woman who was centered on the
cover of the Economist a few months ago (except now she has a more
modest head scarf and is standing, as opposed to riding around on a guy's
neck with a girls-gone-wild look and a Betty Boop tee-shirt). Must be
just chance that she ended up again as the face of the 'new hope we have
brought to this troubled region'. You've come a long way, baby. Yeah.
Now, let's get that Iran or Syria attack going. Draft, anyone? For an
excellent summary of the origins of the 'Cedar revolution' media campaign,
see
A
"Cedar Revolution" I by David Peterson.
[May12'05] The US bombed the hospital in al-Qaim during the recent
fighting there as families still in town tried to flee the fighting.
The hospital director said 8 people inside were killed. These must
have been part of the 100 'insurgents' the US said they killed in this
operation. It looks like the US may be getting ready to demolish the city
in a fashion similar to what was done to Fallujah, which remains in ruins
-- although there are very few truly unembedded news reports. This is
what our $2.5 billion a week in tax money is paying for: a new Guernica
every month or so. At this rate, it probably would have been cheaper
to just buy the country. Our weekly blood and guts bill is roughly 5
times the weekly gross oil procedes of Iraq ($50/barrel x 7 days/week
x 1.5 million barrels/day = $0.5 billion/week) (though who has any idea
of where that money or the oil for that matter is now going).
[May15'05] Our friend, Karimov (who boils people to death -- see Human
Rights Watch link below) ordered his police to open fire on a crowd
in Andijan, killing an estimated 600 people, according to human rights
campaigner Saidzhakhon Zainabitdinov. The police piled up hundreds of
bodies in a school, a third of which were women, and thousands fled to the
closed border with Kyrgyzstan. But it's OK for Karimov 'massacre his own
people', and he doesn't have to immediately submit to 'free elections',
and these massacred civilians don't count (in contrast the valuable ones
in Beslan), because he's our friend (he supported the invasion of Iraq),
and the dead women and children have the wrong religion, and we give him
a third of a billion dollars every year in aid, and, uhhhh, there might
just happen to be some oil and gas he's sitting on that we need.
[May29'05] Italian state TV reports that Zainabitdinov (dissenter
mentioned in previous note) was arrested in Tashkent a few days
ago.
[Jun07'05] There was an interesting quote from an email today to Dahr
Jamail from someone working at Camp Anaconda, near Balad: "Hearts and
minds are secondary, far behind the issue of petroleum products, as the US
continues to compete for resources around the world". Of course it was
about oil. The US (Halliburton, etc) has built and currently occupies
106
military bases in Iraq. I wouldn't be surprised if 'low
cost' Iraqi oil is now being shipped directly to the US.
[Jun20'05] The war on Iran is already on, as Scott Ritter writes today
in Aljazeerah. In the recent Iraq war, preparations and actual execution
(greatly increased bombing, in an attempt to get Saddam to respond) began
almost 9 months before the 'official' start of the war in March 2003.
This was apparent to any person with even a moderate understanding of
20th century history and access to the internet. The din of the worm-like
'press' and 'congress' in late 2002, simultaneously lulled and scared the
average Good American, exactly at the point that all the preparations,
troop movements, and military hardware positionings were taking place.
We are in a very similar position now. If you can write, write to
anybody moderate in the government to tell them to have a little spine
and be a little less cowardly than they were the last time they laid down
in late 2002. The time to demonstrate -- and esp. to slow the crucial
flow of new recruits -- is now, as the US prepares bases in Azerbaijan
to stage our next invasion and the securing of the straits of Hormuz,
and our special operations forces help coordinate terror bombings by the
Mujahadeen el-Khalq (MEK). The antiwar left and right (e.g., Hersh and
Ritter) have been putting out warnings for 6 months. Now is the time
to act, before it's too late (like it was when the big demonstrations
happened last time!). That is the real point of the Downing Street memos:
we have to think ahead -- like they do. Don't be distracted by Iraq,
as awful as it is, while the next move is being made.
[Jul07'05] It will be interesting to see what the London attacks,
the 'new new Pearl harbor', get used for by the US and the UK media.
Some possibilities that come to mind are: preparing the public for the
upcoming wars on Iran and Syria, delaying the plan, announced July 4,
to withdraw British troops from Iraq, taking the focus off of G8 global
warming talks (which were brought to a quick halt today), reducing the 80%
of the British public opposed to a new biometric ID, helping the public to
forget the Downing Street memos, Rove, Afghanistan, etc. ("it's a floor
wax *and* a dessert topping!") The attacks have a strong resemblance to
Madrid train attacks. In that case, however, the Spanish public turned on
the government when it tried to take advantage of them in the election,
and a subtantial portion concluded it was a false flag operation. The
London event was first officially and elaborately described as a
power surge in the Tube electrical
system. Then there was an initial
AP report (citing senior Israeli officials) that Netanyahu
was warned by the British before the first blast and therefore
didn't attend a economic conference located over one of the
bombed subway stops, where he was to speak. This has now been
denied by Scotland Yard, and several
reports now say Netanyahu was only warned
after the first blast.
Stratfor
cites unconfirmed intelligence community rumors that it was actually
Israel who warned the UK several days before, and that this will come
out as a failure of Blair to "take action" (but what action? invading
Iran? installing even more security cameras? [every Londoner is already
on video many times a day], locking down London every time Israel says
so?). Oil shot *down* $4 because for a few hours, presumably because the
geniuses of the market had decided that this would decrease oil demand.
However, they quickly changed their minds, and oil is now back up over
$60. Without implying any lack of emphathy for Londoners (I've been
on those very tube stops many times and I love London and its people)
by Iraq standards, this was a relatively small event. Many recent days
of routine US bombing in Iraq have killed this many civilians and nobody
here has complained. If a relatively small event like this can cause an
outbreak of self-love in the oil markets, imagine what a real oil-relevant
event (like a problem at a major port or a large hurricane) would do.
That will be the time to remind your friends that it's only the 'genius
of the market' (i.e., computer trading programs) doing their magic at
$200/barrel. In other bizarre news, Chevron just set up a website called
Willyoujoinus.com talking about peak oil. I'm involuntarily forced to
recall an old skit from Second City TV with John Candy as Johnny LaRue:
"Won't you join me?" he says as we share in his relaxation in his Discount
Deprive-O-Rama isolation tanks, soon with a cigarette, and then with
a gaggle of Gerbil Girls. "Won't you join us?" -- as we quickly burn
through the second half of the fossil fuel heritage that made industrial
civilization possible and supported the quintupling of world population.
Won't you check out Willy Joinus?
[Jul09'05] Well, the recent 'booster shot' seems to be working well.
So far, it has been attributed to al-CIA-dah, definitely the Iraqi
insurgency, definitely *not* the Iraqi insurgency, Syria (of course),
the Palestinians (!), homegrown east Asian terr'ists (which must
explain their bad Koran translations), but not so far, Iran. In a
strange parallel to 9-11 and the simultaneous NORAD simulated hijacking
that morning, BBC 5 reported on the evening of the 7th that "we [Peter
Power speaking for Visor Consultants] were actually running an exercise
[at 9:30 AM] for a company of over a thousand people in London based
on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations
where it happened this morning" (toward the end of this
clip).
Just a coinkydink, I'm sure. You can't make this stuff up! All righty,
then. Fox News says the terror attacks "work to our advantage" (Brian
Kilmeade, commenting on how this will get our stupid gaze off of the
G8 global warming talks). They also finally got Greta Van Susteren
out of Aruba. And of course, the attacks are a reason for us to start
world war III (it's not already on?). A floor wax and a dessert topping,
indeed!
[Jul10'05] The three train blasts turn out to have gone off within less
than 50 sec of each other, an hour before the bus blast, so the window
for a warning after the first blast but before the second (as described
in USA Today, so no foreknowledge demonstrated) is about 30 seconds (and
about an hour before the rest of London was warned). Today, in London,
Netanyahu, the apparent recipient of that amazingly prompt warning, now
warns the West it must halt Iran nuclear plans. Well, duh, we *knew* the
real problem has always been IranSyriaHezbollahAlQuedaMuslimsAndGypsies!
And today, the LA Times has an endless article by Brownstein et
al. explaining how the bombings are good for Bush, while the DailyKos
deletes
all previous posts discussing false flag attacks and bans their email
addresses from further posts. Keep your Democratic eyes on those shifty
darkies, dammit! since all the public evidence we currently have --
so far, one email already shows that 'they' did it, and that Zarqawi
(!) was involved, too, and besides, the UK govt has never lied before
about dirty deeds of the darkies in order to start a war. Yeah.
[Jul11'05] Just read the article/talk by Mae-Wan Ho below on sustainable
food production. I liked the content, cheerfully presented (however
Lamarkian, quantum coherent, and self-organizing she may be; at least
she's not a creationist).
[Jul12'05] Fintan Dunne (below) argues against Alex Jones' ideas about
the sinister-ness of Peter Power accidentally scheduling simultaneous
terror drills (linked above), suggesting instead that Peter Power merely
took advantage of the situation to advertise his PR business. Sometimes,
I feel I have a genetic indisposition to thinking like a businessman.
Maybe this is part of the explanation for what remains an odd coincidence,
as well as an opportunity for confusion ("I'm actually just part of the
drill, not a real terrorist"). There have also been reports of closed
off tube stations more than an hour before the attack though they have
not been correlated with Peter Power.
[Jul13'05] The London bombers have now been
supposedly identified as traveling together in
surveillance camera videos. Two of the bomber suspects
were even kind enough to leave their IDs at more than one
site. Initially, this made me think of a particular passport
that passed all the way through one of the WTC's, the fireball, etc.
It turns out, the reason the Londoners did this was to make sure that
we knew who did the dastardly deed. Besides, now that we have a grainy
picture of a dark-skinned guy with a backpack to add to the email
(from Texas?), what more evidence do you need?
[Jul15'05] The supposed military grade explosives have now suddenly
and without explanation been downgraded to shoe-bomber explosives (!).
It must have been hard to find evidence of high grade explosives after
the police blew up the bombers houses using them (seems like the most
sensible thing to do to preserve the trace chemical evidence at the
scene of a crime, don't you think?)
[Jul17'05] Somebody has been playing the "mighty Wurlitzer" real
good lately. The latest story in the LA Times is that the explosive
was actually a mixture of C 4 *and* the shoe-bomber explosive
(and a dessert topping, too). The Downing Street memos and other
lies that tricked Americans and Brits into spending roughly $300
billion in tax dollars to slaughter 130,000 non-Westerners are now
backpage. You can already begin to see the uptick in Bush's
poll numbers. Now just because they told a $300-billion-dollar
1/8-of-a-million dead lie doesn't necessary mean that Muslim patsies were
set up, or perhaps even completely innocent people hired as actors and
then given live bombs in the simultaneously scheduled 'terror exercise'.
But the well-documented real conspiracy revealed in the Downing street
memos by the same people certainly demands that we take these alternative
explanations seriously. And don't forget that 6 or 8 of the supposed 9/11
hijackers later turned up alive (this was explained as the result of
identity theft, yet it somehow never impugned the official story, and the
names were never updated). Seeing the "mighty Wurlitzer" in action can
sure make a person into a misanthrope, and constantly fighting the water
torture of media 'reality' is mentally tiring and leaves a stain.
[Jul18'05] Several commentators have noted that the Iraq war going
poorly seems to have slowed down the march toward an attack on Iran,
which had been predicted to occur in June 2005 by both Hersh and Ritter
in January 2005. Though there has been some anti-Iran propaganda,
it has not yet approached the level of anti-Iraq propaganda in the
lead-up to the 2003 Iraq war. The recent London bombing was not a big
enough event to give Bush or Blair very much of an uptick. A nuclear
event of some kind in an American city, however, *would* be big enough
to give the administration room to maneuver. Regardless of who did it,
it could be attributed to Iran, which could then be attacked with nuclear
weapons after a 3-5 month propaganda blitz against the American public.
This would likely cause additional uprisings across the middle east,
skyrocketing oil prices, leading possibly to a US occupation of the Saudi
oil fields. An alternate possibility that has been suggested is that an
unprovoked air strike on Iran by the US or Israel leads to a successful
Iranian attack on a US aircraft carrier leading to an all out war on Iran.
I sure hope both of these don't happen. I'd rather be scanning.
[Jul23'05] Ah yes, the capital crime of "running away while Brazilian"
-- that is, from armed men chasing you (probably special ops guys not
in uniform, who according to witness Lee Ruston did not say anything
to Menezes before executing him with 5 shots [update: 7 in head +
1 in the spine] from a silencer pistol to the base of his skull).
The Israeli-trained UK antiterrorist police "regret" the fact that he had
nothing to do with any crime. That should teach him to go to the skin
lightening place next time. As Xymphora says, wouldn't it be easier
to just withdraw from Iraq rather than having secret Israeli-trained
death squads running around London slaughtering dark-skinned people
because they are wearing Levi jeans jackets? Also today, one of the
supposed 7/7 suicide bombers gives an interview on Pakistani TV (but that
doesn't impugn the official story at all). The "strategy of tension"
continues.
[Jul25'05] According to Debka, Rice forced Abbas to relocate from Ramallah
to Gaza during the Gaza pullout. I wonder if this has something to
do with the "Warning from Israel" below? A US attempt to moderate a
post-pullout Israeli attack on Gaza?
[Aug01'05] The US is currently spending roughly $440 billion/year on
oil (365 days * 20 million barrels/day * $60/barrel, with over half of
that imported). We are spending roughly $120 billion/year on the Iraq
occupation and over $500 billion a year on our military (50% of the
world's military spending). Iraq (or somebody) is making only roughly
about $33 billion/year on oil (365 days * 1.5 million barrels/day *
$60/barrel). One would therefore have to say that as a war for oil,
Iraq has not been going well. As I mentioned a while back, the price of
oil would have to quadruple (or double along with a doubling of Iraqi
production) in order to make our blood-for-oil war a break-even game --
and that's assuming we stole all of their oil, which is probably not
practical, even now that Chalabi (!) is the Iraqi oil minister. It must
be granted that the war to transfer US tax proceeds to Halliburton has
been going better. Could $200 oil be here sooner than we think? I still
think it's a few years off. It seems quite possible that there will be
some kind of recession in the next year, and that this could actually lead
to a temporary stabilization or even drop oil prices (for a year or two).
The sheep will be temporarily lulled, investment in renewables will resume
its drop of the previous 5 years, and then, bam, around 2008, the reduced
demand will run into the slowly lowering and virtually immoveable ceiling
of all-out world oil production and up will go the prices. So I guess
that makes me 'bearish' on oil for now (though it seems so profane to
talk about the elixir of the technological gods this way...).
[Aug08'05] "All the great fields, ironically too, were discovered by
eyesight, as opposed to seismic." -- Matt Simmons. If Matt Simmons is
correct that the standard 260 Gb remaining reserves estimate for Saudi
Arabia is grossly inflated (e.g., by even a factor of 5!), then Iraq
may actually have the largest remaining reserves in the world, in part
because Iraqi production has been impeded by three wars (Iran, US1, US2)
and a decade of sanctions. There was a post on Mobjectivist today on a
similar theme, except that the idea was that Iraq might have 400 Gb of
reserves instead of its currently stated 112 Gb and that Saudi still has
260 Gb. The Simmons scenario, by contrast, is that Saudi has something
like 112 Gb and 112 Gb is probably a generous estimate for what is left
in Iraq (e.g., Kirkuk is long past peak). In both scenarios, the wars
on Iraq were about oil. But in Simmons version, the end of oil is much,
much closer. Simmons sits on the board of Kerr-McGee, which just sold
it's North Sea oil assets to a Danish company. His solution is to
immediately institute a massive offshore drilling program along with
massive alternative energy and energy conservation programs. Well,
at least the first one is likely to happen...
[Aug17'05] Apparently, somebody close to the Menezes investigation leaked
the fact that there *was* a video record (unreleased), Menezes *didn't*
jump the barrier and paid instead with a rail pass, he *didn't* run until
a brief spurt to catch the train, he *wasn't* wearing a bulky jacket, he
*wasn't* carrying a package, he was shot after sitting, *not* tripping,
a surveillance officer who arrived in the train before Menezes grabbed
him and shoved him back into his seat but was himself then wrestled
to the ground by the armed assassination team who killed Menezes, and
the assassination team also put a gun to the head of the train driver.
[Aug21'05] Menezes updates. The leaker mentioned above was promptly
suspended, increasing the credibility of the leak. The star witness
Mark Whitby, who provided the 'unplugged incubator babies' propaganda
fed to the teevee, has now recanted/changed his story. The guy with
the thick coat was probably a surveillance guy; the guy who leaped the
barrier was one of the assassin squad guys; the guy that Whitby thought
was Menezes cowering like a cornered animal may have been another
surveillance officer who was tackled and surprised by the shooting of
the assassination squad. Too late man -- as Bush says, you've already
"catapulted the propaganda".
[Aug26'05] The widespread lack of very basic understanding about energy
is frightening. Lately, as people have been getting a little spooked
about oil prices, I read babble on the net that, well, we'll just make
more nuclear (fission) reactors and convert to electric cars. That's
fine, but that's a *lot* of extra electrical generation. The amount of
energy used to power transportation is several times as much as what
is used to power our electric grid. Imagine tripling or quadrupling
electrical generation along with the capacity of the electrical grid
that delivers it. OK, so say we plan to mostly charge cars and trucks
at night. Then we would only have to double the capacity of the grid.
But the battery operated trucks won't go very far before needing to wait
until night for a charge since the best Prius batteries have *1/45*
the effective energy density of gasoline; a long-haul electric truck
would be mostly battery and hardly any payload (which is why no one
has seriously proposed long-distance battery-operated trucking). OK,
then just some cars, and no trucks. At that rate, we would be lucky
if we covered the *increase* in car traffic, esp. if you include China
and India. Another thing I read is, we'll just make gasoline from coal.
Making gasoline from coal loses about 50% of the energy in the coal
(vs. burning it directly). Also, coal emits more greenhouse gases than
oil for a given energy output. Thus, big time synfuel generation would
probably double the world's greenhouse gas and mercury output. I fully
expect that's what we will do. Yeehaaaaa. Real lemmings don't actually
jump over cliffs. It takes a civilization not willing to negotiate its
lifestyle to do that.
[Aug29'05] More journalists have been killed in Iraq (66) than in 20 years
of the Vietnam war. The Iraq war has also been almost completely censored
compared to Vietnam. There are only 2 or 3 independent US journalists
in Iraq. Given that we're only spending a little over $100 billion a
year there, that's probably enough to get an independent assessment of
how things our going, right?
[Sep02'05] Many have suggested that Katrina may have delayed an attack
on Iran. However, the US does not have complete control over the timing
of an attack. The response to the Katrina disaster is so incompentent
and pathetic, it almost seems premeditated. Here is an interview
(
mp3) with Ray
Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans (a lifelong Republican and Bush campaign
contributor), recorded this afternooon. However, it is hard to see,
even with all the yahoos red-faced about black looters, how Bush can
escape damage from this. That's a dangerous thing for us all.
[Sep05'05] The NSA is constructing a
parallel
secure
internet for authorized "warfighters, business, and intelligence
users" (kewl trio). This means if there is some kind of event, the
regular internet can be shut down or greatly restricted, no doubt, in
order "to protect us", without shutting down the military or selected
parts of the economy. Probably it's time to dust off those old modems and
pre-internet bulletin board software. Rather than phone over internet,
it may someday be back to internet over phone or internet over shortwave.
The lesson of Katrina is clear: we are
on our own.
[Sep09'05] After massive destruction of oil rigs, pipelines, and
refineries, the genius of the market has driven oil prices *down*,
naturally, because refineries (oil users) have being taken off line,
oil reserves have been accessed, and oil donations made or promised. Thus,
there is a very temporary 'oversupply' (well, relative to what there was
before the storm). The market is *so* short-sighted, that both it, and
oil futures, are not yet affected by the withdrawal of several percent
of US usage for what I would think of as the "near future". The Gulf of
Mexico disaster was large, but still only on the order of the depletion
from many of the largest existing fields (e.g., North Sea oil depleting
from 10 to 20% *per year*). I'm not looking forward to the roller
coaster that Mr. Genius will put us through when the real peak begins
to bite in a few years. In between, it is possible that oil prices may
even crash for half a year, which would be enough to lead oil companies
to temporarily suspend new exploration, and alternative energy companies
to go out of business. When we are talking about a resource that is at
the very center of modern global industrial civilization for the last
century, and which is so obviously limited, I fail to see why wild short
term speculation could possibly help us adapt to new energy sources,
which even the completely flat-earth economists agree we will have to do.
In the present case, no sane person thinks that hurricane Katrina has
somehow increased world oil reserves. I get pissed being whipsawed
by a bunch of worthless oil traders who know nothing about geology,
oil, energy, making stuff, and so on. And then, when these friggin
idiots make a bad call, like the LTCM guys and the Russian ruble, they
get their asses bailed out. Why not execute them instead? If they
need more than a $1 billion dollar bailout, I say, lethal injection.
A billion dollars could have helped save a lot of people. These are the
guys that would be setting up a market for Titanic life boats instead of
making sure that none of the boats capsized as the ship sunk. Get 'em
off my lifeboat.
[Sep17'05] The US military has set up an Orwellian police state in the
'pacified' parts of Iraq that it controls, such as the 'demonstration
cities' of Fallujah and Tal Afar. This includes retinal scans, finger
prints, and photographs for every inhabitant, arrests of most men to
interrogate them and further database them, a complete encirclement by
barbed wire with entry at checkpoints only by retinal scan, and
extensive detention without oversight of anyone deemed 'suspicious'
in prison camps outside the city. This goes far beyond anything Saddam
Hussein attempted. Ay-rab-hating yahoos cheer it on, but they should be
wary, because such a thing could by re-imported -- esp. if there is some
pressing 'continuity of government' need for it because of a stunt in an
American city. It might even be implemented by mercenaries from private
security companies. Down the line, there may end up being battles between
these guys and the local police, the two major armed groups.
[Sep18'05] The *real* reason we're having problems in Iraq is that simple
genocide (think Carthage) is now considered off-color. I suppose this
is why Chomsky is always saying that we are more civilized than we used
to be. With all the military power and toys we have, we're bogged down
in a battle with people using 30 year old RPG's and artillery shells.
We could easily annihilate all 27 million people in the country 50
times over, but we have to be 'nice' (that is, starve, poison, torture,
fleschette, and kill only a million of them). But don't let these
difficulties fool you into thinking we will be going anywhere soon.
We are sitting on a minimum of $7 trillion dollars worth of their oil
(112 billion barrels times $60/barrel). In this light, it looks like a
good deal to have to invest 'only' $0.1 trillion dollars a year to stay
there -- esp. since it is likely the price is eventually going to go
*much* higher. The only fly in the ointment is if the Iraqis don't fall
for the permanent low-level civil war thing and instead unite against us.
Then we would have a more difficult choice between oil and all-out
genocide. Several prominent Iraqi figures have come out with statements
that they think the mythical Zarqawi is long dead, suggesting that some
Iraqis have sniffed out the permanent civil war plan, and have seen that
it is not in their collective interest. Also, as the world oil shortage
starts to bite in the next few years, it is less likely that the rest of
the world will stand by passively while we do our dog-in-the-manger act.
They might make a few covert efforts to sabotage us. Damn, all I wanted
to do was figure out how the primate brain has been slightly rewired
for language. For better or worse, there is probably not enough oil to
figure out how the brain works. Maybe that's a good thing. I'm not sure
I want to have a bunch of biologically intelligent military surveillance
devices buzzing around my house some day (and thankfully, these things
aren't practical yet).
[Sep19'05] Today, Michael Rivero at WhatReallyHappened comments:
"If I were Bush I would be watching my rear end closely. Right now
the Neocons are probably figuring that if an Iranian (nudge nudge wink
wink) were to assassinate Dubya, then Cheney could step into the Oval
Office, the lies that started the wars would be buried with Dubya,
and all mention of them dismissed as 'defaming the dead', while your
kids get marched into Iran." Things continue to deteriorate in Iraq,
where, in the generally more placid south, Basra police arrested two
British undercover agents in Arab headdresses (and curly black hair
wigs!) after the agents killed two Iraqi policemen in what may have
been an interrupted false flag attack; non-US media outlets (Xinhua,
Turkey, initial BBC) reported that the British agents who were arrested
were driving a car packed with explosives. When two British armoured
personnel carriers arrived to free the British prisoners, an angry crowd
surrounded them and set the APC's on fire; two or more Iraqi civilians
were killed in that clash. Finally, at night, a half a dozen British
tanks came, knocked down the walls of the jail, and a commando team
freed the British agents (and, in the process, 150 Iraqi prisoners)
(some accounts have the order of these two events reversed). The London
defense ministry says that the pair was in fact released by negotiation
(using tanks, presumably) and that the pair was in fact looking for the
'real' terrorists. This explanation probably played better in London than
Basra. The UK has now withdrawn earlier hints about troop reductions and
now plans on troop increases. And finally, Cindy Sheehan gets collared
by the police for speaking for a few minutes with a microphone in New
York, but not Texas. New Yorkers less kewl than Texans.
[Sep20'05] Predictable mainstream propaganda/spin today on Basra events
above: it's Iran's fault! Juan Cole today has a more 'nuanced' view that
adds info about a previous arrest of several aides of Moqtada al-Sadr,
and he translates, but then doesn't comment on al-Sadr's claim (echoing
reports in many non-US presses, including an initial BBC report) that
the undercover Brits' car was packed with explosives and that they were
carrying remote control detonators -- suggesting that they may have been
involved in false flag operations. Webster Tarpley ("Iran war clouds"
below) suggests that Katrina has not dented the progress toward an
attack on Iran and that air strikes would likely come on nights without
a moon (as in previous wars on Iraq), which will occur near the first
of October, November, and December. There would have to be some kind of
event a few weeks before that to galvanize public support for expanding
the war. The expansion of UK troop strength, the Pentagon's recent
consideration of extended tours together with troop strength increases,
and the continuing Iran/Syria propaganda are consistent with this.
I hope he's wrong.
[Sep21'05] "A typical UK family of four would, each year, emit
4.2 tonnes of CO2 from their house, 4.4 tonnes from their car,
and 8 tonnes from the production, processing, packaging and
distribution of the food they eat." -- from Eating Oil (
pdf summary),
Dec 2001. Numbers in the US are similar. Modern 'civilized' humans
'eat' more oil than they use in their SUV's. I never liked SUV's, but
I sure would miss eating. Meanwhile, a new $100 billion dollar plan
("
Apollo on
steroid"), was announced last week to explore and colonize the moon
as a stepping stone to going to Mars. I'm getting this uncomfortable
decline-of-the-Roman-empire feeling.
[Sep22'05] The ozone hole has gotten back up to a near-record size again
and it is no longer clear whether it has actually begun to shrink. The
great majority of CFC's come from nuclear fuel enrichment (they are used
to cool equipment such as fans as well as the hot uranium hexa_fluoride
gas). Although improved piping would help, the upcoming massive increase
in nuclear fuel production (to offset fossil fuel depletion) may offset
improvements in controlling CFC leaks. Other bad climate news suggests
that the Europe heat wave of 2003 led to a sharp *increase* in CO2
(because CO2-using forests and crops were stopped in their tracks
by the heat); the increased CO2 will then lead to further warming.
Another positive feedback situation -- this one for Arctic warming was
also reported: decreased albedo from increased Arctic melting is leading
to increased Arctic heat absorption, which is leading to further melting.
It looks to me that these scientific observations will have absolutely
no effect on government and business policy for the forseeable future.
For example, a Republican budget study leaked today suggests that Katrina
costs (probably part the result of global warming) will be absorbed by
eliminating things such as Amtrak funding ($2.5 billion), which increases
CO2 output, since rail transport is at least 5 times as efficient as cars,
busses, and trucks. And although there has been some increased awareness
of climate with the recent hurricanes, people watching teevee will forget
it all when Rita drops off the story rotation. As a character in a sci-fi
novel by Kim Stanley Robinson says it's "easier to destroy the world than
to change capitalism even one little bit". Examples of non-adaptive mass
human behavior from previous collapses is not encouraging. And it is not
clear to me that even if you could have given the Mayans all web browsers,
cell phones, and iPods, that things would have turned out differently.
Humans are like roaches -- some survived. And some people will certainly
survive this century as well.
[Oct01'05] There were
fuel
price riots in Indonesia today when the government announced that
it was beginning to withdraw some of its $7.4 billion dollar subsidy
of gasoline, which costs about 95 cents a gallon in Indonesia. It has
often been suggested that as fossil fuel shortages begin to bite, more
developed countries, which have further to fall, will be hit harder than
less developed, less fuel-intensive countries, which use less than 1/10
as much fuel per capita as we do. But I think that this scenario may
only come to pass later in the game. The reason the governments of many
lesser developed countries subsidize fuel costs is because wages are so
low that no one would be able to afford gasoline otherwise. For example,
gasoline costs maybe 10 cents a gallon in Iraq (after our second war
on Iraq, refined gasoline is all imported by Halliburton et al., into a
country with the second largest reserves of oil in the world -- perhaps
12% of what remains in the entire world). As the dollar-denominated
world price of oil continues to increase, people in the US will just
pay more and (finally!) begin to buy somewhat smaller cars. Europeans
have been getting by with gasoline prices are at least 3 times ours.
In poorer countries, by contrast, wages are much lower, which has led
US corporations to outsource just about anything that requires paying
people to do things. But with those low wages, those same people will
have increasing difficulty paying for fuel as the price of oil increases
and as poor-country governments transfer some of those costs. In Eritrea,
for example, the increasing price of gasoline has silenced the streets of
the capital overnight. This is likely to become more widespread in the
short term (the next decade). People in poor countries paying for fuel
denominated in first-world currency (dollars) using poor-country wages
will simply be priced out of driving. This will halt development there
and lead to a backslide in countries lacking significant oil reserves.
Even those with oil such as Indonesia (a member of OPEC) -- but that have
just begun to import oil -- are having problems. The "longer distance
to fall" scenarios may only hit the rich countries later in the game
(two or three decades). Poor countries will likely become more aware and
resentful of the inequities of a situation where oil can be transported
anywhere and sold at the same high North American dollar price, but
people are penned into countries where global corporations can take
advantage of wage arbitrage.
[Nov03'05] Interesting
numbers
yesterday from an oil insider who contacted Prof. Goose at the
theoildrum.com. He/she reports huge increases in the cost of "jackup
rigs" between 2004 and the start of 2006. These costs have approximately
tripled (e.g., for a rig appropriate for a depth of 300 feet, the prices
have gone from $35,000/day to $130,000/day). Much of this increase is
due to the increased cost of steel (including steel pipe), and drilling
'mud' (montmorillonite clay). The tripling of costs for this key part
of exploration has essentially canceled the tripling of oil prices with
the result that there is no increased incentive for oil companies to
drill for new (or already prospected) oil, despite the tripling of oil
prices over the last two years. Some of this oil rig price increase
is due to the greatly increased demand due to massive repairs required
after the hurricanes, which has resulted in shortages. But a more
ominous source is that the rapidly increasing cost of energy (e.g.,
oil and gas) has increased the cost of steel and drilling mud because
*steel-making and mining* are energy-intensive. Cornucopian economists
often write as if oil and other energy price increases occur in an
abstract vaccuum, reliably increasing incentives, and soon after, supply.
Instead, I see a dangerous game of chicken as energy prices increase
the costs of exploration and 'production' of energy in parallel with
increases in the price of energy -- a positive feedback situation.
Since low-energy-cost energy is gotten first, the energy costs of
getting energy have historically increased, even as energy 'production'
has gotten more energy-efficient. This clearly points to a time where
the *energy* costs of getting energy will exceed the energy returned.
We are certainly not there yet. But in the run up to that point, it is
likely that as fossil fuel energy costs increase, there will not only
be positive feedback on fossil fuel prices, but also upward pressure
on renewable energy prices, since production of both non-renewable
and renewable energy is dependent on dwindling fossil fuel. It is an
empirical question whether it is possible to produce enough renewable
energy production devices to power industrial civilization using only
renewable energy. Current back-of-the-envelope calculations say yes,
but it remains to be demonstrated in the real world. Fifty years
ago, everybody assumed fusion would be up and running now. It isn't.
Given uncertainty about all this, you would think that it would be
prudent to begin to increase wind and solar beyond their current 0.07%
of our daily energy gulp (1 part wind/solar to 1400 parts oil/gas/coal).
However, changing capitalism even a tiny bit is currently so abhorrent to
our media-numbed populace and to our proud captains of industry that even
a tiny government move in this direction would be instantly shouted down.
Since business is not massively investing in renewable energy of its
own accord, it must therefore not be needed. Praise the market God.
The market God is great. This situation will only change if there is
a series of massive energy shocks. It is looking like this winter may
turn out to be very cold for northern Europe and possibly the Northeast
(Atlantic Ocean temps are lower than usual, maybe as a result of disturbed
ocean-circulation-based equator-to-North-Atlantic heat transfer -- maybe a
result of Arctic melting). Perhaps this will open a tiny crack of light
and make people begin to question the infinite wisdom of the market God.
Hopefully, they won't (yet) start scrambling like rats (and I have great
respect for rats as well as people!).
[Nov07'05] The troop buildup in Iraq combined with the cutting of all
diplomatic contacts with Syria sure looks like the US is planning an
attack in the next few months. There are currently 160,000 troops in
Iraq, the most ever, and major military operations are ongoing along
the Syrian border. The most powerful military in the world will once
again attack a small country without substantial defenses, mainly from
the air. The rest of the world will bide its time and take notes.
Clinton attacked Yugoslavia right in the middle of Monica. Bush is in
a similarly difficult spot. Not a peep on campus. Not a peep from the
Democrats. No need even for fake WMD's. Where is the embarrassment?
Disgusting.
[Nov11'05] The Jordan bomb story has been quite fluid. Supposedly,
it was a suicide bomber, but there were reports that there was a bomb
in the ceiling, and then some of bombers were arrested (presumably not
the suicide ones!). Yesterday, Yoav Stern reported in Ha'aretz that
Israelis got an early warning to evacuate before the bombs went off,
but then the story was changed today to say that they *didn't* in fact
get an early warning. Then later today, former IDF Amos Guiora quoted
in the LA Times said that the Israeli pre-bomb evacuation was due to a
specific security threat. Also, a Palestinian spy chief was killed in
the blast. Twenty scary-boys-and-girls Jordan reports in the slithering
mainstream media play against a mention here and there of TortureGate (and
no mention at all of the Fallujah atrocities) with the clear implication
that not enough people have been tortured. A leaked GOP memo suggests
that a new terror attack would reverse the party's decline. Well, yeah,
we know that.
[Nov21'05] The near future looks dangerous. A US attack on Syria or Iran
seems more and more likely. History never repeats exactly. As Jorge
Hirsch argues below, in this case, our unprovoked attack could come first,
and our bogus justification second -- that is, we had to use nukes on
Iran because after we used them, Iran threatened to attack our troops
in Iraq, thus justifying our first (and second) strike. Since over
half the country believes in creationism, processing this nonsensical
out-of-order sequence is just another no-brainer (yes, they have no
brains). Don't forget how the public effortlessly swallowed a series
of different justifications for the Iraq war (WMDs, 9-11, Saddam, their
'constitution', heh). Meanwhile, the first major natural gas shortage --
as opposed to a mere price spike -- may occur this winter in the UK if it
has as cold a winter as is currently being predicted. This may require a
partial shutdown of UK industry to keep home heating and electricity on.
The problem isn't that we're running out of gas (yet), but merely that
there may be a few months where supply can't keep up with consumption
(I refuse to say 'demand'), causing gas pipeline pressure to drop, and
some pipelines to be temporarily shut. Two factors make gas production
more volatile than oil production -- (1) gas wells deplete much faster
than oil wells (production usually drops after a few years), which
requires constant new drilling, and so the enduser is more exposed to the
'noisy' process of exploration (some wells fail to hit gas), and (2)
gas is harder to transport long distances than oil, which makes it
harder for local supply variation to be damped out. Great. Real great.
Until now, we have had to endure the spectacle of stupid Good Americans
and Good Britons going along with an horrific unprovoked attack on a
poor, starved, defenseless country halfway around the globe, without
even acknowledging one of the principal motiviations for the attack
-- the large remaining oil and gas reserves in Iraq, Saudi, and Iran.
An actual shortage in gas may regrow the American appetite for slaughter,
now temporarily dulled by a relatively small number of Western casualties
(and the inconvenient fact that we're losing). If Americans and Britons
can be whipped up into a frenzy with a few speeches and cheesy powerpoint
slides about a fake weapons programs, I fear what their little minds
will conclude when they get their first sniff of a real threat to their
lifestyle. Even though I've said previously that an energy shock might
be a good thing to jar people into realizing the seriousness of the
problem, I've changed my mind! Now I'm hoping for a real mild winter,
which will allow antiwar sentiment to continue to grow.
[Nov21'05] "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his
government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility
under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible
to him." -- Principle IV of the Nuremberg Tribunal.
[Nov27'05] Over 2 trillion dollars trades in the currency markets each
day. That's like 3 or 4 thousand times as much as the Iraq war costs per
day. You don't want to get these guys upset because they could buy your
state and the states of both your parents overnight if necessary.
[Nov29'05] The El Salvador option for Iraq, calmly announced publicly
more than a year ago by Negroponte, an expert in Central American death
squads from the 1980's, is now in full swing. Allawi, the US-handpicked
candidate in the upcoming elections said this week that things are
as bad or worse than they were under Saddam. As in El Salvador,
it's time to drill holes in people's heads, tear out their tongues,
randomly shoot up civilian cars for profit, terror, and fun, etc etc,
all for democracy. Things have gotten so bad, they had to 'suicide'
the military ethicist, Westhusing, who had ethical problems with the
operations of the for-profit mercenaries. Christian Miller (Christian,
eh?) in the LA Times reported Sunday without comment that Westhusing's
'suicide' just happened to be 'observed' by two USIS contractors
(I had to search on the internet to find out that USIS stands for US
Investigations Service), one of whom reported that he had picked up
the 'suicide' gun and put it on the bed, 'so no one would get hurt'.
Suuure, Christian. With all the talk about 'phased withdrawal',
you would almost think that the US was going to start withdrawing.
I don't think there is the slightest chance of cutting and running from
all that oil. The air war against the Sunnis will be escalated and the
US will retreat to their bases around the oil patches and the pipeline
(e.g., the currently unused one to Israel). And as conservative
Scott Ritter eloquently says, it is all of our faults. Democrats,
Republicans, rednecks, and soccer moms -- all of the American people
-- approved of this war then, and today agree to allow it to continue,
death squads and drilling holes in people's heads included (besides, it is
Iraqis doing it to each other, so not our fault -- just like El Salvador).
It will continue for years, even without another synthetic terror event.
We may even be able to expand the war to Syria or Iran through the US
first use of nuclear weapons. The US first use of nuclear weapons will
be approved by both the rednecks as well as the soccer moms as crucial
to the defense of our 'boys'.
[Dec12,'05]
As industrial civilization of the 21st century continues
to operate for the next three to five decades -- even assuming growth
reaches a plateau sometime soon -- its greatly increased extractive
power (compared to its early years) will eventually strip most of the
fossil fuel, metals, soil, water, fish, and eventually vegetation of
our planet down to a barren condition worse than what was previously
required to support much smaller Paleolithic populations. But at that
point, there will be many more people living on the planet than there
were in the Paleolithic. As the late astronomer Fred Hoyle was fond of
saying, high industrial civilization is a one-shot affair: it gets only
one chance on any one planet. If after stripping most of the fossil
fuels, metals, rare earths, soil minerals, and water resources out of
the crust of the planet, we have not yet managed to create a system
capable of *sustainable* high tech in the next three to five decades,
we will likely begin to regress back to sustainable lower tech, using
scavenged metal, building materials, and tools from our all-time high
point. We are getting closer to that high point -- for example, in
food
production. In 1700, 7% of the world's land was being used for
agriculture. in 2000, 40% of land was being used for growing crops or
grazing cattle. We can't get much higher than that, since much of the
remaining 60% of land is too cold, too dry, or under houses, stores,
factories, and streets. The only remaining 'unused' arable land is
in Africa and South America (e.g., Amazon forest). And the existing
land and soil is gradually being degraded (e.g., washed or blown away,
demineralized, salinified, acidified). It may not be possible for high
industrial human civilization to rise up again once we have depleted the
planet in this fashion. For example, once the fossil fuel currently
necessary for large scale steel smelting and building construction is
gone by the end of this century, it may not be possible to resume large
scale metal smelting and concrete pouring. Steel was previously made by
first making charcoal from wood and then using human and animal-powered
bellows to get the charcoal to burn hot enough. It's not practical to
make enough steel for a standard modern steel and concrete building
that way (even given that the trees that were cut down largely for
this purpose by the 19th century have to some extent started to grow
back in the Europe and the US). That's why people used to save nails
(e.g., by burning the wood into which they had been nailed). The final
outcome of our current two century experiment remains to be determined
in the next critical 30 to 50 years of our history, since we will use
in that time the same quantity of resources (coal, oil, natural gas,
uranium, copper, water, soil) as were used in the first 200 years
of industrial civilization. So far, the only true energy resource
replacement has been wood by coal. After that, we have not replaced
anything but merely *added* oil to coal, and then *added* natural gas
and fission to coal+oil. If history is a guide, upcoming global resource
limitations are likely to make the next 50 years an extremely turbulent
time. I'm certainly not looking forward to resource limitations and
hope we can find a high-tech-plus-conservation pathway forward before
things begin to get really tight (and hot and dry).
link
[Dec28,'05]
In talking to people and reading on the internet,
it seems that many breezily dismiss the idea that the Cheney et
al. might use mini-nukes on Iran in the near term (e.g.,
Xymphora).
I'm more convinced by Jorge Hirsch's arguments (e.g.,
here), which
are based on public documents describing renewed development of small
nuclear weapons by the US military as well as official US war policy
revisions on their use. I am less sure than him that there will be an
*immediate* response by Iran and the rest of the world, esp. if the use
of mini-nukes is covert and casualties are low. This may result in the US
'getting away with it' for a year or two. The radioactive fallout from a
small penetrating warhead may be quite small (most of the human radiation
damage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the almost instantaneous
airburst itself, not from the fallout), and might be masked by the effects
of bombing nuclear reactors. I agree that eventially, our 'successful'
use of our mini-nuke 'deterrent' will destablize US/Russia/China
and possibly US/Europe relations. And this will set the stage for a
larger nuclear conflagration. Unfortunately, I think the backlash will
take years to develop, making it more likely to coincide with the first
serious fossil fuel resource limitations, which will likely be a strongly
destabilizing influence on world politics. The level of denial about
resource limitations prevents official media reports (e.g., BBC report
on
"huge"
oil find in Brazil) from *ever* mentioning world or US usage numbers
so that 99.9% of their readers can put things in perspective. Thus, the
current estimates of the total size of the new Brazil find (0.7 Gb, not
all of which can be expected to be recovered over the life of the field)
are *never* compared to yearly world usage (~30 Gb) or yearly US usage
(~7.5 Gb). The reason is, assuming that the whole 0.7 Gb in Brazil was
recovered, it would then be apparent that this new find only amounts to
8.5 days of current world usage. This is "huge"; but, our yearly gulp
of oil is way *more* huge...
link
[Jan03'06] Yesterday, the
BEEB
says that Germany warned Russia that its recent dispute with Ukraine over
natural gas deliveries (which affected EU gas delivery passing through
the Ukraine) could "hurt [Russia's] long-term credibility as an energy
supplier". Yeah right. This was followed by pious statements about why
it was wrong for Russia to demand Orange Revolution free-market Ukraine
to pay free-market prices ($230 per thousand cubic meters) for Russian
gas (it was paying $50 per thousand cubic meters). But rather than
hurting Russia's credibilty I think the dispute massively *reinforced* its
credibility as a long-term energy supplier. Jerome a Paris has
breathless details
about the complexities of bribes and corruption involved in the transport
of Russian and Turkmenistan gas through the Ukraine, but with a studied
disregard for the outright shortages that are soon likely to occur.
I think I would have some respect for the source that heats and powers
my home. The Russian slowdown (which the Ukraine passed on to Europe)
precariously dropped pressure in eastern EU pipelines for a few days.
Meanwhile, natural gas production from the west end of Europe (the North
Sea) has been declining as rapidly as North Sea oil (oil production
is going down 10% per year -- ouch, I mean, brrrrrr...). Warn away,
EU guys.
[Jan06,'06]
Newspeak
from Al-Jazeera: "The shootout ... began after the peacekeepers opened
fire on the fugitive [Serb Dragomir Abazovic -- killing him]. Rada
Abazovic [his wife], 46, died from the loss of blood after being shot in
the stomach". Their 12 year old son was also shot. Hmmm. Getting killed
and having your wife shot in the stomach in your home when *peacekeepers*
open fire? Sounds like a new horrible reality show: 'When peacekeepers
attack'. Meanwhile, here at home, the San Diego Union tribune reported
yesterday that the brand new aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan along with
a flotilla of cruisers and destroyers set off on a mission to somewhere
(they won't say) for six months, but the implication was somewhere in
the Mideast. The writer actually said that the carrier was so new that
it still had that "new carrier smell". Sounds ominously like our latest
death star could be heading off to kill yet more dark skinned low market
value people who are sitting on 'our' oil.
link
[Jan07'06] "Prime Minister Sharon's sudden absence leaves no major
leaders in the nation's political center" -- Rafael D. Frankel. Sheesh.
It's hard to imagine what the right must look like -- and how far things
have fallen -- when *Sharon* is the "center". This reminds me of the
days when Yeltsin was "left" as opposed to his "rightist" opponents.
I suppose since Sharon only killed about 20,000 civilians when he invaded
south Lebanon in 1978 and since we have killed about 100,000 civilians
in Iraq that he must also be "left" of Bush...
[Jan17,'06]
The on and off again war-on-Iran propaganda now seems to be
on a sustained upslope (see CNN, Reuters, the Senate, etc). When was the
last time anybody mentioned North Korea or bin Laden? Although, it might
just be some kind of huge military 'exercise', the new aircraft carrier
Reagan left San Diego harbor last week, and there have been scattered
reports that every available ship/troop/etc is on the road to somewhere,
probably the mideast. The antiwar movement (sometimes it seems like all
15 of us...) is silent, or squabbling (i.e., the 9 from UFPJ vs. the 6
from ANSWER) -- exactly at this strategic turning point. But the generic
nightly CNN/Fox scary-boys-and-girls pings won't be enough on their own
to allow a launch. There will have to be some kind of opinion-focusing
yellowcake or aluminum tubes 'discovery', or an actual terror stunt
in the US. If there is a stunt, it wouldn't have to be nearly as big
as 9-11 because people are now primed. Something like the British
tube bombs would be plenty. People will be even more on edge if the
discovery/event is preceded by some mini economic shock like a sudden,
temporary fall of the dollar, or rumors of an upcoming GM bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, the latest year-by-year CO2 increase from Mauna Loa seems
to have taken a huge jump in the last several years -- to almost twice
the 1970-2000 average yearly increment. This may reflect some positive
feedback processes starting to kick in. For example, global warming melts
permafrost, decreasing albedo, which increases sunlight energy absorption,
which then leads to more warming-inducing CO2 release as formerly frozen
ground starts to biodecay. Also, it has recently been discovered
that plants release methane -- a greenhouse gas that is an order of
magnitude more effective than CO2. The increases in global temperature
and CO2 increase plant growth in some areas, which increases methane,
which increases heating, and so on (at least methane seems have a short
half-life -- around a decade -- in the atmosphere, much shorter than that
of CO2). But don't bother about that people, it's just a little fever --
look over here instead, we've got some cool Muslim ugga-bugga...
link
[Jan19,'06]
Did I predict that one, or what :-} As if on cue, Osama
sends us another tape from beyond the grave. Despite all my links to
warnings about a possible nuking of Iran, I was secretly hoping that I
was just being a typical liberal doomsayer, and that everything would
work out, and that it wouldn't actually happen. But day after day,
seeing the propaganda gears clogging along -- a little Condi here, a
little Europe there, CNN all day every day, and now an Osama tape --
it makes me scratch my head and think, they really might just do it.
I had the same reaction to the early buildup to the Iraq war. In early
the spring of 2002, when it first started to hit the airwaves, I felt:
this is crazy, telegraphing their aims so soon -- they couldn't possibly
actually invade Iraq because the obvious eventual outcome would be a giant
way-too-big-to-police 'occupied territories' and this would be known in
advance even by the most incompetent military planner (e.g., myself).
But the gears ground on and on until the Iraq invasion was inevitable
and unstoppable. The same thing is seems to be happening again. It was
pretty clear to me this summer that the public and the materiel did not
seem well enough prepared (despite the early Hersh and Ritter warnings).
But now conditions sure looks a lot like July or August 2002 -- when I
first got the dull realization that the second Iraq war was unstoppable
(see above). The worst part is, even though I have criticized the antiwar
movement for squabbling and not being proactive enough, I really don't
have the *faintest* idea of what can be done to stop this next one. I try
to visualize a gigantic demonstration too large to ignore, or a broad work
stoppage too large to ignore -- but I can't. All I can see is McCain,
Hillary, Feinstein, and Lieberman lining up behind the chimp -- again.
Their pre-election jokeying has them all trying to outflank Bush on
the right. I'm not sure what that means (nuking illegals??). And
this is before anything has even happened.
link
[Jan,25'06] In Iraq, US military fuel use has doubled to about 20 gallons
of fuel per US soldier per day -- that is about one barrel of oil's worth
of light fuel per soldier per day. Since the 20 gallons of gasoline
that can be extracted from one barrel of oil is approximately equal
to one year of very hard labor by a human (see calculation
here),
one positive aspect of peak oil is that it will eventually
be much harder to occupy other countries halfway around
the globe when one has to do it 'by hand'. I think that's
a good thing. The latest data show that 2005 was the
warmest
year ever recorded with modern instruments, and likely the warmest
in 10,000 years. The next warmest years on record were 1998 (an El
Nino year), 2002, 2003, and 2004 (not like there's a pattern there
or anything). 2005 was *not* an El Nino year (which are warmer than
average). On our current track, by 2100, we may experience our warmest
year in 1 million years. It would probably a bad idea to shoot for the
warmest year in 300 million years. That year probably occurred during
the Permian extinction, when life on Earth was almost wiped out (95%
of all species lost). Unfortunately, those temperatures are within the
reach of current climate models.
[Feb05,'06]
The
report that Kuwait only has
about 50 Gb of oil reserves instead of about 100 Gb doesn't seem to have
made a splash (and of course, it was retracted/disinfo'd the next day).
That's a 5% reduction in the entire world's remaining reserves (total
of about 1000 Gb remaining, according to sane estimates). Almost two
years of current world usage disappeared overnight! This reduction
is an order of magnitude bigger than the largest oil field discovered
in the last decade. The reserves estimates of many mideast countries
were doubled in the 1980's during the oil price crash. Perhaps other
mideast countries will now be 'undoubled', too. Even undoubled, though,
the majority of the remaining oil is in the mideast. The sickeningly
mechanical anti-Muslim anti-Iran propaganda grinds along, and now
a majority of glassy-eyed US-ians have swallowed it. They don't
particularly like the Iraq war, but have done nothing to stop it, or
its $100 billion/year drain on their tax dollars. And after a few short
months of propaganda -- even before the cartoon (which functioned to get
Europe in line with the US) -- 57% are ready to support another war on
top of the ongoing Iraq war! It's stupefying. The operation to build
permanent bases around all the Fertile Crescent oil after destroying and
destabilizing the civilizations of its current owners is straightforwardly
visible to anyone who looks. Given the relatively small amount of total
oil left at our current world burn rate, though, you'd think the European
poodles would by now have developed a little more healthy self-preserving
fear of the US, given that EU-ians use almost 5 times as much oil as
they produce. Nevertheless, it seems they have decided to go along,
once again. And Russia and China, too. The big difference between
Europe and Russia is that the Russians still have a lot of oil left.
Russian production plummetted (was almost halved) in the 1990's after
their crash, but has since come back up (though it is expected that they
will soon peak for real without getting all the way back up to their
highest numbers late in the 1980's). But their current production is
huge -- comparable to Saudi and the US (US, Saudi, and Russia are the
top 3 producers, in that order) -- and their consumption is only 1/8
that of the US; they are producing 3 times as much oil as they use while
we are producing less than 1/2 as much oil as we use. And the Russian
reserves are much larger than ours (we peaked in 1970). Perhaps the
Russians think they can thus afford to let the US-ians horde/occupy the
mideast oil because they are hoping that the continued guerrilla war in
our huge occupied territory might sap the strength of the our empire.
On the other hand, the Chinese -- who have also acquiesced to the US
on Iran -- have a lot more to lose. They are producing slightly less
oil than they use (which is about 1/4 as much as we use, despite their
much larger population). They make up the difference by buying some of
their imports from Iran. Bombing Iran would cut them off and it would
force them to turn to their other suppliers. Chinese oil production
has already peaked, and since 1996, their imports have been steadily
increasing; thus, the effects of this could be seriously destabilizing
a few years down the line. Perhaps China feels now that they can't rock
the boat because of dollar and trade relations with the US. People have
argued that the US can't attack Iran because it's better defended, has
investment relations with Russia and China, and because commodity market
insiders would have bid up oil over $100 by now if it was actually going
to happen. I don't find any of those reasons completely convincing,
given (1) who is currently in charge, (2) the changes in US policy
on the first use of mini-nukes that were publically announced last
year, and (3) the guaranteed 95% approval ratings for an attack on
Iran if there were to be (another) synthetic terror event.
link
[Feb18'06] I admit that an attack on Iran now seem illogical, even if
it was just an attempt to seize their oil fields (which all reside in
a small southwestern strip of Iran -- continuous with the oil patch in
Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi). But I have to temper these rational thoughts
with an equally objective analysis of recent history. Before Iraq, my
feeling was that an invasion would surely work (no Iraqi air defenses,
no Iraqi WMDs, and a weakened, starved country sanctioned and bombed
for a decade), but the prospect of a giant 'occupied territories'
seemed daunting. I was right on the first point, but *wrong* on
the second! Occupying Iraq has been difficult; but it has actually
'worked'! The number of US deaths is small, and the construction of giant
permanent military bases is continuing at full speed. Those bases will
be impregnable, even if the rest of the country falls completely apart.
Having chaos in the streets, little electricity, and a
ten-tupling of formerly subsidized oil prices will have very
little effect on the giant base/fortresses; in fact, it will
probably make them less of an issue because people are desperately
busy dealing with daily gasoline and house raids (see
Riverbend's
recent report). Despite the 2K US casualties, by far the most likely
outcome of a tour in Iraq is still to come home in one piece (perhaps 1
million soliders have rotated through Iraq). Well at least physically --
your mind does get permanently screwed up when you slaughter and torture
other humans, and walk around streets where everyone hates you and many
are trying to kill you. But despite the mental toll, I would *not*
say that the military in Iraq is 'broken'; the great majority of it --
and the great majority of its hi-tech equipment -- is working just fine.
An attack on Iran is quite plausible, as disastrous as the *eventual*
outcome might be. I think the lunatics in charge are actively planning
to do it, and might actually carry out those plans. 80% of the proles
*already* think Iran is planning to nuke us (bless their little pea
brains) -- and that's *before* the next Reichstag fire. After it,
you'll be lucky to find a few percent against an attack (when public
opposition might end you up in detention if the other 98% hears you).
The proles will then approve escalation to a nuclear strike on Iran in
order to 'defend' our troops from an Iranian counter-attack prompted by
a US/Israeli first strike. They will quickly forget the little problem
of who bombed first. But the rest of the world may not allow the use of
nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state to pass again. If we turn into
a pariah state, it will be our fault.
[Feb23'06] Who benefits from the Samarra shrine bombing? Over there,
it will temporarily take Iraqi focus off of US occupation troops.
Back here, it will help whip up yet more anti-Arab sentiment, and
this will help sell a possible attack on Iran (US-ians don't know the
difference between Arabs and Persians). Ayatollah Khameni in Iran urged
said there were plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other
properties respected by the Sunni. Any measure to contribute to that
direction is helping the enemies of Islam and is forbidden by sharia."
He blamed the intelligence services of the US and Israel for being
behind the bombs in Samarra. By contrast, Bahraini Shiite Islamic
societies blamed the Takfeereah, the 'Excommunicators'. The Dubai port
management stunt can be seen in a similar light with respect to domestic
opinion. It was approved by a brand new intelligence agency
CARC,
overseen by John "Death-Squad" Negroponte. Noam Chomsky has a point
when he says that the US has actually been getting a more civilized in
the last 50 years. For example, compare our Iraq slaughter, even at
1/4 of a million people, to our Vietnam slaughter, at 3-4 million people
(Vietnam is one holocaust that it is OK to deny, since most people don't
even remember we did it...). I am worried that all this progress is
about to be reversed as energy gets tight. And compared to a day in
Africa, Iraq is a sideshow -- there are one 9-11's worth of casualties
*every day* in Eastern Congo.
[Feb26'06] Some commentators (e.g., Rahul Mahajan, Xymphora) think the
US is just bluffing on Iran. Hopefully, they are correct.
[Mar02'06] Robert Fisk in an interview
here
questions where all the funding and organization of death squads comes
from. He, too, thinks the US cannot attack Iran now. As I said last
week, I hope that's right.
[Mar05'06] "Iraq, as you and me once knew it, is lost. What's left of it,
I don't want." -- AnaRki13 to an Iraqi friend. Scientists, engineers,
doctors, architects, writers, poets, and educated people are getting out
of Iraq as fast as they can, especially if they are Sunni. By contrast,
the number of educated people that have left the US so far has amounted
to only a trickle. Hopefully, there will not come a time when it will
no longer be safe to stay and try to change things. This depends on
the reaction of the American people. If people lose their fear of
the government and begin to ignore its constant braying to be afraid,
'Torture Boy' Gonzales and the rest will be history; if people go along,
Gonzales will have an army of collaborators/torturers ready to electrify
anyone who sticks out. It's our choice: "Your silence will not protect
you!" -- Audre Lorde.
[Mar08'06] Our newest aircraft
carrier, the Ronald Reagan has been
deployed
to the Persian Gulf (I noted above when it left San Diego, destination
unknown at the time), upgraded Vietnam era AC-130 gunships are
returning
to 'Iraq' (last time they were there
was for the Fallujah2 massacre), a
NATO
general has suggested they could help with air strikes against Iran,
George Ure reports in the March 8 urbansuvival.com that there is a broad
shortage of many types of ammunition because the military has recently
been buying so much of it. This is consistent with an upcoming attack on
Iran, but perhaps not yet definitive. The military equipment and bullets
could be headed for yet more bloodshed in Iraq. Hopefully, the fact that
an attack on Iran looks *much* more destabilizing than the attack on Iraq
looked back in early 2003 just before it was carried out will sway the
saner elements of the current loonies in control. However, Cheney is
now polling lower than OJ, and Bush is at his lowest ever (below 40%),
so things are getting pretty desperate. This is disturbingly parallel
to the time that Nixon -- near his lowest approval ratings -- bombed
Cambodia toward the desperate end of the Vietnam war, killing hundreds
of thousands of additional humans. Also, remember that Clinton bombed
Serbia right the in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal.
[Mar10'06] Dubai and the UAE -- the most subservient-to-the-US country
in the area -- would be a major staging ground for a US take-over of
the Staits of Hormuz during possibly nuclear warhead bombing raids
on Iran. Could the utterly flaccid Democrat wussies not know this,
and have temporarily unintentionally slowed down an Iran attack by
offending one of our strategic 'partners' with cheap anti-Arab rhetoric?
Or perhaps, this was actually an antiwar move? It's hard for me to think
that the second one is true, given that all the major Democrats (e.g.,
the execrable Hillary) have been trying to out-hawk Dubya. I think
they are so weak and cowardly, the only thing they feel safe doing is
cheap race baiting. Just today, Dubai has 'officially withdrawn' from
the ports deal. I think it's more likely what is actually happening is
that the richies (here and there) will just find a way to 're-brand' the
deal, with maybe some concessions by the US to calm UAE tempers (e.g.,
to avoid having UAE withdraw billions in Boeing and military purchases)
and to keep good military staging relations, and the proles will be none
the wiser (though of course hating Arabs a little more).
[Mar20'06] The lapdog press has been
ever so slightly exercised over an
incident
where US soldiers stormed into a home nearby after someone killed a
US soldier with a roadside bomb and shot 4 women, 5 babies, and some
men in the head (15 people total killed), and then blew up their
house and cars and killed the farm animals. War crime? Sure!
Good support-our-troops moms dislike such up-close-and personal
badness where male US teengers shoot defenseless women and children
in the head in their own home and then burn it down in the process
of invading those people's country halfway around the globe. But is
this atrocity really worse than some other male teenager dropping
computer-controlled flesh-tearing anti-personnel weapons on houses in
the village next door and 'accidentally' killing babies there without
seeing who he killed and maimed? Or how about killing other male Iraqi
teenagers, who are 'obviously' less morally upstanding than babies of
either sex? (because they are terrorists by definition). I find the
idea of 'war crimes' absolutely ludicrous. There is no 'legal' way to
fight a war. 'Support our troops' means support baby-killers, period.
War includes baby-killing. Killing babies for oil. You can't build
military bases around their oil without killing quite a few babies.
Right now, the price of oil is not that bad (still only about 70% of the
1970's oil embargo peak), and so soccer moms and other Good Americans
would rather not have our teenagers killing babies 'up-close-and-personal'
like this for oil (or revenge). But I bet they would publically change
their tune if oil went to $200 a barrel -- though of course, even then,
they would *only* be in favor of up-close-and-personal baby-killing if
it was done 'legally'...
[Mar25'06] In thinking about a possible attack on Iran, I go back to
the buildup for the two previous attacks on Iraq. In both cases, the
pre-war buildup was leisurely and obvious as materiel and people were
shipped overseas. In the second war on Iraq, most of this stuff was
being shipped to huge mideast bases that were being upgraded outside of
the ones we were evacuating in Saudi Arabia. For the past 2 years, the
US has been building huge permanent bases in Iraq (see Chalmers Johnson,
Sorrows of Empire). Given just this fact, it seems quite possible that
an attack on Iran might come this year -- despite all the bad that might
come of it and the shear idiocy of it. It was obvious before the Iraq
war to me and many other people that there would be problems with us
having a huge 'occupied territories'. But the problems have not stopped
the giant airbase building. Aside from enormous street demonstrations
of the kind that would actually stop a subtantial amount of our daily
work, it is hard to see what popular action could possibly stop this.
It would have to stop the base building. This is a slow, expensive,
continuous construction of the outposts of empire. And these bases
are hardly mentioned, even by the left. Also, perhaps 60% of the US
population already, stupefyingly supports an attack on Iran. Not a
reason not to try to stop it, though.
[Mar28'06] Ruppert now says since the Iranian oil bourse has been
postponed that the war on Iran is off because the dollar is now safe.
Ridiculous. I don't think the Iranian oil bourse was that big a thing,
so it being postponed doesn't seem like that big of a thing either.
And the dollar sure doesn't look that safe to me when I see the richies
getting nervous (they're not nervous about the Iranian bourse). Finally,
the admin is in a pretty desperate place with the polls. They could do
something (more) rash.
[Apr01'06] Jorge Hirsch has another well-documented
article
suggesting that a war on Iran is imminent.
[Apr04'06] Boy, it sure was depressing to read the
child-like
exchanges over at the oildrum, even including Stuart Staniford,
who initiated the thread by posting a link to the Sean Rayment article
in the Telegraph that I linked below (which could be a real leak or
just disinfo). The ethnocentricity of it all! (to use a word that now
sounds quaint). And this from people who have put ethnocentricity and
ethnic identity aside in their study of science. The child-like lack
of emphathy demonstrated by many of the posters is frightening. The bad
thing about the internet is that it allows one to pick and choose and find
things to one's taste, without having to grope through a newspaper that
shades everything a certain way, looking for occasional rays of light
that accidentally got through the editorial filter. But in using the
internet, one can forget what other horrible incommensurable beliefs
reside together with sophistication. It reminds me of 18th century
British literary sophistication in the context of people living over open
septic tanks in their basements -- and then their beliefs at the time that
it was best to close the windows tight at night to avoid 'night miasmas'.
The result was that many suffocated from hydrogen sulfide produced by the
anaerobic bacterial breakdown of their own sh*t downstairs. The horror
of it all. I'm trying to figuring out how the brain works while Cheney
is plotting to nuke Iran, or make a better surveillance and attack drone,
if we ever did really figure out how the brain works.
[Apr11'06] What a disinfo/leakfest! It's pretty hard to tell what's
happening. Here are several scenarios: (1) conservative high-level
military people leak (again) to Hersh to try to slow/stop nuking of Iran,
(2) the Hersh leaks are actually just disinfo to scare Iran, (3) the
administration crazies are planning to bomb Iranian sites and cities
with conventional bombs (Serbia-style, like Clinton did during Monica),
(4) the leaks are a test release to introduce the idea of nuking Iran to
the American sheep, (5) the crazies actually plan to use bunker-busting
nuclear bombs on Iran, with the expectation that this might cause an
attack on US troop concentrations in Iraq, which would then provide the
rationale for the US to drop a nuclear bomb on several major Iranian
cities 'to quickly end the war' we just started, Hiroshima-style,
(6) the US decides to start withdrawing from Iraq and the permanent
military bases it is currently constructing. These options are not
mutually exclusive. The fact that oil is drifing upward suggests that
the genius-of-the-market rats are starting to sniff rising seawater.
I think (6) is the most unlikely, despite being the best option for a
peaceful future (and one supported by a majority of the population of
the US, UK, and Europe). On the positive side, Tradesports contacts
on bombing Iran have dropped to about 25 cents on the dollar, and
the motley collection of Rahul Mahajan, Xymphora, Michael Ruppert and
'use-Neem-because-all-left-blogs-are-CIA' Fintan Dunne agree that the US
cannot bomb Iran because it is too tied down in Iraq. Okie-dokey.
[Apr16'06] I made some updates to my Peak Oil
presentation.
[Apr19'06] Oil just went above $74 this afternoon. Meanwhile, the
stranded headline in Forbes today reads: "Oil prices ease in Asian
trade but still near 71 USD". No doubt, the headline tomorrow will be
"Oil eases again but still near $74". At this rate, oil could 'ease'
its way all to way to $100. :-{
[Apr30'06] The 20 million barrels a day of oil used in the
US is now worth $1.44 billion dollars a day (incidentally,
about the same as the amount of dollars created every day for
the last decade according according to M3). Sure, I found the
almost half-a-billion-dollar going away present given to this
pig
of a human quite excessive, but that was only 1/3 of a day of US oil
usage. It's going to take a long time for people to realize that,
sadly, boiling some of the fat off of these pigs -- as satisfying as
that might be -- won't save us from oil depletion. It is surprising
to see how resistant people are on both the left and the right to the
simple fact that oil-plus-natural-gas is going to peak in a just few
years no matter how many new wells are drilled. There was a similar
resistance to understanding geological reality in the US just before oil
peaked in the lower 48 in 1970. A massive drilling program put in place
after that did not arrest the decline; and neither did the discovery of
Alaskan oil. It took a full decade before US oil people believed Hubbert;
and even then, he never got his due for correctly predicting the peak
before it happened. The prices are high now in large part because world
demand is finally bumping up against absolute production constraints.
Time to begin negotiating our lifestyle. Drive less -- much less --
in one smaller car. People, however, won't be able to understand or
believe what's actually happening. Instead they will get extra mad at
politicians and corporations and Mr. Pig, who will be forced to spend even
more money on advertising. All part of the genius of the market. So,
what the hey, don't mention the peak oil -- it's all just a conspiracy
theory. Don't try to set up incentives for alternative energy since
it would only distort the genius of the market, which runs on trying
to access and create subconscious urges to buy. And don't you know,
the way you *feel* about oil and your SUV is more important than stupid
little things like daily wellhead production rates...
[May01'06] "Everything is tending to catastrophe and collapse. I am
interested, geared up, and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like
this?" -- Winston Churchill to his wife at the beginning of World War I.
Just to be clear, I would *much* prefer a world where there was more
oil *and* we had developed a way to use it without putting much CO2 into
the atmosphere.
[May02'06] Riverbend
suggests
that the US can't attack Iran because of the 150,000 US troops/hostages in
an Iraq essentially now controlled by Iran. She has a point. But there
is a fly in this ointment. It is not completely out of the question
that the lunatics in charge here actually conceive of the threat of US
hostages as *part of the plan*. It would galvanize the US sheep and
allow a more standard Vietnam-like scorched-earth response, or even the
use of small nuclear weapons on cities in Iraq and Iran -- anything to
save our 'boys'. It's a sad day for the US when the people most in a
position to stop such a thing are generals.
[May14'06] The Iran propaganda has been continuous, but
it doesn't seem to be growing, giving me the feeling of a
holding pattern. Rawstory did have a somewhat ominous
report
about carrier movements to the Persian gulf. The Bush
admin seems a little weakened. But this
story by
William Thomas, who also does chem trails it should be noted, nevertheless
gave me the creeps. It certainly wouldn't take much of an 'incident'
to drag US-ians and somewhat reluctant generals into a war.
[May18'06] Ethanol only accounts for
*1/10* of Brazil's energy liquids (
ref).
Brazil is energy self-sufficient not because of ethanol but because it
increased domestic oil and gas liquids production. 40% of the energy
in ethanol (generated by any process) is lost in the distilling process
alone (you don't want to put water into your gas tank). After adding the
energy costs of planting, watering, fertilizing, harvesting, crushing,
fermenting, and straining, not much net energy is left -- maybe 1/5 of the
total energy invested at best -- but only if you consider brewers grains
(fermentation leftovers) as part of the energy output. Ethanol is almost
a total subsidy scam. Not to mention that global grain stocks are at
their
lowest
level in 30 years (which probably explains why Brazilian
farmers are now turning away from ethanol to food sugar because
the price of food has gone up faster). Global grain consumption
(which increases steadily) has overtaken production
overtaken
production (which is a little more choppy) with the balance coming
from grain stocks, which are falling. So oil it still is. Westexas on
theoildrum.com thinks that the Saudis only have 80 Gb left, not the 260
Gb they said they have had (unchanged) since the oil price crash in the
early 80's (when they suddenly doubled their 'reserves'). The world
uses about 30 Gb a year. The conventional oil remaining is usually
stated to be about 1000 Gb. However, Kuwait recently said they had
only 50 Gb, not 100 Gb left. If Westexas is right, then the current
world conventional total is more like 770 Gb. Other OPEC countries
also inflated their reserves the same time the Saudis did. So the
real conventional oil reserves are probably something more like 650 Gb.
That's about 21 years at the current rate. So we're in the regular oil
until 2027. Economists are warning of a 'bubble' in the oil and other
commodity markets. I guess this would be like the housing bubble, except
that when the bubble pops, yours and everybody else's house disappears
so completely that even the bankers can't find them...
[May23'06] The latest disinfo tape from the probably-dead-in-Dec-2001 bin
Laden is kewl. By attacking the Moussaoui verdict, it tries to add street
cred to the original fatty, nose-too-short 2001 admission-of-guilt tape.
Previous to that fake, the real OBL, looking weak in his last tape,
said he had nothing to do with 9/11. The current tape, of course, adds
another 'admission of guilt'. A fine piece of work, whoever did it.
Since he's almost certainly dead, Jim, this cheap-to-produce Orwellian
nonsense could go on for decades. I have no idea why Robert Fisk acts
like he's still alive.
[May24'06] What's with Palast's bizarro, clueless
oil
article?! It's 'not even wrong'! I saw him talk live in SD a few
years back and he did creep me out a little, even then.
[Jul03'06] Now that the occupation of Gaza is 'over', our creepy 'ally'
bombs a Gaza power station (supplying 65% of Gaza's power) built by an
American company because of one kidnapped soldier using weapons paid
for by American taxpayers. A $50 million repair of the power station
will now be paid for by the same American taxpayers that paid for the
weapons used to destroy it. But it's OK to bomb civilian power stations
in collective punishment and storm hospitals (after all, the US does
it) to force the release of a single occupation soldier because the
Palestinians are just untermenschen and 'cockroaches' (haven't I heard
this all somewhere before?) and they hate our 'freedoms' (which seem to be
expressed to them mainly using F-16's). So far, no major 'terror' stunts
aside from the low budget 'bin Laden' tape productions; and the attack
on Iran has not yet happened, perhaps because of internal resistance
in the military (certainly there has been no resistance from US-ians).
Perhaps the cheapo tapes will be enough to keep the feeble US-ian mind
distracted enough for the Republicans to keep control during the midterm
elections (what cheap drunks!). But unfortunately, an election win can't
be counted on to forestall an eventual attack on Iran after that (but
maybe it would allow some people to sell their houses first :-} ).
[Jul13'06] Despite no intellectual surprise, I am still emotionally
surprised to see not even a trace of US press comment about the
'normality' and 'morality' of bombing airports, bridges, power plants
(plural), television stations, public buildings, major highways, and
families in Lebanon in response to a capture of several soldiers.
Of course, we do it in Iraq, and it's 'OK' and 'unremarkable'
there. About the only people that seem to be paying attention here
(and in the UK) are the damn oil traders. Sheesh, even
Fox
News got shot at! It's darkly hilarious to see the hunkered down Fox
News idiots stammering out their groveling apologies to the Israelis who
were shooting at them for reporting from the war zone: "it's difficult
to ascertain who fired that shot", "OK, it's difficult to tell who's
firing at us", "If it was Israeli gunfire it's difficult for us to
say", just after explaining that the area was under Israeli control,
and that Israel had "cut Gaza in half" and that their tanks were just
down the street and their drones overhead. Then after the reporters got
safely away, clearly terrified by the prospect of being hit by a missile
from one of the drones overhead, they then explained that their clearly
marked press vehicle and talking head video setup was fired on because
was that "there is some concern on the Israeli side that our camera was
a weapon". Weapon indeed. Finally, don't miss the priceless closing
exchange between the 3 boobs back in the studio where the guy on the
right says "But I just don't understand -- this is press, that's the
color, that's international". The hair guy then explains "Bad guys
shoot at *anything*". Then the 'I just don't understand' guy says,
"But it's Israel". Luckily, Israel is not bad by definition.
[Jul13'06] Here is quote from Martin van Creveld, professor of military
at Hebrew University in Jerusalem: "We possess several hundred atomic
warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions,
perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air
force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog,
too dangerous to bother.' I consider it all hopeless at this point. We
shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all
possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest
in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to
take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen
before Israel goes under." (reported by David Hirst in the Observer Sep
21, 2003)
[Jul14'06] The current (noon) Google News headline typo says it all:
"Lebanon steps up bombardment of Lebanon". The airport was bombed again
for several hours, rendering it unusable. Power station fuel supplies,
bridges, and main roads have also been bombed for a second day, and
there is a complete naval blockade with a report of Israeli casualties
on a navy warship as a result of an attack by a drone carrying a small
bomb. About 70 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly civilians,
including entire families who had nothing to do with the capture of a
several soldiers by Hezbollah in a border skirmish. Of course, killing
families in Lebanon to affect policy is not terrorism because these
are just untermenschen families. Similarly, deliberately shelling a
beach several months back in Gaza, killing picnicing families cannot,
of course, be considered "an act of war" (after attempts to blame it
on Hamas failed), because again those were untermenschen families.
Hezbollah denied carrying out the Haifa rocket attacks, but not the
others further north.
[Jul15'06] The Israeli military now says the ship was hit by an
Iranian-made missile with the fingerprint of Iran, not a homemade drone.
This will be used to argue for a US attack on Iran. By analogy, I
imagine some people might have begun to think about where the Israeli
munitions and attack jets are made, and even about the fingerprints
of us American taxpayers on the missiles that killed at least 19
untermenschen fleeing the fighting in today in a van, and another 3
when the bridge over the Litani river was bombed (MSNBC report
here). The last major aerial
assault by Israel on Lebanon in 1982 resulted in approximately 20,000
Lebanese civilian casualties -- a total far greater than all officially
annointed terrorist attacks. On a humorous note, Putin's response to
Bush's suggestion that Russia develop a free press and free religion
"like Iraq", was "We certainly would not want to have same kind of
democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly."
[Jul16'06] Robert Fisk's information-filled
article
from the Independent suggests that the Israeli's were surprised
by the Hizbollah responses. Today, it was reported that
8
Canadians on vacation [update: revised to 7] were killed by an Israeli
airstrike. What would Americans think if Canada responded by bombing
homes, bridges, and airports in Seattle because people in Seattle made the
munitions and then also contributed their tax dollars to help purchase
the stuff that killed the Canadians? In current newspeak (e.g., the
disgusting groveling on National Propaganda Radio), the definition of a
'terrorist' is somebody without an air force. You're in deep shit if
you don't have an air force. Wayne Madsen claims that the Israelis have
used chemical munitions (gas) and depleted uranium in southern Lebanon,
and that hundreds of thousands of people have fled. It is expected that
the next wave of aerial attacks will take out telecommunication (phones,
cell phones, television, internet).
[Jul18'06] Bolton explained yesterday in no uncertain terms that killing
civilians with F-16's (about 220 civilians killed in Lebanon so far plus
12 soldiers, none of them Hezbollah) is not terrorism, by definition.
It's not immoral to kill civilians (even Canadian ones!), as long as you
use an F-16 (and as long as the Canadians have Arabic-sounding names).
So, would this mean, for example, that if Lebanon bombed Virginia and
killed a bunch of civilians, it wouldn't be terrorism if the Lebanese
used F-16's, but rather just a "tragic and unfortunate consequence"
of Lebanon putting pressure on the White house? Besides, the stupid
Virginians probably didn't carefully read the leaflets that were dropped
on them telling them how to flee and they took the wrong escape route
and got turkey-shooted, dummies. However, unlike non-Arabic Canadians,
today's Arabic untermenschen have no right to self-defense, period.
This is the transparently racist message uniformly plastered across
the media found from NPR to Fox to the BBC. The internet, however,
still seems to be up in Lebanon (nice design, eh?). I'm afraid I agree
with Paul Craig Roberts who thinks we are being set up for a wider war
in the mideast. Americans are too anesthetized to see what is coming
to get them big time. The only positive spin I can come up with is
that Americans are too out of it to realize that oil (and gasoline)
prices are going up because we are getting close to peak oil production;
instead they will think it is because of the mideast, and so perhaps
they will be slightly less bloodthirsty than usual. Perhaps this will
blunt the expected poll bump-up the Republicans will get from this
latest disaster. It remains stunning to me to see that having 25,000
Americans trapped in Lebanon waiting for a cruise ship (!) to take them
away from US-paid-for Israeli shrapnel somehow implies to Americans back
at home that Republicans are doing a 'better job'! Than what?
[Jul19'06] About 6,000 civilians were killed in Iraq
this *month*. Relative to population, that's like a full
all-the-US-soldiers-that-died-in-Vietnam's worth of people --
in one damn month. Completely out of the news. This is what we
have achieved -- all for a mere third of a trillion US tax dollars.
What an obscenity. Meanwhile 9 US military warships are being
sent
to Lebanon to escort a cruise ship (hopefully not a false flag
setup). The US and UK MSMs continue to yawn as half a million
people have been ethnically cleansed from their homes in Lebanon.
The earnest BBC interviewers try to get carloads of fleeing families
to condemn Hezbollah as the cars careen around craters in bombed
out intersections. It seems quite unlikely that Israel will be
able to defeat Hezbollah without killing half a million people,
and that would be a little too holocaust-y, at least at this stage
of the game. So instead, the only thing they can do is 'just'
wreck their entire society while trying to kill 'only' a thousand
people. The problem is it doesn't look very manly to bomb bridges,
airports, power plants, TV stations, passenger cars, and, uhhh
milk
factories. Milk factories? How positively swashbuckling. I can
see the generals in their control room setting up the target list.
US-ians don't see these images, but the rest of the world does. And so
far, Lebanon has not shown any sign of collapsing into civil war again.
If it manages to hang together under all the bombs, more and more people
may begin to think, "Hath not Arabs eyes? Hath not an Arab hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?" (Shakespeare via
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown)
[Jul19'06] Condi says a cease-fire at this point would be "pointless";
after all, we're only talking about Arab untermenschen getting squished
and burnt alive. And it's "pointless" to worry about that, since they
are low market-value humans.
[Jul25'06] The death toll is up to about 400 Lebanese (they can't
be 'innocent civilians' because all Arab civilians are suspect by
definition -- for the MSM, effectively there is no such thing as an Arab
civilian). Lebanese ambulances are attacked with missiles (a
direct hit
in the middle of the red cross painted on the roof), a UN observer
post/bunker is shelled and then hit with a missile, killing 4 unarmed
people (after 15 or 20 near misses) and then the rescuers are strafed
[Jul26 update: an apology is brazenly demanded from the UN victims],
the US rushes depleted uranium bumber busters and a third of billion
dollars in aviation fuel to Israel (courtesy of the US taxpayer), the
poodle refuses to utter even a tiny peep against the slaughter because
somebody has got him firmly by his naughty bits ("do that smiley sh*t
for the camera, Tony"). Now I am beginning to really worry that the
maniacs may be reinstating their plans to bomb Iran (with the British
meekly in tow, once again). The optimal time from their point of
view would be just before the Fall elections. A glance over at
pollkatz
shows that the June'06 Zarqawi uptick is starting to wear off. Without
another stunt, Bush could be below 30% by November. That would probably
lose them the election.
[Jul26'06] The invasion of southern Lebanon is at the moment going
somewhat
poorly for the Israelis as Hezbollah fights back effectively (despite
massive destruction of Lebanese infrastructure and the ethnic cleansing of
800,000 people from southern Lebanon), prompting the feelers put out today
in the US MSM for the possibility that the US will send 10,000 to 30,000
troops there. However, the matchless US military has become somewhat
bogged down in our own occupied territories of Iraq and Afghanistan --
both extremely weak military opponents that were massively outgunned, but
possessing a small core of determined resourceful people and a hostile
population. Now of course, we could stop using 'precision' weapons
(though I don't think of anti-personnel cluster bombs and phosphorus bombs
as 'precision', but whatever) and just go for outright terror bombing
designed to kill a half a million civilians Dresden- or Tokyo-style,
or even use our nuclear weapons on cities. *That* is why everybody
else wants nuclear weapons. They will be the only true deterrent to a
wounded US empire. It is strange to think that Afghanistan and Iraq --
a starved, defenseless, endlessly bombed mess without any halfway decent
electronic weapons, air defenses, or air force -- could bring the world's
most-powerful-ever military to this point.
[Jul27'06] The Europeans
cower before
US power. Given that people armed with nothing more than rifles and
old artillery shells have the US military occupiers afraid to drive to
the airport, shouldn't you EU guys be showing a little more backbone?
After all, you *do* have decent electronic weapons, air defenses, air
forces, an economy equal to the US, and nukes. How much would it cost
the EU for the it to be a little less cowardly?
[Jul27'06] Jonathan Schell
argues that it's
too late for a US empire because the US military can't really win even
against extremely weak opponents like Iraq and Afghanistan. The basic
argument is that even with all our high tech, people can fight back
against a US invasion and occupation with simple weapons. This is true.
However, this argument assumes that the US (or Israel) won't resort
to nukes to reestablish 'cred' in the future. As Jorge Hirsch has
documented, there have been many public moves in this direction in the
last few years. Such a move seems insane now, but the US is not really
up against the ropes yet. I could easily imagine the US sheeple getting
behind such a move in the context of oil at several hundred dollars a
barrel and a permanently flaky electrical grid. All it would take would
be a second 'new Pearl harbor'. A US attack on a defenseless non-nuclear
state makes about as much sense for stabilizing the electrical grid as
the Iraq war did -- which was started under the cover of a pack of lies,
now unmasked -- but it doesn't matter: the US war in Iraq will go on to
the tune of a $100 billion dollars a year for the foreseeable future.
And contra Jonathan Schell, the US is still there in Iraq, next to
all the oil. The US hasn't lost yet because nobody else has displaced
the US.
[Jul27'06] The heavy losses suffered by the IDF prompted a
heavy
attack on Lebanon today, which included bombing runs against
communications masts in northern Beirut and attacks on three trucks
after AP makes the magnification of the 'after' aerial photo on the
right with the damage smaller than the 'before' photo on the left...).
I don't want my tax dollars paying for this sh*t (but unfortunately,
a slight majority of Americans are currently OK with it).
[Aug07'06] The Lebanese death toll is up to 1000, over 90% civilians,
with many more uncounted bodies still under the rubble. The Israeli
death toll is 75, with the majority made up of invading soldiers.
Lebanon's infrastructure is devastated. A full quarter of the entire
population has been displaced. Why all the media bull crap about
pinpoint accurate strikes? Call a spade a spade: accurate air strikes
have *mainly* killed civilians, terrorized them out of their homes, and
destroyed civilian infrastructure (airports, roads, shops, factories,
apartment buildings, mosques, churches), period. The air strikes
have had relatively little effect on Hezbollah so far, and the Israeli
ground invasion of southern Lebanon seems to have temporarily stalled.
Because of this, Israel has threatened to exterminate even more civilians
and destroy even more infrastructure. War is merely terrorism on a
larger scale using more powerful, more expensive killing equipment.
The mechanical Orwellian nonsense belching out of the MSM sewer every day
would be laughable if a majority of stupid Americans didn't believe it.
The latest Harris poll shows that 50% of Americans now believe Iraq had
'WMDs' before the US invasion of Iraq, up, unbelievably, from 36% last
year. US-ians seem to be ejecting their brains, tunicate-style.
[Aug08'06] The US 'got away' with Vietnam. We killed 2-3 million
civilians during the invasion of South Vietnam halfway around the world.
We did a half a holocaust, and then withdrew, imposed several decade's
of trading sanctions, and paid no reparations for blasting, poisoning,
and scraping the vegetation from 10% their landscape (using phalanxes
of giant D-9 bulldozers). There are no Vietnamese holocaust memorials,
and most people here have forgotten about it (well except for the 70,000
or so US soldiers from that war that have committed suicide afterward --
more than the total number of US soldiers killed during the invasion).
We are now doing the same thing on a somewhat smaller scale in Iraq.
Things will have to get a lot worse before the US military abandons the
14 permanent bases it is building in Iraq, so we will still be there
for a while. The final US-caused Iraqi death toll is likely to be
half a million plus maybe half a million from the previous sanctions
and war for a total of about 1 million people. So this is a form of
progress I suppose (as Chomsky is fond of saying), however slight.
But, these slaughters are likely to come back to haunt us. The rest
of the world may eventually rise up in revolt against our cowardly
attacks on small, weak states, even if a desperate oil-starved US ends
up nuking one of those smaller non-nuke-possessing countries. There are
other non-US countries that the US wouldn't dare attack because those
countries have enough of these weapons to form a credible deterrent.
It seems harsh to talk this way, but that is the way that the
sociopaths
(a small minority of all humans) who run countries and their major
corporations think. Until we normal humans run them out of their nests,
nothing will change.
[Aug10'06] Red alert, whatever. The *real* alert, as we all know from
"The Prisoner", is *Orange* Alert -- someone is trying to escape from
"The Village" and must be stopped. Virtually every previous 'terror
alert' both here and in the UK has been scripted, a mistake (including
a mistaken shooting and a mistaken execution in the tube by undercover
London cops), a completely fake/phony, or an entrapment. Time to keep a
clear mind for when the next serious stunt happens (for those who still
have a mind in operating condition). I watched a few minutes of Blitzer.
The discussion of lethal combinations of innocuous household substances
reminded me of Richard Pryor's comedy routine where he explains how his
face got burnt (from free-basing) "You see, what actually happened was,
I was going into the kitchen to get some cookies and milk, and I ended
up mixing together 2% milk and whole milk, and the whole thing blew
up in my face". I think it's high time that they started taking stool
samples from every traveler, don't you? Who knows what explosive gases
there might be in there? "Alert stewardesses wrestled three agitated
men to the ground after they attempted to simultaneously light farts
generated by drinking baby formula in a plot to bring down the plane".
But the CNN one about accidentally detonating things with your cell
phone... *that* might be useful in my classes.
[Aug12'06] "I am no military expert, but I can state this: Israel's
campaign against Hizbullah has been an abysmal failure, while Israel's
campaign against Lebanese civilians has been a great success. Supporters
of Israel should be very proud." -- As'ad Abukhalil of Angry Arab
News
Angry Arab News
Service. The facts on the ground *are* remarkable. Israeli weapons
are expensive and accurate (with US fingerprints on them) and have killed
over 1,000 people, 90% of whom were civilians. Hezbollah's weapons are
more primitive and less accurate but they have killed 75 people, most
of whom were invading Israeli solders. Yesterday, Israeli jets boldly
attacked some transformers in Tyre, shutting off power to the entire town.
They also asked the US for an emergency delivery of anti-personnel cluster
bombs. Unlike Saddam's imaginary people shredders, these are the
real
thing. Our taxes paid for them. They are going to be used to
kill mostly civilians. How long will the rest of world put up with
Israelis massacring civilians who can't shoot back by remote control in
retaliation for the killing of their invading soldiers? For example,
the IDF occupied Marjayoun (a largely Christian town) yesterday,
ordered its inhabitants to flee, and then had several of their
remote
control drones fire rockets at the fleeing civilian convoy of 300
cars, killing 7, including a red cross worker who was trying to help
people injured by the first missle, and injuring many, all after this
ethnic cleansing was negotiated by UNFIL. I think somebody could at
least have complained about unsportman-like conduct.
[Aug15'06] In a few weeks, using mostly American-made and donated weapons,
the failed Israeli invasion of Lebanon did at least 3 billion dollars
worth of immediate damage to Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and
caused an Exxon-Valdez-sized oil spill on Lebanon's beaches when a power
plant fuel depot was bombed. 3 billion dollars is about how much of our
tax money is given to Israel every year. How about just this year, we
give that 3 billion to Lebanon instead, to fix the damage Israel caused?
I'd feel much better about paying for new houses, new bridges, and beach
cleanups then having my tax dollars go toward yet more people-shredding
anti-personnel weapons. Of course this won't happen. Instead, the
neocon insects are planning to do the same thing to Iran (
Hersh article)
It's really not in our interests, people. We should be investing in
alternative energy rather than a marriage of convenience between the
stealing of Arab oil and unquestioning support for Israeli aggression.
There is not that much time left.
[Aug15'06] The phony liquid-bombers-who-would-sacrifice-their-own-babies
circus has started to unravel. Some of the suspects didn't even
have passports. Postman Patel says, they "make the Miami 7 look like
professionals". Those were the 7 guys who were going to initiate a
"full ground war" against the US a few months ago.
[Aug17'06] JonBenet rises from the grave once again to become a bigger
story today than Lebanon, the fact that a whole 9-11's worth of Iraqis
were killed this month in Iraq (but it's getting better, I know), the
ongoing chaos in Afghanistan (bombing policemen), the anti-NSA wiretap
decision.
[Aug19'06] Olmert today
'suspends
withdrawal plan'. Since the continued acquisition of West bank
Palestinian territory has never stopped, is this really 'news'? (given
that support for the occupation is one big reason why 'they hate us',
it should be). Also today, the Israelis kidnapped Nasser Eddin Al Shaer,
the deputy Palestinian prime minister. Presumably, this kidnapping would
be just cause for Palestinian air force (if it existed) to do $1.5 billion
dollars in damage to the infrastructure of Israel and kill 500 Israeli
civilians (what Israel did to Lebanon -- divided by 2 since there was
only one kidnapping today -- though there were 60 since June 25). In an
equally important development, the confession of the JonBenet killer
was also 'suspended' today after a sucessful run as 'Aruba of the week'.
Calling all third-world conjoined twins.
[Aug23'06] The UN now estimates that Israel did
$15
billion dollars worth of damage to Lebanon's civilian infrastructure,
destroying 35,000 homes and businesses and a quarter of the country's
bridges. That's about 5 years worth of American tax donations to Israel,
not counting the guaranteed loans that are never paid back. Any sane
person looking at the facts on the ground would have to say that Lebanon
is the one 'fighting for its life', having barely repelled an invasion by
a much better armed adversary. All that US-funded mayhem and destruction
did not make the US (or Israel) safer, period. The media has fallen
silent.
[Aug25'06] Iraqi's were
asked
in April 2006 to give three reasons for why the US invaded their country.
76% said is was "to control Iraqi oil"; 41% said it was "to build military
bases"; 32% said it was "to help Israel"; 2% said "to bring democracy
to Iraq". 92% of Iraqis want the US out, up from 74% two years ago.
Great to see democracy in action. Probably, we are just waiting for it
to become completely unanimous, sort of like a jury... beyond a shadow of
a doubt, etc. Meanwhile, 10,000 Iraqis have been killed in Baghdad in
the last 4 months. That's a full 9-11 every month.
[Sep05'06] Filling up that Ford Extinction SUV with corn ethanol would
use enough grain to feed a person for a substantial part of a year.
We are getting close to peak grain. Danger! Will Robinson...
[Sep15'06] Ehud Olmert's
response
to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's questions
about the failure of the attack on Lebanon was "What did you think,
that there would be a war and nothing would happen to our soldiers?
The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is
that a loss?" The failed invasion of Lebanon killed mostly civilians,
destroyed many billions of dollars of civilian infrastructure, and in
the last 72 hours of the war, Israel dropped one million American-made
antipersonnel bomblets on civilian areas (approximately one half of which
did not explode making them into half a million land mines). This states
in no uncertain terms that non-US non-European non-Israeli people are
untermenschen who can be killed and their infrastructure destroyed and
contaminated without political cost. We know from previous experience
that this kind of 'Master race' talk is mentally unhealthy.
[Sep21'06] Torture in Iraq is now much
worse
than under Saddam. Also, a full
9-11's worth of humans (3,300) are now being killed every *month*
in Iraq. To fund these two atrocities, we have funnelled roughly 15
NIH budget's worth of our tax money (almost half a trillion dollars)
into Iraq and the slavering maws of well-connected defense contractors.
Absolutely disgusting -- and I am paying for it.
[Sep23'06] I have great difficulty understanding the large scale
world economic picture. For example, how can a firm
lose
$6 billion dollars over a few days, and then have Citadel and JP
Morgan (giant bank) "[take] over Amaranth's energy positions" on Sept 19
(4 days ago), making huge profits in the process? What on earth does
this mean? Apparently, it was all about failed bets on an expected
seasonal change in the price of natural gas (that's rocket science?).
Often-talked-about US imports from the world represent only 4% of
total world economic activity. The US GDP (11 trillion), however,
is almost 1/4 that of the world (44 trillion). I have read that
perhaps 85% of world's money is in dollars, which is what makes the
dollar the world's reserve currency. But dollars are being created
by the Fed (and the banks it loans to) at a substantial rate (e.g.,
M3 went from 4.5 trillion to 10 trillion from 1996 to 2006 -- graph
here),
which may not be tolerated forever by the world. The world sent
us actual things in return for those created dollars; in fact the
growth of our current account deficit looks like a mirror image of M3!
Of course, other countries inflate their own currencies using similar
methods, so perhaps everything 'cancels out' to some degree. But the
M3/cumulative-current-account-deficit situation sure doesn't seem stable
in the long term.
[Oct01'06] Sometimes, it's worth reviewing the four main intertwined
problems threatening the long-term survival of industrial civilization.
Three involve rapid (in the context of a century), non-equilibrium,
non-sustainable resource rundowns -- in energy, water, metals, -- and
the fourth -- global heating -- is due to the first.
First, oil will peak in a few years
(or might have already) followed by gas, coal, and uranium later this
century. There is currently no practical replacement for our towering
daily fossil energy diet (1000 barrels a second in the case of oil).
No one has come vaguely close to concretely suggesting what a truly
self-sustaining energy supply system for industrial civilization would
look like a hundred years from now. This would be, for example, a
windmill production plant entirely built and powered by other windmills
-- including the energy needed for steel recycling, electronics, copper,
installation, maintenance, decommissioning -- but that also generates
enough additional energy for us to use for other things. In theory,
this should be possible; if not perhaps we can make do with a lot less
energy.
Second, fresh water is being run down
at many times its natural replenishment rate across the entire world
(e.g., the US midwest Ogallala aquifer; Indian aquifers; Californian
and Chinese rivers). Also, mountain snowmelt and glaciers that supply
fresh water to many of the world's major rivers (e.g., in the Himalayas)
are undergoing major modification (less snow, earlier melting, complete
loss of some glaciers).
Third, industrial society relies crucially on
will almost certainly have serious effects on critical infrastructure,
especially since they will all be getting worse simultaneously.
For example, the oil peak (tillage, harvesting), natural gas peak
(fertilizer), water problems (irrigation), and climate change (growing
season) will likely negatively impact food production. We will begin
ramming up against the stops of a finite earth within my lifetime. I hope
we can rise to the occasion.
[Oct23'06] Expat on the oildrum makes an interesting
point that
ethanol is being added to 'all liquids' production numbers. However,
it takes a substantial amount of fossil fuel to make ethanol. Even the
most rosy of estimates for corn ethanol suggest that it takes 3 units of
fossil fuel to make 4 units of ethanol (Kammen et al. Science article).
However, even though this process results in a total excess usable
energy of 1 unit, both the input and output are being counted, so we
get 7 additional units of 'production'. What a joke (on us).
[Oct23'06] Iran. Dreyfuss reports the US has its hands full in Iraq
and needs the support of the Iranian Shi'ites death squads there,
and so therefore doubts the US will attack Iran. Ellsberg calls for
leakers because he thinks an attack is imminent. Debka reports that
the two carriers and third strike group arrived Oct 21 (two days ago),
(others predicted this two weeks ago). I'm guessing there will not be
an attack yet because the strike force doesn't seem big enough to me.
I think there is a small chance that an underpowered attack leading to
the sinking of a US ship could be the motivator for a bigger possibly
nuclear war. But I had already suggested such a thing publically in 2004,
and it hasn't happened yet. A starved defenseless country has fought
us -- with our military budget equal to a full 50% that of the entire
world -- to a standstill. The aftermath of an attack on a country like
Iran with working defenses will be harder. In this light, I can't see
how the US could avoid using nukes if the crazies in our government do
decide to attack.
[Oct28'06] US carriers seem to be
leaving
the Persian Gulf so it looks like there will be no attack before the
election at least. Good news for now.
[Oct29'06] Gwynne Dyer notes that grain reserves have been declining
since 1999 (116 days reserves in 1999 have declined to a predicted low
of 57 days of reserves at the end of this year). This may be due in
part to droughts due to global warming. If this continues for another 7
years, chaotic price fluctuations in basic grains are likely to occur.
The good news is that our crapulous ways in the form of high meat
consumption have a built-in buffer, since it is much more efficient to
eat the grains directly than to feed them to cattle. Another buffer
is the use of arable land for biofuels. Although eating less meat is
good for your health, eating only one kind of vegetable is very bad for
your health. As Jared Diamond and others have pointed out, the origin of
agriculture and densely populated cities -- and the mono vegetable crop
food intake that made both possible -- resulted in a large increase in
malnutrition, and a marked decrease in stature (compared to pre-existing
hunter-gathers), only finally overcome in the 20th century.
[Oct31'06] There are hopeful demonstrations of how to integrate wind
and solar into the existing power grid. The main difficulty with wind
and solar is to engineer rapid ramping ability into non-wind non-solar
sources so the intermittancy can be smoothed out (nuclear is not good
for this purpose), and (2) pumped hydro storage, which to some extent
relieves the need for (1). Sweden, Germany, and Australia are doing
it already. In other news, the 'guarding the oil installations' exercise
planned for Oct 31 in the Persian gulf doesn't look like an attack force.
It could be bait for a 2nd new Pearl Harbor, but I think that is unlikely.
Perhaps just an election publicity stunt with no hostilities. But after
the election, all bets are off. An attack then, esp. if the Repugs lose
one or both chambers seems quite possible. Michael Klare thinks the US
would have attacked Iran this summer if the Israeli attack on Lebanon
had not failed, and now thinks it will take place in Spring 2007.
[Nov02'06] It's good that our fine 21st century satellite
reconaissance technology is being used on US-ian and
Brazilian farmers to keep them from planting
saved
seeds without paying tribute to the GM seed companies.
Of course, since GM seeds and GM genes have gotten into all
different kinds of equipment and jumped fields and even species,
it's a little hard to tell whether you thought the seeds you
planted were actually yours unless you sequence the DNA in them
(in your barn?), and then maybe also lie down in the fMRI
lie
detector to determine if your intentions were bad. What amazing
idiocy and nincompoopery on the cusp of world grain reserves reaching
their lowest levels in 30 years! Some days, I almost feel like us humans
deserve the world they are preparing for ourselves. Meanwhile with
little fanfare, Ghawar (Saudi Arabia), Canterell (Mexico), Burgan
(Kuwait), and Daqing (China) -- the only 4 oil fields in the world
("super giant") that produce over 1 million barrels/day -- all now appear
to be in decline (the only uncertainty is from Ghawar, the biggest,
due to lack of public knowledge of water cut). It's peak party!
Actually, peak cargo cult (there's a magazine called Cargo, tho
I think it's been having problems lately). Some people know -- like
the person yesterday who searched for "peak oil civilization bubble",
and got my peak oil presentation. I'm not happy about all of this in
the slightest. I have a lot of gadgets myself (though I did get rid of
my car) and I am not looking forward to the party being over. But I am
more worried about the hangover that will follow. Thankfully, peak oil,
gas, and coal put a limit on how much CO2 we can add -- about 2-3 times
as much as we have already added. Unfortunately, major measures to stop
adding CO2 will not likely be put in place any time soon because it is
not "politically acceptable". And peak oil and gas will only speed the
dash toward coal, which has an even worse CO2/energy ratio. There are
likely to be (additional) energy wars. I am pretty sure those 2 to 3
additional difference-between-glaciation-and-non-glaciation pulses of
CO2 will be added (on top of the one such pulse we've already added) --
all on top of a non-glaciation level of CO2. Perhaps 'carbon-trading'
(privatizing the atmosphere) will drag out the total time over which
the pulses are added by a decade or two, while impoverishing the global
south even more. But the atmosphere could care less about political
acceptability. So there will be a lot more heating by the middle of
the century. We will have to deal with heating, power down, and water
and food shortages, all at the same time. Eeeeeew. Peak hangover,
man.
[Nov04'06] The US aircraft carrier Eisenhower has gone back to the
Persian gulf
gone back. What up? Meanwhile in Gaza, 540 Palestinians have
been killed in Gaza in the 14 months since Israel 'pulled out'.
This is more dead than at the height of the intifada. Entire towns
(Beit Hanoun) have had all males between the ages of 16 and 45
carted
off in truck convoys to unknown locations by the IDF (why does this
sound familiar?). Gaza is a humanitarian time bomb.
[Nov06'06] Oil production in the UK this summer was down 12% compared to
last summer. Cantarell (Yucatan, Mexico), the second biggest producing
oil field in the world has shown similar more-than-10%-year-on-year
declines. This is is what depletion looks like, in the time of
horizontal bottle brush well completions that massively increase the
permeable surface area that can be accessed by a single surface well hole.
Matt Simmons' recent talks have suggested that there simply aren't enough
drilling rigs to offset declines like these, given the fact that new
oil discoveries peaked in the 1960's, and have been decreasing since
then, now running at maybe 1 barrel discovered for every 4-6 used.
An issue for the elections or for business plans? Of course not!
What kind of inefficient state-controlled anti-business big-government
steal-your-tax-dollars freaks do you think we are? Freakanomics indeed.
The studied disregard reminds me of Phony Tony's preposterous
crocodile
tears about Saddam's death penalty while spending huge wads of tax
money to deal out the death penalty for the crime of being an Iraqi
(more than half a million death sentences there), a Palestinian, an
Afghan, etc.
[Nov09'06] I remember my horror in 1980 at the realization that the
the torture/death squads in El Salvador were manned by El Salvadoreans.
Sure, they were trained by the CIA and our fine faculty of the School of
the Americas. But they were locals -- e.g., the ones that burst into the
church to shoot archbishop Romero. Humans have more powerful thought
capabilities and mechanisms of coordination than other animals. Under
intense pressure, this extra power can magnify their viciousness. For the
last two years, I have gotten the same tragic feeling about Iraq as I
had about El Salvador. Sure, Saddam executed at least 146 people without
trial after a failed assassination plot (the crime was called 'genocide',
and he has been sentenced to death for it); but compare that to the half
a million people executed by Bush filth and Phony Tony ('I can't believe
it's not genocide'). Bush and Blair implemented most of those executions
using other Iraqis (like Saddam). Saddam kept the Shi'ite Inquisition
in check; women could drive and go to college; one-third of all
marriages
in Iraq are between Sunni and Shi'a! The people drilling holes in
Iraqi's heads and putting out their eyes before summarily executing them
and dumping them in the street because of their religion are other Iraqis.
Sure, the death squads were engineered by that same blood-smeared
cockroach that engineered death squads in El Salvador, Negroponte.
But the people doing most of the dirty work are Iraqis killing other --
Iraqis that used to be neighbors and wives. The lesson for us here in
our protected shell is to remember that human brains operate on the same
principles everywhere. The level of stress here is currently *waaaay*
lower than in Baghdad or Gaza. But the level of stress is likely to
greatly escalate a few decades from now when we go over the top of
peak energy (oil + gas + coal + nuclear), which will likely lead to
peak food in a time of rising temperatures. There is a surprisingly
short step between the neighbor who supports the war on terror to the
neighbor with the electric drill (OK, maybe it will have to be a hand
drill by then...).
[Nov13'06] Everybody treats the 'commission' as if it were the
Delphic oracle instead of a bunch of greedy rich old white noblemen.
The idea that the 'commission' will convince Bush to 'abandon the
dream of democracy' and 'tackle the security crisis' so the troops
can be brought home is completely nonsensical. The troops never even
vaguely had anything to do with 'democracy' and everything to do with
controlling the roughly 12% of the world's remaining oil resources
in Iraq and the second roughly 10% next door in Iran (which is near
the 25% left in Saudi and the 18% in the assorted kingdoms, all a
stone's throw from our permanent Iraqi military bases). Of course,
the 'commission' knows this. We are not going to walk away from
all that oil voluntarily, now that the peak has basically
arrived.
I wonder what kind of charade are we going to see in the next year.
It should be entertaining.
[Nov22'06] Daniel "oil-will-be-$38-a-barrel-by-Nov-05" Yergin's CERA
once again tells us -- in a report entitled "Why the peak oil theory
falls down" available for only $1000 -- that there is no problem with oil
supplies. CERA is "a leading advisor to international energy companies,
governments, financial institutions, and technology providers". Whew,
I had been getting more and more worried about the future of industrial
civilization after reading the free crap available at theoildrum.com.
Probably, the $1000 report also explains why Yergin was so off in his
prediction (his prediction was free, so I suppose that shows you that
you do have to pay him to get the good info). Both the US and the
UK still have some oil left (the US currently produces almost 40%
of what it uses and UK just started importing a little oil after
the 1999 North Sea peak). Commie pinko anti-business types like me
think we should 'just say no' to flagrant oil consumption. CERA says:
'just use'. The fact that the idiotic CERA had to respond to free info
like theoildrum.com shows that the free info is having some effect!
Last year, I wrote something for theoildrum showing that the gasoline
made out of a barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent of a
year of hard
human labor. I think another useful way to stress how much finite
fossil fuels help us would be to label applicances in human energy
equivalents instead of just kilowatt-hours. For example, the average
American refrigerator uses about 4 kilowatt-hours a day. A fit human
can put out about 3/4 of a kilowatt-hour per day (that's assuming the
human puts out about half the average power of a racing Tour de France
cyclist for 6 continuous hours a day). So, that means that a typical
refrigerator is a 5-'human-day' device -- that is, every day it uses
the energy equivalent of 5 human slaves pedaling hard for a day.
[Dec07'06] 100,000 people are fleeing Iraq
every
month. That's a rate of 5% of the total population per year
running for their lives. This *is* looking more an more like Vietnam.
During that massacre, there were 15 million people in South Vietnam
(today there are 60 million). By the end of the war, 5 million people
-- one-third of the population of the South had been made into refugees
by the bombing, defoliation, and simple scraping the landscape down
to the dirt with arrays of huge bulldozers (over 10% of the entire
surface area of South Vietnam was defoliated to 'deny the enemy cover').
To get up to Vietnam holocaust proportions, we still have 3 years to go.
Seems like the Iraqi puppet government hasn't been hiring out enough
"it's getting better" news stories to improve the perception of the
Iraqi brand in Iraq...
[Dec19'06] My guess before the election that the Democrats would not offer
even the slightest resistance to continuing the Iraq oil-war/occupation
has so far, unfortunately, proved accurate. I see no evidence that
the US intends to ever leave the oil behind. The only way this will
happen is if the Iraqis drive the US and UK out by cutting their supply
lines from Kuwait. I don't think this will happen for at least a year
or two.
[Dec22'06] I have mixed feelings about the Haditha prosecutions. Sure,
it's bad to break into a house at night in the course of an occupation
of a foreign land for the purpose of raping a teenager you spotted in
previous public humiliations, and then shoot her and the family in the
head and set everything on fire. But I don't see *any* difference in
badness between that and pushing buttons to launch remote control weapons
of human mutilation and burning by remote control from the safety of an
aircraft or long-range artillery installation. If the burned and flayed
folks were Americans, would Americans distinguish the two? At least
the up-close-and-personal storm troopers saw their victims.
[Dec28'06] It really bugs me when I read in the financial press about
fossil fuel and gold both as "commodities". They couldn't be more
different! It is true they both come out of the ground. So what?
If all the gold suddenly disappeared, maybe some bankers and gold bugs
would be mad, but human society could go on. On the other hand, if all
the oil, gas, and coal disappeared, life as we know it would come to a
crashing end. Fossil fuels are not "commodities" -- they are the only
thing that distinguishes us from humans in the Bronze Age. Those guys
already had gold, but there were a lot fewer of them...
[Dec30'06] Bush's war on Iraq has killed half a million Iraqis --
hundreds of times as many as Saddam was executed for (to be fair, Saddam's
total is similar to Bush's total if you include the American-supported
Iran-Iraq war back from the '80s). Saddam was right on Iraq's WMDs;
Bush lied. 90% of Iraqis say they were better off before the US invasion
(that would be under the late Saddam). The way things are currently
going, it is not out of the question that in his old age, Bush might
be viewed and pursued as a doddering decrepit cockroach like Pinochet.
Though a great majority of Americans supported Bush's war on Iraq, they
could easily change their mind if things turn (even more) sour for the
fortunes of the US. When the Italians finally turned on Mussolini in
1945, they shot him and his mistress, and then hung them both upside
down on meat hooks in Piazzale Loreto in Milan. We are not there yet.
Here is Fredrick Barton, co-director of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies post-conflict reconstruction project
commenting that rather than jobs programs or micro-loans, what the
Iraqis really need to do get their country working again is "to push
the Iraqi government to produce a wealth-sharing agreement on oil".
Un-frigging-believable, Fredrick! To fix Iraq, Iraqis need to tell
their government to give away their oil revenues to rich foreigners?!
Who needs jobs? Let them eat kindness to robber barons. Oil and military
bases near oil are the reasons that the US government is paying absolutely
no attention to the election results. As I have said many times, the
US won't leave Iraq's oil behind unless it is forced out militarily.
Of course, if things get really bad, the US could decide to use real WMDs
as a last resort if their supply lines from Kuwait gets cut. I'm against
the death penalty, but I would be happy one day to see Bush, Rumsfeld,
and Wolfowitz in the same cell with one hole-in-the-floor toilet.
[Jan19'07] The recent departure of a second aircraft carrier battle
group for the Persian gulf along with anti-missile missiles was
disconcerting. And the seizing of Iranian hostages. Jim Puplava
suggests that the recent strange behavior of oil prices is because
oil
was attacked as a prelude to an attack on Iran.
An
article by Sam Gardiner says we can tell when the war on
Iran is on when US air force tankers are moved to Bulgaria
(I wondered how one watches out for such things, so I googled
But a third US aircraft carrier may be on the way (Newsweek). Also, there
was a report that a *French* aircraft carrier is headed for the Gulf.
I have no idea what's really going on.
[Mar05'07] In a creepy replay of the lead-up to
the Iraq war, archaeologists are once again
wringing
their hands over the prospect of archeaological sites being damaged
by bombs. What about the frigging people, man? As one Iranian wrote,
don't bomb us, "especially since, hey, there's people down here".
Sure it was ugly seeing American teenagers driving bulldozers over the
remains of ancient civilizations in Iraq to make way for the fast food
restaurant on one of our fine new Roman legion outposts, but it is waaay
worse that our actions their have killed almost a million humans.
[Mar21'07] Thankfully, new moon seems to have
passed without an attack. An attack would be
disastrous
for the dollar. Hopefully,
this
warning from 10 days ago was overly pessimistic,
and the report today that Russia has
exited the
Iran nuke site doesn't indicate an impending attack, or is
just disinfo.
[Mar24'07] The British sailor provocation UN visa denial business
is worrying but nothing bigger so far. I just have a bad feeling
about all that US/UK military hardware floating around in the Gulf.
It really is a provocation. Its 'sitting-duckness' sets it up as
yet-another-new-Pearl-Harbor. Internet rumors say Apr6. Here's hoping
nothing happens.
[Mar31'07] Well, the British sailor thing is still being worked in the
most strangely incompetent way (after magically just having happened to
have the capturees interviewed hours before their capture by not one but
two news sources -- BBC-TV and the Independent). The imminent arrival
of a *third* US carrier in the Gulf (the Nimitz) along with the French
carrier that just arrived is, uhhh, not a good sign. Four giant aircraft
carriers and hundreds of their support ships all in a tight space. Wait,
I see! -- this is a plan to get the anti-ship missiles confused, right?
What utter imbeciles humans are. We are running out of energy so we
spend $1 billion a day holocausting Iraq to keep our giant military
bases around their oil, but then we spend less than $1 billion *a year*
on alternate energy. We are rapidly running out of not only energy (it
looks like Ghawar, the largest oilfield in the world, may finally be on
the way down), but also soil, fish, and water, but people are continuing
to reproduce like deer. Historians of the future will say that we got
what we deserved.
[Apr03'07] Moved to London.
[Apr07'07] Thankfully, nothing happened on Apr6, perhaps
because of the unexpected release of the UK soldiers. Ghawar is
finally getting some serious discussion on theoildrum
here and
here (I have had one of
those Ghawar plots in my oil presentation for several years now,
courtesy of Glenn Morton's reference to a society for petroleum
geology paper). On a completely different note, on Wed, some students
lay down in front of Karl Rove's car and it was kicked by a
small angry mob
(his car is coming from the lower right on the cellphone video).
Probably shook up the fat one a bit...
[Apr10'07] "These death squads arrived after (former U.S. ambassador John)
Negroponte arrived." -- 68-year-old Abdul Abdulla, a refugee who
fled
Baghdad several months ago.
[Apr29'07] A glance at Bush's
approval
poll numbers shows that they have stabilized around 33%. This is
the low number that they arrived at after Katrina. At first (last
year) I thought that such low numbers might require some kind of
stunt to bring them up, but it is clear that this is a solid floor
of core supporters that will never go away. Unfortunately, Bush and
Cheney can operate just fine in this condition, since things have
been this low for a whole year. Sure a few people are being thrown
overboard, but the war policy, the encroaching police state policy,
and the pauperization of working people policy are in full force -- not
deflected one little bit. For example, we are spending more than ever on
the war, and the Democrats are the ones who upped the spending.
Lefties
say they are happy to see the wheels finally starting to come off, but I
don't really see that at all (yet) in terms of actually executed policy.
Despite the fact that Bush is despised by a majority of people in the US
(not to mention the world) none of those people are willing to (or can)
do anything about it, from janitors to scientists. The war continues
to suck down 120+ billion tax dollars a year and has killed nearly one
million people. Most US-ians just don't care or even know. There are
3 or 4 aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf right now.
It's not much different here in the UK (although UK-ians pay less of
their taxes into the war and will get a good deal as the US's poodle --
assuming the US can hang onto the oil spoils). The other day, in the
mobile (cell phone) store here in the UK, the twentysomething clerk asked
my wife where she was from. She said the US. He then asked "that's part
of the EU, right?" She said, well, there was this dispute between the US
and Britain a while back, and after that, no. It's depressing to think
it, but Bush (and Blair) don't even need another 9-11 (or 7-7).
[May08'07]
Here
(doomer alert) is a mathematically simple discussion of population and
possible earth carrying capacities. Obviously there is a problem if the
true continuously sustainable, carrying capacity of the Earth is only
1-1.5 billion humans (the historical average until the discovery of oil in
the 1900's), and if we assume that net birth rate declines slowly (0.015%
per year) from its current growth rate of 1.15% per year to reach 0.0% per
year (=replacement) by 2080. Perhaps the most unintentionally depressing
comment down in the list was one by the author, who ran additional
simulations assuming larger target populations (2 billion, 3 billion,
6.4 billion [current]). He noted there was hardly any difference in the
peak excess deaths required to get to 1 billion, 2 billion, or 3 billion,
which suggests that an overshoot correction could itself easily overshoot
(as it commonly does in animal populations, where post-crash population
often ends at a number lower than the steady state carrying capacity).
But worst of all, to merely keep the population *the same as it is now*
in the long term, the peak excess death rate would have to reach about
73 million per year (before tapering off). This is approximately
equivalent to having the great calamities of the 20th century --
World War I, World War II, Stalin, Mao, the Russian and Chinese civil
wars, and the 1918 Spanish flu (which was bigger than all the rest put
together) -- all happen at the same time. To merely keep the current
population constant at 6.4 billion. As one of the commentators wrote,
this really bummed me out. What could be waiting for us might be a lot
worse than a thermonuclear war. On the positive side, however, if we
get rid of virtually all gasoline (and ethanol) cars and really focussed
our remaining fossil fuel reserves on making fertilizer and compost and
growing food, and massively increased the number of farmers and increased
bicycle manufacturing and transportation (a natural form of birth control
:-} ) -- something like what Cuba did after the Soviet Union collapsed,
which cut off Cuba's oil supply -- perhaps we can do this in a more
orderly fashion. There is always a bright side. And look at India --
most Indians live on 1/20 the per capita energy that we do in the West
(only part of this is due to needing less heating). So hopefully the
true long-term carrying capacity of the earth is closer to the current
population number of 6.4 billion people as opposed to the pre-twentieth
century historical average of about 1.5 billion people. In any case,
we'll have a pretty good idea of what the real carrying capacity is as
fossil fuels begin to decline in just a few decades. Given the size of
this bet, some precaution is probably a good idea.
[May19'07] When 'New' Labor came to power there were a small number of
CCTV cameras in Britain. Now there are 5 million for a population of
about 60 million. Britain has been turned into 'the Village' of 'The
Prisoner' (for those old enough to remember the BBC series). The average
Londoner is picked up on 300 CCTV cameras *a day*. Nothing to fear if you
have nothing to hide, right? Just don't walk funny or the "suspicious
gait recognition" software might report you, and don't loiter or you
get Barry Manilow or near-ultrasonic screeching only audible to dogs
and young people, or both. Ouch. The UK seems to have the same fear of
predatory teenagers they do in the US, despite the fact that older people
including boomers are responsible for the majority of crime.
[Jun04'07] Emissions from burning fossil fuels are now increasing at
about 3 percent per year versus 1 percent per year during the 1990's.
Wind power is increasing, too, esp. in northern Europe (now well
ahead of the US, the leader in the 1980's). Unfortunately, it is not
even close to keeping up with growth. As summarized by
Pedro from
Madrid, in *one year* (2004-2005), global electricity usage grew
by an amount that was *4 times* total installed wind power *to date*.
And as with oil, the best wind sites are being used first. After going
down for many years, the price of wind power installations is starting
to increase, likely the result of increased fossil fuel prices, which
are involved at every stage in the construction of a wind turbine --
from obtaining and refining raw materials, manufacturing, delivery,
and maintenance. Pedro says: current wind turbines are non-renewable
systems for capturing renewable energy. Our only sensible plan is to
reduce consumption, quickly, now. However, it looks like this is not
going to happen until we bang our collective heads into the wall a decade
from now. Pity.
[Jun18'07]
Here is a
nice graph from Euan Mearns of world energy consumption. Notice that
the contributions from renewables (except for hydro) are too small
to see and are not even vaguely close to covering yearly increases.
I feel uncomfortable watching the slow motion car wreck of industrial
civilization and not really being able to do anything about it.
Here on the other hand is
a report of from the (US) Midwest Renewable Energy Association Fair.
Nate Hagens from Canada sums it up like this: "I got the sense the average
person at MREA were in Custer [Wisconsin] because living partially/wholly
off the grid is a lifestyle choice and wanted to learn about the latest
gadgets, meet with friends and learn more about the alt-energy tribe. I
did not get the sense, either this year or last, that a majority of
consumers attended because they see the peak-oil-writing on the wall and
are trying to get ahead of the curve on energy independence." It is
simply idiotic from a 30 year perspective that industrial societies
are not frantically investing in renewable energy and frantically
finding ways to use less energy (e.g., more electrified rail transport)
and punishing energy neutral tax money laundering schemes like the
ethanol boondoggle. Look at what has happened in the last few years.
The North Sea unexpectedly peaked (1999). Mexico unexpectedly peaked
(2004). Saudi unexpectedly peaked (2005). Kuwait announced (2006) they
have half as much oil left as they previously said they had; the 'error'
(which was corrected by simply going back to the 1980's reserves numbers
before they had been artificially doubled during the price collapse
in the mid-1980's) amounted to 5% of total remaining world reserves
(assuming that all the other inflated mideast totals are true, which
they aren't)! Exporting countries (e.g., China, Mexico, Saudi, Nigeria)
have rapidly growing populations and energy appetites (though nothing to
match our own). There is nothing idiotic about looking calmly several
decades into the future. Parents often do this when they have kids.
Why should the future of industrial society be immune from such a
commensense approach? Kids take a long time to grow up, too. Peak fossil
fuel energy (oil+gas+coal) is likely to hit around 2030, which is when
kids born in the next few years would get to college. Why can't one talk
about all this to 'normal' people without them thinking you are some kind
of kook? Why don't these people care about industrial society?
[Jun24'07]
Here
is a pretty good show on peak oil from Irish teevee. Bush's
numbers
have clearly broken to a new low record. But the US Congress' approval
rating is actually even lower than Bush's! Numbers almost this low
have been sustained for almost 2 years and have not really impeded any
of the polices of the Bush administration (or the cowardly Congress).
Several years ago, I predicted that some kind of stunt would be required
if the numbers went so low. I was wrong. Nothing is needed. US-ians
seem completely anesthetized. I also had thought there would be a more
sustained barrage of anti-Iran propaganda than there has been so far.
It's there, but it's not at the same level as before the Iraq war (but it
has been going on longer). 3 or 4 aircraft carriers are in or around the
Persian Gulf now at all times. The state of oil production is not looking
good (the main motivation in my opinion for the continuing US occupation
of Iraq and for attacking Iran). There was a tiny blurb in Bloomberg that
Mexico's oil output (one of the main exporters to the US) fell
6.6%
over the last year. This will be a huge and likely ever-growing hit
to the Mexican (and US) economies. It seems like a recipe for major
instability just across the US's border. Yet there was virtually no
comment in the media. The only place in the mainstream media you can
hear sensible things about the implications of peak oil for the continuity
of industrial society is on friggin' Art Bell, the late-night ghosts and
UFO radio looney (interview with Matt Savinar last night -- mp3
here). It reminds me
of the time years ago a teevee show contacted me about an interview after
an article mentioning my research came out in a popular science magazine;
the 4 parts of the program were: UFOs, poltergeists, earth mysteries,
and secrets of the brain (that was me). Perhaps we need a new angle --
say if we pointed out that if industrial society fell apart, we would no
longer be able to hear about Paris Hilton. I grant that on the face of
it, an attack on Iran now seems more implausible now than ever. However,
I didn't think Bush could continue operating with a 25% approval rate.
He can. And an attack on Iran could still happen.
[Jul01'07] There is a certain irony here given the content of my
previous note, just one week ago :-} "You know what you call a
vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade." (from
Larry
C. Johnson). The latest episode of
"Beavis and Butthead blow up London" (from
Thomas C. Greene) seems to be playing bigger in America than in the
UK, tho it won't hurt the inauguration of Gordon Brown, who looks set
to continue the policies of Bush/Blair, judging from his appointments.
These policies include making us all more 'secure' by matter-of-factly
helping to continue the holocaust of Iraqis (the US- and UK-caused death
toll is nearing a million), and continuing to snuggle up to the more
powerful Americans building permanent military outposts near the oil.
The only way policy will change is if people actually demand it.
They aren't demanding anything at all (well, except maybe an
iPhone).
The 'dual use' UK/US terror strategy worked before with the inane liquids
screening in US and UK airports, which began in Aug 2006 after another
Beavis and Butthead plot in the UK. That one got Americans wondering
whether they should watch whether they were wearing padded bras -- to
keep America safe. The internet is great, because of how easy it is
to look up stuff. But as other people have said, unfortunately, it is
also a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. Having an internet
doesn't replace human memory or knowledge; the internet is worse than
useless if you don't know anything and can't remember anything. As Thomas
C. Greene says, "Why is [the Piccadilly stunt] such big news? Because
clowns have got to be passed off as terrorists. Because a vast industry
depends on terrorists, real and imagined, to justify its existence."
Time sure passes when you're (not) having fun: the US and the UK have
now been in Iraq about as long as they were in WWII. The two stunts
(London and Glasgow) will keep the proles from thinking about the
daily atrocities carried out in their name (and using their money).
One prediction I can confidently predict is that Bush's (and Brown's)
poll numbers will go up a little.
[Jul08'07] Some days, I have to rally against the misanthropic vices of
the onset of old age. The speed of thinking and the speed of recall for
particular facts (of which older people know more than ever) is somewhat
slowed, but at the same time, the recognition of patterns of deception
in daily life (e.g., Reichstag fire, Operation Gladio, IRA bombs, al
Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 80's, Beavis and Butthead blow up London,
Kamal Jalil Uthman is killed -- twice) is better. This can lead to
indulgent wallowing. Maybe nothing can be done. However, that is no
reason to dislike individual actors. The human mind (the neural basis
for the difference between chimps and humans) originated in small bands of
hominins. It had nothing to do with agriculture, hierarchical societies,
temples, or TV. It was not designed to make them or to live with them.
A similar thing could be said about the DNA and protein system inside
individual cells. That system -- which has persisted as the fundamental
control system for multicellular organisms -- was not made for the purpose
of constructing multicelullar animals, the brain, and consciousness, even
though it eventually got used for that purpose. It seems likely to me
that some pruning of the human species will be upon us in a few decades.
It will follow inumerable episodes of pruning that happened in the past.
In biological evolution, extinction events have often been followed by
a renaissance of speciation after the effects of the event dissipated
(fish, dinosaurs, mammals). Given how rapidly we have run down our easy
energy and rare element resources, we may be in for a longer hangover
than usual, at least with respect to high industrial civilization (when
geologists say 'long' they mean *really* long). Given that the origin
of the human mind was a one-of-kind-event, it is possible that high
industrial civilization may also be a one-of-a-kind event. There are
many one-of-a-kind events in the history of life. Except for birds,
there aren't any dinosaurs any more and there never will be. It seems
regrettable that our time in the sun is not being savored for what it is,
and for what it might never be again. But I suppose that even that is
really neither bad nor good. Animals don't savor the exquisite complexity
of their own brains. Instead they they just eat each other -- or plants,
which are similarly complex -- so that they can break down the consumed
macromolecular chains into small pieces in order to generate generic
energy-supplying ATP.
[Jul18'07] "The ecological footprint of a city such as London is twice
the surface area of the UK. If everybody worldwide lived like London you
would need three planets. If you lived like a New Yorker we would need
five planets. We only have one planet." -- Herbert Girardet. This is
all the more remarkable when you realize that London and New York have the
*lowest* per capita energy use (a major part of the ecological footprint)
of any city in the UK and the US by a good measure. Per capita energy
use of many UK and US cities is 10 times greater than London and New
York. Go
here for stats
on per capita energy use in the States.
[Jul19'07] I just read a piece quoting nincompoop business man on why,
despite the fact that there is currently a worldwide shortage of silicon
(because of the demand for solar electric power), it would nevertheless be
a bad idea to invest in solar power now. I won't justify it with a link.
The rationale is that too many people will jump in, and then the market
for solar power will temporarily tank. This dufus suggests we should
wait for 10 years before investing in solar power. Sounds good to me.
Why tire oneself needlessly by pulling the parachute rip cord now?
Wouldn't it make more sense to wait to pull it until we *really* need
it? -- say, at 15 feet off the ground? None of this means I think solar
power will save the day for our current lifestyle. In fact, as fossil
fuel energy costs go up as fossil fuels get scarcer, it is likely that
the cost of solar power will initially go up, too, since solar power
devices are currently exclusively made, literally, out of fossil fuel.
Maybe improved manufacturing methods will help. Waiting for 10 years to
even start to try is utter madness -- but good business. What's good
for business will be disastrous for the continuation of industrial
civilization and the large number of people it has generated. Imagine if
this dufus' mother had used the same lame one-year-lookahead logic when
raising him (well then maybe we wouldn't have had to read this drivel);
and by his own stupid logic, his mother should have sent him a huge bill
for wiping his a**.
[Aug01'07] There was an excellent, straightforward article on
UK energy security on
TheOilDrum by Euan Mearns. The level of denial of the basic energy facts
is as frightening here in the UK as it is in the states. I regularly
see single people in their 100,000 watt cars gun their motors past me
on my 100 watt bike to race a couple of hundred feet up to the next
red light -- even though I'm already riding at over 20 miles/hour, thank
you (twice the average speed of traffic in London). It almost makes
me feel sorry for the car people (well, almost). It's not as if we
are going to fall off an energy cliff next year. But it is absolutely
clear that energy markets are going to get tighter and tighter from
now on. To summarize, here are the 4 independent trends all going in
the wrong direction and adding to each other, indicating trouble ahead:
(1) production within importing countries is continuing to drop (e.g.,
US, China), (2) importing countries are increasing their total demand
(e.g., US, China), (3) exporting countries are experiencing rapid
increases in internal demand (e.g., Mexico, Iran, Venezuela), and (4)
production of exporting countries is finally beginning to decrease (e.g.,
Mexico, Saudi). It is obvious that we have to start reducing demand,
immediately, before the SHTF and (another!) war breaks out.
[Aug01'07] Gordon Brown has said he will not delay taking troops out of
Iraq in order to show unity with the US. Note that he said *absolutely
nothing* about actually withdrawing any troops! 'Pave the way' for
withdrawal, be 'full and frank' about your inner poodle, yadda yadda.
My guess is that British troops will be staying in Iraq until they are
driven out. The massive increase in the US use of air power since the
beginning of this year suggests that we may a little closer to the time
when the invaders are driven out than most people think.
[Aug03'07] There was a report two days ago that there is only one US
aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf now. That reduces the threat
level considerably if it's true. Meanwhile the pea-brained 'Democratic'
'opposition' (Obomber) says he wants to invade Pakistan, after 'ending'
the war in Iraq by leaving anti-terr'ism troops there. He really needs
to get out there and lead the troops into somebody else's house in the
middle of the night. C'mon, let's see some, you pinhead.
[Aug10'07] There seems to be a lot of somewhat panicky activity by banks
in the last two days. The European Central Bank injected $130 billion
(i.e., a whole year of the Iraq war in one day), the Fed injected $24
billion, a German bank temporarily suspended operations, a French bank
has frozen subprime-invested funds, even lil' Canada injected 1.6 billion.
Stock markets continued to burp (2-3% one-day moves). Commercial business
credit seems to have suddenly dried up in a few weeks (e.g., loans
for mergers). I have no idea what it all means or how serious it is
(e.g., how does credit get 'injected' when the overnight lending rate
is going *up*?), but the guy with the Russian name next door who works
in the City seems to be coming home later and later...
[Aug12'07] The world's central banks injected an unusually large amount
of money ($323 billion, equivalent to about 3% of US GDP; the European
central bank's injection was its biggest ever -- 1.5x the amount it
injected on 9-11) into money markets on Thursday and Friday. They would
seem to be worried about something. The proximate cause seems to have
been people at the bottom of the housing totem pole, who took out loans
on bad terms, thus making them more profitable for money managers to
buy (money sharks buying the loans of loan sharks, then insured by
other money sharks, and then sold to yet more money sharks). When the
money guys panic, they lose all sense of reason. Oil dropped along with
everything else. Too bad this 2 day drop is not because Ghawar has begun
to refill itself. 'Bearishness on oil' makes about as much sense to me
as 'carbon-neutral car insurance' (from a recent ad on the silly teevee)
-- but sadly, it is the one-week-lookahead reality of the money guys.
Oil and other fossil fuels are main physical movers behind economic
growth -- they provide the force and heat that make goods and food,
deliver goods and food to wharehouses, and allow people to drive to
stores to buy them. It's not just a commodity but the very engine of
the economy. But most importantly, the amount of net-energy-positive
oil left in the ground doesn't care a bit about what people think or the
market thinks, or whether they are feeling entrepenurial or panicked.
Now that we are close to, at, or slighly past peak oil extraction,
economic growth will begin to flatten and then contract. It is going
to be interesting to see how the money guys deal with this.
[Aug16'07] There is a tropical storm in the Caribbean headed west.
It's now aimed toward Cantarell, but 5-day paths are very uncertain.
Hopefully, it will turn before then. Also, it would probably have to go
over a little land first to get to Cantarell, which would substantially
weaken it.
[Aug17'07] The path of Dean
now
looks look like it will pass north of Cantarell (which is located
around 19N, 92W).
[Aug19'07] Dean's track has been nudged slightly south but still
slightly north of Cantarell (most cool mockups by Khebab
here).
It also looks like it might grow into a Category 5. However, passing
over the Yucatan will weaken it before it gets to Campeche bay where
all the oil rigs are on Tuesday. Oil prices are likely to go back up
since Cantarell produces almost 2% of the world's oil.
[Aug20'07] The
latest
forecasts seem to be nudging Dean closer and closer to Cantarell.
Though it is very big now, it will lose a lot of power going over
the Yucatan plains before it gets there. It is currently predicted
to be only cat. 1 (92 mph) by the time it gets back over the water.
Pemex has evacuated 1300 workers from 140 offshore rigs, so they are
taking it seriously. There is a very good collection of maps
here on TheOilDrum. Oil traders
aren't scared at all, though they tend not to be very good at maps or
math.
[Aug22'07] The passage over land seems to have weakened Dean enough
that it probably won't cause much damage to Cantarell. The oil
market weenies are crowing that "they called it right". Oil prices
dipped almost 2 dollars -- not because more oil was found but because a
more-than-one-week shutdown of a dying super-giant oil field was avoided.
Makes perfect sense, right? With currently tight credit leading to
economic softness, the two-week-lookahead money skimmers could end up
engineering a temporary price collapse of oil -- right at the friggin'
peak, right when we really need a huge investment in non-fossil-fuel
energy. Make your parasitical money while Rome burns. Disgusting.
Here are
a bunch
of useful graphs from Stuart Staniford. I liked this comment:
"Clearly, we have a situation in which financial system players have
started to lose confidence in each other. The public has not lost
confidence in financial institutions, but [the institutions] are
losing confidence in each other. They are probably better informed
than we are...". As the credit crisis unwinds, it is likely to have
disastrous effects on investment in alternative energy. This
cliff-like drop
illustrates this loss of confidence very well (aren't the tapeworms
cute when they all get afraid at the same time?). But as Staniford
concludes, the money guys losing nerve and fleeing to less risky havens
will not make peak oil go away. The financial crisis will eventually
end, and peak oil will still be waiting for us on the other side.
In fact, as Westexas comments (practically every day :-}), the rapid
growth in the *internal* consumption of oil by exporting countries may
hit oil *importing* countries particularly suddenly -- despite the fact
that the *world* production peak is likely to be quite flat for a while
(before it begins to drop in earnest). This sudden drop is likely to
be the impetus for (another) oil war.
[Aug26'07] Here I quote
Evans-Pritchard
quoting Randall Forsyth from Barron's quoting an anonymous hedge
fund operator, because it changed my crude understanding of recent
big finance a lot: "'Real money' (U.S. insurance companies, pension
funds, etc.) accounts had stopped purchasing mezzanine tranches of
U.S. subprime debt in late 2003 and [Wall Street] needed a mechanism that
could enable them to 'mark up' these loans, package them opaquely, and
EXPORT THE NEWLY PACKAGED RISK TO UNWITTING BUYERS IN ASIA AND CENTRAL
EUROPE!!!! These CDOs were the only way to get rid of the riskiest
tranches of subprime debt. Interestingly enough, these buyers (mainland
Chinese banks, the Chinese Government, Taiwanese banks, Korean banks,
German banks, French banks, U.K. banks) possess the 'excess' pools of
liquidity around the globe. These pools are basically derived from two
sources: 1) massive trade surpluses with the U.S. in U.S. dollars,
2) petrodollar recyclers." It certainly rationalized for me why
*European* central banks had to inject (create) a lot more money than
US banks last week. It also looks like the snake still has
quite a bit of
pig to digest.
[Sep19'07] Rawstory news
reports
that Democrats have 'tricked' Republicans by agreeing to stay in Iraq
for another year so that they can win the election (because Iraq will be
regarded as the Republicans' fault). I don't think so. Support for the
Iraq is completely bipartisan and Americans unconsciously know that.
It's hard to pound it into lefty heads that Democrats == Republicans.
Why can't they follow the money and the money talking? For reference,
I regard myself as far left.
[Sep20'07] I just came across for the first time, an old, simple, cool
idea/device discovered long ago, and it made me feel good about human
ingenuity :-} . If you take three reflecting surfaces and place them
at right angles to each other (to make a corner with the reflecting
surfaces on the inside), it will reflect a beam of radiation back to
its source, no matter what the incident angle of the source (within
one hemisphere).
[Sep20'07] China has just become a coal-importing country (even while
5,000 coal miners per year are still dying there). China has also
canceled its plans for coal-to-liquids because of a lack of coal and
because they have correctly reasoned that CTL wastes huge amount of
energy (that would not be lost using coal to generate electricity).
Thank god there is still 200 or 1000 years of coal left, right? (wrong,
there is more like 50 years of coal with useable EROEI left at *current*
consumption rates, not counting more coal for growth, more coal to
replace natural gas electricity, and more coal for CTL in rich countries,
which are all already beginning to happen). Oh, the humanity! (Jim
Carrey voice). On the positive side, the all hydrocarbons peak will
put a cap on CO2 inputs to global warming (lowest IPCC scenarios).
[Sep25'07] The French poodle is yipping. And back in the US, it seems
from personal observation that the pre-war Iran propaganda is finally
starting to work. Bush's numbers have drifted upwards from 30% to almost
35% approval. I'm not looking forward to early 2008. Interesting that
the MSM doesn't mention that the Myanmar demonstrations were precipitated
by a huge hike in fuel prices (from subsidized to near market).
[Sep28'07] I hope these squibs from
Wayne
Madsen (1 week old) and
Daniel Ellsberg
are just disinfo (Ellsberg is not very specific). The fact that the
leak about the nuke joyride (a national security breach if there ever
was one) occurred one day before the Israeli attack on Syria is a little
disconcerting, but correlation is not causation. People in power do screw
up, both with and without malice. Remember how the attempt to plant
chemical weapons in Iraq failed by an 'own goal' when the US saboteurs
were accidentally bombed by the US. So it is hard to tell. The story
of 6 people from Minot air force base mysteriously dying after the event
is definitely noise/disinfo (several had died months before) (update:
this is repeated by Tarpley).
[Oct02'07] Seymour Hersh (increased planning, CIA shifting staff to
Iran war, Iran planning to attack Europe, Latin American if they are
bombed) and Debka (Russians said to suddenly depart Bushehr quoting
unlinked Khorramshar news agency article I couldn't find any other
reference to) say Iran war is close (early spring 2008). I don't
find either of these sources very trustable given their association
with their respective intellence agencies, but I am worried about
government desperation around that pre-election time. The universal
soldiers/goons from Blackwater or Myanmar depress me, for different
reasons. Blackwater shoots up cars full of 'other' non-people that
they think are not fully human. The Myanmar police shoot into crowds
of their 'own' people and beat them to death. From a strictly selfish
point of view, the Myanmar storm troopers worry me more, because
of their analogy with my 'own' people (update: though see
this
video). Eventually Blackwater will come knocking, kicking down,
and shooting through domestic doors (they already did in New
Orleans). Also, it depresses me that the Myanmar demonstrations
were about oil (provoked by a removal of subsidies for diesel,
which doubled its price, in a country with large
natural
gas reserves and a couple of gigabarrels of
oil), or as a Pakistani economist put it, it's
"oil
versus monks".
[Oct08'07] Funny comment by Gavin at RealClimate
reporting
from a China conference through the ever-present haze and through the
'Great Firewall' :-}
[Oct11'07] This year, there was a 27% drop in the minimum northern
hemisphere sea ice coverage (2.92 million sq km) compared to the previous
record minimum (2005). It has been measured quantitatively since 1979.
Southern hemisphere ice on the other hand reached a new record maximum
(16.2 million sq km) that was 1% larger than previous record maximum.
The pictures
here
of the north pole are pretty disturbing. More than one-quarter of the
northern sea ice at minimum size lost in *one year*. Yikes. This is
well ahead of the IPCC's worst case scenarios. If this continues,
there might be no northern hemisphere sea ice in the summer in just
5 years. It *is* just one year of particularly-easy-to-measure
data, as opposed to harder to measure things like the
internal state of the nearby Greenland glacier. However,
reports
from Greenland are not encouraging (much more in "The Big Melt"
pdf here). Hundreds of
holes (moulins) are opening up in the glacier, pouring water into a lake
underneath it, lubercating its flow toward the sea, unleashing storms of
small earthquakes that have never been seen before as the giant glacier
unsticks itself from the rock below. Although the glacier is now moving
into the ocean at a rate of about 10 miles a year, sometimes it speeds
up shockingly. In one surge event, a large piece of the glacier moved
5 km in 90 mins (2 miles/hour). That's 50 miles a *day*. A fews weeks
of that, and you got a real problem, uhhh, Houston...
[Oct12'07] The placement of
this article by Jim
Holt says to me that the US/UK oil+bases grab in Iraq is finally ready
to be presented to the rabble. Mr. and Mrs. Rabble will be all ears,
now that oil (in dollars, at least) has hit another all time high.
[Oct23'07] Labour decides that a goal
of 20% renewable energy by 2020 is
"too
expensive" and will ask Merkel to agree to a more reasonable
target. Somehow, I don't think the mechanical depletion of oil and
gas reservoirs is going to respond to "reason". Amazing and pitiful lack
of vision, guys.
[Oct28'07] The horrific conditions imposed upon Gaza are continuing
with hardly a peep from the Western press. Ethnic cleansing and the
collective punishment of a million people is apparently OK if it is done
to certain ethnicities that have lower market value. Meanwhile here
in the UK, Gordon Brown begins withdrawing Iraq troops by, uhhh,
sending more troops to Iraq. Way to go. He must be finding his
inner poodle. This is awfully similar to when US 'Democrats' earlier
this year *increased* the size of the Iraq war appropriation that Bush
asked for, of course, to help end the war. It worked, right? If the
Democrats really wanted to stop the war, they could do so immediately by
threatening and then carrying through on a filibuster on any of the war
funding bills. They only need 41 solid votes. They are cowardly worms.
Their cowardice has killed over a million people.
[Nov07'07] "Why Respect think they have enough mass to split is
beyond me. It's the People's Front of Judea all over again." -- Craig
Murray.
[Nov08'07] No doubt, as the world watches US-supported 'democracy'
unfolding in US puppet regimes in Iraq, Pakistan, and now
Georgia it must be wondering,
where can we get some of that good stuff, right?
[Nov18'07] In this report (
pdf here), Kharecha and Hansen (global warming guy) finally absorb
the impact of peak oil. Previously, they had been using the bizarrely
over-optimistic USGS and EIA estimates of remaining oil reserves.
Despite this 'good news' (less oil to burn), it is still hard for me
to see how industrial civilization can be convinced not to burn up all
the rest of the oil, gas, and coal. So far, 103 ppm has been added to
the pre-industrial CO2 levels of about 280 ppm for the current level of
383 ppm CO2. The addition is about equivalent to the difference between
glaciation and warm periods, but added to a warm period. Hansen's models
suggest we should stay below about 450 ppm (67 ppm more CO2) to be safe
and to avoid positive feedbacks (e.g., decreased CO2 uptake from forest
dieback, melting permafrost, and ocean floor warming, and increased heat
absorption in polar regions from sea-ice-melting-caused albedo reduction).
To do that we could leave some of the remaining oil and gas in the ground
(there is slightly over half of the oil and gas left in the ground) as
well as most of the coal there, too (there is considerably more than
half of the coal left), or we could find a way to do carbon capture.
Right now, there is not the slightest indication that any fossil fuel
will be left unburned. Strongly deleterious effects of global warming
won't be expressed for at least another 20 years, and then, mostly in
poorer countries. This makes it hard to see a way that people in richer
countries will give up their cars with still so much oil left. And the
use of natural gas for electricity generation, heating, and fertilizer
is unlikely to decrease either. And there are no carbon capture coal
generating plants in operation or planned. And carbon capture uses
a substantial fraction of the energy in coal, meaning that more has
to be mined to get the same amount of energy. And there will be more
demand for coal as natural gas declines and as coal-to-liquids ramp up as
oil declines. And more of everything as population continues to slowly
increase. As I have said before, I think the only way that people's
minds may change would be if a high profile catastrophic event occurred
that the average person would (inappropriately) relate directly to global
warming -- such as a super-large tsunami-causing Greenland iceberg storm,
or a super-large hurricane 10x as big as Katrina that hits a major east
coast city in the US. People would interpret it as a 'sign from God'
or mother nature. If on the other hand, we have business as usual, with
a bad storm here and there, a bad flood or drought here and there, and
a cm of sea level rise, I don't see how we can possibly stay below 450
ppm by 2050. Given current trends (yearly CO2 increases, now about
2.0 ppm/year, are
increasing), it looks like we will burn up all the remaining easy-to-get
oil, gas, and coal and hit 500 ppm or above -- that is, two additional
'units' of CO2, where a 'unit' is the different between glaciation and
warm periods. People in 2100 are not going to like us.
[Nov19'07] There is an interesting comment by
rkshepherd from the UK in today's oildrum
here supporting
an analysis by Khebab (see also parallel analysis today by Stuart
Staniford) which shows that the rate of finding new oil is accelerating
in the context of total oil production being flat. That implies that
newer fields are peaking earlier and faster. The commenter suggests
this may actually be market-driven (there is premium to get oil out fast
and leave with the cash even if it means slightly reducing the total
production from an oil field). When capitalism has you by the oil,
your hearts and minds will follow.
[Nov21'07] Chris Vernon has an well-reasoned approach to reducing CO2
here. It is
the old idea that as oil gets (permanently) tight -- which it has been
for the past few years -- any local demand reductions will be snapped
up by the tight market (Jevons) right up to current maximum production
level, right up until it's effectively all gone. To get under current
production potential and actually leave some hydrocarbons in the ground
(the only practical way to avoid getting to 500 or 600 ppm CO2), the whole
world would have to cooperate in reducing demand. By contrast, to reduce
supply, a much more localized set of producers need to cooperate to hold
back their production, and the market will allocate less total carbon.
A bit like belling the cat, but perhaps easier than 'belling the whole
world'. Perhaps that is what more 'enlightened' members of the junta
currently controlling America and the UK were thinking when they decided
to invade Iraq (as suggested above).
[Nov21'07] 'Salvador Option' Negroponte goes to Pakistan. It's hard
to imagine what digusting filth that must slosh around in that brain.
A truly poisonous mind.
[Nov25'07] On Tuesday, the Chinese (1.45 trillion dollars invested in
US banks) quietly stopped their own banks from extending commercial
loans to other Chinese in order to slowdown investing in advance of an
expected US recession, and as Chinese and Korean short term deposit
interest rates plummetted (as short term treasuries did in the US in
August, which predicted the Fed cut). The US and Asian economies are
becoming more interconnected as Asian consumption-to-export ratios
have actually fallen. Also, on Wednesday, The European Covered Bond
Council suspended interbank trading of covered bonds (whatever they are)
until at least this Monday. More details and extracts at
these links. Clearly,
something wicked is thinking about coming this way. The suddenness of
these events -- like the earlier credit scrunch over just a few days
in August -- always strikes me as bizarre. Normally, this would all
look deflationary (money becoming more valuable relative to things)
since credit is contracting and people can't buy as many things as they
could before, putting downward pressure on prices. But central banks
can and do inflate while this is going on (e.g., by creating money
to keep banks like Northern Wreck liquid). Money creation
in the US seems to be
galloping along at over 15% per year (!). And the helicopters out in
Europe, too, otherwise, the dollar would have plummetted even faster.
The future issue for Europe is how a US-initiated Asian decline will
affect European exports. If subprime turns out to be the trigger
for a worldwide recession, oil prices may even temporarily go down as
consumption flattens, causing reduced investment in alternative energy.
Sadly, this won't make peak oil go away -- because it's probably already
happened.
[Nov28'07] I'm tired of looking at and hearing stupid people
tearing around in their stupid 100,000 watt cars, whether I'm
walking, cycling, or on the bus. Oil is going up in
all currencies. It will soon be
'plunging' to 100 dollars a barrel. When it 'plunges' to 200 dollars,
at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that the stupid car
dunces will have to pay more out of pocket to accelerate their stupid
hulks manfully up to the next light. But I don't think anything will
sink into their stupid heads until oil 'plunges' to 300 dollars a barrel.
In terms of how much human work we get out it, the 'real' price of oil
is today's dollars is about 10,000 dollars a barrel. Just remember how
fast you can push one of your stupid cars around by hand (not that I'm
bitter or anything :-} ).
[Nov29'07] What a relief to have Brown in power in the UK! He has
just brought us another runway to help make Heathrow even more green
so the economy won't be crimped, and will stay green. People will
drive their green cars to the airport, covered by carbon neutral car
insurance, and their houses will be powered by green coal. With a
few more years of this we ought to be able to get past all those
problems the naysayers complain about like peak oil, global warming,
and slowly declining water, soil, fish, and metals. Green
fakirs like Lovins
will cheerfully explain why we are making progress toward renewables
despite the fact that the proportion of renewable energy in overall US
energy consumption (mostly hydroelectric) was 6% in 1973 and was still
6% in 2004. We will then cheerfully arrive at *rapidly* declining oil,
water, soil, and fish and rapidly increasing temperatures. No one's
going to stop us, least of all the pusillanimous naysayers. Not until
the runways have turned truly green -- as in overgrown with weeds.
[Nov30'07] I am slowly catching up to grade-school level on
economics. One thing that happened a long time ago (1994,
Greenspan years) was that banks were permitted to temporarily
'sweep' deposits out of one kind of account (e.g., checking) into
another (e.g., investable savings). At first I didn't realize the
significance of this with respect to *reserves*. But reading
Mike
Shedlock on 'sweeps', it seems like this was basically a way to
get around the 10% reserves requirement, which already results in banks
having the power to multiply the amount of money deposited in them by 10
(by repeatedly only retaining 10% of every deposit for many cycles). The
end result of sweeps is that the actual amount of money in a bank at
any one time is much less than even 10% of the deposits -- perhaps more
like 3%. It means that banks have the ability to multiply the amount
of money injected into them (e.g., from overnight loans from other large
banks, who can go to the Fed to get loans from that special kind of Fed
money that is emitted out of the vaccuum) by up to a factor of 30 or so.
This also explains why the constant, massive daily flow of credit between
banks is so critical, because all their customers just have to slightly
increase their withdrawals in concert to overwhelm the tiny reserves.
When banks suddenly begin distrusting each other, the whole system can
seize up. The Fed lowering its rate will not automatically translate into
banks trusting each other again. Also see this article by a
gold bug (Professor,
Intermountain Institute of Science and Applied Mathematics in Missoula
Montana!) on the difference between cash money and debt money reasserting
itself.
[Dec06'07] "Scientists are in no position to intelligently
guide public policy on climate change." -- Jerry Taylor
from the libertarian Cato Institute (quoted
here). No, I suppose that would take the 'genius' of the market.
And mr. market genius is currently taking our stupid deer herd to ruin.
But who are us scientists to say? Go ahead. Make your own day, then.
You earned it.
[Dec06'07] The IEA (International Energy Agency), has long been telling
us that peak oil won't happen in the forseeable future, and anyway, that
we'll get up to 120 million barrels/day before it happens, and then it
will only be a plateau decades from now, because there is so much more
oil to find, new technology, blah, blah. Now, Aad van Bohemen from the
IEA says on Dutch TV: "So the situation [demand exceeding current supply,
leading to high prices] is on overall worrisome, but it is not yet time
to panic" (
ref).
The IEA telling me it's not yet time to panic frankly makes me pretty
panicky. All the new finds, new technology, new places to explore,
and new production the IEA were predicting didn't materialize yet.
Production has been essentially flat for the past 2-3 years. I don't
think there will be another substantial uptick in production. It's time
to seriously prepare for the downticks that never end instead of smoking
new fantasies from the IEA.
[Dec09'07] This short film about
Ciclovia in Bogota
brought a tear to my eye. As one of the commentators said:
"Cyclists will inherit what's left of the earth." So did
this one -- Last of
Iraqis.
[Dec10'07] Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's excellent and clearly written
second
chapter on hidden holocausts points out that "since 1991, the total
civilian death toll in Iraq as a consequence of Anglo-American invasions,
socio-economic deprivation and occupation amount to a total of 3 million."
This is but one of a large number of 'hidden', but at the same time,
well-documented extermination campaigns that "don't count" and don't get
talked about because we did them. The death toll amounts to 10% of the
population of Iraq. In the US, a like catastrophe would be 30 million
Americans dying over 15 years as a result of a foreign invasion.
[Dec10'07] Lorry drivers here in the UK are getting ready to take
on... geology? They are getting ready for a reprise of their 2000
refinery blockade that shut down the country, spurring panicked Britons to
horde, which cleared supermarket shelves in less than a week (where did
that Blitz spirit go to?) I'm sure all the 90 and 140 million year old
geological formations where most of the oil is will be frightened this
time, too. Of course, oil companies are making unearned money because
oil is becoming more and more scarce. And it is true that a really
effective blockade of the entire world would slow down the 1 cubic mile
a year oil drain rate. And it would make the remaining 25 or so years
of oil last a bit longer. But unfortunately, it won't put any more oil
in the bank. The problem isn't greedy oil companies (though they are
quite greedy). The real problems are: (1) demand for oil is increasing,
(2) there is not enough oil left (a little less than half), and (3) what's
left is already being gotten out at virtually maximum speed. This is
what explains why oil prices have more than doubled in recent years yet
production has remained flat since the middle of 2004. Oil prices have
risen in every currency. It's not an oil companies conspiracy, as much
as I detest their sociopathic and ugly corporate heads. The sooner this
picture is appreciated, the sooner we can get to work. Higher oil prices
would actually help us get to work sooner.
[Dec11'07] A sign at the Mildred Lake mine north of Fort McMurray
brags "Since
operations began in 1978, we've moved over 1.4 billion tons of overburden.
This is more dirt than was moved for the Great Wall of China, the Suez
Canal, the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the 10 largest dams in the world,
combined!". Current production is 1 million barrels/day, a small fraction
of world usage rate (86 million barrels/day). Much more 'overburden'
will be have to be moved just to cushion the downslope of oil, until it
takes more energy to move the overburden than the energy we get out of
the heated and washed tar sands. The best tar sands are nowhere close
to the energy-return-on-energy-invested ratio from mideast oil fields.
And the ones that are included in the constant blather I read about
'more oil than Saudi' are EROEI well under 1.0 -- i.e., they will never
be extracted, even in desperation.
[Dec16'07] What Israel has
already
done (and plans to do) to Gaza will come back to haunt them. Plus,
it is unlikely to force Palestinians to change who they freely elected
(Hamas) as opposed to the collaborationists forced on them by the Israel
and the US. As the Gaza siege continues, even Americans and Britons will
be more and more likely to ask, how could all of the 'good Israelis'
have gone along with this without protest? (and to ask why should they
continue paying for it). The NIE is a clear signal that a core group
of the American elite are not ready to go along with the push to the
next mideast war (I hope they manage to stop it). It should also be a
signal to begin planning for the dismantling of apartheid.
[Dec17'07] I suppose that in a twisted way, biofuels are OK.
Cannabalizing farmland in order to keep SUVs fueled is utterly obscene,
but at the same time, it inserts a buffer into the system so that
when grains gets really tight (maybe in no more than a year or two),
farmland can be released back to food production, stabilizing the
system a bit. This is similar to the idea that the US squatting on
less-depleted-than-average Iraqi reserves introduces a (small) peak
oil buffer.
[Dec18'07] By ramping up atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 380 ppm, we
have begun to warm the planet. The good news is that as fossil fuel use
eventually begins to decline in the future (as oil, then gas, then coal
peak), the excess CO2 will likely be rather quickly absorbed by plants
and by the oceans (quickly meaning a hundred years). As the oceans
have absorbed CO2, they have become more acid through the formation of
carbonic acid, which makes it harder for animals (shell fish, plankton)
to deposit carbonate and silica in their shells. Their acidity will
increase even more before fossil fuel use reaches a peak around 2030.
They will have to absorb perhaps twice again as much as they have
already absorbed. The bad news is that the time course for reversing
this acidity is quite long -- thousands or tens of thousands of years.
This is perhaps one of the most serious 'no-turning-back points'.
[Dec19'07] As a result of the joyous revolution we (the US and UK)
have imposed on Afghanistan, life expectancy is down, literacy
is down, malnutrition is up, 7% of children below the age of 5
are dying of hunger, and the country has fallen to 4th from last
place in the UN global human development index, documented
here
-- all compared to the situation under the, uhhh, Taliban. But, hey,
opium is waaay up. What a catastrophe.
[Dec19'07] The European central bank just make a $500 billion dollar
(half a trillion dollar) loan to EU banks. That's equivalent
to 5% of all US banking assets. Heavy medicine. And it looks
like the stimulus for some of this badness -- falling house
prices -- still have quite a ways to fall to get back to
historical
income/housing ratios for the US. From that seriously scary graph,
they would still have to go down at least 30-40%. They could overshoot
if things get disorganized. A similar -- or if historical precedents
hold, larger -- fall is likely in the UK. House prices in London
fell 7% this month. This suggests that there is still quite a bit
of pig yet to be digested by the python. With all this on the way,
the Congress (approval currently 11%) just gave Bush another
$70 billion to continue
the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan until May or June (on top of
$460 billion for the 'regular' Pentagon budget). They bravely decided
not to give him his $190 billion all at once. Ooooh, what courage,
you scum! Peak oil, global warming, housing bubble collapse be damned.
What are these people thinking?
[Dec26'07] Another year passes. Another cubic mile of oil goes into
the air as gigatons of CO2 (plus larger amounts of CO2 from coal,
and about equal amounts from methane). Tiny, minute changes to our
North way of life are made (a few new windmills here, an extra 1 mile
per gallon here and there) that are hundreds of times too small to
have any measurable effect, even if they could be sustained for 30
years, which many can't (there is no such thing as a 100 mpg car,
if you mean an enclosed vehicle with 4 rubber wheels that holds 4
people sitting upright and can go 60 mph). In any case, these tiny
changes have been canceled out and reversed by people in other parts
of the world increasing their per capita energy consumption up to 1/10
of ours. We are all stealing from and sobotaging the future of humanity.
The collapse will begin (has begun!) in poorer Southern countries first,
where a much larger portion of the daily budget (e.g., 50%) is spent
on raw food. Rice, wheat, and corn prices have have been
rising rapidly,
but have not yet been felt much in the North because they still make up a
small fraction of finished western food. The knowledge of this makes me
a bit more mentally disjointed each year. It is all unfolding in extreme
slow-motion, but even so, I can't really do a thing about it.
[Dec29'07] I'm not sure what to think about the recent
assassination. Bhutto certainly looked like she was
being groomed in the US propaganda-press for much of
the past year to be another 'color revolution', and
some (Chuckman) have suggested that US plans were
disrupted
internally. On the other hand, just a day before
her assassination, William Arkin wrote that Musharraf
had
agreed to more accept a much larger number of US special forces
troops in the Afghan/Pakistan border region (see also Wolf Blitzer's
question to Ron Paul, 'how dare you *not* invade Pakistan', a few days
back), suggesting that there was no longer a pressing need for regime
change (or that Musharraf was more amenable/bribable to increased US
intervention than Bhutto). Most actions arise from more than one source,
so probably the real story will never be known for sure.
[Dec31'07] I saw the Dreamworks kite movie about Afghanistan. It was as
good as it could be while studiously avoiding even the most fleeting
or indirect reference to the elephant in the room -- an American
movie about Afghanistan and the Taliban that somehow 'accidentally'
fails to mention America's support for the muja he deen *before* the
Soviet invasion, as a provocation to the Soviets (see Chalmers Johnson
here).
"The reality, kept secret until now, is completely different [i.e., than
the notion that the US military aid to the proto-Taliban came *after*
the Christmas Eve 1979 Soviet invasion]: on 3 July 1979 President
Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of
the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to
the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would
lead to a Soviet military intervention." "What is more important in
world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some
agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
Cold War?" -- Zbigniew Brzezinski (in 1998). [update: don't forget Zbig
is one of Obama's main advisors]
[Dec31'07] In this
interesting
analysis published by Ahmed Quraishi in Islamabad a few weeks
before the Bhutto assassination [update: disinfo claim
here],
it is proposed that assassinating Bhutto might be a method of creating
enough chaos inside Pakistan and weakening the Pakistani army enough to
allow a much stronger American presence.
[Dec31'07] From a remarkable interview (pdf
here)
in a remarkable place (Acres Magazine, as in farmland!) with Michael
Hudson:
ACRES U.S.A.: Why this disregard [Europe not developing
internal demand] for their own internal economies?
MICHAEL HUDSON:
The only reason I can think of is that the one thing central bankers
feel passionate about is class warfare. They are trained as financial
planners to hate labor so much that they will give everything to America
for free if it will hurt their own labor force. That anti-labor ideology
is a precondition for getting a job at the central bank in today's
world.
[Jan09'08]
Here
is a clear article by Karl Denninger (on canada.theoildrum.com; however,
ideological, emphasis, and personal differences seem to have ended any
further economic posts from ilargi and stoneleigh on any of the oildrums).
It emphasizes the idea that the Fed has much less control that is usually
portrayed. The article -- strictly about money in all its lovely forms --
is in line with graphs showing that the Fed rate *follows* rather than
leads market-determined short term interest rates. It also very clearly
and concretely describes the mechanisms behind the recent expansion of
credit-money and its coming contraction. It is truly remarkable to think
that what may be "the worst financial scandal of all time" is starting
to unravel right at the start of Peak Oil (and decline of the oceans,
soil, and climate) -- so far, almost completely decoupled from it.
That decoupling can't last. How the enormous forces generated by all
these things will begin to interact in the next few years is *really*
hard to predict. Oil may take a (temporary!) steep drop, right at the
very moment of Peak Oil!
[Jan10'08]
This
may explain why theoildrum 'cleaned house'.
[Jan13'08]
Here
is an excellent article on global temperature trends
and how they are played out in the MSM. Of course,
it does contain a few paragraphs that depend on each
other, so it is harder to understand than the typical
FUD
spewed out by the same paper that lied you into the Iraq war.
[Jan22'08] The Fed plunge protection scheme worked today. Asian stock
markets rebounded after the US down-and-up spike on Tuesday. It seems
unlikely that providing cheaper loans will fix the problems of industrial
society or lessen the influence of the sociopathic crony capitalists
'jamming' the rest of us, but those sickos got their fix today.
They should be in jail. Their yachts, bank accounts, drive-up mansions
should be seized. Instead, their in the process of getting their next
fix from our pension funds. They won't stop until the villagers arrive
at the gates of their estates with torches.
[Jan23'08] 350,000 people (as in between a quarter and a half a million)
rushed through holes punched in the giant metal walls surrounding the
Gaza concentration camp to get food, water, and diesel from Egypt.
I am embarrassed at having contributed substantial taxes to the country
(the US contribution is equivalent to about $1000 for every person in that
country per year) that has put the one and a half million people in Gaza
in such a desperate situation. Given the absolutely ridiculous amount of
tax money the US spends on 'defense' (yeah right) -- more than the entire
rest of the world put together -- I suppose this is just a sideshow.
But it's disgusting. As some in the Israeli press have put it, this is
'voluntary transfer'. 'Transfer' is an Israeli codeword for ethnically
cleansing Palestinians from their land.
[Jan24'08] A
rogue
trader in France at Societe Generale SA has supposedly lost the bank
5 billion Euros over a few weeks in Janauary, betting that the markets
would (continue to) rise. The resulting indigestion as these trades were
'unwound' may have made the Fed more nervous than usual. This was a
rather big loss (more than 5 times bigger than Nick Leeson), but remember
that there remain almost $500 *trillion* in derivatives still out there
(this huge 5 billion euro loss is less than 1% of a trillion dollars.
Of course, all those bets have been made by professionals (like the
guys who invented options equations and blew up their own damn LTCM...),
so there nothing to worry about, nothing to see, move along. Just a
rogue trader, not the bank itself, of course.
[Jan27'08] People are getting used to low freq RFID (13.5MHz), which has
a very short range (think Oyster card). There is, however, a higher
frequency version of RFID (900 MHz, like EU mobiles), that would be
visible at 60 feet. That could potentially broadcast the contents of
your purse or wallet to a whole new set of people.
[Jan29'08] Patrick Cockburn
went back to
Fallujah. It's hardly changed since the US destroyed most of the
city in November 2004. 20 children per day die in its barely functioning
hospital. The electricity is on 1 hour a day. But now there are retinal
scans for everyone! And there's a new radio station run by Sarah from
psychological operations. This is the heart of darkness hell that almost
1 billion American tax dollars *per day* has brought to Iraq.
[Jan30'08] World production of all liquids, which includes ethanol,
has
gone slightly
above the previous mid-2006 peak. All liquids includes crude oil,
which peaked in May 2005, lease condensates (pentane), natural gas plant
liquids (butane, propane), and "other" (oil from tar sands, ethanol,
a very small amount of biodiesel). The energy content per barrel is
highest for crude oil. Corn ethanol from the US not only has just 80%
of the energy content of oil per per barrel, but is barely net energy
positive (EROEI ~1.2-1.3, equals net energy 0.2-0.3) to produce --
that is, almost as much energy from coal, natural gas, and oil is
used to produce a barrel of ethanol as is gotten back from burning it.
This utterly disastrous industry, whose recent rapid growth has been
increasingly competing with world food production for water, energy,
and land, is continuing to grow in the US only because of government
subsidies. Tar sands on the other hand generate fuel with energy
content similar to oil, but require much greater energy input (mostly
from natural gas) than crude oil production (as well as huge amounts
of water), though with a better EROEI than US ethanol (maybe 2.0-3.0,
equals net energy 1.0-2.0). Stating peak liquids production in barrels is
intentionally misleading. If stated in equivalent energy units, we are
still likely past peak all-liquids. And even equivalent energy doesn't
take into consideration the different net energies of the different
sources. For example, increasing ethanol production increases fossil
fuel use. But then the ethanol gets *added* to (the liquids part of)
that extra fuel use. I just wrote 9 sentences. Unfortunately, that is
8 too many for a teevee 'news' story. So you will only get to hear the
first one out of the bunghole of the Blitzer-thing. Everything is OK.
We're not on the Titanic. No need to change course.
[Feb03'08] If the hoi polloi is not thinking ahead, the military is.
Here is a quote from a 2007 report from the UK Defense Ministry's
Development, "Concepts and Doctrine Centre suggesting what might happen
by 2035" -- "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class. The
growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible
super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the
growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat....
Faced by these twin challenges, the world's middle-classes might unite,
using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational
processes in their own class interest."
[Feb03'08] Blair helped kill a million people (AKA Iraqis) based
on telling lies that he knew were lies. He helped engineer an Iraqi
holocaust. How is this not a Nuremburg-level war crime? He's not even
a little Eichmann. He's a medium-sized one! Why not 'rendition' him?
Yo Blair, time to 'fess up!
[Feb06'08] The number of cables cut seems to indicate some kind of
sabotage. One theory is that some of the cables were cut to install taps
at a different second cuts of the cable, before first cut was repaired.
Another is that it has to do with the second (attempted) Feb opening of
the Iranian non-dollar oil bourse. Neither theory, however, had any
positive evidence for it.
[Feb06'08] Quite the
masterpiece
of humor from Joe Bageant LOL
[Feb12'08] Here in the UK, Gordon Brown just decided that each family
shall spend 3,000 pounds this week to bail out Northern Wreck, which
is now a UK public liability of around 100 billion pounds. Another 10
or 20 bailouts like that could put a real dent in one's paycheck, eh?
And the subprime thingees are just starting to blow here.
[Feb13'08] Look at this
sad graph: it
shows what happened after the Kyoto Accord -- a huge jump in CO2 output
(the huge uptick over the past several years). Carbon credits should fix
this, right? Instead of doing anything, here in the UK and Europe, where
people like to make fun of Americans, they are imitiating American's worst
excesses, asking 'scientists' to determine whether it is safe to
taser
children and
using
a SWAT team to arrest a bus commuter for listening to his mp3 player.
Then when it was obvious the police had f***ed up, they booked the guy for
suspicion of a firearms offence and took his DNA, even though they had not
the slightest evidence he had done anything but listen to his mp3 player.
I think these wannabe Amurricans should just move to America, where they
could actually shoot their stupid bullets into bodies more often (not
enough de Menezes situations for you here?), or get their little peepees
off
dumping
quadriplegics out of their wheelchairs, or
'doing the
Guantanamo' on a woman who had (already) been assaulted. Jealous of
'real men', you Brits? Here's real man -- the mayor of Toledo, Ohio,
who
booted
the Marines out of town. They had been scheduled for a weekend of
'urban warfare training' downtown. The bad *boys* were shipped off
to Michigan to scare the old ladies there instead. Judging from the
comments on the article it looks like some Ohio-ans felt like they had
been shafted ('scare me harder!') and pointed to the fact that Toledo,
Ohio has always been a prime target of el Queda. Brits could also benefit
from previous American experience with the "do's" and "don'ts" of electric
shock torture, I mean Taser use -- like this cop who masterfully
tasered himself while
aiming for an already-handcuffed suspect lying face down on the ground.
Given that half a million people watched that video and many Americans
commented favorably on it, perhaps some of them might want to switch
places with British cowboys and fascists...
[Feb15'08] Today Bush says that the London 7/7 bombs warrant torture.
Well, ooookay, how about starting with Peter Power?
[Feb27'08] The first response to calls for belt tightening
must always be, tighten the belts first on the bulging guts of
the rich. What's coming is (more!) class war, plain and simple.
Wealth polarization has already shattered the previous 1929-1930
peak. If they take your pension and medical and flat screen then
you have to take their yacht and 3rd through 7th houses.
This
is the tip of the iceberg. As Elaine Meinel Supkis
says,
"Storm the beaches of the Cayman Islands!" The banking bandits who made
huge amounts of money creating the current financial mess must be forced
to pay it back or go to jail.
[Feb27'08] Cycling home in London today, the two-way car/truck vs. cyclist
rage was palpable. At more than one point, I just got off and walked my
bike on the pavement (=sidewalk) to show good will. It's partly due to
poorly designed cycling lanes (two-direction lanes on one side of the
road that make it hard for cars to see 'wrong-way' bikes) and stupid
laws of unintended consequences (e.g., the left-most bus lane into
which cars are not supposed to go under pain of surveillance camera
tickets results in cars turning left from the middle lane, crossing
traffic in the left-most lane). But this all misses the point terribly!
Imagine 20x or 100x as many bicycles! Serious world-changing natural gas
and oil *shortages* (who cares about price) are just years away. A full
blown world energy crisis. All the data about peak oil and
peak natural gas are still true,
sadly. Those numbers change glacially (maybe not such a good metaphor
these day?!). New discoveries are happening all the time. They aren't
saving the day or even coming close to breaking even; and they will do a
worse and worse job of saving the day every succeeding year. The sh*t
is poised to hit the fan and people just don't care, and don't want to
talk about it. Yelling at cars (or cyclists) won't fix the problem.
It's so maddening, I feel like yelling -- at a car, of course :-}
[Mar01'08] The percentage of the American
population that is in prison continues its
inexorable
rise. This percentage was flat from the beginning of the 20th
century up until 1980. Then, after that it began a linear increase
that shows no sign of stopping ("they hate us for our freedom"). The
percentage imprisoned has more than quintupled since 1980 and now stands
at an all-time world record of just over 1% of the entire US population.
Even though nominally the "world" part of my blog, I put this here as
an example of how just how much momentum society has. Through thick and
thin -- wars and not-wars, Democratic and Republican, boom and recession,
and a several-fold drop in violent crime -- the percentage in prison has
stubbornly risen, the result of the war on drugs, sentencing guidlines
changes, the prison industrial complex, and the perennial success
of race-baiting campaign slogans about crime. Around the same time
as percent imprisoned began to rise, the effects of the mideast oil
embargo were beginning to wear off. Oil prices came down, eventually
bottoming a decade later. The result was a 30-year long worldwide amnesia
about the fact that fossil fuels are limited. But as fuel efficiency
stagnated and total fossil fuel usage shot up again, several people noted
that per capita energy use did not resume its increase, but remained
almost flat. A few days ago, there was an article in TheOildrum
on
projections
of world per capita energy use. In a striking breakout,
the world per capita energy use has resumed its increase over the
past few years, after reaching a plateau of about 10 barrels of oil
equivalent per year (per person) by the 1970's (main graph
here).
What has caused this recent bump, given that we are probably 2-3 years
past peak crude oil? Though the article doesn't mention it, the most
likely explanation for this is a combination of two distinct factors:
(1) the inexorable social demand for more energy both in the US/UK/EU,
but especially also in China and India, and (2) declining energy return
on energy investment (EROEI). On the first point, consider the rollout
of the Tata Nano, a $2500 car that will make up for its excellent 50 mpg
fuel efficiency by massive sales in India and China -- that will probably
dwarf that of any previous car; or the fact that China is opening a new
coal electric plant every week. On the second point, consider ethanol,
which has a very poor net energy (at best, an investment of 1.0 units of
energy yields 1.25 return). A key thing that per capita energy *doesn't*
take into account is EROEI. For a given constant per capita energy
use, as EROEI of energy sources goes down, the per capita *net energy
use* goes down because more energy is lost while procuring lower EROEI
energy (grow energy per capita counts both the 1.25 units of ethanol
as well as the 1.0 units of energy lost making it). Although previous
commentators suggested that the per capita energy plateau starting in the
1970's and 1980's indicated that industrial civilization had finally
run into its limits, what seems to have happened instead was that
inefficiencies were being wrung out of the system on average (though
certainly not in SUV gas mileage!) permitting growth to continue.
The recent breakout in per capita energy use shows that we may have
entered a new stage of development, where a powerful and very slowly
changing social machine is demanding more energy and getting it -- but
from lower and lower EROEI sources. The graphs in the oildrum article
don't mention EROEI at all, except to say it was hard to measure.
But just a day before in the very same forum, there was an article
showing a rapid
linear
decline in EROEI for natural gas in Canada (over 40 in 1996 down
to just under 20 in 2006). When EROEI of an energy source reaches 5,
companies begin to throw in the towel because they can't make a profit
(unless there are subsidies as in the case of ethanol). Euan Mearns
has made an excellent illustration of the low EROEI 'cliff'
here. The oildrum per
capita energy use article was relatively upbeat that we might be able
to wring yet more inefficiencies out of the system, while increasing
renewable energy before the S really HTF ('Olduvai'). That't how I feel
when I'm looking on the bright side of life. But we also have to follow
the money and the military. Five years after invading, The US/UK are
still occupying Iraq, where at least 12% of the world's remaining oil
sits, and the US is building enormous permanent bases there at a cost of 3
trillion dollars so far -- a huge investment (3/4 trillion on the Baghdad
'embassy' alone). I think the people who planned this both knew about (1)
peak oil and peak fossil fuel, and (2) how social systems actually work
(and collide). They decided to take matters into their own hands and used
tried-and-true propaganda methods, which worked like they always have.
The populations of the US and UK, despite saying they don't like the war
and continuing occupation in polls, have done absolutely nothing material
to throw the criminals out. The EU has collaborated, and has not taken
any significant action against the US and UK. The recent recessionary
clouds on the horizon don't bode well -- people usually become more
conservative, warlike, and more easily misled under economic stress.
What is to stop the same propaganda methods from being successfully used
again, in the US/UK/EU or in China and India? Through these glasses,
I have trouble seeing the non-'Olduvai' aspects of the right side of
Luis de Sousa's gross energy per capita graph.
[Mar02'08] "The one thing I try to get across to policy makers is that
there is this kind of mythical artificial intelligence, every time
killer robots are mentioned people start talking about Terminator and
'Skynet' and all this stuff that's really fairytales, and if they were
like that it would be better, because what you've got here is like a
washing machine. This is a dumb stupid machine, and then you are going
to give it the decision to kill people, it's just ridiculous." -- Noel
Sharkey on the proliferation of armed robots.
[Mar04'08] Saudi is advising nationals to
leave
Lebanon, just as the USS Cole (false flag target?) arrives off its
coast. The world says, "We didn't know what was happening because our
internet
was down", "enough is not enough yet", "it's just a
mistranslation".
Meanwhile, the US launched a missile attack on...
Somalia??
[Mar08'08] Here in the UK, average home prices are currently at a
staggering 9 times average income. By US standards (heh!), this bubble
is even bigger. Mortgage approvals are now going way down (40% drop),
just like in the US. The cute way the bankers say this is "risk appetite
is being severely challenged" -- that is, they will need to take a huge
sh** (on us) before they will feel like 'eating' some more of our loans.
But no real fear (except amongst London bankers, maybe). Amazingly,
nobody here expects the early 90's again, despite the fact that things
look even more inflated then they were back then. A lot of bankers live
in London...
[Mar11'08] Some round numbers from
here
(all in trillions) put things in perspective: Curr_US_Fed_Budget=$3,
US_Gov_Max_Debt=$9, US_Mut_Funds=$12, US_GDP=$15, US_Money_Supply=$15,
World_GDP=$50, World_Real_Estate=$75, World_Stocks_and_Bonds=$100,
BIS_2002_World_Derivatives=$100, BIS_2007_World_Derivatives=$516.
The last two are real doozies. And it doesn't even include private
deals between non-reporting entities. However, it's not supposed to
be as scary as it looks because $512+ trillion is only the 'notional'
value as opposed to $11 trillion, the "gross market value". I don't
suppose this implies a leverage of 50 to 1, but something related.
Less scary? It certainly looks like Fed actions are not having their
intended effects. There was a big US stock uptick today from the
Fed promising to inject $200 billion (the total cost of the Saving
and Loan rescue -- but all in a one-day announcement!); but long term
interest rates are still going up, making loans even harder to get.
Let's hope the banks aren't using the emergency loans to buy gold
(but shouldn't they, if they were rational?). A generally similar
thing is happening in Europe: Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal --
club Med -- are getting stiffed by German pension funds. As several
commentators have said, this doesn't look like a liquidity crisis that
can be solved by offering more short-term loans, but rather a
solvency
crisis. Money/credit is being destroyed by richies' fear faster
than the Fed can temporarily inject it. C'mon guys, stop wetting your
panties.
[Mar12'08]
This
really creeps me out (cf. David Kelly). Remind me not to go for a walk
in the country!
[Mar16'08] Iraq veterans describe their part in the
war
machine that has slaughtered over a million Iraqis this time around.
Not quite as bad as Vietnam (2-3 million) but getting closer by the year.
This is what American and Brits are running their countries down the
toilet for. Most Americans and Brits could care less about the atrocities
because the victims are just low-market-value humans. But even the
strictly selfish economic argument doesn't move most Americans and
Brits because they can't tell the difference between million, billion,
and trillion. And at least in the US, the war is, unbelieveably, getting
more popular. The only thing that could stop the war at this point is
all out economic chaos in the US and/or the UK. But that probably won't
happen for another decade and a half (unfortunately, right about when I
was originally planning to retire) when peak all-energy really starts
to bite. Maybe American and British men should recall what happened
to German men after WWII -- several million of them were purposely
starved to death by the victors. People often say things like "just
because I criticized the Nazis doesn't mean I am against all Germans".
But it's not true. And you can substitute many other words for "German".
If Americans and UK-ers don't start to make some big changes in their
governments, they are setting themselves up for the same treatment down
the line, from people that will act just like they did.
[Mar17'08] The speed with which
changes
in the mortgage market are taking place is breathtaking. Upticks in
temporary fixed interest rates have increased mortgage demand. But this
has been met with mortgage banks becoming more conservative and halving
the number of mortgages available, sometime on very short notice
(e.g., 10 minutes from announcement, last Friday, here in the UK).
In just days, mortgages have become much more difficult to get.
I think the technical term for this is 'creative destruction'.
But changes this fast could lead to just plain 'destruction'. The
withdrawal of credit is hitting just as we need huge new investments
in alternative energy. This would be an excellent way to
stimulate/resuscitate
the economy (e.g., electrifying rail, a lot more public transport,
solar heat concentrating power, thin-film photoelectric, wind, tooling
up for much smaller cars and electric cycles, better insulation and
passive house design and upgrades, zillions of additional bike lanes!).
However, I think we are instead likely to see a *reduction* in appetite
for new alternative energy projects and the like -- right at the most
critical point -- even as fossil fuels continue to increase in price,
because alternative energy will be increasing in price at almost the
same rate, and because banks will be unwilling to fund risky projects.
Instead of taking the lesson that they should deal less in casino risks
of no long-term worth to society, they will also end up dealing less in
risks like alternative energy that have a chance of saving industrial
society from itself. It's ironic that saving industrial society will be
a project that is considered 'too risky'. Instead, this week, the big
banking sharks will concentrate their attentions on ripping to shreds
their former partners in crime to obscene profit (cf. Bear Stearns
offer today at $2/share; but leaving all the bonuses extracted by the
rats just before their fall intact, of course). It's sad, I suppose.
Industrial society is not going to collapse overnight. But it's *really*
stupid to wait to fix obvious problems.
[Mar20'08] The UK should end their part in the Iraq obscenity. Instead,
the UK junta has decided to 'postpone' the previously propaganda
annoucement of withdrawal. And Sarkozy has just pledged another
1200 French troops for the other ongoing obscenity in Afghanistan.
Disgusting. Collaborators.
[Mar25'08] Remember how people talked about putting Soviet weapons in
safe keeping during the collapse of the Soviet Union. It seems likely
that people in other parts of the world may soon begin to mummur the
same thing about 'bailout nation'.
[Mar25'08] For reference, here is a list of the primary government
securities dealers, which included Bear Stearns. These are banks
beginning in 1960 were granted the right to trade in US Gov securities
with the New York Federal Reserve, and which through the 'open market
desk' (heh), are the conduit through which the Fed injects (by those
banks buying from the Fed) or withdraws (by those banks selling to the
Fed) reserves/money/debt/whatever from the banking system:
----------
BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
Banc of America Securities LLC
Barclays Capital Inc.
Bear, Stearns and Co.
Cantor Fitzgerald and Co.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Countrywide Securities Corporation
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
Daiwa Securities America Inc.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities LLC.
Goldman, Sachs and Co.
Greenwich Capital Markets, Inc.
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
J. P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Lehman Brothers Inc.
Merrill Lynch Government Securities Inc.
Mizuho Securities USA Inc.
Morgan Stanley and Co. Incorporated
UBS Securities LLC.
----------
Nothing to see here. Move along. Some people just have too many yachts
to fail. You all are not one of them.
[Mar30'08] The downtick in stability in Iraq is in large part the
result of anti-American 'Iranians' (al-Sadr, Mahdi army) ending their
cease-fire against the Americans and the pro-American 'Iranians'
(al-Maliki, puppet army/government). And then there is the Sunni core
of the anti-American resistance. It's blackly hilarious to see how this
gets described in the American media. The media can only have one bad
guy at a time. So it must be Iran fomenting unrest (Petraeus). Indeed!
The permanent US Iraqi bases continue to be constructed.
[Apr01'08] Xymphora notes that, in contrast
to my rant above, there have been some
acknowledgements
in the US press (USA Today) of Iran helping to arrange the Iraq
cease-fire. Even after bombing crowded apartment blocks in Basra in
desperation, the US and the puppet army had to withdraw. Given the
tight control over what appears in places like that, this does suggest
a that some parties in Washington (the 'adults', like Zbig) are pushing
diplomatic engagement with Iran. It's hard to overestimate the size of
the disaster in Iraq and in the Gulf and in the world economy should
the US and/or Israel actually attack Iran. It's not like things are
real stable now. This setback for the al-Maliki puppet regime will make
passing of the long delayed oil law harder.
[Apr12'08] The May 2005 peak in world crude
plus condensate production has just been
barely topped.
This is because of increased production of Canadian tar sands (the next
to darkest gray) is now being counted in with "crude plus condensate"
(despite the fact that the energy return on energy investment for the best
tar sands at 5:1 is probably less than 1/4 that of 'non-mined oil').
Nevertheless, this proves that peak oil is a hoax. Also, the cold
snaps experienced in some parts of the globe last winter prove that
global warming is a hoax. Those two things had been worrying me, but
now I realize that just by 'closing our eyes and thinking of England'
we have come through with flying colors (the advice allegedly given to
Victorian brides on their wedding night, which I was recently reminded
of by John Michael Greer :-} ).
[Apr12'08] The size of the local expression of the global real estate
bubble is beginning to be appreciated in the UK, as it was recently in
Spain (where half of all real estate agencies have just closed). But the
European Central bank has been hawkish, trying to control inflation that
seems mostly due to peak oil and peak food (not your daddy's inflation).
There is likely to be extreme stress within the Eurozone in another half
a year.
[Apr13'08] The daily sewer papers here are actually worse than
in the US. In the Daily Mail, London cops are said to be getting
'microchips'. These are actually just better GPS devices (pdf
here
), not RFID chips. This is for their own 'safety',
though I think governor on their stupid police car engines
would help more. Alongside this story we see Posh corrupting
Tom Cruise's wife, and the credit crunch cancelling a charity
ball thrown by some animal trough wiper who needs his bottom
boiled.... Meanwhile back in the real world, there was an
accident
in a Pakistan nuclear plant. It's a little creepy taken together with
Bush saying that there is going to be a bigger 9/11 coming from Pakistan.
[Apr14'08] The US State Dept's Jeff Izzo is
worried about
coming oil shortages. The problem he explains is that national oil
companies "do the exploration and production" but that "they don't
have the technological expertise". Right, you Izz-iot. How about:
they're running out of a limited resource and they want to save some
for themselves? Or perhaps Mr. Izzo is too embarrassed to say what
he really means. Mr. Perry Fischer, editor of World Oil Magazine,
is less inhibited and gives his inner master race freer rein
here:
"And if energy prices go through the roof, and gasoline costs $12 a
gallon, that will still be OK to those of us who can afford it. Plus,
it will have the highly desirable side effect of keeping the Third World
in their... well, let's just say in third place. (After all, if everybody
gets rich enough to buy a car, who will make my $80 tennis shoes for $1
in labor?)". How the 'free market' actually works.
[Apr20'08] It's easy to get used to continuous crisis when one is well
fed. But far off in the distance, I hear the clamour of food and fuel
riots. To some extent, it comes from central banks pouring debt/money
into insolvent non-central banks, who are trying to regain solvency by
investing the newly created debt/money in food and fuel, driving up the
prices (even more) as supplies start to get tight from peak oil. This
failed attempt to bail out risky bankers and the housing market (mortgage
rates are rising, even as central banks lower theirs) is starving people
halfway across the globe! The main effect so far has been to
fraudulently
enrich the upper echelons of the banking industry, who continue to pay
themselves obscene bonuses because people won't call them on it.
[Apr25'08] The dollar is being propped up partly by the fact that
the Chinese stock market has suffered spectacular losses (50% drop
since October, $2.5 trillion dollar loss), which are greater than the
drop in their dollar investments.
[Apr29'08] The shutdown of the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland caused
the shutdown of work on a Scottish wind farm for lack of diesel fuel, with
possible permanent layoffs (redundancies). In light of this, it probably
would be a good idea to set up a lot of wind farms and solar electric and
solar concentrating power *before* worldwide fossil fuels shortages emerge
(or until someone actually constructs a wind farm using only energy from
another wind farm). Many economists would regard such look-ahead policy
as interfering in the already perfect workings of the market. Fine,
but then they should be first in line for the bicycle-generator-galleys
("c'mon, [crack!] even economists should be able to put out at least
150 watts")...
[Jun06'08] I have learned to curb the misanthropic impulse I used to get
when I heard the word 'carbon neutral'. I'm returning to my geological
roots. Geologists are one of the few who *really* know the meaning
of 'dust to dust'. Misanthropy is merely indulgent. If industrial
civilization falls, it will not be a tragedy. Same thing if it doesn't
rise again. All traces of it may well be gone in a million years.
At scales like that, peak oil and global warming don't matter at all.
On the bright side, the collapse of industrial civilization is unlikely
to even start before 2030, so the party's not over yet!
[Jun07'08] Israel (which already has hundreds of nuclear
warhead/'matches') says a strike on Iran is unavoidable. Obama all but
agrees. Oil hits a new record of almost $140/barrel. US unemployment
takes a record jump. The Dow drops 400 points. Banks remain
essentially insolvent with zero non-borrowed reserves (look
here for the
unprecendented nature of that borrowing). All candidates grovel in front
of AIPAC despite the fact that support for a strike on Iran has fallen
to only 7% of Americans. It would seem that Americans are going to need
another 'injection' to stiffen their 'resolve' to continue pouring the
wealth of their country down the toilet. One million Iraqis killed is
not enough. The draculas want more blood. Again.
[Jun15'08] The Saudis say they will increase oil production to a new
record. I don't think they can. The oil fields where the increases
are supposed to be coming from were discovered 50 years ago.
[Jun25'08] As UK-ers are blithely accelerating up to the next speed bump
(or yelling at me for riding in the street and not in the dangerous
two-way-on-one-side-of-the-street cycle lane), they are likely to be
hit with massive natural gas ("meethane") price increases
this winter (straight
from the mouth of a Norwegian). The UK went from exporting 20%
of its energy to importing 20% of its energy in less than 10 years.
Imported energy is now growing at 6-7% *per year*. You'd think this
would be a clear and present danger (almost all energy will have to be
imported in less than two decades at the current rates). But it's not
on anybody's radar! Instead, lawmakers are readying idiotic ordnances
to have everybody's *trees* inspected every year, to avoid the very
occasional branch fall. We're making damn sure that 1 or 2 people a
year are not going to get bashed by falling branches by sending half
the population to tree surgery school, but no one has the time of day to
discuss the fact that the energy sources for industrial civilzation are
declining at 6-7% annual rates? Sheesh. I'm all for the nanny state
or the banker state for that matter -- so long as they concentrate on
things in order of their importance. The nannies and bankers have their
priorities *seriously* screwed up. I'm also not looking forward to the
response of the people who madly accelerate up to the next speed bump.
Or cops, who now only get to proudly turn on their sirens ever more
often to idiotically race down the street to accost a dwindling
number of drunken yobs. Here is a broader look at the
imminent state of emergency in
energy and the budget in the UK.
[Jul05'08] I had been doing pretty well at keeping my inner misanthropist
at bay until I came across a reference to "climate ready GM seeds"
here,
in an article mainly about why we have to steal Iraq's oil to help them
(because we've destroyed their country).
[Jul06'08] From the latest ASPO
pdf:
"Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 before falling at a relatively
high rate of around 7% thanks to the high efficiency and advanced
technology of its offshore operations. It had produced its oil and gas
at the maximum rate possible without a thought for the future, exporting
its surplus at a time of low oil prices before becoming an importer at
a time of soaring prices: a strategy that was hardly in the national
interest, whatever the short-term gains". Paradoxically, if *less*
efficient technology had been used, Britain would now be raking in extra
money instead of sitting in the frightening position of scrambling to
find new imports for 7% of its total usage this year, 14% next year,
21% the year after that, and so on. The irritating truth is that we
are quickly heading to an economy on a war footing -- for good.
[Jul08'08] There is a lot of talk about electric vehicles replacing
oil-driven cars. I think that's generally a good idea. However, the
amount of power pushing oil-driven vehicles around is several times
the amount of power used in the grid. We would need to triple the
capacity of the grid, which is now near a breaking point in many places
because of Enron-like electricity market gaming (shipping electricity
long distances to take advantage of short term differences in prices --
something the grid wasn't designed for). If we stop that sh*t, and get
smaller electric cars, it would help. But it seems very unlikely to me
that the capacity of the grid is ever going to be tripled (3 times as
many coal plants? 60 times as many nuclear reactors? 3 times as much
current carrying capacity?). Instead, we need to be thinking about tiny
electric scooters and electric carts and bicycles and replacements for
truck+train-to-store vans (yahoo! make the white van guys pedal!).
[Jul15'08] The great wisdom of the market is flopping oil prices around
wildly (up 3%, down 10% in an hour, back up 2%). "Oil is down the most
ever" (in non-inflation corrected dollars...) -- "the oil bubble is
popped!" -- "We're saved from the speculators!" That's one good thing
about petroleum geology -- changes happen in a more leisurely fashion.
When it comes to draining oil fields, the amount of oil left goes down
more slooooowly. Of course, it's that slow speed scares the cr*p
out of me. Oil 'plunging' to $135 won't save us from the geology.
Ignore the silly/stupid money people and economists and listen to Phil
Hart who as actually
Phil
Hart who as actually worked on real oil fields. If you do
this for a long time,
it eventually runs down.
[Jul19'08] Though Iran has substantial oil and esp. gas deposits
remaining, they are hardly infinite. Like many other exporting countries
(e.g., Mexico, Indonesia) Iran is surprisingly rapidly approaching
the day when domestic oil and gas demand will drop exports to zero.
This depletion of exports is faster than the underlying depletion
of oil wells, a point often made by Jeffrey Brown (westexas' export
land model). The holocaust engineered in Iraq by the US, UK, and
Israel (over 1 million dead, 4 million refugees, a permanently occupied
country dismembered into 3 unstable insecure states) has had the result
of reducing the drain on Iraqi oil by destroying the economy, and has
removed any real oversight as to where the oil or the oil revenues are
actually going to. It hasn't been a boon for Western oil companies
yet, but it has had the effect of keeping more oil 'in storage'.
Iraq is conventionally thought to possess perhaps 12% of the remaining
world oil reserves. Since Iran currently has another 9-10% of total
world oil reserves and 15% of total world gas reserves, the idea that
a similar similar holocaust is being prepared for them by the same
parties responsible for the one in Iraq has seemed quite plausible to
me for several years. On the positive side, the slight 'detente' of the
past few days seem to have suggested that the hardliners have once again
met some internal resistance. I hope it holds up.
[Jul21'08] The level of
shrieking
at the NYT seems to suggest that the neocons are getting desperate:
"[since deterrence will not work] an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent
the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb
is probable" -- Benny Morris. Why not go ahead? The worst that
could happen would be a few more countries on the 'to-nuke' list
(not a problem since they have several hundred nukes) and a few more
countries "turned into a nuclear wasteland". No big deal. No parrots
-- or any people from the master race -- will have been harmed.
The gene pool will have been cleansed. And if there were no nuclear
bombs being made in Iran (cf., uh, Iraq, the IAEA, etc), nobody's
going to sort through their radioactive dirt trying to prove it.
It takes a genius. Plus, I'm sure the untermenschen will understand
(even the genetically almost identical Palestinians [pdf
here]).
[Jul28'08] On some days when the stupid policemen
and their stupid sirens are particularly bad, I look
forward to peak oil, which is finally starting to cramp their
'style'.
Yahoo. I look forward to the day when they have to arrest Amy Winehouse
by bicycle. But that's about the only good thing I can think of about
peak oil. I'm certainly not looking forward to peak oil one little bit.
There is no silver lining. It won't bring people together. People won't
cooperate more. As the police get more and more storm-trooper-y to keep
the populace in line (in the current precarious economic situation,
over a third of Britons have less than 500 pounds savings!) they will
eventually have to deal with the same hazards that Iraqi police supporting
the US puppet regime in Iraq deal with. It's all bad.
[Aug02'08] Year-to-year growth in M3 (reconstructed)
may have stopped growing (top graph
here) Note that it's
still at an awfully high level (increasing 16% per year); but now it has
dropped from increasing 18% per year. M3 growth was wobbling around 6%
per year in 2003 to 2006. I don't know how this relates to all the
financial turmoil, since I was sort of expecting that M1 growth would
be contracting (it's actually expanding), while I would have expected
the opposite for M3. Is the Fed finally losing the ability to make the
overall money supply expand?
[Aug06'08] The air force has dropped a a large number
of bombs in Afghanistan this July (515 bombs), which
almost reaches the August 2007 record (670 bombs --
stats
here). The US/UK/EU invaded Afghanistan in 2001, supposedly to catch
Osama, who probably died of kidney problems in 2001. All the carnage
doesn't even make the news. It's impossible to get US-ians or UK-ians
worked up the loss of life and limb of low market value humans; but you
can't even get them to pay attention to the loss of tax dollars used for
this purpose. One wonders what kind of wake-up call would be required.
Storm troopers coming to collect late mortgage payments?
[Aug09'08] One thing that explains sustained
buying by the Chinese of electronically generated
US dollars is that the Chinese stock market is
down
50% this year -- "The Great Leap Floorward". This means that the Chinese
have been buying less machine tools from places like Germany, which will
put a strong damper on further rises in the Euro. The German economy
has actually contracted for a quarter. The US hasn't contracted yet, at
least officially (tho there are a huge number of extra people now going
to food banks). Spain's manufacturing output fell almost 10% in June.
But all this beggar thy neighbor is a distraction. In the medium term
(20-40 years), we *desperately need* contraction! -- contraction in
energy use, water use, fish use, coal use, and of course, population.
Instead, we are only beginning to think about getting ready to start
to consider slightly lowering the rate of growth! And even that is
considered to be unpatriotic, both in the US and India. I'm sure all
the deer on a small island finishing off the last of the browse have the
same patriotic feeling about growing their herd/business. As a science
deer, I just hope the pro-growth deer don't come after me when the SHTF
because we scientists failed to "come up with something". My best guess
-- and the guess of a lot of other scientists -- is that there isn't a
"something" out there that would allow us to continue current population
growth and energy use growth, and growth in percentage of the population
using western-style energy water and food per capita. It's not impossible
that scientists and engineers will "come up with something" (plan A).
But we also need plan B. This starts with scientists being more honest.
The recent shameful MIT press release about a new water electrolysis
electrode is *not* a good example of this. At this rate, it's snake oil,
all the way down.
[Aug10'08] The initial news coming out of Georgia/Ossetia
was extremely difficult to decode (e.g., see this
AP/Reuters
summary that highlights the Russian counterattack but downplays the
initial Georgian assault that killed the 1,500 in the article title).
It appears the conflict started with major Georgian artillery and air
strikes and tank assaults by their US- and Israeli-trained and supplied
military on the small South Ossetia city of Tskhinvali, killing hundreds
(or two thousand), leaving most buildings damaged. South Ossetia is
the breakaway-from-Georgia republic, where Georgia itself previously
broke away from the USSR. South Ossetia has been a de facto independent
country allied with Russia since 1992. Russia responded with much larger
artillery and air strikes and tanks assualts. Georgia seems to have
lost the war it started, and Russia's larger counteroffensive may end up
taking additional territory. Under the cover of this confusing chaos,
there are reports that a huge US/UK/EU armada, almost as big as the ones
before the Gulf wars I and II, is headed to Iran, perhaps to try to set
up a blockade. Those reports have been disputed. I was already worried
about a carrier sinking as a way to get the US public behind an Iran
war in 2004 (my first public peak oil talk). Just a possible scenario.
I'm still hopeful it won't happen (and that the carrier strike force
reports are the usual periodic disinfo).
[Aug18'08] Propaganda from
Sky, using Tskhinvali
ruins (destroyed by initial assault by the Georgians on South Ossetia
that started the war) to smear Russians by pretending it was from Gori.
Watching teevee can really make you stoopid. Just say no.
[Aug19'08] Predicting the overall shape of the near term (several year)
trend in house prices in the US, UK, and EU isn't rocket science. As a
result of more than a hundred years of experience in the modern world,
lenders have restricted loans to 2.5 to 3 times yearly earnings. This
began to change, starting about 10 years ago and culminated in obvious
inanities like having people pay less than even the interest for a few
years in order to allow them to take out an obviously too-large loan.
Now that banks have stopped doing that, prices in inflated parts of
the US/UK/EU still have to drop by a lot (like another 50%) to get
back into historical equilibrium with salaries. Of course, prices
could be propped up by increasing people's salaries! That, however,
is completely off the table. People's salaries are likely to go down!
So prices surely have to continue down, too. It has been obvious to any
sane person for years that this would have to happen sooner or later (I
already wrote about it as "perhaps the largest bubble in human history"
in 2002, above). But the most insane thing about this whole fiasco is
that it happened and is will have to be unwound *before* peak oil and peak
energy have really begun to really bite. Peak oil/energy constitutes
a completely *independent* deflating factor to be added on top of the
deflating house bubble. Bummer. I feel like that giant Gary Larson
roach taking a shower when the drain plugs: "I hate to think of what's
down there".
[Aug29'08] Thank you David Miliband for inspiring the British to quickly
find more oil and natural gas in their declining North Sea fields (peaked
in 2000). Although it didn't work in Texas (the 10 times more wells
drilled after Texas' unexpected peak in 1970 didn't stop the slow American
decline which has continued to this day), and although superior British
technology has not yet stopped the 6-8% per year North Sea decline rate
since 2000, perhaps the problem was lack of motivation, since Russia had
been selling low. This reminds me of the last time there was a natural
gas line cutoff over a pipeline dispute last year. The British press
scolded the Russians for 'not being reliable suppliers'. Tchya right,
it's a sellers market from now on, forever. Playing lapdog to the US
invasion and occupation of Iraq was one thing. Perhaps Mr. Miliband
should volunteer to lead the charge into Russia.
[Aug29'08] As I was listening, irritatedly, to London
emergency sirens, I was curious if there were any
studies of accidents involving ambulances. I found
this study (behind
a paywall), claiming to be the first of its kind in the UK. The bottom
line was: about 10 deaths per year from accidents involved ambulances
out of a total 3000 total road deaths per year (20% of those pedestrians)
for the entire UK. The ambulances sure do crash a lot, though -- 4 times
a day in London alone (!) according to the less than reliable
this is london. If you add deaths from road accidents involving
police and fire fighters (who have higher road accident death rates than
ambulance drivers), emergency-vehicle-involved road deaths are probably
on the order of 1-2% of total road deaths. Still, not too bad considering
some of the supremely stupid stunts I've seen them do.
[Sep09'08] Despite the fact that the 'liquid bombers' were
cleared of targetting
aircraft, the 'thousands standing around' TSA and their British
equivalents (DOT) have vowed to continue to keep us safe by stealing
our sunscreen and bottled water. What a complete scam.
[Sep15'08] Riverbend hasn't posted anything to her blog since one post
after arriving in Syria in October 2007. Hope she is still OK/alive.
[Sep18'08] US attacks on Pakistan seem hardly to make the news given
all the banking shenanigans. Both McCain and Obama support attacks
on Pakistan. This would be a considerable extension of the war on
Afghanistan. Reports suggest that the US and NATO have been moving
additional troops and hardware there recently. Time to take our
weaponized
urine to the streets before it's too late!
[Sep23'08] The Marriot bombing may have been a US attack on Pakistan
(see above). The Pakistani leader calling for the US to stop cross
border raids from Afghanistan narrowly escaped.
[Sep30'08] The beginnings of a
turn
in mood of the US public could be dangerous for bankers and
corporations if it gets out of hand. People are just barely becoming
aware of the fact that the current deleveraging plan is extract money
entirely from them -- from pensions, standard of living, salaries,
health care, etc. If they continue to get more and more angry, some
kind of distraction will be obligatory. The US is navigating through
dangerous waters right now and the effects are worldwide. Across the
world, overnight interbank borrowing rates have jumped so high that
central banks are the only source of (created from nothing!) cash.
These bank monkeys don't trust each other at all, plus they're playing
chicken with us.
[Oct03'08] Pretty amazing picture of
house
prices in the US, UK, EU and Japan. The upcoming fall in the UK
is likely to be *the* most spectacular in all of recorded history.
Tulips don't count.
[Oct05'08] British bankers are angry with the Irish for guaranteeing
the full value of deposits of 6 Irish banks. This caused a large
amount of money to be withdrawn at the end of last week from British
banks and put into those Irish banks. The British were outraged,
calling it a beggar-thy-neighbor tactic comparable to catapulting
plague-ridden corpses into the city. Whatever. Maybe if the British
banks themselves began to trust each other more (the London interbank
offered [overnight] lending rate was at a record high, indicating
very low trust), regular people would, too, yer fink? Not that the
Irish government could possibly pay if several banks went under (the
potential size of the bailout was 24 times the size of the US bailout!).
But once again, idiot bankers shooting themselves in the foot is the
least of our problems. The impending permanent energy crisis will be
a lot worse. I have no idea how the stupid banker tricks situation
will be resolved. I am quite sure of how the energy crisis will be
resolved -- by using less energy, every year, for the next 40 years
(the rest of my life). The first 10 years will be OK. It's going to
get more tricky after that. It's going to involve a lot of coal --
which constitutes about 2/3 of the remaining fossil fuel. 50% of all
the coal so far used by humans was used after 1972. The percentage of
human energy coming from coal has recently jumped in Asia and is going
to increase sharply in the US/UK/EU as oil and then natural gas decline.
Peak coal will occur around 2025 or 2030, long after peak oil and peak
natural gas. Current political discussions in the US and UK are so far
removed from reality I feel like I'm on drugs, but I'm not, so
don't
choke me.
[Oct07'08] Hmmm. I wonder if people will finally draw the conclusion of
how out of touch with the real world these crazy financial gyrations are.
Oil dropping by 50% in the year of peak oil! The paper price of gold
going down together with a shortage of the metal. I feel like I did last
week with the disgusting American bailout. If you bankers bring down
the financial system, we'll bring down your food system. "Hi guys, even
though I do rent a flat *near* the bankers, I'm actually not one of them.
T hey're over that-a-way...". I predict things will settle down (stop
dropping) in a month. It's just money -- not energy (yet).
[Oct08'08] Today, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling announced a 50
billion pound (or 500 billion pound) bailout of all the major UK banks
after the share value of UK banks fell by 50% over the past two days.
Brown blamed the entire problem on Americans for concealing toxic assets
(that British banks eagerly invested in), even though "they both have an
enormous amount of admiration for Hank Paulson". I think the Americans
*are* at fault, but "gladly wearing holes in your tongue" licking the
boots of that stinky troll Hank Paulson? Eeeeeewwww! The truly scary
thing for me, living here in the UK, was that none of the British
reporters at the press conference made even an oblique reference to
facts that: (1) UK and EU banks are *more* leveraged than US banks,
(2) the debt-to-earnings ratios of Britons are substantially worse than
even those of Americans, and (3) the housing bubble in the UK is
*twice*
the size (!) of the now-deflating housing bubble in America,
both measured in relative price levels and in loan-to-income ratios.
One might note that those three things are often cited as causes for the
problems in America. Any rational person who can click a mouse can see
that there is going to be an even steeper housing price crash here in
the UK than in the US, that the US crash is not done yet, and that the
British crash will be delayed by 1-2 years relative to the American one.
These things are not hard to predict since they change at such a leisurely
pace (see graph above). C'mon, I thought the UK reporters were supposed
to ask more hard-hitting questions than Americans!
[Oct11'08] Clearly, something is still completely
wacked
with the US$ LIBOR: short term interest rates are wildly higher than long
term interest rates for the same thing. On the cautiously positive side,
this suggests that bankers think some of the problems that have led to
a complete freeze in interbank lending will soon go away. Of course,
these are the same people who thought it was a good idea to invent bets
on things that were worth 10 or 100 times the thing itself (everything
in the entire world).
[Oct13'08] The EU and the UK have bought controlling shares in
several of their banks and in the UK, the government is now planning
to force the state owned banks to expand their mortgage lending to
2007 levels. The only thing left now is to find families desperate
to (1) get hugely into debt (2) in a hugely overpriced housing market
(3) that's declining (4) while jobs are being lost all around and (5)
mortgage rates are increasing. Sheesh. Somehow I don't think there
are enough families stupid enough to try this now (as there were in
2007 at the peak of the bubble). What's the next step? A British
Phaedra and Fredrick? (Fannie just doesn't work in British English).
It seems pretty clear that the problem is not a lack of debt, but *too
much* debt -- adding yet more debt is hardly going to solve the problem!
I thought the origin of the problem was supposed to be poor people having
taken out mortgages they couldn't afford! British already have the worst
debt-to-income ratio of any Western country (worse than Americans!).
Increasing it further will help?! Meanwhile, the markets are doing their
market thing. Lately, because of the fall in the pound against the euro,
pharmaceutical drug wholesalers have been making a killing by buying drugs
cheaply in the UK and then selling them at a profit in the EU,
depleting
the supply of prescription medicines in the UK. The invisible hand
comes and grabs you by the heart muscle.
[Oct15'08] One UK bank, Barclays now holds $2.4 trillion dollars in credit
default swaps -- more than the entire GDP of the UK. They're probably
hoping the 21 Oct payouts on CDS's for Lehman go smoothly. Royal Bank
of Scotland (recently taken over by the UK gov't) holds an equivalent
amount of CDS's.
[Nov06'08] The UK needs to immediately get out of the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars and ressurect its manufacturing, not its banks. There is an
enourmous amount of stuff that has to be manufactured for renewable
energy, energy efficient retrofits (e.g., windows, heat pumps), more
electric rail, and electric bicycles and carts. We don't need to rescue
banks to do this. Banks don't make anything. And when they fail, they
just fire everybody, pay obscene bonuses to the criminals that ran them
into the ground, and leave huge bills with the taxpayer. Good riddance.
We need to rescue manufacturing. Quick. North Sea oil is plummetting
at a rates approaching 10% per year. I'm flabbergasted to see another
runway at Heathrow and new motorways on the drawing board with the wolf
at the door. Wolf.
[Nov09'08] LondonBanker unfortunately
has it right: "I have a bad feeling
LondonBanker
that America has just elected its Tony Blair." Meanwhile in Spain,
unemployment has reached 14%, and looks like it's on its way to
Depression-like levels of 20-25%.
[Nov12'08] The drop in oil prices has resulted in a 46%
surge
in imports by China year-on-year in September (to 4.9 million
barrels/day, where world usage is about 85 million barrels/day).
That's was an unusually large one month blip, but Chinese *consumption*
(about 8 million barrels/day, since they are still a major oil producer)
has been going up at a rate of about 5% per year. Note that because
Chinese production is now decreasing, this means that Chinese *imports*
are going up faster than 5% per year. The overall picture is that
the remaining 30 or so cubic miles of accessible oil in the world is
being drawn out at 1 cubic mile a year, give or take a few percent.
Oil price swings are not going to have much of an affect on peak oil.
Oil will be on the way up again next year. Here are some pics showing
that oil is already being used efficiently elsewhere to
carpool,
and when that fails, to
train pool.
It looks dangerous and it is:
10
people die every day commuting on Mumbai trains.
[Nov27'08] Watching the response to the attacks in India. Obama
now
has a pretext for a Pakistan attack (see Newspeak
here preparing
the proles). Two wars and an economic meltdown are not enough. Perhaps a
third war would help? The Mumbai terror attacks killed a few foreigners
(news for parrots), but the great majority killed were Indian. The number
killed was equivalent to the number of people killed every few weeks
riding Mumbai's overcrowded trains (see above), but those people don't
even count as non-parrots.
[Dec06'08] The wild swings in currency markets are very disturbing.
There is a rumor that China is planning a major devaluation (e.g., 30%)
of its currency (it did some small devaluations this week). That could
provoke a race to the bottom, tariffs, and continued deflation.
The lack of understanding of the dynamics (esp. mine!) of the borg
that has been created scares me. Many important parts of the world
can't possibly change this fast (e.g., amount of oil left, the degree
to which we understand how the brain works, how much time it takes to
grow a tomato). It's just a bunch of monkeys with their little minds
all bunched up running for the exits all at once. The worst part of
it is that it is hugely distracting from the *real* problems (like the
fact that we used up half the oil and are going through the second half
a lot faster than the first half -- esp. when the price drops by 2/3
virtually at the very moment of peak oil!). I just noticed that the
monstruous discontinuity I pointed to a few weeks back in the BASE money
supply
here just
went flat. Despite no blood in the streets, I'm not feeling confident
about just-in-time practices and the insanely steep drop in the Baltic
Dry Goods index.
[Dec07'08] Although this
particular
instantiation of home-brew small battery-assisted vehicles is
more dangerous than it needs to be, it obviously points in the exact
direction we should all be going! Instead of seeing the possibilities,
the authorities just crack down keep the steeenking diesel taxis running.
Battery-assisted carts are much more energy efficient than diesel cabs.
Eventually, the authorities will see the error of their ways -- probably
about the time they are no longer authorities...
[Dec09'08] It was a relief to see the BASE graph flatten (Dec06).
The dogleg up must have come from the Fed buying off balance sheet
crap to turn it into reserves (as opposed to my probably wrong idea
that it was somehow related to cash raised by hedge fund withdrawals).
The amount of US cash *was* increased by 1.7x in a month or two when
the normal increase is 1.03x per year, but at least it has stopped
(for now). I suppose it's a sign of how bad things have gotten that
something like this looks good. Although I have seen relatively little
on it, I imagine there is terrible damage being done to alternative
energy by the combination of low oil prices and reduced credit --
and right at peak oil. All this from oil demand having 'crashed' --
from 1.8% annual *growth* to 1.2% annual growth. This is a classic
example where a more rational approach to industrial civilization
would help -- e.g., we could put a price floor under oil. Instead,
everybody helplessly watches emotion-driven business cycle hack away
at the branch we're all sitting on. This isn't creative destruction;
this is suicidal destruction. Once down, industrial civilization may
be very difficult or impossible to resuscitate -- all too placate some
wrong, mean-spirited, and ultimately, short-lived idea about how people
are supposed to interact.
[Dec10'08] It is looking more and more that truly humungous amounts
of money (8 trillion) dumped into banks to try to keep them in
operation as credit default swaps (CDS's) and hedge funds unwind is
*not enough*, not only in the US but also in the EU. Currently,
there are roughly $50 trillion in CDS's. According to
this
article by Chris Whalen (from Dec 1), the EU is considering
freezing CDS payments, which will crash the whole system, and require
more nationalizations. Yet this is a perfectly reasonable strategy
given that generating an amount of money almost equal to *the entire
US gross product* and giving it to these criminals *was not enough* to
stabilize things! Because banks are doing nothing else but trying to
pay these gambling debts, they are endangering the entire world economy
by virtually shutting down credit to the real economy (food, energy,
housing). If this is what the free market is, it has completely failed.
Call a spade a spade. CDS's utterly failed at the three things they were
supposed to do! -- raise capital (eating bailouts the size of the whole
GDP doesn't count!), manage risk (the gubmint is bailing them out!),
discover prices (what are their prices? no one wants to look in that
septic tank so their prices are basically indeterminate!). The only
additional thing we need is a pile of the perps in jail -- right next
to the guys already there for decades for non-violent drug offenses.
Isn't bringing the economy of the entire Earth to its knees at the moment
of peak oil for personal gain at least as bad a thing as selling a few
kilos of weed? I'm against the death penalty. I just want to see a
bunch of "big swinging d*cks" in jail. In the London paper. This year.
If the average person had any idea of the gross criminality involved here,
the perps would be hanging from bridges right now.
[Dec16'08] Muntather Al Zaidi rocks: "This is the farewell kiss,
you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were
killed in Iraq". There was no American (or American reporter) brave
enough to do this. Since he was arrested, they broke his arm and
several ribs, knocked out a tooth, and injured one eye (inside the
Green zone, natch). The US and British pigs have killed almost a
million Iraqis since the 2003 invasion of a country that contains
10-15% of the world's remaining oil. This year, they are
revving
up the sickening, automated slaughter in Afghanistan (using robot
drones to track and kill kids and everybody else at yet another wedding
-- what is it with you military sickos and weddings? -- in multiple
attacks) and Obama-pig is planning to transfer 30,000 troops from
Iraq to Afghanistan because the occupation there is deteriorating so
precipitously. Why do Anglo pigs have such a taste for blood? Stop the
wars! Don't you idiots know there's a depression on? You prefer blood
even to money?
[Dec23'08] The price of oil is dangerously low. It is likely to increase
chaotically next year as the world's one-cubic-mile-a-year drawdown
slams up against current production cutbacks, project cancellations,
exporting-country export cuts, and China resuming imports after the
Olympics clean air shutdown. Among other things, Mexico -- which
relies on oil for 40% of its budget, and which is a major exporter to
the US -- is on a path to cease all exports within two years (causing
enormous problems in both Mexico and the US) as Cantarell continues its
breathtaking plunge in production. The whole sorry process of speculation
driven price rise is bound to repeat itself (I can virtually see
surviving hedge funds slavering over the unnaturally low oil price/buying
opportunity). I doubt the insanity will stop until there is some kind
of insurrection when we get to gas lines that never go away. Meanwhile,
back at the oildrum, Heading Out published an embarrassingly bad global
warming denial article, which brought a bunch of bugs out of the closet in
the comments section. As several sensible posters remarked, if you guys
(1) can't read and understand the basic climate graphs, (2) can't afford
to spend a few hours scanning articles at RealClimate.org, (3) insist on
cherry picking a few points out of a noisy but unambiguously smoothly
rising temperature graph, (4) can't overlook the fact that it was cold
this week in their back yard but at the same time, *can* overlook the fact
that ski lodges the world over are rewriting their business plans as 98%
of glaciers retreat, then *why* should we take your oil and coal articles
seriously? Indeed, there is way too much noise there. The venerable
ASPO
newletters are more pithy and less whiny.
[Dec26,'08]
When people look back from what I fear
will be the wreckage of 2060, I think they will come to see the 1980's
as the true beginning of the end industrial civilization. Starting
20 years before, in the 1960's, a substantial collection of people
(Hubbert, limits to growth, environmental movement) first got access
to enough good data in order to correctly undertand the main outlines
of the problem of the non-sustainablity of fossil fueled industrial
civilization, including water, soil and fish drawdown, and climate.
But this understanding was distracted by the holocaust in Vietnam and
surrounding countries engineered by the US (3-4 million killed), the
post-Vietnam war recession of the 1970's, and then the stagflation,
18% interest rates, Savings and Loan scams (true pikers those S-and-L
guys were by modern standards!), and oil price collapse of the 1980's.
Right at a time in the late 1980's, when the richest countries probably
had their last chance to retool industry, transportation, housing,
farming, and cities to head off the end of industrial civilization,
many of them instead rapidly sped up the pace of *de*industrialization,
outsourcing, and labor arbitrage, as a result of the suicidal incentives
of a toxic economic system that rewarded bets upon bets upon bets at the
expense of the real economy and the real world. Now, on the cusp of peak
oil and the beginnings of a great decline, the same pitifully idiotic
system is blindly thrashing about, collapsing the price of oil by greatly
amplifying relatively tiny short term oil supply/demand oscillations
(a few percent demand reduction!), which has resulted in immediate
disinvestment in energy and housing retrofits and industrial recycling.
The troubles on the way as the financial system finishes unwinding over
the next few years will further distract people. If things get bad
enough, people will rise up -- and burn down their neighbors' houses.
That won't help if it doesn't change the suicidal incentives of the
current financial system. On the other hand, I hate to think of what
would happen if the current financial system actually did collapse
under a sustained popular revolt. Could things have been any different?
When I was younger, I definitely thought so. Now, I'm not so sure. If we
couldn't collectively do the right thing before, it's not clear to me that
stressing the system by financial crisis combined with the beginnings of
energy, food, and water constriction will get better results. The overall
system is so complex that it is almost impossible for one person to even
understand its outlines -- yet at the same time it relies on the combined
daily purchasing and eating decisions of those very same single people.
Even though I can't see a way out, I'm still hoping for the best, because
the future always full of surprises. Happy dangerous new year.
[Dec26'08] "We have very great and destructive strength which we do
not wish to use. I think of the tens of thousands of children and
innocents who will be in danger as a result of Hamas's actions." --
Ehud Olmert explaining why the slaughter innocents will be required
when Israel invades Gaza after months of Israeli food, water, power and
banking blockades.
[Dec27'08] 60 US-supplied F16's, helicopters, and drones were used by
Israel today to conduct more than 30 air strikes on police stations and
prisons in tightly packed civilian neighborhoods in the Gaza ghetto.
A pharmacy in Rafah and several medical centers were also bombed
and destroyed, and there were 6 air strikes on the Gaza University.
More than 100 tons of bombs were dropped, killing over 200 people,
including women and children, and injuring 700 in what has been called
the Chanukah massacre. Most of the world criticized the killings.
Obama said, "no comment", which translates as "they got the green light
from us (the US and the UK)". Israel is going into emergency PR mode,
helped along by places like the BBC and the Huffington Post, to explain
to the world why Israel dropping 100 tons of bombs from fighter jets on
one of the most densely populated civilian neighborhoods on the planet
that have been deprived of water and electricity for months by Israel
itself is not terrorism. The subtext is that it's not terrorism because
it's being done by the master race and because those being starved and
killed by the hundreds are low-market-value untermenschen each of whose
lives are worth at best 1/100 of the value of people from the master race
(a cultural definition of race, since the victims are genetically the same
as many of the people in the master race); thus 9 Israeli civilians have
been killed by rockets fired from Gaza since Sept 2005 (none over the past
few months), while over the same period, at least 1,400 Palestinians
were killed by Israeli security forces in Gaza (B'Tselem). Also,
the Palestinians elected the wrong guys (Hamas). That's the way this
particular democracy works (kind of like the original 5th century version
in Greece). Only the votes of the master race count. If you vote for
the wrong party, you get starved out and bombed. The Chanukah massacre
was designed in part to boost the fortunes of the 'moderate' Livni and
Barak relative to far-right Netanyahu (currently ahead in the polls)
in the upcoming election (sorry, the other half of the country doesn't
get to vote in that one). The Israel-approved Palestinian Authority
(Abbas, Fatah) is now 'ready to take' Gaza. These are the puppets the
Palestinians were supposed to have voted for in the first place.
[Dec29'08] The Gaza death toll is up to 300 untermenschen, over 1000
injured. Gazans attempting to flee through breeches in the Egyptian
border wall of their concentration camp were fired upon by Egyptian
border guards. It's so bad even the stinking Rattie pope had to mumble
something today. The problem is that there are more Arabs than Jews in
'Greater Israel'. The only path to a majority Jewish state at this point
is (finishing) ethnic cleansing ('transfer') begun in 1948, or outright
extermination of Palestinians. A west bank 'Palestinian state' broken
into hundreds of disconnected patches by a mesh of Jews-only roads going
to Jewish settlements with apartheid checkpoints and concrete walls,
plus the disconnected Gaza ghetto is not, and never was, an option.
And of course, without transfer or extermination, democracy (one person,
one vote) for Greater Israel is not an option either, because Israelis
are afraid of what Palestinians might do after what Israelis have done to
Palestinians for the past 60 years. It's remarkable how these basic facts
on the ground are presented in mainstream US and UK media. A
simple
map of the mosaic of separated bantustans of the proposed so-called
Palestinian state has never appeared in the mainstream media. Only a
tiny number of Americans even know of the existence of the Jews-only
roads criss-crossing the ever incipient 'Palestinian state', or how many
people still save 1948 keys to what used to be their homes in current
day Israel (many razed). In the mainstream make-believe world, speaker
of the house Nancy Pelosi responded to the slaughter in Gaza with:
"When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand
strongly with its friend and democratic ally." In that narrative,
untermenschen, by contrast, can be attacked and slaughtered at will,
the blockade/siege of the last 3 months doesn't exist, Israel's breaking
of the cease fire on 5 Nov 2008 by killing 5 Hamas officials (under the
radar, one day after US election) doesn't count, there is no such thing as
a Palestinian civilian, their pharmacies and universities and ambulances
are terrorist infrastructure, they have no right to defend themselves
from attacks, they can only vote for Israeli-approved candidates,
and they can't even run away when bombs rip their neighbors' flesh.
This slaughter was planned 6 months ago for the upcoming election to
ensure that the candidates' hands would be covered with enough Arab
blood to beat Netanyahu. Absolutely disgusting.
[Dec30'08] Air raids on Gaza continue (400+ total so far).
The Israeli navy had two high speed patrol boats ram the Dignity
early this morning, a Free Gaza cabin cruiser, in international
waters, with Cynthia McKinney, CNN's Karl Penhaul (CNN video
here,
doctors, surgeons, and 3 tons of medical supplies on board. The Dignity
suffered some damage, but eventually made it to Lebanon after being
turned back. The fact that a CNN newsman with a satellite connection
was on board probably saved the doctors and medical supplies from being
burnt to a crisp as 'terrorist infrastructure'. The only way to begin
to break through the silence is with high-market-value human shields
(with satellite connections!). They can't be local stringers, who will
get slaughtered without consequence or report. They have to be from
the US or UK, and white (so Cynthia McKinney won't help, brave as
she was to get on the boat).
[Dec31'08] The estimated combined losses in commodities, stocks, bonds,
and real estate has reached perhaps $60 trillion dollars. Looking back
over my comments above, I noticed a comment from the halcyon days
of... just this summer, WTF?! bemoaning the fact that bank losses looked
like they were going to get up to $1-$2 trillion -- 10 times the size
of the Savings and Loan disaster of the 1980's. $60 trillion dollars
has evaporated from the world economy in less than a year. The US Fed
has injected or promised to inject/create around $8 trillion dollars.
The UK, EU, Japan and Chinese central banks have also done their part
(maybe another $10 trillion?). Doesn't look inflationary at all so far.
And aside from oil, I have a hard time seeing stocks, bonds, and real
estate shooting up tens of trillions of dollars in 2009.
[Dec31'08] Found by Keith
here:
the United Nations reported on Tuesday that 320 people were
killed in Gaza, including 62 civilians, and around 1,400 injured.
"[The 62 figure] does not include civilian casualties who are men,
even though we know that there have been some civilian men killed
as well," UN humanitarian affairs co-ordinator John Holmes said.
Only when they were called on it, did BBC cover their cowardly racist
Goebbels behinds and change "civilians" to "women and children".
Imagine saying that with Jew substituted for Palestinian. But the
BBC still won: the sick meaning remains the same -- Palestinians
have no right to defend themselves. Here's some more
civilians
that do have that right. Or look at how *air raids* on Gaza university
are justified as 'self-defense' (!), while an academic boycott of
Israeli universities is anti-semitic. Air raids on Gaza university
are anti-semitic!
[Jan01'09] "In six days of shock-and-awe raids, IAF warplanes have carried
out more than 500 sorties against Hamas targets, and helicopters have
flown hundreds more combat missions, a senior Israeli military officer
said on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations." --
Ha'aretz.
Wow, pretty brave you anonymous 'combat' guys are, using US-made
high tech jets and pilotless drones and $5 billion in US 'aid'
per year to rain tons of US-made high tech bombs onto a densely
packed city that lacks any trace of air defenses in the latest
'hostilities' -- and a city you've had under a water, food, medicine,
and power blockade/siege for months. And I suppose this
pathetic
echo of the outgoing ape-like president of the US (no
offense to apes) celebrating his much larger holocaust in Iraq
is a loving thank-you note for all the tax dollars that many of
us opposed sending to you. May you end up some day before a war
crimes tribunal. That looks remote now, but it is gradually getting
harder to hide behind the servile mainstream media. Great work by the
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has helped to dig out the
real
story behind the recent war porn snuff video posted by the IDF on
YouTube (and now withdrawn).
[Jan02'09] Thousands of seriously injured people including 100 with 3rd
degree burns covering their bodies, possibly from tungsten or phosphorus
incendiary bombs, are lying in the cold and dark in a Gaza hospital,
which had all its windows blown out when the nearby mosque was bombed.
News from Gaza now comes only from brave foreign doctors like this
Norwegian doctor,
since all foreign journalists have been banished to several miles away
from the border of the Gaza ghetto so Israel can try to conduct its
morally depraved election-strategy slaughter in private (i.e., only for
the benefit of its electorate). The internet makes it possible for the
rest of the world can see, too -- until attacks on infrastructure
bring it down, too.
[Jan03'09] Good turnout at the London demo today (~50,000).
Speeches by Annie Lennox and others. Many shoes were
thrown at 10 Downing Street. Why are Britons and Americans
paying for this sociopathic sh*t? Don't we have a
depression
on? Instead of trying to fix that, we're paying for Israelis to
drive tanks into a refugee camp (their brave depleted-uranium-armed
storm trooper tank drivers crossed the border today under cover of no
foreign reporters and phosphorus incendiary bombs). Taxes *need* to
have line items on them so people have some power to cross things off
and rearrange money allocation. I would be happy to pay the same taxes
but divert all of my money that has gone into killing Palestinians into
the rest of the economy. Israel is not the victim. Stop this insanity.
Cut off their funding now.
[Jan04'09] From
Ramzy
Baroud: 'A doctor from a Khan Yunis clinic in Gaza told me on
the phone, "scores of the wounded are clinically dead. Others are so
badly disfigured; I felt that death is of greater mercy for them than
living. We had no more room at the Qarara Clinic. Body parts cluttered
the hallways. People screamed in endless agony and we had not enough
medicine or pain killers. So we had to choose which ones to treat and
which not to. In that moment I genuinely wished I was killed in the
Israeli strikes myself, but I kept running trying to do something,
anything."' The US just blocked a UN call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Barack must-have-misplaced-my-cojones Obama continues to body surf as the
1 week death toll reaches over 500 dead and 3000 injured. You're sure
not looking kewl, dude.
[Jan06'09] With one side of his ugly mouth, Brown calls for a ceasefire.
With the other side, he tells the Israelis, go ahead, we won't
stop you. Every once in a while the behind-the-scenes maneuvers
leak (see, for example, the recent online indiscretion
in Rome).
What a 'good German' you are, Mr. Brown! How can you sleep at night?
I can guess who's got you by the naughty bits so you won't utter a
peep about the obscenity of dropping incendiary phosphorus bombs and
cluster bombs on 1.5 million defenseless, caged people. What a coward.
But despite the continuous blizzard of pro-Israel propaganda on the
teevee, the official papers, the internet, the Megaphone, the Facebook
censors, more and more bits of the true story are getting through, the
smell of burnt flesh is leaking through the cracks, the blood is oozing
out of the floorboards. In the US, almost half the population thinks
the Israeli attack is not justified! (41% vs. 44% in favor). And here is
some real news that has leaked through the media blockade: an
eyewitness report put up on
ABC news that comes from a high-market-value white person (more believable
for UK- and US-ians) doing her best to help in Rafah. Here is
another
mainstream piece in the Independent, that portrays Palestinians as,
imagine, not subhuman! And here is yet another from CBS:
"They
are bombing 1.5 million people in a cage". Quite a contrast to the
carefully qualified tract yesterday in the UK Times that begins with
justifiying the firebombs on civilian areas as 'not illegal' -- "we'd
like to be sorry, but I'm afraid we can't be, little low-market-value
kid, because that was a not-illegal white hot phosphorus bomb fragment
that burnt its way all the way down to your leg bone, and furthermore,
it's not illegal that we've supported blocking all the pain killers
and rubber gloves from getting through to your bombed clinic, and I
can't hear your screams, la, la, la, here in London, because we are
all very proper British collaborators". There were only 13 comments
on that lousy article, no doubt because the Times' hard-working censors
stripped out all comments with expressions of outrage (like mine). So the
ghastly slaughter continues. An open question is whether the growing
realization about what is going on will be able to put a halt to the
long standing plans for the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
from their land (note that many of the people in Gaza were already
ethnically cleansed from their villages in Israel in 1948 and 1967), or
their partial extermination, or both. Never again indeed. The
death toll is up to
600 people killed and over 3000 injured. No end in sight. In
one
incident today, an Israeli tank fired anti-tank fragmentation shells
into a UN school inside which civilians were hiding, instantly killing
40 of them. Cowardly mass slaughter of civilians by a terrorist/gunman
sitting safely in a tank. They knew exactly what they were doing
because the UN gave them the GPS coordinates of all of their schools.
The Israelis are trying to exterminate as many people as they can get
away with as a means toward their dream/nightmare of an ethnically
pure greater Israel. They won't stop if the rest of the world doesn't
object strongly. Silence is complicity.
[Jan07'09] The brutal disproportionate terrorist attack on Gaza
civilians seems to be gradually turning public opinion in the US and
UK away from Israel (some have argued, because it sounds so much like
the lies that motivated the Iraq war). Looking ahead, if this trend
continues, I think there is an extremely serious danger of a false
flag attack. The mighty Wurlitzer of the press dangled the faked
Iraqi nuclear bombs and the real fact of 9-11 to get the US, and to a
lesser extent the UK population behind a really large scale terrorist
operation (by this standard, the Israelis are pikers) that killed more
than a million Iraqis. 9-11 ran Bush's approval up above 90% before
the war. The mainstream press has continued to talk about 'al Qaida'
and Pakistan nukes. But I am just as worried about 'opinion makers'
in Israel. Right after 9-11, Netanyahu memorably said that the attacks
were very good for Israel. More recently, in April 2008
he has repeated
this point in a talk at Bar Ilan university ("we are benefitting from one
thing, ..."). There is no question that a small nuclear explosion in an
American city attributed to Muslims would be extremely good for Israel.
It's a growing danger. It could trigger a world war. That would be
a really stupid move when we've got peak energy/water/soil and climate
change on our plate already.
[Jan07'09] Yonotan Shapira speaks the truth in this BBC interview:
"Obama -- don't act
like a slave". The impotent UK interviewer does his best to mumble
out the usual spin, unintentionally providing a vivid example of the
very kind of "slave" Yonotan Shapira is talking about! Meanwhile BBC
Radio continues the "la, la, la, I can't hear you" treatment, screening
out any callers wanting to talk about the Israeli air strikes and ground
offensives in the Middle East. Good Englishmans.
[Jan12'09] The toll from the Israeli slaughter in Gaza is now
approaching 1000 dead and 5000 injured, 50% of those women and
children.
It's not a "battle" when only one side has all the weapons and
half the casualties the one side causes are women and children.
It's a cowardly slaughter of bombs and shrapnel versus skin.
Bombs and shrapnel always win. Here are the results of
phosphorus
bombs dropped on unarmed civilizans. This brings to mind video
burned into my mind as a teenager of a running napalmed Vietnamese girl
(clothes burned off), except there are no movies from ground level
this time because Israel carefully kept out all the "white" reporters
out of Gaza. I wish there was some way I could have prevented my taxes
from supporting these appalling atrocities, which are being carried out
by a rogue state with a sociopathic chosen-people/master-race mental
illness (an irony if there ever was one) using weapons bought and
paid for mostly by US taxpayers. Even my UK teevee tax supports it,
by helping fund the constant pro-Israel propaganda blizzard. As an
example, the only comment the UK Times censors allowed on the article
above about napalming Gazans came from some racist git, supposedly from
Canada who supposedly helped to deliver this kind of terror himself.
Too cowardly to sign his own name, but 'brave' enough to burn people's
skin from a safe distance by remote control. Better watch out dude, maybe
they have phosphorus bombs in your hell. Pro-Israel propaganda still
dominates US and UK teevee and press; and in an excellent illustration
of the power of the lobby, the servile US congress just stood and
slavishly delivered an virtually unanimous vote blaming everything on
the Palestinians, even though the US public is split almost 50-50 on
the issue. But Israel is slowly but surely losing ground in the
PR
war in the US and UK, and not a moment too soon. The pro-Palestinian
demo in London this weekend was the largest ever -- over 100,000
people came out on a below-freezing day. Or look at
Jon
Stewart. Or what about the Canadian postal service (!) --
they
just
voted to boycott Israel. Or
this
post on dailykos. As Yonotan Shapira says, don't be a slave, we
must all act now to avoid world war before it's too late.
[Jan14'09] Yet another 'bin Laden' message from beyond the grave to
distract attention from the ongoing atrocities and to associate those of
us objecting to them with the long dead nemesis/asset. This is getting
so preposterous that people are beginning to laugh openly.
[Jan18'09] Stop the killing. One state, one person, one vote
is the only solution. The tables are beginning to turn on the
racist Zionists. Tom Friedman and Jim Kunstler (et tu?!) calls
for more Palestinian blood and more burnt skin won't help.
Does Tommy *really* think that killing 6,000 Palestinians civilians
instead of the 600 plus killed already would actually help Israel?
And besides, they're already bombing hospitals and schools
(67
schools), shooting at medics who are trying to retrieve burnt dead
babies from getting eaten by dogs (21 medics killed over past 3 weeks),
fire-bombing
apartments and UN food supplies, and now,
slaughtering
a Palestinian doctor's daughters, live, on Israeli teevee.
Where does this sicko bloodlust come from? I hate to think of what
exactly would get Tom off. A Palestinian Dresden or Nagasaki?
Killing 'just' 6,000 Palestinian civilians wouldn't be enough to
solve the 'demographic problem' of the sociopathic master-race-ers
(again, so ironic since the Palestinians are closely related to
the biblical Hebrews, genetically speaking -- see this
pdf for a review of the
interwoven genetic relations of the region). The only way to do that
would be to kill more than a million Palestinians. Even the groveling
US Congress (100-0, 395-4 vote in favor of Israel at a time when the US
public is split evenly on that question) would have trouble gagging that
one down. Israel has done everything possible to make two-state solution
impossible. So what's wrong with one state, one person, one vote?
Remember the creep-out feeling you would get in the 80's when an academic
from South Africa introduced himself? Gerald Kaufmann, MP, just gave
a fine
Commons
speech: "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for
Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The
present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the
continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the
Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians".
George
Galloway's speech was very good, too. Listen to
Mearsheimer:
"It [Israel] is pursuing a strategy
... that is placing its long-term future at
risk". One person, one vote. Stop the killing. Talk about the
methods
of the lobby publically. Prosecute
war crimes. Don't let Israel steal
Gaza's
offshore methane/gas by (a second!) terror/ethnic-cleansing of
Palestinians into Egypt. Don't be a slave.
[Jan19'09] I can sympathize with Israelis complaining about Americans
telling them they shouldn't treat Palestinians like untermenshen after
seeing the holocaust the Americans engineered in Iraq (starvation,
followed by over 1.3 million killed) and Afghanistan. Without ignoring
the fact that the American attack on Iraq was intensely lobbied for
by Israel and popular there, the Americans and Britons actually did
the killing. Those were numerically larger, and therefore, worse
crimes, since in my book, each person has approximately the same value
as another. But I'm not anti-American any more than I'm anti-semitic.
Slaughtering people of *any* kind is a crime, no matter who does it, and
no matter whether they use knives, artillery, remote missles from drones,
or gas. At least 50 million 'other' people were slaughtered in WWII;
that was a tragedy 10 times bigger than the Holocaust. But all this
is just stupid fiddling while Rome burns. The peak energy/soil/water
wolf is at the door of world industrial civilization. We really should
be keeping our eye on the ball instead of cultivating worthless, failed
racist/supremacist thought patterns. They have a bad habit of getting
stuck inside people's animal+language brains, and once they get in there,
it takes decades to pry them loose. They always lead to the same old
sh*t. Mine is a pragmatic view! When the energy crunch really starts to
bite, do we really want to see everybody flying their master race flag?
Instead, how about we cooperate like scientists did when they figured
out physics and biology?
[Jan20'09] "The only question is how to dismantle this
monstrous suicidal hawkish creature without turning
our planet into a fireball." -- Gilad Atzmon
interview.
[Jan22'09] The Gaza death toll is now up to about 1400 people, almost
1000 of which were Palestinian civilians. 50,000 people lost their
homes. Here is Uri Dromi, former government press adviser,
explaining
what Israel's problem was, soon after the start of the so-called 'war'.
Even though "the timing was perfect" because "no one was there, Obama
was in Hawaii, Bush was in Texas, Condoleezza Rice was away, it was a
twilight zone", there remained a "hearts and minds" problem: "When you
have a Palestinian kid facing an Israeli tank, how do you explain that
the tank is actually David and the kid is Goliath? That is why television
kills us". It's hard to believe it, but that statement wasn't ironic.
Television kills, but tanks shooting at kids are an image problem.
That last statement *was* ironic.
[Jan25'09] I usu. don't like Neil Young. But I
loved the sound track to Dead Man and
this is pretty good.
The best line (which I suppose applies to me!) is: "Keep on bloggin...
'til the power goes out" :-}
[Feb10'09] "A week ago or so, a friend of mine, the legendary musician
Robert Wyatt, helped me put it into words in the most eloquent and simple
way. 'My politics', said, 'is very simple, I am just an anti-racist'. This
is really what it is all about, being an 'anti-racist.'" -- Gilad Atzmon.
I agree. Each person is about as valuable as any other person. There are
no master races.
[Mar01'09] When I heard that almost 2/3 of Americans support the
Afghanistan 'surge' in the midst of something worse than the Depression
formerly known as Great, it struck me as insanely idiotic. Here is
another
insane idiocy:
oil companies have reduced the number of drilling rigs operating in
the US by almost 40% since Septemper 2008. Virtually right at the
moment of peak oil and gas. The market is an idiot, too -- which is
why we're truly f*$k'd. Of course, it would be a *great* idea to reduce
rig count in tandem with planning for a lower energy future! But we're
not planning a lower energy future at all. Instead, the continuous 1
cubic mile per year drawdown of oil for the world (give or take a few
percent here and there), along with an almost energy-equivalent drawdown
of natural gas will slam into the reduced production in a year or two,
after additional economic contraction and deflation. The skyrocketing
price of oil will probably cause even more deflation in everything else.
Why is planning ahead such a dirty word for deer-humans?
[Mar14'09] Just back from a movie at the Barbican (got there on foot).
It started with 5 car commercials (already saw them now repeatedly in the
movie theaters -- the perks for one car even included 'free insurance',
which no doubt is also 'carbon neutral'...). Then there were ads
with pictures of wind turbines. The amateurish and irritating movie
that followed was about a clueless drifter with absolutely no skills,
and her dog, which she loses, finds, and then gives away. Ah! perhaps
I had missed the fact that the movie was actually a parable about the
fate of industrial civilization! Bring on even more clueless pictures
of wind turbines!
[Apr02'09] I don't think there were enough
photographers
at this 'event', do you? Craig Murray has a good summary
here.
[Apr27'09] I wish I could say I've come up with something useful to
help with all the problems I have written about. But no. I suppose
I'm really no different than the young lady and her dog I made fun
of last month. I just passively watch the financial criminals lining
their smelly pockets, just like everyone else watches. I just watch the
one cubic mile per year of 100 million year old oil being burnt (most
other people don't see this yet). I just watch the obscene and costly
'wars'/occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan grinding on with
no publicity, reason, or end in sight, all the while expecting support
for them to grow when oil rockets up again in a year or two. I watch
people buying and supplying expensive artificial fertilization when there
are so obviously too many people already. Then I watch the obscenity of
modern emotional technology and media mind control blasting out a month
of the IVF Iraqi (!) welfare octomom, who got a $1 million offer to
star in a pornographic movie along and death threats to her succession
of publicists. I can easily imagine the looks on the salivating Brave
New World producers' faces at the moment they got their first look at
her face, her name, and her story, as they quickly calculated how to
send it out to the weakened helpless minds nursing on their teevees.
It really is a matrix. I just feel stunned and hurt.
[May20'09] The US used to bomb hospitals in Vietnam. It did
the same in Fallujah. Now the Sri Lankan military has
shelled
hospitals in the "no-fire zone" in which 100,000 people are
trapped against a coastline. At the same time, in Pakistan
and Afghanistan, one million people have fled US
remote control
drones that have killed thousands of people. Back in the empire,
to better prepare our current and future storm troopers, right in sunny
San Diego's only (non-union, of course) teevee studio, Stu Seegall
productions, has a complete Iraqi village where US military (and the
San
Diego County District Attorney's Office?!) can practice
breaking down doors and breaking through walls of adjoining houses of
non-white people to 'fight terror'. Previously Stu Seegall
produced
and distributed hard core porn movies among other things,
but then when the movie business slowed after 9-11,
Strategic
Operations was born. More than 100,000 trainees have been
through it. When you think about what we are currently doing
as a species given the trajectory we all know we are on, given
well-documented energy/mineral/fish/grain/soil/water depletion (see
this 2001 article
for a example of how Atlantic cod were strip-mined to virtual
extinction -- they're still gone), and combined with continued,
idiotic population growth, exactly in the areas that will be
hardest hit by climate
change (unfairly, since they were mostly not responsible for it), it
gives you a bad feeling. Misanthropy. Humans are about to get what
they deserve. We can't help ourselves. Literally.
[May20'09] "From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never
earned more than 16% of [US] corporate profits. In the 1990s,
it oscillated between 21% and 30%, higher than it had ever
been in the post-war period. This decade, it reached 41%." --
Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF (quoted
here).
At that rate, we'd all be 'financial' in another few decades. Who needs
fish or food when you're that 'productive'?
[May21'09] "This idea of two states for two peoples is a stupid and
childish solution to a very complex problem," -- senior members of
Benjamin Netanyahu's staff. Sounds good. Then one state? Or
maybe there is some other 'complex', 'adult' solution the staff
members had in mind but were not at liberty to divulge?
[May31'09] US energy use (From Matt Simmons):
-- train car of coal every second (86,400 train cars/day)
-- 10,000 gallons of oil every second (864 million gallons/day)
-- 60 billion cubic feet of natural gas/day (to moon + back 25 times)
For the world, multiply by about 4. There is a lot of talk about how
oil might go up again in the next 'business cycle'. No doubt it will!
But it's parochial to think that the underlying cause is some pathetic
'business cycle'. There is a much bigger cycle that underlies the chaotic
oscillations we are about to experience -- the 'world industrial cycle'
-- based on the rise and fall of easily available fossil fuel energy.
This one probably only has one up and down cycle. Instead of feverishly
preparing for this, we have mostly waited until the last second trying to
keep on doing what we have been doing for the last 100 years. Right at
the precipice -- in the throes of severe world overshoot with respect to
energy, food, soil, freshwater, fish, and minerals -- population continues
to steadily increase. Why are we doing these things? Martin van Mourik
(via Michael Ruppert interview) hit the nail on the head at the 2003 ASPO
meeting: "It may not be profitable to slow decline." So not only shall
we not prepare, we shall instead do our very best to steepen the cliff
off of which we are consciously planning to hurl ourselves. Despite all
the beauty and power of our human minds that led us to this very point,
and even despite our ability to clearly foresee what lies ahead, we
can't seem to stop. This is essence of Greek tragedy, played out on
the biggest stage there is. But ending of the play isn't written yet.
Still time to change course.
[Jul12'09] Pretty depressing watching Obama presiding over the largest
military ground campaign since Vietnam (Afghanistan) and helping engineer
a coup in Honduras while Gordon Brown finds his inner poodle by agreeing
to send thousands of British troops to Afghanistan next month. All while
both men continue to arrange secret bailouts for slimey super-rich banking
criminals. The utter idiocy of paying *any* attention to 'election'
diversions has never been clearer. The elections resulted in virtually no
change in critical policies and numbers (criminal bank bailouts, running
two wars and planning new ones, secret detention and surveillance,
funding of 800 military bases across the world, taxes, energy use).
It's utterly mad to think that it's just a matter of waiting. For what?
For investment in alternative energy to drop even more? Change will only
come from something other than elections. No time to get distracted by
swine flu (British vaccine is being rushed through safety checks in a week
in order to be able to vaccinate the entire population for something that
has killed one person, and something that the CDC was already
experimenting
with creating in 2004), or the next stupid fake terror trick.
[Jul27'09]
This
article by Chris Cook is an excellent summary of the depravity
of capital leading the part of the world that actually makes
things into the abyss. The only way to stop it is to understand
it and set boundary conditions to prevent it. This is what
the best minds are doing as Rome burns. Fiddling for dollars.
Plain fiddling would be preferrable. I'm embarrassed at humans.
Chris Cook's simple and practical suggestion to stop all this
nonsense is to denominate money in units of energy (see
here
for a slide presentation). The problem is that volatility is bad for
producers (because large temporary price dips cause them to draw back,
even as overall time-averaged scarcity is increasing) and consumers
(because they can't predict how much to set aside for energy or how much
to conserve/rearchitect/etc). Only the middlemen profit from volatility.
The middlemen are now are mostly operating in secret, non-public
'over-the-counter' mode, which is truly an 'under-the-counter' mode!
There is nothing wrong with private transactions per se; bartering is
'under-the-counter', too. But in that case, goods that are actually being
used are transferred. Millisecond parasitic transfers of oil futures
are very different. Get rid of these parasites! They don't do anything
useful for other humans. We don't need the stupid 'liquidity service'
they 'provide' because it's *not* a service; it's merely cruds up the
system, screwing up signals for people who actual produce and consume
things. These guys are are collecting money for nothing.
[Aug20'09] [external inaccessibility of cogsci.ucsd.edu over the
past month and a half (!) was due to the campus net police closing
outside access to the server, while looking to see if an opening had
been exploited.]
[Sep19'09] In contrast to the late 2007 peak in subprime resets, the peak
in alt-A resets won't happen until late in 2012. As can be seen in the
graphs of
BASE
and
FGRECPT,
tax receipts began to collapse in late 2007, right around the subprime
peak in resets (I've also plotted the spectacular Fed-driven increase
in the monetary BASE on the same graph that occurred a year later).
Unfortunately, the alt-A reset bubble is a lot bigger than the subprime
bubble. A similar progression of riskiness and size (alt-A mortgages are
larger than subprime and their resets are delayed) has happened to some
extent in other countries. Now stir in the beginnings of post-peak oil.
I think we're going to see a lot of pretty agitated human monkeys a
few years from now (they're really unattractive when they're angry).
The deflationary fallout of the alt-A peak in resets is likely to require
another round of central bank money creation in 2012 and 2013. This will
happen right at the moment when we're all supposed to be heavily engaged
in re-architecting the world's economy/population/energy-use towards a
more physics/reality-based, steady-state, renewable condition. Yeah,
right. I still always get the urge to say that it didn't have to end
this way. If we had only taken proactive measures in 1970, when the true
scope of the problem was first clearly recognized... But looking at the
nature of the recent debate in the US about health care for all monkeys,
I suppose that a proactive approach was never a possibility. Probably the
only thing that could have made the monkeys stand up and pay attention
would have been a large-enough, but not civilization-ending, catastrophe
-- like a small meteorite. Things are not changing in the right direction
now, or with anything vaguely close to the speed the true direness of our
predicament demands. The upcoming fallout of the alt-A reset peak will
seriously sabotage attempts at re-architecting industrial civilization.
But the initial downslope of peak oil will be very gradual (though stupid
monkey chatter during oil price spike next year will obscure this).
The steep part of the downslope won't really begin to bite until 2020.
From this point in time, 2030 sure doesn't look good at all (I know I
should keep my inner misanthropist off public display...).
[Sep30'09] Interesting to read (from a
comment
on today's Automatic Earth column) that N.J. Berrill, a comparative and
developmental biologist (Berrill and Karp is on my bookshelf) was quoting
the ideas of Hubbert to the poster in Montreal in the late 1950's.
[Oct10'09] An astounding 61% of the American public (50% of the Democrats)
agree
that it is "more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear
weapons, even if it means taking military action". All while the
8-year war in Afghanistan is being escalated. Hard to know what would
put Americans off of their suicidal track. Apparently 20% effective
unemployment isn't enough! Perhaps they would see the light at 30%
unemployment? [update: Oct10] Meanwhile, just a few hours after giving
his Nobel peace prize acceptance speech, Obama met with his generals to
dicuss sending 60,000 more troops Afghanistan (which is now supported
by Medea Benjamin from Code Red). Obama presides over the largest war
machine in the world, which costs as much as the war machines of the
entire rest of the world (the US has 5% of the world's population).
The disconnect from reality is so large, I'm having major difficulty
concentrating.
[Nov09'09] "And now, for something
completely
different". I would laugh at this Soma for weakened minds, but it
mechanically does its job. In the past, I thought that human minds were
precious and a terrible thing to waste, and that we should rise above
unthinking animals. Now I just wait, in comedy, for the Grim Reaper to
point to the salmon mousse.
[Nov21'09] The Australian senate
voted
against a plan to prepare for peak oil by planning ahead for
sustainable energy sources as opposed to increasing coal burning. Kewl.
That'll show those oil rock formations who's boss! No doubt, it will also
make the 100 year drought in Australia go away by changing the laws of
physics on heat absorption. Ya think? It's the human comedy :-}
[Nov22'09] Michael Rivero has had some worthwhile stuff ocassionally.
But the barrage of nonsense he continually posts on both energy and
climate (wall-to-wall 'climategate' for the past few weeks) is truly
embarrassing. The bits of real info on his site are then tainted --
a classic disinfo move. Who knows, maybe he's being paid for it.
[Jan08'10] It's been pretty cold in London (around
freezing), while at the same time, the
re-freeeze of Arctic
sea ice is proceeding at a record slow pace (equivalent to the warmest
re-freeze ever). I was raised in the Chicago suburbs, so I haven't even
taken out my heavy coat. But they could sure afford to take some of
the money they waste around here on surveillance cameras (incl. 20,000
video cameras *inside* people's houses!) and spend it instead on salt.
Many downtown London sidewalks (pavements) are atrociously icy. No prob
for me, but really terrible for old people.
[Jan10'10] Sampling the mood of the times, I'd say we're currently
straight on the path to what Gregor Macdonald called, in November
2009,
coal world.
I have repeatedly made the same point myself here, years ago (Nov18'04,
Jan27'05, May10'05, Jul12'05, Jul30'05). That is, we continue scrabbling
for dwindling standard fossil fuel resources without making serious
efforts ("serious" means more than a fraction of a percent per year) in
two key directions: (1) building new infrastructure for renewable energy
while plentiful high-energy-density fossil fuel is still around, and (2)
reducing energy consumption, because renewable energy will never be able
to completely replace fossil fuel. The result of not doing this will be
that energy will get tighter and tighter using current infrastructure
until we are driven back to using almost all coal. We will then be so
energy impoverished and stressed that there won't be any surplus left to
invest in energy transition. It will be (would have been?!) extremely
energy intensive to make an energy transition. Macdonald points out that
the previous two previous difficult-enough energy transitions -- from
wood to coal, and then from coal to oil -- were both transitions in which
the new energy source was *more* energy-dense than the previous source.
The hypothetical transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy goes
in the opposite direction. For example, a nominal "one kilowatt" silicon
rooftop photoelectric cell covers 100 sq feet (twice as much area would be
required for an equivalent power thin film cell), costs $9,000 installed,
and generates 3-4 kilowatt-hours of usable power per day in a sunny
location, which equals about 1/10 gallon of gasoline. To put this in
perspective, the average US household used (in 1999) more than *eight*
times that much electricity per day. And, unlike gasoline, the solar
electric energy must be used as soon as it is generated, or else it must
be stored with a substantial loss. So an average American electrical
budget would currently require a $100,000 photoelectric installation.
And that doesn't include driving, heating, and air travel, each of which
use equal or larger additional amounts of energy. A 10 kilowatt solar
installation costs that much largely because *it takes a lot of energy
to make it*. Finally, this difficult, not-even-started transition to
renewable energy will have to take place with a *much* larger population
to support than was the case with the previous two transitions. Yeast,
meet barrel.
[Feb01'10] The latest word from the growing police state is that if you
refuse to be scanned in one of the naked scanners (either X-ray based or
high energy microwave-based), you won't be able to fly. The American
Civil Liberties Union gives a preview of what the perverted "thousands
standing around" are going to be grabbing in the near future: "Passengers
expect privacy underneath their clothing and should not be required
to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of
mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and
the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a
plane." A bunch of mindless drones from the Tourism Suppression Agency
groping mastectomies, penile implants, and colostomy bags. The next
step, if we don't resist now, will be naked CCTV cameras irradiating us
at every corner. We humans are pretty stoopid. Rather than dealing
rationally with peak oil, we instead donate tax receipts to scumbag
Michael Chertoff's company to buy zillions of naked scanners (that
would have had at best a 50% chance of detecting the underwear bomber,
according to their *supporters/manufacturers*!). The next step will
be body orifice scanners like they have in prisons (you sit on them).
Nothing will stop these creeps except mass resistance. And people have to
have the mental fortitude to ignore and expose the (next!) false flag when
the creeps get really desperate. The verbatim response from many people I
haved talked to "well... if it makes us safer". The response to that is,
"will you accept body cavity searches if 'it make us safer'" or "does any
of this actually make us safer"? The answer to both those question is
"no". On the other hand, if we would stop messing around with other
people's countries and resources, that *would* make us safer.
[Feb06'10] Just 5 days after my post above, and there are already articles
on the internet about TSA drones using nudie scanners to
grope
mastectomy patients. The really sad punchline is that the gropee
thought the whole thing was a good idea.
[Feb09'10] Peak oil warnings from, uhhh,
Richard
Branson.
[Feb25'10] The average wage for manufacturing jobs in China is
$1/hour, 3% of what it currently is in the US (for comparison, Japanese
manufacturing wages are 80% of those in the US). That $1/hour wage is
just as much a problem for Japan as it is for the US. At these wages, the
de-industrialization of the US and most other high-wage countries is bound
to continue. It is hard to see what could reverse it in 10 years, even as
the downslope of peak oil begins. During the US depression of the 30's,
the US turned leftward. There is no sign at all of that this time around.
And economic pressure on the lower wage tea party guys is just beginning.
In thinking about how this will play out, it's important to remember that
the depression hit the US most severely because the US was in a similar
position to where China is now -- low wages and surplus industrial
production. With wages at 3% of those in the US, China can't easily
begin to absorb a lot more of its own products without taking a big hit
in revenues (from either adjusting wages higher wages or prices lower),
because they still have to pay for raw materials at open market prices.
Perhaps that is a good thing because currently, a Chinese person only
uses 1/10 as much oil per capita as a US person. If they were to escalate
their usage to that of people in the US, it would require doubling current
world oil production, almost certainly impossible given that we are likely
past peak oil production The US came out of its depression -- well,
at least after WWII -- on top of the world. What followed in the US and
the rest of the world was an almost perfect exponential rise in energy use
(esp. oil) that cemented its world dominance. How things will turn out
this time, I can't really guess, esp. with the possibility of new war(s)
somewhere thrown in there. The only thing I am sure of is that that kind
of post-WWII exponential increase in energy use *cannot happen* this time.
It is hard to see how intense competition over resources can be avoided.
The recent collapse in world trade (yearly 10% gains in trade over the
past 15 years were replaced with a 20% drop in 2009) have helped to
take some of the pressure off, but even 20% less trade leaves 80% --
and that involves substantial resource drawdowns. Even with a permanent
depression there will eventually be a horrible collision with the energy
supply downslope. I'm just repeating myself ad nauseum.
[Mar15'10]
This could be just more of the regular disinfo (esp. given Dan Plesch
source), but actual movements of materiel (if the report is correct)
carry a lot of, uhhh, weight for me. It took months to very visibly
ship stuff to the Persian Gulf in the build up to the 2003 Iraq invasion.
To prepare for another war there, it could be less visible, since there
is already bunch of stuff over there.
[Mar16'10] Chinese steel overcapacity is now greater than total European
steel output (from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard). This suggests that China
is having difficulty growing out its current situation. China could
be in a situation somewhat analogous to the US before the Depression.
Will they then also turn left?!
[Apr21'10] Only *6* people in Greece reported earning over a million
dollars last year. They are now coming to London to cash out in the tony
West end, helping to keep London the developed world's most unequal city
(from Daniel Dorling). The Greece bailout should be made dependent on
them taxing their rich people properly.
[Apr25'10] Reading about Stephen Hawking's new teevee show has added a
peak oil tick to my thinking about extraterrestrial life. Given the large
number of galaxies out there and the fact that life is based on simple
molecules that exist on asteroids and in other stars systems, it has
seemed likely to me that life may have evolved many tiems. However, there
were two 'origins of life' (defined as the origin of a self-maintaining
code-using system) on Earth -- first life, then language (Sereno, 1991).
Other life out there is therefore most likely single-celled (which is what
life was on our planet for 7/8 of its 3.8 billion years of existence,
or single-celled plus non-code-using multicellular (all but 0.002%
of 4 billions years). Other alien life out there has no doubt been
burnt out by stellar evolution. If the second coming of a coding system
(coding system on top of a lower level coding system) happened on another
planet, *and* it had access to enough easy energy sources to boot up an
industrial civilization, then still, it might have burnt itself out --
as our own is likely to do this century -- by running out of easy energy.
The brief run of our industrial civilization on Earth is even a tinier
speck of galactic time than code-using intelligent life on Earth.
Unless some new energy source comes up, which I think is unlikely, our
current civilization simply doesn't have enough remaining energy to build
enormous death-star-sized space ships capable of reaching other planets.
Here is the extra peak oil tick inspired by Hawking. Imagine that another
planet was endowed with 100 or a million times as much easy-to-get energy.
An industrial civilization evolving there might actually be in such a
position to 'leave town' after it overran its ecology, but before it
overran its energy resources. Like Stephen Hawking, I think the blind
acquisitiveness of code-using systems powered by a million times as much
easy energy as our own would indeed be a terrible thing to behold.
[May25'10] The new chimerical government of the UK is planning massive
public sector cuts while sparing cuts to their poodle participation in
the US-run Afghanistan slaughter/occupation. Shameful.
[Jun01'10] An increasingly desperate and dangerous nuclear-armed
pariah apartheid state stages a 4 AM massacre on a flotilla of
unarmed
aid vessels in international waters killing 19 aid workers
that were carrying supplies to break the medieval-style siege
on refugees in Gaza many of which had been previously ethnically
cleansed from their land. The US, which provides on the order of
$4 billion in aid every year, immediately unilaterally blocked a UN
security council condemnation of the act, with Obama playing the same
pitiful wimpstooge he played during the Gaza massacre a year and a
half ago (magnifying the stooge-ness he so recently displayed in his
handling of BP). The UN condemnation was supported by virtually the
entire world beyond the ruling classes of US and the UK (
pics).
Israel is still holding over 600 people. The Egyption dictatorship, which
has supported the siege, was forced to temporarily open its border with
Gaza, presumably to avoid a mess on the street. As with South Africa,
boycott, disinvestment, sanctions, and above all, social rejection will
be the only effective options in dealing with a country that has morally
collapsed (94% of Israelis approved of the 2008-2009 Gaza massacre), and
is hopelessly mired in toxic racial supremacist thinking. All humans
have the potential to let their own personal master race thinking get
out of hand. The trick of civil society is to keep it focussed on food,
music, and dance. It wouldn't hurt to have the US stop sending them arms
and money to the tune of thousands of dollars per Israeli per year, but
given the strength of the lobby in Congress, that is not likely to happen
any time soon -- strikingly, even in the midst of an economic disaster
in the US that is rapidly approaching the size of the Depression.
[Jun04'10] Some people think that because Israel has nuclear weapons
and because it appears crazy -- or tries to make itself appear so --
that it has to be appeased, else it will set one off, perhaps via a
false flag. I think there is only a very small chance of that happening.
For example, South Africa had nuclear weapons (via Israel), but they were
weaned off their master race thing without detonating one in public
(it is true that Israel has 200 while South Africa only had maybe
one, bought from Israel). Yesterday it was revealed that a 'parrot'
(a 19 year old American citizen) was among otherwise low-market-value
humans killed by the 'Bambi commandos' -- by four bullets to the head.
Unfortunately, since he is Turkish-American (his parents moved to Turkey
when he was young), his market value is lower, and this has already
been played up by the execrable mainstream media. Several survivors
have reported that several dead bodies were thrown overboard, which
may account for the discrepancy in the number of dead reported (
here
are the faces of the named ones). By contrast, the 81 year old woman
who threw one of the commandos overboard is being held for 'attempted
sexual assault'. It's impossible to make this stuff up. Or
this
-- an inadvertently anti-hasbara masterpiece by a managing editor of
the Jerusalem Post that was so smelly it even managed to irritate The
New Republic.
[Jun05'10] In spite of the fact that real industrial production in
Europe and China and India and the OECD in general has basically
recovered
to pre-Fall-2008 levels, strange hidden money shenanigans with
overnight banking lending seems to be just starting to go insane
again, like just before September 2008. I have no idea of what is
really going on. I am suspicious of games played by unproductive
parasites using millisecond delays to jump in and pre-bid other
people, but don't know how much they are to blame (though a Tobin
tax together with outlawing 'dark pools' would help starve these
creeps).
[Jun10'10] The mayor of London is calling for Americans to stop
criticizing BP because it will damage British pensions (like mine).
I wonder what Boris would say if an American company caused the largest
oil disaster in history and ocean currents carried it to the UK shores.
Somehow, I don't think the security of American pensions would be
foremost in his mind. But what if a greater tragedy occurred and there
were no more tuna left for sushi, Boris? (a major tuna spawning ground
is in the sights of the oil plume -- it's 'only' parts per million, but
that's plenty enough to do the job). Now a tragedy *that* big might
actually have Boris calling for BP to fly straight and pay damages.
In reality what is likely to happen is that the US government will
bail out BP using American tax money. So stop your sobbing, Boris.
And who's the real victim? This is beginning to sound more like Bambi
commandos assaulted with cameras by peace activists using their own
blood to cause them to slip. The reality is that BP executives gambled
by cutting corners during drilling and completion on what was actually
not an overly hard well to drill. There are many wells that are just as
difficult (5% of the US's daily oil comes from offshore wells in deep
water), and a number that are substantially more difficult -- deeper
water, deeper hole, higher pressure. BP lost its potentially profitable
gamble and should now have to pay, like ordinary people would have to
(and will have to, via pensions). And don't forget, Boris, if the bottom
kill relief wells run into difficulty before finally sealing the well
(which they often do), the oil plume may very well reach the UK via the
gulf stream. None of this excuses people getting angry at BP while not
even being aware of -- much less thinking about doing anything about
reducing -- their daily oil.
[Jun16'10] It's
tragic
and maddening watching the UK and the US sinking fortunes
into slaughtering the natives of Afghanistan and Iraq while
their own economies totter along precariously close to
the abyss. The head wedding-party-slaughterer, Petraeus,
briefly
collapsed in a Senate hearing, supposedly dehydrated.
I wonder what he would have done if one of his obscene drone-borne
missiles had sheared/scorched off his legs. Hopefully, the
wikileaks
release of one of his finer works or art
will soon be smeared across the internet, despite
sniveling rat-faced attention-starved snitch
Adrian Lamo having betrayed the presumed leaker in support of the
war machine. Truly an insane moment in history.
[Aug04'10] This is a
worrying note from
a generally sensible group (also linked below). As usual, one has to
be on guard that this could have been motivated by disinfo, perhaps
unbeknownst to the VIPS guys. As mentioned above, it is a different
situation than the impossible-to-conceal buildup to the Iraq war in late
2002 in that there is already a lot of hardware and people and supply
lines in place there. Hopefully it will blow over.
[Aug07'10] [from the oildrum] Think of a 300 mile long train with
30,000 hopper cars filled with coal. That's how much coal the US
burns. Every day. China burns three times that much. Every day.
Over the past decade, China tripled its coal consumption and India
doubled its coal consumption. There is a higher proportion of coal
left than there is of oil and natural gas left. But up against those
recent increases, we'll be lucky if it's 20 years until peak coal,
esp. since 10 years from now, coal will have to begin filling in for
declining oil and natural gas. The writing is on the wall and
on the web but most humans
refuse to read it.
[Sep22'10] Dmitri Orlov certainly got up on the wrong side of the bed
a few weeks
ago! -- but he does make many good points. I recently read Tainter's
old and rather tedious 1988 book that focussed on the collapses of the
the Roman empire, the Maya, and Chaco Canyon. The simple main point is
that societies collapse to a state of lesser complexity because it becomes
more and more energy-intensive to increase or even maintain complexity.
Clearly, this basic idea applies directly to ever-reducing return on
energy investment of oil -- one naturally goes for the easy oil first.
Over time, it becomes more and more energy intensive to extract oil
until the energy return on energy investment gets close to 1:1, at
which time oil extraction will begin to collapse. But it also applies
to something like Microsoft Word. In the beginning, it was a program
that one or two people could read through, with 27,000 lines of code (I
maintain three 10-20K line programs myself). The original Word worked
OK, more or less. But by 1995, it had grown to 2 million line of code.
By now, it's a 50 or 100 million line blood sucking monster that requires
a small city to maintain it, and its functionality is not that much better
for most people, despite having increased in size by a factor of 2000.
Perhaps Word can double in size one last time. But trying to guess how
our current supercharged much-more-highly-interconnected system will
play out under similar stresses is difficult based on the analysis of
previous cases. Certainly, one could imagine, as does Dmitri, that
collapse could potentially be much faster than say the Roman empire.
But the additional interconnectedness is not all bad. Individuals have
better access to information (tho they rarely use it). But perhaps some
might, when push comes to shove. Thankfully, Dmitri's next post
next
post was more uplifting -- in his own special way.
[Oct02'10] There was a tedious discussion in the oildrum yesterday
about a reasonable article on the reasonable "Export Land Model" of
more-rapid-than-expected oil export reduction as a function of growing
*internal demand* in exporting countries. This will collide in the
worst possible way with the growing appetites of importers, as well
as collisions between the big importers -- in particular, the US, EU,
China, and India. While massive EU and US imports have been relatively
flat, 'westexas' (one of the original authors of the Export Land idea)
notes
that China and India have increased their share of *total global exports*
(from exporters with at least 100,000 barrels per day of exports) from 11%
in 2005 to 17% in 2009. A simple extrapolation puts their share of total
global exports at 100% in 16 years. While this clearly can't happen,
it's obvious everybody's boat is likely to be rocked sooner than one
might expect if one was only looking at the almost flat peak in the world
oil *production* curve. That curve has been hovering around 90 million
barrels a day -- depending on what you count as 'oil' e.g., sweet crude,
heavy crude, lease condensates, natural gas plant liquids, oil from
tar sands, ethanol, biodiesel -- for the past 3-4 years. The stunning
lack of appreciation of these simple, practical, easy-to-understand
numbers by other-worldly economists and short-sighted businessmen is
depressing. The current basic numbers (summarized from EIA
here, and worth
memorizing) are as follows. On the *export* side are: Middle East: 55%,
Norway/Russia/Kazakhstan: 29%, Nigeria/Angola: 6%. On the import side are
EU: 36%, China/Japan/SouthKorea: 31%, US/Canada/Mexico: 28%, India: 5%.
Then there are regular people, left and right, who are instead currently
concentrating their powers of analysis on much more important topics
like the new Richard Curtis video...
[Oct17'10] China is creating a housing bubble that is several times the
size of the one in the US. There are reports that there are 5 times as
many empty apartments and houses as there are in the US. Hard to imagine
that this will interact well with peak oil. Once again I feel like that
giant Gary Larson roach taking a shower and discovering that the drain
is plugged: "I'd *hate* to think of what's down there..."
[Oct23'10] Superb graph
here from
a presentation made by Paul Mobbs to some arm of Parliament in 2009.
Contains all the main points for the UK. The contrast between this
reality and everyday discourse is so great that it's hard to imagine
I'm living on the same planet as "everyday". It's clear there will be
essentially no preparation for the downslope of peak oil. There will be
no preparation for contraction. Just falling down the stairs, one stair
at a time (image from a recent John Michael Greer interview).
[Oct24'10] The revelations in the wikileaks -- whatever their limited
hangout intent w.r.t. Iran -- ring depressingly true to life and are
intensely reminiscent of the El Salvador death sqauds where US supported
*local* mercenaries did most of the dirty work of *personally* torturing
and maiming people. US-ians prefer to do most of their maiming from a
safe distance whenever possible and outsource the Spanish Inquisition
stuff. That doesn't make them even slightly better -- thats's just what
people do when they have more money.
[Oct31'10] Every day I watch people pointlessly accelerating for 100
meters before breaking sharply before the next red light. Every day
I watch ebb and flow of the religiously maintained traffic volume.
We are now just about at, or perhaps even a few years past peak oil.
The oil spill that was just capped was in deep water -- hard-to-get oil
with much poorer energy return on energy investment than the oil of 10
or 20 years ago. No large cache of easy-to-get oil has been discovered
in decades. The world is still using 85-90 million barrels a day,
one cubic mile per year. But I'm not resentful. My urge to raise the
alarm is shamefully reduced. If the super-rich get all the bail outs for
their gambling debts and then get to cash out now (income polarization
rose to record level *since* 2008), while austerity is rammed down the
throats of most of the rest of the herd, why *shouldn't* those people
in cars have the right to race up to the red light? Maybe they, too,
know it's probably too late.
[Nov06'10] "The bankers defrauded each other, and as the crisis deepens,
they will turn on one another like frenzied, fat, white cannibals --
just as they did in 2008." -- Glen Ford.
[Nov11'10] The UK government, which already spends less per student
than the US, is planning to double or triple college fees, all while
maintaining nuclear stockpiles, aircraft carriers, and other useless
things. Not a good investment in the future, but maybe those in
control think there isn't any (future). Then there's the 'war effort'
-- 10,000 UK troops in Afghanistan -- 10 solid year of supporting the
US-run debacle/slaughter. Shameful misallocation of funds at the very
moment of peak oil.
[Nov26'10] Don't believe in peak oil? Soros has *30%* of his ill-gotten
gains invested in oil (these are the people/scum who make their money
'work' (sic): they will bid up oil again, rake in profits, and crash
the world economy again). Don't worry be happy. The latest Marcellus
oil shale find (sic, it's gas) will save the day. And just for kicks,
Soros bought 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns
Rapiscan, the X-ray airport body scanners.
[Nov30'10]
Here
is a particularly clear description of the main difference between money
creation by deposits/loans with a reserve requirement, and money creation
by securitisation, hedging, leveraging, and derivatives. In the first
case, there is an exponentially decreasing, bounded multiplier; the
total amount of money created by the bank after multiple deposit/lending
cycles is: 1/reserves_fraction - 1. That is, $9 is eventually created
from an initial $1 deposit after about 30 cycles of redeposit/relend.
In the second case, instead of lending out deposit*(1-reserves_fraction)
(i.e., $0.90 from a $1 deposit), the bank can effectively lend out *more*
than reserves; but more importantly, it can do this *each time* a deposit
comes in. Thus, there is no exponential *decay* in the amount of money
created with each redeposit/relend cycle, but rather an obviously unstable
exponential *growth* in the amount of money (which is how derivatives,
etc got up to $2 quadrillion -- many times the size of the real economy
funded by the standard reserve-based money creation system). This is
grade school algebra. This 'new innovation' has turned the banking
system into a absolutely standard, old-time pyramid scheme, massively
enriching already-super-rich people at the expense of everybody else,
to levels unseen in a century, and destablizing the financial system
right at the moment of peak oil. It's so stupid and evil and ill-timed,
that it's hard to believe. Nothing has been fixed and seems unlikely
to be, barring some kind of insurrection. The latest outrage is having
Irish pensioners bailing out EU (German, French, English) bankers who
made bad bets (via the Orwell-speak 'bailout of the Irish'). But, as
satisfying as it would be to see these guys hanging from the lampposts
(or at least in jail!) an insurrection would not fix peak oil. On the
positive side, the oil peak is a gentle one -- at first. Thank god this
will give us and Lady Gaga quality time to attend to critical topics
like openly gay Amurrican soldiers...
[Dec01'10] Another 80 million people were added to the Earth last year
(a number slightly more than a quarter of the population of the US,
or approximately equal to the whole UK). Almost a billion have been
added since 2000. Of course, it would be a good idea to think about
voluntarily *reducing* population before the decline in fossil fuel
begins in earnest. But there is no chance of this happening either
in rich countries (where each new birth adds an energy load that
is an order of magnitude greater than a birth in a poor country)
or in poor countries (where more rapid population growth makes up
for lower per capita energy use). The growth of easy energy is
highly correlated with the growth of human population.
Here is
a graph of just oil and world population from my no-longer-updated peak
oil presentation. Human population took off in the 19th century around
the time of big increases in coal use. It rapidly accelerated about the
time that oil was added to coal (after that, natural gas and then nuclear
power were added to still-growing coal and oil use). The growth of easy
energy probably directly drives human population growth via increases
in the food supply. Humans left and right will have sophisticated and
civilized debates about who should go first, about comparative patterns
of development, fairness, and so on. Nothing will change. Both sides are
ridiculous. The rich say, just raise the level of the poor and they will
stop reproducing. That's a fine sentiment except that raising the level
of the poor to the level of the west would increase the depletion rate of
fossil fuels and fresh water and fertile land by a factor of 10, leading
to a really fast crash. Imagine adding the infrastructure of a whole
'nuther UK, every single year (that's what China and India are trying
to do, but most people there are still living far below UK 'standards',
such as they are). And the west is not doing a very good job of reducing
its production of gold-plated 10x-poor-people babies. The poor say,
it's not fair that we should pay for a century of intemperate behavior
by you rich pigs. Those who have not had babies yet say the same thing.
All true, and not fair; but adding another billion people, rich and
poor, will only make the denouement even more horrific. It is virtually
guaranteed that there will be another billion people on the Earth by 2020
(15 more UK's). Sometime around 2030 or 2040, human population will be
begin to be controlled once again by the same sure and natural method
that has always worked for controlling populations of other animals --
limitations in the food supply. It won't be fair. It won't be equitable.
It won't be predictable in detail. Many humans will be looking the
other way. It is guaranteed to work overall.
[Dec03'10] "As for the bulk of what has been leaked so far, especially
on Iran and the movers and shakers in the Persian Gulf, it is barely
disguised US/Israeli propaganda." -- Pepe Escobar in Asia Times on
Wikileaks.
[Dec17'10] David Rutledge from Caltech has made a
new estimate for total
world production of coal, past and future, of 680 Gt (gigatons).
This is slightly lower than his previous estimate, and about the same
as the estimates of Patzek and Croft (2010: 630Gt) and Mohr and Evans
(2009: 700Gt). About half of total world coal has been used (310 Gt).
The yearly coal burn rate is about 7 Gt. By contrast, some of the worst
case IPCC scenarios use official government and energy agency estimates
that total coal production, past and present, will be 5x as great (3,500
gigatons). Those estimates come from the same organizations that have
steadily dropping their ridiculous overestimates of total oil for years
now as oil production has flattened; they are getting closer and closer
to 2000 gigabarrel total oil reality (not too long ago, their official
line was that total oil was 5000 gigabarrels). I think those agencies
will soon have to start doing the same thing with coal. As with coal,
about half of total oil has been used. The yearly oil burn rate is
about 29 gigabarrels. Since one ton of coal has about 4x the energy
of one barrel of oil, the total energy in 2000 gigabarrels of oil and
680 gigatons of coal is roughly comparable. It goes without saying
that nothing will stop cold starving humans from using all the useable
(net energy positive) coal and oil. Also, these calculations assume
that all coal and oil have equal net energy. They don't. Net energy
declines as better quality, eaiser-to-get resources are depleted.
What will stop coal and oil production is break-even net energy, not
absolute depletion. Thus, the effective (net energy) downslope is steeper
than the production downslope, and the two downslopes diverge more and
more as the break-even point is approached. This isn't rocket science.
You don't need a college degree to understand it. The good news is the
climate probably won't get as quite awful as predicted by the standard
scenarios (it will still get awful). The bad news is that coal will
be 90% exhausted by 2070, when humans will be desperately scraping out
the last of the barely net-energy-positive stuff. Oil and natural gas
will be even more completely exhausted. Already by 2040, there will
probably be another 2 billion people around (the current growth rate is
about 0.5 billion people per decade). The current death rate is about
1% per year. The death rate is likely to increase a lot. From here,
2070 is not looking too good. At least I'll be dead. This is the adult
world we are preparing for the kids that people are bringing into the
world today. I know humans are animals, but they also have language.
Just don't do it.
[Dec21'10] There was a stunningly incompetent response to a few inches of
snow at Heathrow this weekend, an amount we would have laughed off back
in Chicago. Instead of moving it aside in order to keep 1500 flights
a day flowing through the airport, the privatized airport management
decided to save money and leave it in place until it partially melted
and then froze solid. Then they tried to have their workers chisel it
away the next day. BAA, the airport owner, reported pre-tax profits of
1 billion pounds this year, but they spent only 0.0005 billion (500,000
pounds) on equipment at Heathrow to deal with snow and ice. Heathrow had
only 50 people working to clear the snow (vs. 150 people at Gatwick,
an airport less than half the size -- i.e., *1/6* as many as Gatwick).
They turned down an offer from the UK military to help. Apparently, the
airport failed to follow the recommendations of the 'resilience' report
after the disaster last year. This impotent response to a relatively
minor disruption -- and the very fact that you have people whose jobs it
is to write about 'resilence'! (as opposed, to say, grabbing a shovel)
-- is not a good sign for the future when there will be real problems.
Like many other people, our holiday plans were cancelled. Dang, you
can never go home again, etc. The execs at BAA raking in huge bonuses
for messing up everybody else's lives are faceless, for now at least
[update: the slob went public with a sob story that he had to lift his
snout out of the 'privatized' public trough for a few seconds to forgo
his bonus this week]. In Greece, when protestors recognized one of their
parliamentarians on the street, they started *stoning* him, but he got
away (cf. Charles and Camilla). The richies won't stop until there are
consequences for their own travel plans and private estates and Mercedes.
The problem is that by the time that average people figure that out, we
will be on a serious net energy downslope, and well-deserved beatings will
do nothing to fix it. And the proles could easily be distratcted (again)
by a big false flag terror event if they start getting out of hand.
Recent booga-boogas involved FBI infiltrator talking so much nonsense in
a mosque that the people there reported him... to the FBI; or in Oregon,
where the FBI provided fake bombs to a barely mentally competent patsy.
It would be trivial to supply one of these slow-witted sots a real bomb
when simple booga-booga is not enough (cf. the real bomb in Sweden).
It will have to be at least as big as Oklahoma City.
[Dec29'10] Here is a sensible, data based prediction of
near
term oil import capacities by Jeffery J. Brown and Samuel Foucher.
The one sentence summary is, if we assume current import and export trends
for the next 5 years, rich oil-importing countries (i.e., excluding China
and India) will have to reduce imports by 33% (in the case of the US,
this would be 33% of 60% imported, or about 20% of total oil usage).
Their point has always been that major stresses may develop even on the
"bumpy plateau" here at peak oil, before world production has begin to
decline in earnest. None of this justifies the US consuming as much
oil as China, India, Japan, Russia, and Germany -- combined.
[Jan17'11] This is the kind of
nonsense
by which money changers make money for nothing -- gaming somebody else's
stock order by less than a millisecond -- a true case of rearranging deck
chairs on the Titanic. Idiocies like this, however, will be temporary.
They rely on a properly functioning electrical grid supported virtually
completely by electricity generated that same millisecond from fossil
fuel. These activities are completely parasitical. When food starts
going short, these parasites will eventually begin to be targetted and
eliminated from the system.
[Jan23'11] "A cash machine for which you need no PIN"
-- a showgirl's description of Silvio Berlusconi and his
Caligulan
court.
[Jan28'11] Today, the US-supported dictatorship in Egypt -- the largest
recipient of US military aid ($2 billion/year) next to Israel ($3+
billion/year) -- turned off its internet, BlackBerry messaging, and SMS.
Syria just followed suit. Looks like martial law is next. There are
reports that Mubarak's son and wife fled to London, many a tyrant's first
stop on their way to their favorite tyrant retirement community...
[Jan29'11] Bizarre placement!
Fox news (!) gave Kurt
Haskell air time for his long standing claim that the 'underwear/crotch
bomber' was let onto his flight *without a passport*, as a result of the
intervention of a 'well-dressed man' at the ticket counter, presumably
in order to provide support for the Patriot Act and airport nudie
scanners pimped by former homeland 'security' chief Michael Chertoff.
Go Kurt!
[Jan29'11] In Egypt, Mubarak dismissed his government and deployed
the army to the streets for the first time in 25 years after
protestors overpowered police, because, as he explained on Egypt
teevee: "there is no turning back from the path of reform that
we chose. We seek more democracy and freedoms". As Dmitri Orlov
notes, this is beginning to look like Eastern Europe in 1989, when
the (other) 'evil empire' began to collapse. Mubarak dismissed
his 'government' and appointed the former spy chief and
head
torturer as 'vice-president' (there wasn't one before). May the
'seek' for 'democracy and freedoms' continue! It looks like the
demonstrators are defying the just announced 3-day curfew. Tanks
are in the street in the center of large cities, for now
visible live on Saturday at Al
Jazeera seem to be just sitting there, in the middle of huge crowds.
The police have retreated completely. Tanks always win vs. people (cf.
Gaza), and for now, most Egyptians are welcoming the army and the tanks.
About 100 people have been killed so far.
[Jan30'11] Mohamed ElBaradei (formerly IAEA) is a current member of
the
board
of trustees of the Soros-funded International Crisis Group,
known for previous involvement in 'color' revolutions (most recently
'red' in Thailand). The Gaza-Egypt border was just
indefinitely
sealed by the Egyptian army. Al Jazeera has
reported that Mubarak is planning to evacuate to
Tel
Aviv after Saudi said no (since they just took in the US-supported
dictator just booted out of Tunisia). It is difficult to guess what
happens next in this fluid situation.
[Feb04'11] Military vehicles running over crowds of protestors in Egypt
rhymes with Tiananmen Square. For now, this still seems far away in the
US and the UK. I think it will still look far away after another year
or two of 'austerity', despite the fact that the polarization of wealth
in the US and UK has gone beyond that that preceding the Depression.
The almost perfect correlation between food prices and oil prices gives
me pause. Things could rapidly spiral out of control again if oil
prices spike again, which they are bound to do in the next year or two.
And speaking of oil, I just checked oil exports of Egypt at
Energy Export Databrowser and
was horrified to to discover that exactly this year, they just went down
to almost nothing. There is a long way down from the US/UK to Egypt,
where 45% of the population lives on $2 a day or less (in purchasing
power parity terms). For comparison, 50% of people in the world live
on less than $2 a day.
[Feb07'11] The US
financially
supported key members of the Mubarak opposition, even as Obama-robot
Hillary-robot and Blair-robot are limply mouthing support for Mubarak.
Don't forget the facts on the ground: the main effect of the Egypt
revolution so far has been to groom the Israel-supported head torturer,
Suleiman, to replace the doddering 82 year old Mubarak. Not that
I or anybody else even more justifiably paranoid than me could have
fomented a different outcome. The only way to head something like this
off is for *every person in an entire population* (including the army)
to be well-informed, ultra-paranoid, and street active, one year before
anything officially begins to happen in the mainstream propaganda/media
-- a truly tall order. I got the same sinking feeling before the two
Iraq wars. The government/military started systematically transporting
military equipment over there for the first war many months before it
started. By one month before it started, all the materiel was there,
and the war was completely impossible to stop -- right at the moment
when the Wolf Blitzer propaganda blaster was shifting into high gear.
To stop it, one would have had to have been paranoid enough to begin
public interventions *one year* before that (early 1990) -- at a time
when no one was even yet thinking about Iraq. Right now, that means
paranoiacally visualizing the next big thing (but where?). Last month,
I wasn't thinking about Egypt at all, even though the CIA had already been
thinking *and* doing there for two years. Today, the lovely
Merkel
has offered Mubarak asylum in Germany, but it is looking like he won't
even leave the place to his head torturer. His personal fortune is
"$40 to $70" billion dollars. Given that the US money spigot was less
than $2 billion a year, he must have directly pocketed half of it!
He also has a giant loyal court of sycophants and goons protecting him
(today they got a 15% pay raise). The situation is not yet dire enough
for even one of them to turn on him (not that I would be brave enough
to do so). Though the price of food and fuel skyrocketed,
a
larger impetus for the riots in Tunisia and Egypt than twitter,
people are not yet starving. But the situation is fluid. The world food
sitation is now hiccupping more severely, with China just announcing
that they will *9 times* their last year's imports of corn. Too bad
the stoopid Americans made 1/3 of theirs into ethanol for their stoopid
mini-tanks. As Bob Moriarty just wrote, peak oil means peak food means
peak people.
[Feb08'11] A classic false flag
is
exposed in Egypt! Egypt's interior minister Habib el-Adly
arranged to have a Christian church in Alexandria bombed on
New Year's Day, killing 24 people. This was first blamed on
'Gaza militants'. Then Jeffrey Fleishman in the LA Times
'reported'
two weeks ago that Egypt had conclusive evidence, courtesy of el-Adly,
that Al Qaeda -- virtually non-existent yet omnipresent, headed by Elvis
bin dead 10 years Laden -- was also involved in the church bombing.
But this time, the bastards were outed when the hired perps escaped
from jail last week and tattled! Yeah. Beware the next false flag.
Some paranoia is justified.
[Feb12'11] Great to see Mubarak gone. Now let's see
what the military and the CIA/Israel-supported torturer
Suleiman,
do. He is not more liked than Mubarak, but Egypt has an enormous secret
police in addition to its regular police and its army, and it is still
well supplied with US supported torture chambers. The army remains
currently in control. There is not a great deal of practical difference between
the army+Mubarak and the army.
[Feb21'11] The French Revolution occurred during the Enlightenment,
a time of increasing expectations, education, and communication --
and bread shortages. That's rather like a lot of the world (e.g.,
US/EU/Mideast/China/India) right now. The French Revolution ended up
with Napoleon and huge invading armies. I suppose fossil fuel shortages
will eventually put a crimp in the aircraft carriers and killer drones
of our modern Napoleons (a modern western military on the move is 70%
fossil fuel by weight). On the other hand, I'm not sure that a return to
more traditional methods (bows shooting arrows dipped in feces to cause a
'better' infection, Waterloo, etc.) would be that much better. At least,
it would take longer to move military crap around. As usual, I had
absolutely no inkling above of the imminent parallel uprisings (Tunisia,
Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Wisconsin!) that were about to occur.
Well, prediction is very hard, especially about the future. At least I
did mention oil shortages (but when have I not mentioned them...)
[Feb24'11] The 'diplomat' picked up in Pakistan
turns out to be C IA. The government rag NYT
obediently
following Obama's orders to withhold the
goods they had in an effort to try to let the story
blow over. There is a widely linked report (e.g.,
here)
that Davis was plotting nu clear false flags with the Taliban. However,
the text of that report originated with 'Sorcha Faal' (=David Booth), who
runs a known disinfo site (doesn't mean that it doesn't sometime publish
partial truths in order to poision the well -- but it's not a trustworthy
source). There are plenty enough real false flags. Remember
this
one? -- "The [Iraqi] official said two unknown gunmen in full Arabic
dress began firing on civilians in central Basra, wounding several,
including a traffic police officer." These two guys turned out to
be British special forces (SAS) who had to be rescued by demolishing
the prison they were being held in. In any case, we are entering some
uncharted waters. Even though Libya 'only' produces 1.6 million barrels
a day, if we lost that it would amount to a 2% loss of our daily oil
(1000 barrels a second, 88 million barrels a day). We are at peak
oil precisely because Saudi no longer has enough 'swing production'
to make such a large loss invisible (it's spare production is probably
not much more than 2 million extra barrels a day). And all this is
occurring in the context of other exporting countries experiencing
increasing internal demand in the face of declining production (e.g.,
Egypt's exports just went to zero this year). If Libya goes offline for a
while, it will be keenly felt by the rest of the world over the next year.
Oil prices will likely spike, which will then cause economies to crash,
which may then precipitate yet another flight to safety (the dollar)
later this year.
[Mar13'11] In the wake of the terrible earthquake/tsunami disaster in
Japan, there are many jeremiads about how dangerous nuclear power is.
It *is* quite messy. But given that the quake was a gigantic 9.0,
followed by a 30 foot wall of water (which probably did more damage to
the reactors than the shaking), it's perhaps surprising that the result
wasn't worse (though the scenario is not over yet). It's easy to say you
are against nuclear power. It's easy to say you are against big oil or
big coal, too. But all that whining is utterly meaningless if you're
not also against plentiful always-on electricity and easy transport
and enough food. There will be coal, there will be deep water oil
and gas, and there will be nuclear -- at least for the next 30 years
when all three have run out in a practical sense (i.e., as *sources*
of energy). If you don't want big nuclear and big coal and big oil
and gas, stop having kids, stop driving around and flying around, stop
eating meat, and get off the internet (hey! I should follow my own advice!
I'd probably get more useful work done...). Currently, in the US, solar
provides 0.01% (i.e., 1/9400) of total energy used. Wind provides 0.7%
(1/135) of total energy used. There will coal. There will be oil.
There will be nuclear.
[Mar14'11] Eeesh. A hydrogen (gas) explosion just occurred at a
second reactor (#3), a plutonuium-containing reactor, and there was
just another tsunami, as well as reports of low levels of radiation
from a US aircraft carrier that passed 100 miles from the power plant.
This explosion was larger than the first one. We are getting a bit
closer to a Chernobyl-sized disaster (but still far away). I am
sure, however, that the unquenchable thirst of the still-growing
human population for energy will keep nuclear (and coal and oil and
natural gas) energy on our plate until they run down. Population is
currently growing at the rate of more than one entire new UK per year
(80,000,000 people). Is California going to turn off the 2 gigawatts
coming out of San Onofre (1 million homes)? The output of San Onofre is
equivalent to the average yearly output of about 12,000 typical Danish
0.6 megawatt wind turbines set up in a windy location. It's
not very
windy [very large jpg!] around San Onofre, so replacing the output
of San Onofre would require 50,000 or 100,000 turbines. The San Onofre
plant alone is equivalent to the entire current wind turbine power output
of California. But that wind output still has many complete zero-energy
gaps in power of 1-2 days when it's not windy. I don't think San Onofre
is going offline anytime soon. People are too short sighted to think
ahead for 10 years (even for their kids) to do the right thing now.
And what about all the new power plants for the extra 80,000,000 new
people added to the world just this year? At California standards,
with 5 people per home, those new people would need 16 new San Onofre's
or about 40 reactors the size of each of the reactors in the Fukushima
complex, just for their home power, just for this year. Lack of energy is
a war footing. The rules will change. What is acceptable will change.
Unfortunately, energy decline is a permanent war footing. And as others
have commented, the number of people killed by the tsunami (probably more
than 10,000) is 3 orders of magnitude larger than the number killed by
the nuclear plant disaster. For that matter, there are over a million
deaths *per year* from automotive accidents, which utterly dwarfs the
miniscule number of deaths from nuclear energy accidents. I'd be very
happy to see less cars and more wind turbines myself. I'm not against
nuclear power, properly handled, but it's not a long term solution: we
are running out of uranium and only one thorium core has ever been built
(note that a hypothetical thorium electric plant isn't any less messy
after it's been running for a few years).
[Mar15'11] Additional
bad
news from Japan: a spent fuel pool caught fire (now put out)
releasing radioactivity, and there was a third explosion that may
have breached the water filled torus at the base of that reactor,
tho not the pressure vessel itself (these events were at 2 different,
additional sites to the sites of the 2 previous explosions at #1
and #3). Not close to Chernobyl in terms of radiation release (yet!),
but not yet stable (i.e., below the boiling point of water). It looks
like the biggest release of radioactivity so far may have come from
damage and fire in the on-site pools containing spent fuel (5 times
as much long-lived radioactivity there as in the core,
located
above and just off to the side of the core for easy
unloading), not from damage to the reactor core itself.
Even the large explosion at #3 which sent stuff flying high into
the air may not have ruptured the containment vessel since it
remained
pressurized afterward. Another worry is that temperatures are
rising in the spent fuel pools sitting the the buildings above the
other reactors. Here's hoping for the best even though the news has
gotten worse each day. Also the wind is blowing inland today. I have
corium in my nightmares. It's worth reemphasizing that nuclear energy
doesn't replace coal or oil or methane. It *adds* a good chunk to them.
Humans are going all out to maintain business as usual, which means going
all out on *all* of the 'big four' energy sources, at the same time.
With growing population, I don't think this will change *at all* until
each source is depleted beyond practical use. Platitudes about stopping
climate change won't stop humans -- those platitudes haven't budged
humans even a hair in their energy use patterns! The only thing that
will stop humans from using coal, oil, methane, and uranium is running
out of coal, oil, methane, and uranium, followed by running out of food.
It's the obvious elephant in the room that virtually no one can talk
about in the everyday happy market world of Matrix-land that each of us
lives in.
[Mar16'11] Problems with the spent and partly spent fuel overheating and
boiling off water in cooling ponds continue. The amount of dangerous
radioactivity in each pool is several times larger than in each core.
Still not stable. The next 2 days are critical. The Chernobyl disaster
was caused by non-engineer 'safety officer' apparatchiks ordering more
knowledgeable plant workers to pull the moderator rods out past the
"never go past this point" mark put on them by the physicists -- in order
to perform a 'safety' test!!! The Chernobyl reactor core melted down *1
second* after they did this, and caught fire soon after. The physicists
knew about this dangerous instability and bear some of the blame. In the
Fukushima case, a bad design of emergency power (underground generators
that flooded, vulnerable overground power lines that got knocked down, all
virtually at sea level on a tsunami coast) turned a manageable situation
into something that is getting closer to Chernobyl each day. Very sad.
In both cases, the disasters were completely preventable by scientific
knowledge and common sense. Years after the Chernobyl disaster, very
few people can accurately quote the real reason for it.
[Mar18'11] The disastrous hydrogen explosions may have been caused by
hydrogen vented from the overheating core escaping past an O-ring on a
heavy on a cement plug (by the 70 pounds per square inch pressure lifting
it and ruining the seal) just above the sealed metal reactor core (instead
of being vented safely outside of the building) as explained
here.
News today looks somewhat more hopeful after water was added to some of
the cooling ponds and power is being restored (and no more explosions
have taken place...).
[Mar28'11] Unlike the 'own goal' administrative mistakes in the first
space shuttle explosion (administrator overrides solid fuel rocket
booster engineer, Roger Boisjoly, who refused to sign the take-off order
because it was too cold on the basis of his observation of previous
partial failures), and Chernobyl ('safety officers' order the removal
of moderator rods past their maximum safe withdrawal point to perform a
'safety test', which instantly causes a core meltdown), the Fukushima
disaster seems to have been caused by two engineering design flaws: (1)
explosions caused by pressure vessel hydrogen (and radioactive steam)
venting into the building instead of being 'safely' dumped outside
because of an incorrect specification of the pressure the O-ring on
the concrete containment vessel inside the building could withstand
(above), and (2) loss of water in the spent fuel pools through a
compressed-air-operated door/gate seal in the side of the pool which
failed with prolonged power outage (Dave Lochbaum's hypothesis
here.
Neither of these design flaws are particularly subtle. If these two
explanations are verified, they are largely the fault of GE engineers
and their subcontractors (in the 1970's), along with Japanese engineers
who failed to correct them, and failed to provide earthquake- and
tsunami-resistant backup power). Alternative or additional explanations
of spent fuel pond water loss include water being splashed out of the
ponds by earthquake shaking, and cracks in the pools from the earthquake
and from the subsequent explosions. Of course, none of these real
explanations, or the practical palliatives (transfer spent fuel from fuel
ponds to dry casks like the Germans have done) that should immediately
be implemented on the many current operating copies of these reactors
will be calmly reported by the stupid dunces the world calls 'teevee
reporters', currently engaged in 'reporting' on the latest US-run effort
to bravely kill poor people and bomb power stations by remote control
in countries that still have a lot of oil. Rather, we will have them
motivating American to empty the supply of potassium iodide actually
needed by Japanese near the stricken plant. Long live the internet,
where real information was available to everybody within days of the
event, without the need for any 'news teams'! Helpful, publically-minded
engineers and scientists are all we need. The world would be a better
place without the news teams and their painted clown-face 'reporters'.
Everybody is against nukes now, but, childishly, almost no one wants
to forego the power the plants put out (which among other things, help
make parts for phones/computers/teevees), have fewer kids, travel less,
and so on.
[Mar30'11] From the first time I saw the larger explosion at Fukushima
unit 3, I had a bad feeling about it, given how much more debris and dust
were blown upward. It was immediately apparent that unlike the first
explosion in unit 1 and the explosion in unit 4, both of which left most
of the reactor building structures intact, likely including the spent fuel
pools, this one might have damaged the concrete containment structure.
Unlike the other two, there is a possibility it was initiated by molten
'corium' from a substantially melted core coming into contact with water
in the suppression torus below the bottom of the containment structure,
causing a steam explosion (rather than, or in addition to a hydrogen
explosion). This explosion was more likely to have damaged the spent
fuel ponds causing them to leak water. Quite a mess, though there is
no hard information on what actually happened (and there won't be for
a while). In the end, the whole thing will likely kill a smaller number
of people than the tsunami/earthquake itself (27,000 killed or missing)
-- and probably less than the number of people killed across the world
in automobile accidents *every single day* (about 3000, with about
10,000 a day seriously injured), which is regarded as an unfortunate
but acceptable daily loss of life for the convenience of driving. But
the Fukushima disaster has permanently wrecked a good chunk of land
(some of which still has people on it), caused ground water and sea water
contamination, and will require an enormous effort (years) before it is
stablized (e.g., by digging under the structure to install a concrete
barrier to further ground and sea water contamination). The stabilization
seems to be going slower than with Chernobyl and there is a lot more
radioactive fuel at play. Dmitri Orlov (always a hopeful one :-} )
argues that we have declined as an industrial civilization below the
minimum level of competence required to use and manage nuclear power.
I hope he's wrong.
[Mar31'11] The Libyan rebels -- whose
leader spent the last 20 years in
Langley,
Virginia with no visible means of support -- have already
set up their own central bank. Capital idea! Cool! Can we do
that here? This comes about a year after Libya began charging US
and UK oil companies additional fees to operate, which resulted in
US and UK oil companies (but not Chinese oil companies) withdrawing
from their Libyan oil operations in protest. As Susan Lindauer
writes,
this is yet another vampire war for oil.
[Apr06'11] As a result of taking some of its older nuclear power plants
offline, Germany has had to import power from its neighbors (France and
the Czech republic). France, on the other hand, generates 80% of its
power from nuclear power plants...
[Apr12'11] Japan now estimates that the release of radiation from the
Fukushima disaster is (so far) up to 10% of that at Chernobyl. Not as
bad, but getting closer.
[Apr13'11] I would imagine a lot of countries are concluding that
Gaddafi's decision to give up his nuclear program was a mistake. The US
doesn't do no-fly programs over countries with nukes.
[Apr18'11] Saudi has not made up for the 1.3 million
barrels a day cut in oil production by Libya (the cut
is about 1.6% of world "all liquids" usage, graphs
here).
Saudi also has growing internal demand. Saudi's oil fields are 50
years old and many are producing oil with a substantial water cut (water
pumped in below oil to repressurize depleted oil field), which has to
be separated afterward. The 'newer' fields (most also discovered 50
years ago) have high sulfur, more viscous, more difficult-to-process
oil. A significant permanent downslope of oil production now awaits
industrial civilization. But unfortunately, nothing will be understood
until severe shortages have been chronically experienced. An example of
the absolute unreality of discourse comes from the Pacific Northwest.
Because of a large snowpack this year, the hydropower reservoirs have
been emptied in anticipation of large run off. Since there will be extra
power, the intermittent supplies of wind power (equivalent to two large
dams) is currently planned to be idled, because there will be no place
to store it. This has gotten people angry for having spent money on
wind power. Instead of planning for coal depletion, a sloppy wind grid,
distributed battery storage of intermittent wind power, more pumped hydro,
or any of a number of common sense responses to the imminent decline of
industrial civilization, people are mad because they can't waste energy
like they have become accustomed to doing. The only thing that could
change their mind is severe, chronic shortages. This all goes for me,
too. We don't have a car or kids, and we live in a small flat, but we
still use a lot more energy than world per capita average. Of course,
by the time that forced shortages cause rationing, it will be even more
difficult to spend the extra money on renewable power, since renewable
power will *always* be more expensive than coal/oil/gas "because it's
made out of them, stupid" (Dr. Steve Brule voice). *Of course* it's not
as good/convenient/cheap as coal/oil/gas (maybe I will leave nuclear out
of that trio just now...). Never will be. And that is *exactly* why we
should be going all out right now making renewable energy while there
is still some fossil fuel left! Despite its momentous implications,
energy rundown will too slow to knock people sufficiently upside the
head to get them to actually do something practical about it (i.e., look
ahead for at least 15 or 20 years). For example, right now, because of
current high price for oil (which is all that matters, even if it is set
to crash next year, since this is business, not logic), natural gas now
looks cheap. In equivalent energy terms, at current prices, natural gas
costs only 40% of what oil does. In anticipation of this demand (again
with a time horizon of one year), drilling into shale gas has picked up
over the last year. Shale gas wells are super-rapidly-depleting (e.g.,
85% declines in one year in Chesapeake Energy Corporation's
Haynesville
shale) because shale gas formations are so 'tight' permeability-wise.
This makes it hard for the gas to percolate through to the borehole,
which often includes several miles of horizontal drilling through
a 50 foot thick formation. The methods of slightly increasing
permeability (fracking, 'proppants') cause small earthquakes,
contaminate the water supply (e.g., causing tap water to be
ignitable!),
release large amounts of the super
(20-100x as bad) greenhouse gas, methane (
6%
of total well production!), etc, etc. It doesn't matter. And the
oil shale boom is still happening even when all the big money on oil
is already shorting oil in anticipation of the next oil price crash.
It makes perfect sense when you are looking ahead one year. So, full
steam ahead -- for one year. Until the next iceberg. Until we all go
down with the ship. Oh well.
[May13'11] TEPCO has confirmed that the core has melted through the
bottom of the pressure vessel in (at least) reactor 1. The scale of
the disaster is getting closer to Chernobyl every day. My initial
guess that it wouldn't turn out to be as bad as Chernobyl may turn out
to be wrong. Despite the lack of press coverage, the situation remains
far from being under control. Constructing a containment building over
as well as into the ground alongside the damaged reactors to contain
the mess will be a substantially bigger job than it was with the single
Chernobyl reactor. From a distance, the response to the disaster seems to
be lackadaisical and haphazard given its seriousness -- but this is from
a distance, and with spotty reporting of what is currently going on.
The current understanding is that the core probably melted into a
pool at the bottom of the pressure vessel within the first few hours
(detailed reports
here).
This disaster lends credibility to those who argue that nuclear energy's
energy-return-on-energy-invested is overestimated because of not having
included energy costs of recovering from disasters. However, nuclear
EROEI is still *much* further above 1.0 than the pointless (1 unit of
energy in, 1 unit of energy out) conversion of 40% of the US corn crop
into ethanol. Nuclear plants are still being constructed worldwide and
few modern plants have been turned off worldwide. And as peak world
energy hits around 2025 or so, it is likely that a lot more will be built
(think: China, peak coal).
[Jun02'11] Excellent articles on
pedal power from Low Tech Magazine
here
and
here.
I like the calculation of how many pedalling people it would take to
generate the UK electrical base load (1.2 billion people) -- that is,
20 people, each pedalling non-stop for 8 hours, every day, to power each
UK person (that would be 40 people per person in the US). And this is
just for electricity (about 1/8 of total energy use).
[Jun06'11] The 'sprout' E. coli is resistant to penicillins,
tetracycline, nalidixic acid, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazol,
cephalosporins, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, piperacillin-sulbactam,
and piperacillin-tazobactam. No doubt this is due to scary organic
vegetable farming practices (yeah right). The official story is that
it has nothing to do with standard genetic engineering practices where
a DNA sequence to be inserted includes an antibotic resistance gene
so that the antibiotic can then be used to select organisms that took
up the DNA sequence... Clearly the way to fix this is to ban organic
vegetable farming (after all, all those organic vegetable farmers give
their vegetables antibiotics, right?) and buy all your safe GMO food
from Big Pharma. What a steaming pile of crap, so to speak :-}
[Jun07'11] Oh, not cucumbers, not lettuce, and not tomatos? Oh,
not Spanish farmers (not to worry, since they're bankrupt now)? Oh,
not the organic sprouts? I'm surprised Mladic wasn't blamed. But the
idea of it being unsafe to eat homegrown and fertilized vegetables has
been implanted. Sales of vegetables have plummetted in Europe, despite
no evidence against them. After all, you never know when an organic
vegetable might contain bacteria resistant to the 8 main antibiotics that
also releases a special toxin. If we could only get rid of these damn
organic farmers and replace them with factory farms growing GMO crops
that can be manufactured into 'food' with implanted edible RFID chips so
your smart fridge can tell you when your 'food' has 'spoiled' (can it,
even?) ... What utter mainstream media B.S. mind control nonsense!!
The only food that is safe to eat is the kind that's *not* advertised.
If sensible humans can't see that having a chemical and computer companies
taking over the food business -- and their fridges! -- is a dangerous
and direct assault on their bodies' health, well then, just eat up,
folks.
[Jun10'11] In addition to genes for resistance to 8 antibiotics, Helge
Karch now reports that the supposedly 'organic' E. coli from Germany
also contains plague genes (as in "I'm not dead yet"). We've got to
take the DNA synthesizers away from those damn organic farmers before
they kill us...
[Jun12'11] The average Chinese person uses less than 1/10 the number
barrels of oil per year that the average American uses (2 vs. 23).
If China increased its per capita oil usage to US levels, China would
consume the entire world's oil output (not just exports -- the whole
output). They are trying. Just this year, the combined length of
their freeways reached the combined length of the US interstate system
roads; but the total number of cars in China is still less than 1/5
that of the US, and Chinese on average drive less. This situation
suggests that something will have to give in the next decade -- US oil
consumption, Chinese growth, or both. On the bright side, worldwide solar
power is continuing to increase, currently running at about a
60%
year-on-year increase over the past 4 years (almost all due to
Europe and in particular Germany). Solar is still only at 1/200 (0.5%)
of total electricity generation, but more solar is good news.
[Jun14'11] Despite a lack of direct (DNA) evidence of contamination by
the pathogenic, multi-antibiotic resistant, plague-gene-containing,
shiga-toxin releasing E coli with both enteroaggregative and
enterohemorrhagic features previously only seen in separate E coli
strains (non-toxic strains of E coli constitute a substantial proportion
of healthy stool), the sprouts remain accused on an epidemiological
basis (i.e., several people from the same sprout farm got sick at
the same time). Some 10-year-old background from Helge Karch is
here.
One idea is that it came from sprout seeds. Note that the initial
incorrect Spanish cucumber story came from epidemiological evidence as
well, which led to the discovery of shiga-toxin releasing E coli, that
however turned out not to be the deadly strain. Despite the seriousness
of the outbreak, the story is rapidly fading from the news, with organic
foods and vegetables (unfairly) under a subconscious black cloud. This may
help the adoption of GMO's in the EU, which had previously strongly
resisted their introduction (see, e.g., recent wikileaks diplomatic
cable releases showing US diplomats lobbying for Monsanto against French
and especially Spanish resistance to GMO's, reported this January
(Guardian
article).
[Jun16'11] Today at least :-} things seem to be unwinding a little faster
that I would have expected. I ran across (1) the insightful comments
from an old guy in Athens to Paul Mason at the end of his
Greek report today,
(2) undercover police in Plaza Catalunya trying to start a riot,
but now, as is getting more and more common, caught on youtube,
(3) the fact that 60% of Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo's
profits (Lenovo is the 4th largest computer manufacturer in the
world that recently acquired IBM thinkpad, etc) in 2009
came
from *real estate speculation* in China (!), and finally (4)
this
supposedly muckracking article about bankers, including one at
scitty bank (Italian pronounciation), in the New Yorker with a tone
that was a combination of sycophantic (the usual) but also worried.
These look like the beginnings of cracks in the shared world
picture/illusion required for modern life. Ugh. Well, not that I
think that bankers shouldn't take a hit... I'm sure things will be
patched up again in a few days for another couple of months of business
as usual. Hopefully. So we can get back to removing the
last
working fish from the ocean, as is our wont.
[Jun23'11] The new IEA plan to release oil from the strategic reserves was
a big surprise to me. The amount is not that great (the US component of
the release is 30 million barrels, or approximately 1.5x the amount of oil
the US uses in *one day*). Spread over a month, it is a little more than
what the war on Libya took off the market -- that is, *per month* (mainly
from the European market). Presumably it is designed to temporarily
drop oil prices so that an (oil consuming!) economic recovery can happen.
These are the pitiful strategies of humans in the time of peak oil -- burn
off your savings so that the burn off rate of remaining savings can be
increased. This is worse than burning the furniture in the fireplace --
this is burning it in the middle of the house. Talk about short-sighted!
Now if this was part of a crash program for replacement energy and energy
savings to avoid the collapse of industrial civilization, fine. Instead,
it will get people back on the road to nowhere and boost SUV sales and
crash renewable energy companies at the worst possible time. This will
work for less than a year, and risks a new embargo by oil exporting
countries -- and that's assuming the the reason this is being done is
not that an actual critical oil shortage is about to arrive and the IEA
is panicking. In a footnote to my previous post above the absurdity of
the 4th largest computer company in the world making more than half of
its profits from real estate speculation, China just announced
cash
for clunkers because car sales there have dropped. It sure looks
like they've got the same just-burn-the-whole-house-down idea in mind.
In not too many years, it will become pretty obvious to everyone in the
US that it was a Really Bad Idea to fall for dumping 3 trillion dollars
into the Iraq war obscenity/slaughter ($20 billion dollars a year just
for air conditioning) instead of spending it on solar panels and expanding
the electric grid. But by that time, it may be too late.
[Jul03'11] Well, looks like the occupied territories extend quite a
ways across the Mediterranean! Heavily armed Greek commandos bravely
stopped an unarmed boat as a favor for another country, even after
Hillary said it was OK for that country to kill people on the boat.
Now that'll certainly help Greece to pay back those French and German
banks, right? (so the default insurance on those loans won't have to be
paid out by American banks). Greece *will* be paying the loans back
by selling whatever it has that's worth something. It's not obvious
they got anything for this particular grovel, so maybe they were
just practicing assuming the position. Greece is stuck on the euro.
If it trys to get out, go back to its own currency, and devalue it, the
price of oil in its own currency would immediately triple or quadruple.
Greece imports 100% of its oil, which must still be paid in dollars.
Same goes for Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland.
[Jul05'11] Though test designs have been operated decades ago, no
commercial ambient air pressure molten fluoride salt thorium reactors
have yet been built. These are different than molten salt *cooled*
reactors (such as the solid fuel breeder reactor in Japan that currently
has a stuck fuel assembly immersed in hot, can't-be-exposed-to-air,
opaque liquid sodium...) and actually have the nuclear fuel dissolved
in the air-safe (in the sense of not causing an explosion if exposed
to air) liquid. They have much more attractive :-}, that is to say,
better failure modes than pressurized water solid fuel reactors
(the molten salt is at ambient air pressure, the fuel is liquid,
there is less neutron exposure of heat extraction circuit, shutdown
is by passive drain out), and have mainly been overlooked because it
is harder to make nuclear weapon material from them. They certainly
look like the next obvious stage in our race to avoid energy dought.
It is critical that some actual examples be contructed and have their
failure modes tested to see if the expected benefits are real and the
remaining engineering obstacles can be overcome (fluorine emission after
shutdown, corrosion problems with high temperature fluoride salts,
stopping tritiated hydrogen fluoride production, etc). This will be
difficult, since people don't want 'nuclear' (for quite reasonable
reasons, like the dreadful ongoing permanent disaster of Fukushima),
but they want their energy just the same. I think the near future will
instead be a lot more coal and a lot more more brown clouds.
[Jul17'11] The news doesn't usually make me smile, but "the smell
of Murdoch in the morning" (William Rivers Pitt) or "Rupert Murdoch
dogpaddling over the cosmic sewer" (smokingmirrors) makes me feel
positively warm and fuzzy!
[Aug09'11] Well, now it's the smell of a wharehouse of independent
filmmaker's and independent record label musician's work burning
(Sony/PIAS). I guess spending a third of a trillion dollars on
surveillance cameras didn't work out. When rich people steal a billion
here and there and crash our economic system, they generally don't make
a lot of noise and main-sewer media explains that we all have to tighten
our belts (except the richies). Poor people are noisier, less savvy,
and happy to get away with a just a teevee or a cell phone. For about
the tenth time in the past few years, I feel like Gary Larson's giant
cockroach taking a shower when the drain plugs. This isn't even the
beginning of the downslope of oil/energy/GDP/industrial civilization.
We just hit a dang plateau and the richies are already cashing out
(wealth distribution most skewed ever) and demanding martial law.
"I hate to think of what's down there...". On the positive side, a
lot of people took matters into their own hands and brooms at
RiotCleanup.
[Aug10'11] There have been several slightly strange things
about the recent London riots. The police seem to have
held
back oddly, compared to, say, anti-globalization protests.
In this case, there was a lot more reason to be aggressive. Certainly,
the spotlight has moved off of criminal bankers and Rupert Murdoch who
have in their own way, hied off with orders of magnitude more ill-gotten
goods than the rioters. Who now remembers the endless, multiple criminal
foreign wars that have turned a large proportion of Afghanis and Iraqis
and Libya into refugees? I also noticed a larger than usual amount
of like race baiting in online comments, even from BBC newscasters
(Fiona Armstrong vs. Darcus Howe) and Cameron's racist
facebook
friends (cf. hasbara, online 'personalities' constructed by
intelligence agencies). Certainly an intra-class war is an excellent
thing to foment as in*ter*-class differences rocket to historical
extremes. This is what happened after the late 60's riots in the US
(that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King), preventing any
coalition between poor whites and blacks, and fortifying a divide that
has persisted for decades. Liberals and conservative both asking for
martial law. Same old.
[Aug22,'11]
Juan Cole a neocon
Juan Cole certainly seems to have lost it and morphed into a neocon!
The strangest things happen when you're not looking. He has been
raving on in support of the immoral UK/French vampire attack on Libya
for oil, as the North Sea rapidly depletes. People who read him
openly wonder why he lost it [update 1 Sep: well maybe he never had
it: I missed the old news on his CIA consultant gig]. The
unreported attacks are the
usual cowardly bombing of undefended city buildings and power plants,
water lines, strafing boats and people in the streets from helicopters,
beginning
3
months ago and continuing since then. NATO has carried out almost
20,000 sorties, including 7,500 bombing runs over the past few months.
These are being carried out so mindless UK drivers can continue
tooling uselessly around in their armored, oil-powered 4000 pound
hulks, where, in London, 50% of trips in cars are less than 2 miles.
The UK can't blame the US for these oldstyle colonial atrocities using
newstyle high tech equipment, cowardly delivered from the safety of
a high flying bomber. Maybe 1000 people killed over the past day and
a half. At least 5000 injured. Hospitals overflowing. Disgusting.
It's just a matter of time before they start bombing the hospitals
(cf. Vietnam, Iraq). I fear one day, NATO countries will get repaid
in kind. Imagine a powerful foreign country bombing London while
simultaneously arming bands of thousands of local yobs/rebels (see
Franklin Lamb,
Nazemroaya1),
Nazemroaya2)
and then blasting an alternate reality out to the world and
back into your own London teevee with the Mighty Wurlitzer.
Why don't you French and British and Italians go home and fix your
own countries? Stop trying to steal other people's oil!
Here
is a report of the european oil jackals already running back in even
before the bombers have left, cancelling Gaddafi's Russian and Chinese
oil contracts (the Italians killed half of the Libyan population between
1911 and 1943 suppressing resistance to their colonial rule). Not about
oil, no... And it worked so well, in Iraq, right? One million people
killed, civil society destroyed, daily breaths of depleted uranium.
Before NATO invaded, Libya had the highest human development index, the
lowest infant mortality and the highest life expectancy in all of Africa
(ahead of Saudi and Russia!). Let's check back in 10 years.
[Aug23,'11]
MSM 'reporters' convey death threats to real reporters
MSM 'reporters' from CNN and others conveyed death threats to Mahdi
Darius Nazemroaya and Thierry Meyssan, at last report (yesterday)
trapped in the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, when the CIA/MI6 'reporters'
abandoned the building as the NATO supported rebels passed through the
area, looting houses and stealing video projectors off the ceiling
at the Rixon hotel. The death threats were for suggesting that the
NATO air-power-and-intelligence-supported yobs/mercenaries/rebels being
ushered into Tripoli included 'al-Qaeda' -- in the sense of Afghanistan
redux: bin Laden slash al Qaeda started out [ended up?] as a CIA asset.
Franklin Lamb (in a different hotel) says he was shot in the leg by a
sniper and now reports that the 'rebels' are winning. Hope they make it!
[Update: Aug24: Nazemroaya out of the Rixon now taken by rebels, Lamb
reports from Tripoli Port in the Corinthia hotel] [Update: Aug25: rebels
apparently holed up/controlling the Corinthia hotel, shooting *out*;
Update: Sep1: Meyssan and Nazemroaya make it to Malta]. Over 1000 other
people were killed today.
[Aug26'11] Proud NATO is still delivering bombs to supposedly 'liberated'
Tripoli. A lot more people have been killed in the fighting today. The
US, UK, France, and Qatar still have special forces on the group
supporting the Taliban-like 'al-Qaeda' rebels/yobs who keep themselves
busy looting video projectors from hotels when not otherwise engaged. The
handful of non-mainstream journalists (4-6) still on the ground, peeping
against the mighty MSCNNBCBS Wurlizter (e.g., Theirry Meyssan
here),
have been completely silenced by death threats, and may have been
captured or killed. The 'official' 'battle hardened' reporters,
who mysteriously only take pictures of the rebels and the hospitals
they have laid waste to (e.g., Alex Thompson), meanwhile
rigorously censor
any pictures of the US/UK/French special forces they are traveling with,
which include forces from Qatar (which has oil interests in Libya) and
even eastern european mercenaries. The UK/Canada!/UK/France/Italy/US
should go home and fix their own damn countries! Instead NATO is today
plotting an occupation/demolition/'stabilization' force so the country
can be utterly destroyed and demoralized in a catastrophe similar to
what the US/UK achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan, while preserving Libya's
oil for the multinational vampire pirates.
[Aug27'11] To cover up the UK/French/Canadian responsibility for the
massacre in Abu Salim carried out by CIA-dah 'rebels',
this disgusting
report from the BBC is larded with disinfo: the rebels control
Tripoli; but at the same time, the TNC are not in Tripoli because they
have retreated to a "makeshift airstrip" in the western mountains (don't
mention the 3 months of NATO bombing, 'I mentioned it once, but I think
I got away with it'); Tripoli is free (of water, and electricity because
of NATO bombs), the people are celebrating, even though the streets are
empty; the rebels "are continuing to secure frozen assets" but some of the
money is missing because it was stolen (by who?); a stream of "foreign
dignitaries" are waiting to meet the rebels (on the airstrip?) but they
can't, because 'security' is bad (executing too many injured civilians
in the hospital? did I mention the bombing?); but actually it's 'the
regime' that may have destroyed the hospital because NATO is concerned for
civilian life (that's why they did 8,000 bombing runs) -- and actually,
it was 'Gaddafi's guards' who were 'raping children' (in incubators,
perhaps?). How can you beeb writers live with yourself after writing
lying crap like this? Libya [used to] export most of its high quality low
sulfur oil (EIA 2010 numbers): it was going to Italy (28%), France (15%),
China (11%), Germany (11%), Spain (10%), Greece (5%, UK (4%), US (3%), and
14% elsewhere. Go home, Canadian/UK/French/Italian oil pirates!
[Aug31'11] The lesson of Iraq and now Libya: it's a really bad idea to
give up your nuclear program. Libya looks set to be driven into a state
similar to the post-2003 catastrophe of Iraq, which like Libya, was a
place that had a good standard of living before the US invasion. Now,
Tripoli is filled with rotting garbage, an unintended side effect of Libya
'rebels' having slaughtering anybody in Tripoli they caught with black
skin, which included the foreign workers who used to pick up the garbage.
Blacks left in town are in hiding -- one was with Franklin Lamb.
[Sep04'11] Rick Rozoff's excellent site on WordPress,
Stop NATO, was
on Sept 2 from making any new posts by WordPress with:
"Warning: We have a concern about some of the content on your blog. Please
click here to contact us as soon as possible to resolve the issue and
re-enable posting." Of course, click here, produced no response.
Dangerous anti-war, anti-military thoughts must be suppressed.
Meanwhile in Libya, NATO bombing is continuing (52 bombing runs on
Sept 4) -- 200 bombs a day, average, for 6 months. Go home, NATO oil
vampires. [update: on Sept 4, wordpress backed down, perhaps after the
negative web publicity, and the site is live again].
[Sep12'11] Colonial NATO cowards are back to bombing Libya while
British and French soldiers and their al-Qaeda shills on the ground
are busy torturing blacks and Gaddafi supporters in the wasteland
of cities they have 'liberated'. Of course, self-righteous NATO
only slaughters people 'accidentally' because they have been
used as 'human shields'. I wonder how a Londoner or Parisien
would like it if their slaughtered mom or kid were labeled 'human
shields' killed 'by accident' when their neighborhood was bombed
from a high altitude fighter jet piloted by an African trying to
oust Cameron or Sarkozy? Fix up your own houses (and your damn
public transport) UK/EU and stop destroying other people's
countries!
[Sep19'11] Amy Goodman, pod person, comes out in her true
colors on Democracy Now, shilling for the US/NATO Libyan
invasion/bombing/oil-grab/al-Qaeda-install and, oh yes of course,
popular revolution, via a report from an embedded 'reporter'.
Here is some real discussion, including Lizzie Phelan back
from Tripoli, holding her own, from 12 days ago:
part 1 and
part 2.
[Sep20'11] Yesterday, Siemens pulled half a billion euros from an unnamed
French bank and deposited it directly with the European Central Bank.
Sounds a bit unravel-y.
[Sep29'11] NATO airstrikes continue to support the bloody, shameful
siege of Sirte, helping the 'rebels' shell strategic positions such as
hospitals.
Many black refugees fled there from Tawergha, which the rebels plan to
bulldoze so no one can return. Sounds familiar. Meanwhile, back at the
ranch in the UK, there is plan afoot to increase the road speed limit
from 70 to 80 miles per hour. This was touted as a way to 'stimulate
the economy' and 'increase efficiency'. Driving somewhere at 80 mph
instead of 70 mph uses about 20% more gas to travel exactly the same
distance (or almost *40%* more gas than driving there at 50 mph, which
is around the optimum speed measured in miles per gallon). Slow down,
and get your hands off Libya, greedy UK-ers! The economy is tanking
in part because of high oil prices -- and the solution is to reduce
miles-per-gallon by 20%? Talk about a waste-based economy...
[Oct04'11] Another London woman cyclist was crushed to death by
a lorry on 3 Oct, this time at the awful intersection at York Way
and Pentonville Road, which has the utterly idiotic but ubiquitous
pedestrian/bike-crusher railings set up on a useless sticking-out traffic
island-like thing in front of the McDonalds, which creates a choke point
(where the back wheels of the lorry ran over the woman's head after she
was caught against the railing). The British certainly do have their
head up the arse with respect to the Netherlands when it comes to bikes
(not that the US is better). One example among many is the pampered
black cab lobby. The black cabs transport only 0.6% of commuters
in central London but account for 20% of the heart-disease-causing
small carbon particle pollution as a result of their horrible-quality
diesel engines coupled with a driving style that involves useless
rapid acceleration and braking. I fear the situation will get worse
before it gets better. As the squeeze on fossil fuel in the UK gets
worse as the North Sea continues to deplete, UK drivers will get
more aggressive. Also, economic contraction will tend to limit money
for improving cycling conditions (construction of more separated bike
lanes like in the Netherlands, where more than 90% of the people cycle
at least once a week, without helmets, with the lowest death rate per
cycle mile in all of Europe). Put simply, major road space has to be
reallocated away from cars. Car ownership in the Netherlands in 1960
was 0.5 million cars and a lot of people cycled. In 1980 it had
increased
to over 4 million cars. This resulted in cycling virtually vanishing
from city centers in the Netherlands. But they managed to fix this in
the next decade! Cycling in many cities in the Netherlands is continuing
to increase. In the UK, by 2000 there were 21 million cars. The modal
share distribution of journeys in the UK in 2009 was: 2% cycling, 3%
rail (including the tube!), 3% other (ferries), 7% buses, 23% walking,
63% cars. Since 1995, across the UK, cycling has been on a slow
*downward*
slope while car licenses have been on an upward slope (25% increase
1997 to 2009). Cycling by 11 to 17 year olds in the UK is now down to
*1/3* of its level in the 1970's as kids are being driven to school,
just as in the US. The absolutely preposterous *growing* reliance on
cars in the UK has to -- and *will* -- be undone by peak oil, whether
car drivers like it or not. It would be rational to set up policies
to further deter people from driving now, to cushion them from the
coming blows. But people in the UK won't have that. They demand to
feel the full force of the hammer on their head. Fine. If we can all
get through the comming squeeze without car drivers going on too many
murderous rampages, perhaps there will be something positive to look
forward to. Just think of how many useless new nanny state jobs could
be created to help people get over their 'car addictions'... :-}
[Oct10'11] NATO bombing has killed thousands of people in Sirte.
This
is what receiving end of NATO bombs looks like. 'Humanitarian' bombing
of course. I seem to remember something about a no fly zone because
Gaddaffi was killing civilians. But the servile UN is silent now.
Why don't we have a NATO/Cameron/Sarkozy criminal oil vampire no-fly zone?
They are the scum who are actually killing civilians and maiming children
like the one in the video, with thousands of bombing runs -- *hundreds*
or *thousands* of times as many as Gaddafi was accused of (25,000 sorties
total to date including surveillance). NATO scum.
[Oct25,'11]
Libya aftermath
NATO heavily bombed Libyan oil field infrastructure in order to make
it impossible for Libyan oil production to resume without foreign
'investment'. NATO air sorties continue apace, now over 26,000 including
almost *10,000* bombing runs. Libya has about 42 billion barrels of oil
left compared to Iraq's 112 billion barrels, compared to about 900 billion
barrels total world crude left. That means that Libya alone contains
almost 5% of the total remaining oil in the world (if you believe the
official story that the 30%-of-total-world-oil-remaining Saudi reserves
have somehow remained constant after the last 3 deacdes of production).
After the utter destruction of Sirte by bombs and remote control
terminator-like robots, Gaddafi is now dead. This production was
more reminiscent of a classical continental torture-execution
-- complete with sodomy and faked death photos -- than of a
people-finally-rise-up-and-kill-Mussolini kind of thing. Very similar
to the hanging of Saddam. The were some good things in the bad old days
(if Europe and before) like smaller, more compact walkable cities, lower
energy intensity; however, public state torture/disembowelment/execution
wasn't one of them.
Similar to Iraq, there has been massive infrastructure destruction (water,
power, hospitals, buildings, roads). The savings and gold of the country
have been impounded or stolen by corrupt, bankrupt US/UK/EU bankers.
This will keep Libya in a desparate state for decades. As in Iraq,
the position of women is quickly regressing back to the middle ages (the
result of a war supported by so-called feminists, and now, girlie man,
Gordon Duff?!). But like Iraq, it may be difficult to hold back the
armed Libyan civilian population forever.
This is a proxy war to contain reemerging Russia and China. I am somewhat
amazed at the passiveness of both of them in the face of so many (oil
contract!) losses. They both have the technology to interfere with
US/UK/EU shooting-fish-in-a-barrel terrorist wars against defenseless
third world countries; but their thought control technology is far
inferior. For now, the NATO oil vampires have won.
All sorts of threatening text is now being written in the usual outlets
about Syria and Iran. As openly mooted, one possibility to draw the US
(and the US military!) into a war would be for Israel to attack Iran
unilaterally, Iran to respond by decimating a remaining rump US Iraq
force, dragging the clueless population (and US military!) along.
Just one of several possible scenarios. A similar effect could be
achieved with a US carrier vs. a 'super-exocet' (Joe Vialls redux!).
This could easily be psyops/disinfo, which has been going on with respect
to Iran for a full 8 years now.
But the increasingly precarious economic situation (e.g., in US, food
stamp usage went from 27 to 46 million in just 3 years from 2008 to 2011)
along with peak oil is bringing us closer to kind of situation that in
the past has been followed by large scale wars. An attack on Iran could
possibly set such a thing off.
[Nov02'11] A
drive
through of the ruined and looted ghost town of Sirte after NATO
and its rats got done with it. NATO does a Guernica/sodomy and Hillary
laughs about it. She/Sarkozy/Cameron should watch their karma.
[Nov08'11] "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him *every day*"
-- President Obama, ostensibly, of the United States.
[Nov27'11] Just sitting watching. I don't know what to say. Maybe just
sitting is the real problem...
[Dec01'11] The biggest strike in the UK in decades (Nov 30) barely
makes the news. It was visible in London mainly as an increase in the
number of 'protect and serve' police vans scurrying through the streets
with their American sirens turned up so loud the scratchy distorted
sound output was ear splitting. If I'm wondering what kind of action
is required to affect policy, then I'm sure other people are as well.
The austerity cuts are strongly weighted by income -- if you make less
money, the percentage of your cut is *more*. This is straighforward class
war, couched in the language of the nanny state (the latest ridiculous
example comes from Spain: street walking prostitutes will be fined for
not wearing reflective safety vests...).
[Dec28'11] "A theme that emerges...is insulation of the decision-making
elite from the consequences of their actions. That is to say, in
societies where the elites do not suffer from the consequences of their
decisions, but can insulate themselves, the elite are more likely to
pursue their short-term interests, even though that may be bad for the
long-term interests of the society, including the children of the elite
themselves." -- Jared Diamond, Collapse. The implications of this for
our current situation is very clear: make super-rich people pay, else
we all go down even harder.
[Jan02,'12]
Predictions for the new year
The Iran talk has escalated. And Israel just said that it has no choice
but to 'burn more Palestinians' in Gaza (it burnt 1500 last time).
This could be more of the same Iran disinfo we saw over the past 9
years. But looking at the past year, the destabilization of Tunisia,
the destabilization and re-junta-ification of Egypt, and the utter
destruction of Libya went more 'smoothly' than I would have predicted,
and so far, is closer to having achieved original the stated PNAC goals
that I would have predicted. Syria is now teetering. Syria would seem
to be a more difficult case than Libya because it is better armed and
somewhat more strongly supported by Russia. Iran is much better armed
than Libya, with missiles, air defenses, and electronic expertise.
As far back as 2003 I was guessing that an attack on Iran could be
used to provoke the Iranians to sink a US ship or even disable an
aircraft carrier, which would then provide a 9-11-sized reason to
(continue) attacking Iran. That never happened. It is probably
still the case that US aircraft carriers have no sure defense against
fast comparatively cheap water-skimming anti-ship missiles that jump
up at the very end before impact, esp. if several are used at once.
The interruption of world oil supplies after an attack on Iran seems
too risky, even for the sociopaths in control of US/UK policy (Panetta,
Clinton, Petraeus, Dempsey). Perhaps the US has recently developed some
way to neutralize these kind of missiles (or plans to bomb them instead
of bombing the nuclear reactors). Perhaps Iran doesn't have as many
of the latest fastest Russian anti-ship missiles as some people think.
And a big war would certainly distract people from the end of growth.
Sadly, the end of growth doesn't mean the end of growth in CO2.
The unspeakably ridiculous meeting about reducing carbon emissions was
recently adjourned while the rate of CO2 increase continued utterly
linearly upward. The only plan was something like: more 'carbon-neutral
car insurance' brought to you by Iggy Pop. It is remarkable that the 2008
crash and subsequent depression was *barely* visible in the
CO2
data ramp! It is pretty clear that we will deep-water-drill, frack,
mountain-top-remove, and oil-sand our way through the rest of the earth's
net-energy-positive fossil fuel. Because doing that burns fossil fuel,
CO2 will continue to linearly increase, even as the net energy obtained
from those harder-to-get-at deposits continuously decreases. We've added
one glaciers-to-no-glaciers aliquot of CO2 to the atmosphere on top of
the higher, no-glacier CO2; burning the remaining half of fossil fuel
will add another one, getting us up to about 500 ppm CO2, well into the
extreme danger zone.
But the really bad effects of climate change are likely to be delayed
for a few decades. I don't think climate change will be the first
thing to stop the growth of humans. Instead, the approach to zero net
energy fossil fuel leading to food shortages will probably hit first.
Any moderately rational person can see that the only way to avoid
an ugly crash resulting from increasing human numbers pitted against
the energy downslope, the soil downslope, the fresh water downslope,
the fertilizer downslope, the minerals downslope, the fish downslope,
etc. is for humans to voluntarily have less kids and to voluntarily
use less stuff. But I think there is basically zero chance of humans
reproducing less and using less.
People are animals with a powerful animal urge to reproduce and consume,
acutely refined by natural selection, that can't be denied by mere
language (even if language *is* something analogous to the cellular
code-using system! :-} ). We are adding more than one entire UK of
people to the earth every year. Think of outfitting an entire new UK
with houses, cars, trains, roads, schools, electricity, food, clothing,
sewers, health care -- every year).
Resource downslopes in the physical world, however, *are* stronger than
even language-equipped apes. After resource limits on population have
begun to bite, they will probably be followed by extreme climate disasters
further limiting food and population. I wish I could see a different
viable path forward to 2050! The main reason for my pessimism is that
humans had pretty much already figured out what the problem was *40*
years ago, when resources were less depleted and a different path could
have been chosen. It wasn't.
So what are my (useless) short term predictions? No bombing war on Iran
(hopefully, despite the growing feeling of dread that Iraq troops and
materiel are being repositioned for this purpose), just continued economic
war. For the rest of the world, nothing less than fitful business as
usual for another decade. Oil prices may actually decline a bit over the
next few years (barring outright war) as high prices reduce demand to just
under production limits, paradoxically even as we sit right on the bumpy
plateau of peak oil. My longer term prediction is the same as a decade
ago -- really big trouble maintaining industrial civilization by 2030,
and a horrible mess by 2050. Hopefully, I'm wrong! (and not just about
climate change being slightly delayed, and no war on Iran...)
[Jan09'12] I don't know the true order or whether they are related in
any way, but the announcement that Iran will no longer accept dollars
for oil (supported by Russia; in retaliation for sanctions) and Panetta
saying Iran isn't working on nuclear bombs on face the nation were a
little surprising for me. Soon after Iraq demanded Euros for oil, it was
invaded. I don't see how the US could invade Iran. The US could try to
bomb Iran's hidden missile installations. However, as the war on Serbia
showed (where the US almost exclusively bombed decoys instead of real
tanks) it is possible to outsmart the smart bombs. In its own wargame
simulations almost a decade ago, the US lost against Iran. I don't
know what has changed since then. The main effect of the sanctions
so far seems to be an 'own goal' -- the rise in the price of oil costs
the US/EU/Japan, but increased revenues for Iran (and oil companies).
The US is committing slow economic suicide by military Keynesianism
(Chalmers Johnson). The US spends $1 trillion per year needed to maintain
1000 foreign military bases, fund terrorists in Iran, etc. That comes out
to $10,000 per year *per US household*. The logical thing to do would
be to spend that money instead on retooling industrial society to use
alternative energy so that it won't start collapsing in a few decades.
Instead, the response to peak oil is economic suicide.
[Jan13'12] It's worse to kill people than urinate on them, Mr. Panetta.
You are one of the people ordering the killing. On a different topic,
another worrisome possibility for jump-starting the war on Iran would be
a false flag attack on a US ship (cf. the USS Liberty). In that case,
the actual source was detected (not Egypt). The source of an anti-ship
missile or a torpedo might be easier to conceal. Most wars, perhaps,
have been started by similar methods. Doesn't mean one is coming.
I still think it won't happen (yet).
[Jan15'12] The cancellation/postponement of the US joint military exercise
in the middle east planned for the spring -- supposedly to have been the
largest US military 'exercise' ever -- is a hopeful sign that the adults
may at least temporarily be in control in the US. Although there is no
overt shooting war, the recent US economic actions has resulted in an
instant 40% devaluation of the Iranian currency relative to the dollar,
and assassinations/provocations are continuing as the US moves men and
materiel around the ring of military bases it has on Iran's borders.
Of course, could also be more of the usual disinfo/feinting.
[Feb20'12] As long as the US has a carrier in the Persian gulf, I think
the US is probably *not* serious about starting a war with Iran because
the US military is well aware of carrier vulnerability to surface jump-up
missiles. So a real danger sign is when all the US carriers *leave*
(unless they are so desperate for war that they are willing to 9-11 a
whole carrier, which I continue to doubt). The various bungled/false flag
attacks haven't been very convincing (Iran bombs India for buying their
oil?! the ushered-onto-the-plane-without-a-passport underwear bomber?).
And perhaps China can help.
[Mar05'12] You'd think the there would be some *penalty* for the last time
(second Iraq war) that the lying scum in the government and the servile
press and military lied lied lied lied about weapons of mass destruction,
which was only ten years ago (not to mention the massacre of over 1
million people plus trillions of dollars wasted right at peak oil...).
Sheesh, if people can't see through this, how on earth can people deal
with the very *real* problems on the way...
[Mar09'12] The Unemployed Kindgom is pushing to spend 20 billion pounds
on renewing its Trident nuclear weapons. This will be paid for by
cuts in pensions, schools, colleges, hospitals, public transport, and
renewable energy. Homelessness in the UK jumped sharply this year (up
14%, to almost 50,000 households). What on earth are British nukes for?
And all this while the UK spectacularly hypocritically toadies up to
USrael about Iran's nuclear power plants. It's pitiful, stupid, and
disgusting.
[Mar14'12] A UK teenager was
arrested
for making
this
relatively mild facebook post. Good to know the Orwellian UK
thought police are protecting the UK from being terrorized by
the writings of people who think that the UK was stupid to have
gotten involved in the pointless longer-than-WWII, US-run Afghan
debacle/slaughter/occupation/moneypit that now seems to be falling apart
(moi?).
[Mar27'12] Went out for a 50 mile bike ride out of London and back into
London over the weekend. At one point, me and my friend got behind an
especially aggressive car for safety, and then we watched as he wildly
swerved, narrowly avoiding hitting a pedestrian as he strongly accelerated
onto the motorway ramp. We didn't even slightly block him at any
point; the simple sight of bicycles and pedestrians seemed to throw him
into a rage. Wish I could have texted him the first graph from
this
PDF from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It shows an
absolutely stunning, almost 23% drop in indigenous UK North Sea oil
production -- *in one year* (as in 4 more years of this, and we're
importing almost 100%, like Greece). This was accomodated by a 11%
increase in imports and 27% decrease in exports, so actual consumption
hardly budged (like the car guy above whose near-deadly burst of
acceleration required the full tenth of a megawatt of power many car
engines can put out). Maybe Chris Cook will be wrong on oil prices this
time :-/ (he thinks they are about to crash like after the 2008 peak).
In the US, a spike in methane prices 2 years back resulted in the
fracking gold rush. This then quickly caused methane prices to crash,
with the result that the fracking companies are now all having to sell
methane at a loss. Sheesh. Peak fossil fuel surreptitously sneaks by,
under cover of the idiotic business cycle.
[Apr29'12] "So this twenty-first century world of ours is shaping up right
now largely as a confrontation between the U.S./NATO and the BRICS,
warts and all on every side. The danger: that somewhere down the line
it turns into a Full Spectrum Confrontation. Because make no mistake,
unlike Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, the BRICS will actually be
able to shoot back" -- Pepe Escobar.
[May14'12] Several years later, it comes out (in the Guardian) that the
scary underwear bomber that launched only-job-left-in-town pathetic TSA
drones into fondling the traveling population (well so far, just people
not in cars) was working for the CIA. Kinda thought that right at the
beginning, given how he managed to get escorted onto the plane without
a passport. Of course, the testimony about that critical bit wasn't
allowed in his trial. Irrelevant detail, apparently.
[May20'12] "Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They
were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without
rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they
were forced into marriages, often as children. Today, women in the
vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions,
with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war." --
Sonali
Kolhatkar.
[May28'12] The Iraq war is now supposedly 'over'. There are now about
40K regular US soldies and 40K military contractors on 15 military
bases there. That is, 80,000 troops.
[Jun18'12] A decade ago, GM and Ford spun off their component-making
companies. Through the 'genius' of financial engineering, they were
filled with debt until they went bankrupt, and were then sold to China.
This has also occurred even in Germany. China new vehicle sales went
up 54% in 2009, 33% in 2010, but only 2.5% in 2011. There are 5 million
cars now in Beijing, a city of 25 million people.
[Jul04'12] Monbiot embarrassingly
channels Maugeri this week. This
simple
chart by Ron Patterson (Darwinian) showing OECD oil (crude+condensate)
production+imports (=usage) from publicly available EIA data carries
so much more weight than a thousand weekly columns. It says that the
game is (half) over -- peak oil effectively happened to the OECD in
2006; China and India are now increasing their usage mostly at the
expense of the OECD, in what has been a zero-sum game since 2006.
But this doesn't mean that there isn't enough oil+coal+methane left
to really mess up the climate (about half left). Monbiot is right on
that point. Now it *is* true that the IPCC guys have stubbornly stuck
to using off-by-a-factor-of-at-least-2 overly optimistic (from an energy
standpoint) remaining hydrocarbon reserves estimates. But as humans
get more and more desperate, they are *not* going to stop reproducing
(have you?), and they will burn every last scrap of accessible
net energy positive fossil fuel. I can't currently see anything
powerful enough to even slightly budge our progess up the
linear CO2 ramp (the worldwide recession
didn't even make a tiny dent!) *except* simple depletion of net energy
positive fossil fuels. The CO2 ramp will most likely continue upward,
reaching about ~500 ppm CO2 by 2050 (cf. glacial CO2 was ~200 ppm,
pre-industrial/interglacial was ~280 ppm, current is ~400). 500 ppm
is more than *twice* the glacial/no-glacial difference added on top
of no-glacial. That CO2 will take thousands of years to get absorbed
by the oceans (where it is already dissolving the shells of coral and
plankton) and absorbed by land plants. But peak oil/energy is going
to hit us first, and much harder initially than climate change will.
Things are likely to be pretty chaotic on account of energy constriction
alone by 2030. Then, in 2050, when our maneuverability has been greatly
reduced because of massive energy depletion, and as the skies begin to
clear (like they did during 9/11), climate change will really begin
to bite. As the song goes, "Walk the plank with our eyes wide open".
I really wish I could see another way forward.
[Aug01'12] Orwell-world continues as US/Nato journalists in Syria are
now openly embedded with al-Qaeda! However, it is taking longer for the
US/Nato to make a wasteland of Syria than it took them in Libya because
Syria has a moderate ability to shoot back. Leon Panetta yesterday
stooped to threatening Bashar Al Assad's family: "If you want to be
able to protect yourself and your family, you'd better get the hell
out now". Everyone kowtows to the huge US/Nato military machine,
but when you look at results, it basically lost in Afghanistan and
Iraq against very weak opponents, and at huge cost (in money in the
west and without yet obtaining originally desired sweeetheart pipeline
and oil contracts, and in a holocaust of lives lost in Afghanistan
and Iraq). Meanwhile, peak oil is happening all around us, just as
the denials get more and more shrill. OECD oil usage peaked in 2007
and has since dropped by almost 20%. Then beginning in 2011,
China
oil usage peaked (EIA nuumbers plotted by Ron Patterson). The linear
extrapolation from 2000-2010 data, where China and India would have
taken all world oil and coal exports by 2025 is now decisively broken.
The relentless burning of one cubic oil of mile per year now has us
steaming oil out of slightly tarry sands. How long til we're 'burning
the furniture' by tearing up old asphalt for oil (which has about the
same oil content as tar sands)? Fairy tale economists will insist
it's just a flesh wound, and that oil consumption is down because of
the worldwide recession. This completely ignores the reality that,
vampire squids aside, it takes energy to make things. As the energy
requirements for getting energy to put into the economy increase,
less things will get made. Here in London, the city is quiet and
deserted in the middle of the O-limp-ics! There are only 1/3 the
usual number of foreign tourists (100K vs. 300K) visiting this summer;
some downtown businesses are having their worst summer in 50 years.
Putting anti-aircraft missile batteries on top of apartment buildings
probably didn't help. As the Druid notes, if this stage is denial,
then next is anger. Not looking forward to that next stage. Forget I
ever said anything about peak oil. I had nothing to do with it!
[Aug07'12] It's hard to like the big picture. The US has
still only slightly unwound the huge private debt bubble (e.g.,
relative to GDP). In fact, private debt relative to GDP has
not yet even dropped below the US 1932 peak! (Steve Keen
graph
from Steve Ludlum's site). The last time such a huge debt bubble got
unwound in the 1930's, there were very hard times, made worse by bad
climate conditions. But then there was WWII and a huge growth spurt that
rode on an almost perfect exponential rise in energy and especially oil
usage. It is blindingly obvious from a physical/geological perspective
that things can never be fixed by an exponential rise in energy usage
again (not saying they can't be fixed, just not that way). That truly
sucks. I like to focus on basic/gross/overall/big-average/slowly-changing
kinds of numbers on debt, energy, and climate. Not a peep of
this appears in any public discussion of policy, lamented today
here
by Ugo Bardi -- while he was driving home ;-} That truly sucks, too.
Everybody is hoping reality will just go away. Last month, I watched
a full week of teevee, which I do once a year. I truly felt like
I had been transported to a parallel universe. I couldn't believe
the sheer number of SUV/car commmercials -- in the midst of an
historic
reversal in 3 decades of increases in driving, with China beginning
to outbid the US for oil, and the US turning almost half its entire corn
crop into ethanol (an EROEI ~1 process that basically turns natural gas
and coal into ethanol with no energy gain) to provide what is still
only a small fraction of the fuel for idiot packs of cars. 10 years
ago, when I first became aware that peak oil was going to happen in a
few years, I was not surprised or bothered that normal people thought
I was a kook. But I never imagined then that when peak oil *actually
happened*, it would lead to *more* car commercials even as half the
corn went into gas tanks! I suppose I'm stunned to realize that even
people with money think that more oil can be advertised into existence.
If only it *were* possible 'print' oil! As mentioned many times above,
the problem is that capitalism is hitting the fan in slow mo -- not fast
enough to rouse us sleepwalkers, poor or rich. Rather than even the
smallest peep about current realities (e.g., planning to deal with more
regular, more severe drought conditions), we instead have the spectacle
of Obama doing a Reagan by arming the FSA (cf. 'Afghan freedom fighters')
in Syria/Eastasia. Many of the US-supported people now killing Syrians
are the very same Iraqi Sunnis who were very recently blowing up US and UK
military vehicles in Iraq with roadside bombs. And the Cameron UK poodle
just started yipping, too. The spectacle of the underdogs slaughtering
each other at the bidding of their overlords depressingly reminds me of
death squads and El Salvador 1980. The chances for blowback from this
operation are very high. For now, the US is safe from this sort of thing
happening in the homeland. But rabid Christian right types are not that
different conceptually from jihadis; and this could be a problem down
the line. And as Dmitri Orlov has just pointed out, the drought this
northern summer has just put a big world food squeeze into the pipe for
early next year. The food price oscillations will be amplified by the
money parasites, who will see this as a great 'opportunity'.
[Aug14'12] Gordon Duff is often a disinfo-y kook, but he recently made a
valid point about the skirmishes in Syria. It would seem that if the US
or UK (or many other military hardware-supplying countries) wanted to,
they could relatively easily arrange to supply the Syrian contras with
modern (i.e., less than 45-year-old!) anti-tank/helicopter/jet weapons,
which would suddenly change the equation. So the whole thing so far has
largely served as extended bloody GWOT theater for teevee watchers, rather
than an actual overthrow of the Syrian government. Reports of the capture
of 40 Turkish soldiers inside Syria suggest desperation and incompetence
in the face of unwillingness on the part of NATO and the US to overtly
attack, or provide critical hardware (yet, no doubt, while requesting
that Turkey act -- perhaps most recently via the Obomber phone call to
Erdogan during which Obama was photographed holding a baseball bat).
Today, ludicrously, Killery complains about the very kind of sectarian
turmoil she directly helped to create! But now that the insurgency seems
to be failing, the US and its poodles could begin have some real weapons
sent to it (the kind Gordon Duff mentions; the kind that probably shot
down the Turkish reconaissance F-4). That would be very destabilizing
for the whole region (e.g., Saudi). More likely is to dribble weapons
into the crazies whose latest exploits include bravely throwing postal
workers to their death out of tall buildings.
[Aug18'12]
Here
is an interview with Jorgen Randers which pretty closely reflects my
expectations for the future, I suppose because I'm getting to be an oldie,
too. I am less sanguine than him about the implications of overall fossil
fuel energy depletion on the stability of industrial society by 2050,
but generally agree (cf. the Druid) that collapse happens slower than some
people expect -- which will make society's likely continual inability to
act even more poignantly tragic. His advice is, don't take your kids
out to the forest; get them used to virtual reality (actually, Jorgen,
not a problem -- but you're forgiven for being 67...). His 'practical'
advice is: have less kids (esp. rich countries), reduce fossil fuel use,
give renewables to the third world for free, set up stronger international
organizations. Only number two will happen, but because of running into
maximum production rate constraints, not by choice.
[Aug21'12] The German-British-poodle-led Syrian 'rebel' operation (using
imported Libyans among others) currently seems to be failing badly.
So now it's all Pussy Riot, all the time (I'm against the prison time; but
they could have been sentenced to music school...). Obama's seemingly
crazy statements about chemical weapons could perhaps be referring
to the very ones that the US arranged for their 'rebels' to get.
NATO was able to turn Libya into a wasteland in a few months by bombing
in combination with funding militias on the ground. The expensive
military toys work well in a "turkey shoot" against civilian cars,
but they are more difficult to use against targets that have a moderate
ability to shoot back (Syria, Iran). Paid mercenaries (incl Libyans,
Chechens, Uzbek, Pakistanis, Senegalese, Algerians) on the ground alone
won't work. Another point is that there is less oil in Syria than Libya
(tho they have a lot of methane). Balancing Pussy Riot is seeing Todd
Akin furiously back-pedaling on his auto-abortion comment as the richie
rats abandon his foundering ship.
[Aug21'12] My initial guess about Fukushima turning out to be smaller
than Chernobyl (to be fair, made before reactor #3 exploded) was wrong.
The Fukushima disaster has now released several times more radioacive
cesium-137.
[Sep04'12] The downsizing of the US/Israel war games and Dempsey's
statement yesterday are positive signs that the US military is digging
in its heels a bit against a foolhardy attack on Iran. Not a good sign,
I suppose, when the military is our brightest hope; and they have been
tricked into wars before. I have gotten the impression that people
think that if Obama is reelected, he may be freer to reign in suicidal
Israeli plans to attack Iran. I think that the Israeli counterparts
of the US army will likely be able to stop such an attack, even if the
Republican uglies get elected. Instead, a reelection might free Obama
to attack Syria. Despite all the idiotic self-defeating viciousness on
display from the other party, I don't think the failure to reelect Obama
would result in major policy changes. There are certain constraints
on the budget. 10 more trillion will get to the criminal bankers,
no matter which party wins. And there is the need prevent the general
public from starving via social services in order to avoid revolution
that will also be respected by both sides (the drought and continued high
oil prices will raise the price of food). Not that they aren't taking
precautions -- after all it was under Obama that homeland 'security'
purchased half a billion hollow point bullets this year (the kind that
are 'illegal' to use in war because they cause such horrific injuries).
These are for use on the *domestic* population, sorry, I meant terr'ists.
That's a little over one hollow point bullet per each American man,
woman, and child. Lotta terr'ists among 'em, I guess.
[Sep07'12] The fact that the Republican uglies haven't jumped on the
US military slap-down of Netanyahu, which legitimizes it, emphasizes
the fact that the supposed Repub/Dem differences are all theater and no
substance. There is only one party: the corporate/banker republicrats.
As Glen Ford says, Obama has turned out to be the "more effective evil"
as opposed to the lesser evil. This does *not* mean there is no threat
of a false flag to start a war; false flags have often been carried out
by very localized parts of governments or intelligence agencies.
[Sep25'12] Some professional humanitarian organizations now have to
wait at least 6 hours before trying to help injured people, some with
limbs torn off who have survived US drone attacks (a majority of those
killed in the attacks are civilians). because of the new US strategy
to re-bomb first responders. Civilians in US-military-occupied
countries have gotten justifiably paranoid and have
serious
trouble sleeping. Meanwhile, back in the homeland the dept of US
homeland 'security' is just getting started with 60 domestic drone bases,
so far, somewhat distant from population centers. But this is likely
just the beginning, paralleling the decade long trend of militarization
of police departments (well, at least in cities that can still afford
them -- cf. Camden, NJ). Not looking forward to karmic "double tap"
operations in the homeland -- run by out-of-shape previously unemployed
college students gamers/terminators. Sad that this is what 'artificial
intelligence' turned out to be, though I suppose in this context, I'm
also glad that real good old-fashioned AI never did work...
[Oct08'12] The shifting of bank losses -- including outright criminally
fraudulent things like mortgages on non-existent homes -- onto the public
continues with QE3 in the US and with similar operations in the UK/EU.
The end result is a devaluation of public purchasing power and public
pensions. A third of all home sales in the US in August during the
'housing recovery' were all-cash, suggesting that record low mortgage
rates are not the explanation of the uptick. This is similar to London
property market where a *majority* of home sales are cash. Since the
average London yuppie can't afford to pay one million pounds *cash* for
a two bedroom flat, this is consistent with a substantial part of the
market serving as a money laundering operation. This operation continues
because it is just slightly too abstract to explain to the general public.
So we end up with outright theft -- conducted in broad daylight. When I
was in college, I made the mistake of not learning anything about the
basic facts of money creation. I didn't really begin to understand
how things actually worked until I was almost 50 (!). This is
critical
basic information like algebra or history that everybody should
learn in school.
[Nov19'12] Quick thinking British drivers have run down both their Olympic
cyclist medalist yesterday and then his coach in a separate incident.
Own goal, British car dudez! Probably not worth it trying to warn
the car people about peak oil/energy -- it'll just make them even more
dangerous...
[Nov19'12] The new war on the Gaza ghetto (if the Goliath vs. David
bombing of urban neighborhoods and media centers with US-made F16's and
naval shells is properly labeled a 'war') is just like the last one
-- right at the election transition -- and mostly funded by the $3-4
billion of US taxes and military equipment the US delivers to Israel
every year. It is against Hamas, itself partly an Israeli creation
(read about it the Wall Street Journal!).
After killing another one or two thousand Palestinians (last time,
1400 Palestinians killed vs. 13 Israeli deaths -- which the Israelis
pornographically call "mowing the lawn"), the lust for mutilated
Palestinian human bodies will subside after the votes are delivered in the
upcoming election. This is an absolutely disatrous policy -- esp. for
Israel. The only way to stop this, and the endless ethnic cleansing
accompanying provocative new land-grabs/bulldozing/settlements,
is to cut off the military funding. But the chance of
that happening is very small since the US and UK seem
determined
to support this suicidal (for Israel!) policy. The problems of
energy descent, avoiding the collapse of industrial civilization,
and re-making our monetary system to deal with contraction are much
more critical than maintaining the current short sighted strategy of
continuous tension in the Mideast. But I can't see anything to change
the current trajectory (certainly not Obama! -- compare the current
'facts on the ground' and his statements to the utterly clueless happy
talk just a few weeks ago that Obama must win so he can reign in Israel).
Israel is on a course to destroy itself (Kissinger's comment!), and the
US and the UK have spent the last 5 years preparing to take advantage of
the eventual new situation via funding Egypt, Saudi, Qatar, al-Queda,
and the Muslim brotherhood (currently behind the attack on Syria, and
now destabilizing Jordan).
[Nov19'12] The Greek economy contracted at 7% in the third quarter.
5 more years of that sort of austerity and there won't be a Greek economy
at all! Hopefully then, things would begin to pick up...
[Nov20'12] The recent purge of generals on utterly laughable grounds
(booting out professional killers for chat room sex or "abusive management
styles"? sheesh!) suggests that there are other more substantial reasons.
Some have focussed on the involvement of Cantor. Others suggest a
payback/purge for what was possibly a Benghazi 'October surprise' or
a purge to prevent an attack on Iran (cf. recent US talks with Iran).
Benghazi served as a CIA torture center and one of the major conduits of
arms and intelligence for the destabilization of Syria by US/UK/French
supported muslim fundamentalists, which is the 'new look' of US north
African and mideast policy. Perhaps the Cantor angle actually does fit
in to the other two if the 'new look' in fact reflects US positioning for
a post-Israel mideast (Cantor trying to monkey wrench it). I doubt a big
shooting war on Iran is part of the 'new look'. Complicated, deadly chess
game! I really wish all this mental and physical effort could be focussed
instead on planning for power-down and food and water shortages. But I
suppose you could make the same complaint about brain research...
[Nov23'12] I am very glad to see the truce sooner than I had expected
and the death toll much lower than I expected. Over $1 billion was spent
to do $1 billion in damage and kill 160 human beings. How about taking
that $2 billion out of the US' yearly tithe?
[Nov30'12] The recent vote suggests that the US, Britain, and Canada
support the one-state solution. The next decision will have to be:
continue apartheid, 'help out' with 'transfer', or do the right thing
and implement one-person-one-vote.
[Dec24'12] Sometimes the layers of BS are so
thick it makes you feel dizzy. The CIA complains
here
that torture wasn't as important as it was depicted in Kathryn Bigelow's
latest Hollywood-supported putrid puff job where 'feminist' 'heros'
torture witches to death during the hunt for bin Laden (remember when her
vile Hurt Locker got the award and the much better Avatar didn't?) (what's
next? 'feminist' baby killers?). Given that bin Laden probably didn't
do 9-11, that he was probably already dead when they crashed a helicopter
'hunting him down', and that the CIA has *always* been a torture center,
a torture training center, and a torture out-sourcer, and given that the
CIA was certainly consulted during the making of the film, and that the
film plays a critical role in the long line of CIA-supported Hollywood
productions (cf. 24) designed to brainwash the public into seeing torture
as normal, well, whatever, man!
[Jan19'13] 'Occupy Heathrow' again as hapless passengers camp amongst the
yobs in response to... a few inches of snow on one day! It was a display
of stunning incompetence with a landscape gardener helping (and failing)
to clear a runway. It's not country-wide British incompetence. Gatwick,
which experienced the same weather, by contrast had no problems because
they invested in snow and ice clearing equipment. Heathrow invested
less than the salary of one CEO in snow equipment (half a million pounds
according to one report). Unless privatized Heathrow is directly punished
by the government or by passengers, this will happen again. Some have
framed this as a CEO gamble -- now lost -- that it wouldn't snow.
But one commenter, Jose Hartley commenting in 2010 at the Economist,
suggested that BAA might actually profit from the chaos because they make
more money from retailers in the terminals than from landing charges.
Genius bidness strategy: trap hungry people in the airport without their
luggage, then charge them...
[Jan20'13] In the UK, we have the highest per capita
surveillance camera count outside of a prison -- it's Patrick
McGhoohan's Prisoner all the time. By contrast,
here is how they are
treating surveillance cams in Germany :-} .
[Jan21,'13]
What The Edge is worried about
I skimmed all the approx. 160 short pieces on the
Edge on things we should be worried about in 2013
here. It is a useful catalog of
human hopes, desires, and fears. Stuff on physics, drugs, neuroimaging,
our digital tatoos.
To my mind, some of the most critical mid-term (20-30 year) worries facing
us (the ones we should be preparing for *now*) hardly make an appearance.
Things like: (1) already drained acquifers facing ever more intense
droughts affecting food production (and fracking), (2) declining soil
quality (lack of phosphorus, carbon), (3) ever dwindling energy return on
energy investment for the fossil fuel and uranium lifeblood of industrial
civilization, (4) rapidly depleting elements that can't be synthesized
(e.g., helium, lithium, copper, vanadium, gallium, indium, palladium,
silver, neodymium) yet that are supposed to be our best hope to save our
sorry butts (solar cells, wind turbines, batteries, wall-to-wall touch
screens, efficient electric transport, the internet), (5) spreading
electrical grid problems (what we are supposed to plug our butt-saving
devices into), (6) major ocean problems (big fish all gone, acidification
from CO2, severe shallow water damage from heat and fertilizers), (7)
still-increasing world population (more than one new UK every year) with
3 million people a week moving to cities (one new Seattle every week)
where they are being outfitted with cars and disposable paraphernalia
that are 5x or 10x as energy intensive as the stuff they left behind
(pop. numbers from geographer Laurence C. Smith's piece).
So what if there are a few too many old people? or that tech is making
us a bit more stoopid? or that there are not enough scientific heros?
or that the supercollider merely 'verified' the florid hyperabstract
theories that everybody already thought were 'true' anyway but at such a
huge expense that the next project will have to be smaller (4 pieces on
that)? It staggers me that so few (2 or 3) of these smart people pointed
to the obvious overshoot elephant sleeping in our room. As I have said
many times, the problem is that the critical horizon is just a bit too
far away to be strongly motivating. The elephant is now barely stirring,
which is leading fast collapse doomers to retire because slow collapse
'is
not exciting enough'. Good riddance. Because it is not currently
exciting is *exactly* why I am so worried!
[Jan25'13] An important graph of world GDP
here
. With virtually no fanfare from the yammering hordes of
business/economics/politics commentators, world de-growth is happening,
strongly supporting the idea that effective peak oil *was* in fact around
2008, much as I had long suspected (and feared). Though many people
are worse off now than they were in 2008 (and a tiny population of very
rich people are even more ridiculously rich), nothing *super* bad has
happened so far, which is good news. As mentioned above, contractions
partly due to fossil fuel becoming more expensive (roughly the result
of its EROEI becoming lower) take an especially heavy toll on exactly
the things that are supposed to replace it. For example, in 2012,
Komax Solar reported a 90% reduction in orders, while orders for solar
photovoltaic production equipment spending (for crystalline and thin-film
cells) fell by three-quarters (yikes! I hate to be right) (
Solarbuzz
report). Solar production spending for 2013 is
forecast to fall back to $2 billion -- levels last seen
in 2006. In China, solar and wind companies are now facing
extraordinary
overcapacity. Cannabalizing renewables right as the first peak oil
shocks filter through the economy is the first stage. I'm hoping we can
get past that. My guess is that renewables will always be more expensive
than fossil fuel (because they are partly made out of fossil fuel), but
I'm hoping that *eventually* I will be wrong. But even if I'm right,
it's *still* worth it investing in them now and rearranging to grid
to deal with them now. It will only be harder, and probably even more
expensive to do this 20 years from now! Besides, stuff like
this
is just cool!
[Feb11,'13]
China, coal, climate, food
China's linearly increasing coal consumption has now reached a
level (3.8 Gt/year) almost equivalent to coal consumption of all of the
rest of the world *combined* (4.3 Gt/year), despite only having 20% of
the world's population. China has used 1/3 to 1/2 of all its coal (about
60 Gt used, with 30 Gt used in the last decade) and has been steadily
increasing its imports, linearly heading toward importing all available
world exports in 15 years. Stuart Staniford recently shed crocodile tears
over this, but made no comment on the fact that a lot of the stuff he
bought was made with that very coal. Though I think that the situation
is absolutely, utterly unsustainable for geological, soil-o-logical,
aquifer-o-logical, and most importantly, simple food supply reasons,
I can't condemn China in good faith unless I am willing to walk the
walk and not use any stuff manufactured there. I use stuff manufactured
(and mined) there every day.
For the past month, China has sure
been
looking Blade Runner-y (but New Delhi is
just
as bad). Shades of filthy London in the times of "The Big Smoke"
(the 1952 bad air days killed almost as many people as the Blitz).
Despite these massive increases in coal usage, there is not nearly
enough coal to bring the world up to US or UK/EU per capita energy use.
But people everywhere are going to try, and I don't blame them any
more than people in the US/EU. I think that the roughly half of the
EROEI-positive world coal that remains (the not-as-good half) will all
be burned -- perhaps in a slightly less sooty way, but releasing all of
its CO2 (which, since it's the not-as-good half, will result in less
usable energy than we got from the first half), and this will happen
much more quickly than the burning of the first half. That, plus oil
and plus methane burning, will raise CO2 levels to twice pre-industrial
levels -- which is equivalent to twice the difference between glaciers
and no-glaciers CO2 -- added onto no-glaciers CO2.
In 20 years, it will be hotter. This will make it harder to grow enough
food. Since 2001-2002, when I first started consciously worrying about
peak oil and its potential to affect the food supply, food prices have
doubled. Global grain stocks have crept down to their lowest levels
in decades (still a respectable 70 days). However, because there is
still a little slack in the system, and because the inexorable global
heating is quite gradual, it will probably take another 15 years or so
before outright shortages appear (when we reach truly just-in-time food
AKA 'peak food'). It is likely that the food supply will be the thing
that limits and then reverses the growth of human population, but only
starting around 2030.
So, no prob, keep your head down, nothing to see here, real change
won't fly, business as usual, keep driving, move along. Even though I
think I can see the main outlines of the road ahead pretty clearly by
concentrating on ten-year trends of world-average numbers and ignoring
the blinkered yammering business press, zerohedge, etc., I am basically
taking the same head-in-the-sand approach as Stuart Staniford since
I truly don't have a brighter idea. Time to go back into school on my
bike, through the light snow.
[Feb12,'13]
Romanian donkey meat
The English are not known for their cuisine -- or for doing
much cooking at all. A few years ago, Whole Foods (simple
English name) in London almost went out of business because
they didn't have any aisles of prepared 'ready meals' for the
British (sic) kitchen, and the CEO had to abjectly apologize and
make
'good' for this specialized market.
So the English took it in
stride when recently, the The Daily Mail
blared
that ready meals marked as containing beef contained
up to 100% horsemeat instead. But the Independent
easily trumped that with a report that the horsemeat
was
actually donkey (Romanian donkey, so be specific, banned along with
horses from Romanian roads by a new Romanian law).
To top it off, those donkey ready meals were imported into England
from France (who got the meat from Romania via Cyprus). Quel dommage!
That's *gotta* hurt! (learn how to cook, dammit). And besides, horse
and donkey meat is not clearly worse than (mad) cow, since they probably
weren't being fed ground up sheep spines. OK, gratuitous prose violence
in this post on my part...
[Mar03,'13]
NHS deems starving to death in hospital 'unacceptable'
After a report that 1165 patients in NHS hospitals starved to death
over the past 4 years, the Department of Health responded by saying
that the figure was 'unacceptable' and that unannounced inspections
will increase. I'm sure the inmates will appreciate inspections.
Austin would have classified this as an indirect speech act, meaning
roughly, 'avoid going into the hospital'. The story of the poor sot
(in his twenties) who was dying of dehydration and who called the
police twice in desperation, but still ended up dying of thirst
comes
to mind. I realize ballooning health care costs are a problem but
some of this seems like a stunning lack of common sense, not cost control
(or Liverpool care).
[Mar19'13] The bizarre EU confiscation of a percentage of everybody's
bank account in Cyprus to 'fix' Russian money laundering in Cyprus banks
seems unfair to say the least. Half the depositors *weren't* Russian,
and all the Russian depositors weren't money launderers; why not prosecute
money laundering rather than confiscating cash from everybody? (and no
money laundering happens in London, right?). The money ($3 billion)
will be handed to senior secured creditors, shareholders, and depositors
from outside of Cyprus (AKA "EU/IMF") in return for the $13 billion loan.
This looks incredibly bad. But it is worth noting that it is actually
not obviously more unfair than less visible public bailouts of banks
in the US and UK. For example, in the US, large banks take out loans
from the Fed at low interest. Then they deposit them back in the Fed
which pays the higher interest. This truly is printing money for banks.
Banks then in turn rent foreclosures instead of putting them back on
the market, or buy rentals, which inflates housing prices (and rents).
The effect is similar in the end to direct confiscation of bank accounts.
The more direct approach, however, seems to have backfired a bit at this
point.
[Mar21'13] The UK just announced a program to prop up the housing market
(it needs propping up?) by subsidizing subprime borrowers, including
interest-free home equity loans (so people will only need 10K up front
to get a loan to build a 200K house) along with loan guarantees for
banks so that they can lend to these more risky customers, who likely
won't be able to pay it back. The plan is to stimulate a giant increase
in personal debt. Personal dept in the UK already stands at 100% of
GDP, which is *twice* the size of the government debt. This policy
is explicitly designed to ignite a similar contagion to the one that
previously inflated the US housing bubble, in order to help rescue
underwater banks (which are in that situation because of the previous
bubble!). Given current conditions, this seems ridiculously risky.
The UK already has the largest government-plus-personal debt to GDP ratio
(vs. EU, US, Japan). But this plan will surely 'work' -- debt, prices,
and risk will increase in the (very) near term. Rent and house prices
will go back up for while. It looks absolutely horrible for 6 or 10 years
down the line (retire? retiring is so old school...), which will also be
6 or 10 years down the fossil fuel decline curve, but I suppose no one
can think that far ahead any more. If this was an increase in debt that
was trying to prepare for the loss of fossil fuels, it would be risky
but admirable. This just looks outrageously stupid/greedy. Meanwhile,
the collapse of the solar industry continues, with the recent
Suntech
backruptcy. [update Apr04: Nanosolar, a hi-tech
CIGS thin-film solar company is on the verge of
bankruptcy
after burning a half a billion in venture capital]. This follows the
pattern of alternative energy companies failing in the face of continuous
high fossil fuel costs. The US solar company Solyndra went bankrupt just
over a year ago. The prudent course of action for maintaining industrial
civiliation would be to subsidize or nationalize companies like this
rather than letting them collapse (a much better government investment
then trying to get house prices to go even higher!). Because alternative
energy devices are literally made out of non-renewable fossil fuels,
alternative energy is likely to remain sensitive to fossil fuel prices
and may remain more expensive than the fossil fuel it is supposed to
replace for a long time, or forever. The market is so short term, it
doesn't understand (or rather can't pay attention to) this very basic
boundary condition. This may be our downfall.
[Mar27'13] A new comprehensive (178-page,
graph-filled) publication from the Energy Watch Group,
including comparisons to their previous predictions
PDF
here.
[Apr09'13] [updated/revised after reading this
highly
informative post from David P.]. The banks in Cyprus failed because
*German and French banks* made big bets on Greece that failed when Greek
debt was restructured last summer, and which didn't blow up until now
because they were obscured by over-the-counter (i.e., under the counter,
non-public) derivatives, the hiddenness of which allowed big German
and French banks to get their high-interest term deposits out first.
Then, after all the banker's profits were safe, the EU (that would be
Germany, France, etc) could take large chunks of average people's and
average businesses' bank accounts to 'fix' the gutted Cyprus banks.
(except, of course, not before helping laggardly not-in-the-know
richies withdraw their money at the last second, a few days before the
hammer came down). Cyprus is small. But each new step is a test as
to what non-rich people will accept. Eventually, the non-rich will get
angry and ask for banker neck-cuts or cut some banker neck themselves.
I never in the world thought I would end up thinking that
David Stockman of all people (Mr. g*d@mn Trickle Down!) was one of
the more sensible voices in the media. What Henry Ford said about money
and banks remains true: if people really understood how they worked,
there would be a revolution the next day. The whole system relies on
the good graces of average people.
[Apr10'13] There is 'outrage' over CNN running a picture of Margaret
Thatcher chumming around with Jimmy Savile during a 'tribute' to her
:-} Whatever. Where's the outrage over the stench rising from the BBC
for their *decades-long* coverup of the Savile monster? They didn't
even make an attempt to discreetly ease him out. Just revolting.
Several energy commentators on Thatcher have also noted that there has
been no commentary on the fact that Thatcher rode the wave of UK North
Sea oil -- now rapidly declining -- which helped her short sighted
project of gutting/offshoring UK industry.
[Apr29,'13]
'Leftists', drones, and Syria
'Leftists' are all against drones (incidentally,
I consider myself far left, and don't like drones).
But most don't see them for what they really are -- a
relatively
inexpensive tool of empire for propping up our useful mafia thugs in
3rd world marches -- easier to use and cheaper than 'freedom fighters'.
They are strictly for places that can't shoot back (the homeland?!).
The slow moving drones are relatively easy to shoot down with modern
(post-1990) short-range anti-aircraft missiles. There is a good
reason that there are no drones being used to help the 'Syrian freedom
fighters' who are currently trying to destroy Syria. Our (US/UK/France)
Salafist/Wahabi/jihadi 'al-Qaeda' universal soldier contras and
torture-ers are mostly not Syrian but rather from Libya, Jordan, Yemen,
Sudan, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Chechnya, and are being fed many tons
of low cost weapons delivered from Libya and other places via air bases
in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi, Qatar, and Bahrain. The reason no drones are
being used there is because the Syrians can still shoot back.
Hearing politically-correct supposed 'leftists' in the US
and UK supporting their governments' destruction of Syria
for 'humanitarian concerns' from the comfort of their posh
homes in the country makes me puke (a recent list
here).
Tony Cartalucci has a useful summary of the 'rebels'
here.
Though the politics of Syria are complex, perhaps
these people need to watch some of the on-the-street
videos over at SyrPer, or look at the pictures
here
to get a better idea of what they are actually blithely and stupidly
supporting. The US/UK/EU are backing the Sunnis against the Shia -- the
very same Sunni's who were blowing up US/UK occupation soldiers in Iraq
(see also: Osama and, uhh, some Chechens that were recently in the news).
The idea is to exploit and escalate local ethnic/religious conflicts
try to bring another country back to the stone ages, to live alongside
the US/UK/EU's previous glorious successes Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Sickening. In contrast to those previous catastrophes, however, Syria
(and Iran) can shoot back.
Doesn't mean they can/will win; but it won't be as easy as shooting
fleeing passenger cars in the middle of the desert. The moles in the
US/UK/EU governments are truly playing with fire this time as they lamely
trot out their same-old fake 'chemical weapons' nonsense (why would the
Syrian army mess with chemical weapons when it has tanks and MIGs?).
The blowback of direct involvement would be fierce (attack on Israel,
interacting with a Russian fleet). [update: a mea culpa from the Angry
Arab!]
[May03'13] Morris Berman quote from a recent talk he gave about
Japan:
"A rising tide lifts all yachts". He is so academic sounding! (I suppose
I have no grounds to complain...). His Japan thesis is fine as far as
it goes. But I was shocked at out naive Berman seemed about energy.
Japan is *far* from sustainable, importing virtually all its fossil fuel,
which powers its exports (e.g., cars), which pays for the fossil fuel.
This system won't work as other people buy less cars. It's fine that
Japan has replanted its forests. Too bad the Indonesian forests were
destroyed and imported as fuel to make up for it.
[May14'13] Stephen Hawking acted out of conviction, despite Cambridge's
lame attempt to save its face by reporting his decision as due to
health reasons. Hasbara (et tu Raimondo?) says: Hawking shouldn't
complain because the chip he uses to talk was partly designed in
Israel. Go ahead: snatch his chip! Like white phosphorus, that won't
"photograph well". This may turn out to be a turning point against
Israeli exceptionalism. The latest ploy is that it's all Chomsky's
fault (!). Now I would agree that 5 decades of dire transformational
grammar *was* Chomsky's fault... Speaking of not photographing well,
one of our contras haplessly allahu akbar'ing his way across Syria
took a video of himself eating the heart and liver of a dead Syrian
government soldier. Despite support from the US, UK, Israeli bombs,
Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi, along with pro-war 'leftists' like Tariq Ali
and Ilan Pappe and Bernardine Dohrn (!), the freedom fighters have
been losing badly to the (mostly Sunni!) Syrian army defending their
own country from this ragtag bands of foreign Al Qaeda mercenaries.
Such 'great successes' must be why Cameron just pledged to double support
for these idiots in 2014 because of all the 'progress' made (and because
he has so much of our extra money lying around). After he met with
Putin, Cameron said "they were good talks and I am looking forward to
now taking them up with President Obama and seeing if we can turn this
proposal for a peace process and a peace conference into something
that can make a real difference" (glowingly reported on
here
in the 'leftist' Guardian). A "peace process", eh? Like that other
one? Maybe he forgot that it was the *Syrian goverment* that agreed
to a *Russian* offer for negotiations after his 'rebels' categorically
refused it? Or was it because part of the Russian fleet has docked in
Syria and agreed to finally provide Syria with anti-aircraft defenses
again American and Israeli O'bombers? All good for cynical misdirected
US/UK policy? Scheisse. What a plonker! (I'm in England now, after all).
Obomber responded that the “work to establish the use of chemical
weapon in Syria” will continue. I suppose this makes sense since
Carla del Ponte at the UN reported that it was actually our contras
that used the chemical weapons in Syria. So now they get another shot.
The disconnect between the official/mainstream/'alternative' story and
reality makes you feel a little more schizo every day. Check out this
puff
piece that looks like it was written by the state department on a
new dawn in Afghanistan on supposedly 'alternative' zerohedge.
[May22'13] On a public teevee, I saw an MSM shill casually walking down
the middle of a street 'battle scene' intercut with a 'fierce' (but,
of course, attractive, woman -- how peecee!) unconvincingly manning a
machine gun. I instantly knew what it was without sound or captions
(later confirmed on the hotel room teevee as an MSM embed with our
'Syrian' 'rebel' proxies). The saddest thing was that none of the blue
pills in the room laughed at the preposterous sham.
[May25'13] The foreign 'Syrian' contras supported by UK terrorists are
losing bad... oh, lookee here, UK people at this bloody knife!
[Jun03'13] Foreign 'Syrian' contras were trying to
import a load of sarin into Syria from Turkey but
got caught
by the Turks (whose government is supporting the contras against
the wishes of a large majority of the Turkish population.
No trace of this from the MSM sewer media of course.
This
from Edward Dark was a depressing read for the utter and disastrous
naivete of it all. Given PNAC, what could he have possibly expected
would happen? The sheer power of the worldwide matrix is stunning.
Meanwhile back in the real world, births continue at about 130 million
per year and deaths continue at about 50 million per year. So, say we
wanted to reduce world population by 2 billion to take a little stress
off of our energy/water/food/soil/fish/CO2/etc situation -- how long
would it take? Keeping the current rate of deaths constant, reducing
world population by 2 billion people would require *no births* at all for
40 years. You're probably thinking, that's not practical, and I would
agree. So I guess we'll just have to settle for Monsanto/Astra-Zeneca
giving us royalty free licences for the Vitamin A enhanced
"Golden
rice" scam that has about 3% as much beta carotene
as cilantro. But luckily, there's Golden Rice II, with
half as much vitamin A as cilantro. It hasn't been tested on
animals yet, but I'm sure the 72 hungry children it was
tested on liked it because it
was as
effective
as spinach. Whew, I was getting worried there for a minute that
the world death rate might really start to go up in a few decades when
the energy/water/food/soil/fish/CO2 thing really hits the fan. And keep
using your re-usable grocery bags, dammit!
[Jun16'13] Now that the Syrian government -- whose support has
risen dramatically during the war to include a strong majority
of Syrians -- has mostly successfully beat back the motley crew of
US/UK/EU/Saudi/Qatar-supported al-Qaeda mercenaries/proxies, the US/UK/EU
are contemplating a disastrous direct attack on Syria to Iraq-ize it and
make its population pay for their 'wrong choice' of supporting Assad
(it's only democracy when we do it), using a stupid old already-used
already-discredited last month (!) 'chemical weapons'/'Tonkin' sham/scam.
PNAC all the way (see Wesley Clark talking in 2007 about the the
long-planned destruction of Syria as just one of a group of countries
here). What
another human catastrophe this would be if the US/UK goes on a rampage
bombing its usual infrastructure targets (bridges, power plants, water
purification, hospitals, teevee, internet). However, it is
unlikely
to be as easy as Iraq or Serbia. As usual, the so-called 'libruls'
will begrudgingly support it, now having turned in favor of the
surveillance state 65/35 (versus almost the opposite under Bush).
For shame. The US attack on Fallujah left a toxic legacy
worse
than Hiroshima. Syrians are likely in for something similar for their
'wrong choice'. I wonder if the Russians will roll over once again.
This one is awfully close and they have to see the writing on the wall,
but they are in a very weak position and they probably haven't delivered
enough air defenses to be effective against the US terminator military
-- by far the largest and most expensive in the world. There may also
be a 'Monica distraction' element here; things rarely happen for only
one reason. The Druid suggested yesterday in a comment in his blog
that outside agitators from other countries might be trying to foment a
'color' revolution in the US, and that the US security apparatus would
be in a position to beat it back. An intriguing concept, which I hadn't
really thought of before. Seems highly unlikely in the next few years.
Perhaps not so inconceivable after another decade of austerity, though,
or if long term (mortgage) interest rates tick up even a tiny bit.
[Jul04'13] The Egyptian military coup and the reinstatement of Mubarak's
generals and thugs, complete with tanks in the street, is described
as a triumph of 'democracy' (!) by the 'left', despite the fact that
the military overthrew the guy who won the election (by a minority of
eligible voters -- but that's just like in the US). Hard to figure out
exactly what is happening given all the media miasma, and given that the
US supports all sides, as needed. Among the contradictions, in addition
to suporting the Egyptian army ($1.3 billion this year, second only to
Israel), the US supported the Muslim Brotherhood and helped install Morsi,
who in turn supported the US-supported jihadis in Syria, which is what
created much of the rage against Morsi on the Egyptian streets (compare
Erdogan's weaking position in Turkey for the same reason). To make
things more contradictory, the Salafi parties *supported* the coup,
and just today, so did the Syrian army! But it seems unlikely that a
US-supported Egyptian military junta will change Egyptian policy on Syria,
and it won't have to make any annoucements (like Morsi had to) about
what it decides to do; it has taken over most of the local opposition
media and arrested journalists. Given that the beginning of troubles
in Egypt (popular resistance to the Mubarak dictatorship) basically
coincided with the end of oil export revenue (mazamascience pdf
here),
this bodes poorly for the future stability of other
oil exporting countries (well, at least those that
have not yet been destablized by a US attack).
Two
thirds of Egypt's oil is gone; the situation will likely only
worsen from here on out, as internal demand is further crushed each
year, creating more instability. Some commentators have suggested that
the coup is a setback for the US since Egypt wasn't on the PNAC list of
countries to destabilize/destroy. Maybe, but plans have to be updated;
that document is now quite old. In any case, the US is only a decade
away from entering the same oil situation that Egypt arrived at last
year.
[Jul07'13] Pretty good analysis of Egypt
here,
though it goes too easy on Morsi, and fails to see that a good part
of the reason "The MB was unable to make a dysfunctional neoliberal
economy work" was because of peak oil in Egypt. There isn't much
difference between socialism and neoliberalism with regards to energy
requirements; neither (will) work very well under an unrelenting and
ever-worsening energy drought -- though I prefer the flatter distribution
of (energy-derived!) wealth that typifies the first. In any case,
US-installed Mubarak thugs now reinstalled will remove all traces of
Morsi's moderately anti-neoliberal moves.
[Jul09'13] Looks like Egypt 'got its Pinochet' after all as soldiers
shot systematically into a crowd killing 50 people and wounding over 400.
This has resulted in the Salafist parties withdrawing their support for
the coup. The new pharaoh, Adly Mansour, appointed by General al-Sissi
will retain the $1.5 billion/year in (military) aid sent by the US.
And I'm sure that when it's not shooting them, the junta will denigrate
women less than the Muslim Brotherhood. This reminds me of arguments
during the US elections. [Update: Jul10] NBC reports that "Egypt’s new
defense minister warned on Tuesday that it would not allow any group to
interfere with the interim government’s road map toward the restoration
of democracy." Dictators don't do irony, I suppose. But to put this
in perspective, I don't really know what's actually happening in Egypt,
a country of 85 million people (incidentally, the number of people that
were added to world population this year). I just think the US should
stop sending $5+ billion/year to Israel and Egypt, and allow them to
figure it out on their own. Where does the 'aid' go? Well in 2013, the
other country ordered a lot more jet fuel than it usually does, which
may correlate with the recently observed drop in US refinery output
of gas/petrol supplies to motorists in favor of jet fuel (kerosene,
most energy dense liquid fossil fuel, more energy dense than gasoline)
this month. This possibly sounds like preparation for an offensive war.
More than half of the weight of a modern military on the move is liquid
fossil fuel. US tax dollars at work.
[Jul17'13] Another bicyclist was slaughtered on the road in London
this week (51 year old man). This was unusual because most cyclists
killed in London are women. The reason, described in a
suppressed report by Transport for
London, is that women respectfully stay closer to the edge of the lane and
follow traffic rules -- exactly what the bicycle-hating car drivers say
they should do. Their reward is slaughter. Lorry/truck drivers don't see
(don't look for) them and then turn right over them squishing them (this
is what happened to the man this week). Men are more likely to go out
into the lane, and to jump the red lights, thus avoiding death. That is
why the report was suppressed -- because it didn't fit the politically
correct message that everything is OK if you obey traffic rules and wear
a helmet. In the Netherlands, where they have strict liability laws
favoring pedestrians and cyclists, nobody wears helments, and far far
fewer cyclists are killed. In Britain, at least, the 'war on motorists'
is a complete
myth: over
the last decade, total motoring costs (purchase, maintenance, petrol/gas,
taxes, insurance) have *fallen* 8% while rail fares have increased 17% and
bus fares 24%. In fact, motoring costs have risen slower than the cost
of living over the past 20 years. Tax those suckers! If they are get to
destroy their earth for their grandchildren and everybody after by aimless
driving back and forth, they should at least pay a little extra.
[Jul19,'13]
Neural dust
I work on the brain. In the past, I have often lusted after some
method of recording from a very large number of neurons at the same
time in order to visualize neural activity as it circulates around
the several hundred maps in the brain. This is now possible with
optogenetics using very small, very young, almost transparent animals
-- like zebra fish larvae. But the Holy Grail is to do this with
a mouse or a primate. Now, I think I am finally beginning to get
cold feet.
Would it really be a good thing to try to design some kind of
nanodevice dust that could be implanted, or worse, implant itself
into the brain? To be sure, there is nothing remotely like
this now (either implantable or self-implanting). And I
think it is extremely unlikely that anything like this will
be constructed in the next decade. Graphene, for example,
might be highly cytotoxic. Check out this paper (PDF)
showing
SEM pictures of graphene flakes slicing into cells showing SEM
pictures of a graphene flake slicing into cells.
Breathing
graphene dust (very strong fragments of 2D sheets) may be like breathing
asbestos or worse. It's an empirical question yet to be answered.
Right now, 'nanobots' are primarly a shopworn sci-fi fantasy, like flying
cars, that is being recycled just now because scientists want to attach
themselves to scarcer and scarcer funding, such as the the US and EU brain
projects that have just been announced with this as their explicit goal.
But it might not be that impractical to make a set of very moderately
numerous small devices that could find their way into the brain. To get
there, it could in via arterial circulation (big diameter to small), and
would probably have to be coated with biocompatible molecules or perhaps
be embedded into biological vectors. I just don't feel comfortable
with the general feel of corporate 'neural dust', and given the cost of
designing and manufacturing it, there is no other kind. I highly doubt
having it made will be in my best interest of understanding how the
brain works. Consider rabies, a naturally occurring neurotropic virus.
Once it gets into your nervous system, it self-replicates until the
whole brain is overcome.
Do we really want some kind of artificial, instrumented
super-rabies from, say, Monsanto crudding up brains in what's left of the
biosphere? Probably not. This is turning vaguely Manhattan project-y.
Just imagine the applications -- e.g., a pre-crime sensor in orbitofrontal
cortex that could report when you are about to do something bad. Again,
I want to stress that we are a *very* long ways away from being able to
do anything even vaguely like that, despite the breathless, clueless,
contentless bloggers. But scientists are creative, and sometimes they
make very rapid unpredicted progress toward their goals. Maybe it's not
such a laudable goal after all. Given the tighter and tighter coupling
between academic science and commerce, it would be foolhardy to ignore
applications beyond 'figuring out how the brain works'.
[Jul28'13] Over 300 people have been killed in Egypt since the military
coup. Many of these have been poor people (who generally support the
MB) killed by military snipers firing down into crowds from rooftops.
The best the BBC can manage is "It is not clear whether they were
killed when security forces tried to clear the area". Nothing like
their reporting of the 'heroic' western-supported sarin-gas-using
foreign-to-Syria mercenaries fighting alongside embedded BBC reporters
in Syria. BBC's report of the assassination of Abdelsalam al-Mismari in
the post-Gaddafi chaos that the UK itself arranged, is similarly bland and
intentionally misleading: "Abdelsalam al-Mismari dies" and "Benghazi has
seen a number of violent incidents since the fall of Gaddafi".
[Aug09'13] The situation at Fukushima has recently worsened as engineers
attempted to solidify ground to contain radioactive water leaking out of
the melted reactors. The result was that ground water that is percolating
through the mess is being partly contained, and is rising in level, and
threatening to overflow hastily constructed temporary waste water storage
tanks. It is simultaneously escaping out into the underlying aquifer
from below the plant, probably through damaged, never stabilized, never
entered, flooded tunnels containing hundreds of tons of highly radioactive
water, either directly into the sea, or possibly *under* the sea floor,
to reappear as seeps elsewhere in the ocean. Finally, by changing the
dynamics of the underground aquifer with the underground hardened earth
barrier, there is the risk that the buildings -- particularly unit 4,
which holds a gigantic amount of spent fuel -- will begin to tilt
or topple. Building 4 has already sunk 30 inches since the quake.
This is seriously tragic. When this first happened (before unit 3
exploded), I had clearly underestimated how badly this disaster would
turn out. It is now *much* worse than Chernobyl. The total tonnage of
radioactive waste at the site is much bigger than Chernobyl. The total
release is bigger. Many parts of the site are still no go zones.
But since the Pacific ocean is so huge, the absolute level by the time
it gets across the ocean is still very small and barring some additional
catastrophe, currently probably not as dangerous for the west coast of
the Americas as was the early 1960's fallout from atmospheric atomic
bomb testing, which did cause a wave of cancers in California beginning
in the 1980's. But it's a *way* different story for people living near
the source, with radioactive coastal sand blowing back up to
1 km
inland. Bioaccumulation, however, is a different matter than water
concentration, and there have been few public tests (the few released
suggested cesium is already up in tuna). This gives us an unfortunate
preview of what may happen to many other reactors currently sited
near the ocean (unlike Chernobyl). The academic sites that had good
information in the early stages of the disaster (e.g., Dave Lochbaum)
have been strangely silent about Fukushima lately; instead we just have
the spectacle of nervous Tepco officials making public statements that
they have lost control of the leak situation, that they are worried that
building 4 might topple (that's the one with the largest number of spent
fuel rods by far), and are putting down an asphalt layer over to try to
stabilize the soil, or perhaps installing refrigeration coils to freeze
it in place (!?).
[Aug18'13] Shame on the supposed 'lefties' supporting the
'not-coup' in Egypt with the death toll over 500 (that's the
junta's estimate! the real death toll is probably over 1,000).
This is one of the largest police-killing-demonstrators
event in a long time. Unlike Tiananmen square, if you
stand unarmed in front of an Egytian tank, the Egyptian military
shoots
(see also
here
as armoured vehicles mow down a crowd of unarmed people throwing rocks).
The likely nomination of Robert Ford as US ambassador to Egypt suggests
what is coming (or has already come). He had great 'success' implementing
what was called the "Salvador option" (after the US sponsored death squad
hell in 1980's El Salvador) in Iraq. Ford and Negroponte arranged this
after the savage aerial bombing wasn't enough to completely tear apart
the country. Then more recently they did this in Syria (Ford is currently
ambassador to Syria). Iraq is still apart. Syria has fought back against
the US/UK/Saudi terrorism successfully so far (but at a huge cost --
100,000 dead, rubble piles everywhere). The situation is complex given
that Morsi had expressed support for the US/UK/Saudi/Qatar-supported
foreign mercenaries/al-Qaeda attacking Syria. But the big picture is
that this chaos actually supports -- and is supported by -- US and
Israeli policy in the region, which is, basically, to create chaos
(compare Libya today versus 2 years ago). The US military aid to Egypt
still rolls in and is highly unlikely to stop. As mentioned above,
part of the impetus for what has happened in Egypt was the transition
of Egypt to having to import oil combined with a rapidly growing
population. I suppose some of my deep middle class unease comes from
projecting into the future, and into other currently richer countries.
The coup was supported by some 'leftists' in Egypt, too. The people
currently being killed are mostly poor and religious. This kind of
'whose side are you on' class war threatens to arrive in other countries,
too, when the big energy crunch hits in 15 years. Chris Hedges
here
and Pepe Escobar
here
are right on the money. But none of the commentators even
mention energy, the driving force behind high food prices,
which is one of the main driving forces behind the uprisings.
How will we ever deal with effects of peak oil on food and
society without speaking its name? I fear the answer is that
it won't *ever* get mentioned -- all the way down. [Update:
Here,
finally, is a mainstream-y article on this topic.]
[Aug20'13] Brits say they like Americans (that means they dislike them),
but then they act as servile American poodles, detaining Greenwald's
partner for 9 hours under anti-terrorism laws (Greenwald says the
Mafia had rules against this) and then having GCHQ officials visit the
Guardian to oversee the destruction hard drives containing information
from or about Snowden (kinda reminds me of the story of the US Economic
Development Administration destroying printers, keyboards, and mice in
an attempt to deal with a malware infection...). Both actions are mere
intimidation and unlikely to be effective (esp. destroying disks that are
merely copies, why bother?). British papers today then meekly avoided
mentioning this in their headlines (the disk destruction was hived off
into the Guardian's "comment is free" blog area). Old Blighty's looking
limp today. For an interestingly different take on this, see
Scott
Creighton. I agree with Scott that the whole disk destruction story
did have a weird stage-y look to it.
[Aug22'13] "The people who call for boycott of the Winter games in
Russia had no objection to holding the Olympic games in London, which
implies that, in their eyes, taking anti-gay measures is a serious crime,
whereas wars in Afghanistan and Iraq [killing over a million people]
are mere peccadillos." -- Jean Bricmont.
[Aug23'13] How many times can they replay this chemical weapons of
'mass destruction' 'unplugged incubator babies' crap?!? Can't this
B.S. actually work again?!? (after already 2 failed tries *this time*!).
Why would the Syrian army possibly bother with chemical weapons when
they have tanks and planes? The whole fake Iraq chemical weapons
incubator babies thing was hardly more than 10 frigging years ago,
now completely outed even in the MSM sewer. But people's brain are
even worse now not to laugh at 3 times in a row this time. I suppose
they can't remember that far back, because the internet is all about
this momemnt and anything older than a month is not relevant and not
kewl. In other news, the MSM finally has begun reporting on the
worsening
situation at Fukushima.
[Aug25'13] The human scum who direct covert British and US military
strategy truly have sick minds. As Tony Cartalucci says:
Did
the West gas thousands to rescue failed Syrian war?. If a US/UK
attack on Syria actually went off (still highly unlikely in my opinion,
at this point), Russia and China would be unlikely to be able do
anything to stop it. To stop it domestically, there would literally
have to be a revolution in the US and UK; and there hasn't even been
a peep from any of the Good Americans on the street. People in the US
are mostly against an attack on Syria, but won't actively oppose one.
The good Germans in the UK are similarly passive, as the the BBC
lickspittles and Hague mouth the American line. And by the time any
vocal resistance from a substantial fraction of the populations arose,
it would be way too late (like Iraq 2003). The domestic resistance to
this is instead coming from the military (!) -- in the US, from people
like Martin Dempsey. The local people in the middle east actually
falling for the divide-and-rule strategies, and then doing the dirty,
filthy, bloody work of implementing them (compare El Salvador) are
equally at fault, esp. since in many instances (e.g., Iraq before
the US attacks) the people there were previously living in mixed,
non-sectarian neighborhoods and marriages. This is *exactly* what
the western sickos and Israel were so keen to destroy. Sh*t like this
goes a long way toward cancelling out the beautiful things that humans
have done. Still, for now, I'm pretty sure this is just a psyop bluff,
esp. because Syria has decent air defenses, and because in the last 50
years, the powerful but cowardly US/UK militaries have rarely attacked
a country that can actually fight back.
[Aug27'13] Two days later, and the US/Israel/Saudi/alQaeda coalition
crazies look, well, crazier than I thought even two days ago.
I suppose that's the whole idea of psyops -- looking crazy. Syria
certainly couldn't hold off a sustained US attack for very long,
but it could do a lot more damage fighting back than Iraq did.
It is hard to express in words the level of disgust I have for
the people in charge, Obama granting "absolute immunity" to his
predecessor war criminals, Obama channeling Cheney, Kerry's Colin
Powell moment, the MSM-Goebbels-NYT-'news', mercenary-embedded
doctors
without borders but with a specific political agenda, so-called
leftist pwogwessive humanitarian bombers supporting the foreign
Syrian mercenaries who won't object when Obama does a full-on Cheney,
UK poodles, French poodles, and finally J6P Americans and Brits who
seem to gladly swallow this B.S. whole. But I'm *still* hoping this
is just psyops, or something more limited, like Clinton bombing a
"chemical weapons laboratory" in Sudan which turned out to be the
Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on 20 Aug 1998 (this was right after
he explained what a blow job "is" on 17 Aug). For the Obomber
regime, it will distract people from the Stasi NSA, the criminal
banker mafia, their cratering jobs and salaries, and the
effects
of the supposedly dead peak oil problem... (for another example of peak
oil being dead, see Portugal, where road traffic dropped 50% in 2012 and
then 68% more (!) in Q1 2013 -- fracked oil that costs even more than
the current world price to extract will fix this, right?). In the case
of Good Americans not stopping their government from attacking Iraq on
false premises, every year, history will more clearly say that the blood
of the millions that were bombed and poisoned is forever on their hands.
Good Americans and Brits are now ready to (remotely, oh so cleanly)
dip their hands into the gore once more. Being fooled by the yellow
journalism of one's mainstream media is not an excuse (try that with
Germans -- that they were fooled by the Nazi's false flag Reichstag fire
blamed on the communists and reported that way by the mainstream media
of the time *isn't* a good excuse). People in the powerful attacking
countries are the only ones with the power to stop this. Use your damn
language-enabled minds! The three big Iraq lies (yellow cake/nukes,
chemical weapons, involvement with 9/11) were obvious lies in 2003 to
anyone with half a brain. It's equally obvious now!
[Aug27'13] The propaganda is being catapulted, but it hasn't
taken effect yet; an attack on Syria is currently less popular with
US-ians than Congress or a colonoscopy, or for that matter, the
King
of England during the Revolutionary war. There is the
danger that sterner medicine -- e.g., a false flag sinking of a
not-too-big American ship -- will be needed. Can't imagine where
idea came from... (the 4 American not-too-big ships are in
virtually the
same place as that particular American listening ship from yesteryear
was when it was hit by a false flag attack). But probably another week of
the puke Blitzer mighty wurlizter will work as it always has in the past.
Then it's just dialing in coordinates of radio stations, power plants,
barracks, airports, bridges, hospitals, and government buildings by our
brave 'warriors', because it's so much less morally depraved to blow
children's heads off by remote control than it is to poison them by false
flag attacks (oh, I forgot, we do both). It *is* possible that that
Syria itself may sink an American ship with a Russian anti-ship missile.
That would have the same effect as a false-flag sinking. One can imagine
various in-between let-it-happen scenarios as well. On days like these,
I look forward to humanity finally running out of fossil fuel.
[Aug28'13] Russia and China walked out of the Security Council meeting
on attacking Syria. According to Eyptian teevee, Egypt will close
the Suez Canal to ships including US and poodle UK warships (but they
can easily launch missiles from the Mediterranean, and this might have
been pre-agreed). The Blair thing crawled out of his hole to support
the Cameron and Hague things. The latest polls show that the attack
on Syria is only supported by 9% of the public in the US and 9% of
the public in the UK. The attack is said to be based on secret
Israeli
intelligence (I watched zio lite Steve Clemons mouthing this on
Rachel Maddow). Obama is a pathetic man.
[Aug29'13] It is not clear how a less-than-all-out attack on Syria is a
plausible US military strategy for a direct attack (this is different from
spending billions arming the proxy foreign mercenaries and liver-eaters,
who have now mostly been defeated). But a direct all out attack leads
toward dangerous scenarios. There seems to be some slightly more
than average discord between Dempsey and Hagel on one hand and the
Ziocon crazies on the other, which makes the situation more complex.
The crazies' momentum seems to have slowed a bit and the propaganda war
has gone a little limp. But I have no real idea what happens next.
The mobilization of armies throughout the region makes things even
more unstable and unpredictable. Looking back at similar situations in
history, this just the kind of situation where a false flag "new Pearl
Harbor" can have dramatic effects. Hopefully, we'll get through the
next month without (another) one.
[Aug29'13] Update: Cameron just barely lost a Syria vote in the Commons
by 13 votes, 285 to 272 (only 9 lousy 'Liberal' MP's voted against --
less than defecting Convervatives!). Excellent result! The Cameron
and Hague poodles are slapped! (they are absolutely fuming, calling
everybody c*nts). If I said anything bad about the house of Commons,
I take it back. This leaves only theFrench surrender poodle, sniffing
around! This is one case where having a nominal conservative in power
in the UK probably turned out to be an advantage, since a generally
pro-war Labour person like Ed Miliband could rally his troops to vote
no against Conservatives. A similar analysis applied to the US means
having a nominal Democrat in power could turn out to be a disadvantage.
But it's still hard to say what will happen. The UK had already sent
fighter jets and UK sappers are already rumored to be on the ground
in Syria. And the UK government could go ahead anyway (like Nixon
bombing Cambodia), after further 'revelations'.
[Aug30'13] Looking up today, as a result of
the British vote! (see Galloway speech
here). Time to have
a vote in the US Congress! Those embarrassing slugs can't even get
a majority to agree a vote is necessary, in order to start a friggin'
war -- and the letter demanding a vote came mainly from Republicans.
The embarrassing 'representatives' of California, Nancy Pelosi and
Diane Feinstein both support a war (why don't you suit up and help
out, girls, since only about 10-20% of the US public supports your
sicko war plan? you could call Samantha Power and Susan Rice to help,
too -- when they get back from vacation; and take McCain with you).
The state of deep-state-controlled press world wide (including e.g.,
Aljazeera, which catapulted the new 'unplugged incubator babies'
stories with the best of them, or Amy Goodman, who catapulted Razan
Zaitouneh 7 times) is truly pathetic! Today this positively
whiny article in
the BBC about the Commons vote says, Britain will be embarrassed by
having the French poodle there beside the US but not themselves (gag
me with a spoon). This is after the BBC ran wall to wall propaganda
on BBC teevee last night -- not a single antiwar interview; maybe they
could change their name to BBFOX. I hate paying for them via my teevee
license, esp. since I don't watch it or read the beeb these days except
to ridicule it. Still a dangerous time. If a US or UK destroyer gets
sunk by Syria or Israel, this could turn around quick. Finally, there
is also always the tiny chance of an outed false-flag ship-sinking;
that could backfire spectacularly. I hope we are moving back to 'just
a psyop' -- 'When chemical weapons attack!'. That the Russians have
sent armed ships into the Mediterranean with high quality military
radar suggests that they were/are possibly expecting or trying to slow
down an actual attack. For a laugh, see William Banzai's
Hollandaise
twerk (the whole collection is
here).
:-}
[Aug31'13] Polls suggest that the French people -- like the British and
American and Turkish people -- oppose a war on Syria by more than 2:1,
in contrast to President Hollande's faux left 'humanitarian' bombing
tag-along-with-the-Americans plan. This is a remarkable world-wide
unanimous antiwar sentiment prior to a war. The war is utterly at
odds with US interests (good discussion with Pepe Escobar
here). The only
explanation for the continued yelping calls for war from the Kerry
thing and Obama and the MSNBCBSBBC yellow press is that they are
almost completely driven by powerful lobbies, including Saudi, that
are at odds, literally with the opinion of virtually the entire world.
The UN weapons inspectors have been booted out by the US after only a
few days (a real investigation would have taken a minimum of a month).
Back in his first term, Obama could have argued that he had to watch
out for the funding of his reelection. Now, when he is supposed to
be more of an independent agent, he looks pathetically driven to try
to find a way blow something up, kill a few people, and damage the
Syrian air force and air defenses -- all for the benefit of another
country -- somehow without starting a catastrophic worldwide firestorm.
It's painful to watch this weak man, preposterously given a peace prize,
surrounded by incompetent chickenhawks, unable to face off the lobbies,
unable to manfully announce that he is calling this off. And c'mon
you US Congress-slugs! The UK just showed you how it's done! You can,
too! [Update: the global backlash seems to sunk in: Obama just called
for a vote before going forward. This is very good!]
[Sep01'13] Now, we will be forced to watch the disgusting spectacle of
the Congress worms trying to out-zionize each other (blech). Still,
there is the possibility that a combination of: (1) party politics
(Republican uglies against the President, plus just enough Democrats
with backbones who can see through the false flags and bombing for
peace crap), (2) military people advising them about military reality,
(3) seeing that over half of the UK Commons MPs were able to overcome
ziopressure (and saudipressure), and (4) reason (whatever little they
have :-} ), will win the day! Rather than wasting those billions
toadying up to the ziocons who want to degrade Syria's air defenses and
risking blowing up the world, how about spend it instead on US college
education? For example, for $12.5 billion, all 2- and 4-year colleges
and universities in the US could make tuition free (calculation
here). Money much
better spent! For comparison, the false-flag initiated (second!)
Iraq catastrophe cost, at an absolute bare minimum, $1 trillion dollars
(i.e., 1,000 billion dollars). The money spent destroying Iraq could
instead have paid for 80 years of free public tuition in the US.
[Sep03'13] Two missiles were launched in the eastern Mediterranean this
morning (6:15 GMT), which were detected soon after launch by
Russian
radar or Russian satellites. They were travelling from the
central Mediterranean to the east. Initially it was not clear what kind
of missiles were fired. One suggestion referred to the report
here,
which describes missiles that mimic Scuds and Iranian Shahab missiles
(to serve as targets for air defense missiles). After initial denials,
a few hours later, the missiles were in fact reported to be
Israeli
missiles, and then that the test was 'US-backed'. Initially, I
thought it could even have been a wag the dog attempt ('US destroyer hit
by Iranian missile' or 'Syria sinks US vessel after mistakenly detecting
missile attack'). They were probably merely attempting to test/localize
the radar responses of Syrian air defenses. On the subject of an
impending attack, none of the major corporate media effluent sources
have questioned the extremely weak evidence that the probable al Qaeda
false flag was actually the Syrian government using chemical weapons,
utterly at odds with its own interest. The polls suggest only a small
fraction of US-ians support an attack. But the mighty Wurlitzer still has
a week or two to grind on. And a successful false flag sinking *would*
be a slam dunk for the pliable minds of the people. What a stunning and
idiotic distraction this is from real problems the world faces keeping
industrial civilization viable...
[Sep04'13] Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh calls
'false flag' while Nancy
Pelosi
explains
the necessity of Bronco Bama's upcoming war on Syria to her 5 year
old grandson (the grandson was against it!). World gone wild!
Is *this* what the Teilhardian global nervous system
super organism looks
like from the inside? Unfortunately, the Congress worms will be voting
right around the anniversary of 9-11. Obama is probably planning to
attack on 9-11 (look at how he managed the killing of the already dead
guy in 2011). If there was ever a time to stand up and be counted in the
US, this is it. Syria can't stop the attack. Americans can. We have
to stop Obama, Kerry, Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, not to mention McCain,
Peter T. King, Robert Menendez, Bob Corker, etc, etc, etc. Kerry just
revealed in Senate committee that the Saudis and Qataris will pay for
the war (Prince Bandar, the guy who bought the chemical weapons for the
Syrian jihadis, the same guy who ran the mujahedeen against the Russians
decades ago in Afghanistan). Kerry is hiring out the US army to Saudi
for al Qaeda and for international companies to build gas pipelines.
The US Senate committee just approved the attack resolution. Russia
just redirected several more destroyers and troop transport ships to
the Mediterranean today. Exactly how *not* to deal with peak fossil
fuels.
[Sep05'13] To really be against the against the attack on Syria,
one has to also be against one of the main driving forces for it --
the western domination of fossil fuel resources. Sure the Israel
lobby is lobbying all out (even as the NYT scrubs mentioning it) to
get the US degrade Syrian air defenses so Israel can more safely bomb
with impunity, like they can safely shoot Palestinians in a barrel;
and they certainly control a majority of mainstream media outlets
and re-election purses. But it's critical to also pay attention to
the fossil fuel angle (e.g., gas pipelines). As Greg Muttitt has
written
facile and inaccurate dismissals of the oil angle in Iraq war (e.g.,
see Greg Palast) are just that. The bottom line is that US and UK oil
and gas resources are depleting and Europe hardly has any at all. As a
whole, the world is using 5 or 6 barrels of oil for every barrel found.
But the US-ians, UK-ians, and EU-ians all drive and fly like there
is no tomorrow. To really be against the (additional!) catastrophic
destruction planned for the humans in Syria, you also have to be against
fossil fuel business as usual, which means you will be against everyday
life as usual. That's a taller order because it's about one's own hide.
Each local action (e.g., a trip in a car to the gym -- is a daily cluster
of votes for a particular course of action halfway around the world that
is going to destroy many human lives.
[Sep06'13] Today, Putin says Russia would help
Syria respond to a military intervention by the US,
which immediately caused a swoon in world markets.
Here
is a useful summary of possible attack and response scenarios (note that
none of them feature Russian intervention or even help). This is a much
more dangerous gambit than bombing Libya or the second bombing of Iraq.
Truly world-destabilizing consequences are possible. The US public is
massively opposed to attacking Syria and has saturated the congress
worms' offices with letters, calls, and emails 100 to 1 against it.
As incredible as it may seem to Obama's supporters (but many of us
warned you), Obama has turned out no better than Bush. He just looks
physically different. Instead of standing up to neocons/AIPAC/bankers
in his second term because he doesn't have to worry about reelection
and theoretically has more freedom to do the right thing, Obama has
instead stood up to American and world public opinion, in order to more
closely follow neocon/AIPAC/banker guidelines. He is just a figurehead.
At the G20, he will be visiting gay activists in St. Petersburg (what,
not Pussy Riot?!) -- on the way to setting the world on fire. He looks
like an amateur in comparison to Putin. What's so great about humans?
On days like this, I like animals better.
[Sep07'13] In France, public opinion is against the attack on Syria.
The war is supported only by Hollande, the 'Socialists', the 'Greens'
(hah!), Le Monde, and Liberation (hah!). The right and the left are
against it (via Mina on Moon of Alabama, who says, "what a picture!").
Anyway, back to the basis for why fossil fuels attract so much unsavory
attention. A detailed book recently published by Pedro Prieto and
Charles Hall has analyzed the energy return on energy investment (EROI)
of a large, real world, renewable resource: the recently installed
solar photovoltaic system in Spain that currently provides about 2.5%
of Spain's power. Their conclusion is that this installation will soon
be net energy positive (good!), but that the EROI calculated over a
25 year period -- when a full accounting of the energy used (roads,
washing, maintenance, network stabilization) is done -- is only 2.5
(that is, 2.5 units of energy generated for 1.0 units of energy input,
or in other words, only 1.5 net units given an investment of 1.0 unit).
This is much lower than conventional EROI estimates for solar PV
of around 8. Prieto and Hall have been criticized for including
too many boundary inputs and using 1.5 euro spent to stand for 1 kWh
consumed rather than directly estimating energy inputs. But there is no
question that the EROI of solar PV is less than present day crude oil,
coal, or methane. In any case, the energy used to create the Spanish
solar PV installation was virtually completely supplied by fossil fuels
(crude oil, coal, methane). No photovoltaic 'breeding' systems have yet
been contemplated, so photovoltaic is currently completely dependent
on fossil fuel business as usual. That business is now starting to
get less 'usual'. The constriction in EU energy supply as a result
of growth in China and India in combination with a relatively flat
world supply has essentially crashed renewables; the collapse of many
solar manufacturers that I mentioned several times above was caused
by the withdrawal of state subsidies in the past few years (e.g.,
the Chinese firm Suntech, was selling 40% of its output to Spain).
There is a major worry is that a low real world EROI is not enough to
keep industrial civilization going in its current form, since so far,
we have kept it going with fossil fuels with EROI's in the 10-50 range
(Hall estimates the minimum EROI for business as usual is over 10).
To return to a positive note, the EROI of wind is better. Clearly, there
is no other way forward than using *much* less energy per capita *and*
building *a lot* more renewables, including solar PV and wind (Germany
now gets 7% of its power from wind, 6% from biomas, and 5% from solar,
up from almost nothing just 15 years ago!). Lowering population growth
wouldn't hurt either. Coming back briefly to the politics surrounding
the latest war plans, one thing I haven't seen mentioned with respect
to the UK decision to stay out is that last winter, the UK came within
a day of the electrical and heating grid doing down for lack of methane
during an extended cold snap (I'm from Chicago, it wasn't *that* cold
in the UK). Since Russia supplies methane to EU countries, and given
that UK oil and methane is well past its peak, this may have played a
small role in a decision probably mostly made on the basis of monkey
(party) politics.
[Sep09'13] As Paul Craig Roberts points out in
Why
are Obama and Kerry so desperate to stat a new war?, Assad has better
support at home than Obama does. We must ask, why there is such a push
from someone who opposed the Iraq war, which is now generally agreed to
have been an disaster for both Iraq and the US, and why is the media
so at odds with public opinion? The latest ridiculous thing I read
was that 'left' Hollywood-ers were worried about being seen as racist
if they opposed Obama's war plans, and wouldn't get work if they did.
Well, maybe they wouldn't get work. But the racist thing is a crock.
I am still hopefully thinking the same way as "Anonymous", who commented
today at the vineyard of the saker: "Not too many thought WWI would
turn into what it did. And it's not like the situation isn't Byzantine.
I doubt it would go to WWIII, but it is an existential fight for many of
the players, and there isn't much time to react to missiles. My bet is
the US backs down. Not enough support, and the opponents are able to
fight back."
[Update!!] The Kerry 'give up your chemical weapons'
offer/gaffe has now been accepted by Syria and Russia! This increases
the difficulty of attacking, just as AIPAC was set to go into high gear.
But it probably also raises efforts to set off another false flags.
Two possibilities are: (1) the sinking of a US destroyer attributed to
Syria, Iran, or Hezbollah and, (2) a chemical weapons attack on Israel
(e.g., by the US/UK/Saudi supported rebels).
[Sep10'13] As the 'unbelievably small' minded Kerry idiotically
back-pedaled ('it was just rhetorical about him giving up the
chemical weapons') and while WWIII-er's Susan Rice and Samantha Power
tried to look fiercely Wolfowitz-ian, Obama may have overruled them.
There remains some danger this week of (another!) false flag chemical
weapons attack, this time on Israel by US/Saudi/Turkey/Israel supported
rebels. A report of 'Jews gassed by Hitler Assad' coming on or around
the anniversary of 9/11 could immediately restart the faltering
US/Israeli Syrian war effort. Here is a report on RT from Israel
explicitly
discussing this option (!). I rate this as unlikely.
It's worth keeping in mind that a large number of wars in human
history have been started with a false flag; it's the
classic way to galvanize the population
to do something they are fundamentally against. However, the internet
has made it possible to defuse false flags more quickly. For example,
the wide distribution of chemical weapons attack videos allowed Syrian
parents to recognize their kidnapped children amongst the chemical
weapons victims, and then feed back this information to the web. There
may even be an investigation of how those people -- probably
hostages
-- were poisoned. It also allows striking back against the mainstream
media (BBCFOXCNNBC "news") by publicizing the effects of the chemical
weapons use by the 'good guys'. For example, here is what
white
phosphorus did to a child in Gaza a few years ago. That is the
kind of picture the mainstream media censors as being too 'sensitive'
to publicize, *right* at the moment they (and Kerry and Rice and
Powers and Boxer and Angry Grampa) are screaming for a hundred
times as many bloody stumps and a hundred times more burnt flesh.
No more. Well, at least this time, hopefully!! *Not at all* what I
was expecting to happen just two days ago! If this plays out without
an attack as I am fervently hoping, it's important to remember the
main things that stopped it: the UK parliament, US and world opinion
against the war, and finally and just as critical, the ability of the
Syria (and Iran and Hezbollah) to strike back partly as a result of
Russian and China not backing off, but instead placing intelligence
gathering ships right next to Syria. Mutual deterrence through
credible
defense ("every state has the right to independence") is good,
not bad. That's what makes this situation different from Serbia, Iraq,
and Syria, where the US first requested disarmament, then blitzkrieged
afterward, killing (hanging and sodomizing) the leaders in the second
two cases, in a perfect recapitulation of heads on a pike on the London
bridge from days of yore. Chimpanzees with grenades.
[Sep14'13] Good so far! There was a suggestion two days ago that the
two west-to-east missiles launched across the Mediterranean toward
Damascus on 3 Sept came from a NATO base in Spain -- not Israel,
who initially denied any knowledge -- and were shot down by the
Russians. Probably disinfo. Good article from Pepe Escobar
here:
while the doddering US/UK/Saudi/Israel lunatics are hiring
liver-eating mercenary jihadis (who are now threatening to attack
the US for not bombing Syria!) and threatening remote control
demolition of power plants and hospital buildings halfway around
the world with Tomahawks on the basis of Saudi false flags, China
adopts a more productive tack. Meanwhile, the Russians, motivated by
reckless, 'own goal' US/UK/Saudi/Israel actions, are now moving major
hardware into the eastern Mediterranean in order to actually
deliver
the goods (modern defensive weapons for Syria).
[Sep16'13] With the attack on Syria derailed (for a while at least),
and Summers withdrawn, it's a good day! (even the world's markets
agree!)
[Sep22'13] The Syrian war drums are still beating in the background.
Russia has continued to increase its military presence in the Eastern
Mediterranean (now up to around 11 warships). Looking at the ebb
and flow of past propganda campaigns, it would seem to be difficult
to start a war immediately. Another poison gas false flag is not
immediately practical and the priest and children (!) beheadings by
our 'freedom fighter' death squads have slightly fogged the official
story, which now has had to regress in the US to saying that our
'moderate opposition' is being killed by the 'real bad guys'. Would
those be the bad guys be financed by Saudi, France, Qatar, Turkey,
Jordan, the UK then? No: the answer is they are funded by
'twitter
donations'! What an amazing crock! Looking back, even
after the mother of all, it still took months of wall-to-wall
prepared-from-the-beginning propaganda to start the war on Afghanistan
in 2001. So I remain hopeful that the US/UK/French publics are somewhat
immune from false flags and pretty strongly antiwar for now. A really
big one would be needed, and that could go wrong.
[Oct02'13] "Iran is now building ICBMs that the US says could reach this
city [New York] in three or four years," -- Benjamin Netanyahu. Those are
some mighty slow @ss ICBM's! :-} Maybe it's time to start dismantling
the other big chemical and biological weapons cache in the mideast, not to
mention the huge stockpile of actually existing nuclear weapons...
[Oct06'13] A
pseudonymous
article a few days ago suggested potential GPS jamming was in large
part responsible for the deferred US attack on Syria. Probably just part
of the picture, but combined with Russian antiship missiles keeping US
ships at a distance, this seems like a more believable reason for the
back down than that "the American people were agin' it". If the US had
blown up stuff on the teevee, the US peeple would have gone along with
it just fine. There were an order of magnitude more Americans watching
twerking than watching Syria. And now they're drooling watching the
congress worms' standing applause for the manly SWAT team that executed
an unarmed woman after they supposedly pulled her baby out of her car
(out of the baby seat? -- baby now 'safe in protective custody').
It's all about the children.
[Oct07'13] Good work by Craig Murray who has caught the BBC faking
the sound track of a 'Syrian chemical weapons' interview
here.
The beeb will probably scrub the embarrassing fakes soon, but they have
already been saved.
[Oct13'13] I recently scanned the 2000 page
draft IPCC report (pdf one click from
here).
Well, I *downloaded* the whole thing, but actually only scanned the
50 page summary :-} . Climate modelers tend to be cornucopians with
respect to energy. Previously, they directly based future expected
carbon inputs on EIA future production and reserves estimates, despite
the fact that the EIA's future production estimates (esp for oil) have
had to be revised downward every year for the past 15 years. This year,
the IPCC finally put in a "representative concentration pathway" (RCP)
with a forcing number that is closer to reality. Their forcing numbers
for the four different main scenarios are 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 W m^-2
(Figure TS.19, page TS-115). The real amount of positive net energy
fossil fuel left by reasonable (non-EIA) estimates corresponds to a
forcing of 2.5 to 3.5 (i.e., we will use about 1-1.5x as much additional
carbon as we have already used since the nineteenth century). Net energy
will never be publicly mentioned as the crisis unfolds. But finance
is pretty good at estimating it. Energy exploration and extraction
is currently falling off as energy prices get close to the equilibrium
point where newly extracted energy is too expensive for people and the
economy to afford, but too cheap for energy companies to get bank credit
and make a short-tern profit extracting it. This 'demand destruction'
by price has resulted in an historic flattening of driving miles in
US/EU/UK since 2008. This will soon be coming to China and India (they
can withstand a higher price because they waste less, but they too have
their price/net-energy limits, and are rapidly increasing their rate of
waste). The end result will be that most of the EIA 'reserves' will get
left in the ground because they are too close to zero net energy -- and
hence aren't really reserves after all. The IPCC calls the lowest-carbon
RCP 2.6 pathway the "strong mitigation scenario". I find this ironic,
since I don't think there will be even the slightest trace of voluntary
mitigation. Instead, there will be a mad dash to extract every last drop
of net energy positive fossil fuel. But it is true that the effects of
energy starvation on industrial civilization by 2030 will be characterized
as 'strong mitigation'. And it will unfortunately all be accompanied by
progressive climate heating, ice-free Arctic summers, smaller glaciers,
acidic oceans, freaky weather, not too mention freshwater, soil, mineral,
fish, and food shortages. But to end on the bright side, from the latest
models, it looks like we might keep the warming we are baking into the
next millenium to about 2 deg C!
[Oct15'13] A good summary of London's
view of cyclists can be found in the
court
decision that "nobody is to blame" in the case of a woman cyclist
who died when a lorry/truck turned left over her, crushing her.
The lorry/truck driver had failed to signal (against the highway code)
and was talking on a mobile/cellphone (also against the highway code).
Until the law is changed in favor of cyclists (and pedestrians), the
carnage will go on. For me, I stay the hell away from lorries/trucks,
jumping up onto the pavement/sidewalk (which is illegal for a bike here)
if necessary to avoid ever getting close to them. It's not uncommon
to see the tyres/tires of a lorry/truck ride up over the curb around a
corner (not illegal) so I get close to the buildings. The lorry/truck
drivers would look more carefully before turning if the law was made
even moderately more rational. For American readers, they will be
surprised to find out that the British are actually *more* car-crazy
than the Americans, despite the fact that some of their cities are
still walkable/bike-able and gas/petrol is heavily taxed. I chalk it up
precisely to the fact that gas/petrol is more expensive, so they feel
more god-like wasting it, pointlessly overaccelerating up and down the
street to the next red light. It all has a bit of a 1950's or 1960's
feel to an American. A lot of other Europeans were like this. In the
Netherlands, they made a conscious decision to change all this in the
1980's, and fixed their bike lanes and accident liability laws (it's
*always* the motorist's fault). They should do the same here! (more
than 30 damn years later!).
[Nov14'13] Five cyclists were slaughtered on London roads in the last 9
days (a lot more than Londoners killed by islamic terrorists). The mayor
says the problem is that cyclists are jumping red lights. The irony is
that those light-jumping guys (and they usually *are* guys) are *exactly*
the ones who *don't* get killed! Less than 2% of cyclist deaths are
due to jumping lights, whereas about 2/3 of cyclist deaths are due to
mistakes by cars and trucks/lorries crushing cyclists dutifully off to
the side, who have *not* jumped the light. The only way forward is to
make it the motor vehicle's fault -- always. That makes cars slow down.
And some space needs to be taken away from motor vehicles. The overall
through speed of the traffic won't change, but there will be less cyclist
and less pedestrian deaths (there were about 70 pedestrians killed in
London last year, which is always 4-5x the number of cyclist deaths),
and it would save fossil fuel. It is utterly pointless to waste fuel
massively accelerating a multi-ton metal vehicle with a 100,000 watt
engine just to pull up more rapidly to a red light. The Netherlands made
these changes a full 30 years ago. Not rocket science, really. However,
I think the British are so car-insane (read the red-faced anti-bike
comments at the Guardian), that they won't allow this to happen until
peak oil takes them out. The car crazies actually think that saving 20
seconds in a car journey is worth killing 30 humans per year. They think
that if a bicycle is going faster than a car stopped in traffic that the
cyclist deserves to be killed. Logic will not change their minds.
[Nov29'13] In the US, data release for last quarter show that banks
earned $118 billion in interest while paying out only $13 billion
to depositors. The interest income is mainly from the Fed, which is
paying banks interest on the excess reserves banks have deposited back
at the Fed, incredibly, mostly money originally created out of the
void by the Fed itself. The Fed (bankers) are making bankrupt bankers
(including some of themselves!) rich by keeping bank's overall income
the same as it was before the crash, while the banks have constricted
depositors' earnings by 90%. Basically, the Fed is giving banks almost
half a trillion dollars a year as the banks stiff savers. How much more
reverse-Robin-Hood can you get?!
[Dec02'13] Peak crude oil -- the original peak oil -- began around 2005.
World crude oil production has remained approximately flat since then.
If you toss less energy-dense "lease condensates" (pentane) in, production
has gone up slightly, but way below the average yearly rate of increase
from the end of the 70's Arab oil embargo until 2005. The oil fracking
propaganda is interesting. People I talk to in UK/EU (incl. academics)
casually assume that the US has become 'energy independent'. This is
a stunning propaganda coup considering that the US consumes about 19
million barrels a day and imports almost 10 million barrels of that.
There was a small uptick in domestic production but not anything even
remotely approaching self-sufficiency. Of course, the US could cut its
consumption in half and become self-sufficient, but I don't think that is
what these people had in mind; many think the US is self-sufficient now!
The whole fracking industry is on a tightrope, highly vulnerable to
small drops in the price of oil; $80/barrel would wipe many of them
out, and this may soon be on the way. Rig count is already declining
and the 'subprime' oil field leases bundled by Barclays with ones like
the Bakken are turning out to be, well, subprime, and oil companies
are selling them off. Since 2005, greater and greater amounts of
"natural gas plant liquids" (butane, propane), and "other liquids"
(grab bag of ethanol, biodiesel, tar sand oil) have been added to "all
liquids", which has continued to go up slightly (as Stuart Staniford
is forever pointing out). Most of these liquids have considerably less
energy density than crude oil (ethanol, butane), but are still measured
using uncorrected raw volume. Some of them yield essentially zero net
energy; US ethanol production merely converts coal and methane energy
to ethanol with essentially no gain in energy and so is not an energy
source at all (it thus gets double-counted). So what has happened?
Essentially, just what I expected. People in the US/UK/EU finally
began driving a little less. Contra Cheney, the American lifestyle
*was* negotiable! This is why the US domestic oil production increase
looked proportionally a little bigger. And as the world has been
forced to go after the dregs of liquid fuel (all the dregs have lower
EROEI than classic crude: deepwater oil, tight fracked oil, propane,
ethanol, tar sand oil, arctic oil), there has been a turn toward coal and
methane, which have not yet peaked. Most striking of course is China,
which in the last 10 years has rapidly ramped up to consuming as much
coal as the whole rest of the world combined, while making electronic
toys for the rest of the world. And they have the air to prove it.
'Renewables' have continued to increase. But wind and solar are *not*
drop-in replacements for coal and gas. In fact, they currently rely
heavily on coal, nuclear, and gas. Europe (well, Germany) where solar
and wind are farthest along, is experiencing problems with grid-tied
renewables. The peaker plants required to keep the power on when the
wind goes off are having trouble because solar and wind are regularly
taking some of their best paying hours, making them uneconomic, despite
their critical function to renewable electric energy. See Euan Mearns
here
for an accurate description of the problem together with remarkably and
disappointingly/depressingly short-sighted anti-green climate-denialist
rage. We need to quickly think outside of the box to redesign the grid
and redesign transportation and redesign incentives for peaker plants
and build more pumped storage, and use local batteries (e.g., electric
car) for distributed storage, etc, etc before the excess energy to make
these huge changes runs out. *Of course* they will be more expensive
than just reflexively grabbing for the fossil fuel dregs. I am not
very optimistic that creative changes can be made quickly enough.
Rather, at least in the UK -- in contrast to Germany -- there will be
a big turn toward nuclear to keep business as usual in operation as
long as practical. This won't help wind (nuclear plants make very poor
peaker plants -- they prefer to stay on all the time at the same level).
This will eventually leave the grandkids living in a really messed up
world -- like Detroit, but with a bunch of leaking, derelict nukes.
Crap towns indeed! Sometimes anti-boomer rhetoric rings true. I prefer
David MacKay (slagged off in Euan's comments). At least David is trying
to do something good instead of merely plotting his tropical exit strategy
(also see comments). What a let down, Euan.
[Dec19'13] Today a old dude in a van tried to brush back my wife as
she walked across a London street coming within inches of hitting her.
He accelerated and then turned aggressively toward her -- in his rush to
reach the back of a traffic jam about 50 meters further down the street.
The rage of people in their multi-ton 100,000-watt steel-plated boxes
is palpable, idiotic, and deadly. I experience it twice a day on my
bicycle, to and from work. About 100 pedestrians and 20 cyclists are
killed a year by these idiots so I do my best to stay our of their way
and bite my tongue when they car-valierly threaten me. But their reign
is coming to an end. North sea oil is rapidly depleting, and fracking
has suddenly become all the rage here, too. The lastest plan is to put
60 fracking rigs into the middle of the South Downs National Park near
where rich people live. Car drivers are of course against this (because
they like to drive to it for an weekend outing and don't want their water
supply messed up), though of course they don't connect it with their own
car use. At present decline rates, North Sea production will be roughly
zero in 5 years, so the UK will become like the Greece, having to import
all of its oil. If the price of oil slips even a little below $90 (oh,
say, because the countries can't afford it because the oil import bill
is going up?), the fracking guys will abandon the mess they have made
(if they even get to drilling) in a flash. Oil price may go down, but it
will be less affordable. Unfortunately, that will make the drivers even
more aggressive toward pedestrians and cyclists. If you walk or cycle,
keep this in mind. Every day I manage to get home or to school without
getting killed, I get a bit of a rush (it's probably keeping my limbic
system properly calibrated :-} ).
[Dec23'13] As the UN silently withdraws its faked chemical weapons
claim ('nobody' did it), it's pretty clear now to most people that
the foreign jihad in Syria is starting to collapse, and that there
never was an indigenous Syrian revolution. There was no 'civil war';
it's just a bunch of Saudi and Turkey funded jihadis and prisoners,
most from outside of Syria, terrorizing Syrians. The NYT megaphonies
won't recant, tho. If they were real journalists, they would publish a
retraction. If all the 'leftists' who supported it were real leftists,
they would say they were wrong (they won't). They're too busy ignoring
an equally disastrous aftermath of what they supported in Libya.
[Dec27'13] What happened to Tony Cartalucci? Is this actually the
same guy writing now as 6 months ago?! Some months back, he said he
was leaving his blog and some other people would take it over, which
they appeared to do, but then he started signing articles there again
without an explanation about how he somehow changed sides overnight.
Truly bizarre. Makes me think of Lizzie Phelan.
[Jan21'14] In the latest 'news', the laptop
bombers in the 'left' Guardian are on the war path again,
catapulting
the Syrian propaganda (they could hire 'Tony Cartalucci', whoever
he/they is, for Thailand reporting!). And Mr. Death Squad just went
all ballistic on ... his
latest set of death squads. Same stupid human tricks. For something
more sedate and historical, consider Alan Turing. I had read Turing's
classic paper on reaction diffusion equations and development in a
course given by Jack Cowan in 1978. Back then, I didn't know anything
else about Turing other than 'Turing machines'. Then a decade later,
I found out about how he had been put on estrogen as a 'treatment' for
being homosexual, started developing breasts, and then committed suicide.
I didn't read about it in detail and assumed it was from getting depressed
about the side effects. 6 months ago, there was a BBC article suggesting
it wasn't suicide, but an accident, and that Turing was cheerful, not
suicidal in his last days before death from cyanide. Finally last month,
on the occasion of his royal pardon, it was speculated that given Turing's
knowledge, his possible revenge motive given the way he was treated after
his amazing war service, and his blackmail-ability because of being gay,
that Turing might have been covertly assassinated as a security risk.
Though the idea is plausible, there is currently no evidence for it.
It would have been one of the most stunning British own-goals imaginable,
snuffing out one of their best minds in the name of 'homeland security'.
The way in which British 'homeland security' was subsequently invoked
to keep computer science research secret resulted in the permanent loss
of their commanding world lead in computer science.
[Feb25,'14]
[Feb25'14] The US says 'forget' [f*ck] the EU because the US paid $5 billion
for their moderate 'color revolutionaries' in western Ukraine under
cover of the Olympics and the EU just talked. But now it looks like
the Nazi (literally) Right Sector has taken over in western Ukraine
(all the wealth and industry is in the east) and booted the US-promoted
moderates out. Seems like a dangerous and somewhat unexpected outcome,
dangerously close to Russia. It would be like Russia funding the
breakup of Mexico, then its proxies losing control to indigenous,
well-armed neo-nazi ultra-nationalists intent on taking back California.
The future of Ukraine looks bleak, with old 20th century hatreds rekindled
and blazing. Incidentally, they import 100% of their oil. Stupid human
tricks indeed.
[Feb28'14] There are reports that a Turkish plane turned around from
a planned landing in Simferopol airport in Crimea, and rumors that it
contained weapons for Crimean Tartars. This may explain why military got
to the airport first, to protect key Crimean facilities. Given the thick
disinfo flying around in situations like this, however, it's important
to maintain a skeptical stance.
[Mar01'14] Mark Ames (now at pando.com, funded by silicon valley venture
capitalists; pando got Ames when they recently bought NSFWCORP)
claims
that eight-billionaire Pierre Omidyar (the guy who now more or less owns
the Snowden documents) together with USAID/CIA were the main funders
behind the Ukrainian coup. Greenwald, Scahill, and Taibbi (formerly
with Ames at eXile) now all work for the new online new service funded
by Omidyar. Greenwald and his defenders have risen up to say it's
just a flesh wound, that Omidyar's views (meaning pocketbook?!) don't
matter, and that this is all a disinfo plot to undermine Greenwald
(and Snowden), all while artfully managing to say exactly nothing
about the crisis itself. This Ames article is on target (tho
this
article of his a few days before, was not very
good). It is looking now like there may have been
some
kind of attack that the Russian military responded to in Crimea
(as opposed to getting there first, as suggested above). Vineyardsaker
points out that such an attack (if it occurred) would hardly have been in
the interests of the moderate side of the Ukrainian nationalists (these
would be the ones funded by Omidyar) who want to repeal the uselessly
provocative law agsinst the Russian language passed by armed Right
Sector goons in the new parliament, and want to negotiate with Russia
(loans, gas, etc). So perhaps it came from other disposable death squad
groups indirectly funded via Turkey, USAID, and/or the CIA, similar
to the jihadis in Syria. Trying to take over mostly Russian Crimea
seems completely impractical, so I suppose the goal is just generalized
destabilization of the social fabric in the spirit of 'never let a good
crisis go to waste'. My gorge rises with misanthropy.
[Mar02'14] The Russians lost more than 25 million people in WWII
fighting the fascists, one of the greatest disasters in all of human
history (rivaled only by the even larger post-Columbus holocaust in
America). It is very unlikely they will permit Nazi remnants (one
here
holding a "discussion" with the Ukrainian Attorney General in
Kiev) to govern the whole country. And it will be difficult
for the Orange-men to attack Russia when their
navy and
army
are joining the other side. The rhetoric from the US and UK mainstream
media sewer at this particular mmoment in history seems more hallucinatory
than usual. One can only hope that some rendering defects in the Matrix
are beginning to briefly flash into view. Maybe I'm missing the bigger
picture and the mighty Wurlitzer is still intact. Time will tell.
[Mar03'14] One issue pushing Russia's hand is that disaffected actors in a
disintegrating western Ukraine could sabotage gas pipelines to the EU This
would not be in either Russia's or the EU's interests. For concreteness,
a truck from Kiev carrying explosives equivalent to 400 kilos of TNT
was
stopped in Crimea today. It was amazing to watch a few tidbits of
the mainstream sewer today 'explaining' the continuing circus/disaster.
Two billionaire oligarchs were 'democratically' appointed as governors
in eastern Ukraine in order to save Ukraine's sovereignty and show that
there is no anti-semitism. Upon arriving in Donetsk, a screaming crowd
(democratically) forced one appointee to leave. There was a fake story of
a supposed surrender ultimatum from Russia blared by Reuters and widely
rebroadcast (from CNN to zerohedge). In the meantime, two-thirds of a
million people (a lot) have recently fled Ukraine to Russia. These must
be people afraid of 'democracy' (or maybe the impending arrival of John
Kerry's hairdo in Kiev). CNN weighed in to wonder whether the tension
in Crimea might be a danger to the Ukrainian Human Barbie. And Craig
Murray, wasup?! I no longer worry about energy issues -- I think humans
have access to waaaay too much electricity and gasoline...
[Mar04'14] The prime mover in the western Ukraine takeover may have
been the Gladio-like snipers of unknown origin that shot at both the
protestors *and* the police on the 20th Feb (this is what caused the
majority of deaths). This masterful application of small amounts of
well-timed force created a much larger outcome. Whether these 'gains'
can be consolidated, is, however, still quite unclear. Iraq and Libya
were turned into hellholes (today the Libyan parliament moved into a
hotel after 2 MP's were shot). Syria was almost destroyed, but has
successfully fought back. It now seems likely that prompt action from
Russia blocked the eastern half of the putsch. In the west, Chevron lost
no time, signing a fracking deal already *yesterday* with 'free' Ukraine
'government' (the ground for the deal had been set up a few months back).
Fracking seems like the perfect thing to do underneath 'the breadbasket
of Europe', doesn't it? I don't listen to US teevee but the little
snippets I see on the web are getting more bizarre than they used to be.
But then so was Abby Martin's clueless video on RT today! Not surprising
was seeing Glenn Greenback rising from First Look Productions to bravely
support Abby's lack of clue, comparing Russia's bloodless blocking action
in eastern Ukraine to the second shock and awe US invasion of Iraq.
Ya think, Glenn? Omidyar funding the orange-ies still irrelevant?
We *are* in the Matrix.
[Mar05'14] Intercepted (and now verified by him) quote from the Estonian
foreign minister Urmas Paet: "It's really disturbing to know that the new
coalition don't want to investigate what exactly happened. So there is
now stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not
Yanukovich but it was somebody from the new coalition". When Catherine
Ashton ignored his comments, he changed the topic. Gladio lives.
This real story has been buried by the Liz Wahl and Abby Martin carnival.
Knowing about the progress of their careers is less important than what
they were (supposed to be) reporting on.
[Mar12'14] The US says "Russia will pay" if the Crimeans vote to join
Russia. According to Obama, this is because referendums on secession are
illegal unelss they are endorsed by the democratically elected government
of the country they are trying to break away from. It's hardly clear
that the US-financed ($5 billion investment according to Victoria "I think
Yats is the guy" Nuland) unelected/installed/puppet/oligarch/club-wielding
'government' in western Ukraine is 'democratically elected'.
[Mar14'14] The US supported Banderite regime in western Ukraine, an
odd-couple coalition of neo-nazis and jewish billionaire oligarchs,
has no real navy or air force, but it probably does have access to
a lot of operational artillery pieces, which could be used to wreak
havoc in Crimea. If the Banderites start lobbing shells into Crimea
and killing (more) people, the Russians will respond (but remember
that the range of artillery is only 10+ miles). Given the
breakdown
of civil society and increasingly unstable mob rule unleashed in western
Ukraine, anything is possible. Merkel's support of the Nuland-the-EU
US-ians was a weak move, a serious failure! Left opponent Gregor Gysi's
comments were good. I can't imagine that Americans are paying much
attention to Kerry's botox blatherings.
[Mar15'14] The unearthly (literally) linear increase in China-everything
(coal, steel, concrete, water, debt, exports) seems to suddenly be
flat-lining -- rather like the sudden flat-lining in 2008 of the linear
increase in car miles driven in the US. The China effect is likely
to propagate through the world economic system in unpredictable ways.
It was clear a few years back (see above) that this linear increase in
China-everything couldn't go on 'indefinitely' (which translated into
economics-speak means for more than a decade), since as I pointed out
endlessly above, another decade of that increase would have had China
consuming all world exported resources. Going back to the US-ians
suddenly flatlining their driving, though people are not real happy,
nothing major blew up so far, so perhaps the same will happen with the
whole world. The ability of the world economic system to absorb such
sudden shocks amazes me. Here's hoping it continues to do so!
[Mar16'14]
This
broadly written Mar 6 executive order by Barak Obama threatens to
confiscate property and money of anyone that is "directly or indirectly
complicit in" undermining democratic processes in Ukraine (Nuland's
guys with baseball bats in Parliament don't count?), or "threatening the
territorial integrity of Ukraine" (does my irony count?). The executive
order ends by saying that it doesn't apply to the US government.
I suppose that was to absolve them for payments to the snipers and the
guys with the baseball bats. This order might be a strong motivation for
Russia to draw down deposits in western institutions (e.g., treasuries)
as quickly as possible. Obama's poll number are down to 41%, which is
only 5% above George Bush's lowest poll numbers in his last year in office
(~36%). This shows that some Obama-ites are finally red-pilling their way
past the pointless Republican/Democrat show, and are realizing that Obama
finally *did* turn out to be not that much different than Bush.
[Mar16'14] Clear presentations from Ben Dyson on the
basics
of money. It's about what I finally slowly learned 10 years ago.
I got to it through finally understanding how the 'money multiplier'
actually creates most of the money in the economy. That was
hard enough for an average person (me) to understand. But the
critical second step was to realize that in practice, the creation
of money when a new loan is made actually happens *before* the
money-to-be-multiplied is deposited in the bank, either by customers,
or, more importantly, by the central bank (as explained by the
Bank
of England itself!). That is, it is *regular banks* that do most
of the 'printing of money'. *Then* they get a loan from the central
bank (money printed by the central bank) to increase their 'reserves',
*after* creating money to loan out. Since private commercial banks
proactively create money, they (as opposed to the Fed) can therefore
strongly influence what that money is used for. This is often *not*
in the interests of non-bankers. Almost half of the money banks have
created in recent years has been used to inflate house prices much faster
than salaries. Inflating house prices is not good for people, people!
Inflating house prices won't help with peak energy! Inflating house
prices basically help commercial banks make more money, period!
[Mar16'14] After all the preposterous bloviating in the US/UK/EU
press (as well as bilge in 'alternative' zerohedge!), the Crimean
vote is in, with over 95% support (85% turnout, better than any
US presidential election for the entire last century) for joining
Russia, and US/Kerry have backed down for now [update Mar19: even the
Tartars voted to join Russia!]. The Financial Times just ran the
most unbelievably ridiculous headline about the vote: "Crimea poll
leaves Moscow isolated". You have to give the English credit for the
brazenness of their tabloid skills (but why they didn't get Madonna to
weigh in?). Now it merely remains for the western Ukrainians to sit back
and enjoy the benefits of western freedom (e.g., being able to
audition
for X-factor), all while slumbering in the gentle embrace of the
IMF, a few caring oligarchs (these would be good oligarchs, like US-ian
oligarchs), and some Bandera-ites. And don't forget western Ukrainians
now have the right to gay paralympic pride parades with music by Pussy
Riot (subject to the approval of the skin heads with the baseball bats).
The John McCain thing must be running in circles. At this moment,
the heads of the US/UK/EU look pretty stoopid as they explain to their
subjects how the anti-democratic Crimeans must be punished for, uh,
all voting in an orderly ways.
[Mar18'14] I agree with Pepe Escobar: Obama *is* better than Bush --
because he lost two wars before they even started, as opposed to Bush
who lost two wars *after* starting them :-} Now, I wonder how the EU
will react if the Right Sector Yarosh carries through on his threat to
"deprive our enemy of its source of income" by bombing the pipelines
carrying Russian gas to EU. Own goal comes to mind.
[Mar19'14] Gladio/Maidan-like snipers may have killed one member of the
military of both sides in eastern Ukraine. But this time, one of the
snipers was caught. A different (good!) smell in the wind today.
[Mar21'14] A full 60% of the Ukrainian military has accepted Russian
passports (Dmitri Orlov). This suggests the Ukrainian military is
unlikely to start a war with Russia, and that the military does not
support the US-supported nazi thugs who commandeered public buildings
and kidnapped people using baseball bats. The breathtaking level of
incompetence and hallucination in Washington and the EU seems worse
than before (e.g., Power vs. Churkin at the UN, Merkel again today).
They (including hyper-politically-correct Germany with holocaust denial
laws!) seem to be bent on keeping the neo-nazi thugs in power as long as
possible in western Ukraine, which looks like a seriously short-sighted,
not to mention seriously losing strategy -- from a completely impartial
point of view, regardless of which side you think is 'right'!
[Mar22'14] Russia's debt relative to the size of its economy is only
about *1/10* that of the US. So naturally, western credit agencies have
lowered Russia's rating again. This will make it harder for Russia to
get credit from western banks. That's a brilliant plan -- in fact, one
that Putin has been trying to implement himself for years. And don't
forget that the US also plans to beat the Russians by out-oiling and
out-gassing them. After all, the Russians are behind and have hardly
bothered fracking yet because they are not depleted enough. There is
the small fly in the ointment of stopping US frackers from going bankrupt
by, I don't know, raising oil prices? (for the gipper). Last time that
happened, people started buying less oil and gas, and prices dropped.
But wouldn't increasing the oil supply drop prices even more? Whatever.
The power of the dollar stems in part from the fact that oil is priced
in dollars. When the US was exporting oil, that made more sense.
Now the US imports almost 1/2 of the oil it uses. However, I can't
imagine it would take very long for the US to turn into a powerhouse
exporter again, which would be good, given that Russia and China are
negotiating new oil and gas deals in rubles and yuan (worth $1 trillion
dollars equivalent). And probably the Russians will still continue
to let the US transport military supplies to US troops via Russia for
the endless US war against East Asia wedding parties in Afghanistan.
Blue-pill me harder (I am having a snark fit).
[Mar23'14] Abby Martin publicly
wising
up about the Brzezinski/Soros/neocon-fomented looting of Ukraine
(before completely losing her street cred!).
[Mar25'14] Manilio Dinucci wrote an interesting big-picture
piece about why the
apparent US failure in Ukraine may actually be a success with respect to
'progress' in alienating the EU from Russia and in advancing anti-missile
defenses and attack missiles even closer to the Russian border. If this
is the real strategic reason, then it suggests that the military crazies
really are increasing their planning for a nuclear war against Russia
(again). It's all about scaring the stupid people: fear of nuclear
annihilation overseas, fear of the totalitarian police state at
home, to distract people from the things that the military knows the
people should *really* be fearful of: the inexorable decline of net
energy, and eventually food and water. Meanwhile, another strategic
(Russian?) leak of a phone call, this time between Nestor Shufrych
(probable future Ukrainian president) and Yulia Tymoshenko (oligarch,
former prime minister): Shufrych: "What should we do now with the
8 million Russians that stayed in Ukraine. They are outcasts"...
Tymoshenko: "They must be killed with nuclear weapons." Beavis and
Butthead 'democracy' -- that was kewl. But it's all distraction/disinfo.
In another month, the most egregious fascists will have been
purged
by the oligarchs in preparation for the main work of stripping
the remaining wealth from the rump country. Stupid human
ethnic/religious tricks take their eyes off the ball
every
time! Before long, the army will be back to its main function
of protecting the blood-sucking operations of the oligarchs --
all blood-sucking done in plain sight, with no resistance from
the angry and dispirited and increasingly anemeic body politic.
Only years later will the population vaguely come to a realization
of how they were played. Next door to Ukraine lie many
'fertile'
areas for ethnic conflict (Moldova, Transnistria, Gagauzia, Belarus).
I am having a worse than usual misanthropic fit today, but it will
pass.
[Mar27'14] Looking back objectively at the very clear results of the
recent US/UK policy in Iraq (over 1 million people killed), Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine, it is now apparent that the overriding
goal seems to have been simply to destroy these countries. Extracting oil
concessions, or running a profitable CIA opium trade, or getting lithium
(Afghanistan) were probably distant second tier goals. Despite all my
writing about oil, I now think that *even in Iraq*, the main goal was
simply to wreck the country, not to try to get its oil. This suggests
that largest long term US/UK goal is to wreck Russia (and China).
A sad commentary on supposedly civilized humans. Given the power of
language, humans have truly become the worst animal. But a very
funny
animal :-}
[Mar28'14] b at Moon of Alabama
does a good job of reporting on how the
pusillanimous
main-sewer media (Washington Post, Guardian) have downplayed
the revelations of Turkish military false-flag plans with
respect to Syria. The Guardian is a good example. Instead of
pointing out that this was high-level planning of a classic
Reichstag-file-like-psyop, recorded straight from the
horses mouths, early
in 2014, the Guardian describes it as "discussing possible military
action in Syria" (describing planning to get Syrian stringers to
attack an Ottoman tomb site, the tomb of Suleyman Shah, just across
the border in Syria). But from a broader perspective, there is the
question whether this leak might have originated from the CIA.
Here
is an informative post from William Enghdahl back in Feb with some
background on the strange bedfellows created as Turkey might be shifting
*away* from the west, and the west trying to undermine the shift.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, the looting has begun. As Paul Craig Roberts
says, "the gullible dupes who participated in the orchestrated Maidan
protests will rue it for the rest of their lives." In a similar 'strange
bedfellows' vein, it is an interesting fact that much of the IMF loan to
Ukraine will immediately go to paying Russian banks, which will help keep
them solvent, and help stabilize western banks related to them.
[Apr01,'14]
The cost of extracting oil is rising at 10% per year but
the cost of oil is flat. That could probably go on for at least
another year or two :-} By that time, the US will be an exporter,
right? (not!). [Update: Jun2018: in fact, it *did go on for 4
years! But the US is still a net importer]. The worldwide level of
human self-deception about energy so close to the precipice continues
to stun me. Jeremy Rifkin (old fart!) thinks 3D printers will solve
this problem. Computer controlled stuff like that works best -- but
more importantly, can only itself be manufactured -- when the power
is on. A big pigeon in the ointment is that the increased automation
of manufacturing has been associated with an *increase* in power use.
Digital machine tools can go faster than humans on manual machine tools,
but they use more power *per unit manufactured item* (e.g.,
5x
as much power). I'm sure there will be no problem getting all
this extra power for the neighborhood chip fab and car manufacturing
plant off of neighborhood rooftop solar panels, and water for that
won't be a problem either. And I can't imagine there will be any
problem with the coal electric power staying on after we manufacture
and plug in a bunch of 50,000 watt electric cars into the grid
to replace our 90,000 watt oil-powered cars (requiring nearly a
doubling of the size of the grid, a lot more copper, more coal, etc).
Time to eat your RFID-enabled soma pill (just rewatched
Aldous Huxley from 1958
talking about his 1931 book with Mike Wallace). E.M. Forster's
"The Machine
Stops" was written in 1909. Not rocket science, just common sense.
On the positive side, the eventual demise of computer-controlled
manufacturing will probably make it difficult to keep a full-on Skynet
(e.g., not just soft sell taser drones) going for a long time. I think
people know something is wrong, but most won't say it out loud.
[Apr12'14] Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary: "Russia is the
only country helping Ukraine’s economy with energy supplies that are
not paid for" [the $3 billion discount on gas Russia gave Ukraine in
Dec 2013], Dmitry Peskov told reporters today in Moscow, commenting
on President Vladimir Putin’s letter yesterday to 18 European heads
of state. "The letter is a call to immediately review this situation,
which is absurd on the one hand and critical on the other". So, as
a result of a US-engineered coup in Kiev, Europe will have to take
over paying Ukraine's gas bill so the Kiev neonazis won't go bankrupt,
oligarchs can keep on oligarching, US fracking companies can move in,
and so the EU they won't get their own gas imports slowed (the EU uses
imported gas for heating, and for peaker power plants that help make
renewable energy useable for the grid). The delicate irony of it all.
If I was an EU-ian, I wouldn't be too happy with the US-ians.
[Apr23'14] From http://uauk.wordpress.com/, a blog by a British lecturer
(since 2012) in western Ukraine, who "encouraged my students to head
out to Maidan in November already". But yesterday, he wrote: "This blog
has gone quiet recently. I’ve plenty of ideas for updates but no time
to complete them, what with seminars to give, conferences to attend,
job applications to submit and so on".
[Apr24'14] Hopefully the substantial number of soldiers (5-10K) and
tanks and artillery (that might have been) moved east by the coup gov't
in Ukraine, and the attack on Slaviansk (5 killed) is just a bluff
(for comparison, the Kiev snipers killed 21 people). The Russians have
responded with a major military mobilization inside Russia. It's hard to
believe the coup gov't wants to start a war with Russia when they have a
coal miner's strike on their hands (against pay cuts to be used for fixing
up Kiev) after just securing a large loan to pay the Russians for gas.
But who knows?! Disinfo is running high, so just have to wait.
[Apr25'14]
Pics from
Graham Phillips iphone don't show anything that looks like much a
'war', yet (go to Syrian Perspective to see what a cell phone pics of
real war look like). Hopefully it's just unenthusiastic Ukrainian army
units pretending to fight to show the Right Sector putschists back in
the Kiev how 'bad' they are, so they won't get themselves assassinated
(the key role of commanding officers in any army, is to threaten and
sometimes actually shoot the people who try to turn back -- from behind
the front lines). Any war, no matter how small, is an utter human
disaster that no sane human wants to be a part of. Here's hoping all
the sabre rattling is just disinfo. One of the anon's at the saker made
the interesting suggestion that the unenthusiastic Ukraine military is
moving stuff futher east nearer to the Russian border as an excuse to
the Kiev junta for why they can't spare stuff to kill Russian speakers
in the middle of Ukraine. Since Russia has been in communication with
the Ukrainian military, the Russians would know what was happening,
and avoid overreacting. The lastest round of NYT/BBC photo fakery is
so, been there, done that, guys. And I'm really getting why it's so
critical that Justin Bieber apologize for visting the Yasukuni shrine.
Pay no attention to China negotiating to buy some of the fossil fuel
currently being sold to the EU (esp. if you are in the EU).
[Apr27'14] Well... now there are reports from
RIA
Novosti that there are 10K+ troops and 100+ tanks surrounding the
lightly defended town of Slaviansk. The servile EU-ians (Germans)
sent 'military observers' to the region. Several of them were grabbed
by local people. The local people are 'separatists' in the
presstitute
western press; the mercenaries flown in from another country, well, those
would just be 'neutral observers'. This sounds a little worse than a
few days ago. But the locals are fighting back. Today, locals
captured
3 high level Ukrainian special forces 'Alpha males' sent from Kiev who
were attempting to kidnap the head of the local police department.
[Apr30'14] The servile French, Germans, British, Danish, and Canadians
(huh?) are all deploying fighter jets near the Russian border along with
the US while yelling at the Russians to pull their defenses away from
their own borders *within* their own country. Probably more than 70%
of Germans are opposed to this intervention, which has a good chance of
undermining EU energy supplies. It's not even vaguely in the EU people's
interest. What a sad commentary this is on stoopid and desperate human
manipulators as they reach peak oil, just a few years from peak energy.
Don't fix the problems -- just bloviate, with the danger of really blowing
things up. In the US, just imagine if the several trillion dollars hadn't
been totally and war-criminally wasted on destroying 10 million people's
lives in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. That could have easily
avoided the $1 trillion in new student debt, and then some. Instead,
young people will be massively in debt for the next 3 decades essentially
paying bankers for these past 4 wars. What unbelievable stupidity.
Makes me embarrassed to be a human. Here is another 'gem' from Ukranian
nationalist, Iurii Lutsenko, on Ukranian teevee "the genetic code of the
Ukrainian people gives them the ability to live outside lies, whereas
the genetic code of children of Gengis Khan makes them willing to live
in lies and spread the patriotic syphillis" -- translation by
vineyardsaker.
Great set of master-race-ers the US and Germany and the UK is supporting
there.
[May02'14] The locals efficiently defended Slaviansk so far and the
unenthusiastic Ukranian military did not shell the town. In Odessa,
by contrast, a Kiev football fan mob (just like in Kharkov) traveled to
ethnically very diverse Odessa to burn down a building with pro-Russian
locals inside, shooting and killing many. The BBC Matrix News reports
"many pro-Russia rebels" were killed in Slaviansk (where there were
almost no casualties!), and initially made no comment on 30 or 40 burned
to death in the massacre in Odessa, a number of them shot as they tried
to jump from the burning building. Hopey changey drone Obama read the
teleprompter about more sanctions, and the Mighty Wurlizter grinds on (but
now we have the internet). The Russians will sit tight for now as the
Americans battle the Germans. It is informative to looks at video from
the scene (e.g., from
Graham
W Phillips).
[May05'14] Graphic still pics
here
(another link
here
in case the first one goes down) of the Odessa massacre,
taken from a video from inside the building posted on youtube by
EuromaidanPR
(the victorious guys whose 'friends' burnt down the
building; incidentally, EuromaidanPR just put a
$10K
price on the head of British journalist Graham W Phillips).
This sure looks like an outside-supported mercenary-run strategic
terror operation, like the Maidan snipers (see above) shooting
at both sides -- classic CIA death squad stuff, think 1980's El
Salvador (the CIA director himself was just in Kiev a few days ago!).
It is designed to leave regular local people in complete shock (that
probably was the point of EuromaidanPR posting the youtube video of a
woman who looked like she had been raped then her upper body set on
fire in front of the elevator). Unfortunately, it also looks like
a real military attack has been launched against the small eastern
Ukranian town of Slaviansk. The American installed puppet fascist
Right sector regime is trying to move quickly (before it collapses)
to try to draw a Russian attack. Instead, Russia is filing a
lawsuit
with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). I have to say the
degree of western media manipulation -- both 'left' and 'right' -- is
truly breathtaking this time. It's just the same old destabilizing death
squads -- for the 50th time -- which rely on some of the most disgusting
yet inseperable and reliable parts of the human character.
[May06'14] The usual lies of our
NYTimes.
But lookee here: Pussy Riot's in
Scotland,
complaining about some Scottish dude saying something positive about
Putin. Let's not be prejudiced, guys! you're off script (or we'll
trash yo mamma's church, too -- and pay no attention to our CIA- and
International Neonazi Fund-supported anti-Putin 'freedom fighters'
choking pregnant women to death in burning buildings). I'm sure this
will convince all the good people living in Odessa that they need to have
*even more* Kiev neonazi hooligans visiting them from out of town --
because Putin is the real problem, why won't he send troops, damn it?
Ya think?
[May09'14] Today Kiev/NATO junta tanks and armored
personnel carriers dashed through Mariupol, which was
setting up for a Victory Day parade, and manfully
shot a few unarmed
local people in the head from inside their armour (and sniper-killed
a young woman on her balcony) during an 'anti-terrorist operation'
(against half the population?). These pathetic operations do not seem to
reflect long term planning, and they don't appear any more 'manly' than
beating people to death who jumped out of a building that you set on fire.
But it is also unlikely to draw Russia to invade. Instead, Russia made
a rational response to the Odessa massacre 2 days ago -- suggesting
immediate negotiation and postponement of the referendum (both ignored).
When the Kiev junta can't afford to or refuses to pay for its gas, it *is*
likely that Russia will stop pumping it to them. Pepe Escobar
says,
"Well, at least Washington's prayers have been answered. It took a while,
but they finally found the new bogeyman: Osama Bin Putin."
[May11'14] From the Lies of our NYTimes: Jen Psaki, a State Department
spokeswoman said the United States would not recognize the results
of the votes. She said the referendums "by armed separatist groups
are illegal under Ukrainian law, and are an attempt to create
further division and disorder" and "will violate international
law and the territorial integrity of Ukraine." Nuland-installed
Kiev out-of-towners driving tanks at 40 mpg through the middle of
town inexpertly shooting into crowds of unarmed people apparently
doesn't count as "armed" (except now, any person can see what's
actually going on with the internet, you dorks). Here is video
of the neonazi thugs firing live bullets into a crowd that is
lined
up to vote. These seriously brave 'anti-democratic' voters are
considered extremely dangerous in the 'democratic' Khagante of Nuland.
They clearly do want to be a part of Banderastan. Zio-lite Chomsky,
supposed anarchist, sings the same song as the NYT about the illegality
of the previous Crimea vote. Lookee instead here at these Nigerian
girls. And look at the wonderful triumph of the bearded lady in the
Eurovision song contest. Take that Putin! Go Austria! What's next,
Bearded Pussy Riot? Panem et circenses. But finally, the Germans did
manage to make a little whimper: der Spiegel (of all places!) re-tweets
a Bild report of 400 Blackwater/Academi mercs on duty in
eastern
Ukraine.
[May12'14] Some good news today. The
Donbass
referendum came off despite the half-hearted efforts of the
Kiev death squads. Jihadis/Saudi/French/Americans were
booted out of Homs
on busses (tho it is worrying to contemplate what Saudi/France/US plan
to do with their evacuated jihadi ronin). But meanwhile, back in the
human catastrophe the US and the UK created in Iraq, another 50 people
were killed in one day. That's one Odessa every day in Iraq.
[May15'14] A few days ago Russia suggested that it may begin asking for rubles
in return for oil and gas. Saddam suggested asking for non-dollar
payments for oil over a decade ago. Iran did so about 4 years ago.
Though the Russian economy is officially small compared to western
economies, this is a significant event. Maybe Belgium (!) becoming the
3rd biggest 'purchaser' of US treasury holdings over the past 6 months
(a fifth of a *trillion* since October) is a result of Russia preparing
for the blowback from its attack on the oil-dollar.
[May16'14] Vineyardsaker blog has an informative transcript
of two telephone calls in the aftermath of the recent
deadly racist neo-nazi attacks in Odessa and Mariupol
here.
Here is a quote from one of the calls between Oleg Noginskii and another
person on the subject of Igor Kolomoisky, the oligarch/mafia/PrivatBank
governor of Dnepropetrovsk in southeast Ukraine, nicknamed the "Jewish
Banderite": "We declare that the world Jewish community, first: has
nothing to do with Mr Kolomoisky, second: does not support [the actions]
in Odessa, or Mariupol or any of those involved and expresses sincere
sympathy. And third, says that if a Jew is involved in Nazi crimes, we
will fight first him." -- Oleg Noginskii (Russian transcript
here). Here are English
RT
interviews with Paul Vickers (his blog
here), and others on the topic.
[May16'14] I have written a lot above about how China has produced a
lot of cement and built a lot of roads. But FT now reports that China
produced as much cement in 2011 and 2012 as the US did *in the entire
20th century*. I was in Beijing in 2012. I remarked on returning about
how much new cement there was. But the true scale of what just happened
is truly mind-boggling. If nothing else, it suggests that as long as
there is still fossil fuel muscle left (roughly half is still left),
rapid change -- for better or worse -- remains a possibility :-} .
One could imagine that a graceful taper from building an entire 20th
century US every two years could turn out to be a delicate operation.
In any case, it is absolutely clear that the second half of net energy
positive fossil fuel will all get used, which means we will get to 500
ppm CO2 (for reference, in recent glacial periods CO2 has been 200 ppm,
while pre-industrial/interglacial CO2 was 280 ppm). The continual car
and lorry/truck racket outside my window is virtually the same as it was
when I arrived 7 years ago (two more bicylists were slaughtered this week
on poorly designed London intersections) and the electricity is still on
every day. The one ray of hope I have mentioned previously is that the
IPCC has severely overestimated the amount of net-energy-positive fossil
fuel left (by blindly accepting the IEA etc's ridiculous overestimates).
So we probably won't see their worst greenhouse scenarios (600+ ppm),
but rather something more like their unintentionally ironic 'strong
mitigation' scenario (the IPCC RCP 2.6 pathway). That one will probably
'only' increase worldwide temps by 2 to 3 deg C. Your children will still
be facing a terrible climate disaster 50 years from now, completely out
of energy, and very probably low on water and food. But it won't be as
bad as the worst scenarios!
[May22'14] Down in the comments
(starting with comment by Petri Krohn)
here,
somewhat garbled by the machine translation but still understandable,
you can see the classic function of 'commanding officers'. The
oligarch's Privat Bank death squads (here is one of their van
'logos'
) were sent from Kiev to kill 10 to 20 truly brave Ukrainian
soldiers who had arranged a non-aggression agreement with the locals
and who had refused to fire on the locals. This was followed by
Kiev attack helicopters firing missiles at the scene of the crime to
try to sterilize it. Video already out on the internet -- too late.
NATO nazi democracy is kewl according to the MSNBCBBC (they even had some
preposterous explanation of why the attack helicopters were firing on
their own-side vehicles). Somehow I don't think this will convince the
local people, previously rather apathetic, that the Kiev junta is so much
better than the previously actually elected but corrupt Viktor Yushchenko.
Today, this sh*t is a all taking place a long distance from where I live.
But I'm not confident it will still be far enough away 20 years from now,
when the great net energy downslope starts to pick up speed.
[May26'14] Classic no-can-do London etiquette: you see
an older man on the street knocked unconcious by a bus;
walk by, but under no circumstances should you
call emergency
services. That would be getting unnecessarily involved. And don't
forget to don that yellow health and safety vest before jumping off the
bridge -- you might endanger the vehicles!
[May28'14] The Kiev putsch regime -- now with a newly elected jewish
billionaire oligarch in charge of Right Sector neonazi death squads
(note that Pravy Sector and Svoboda together only received a few percent
of the vote) -- began off-and-on artillery bombardments of residential
buildings and schools in Slavyansk, Donetsk, Mariupol and Lugansk City,
not to mention bravely shooting at vehicles transporting the wounded (then
shooting any survivors in the head), and picking off the odd
old
women 'terrorist' (she was hit by shrapnel from an artillery shell
lobbed at a teachers college). Over 100 people were killed and wounded.
Many people are trapped in these sealed-off cities (120,000 in Slavyansk,
incidentally, the site of a major shale gas field, with Biden's son
invested in Burisma Holdings -- you can't make this stuff up!). This is
a major escalation of the war. But the neonazi's have not yet stormed
those cities, or been able to convince or threaten (the families of)
the Ukrainian army into doing so. As in all wars, the great majority of
deaths are civilians. There has been relatively little armed resistance
from the populations in these areas so far. It is unlikely Russia will
get involved, since the local population does not want them involved
(yet). As in Syria, it may take a while for the local people there to
realize the gravity of the situation into which they have been cast.
All the leftists in Syria that initially supported the US/Saudi jihadi
'Maidan' that ended up destroying their cities, beheading their neighbors,
and killing 150,000 people eventually all came around to support Assad.
The R2P 'leftists' outside Syria who supported the US-supported jihadis
never owned up to their misjudgement (and what's with Craig Murray's
continuing bizarre/pathetic position on Ukraine?!).
[May30,'14] I'm half wondering now if Poroshenko's plan
was let some of the most unstable Right Sector/Svoboda
maniacs get partly chewed up on purpose. Here is
Pepe
talking here about how the pivot has been pivoted :-} . But I wonder what
he thinks about EROEI? There is clearly not enough net energy left to
continue building at China's insane rate of a plug of cement equal to
all the cement poured in the entire US 20th century, every two years.
Perhaps it's possible to build 3 or 4 more complete US's. But at this
rate, that would be only 6 or 8 years. It looks like China has already
slowed massively down. I'm sure I'm somehow missing the forest for the
trees given my general inability to think strategically.
[Jun02,'14]
Another cyclist (52 year old experienced commuter) was
slaughtered in London Monday morning at 7 AM by a skip/dumpster
lorry/truck. London streets are extremely hazardous because of: (1)
their confusing and inconsistent marking and variable design (
here
is the stoopidly-designed intersection where the cyclist was squished),
(2) a set of one-way streets that does *not* increase overall
flow-through speed (the average traffic speed in London is 10 mph) but
instead causes uselessly increased local speed, with the only effect
being that more pedestrians and cyclists are killed, and (3) a weirdly
even-more-extreme-than-the-US car culture (just think of the putrid
Jeremy Clarkson) where cars routinely aim for female pedestrians to brush
them back. A similarly extreme car culture was brought under control in
the Netherlands in the early 80's by a sea change in attitudes, a burst of
separated cycle lane construction, and changes in indemnity laws. I don't
hold out a lot of hope for this Anglo city, tho. There is another 8 or 10
years of good oil left in the North Sea, and by god, Old Blighty is going
to use it as fast as it can (NO2 level in London are actually
worse
than Beijing). Instead, let's spend money sequencing the British
genome to find out why British kids are getting fat, and getting fatty
liver disease as kids. It must be genetic because it's become a new
epidemic, right? Couldn't be because kids are aren't walking and aren't
on bicycles, because of a bunch of angry Jeremy Clarksons gunning their
FUV motors, spitting with car rage, are right on their @sses, could it?
Nah, it's the fault of their genes I'm sure. The recent yearly increases
in cycling in London since 2007 have topped out and actually started
to reverse after a particularly bloody several years, and because
the supposedly pro-cycle mayor has done absolutely nothing to help
cycling with construction or laws (the 'Boris-bike' system was actually
contracted by the previous mayor, Ken Livingston). When I'm cycling
and I see a lorry/truck coming, I jump up onto the pavement (=sidewalk).
That's illegal in Britain -- health and safety, don't you know?
[Jun05'14] The CIA-supported neo-nazi death squads have descended
to shooting up hospitals and nurses and injured soldiers in
eastern Ukraine. Classic Vietnam era revolting heart of darkness
sh*t. The local people despise the Kiev neonazis, who call the
eastern Russian-speaking Ukrainians 'colorado beetles' that should
be burned. Ukraine is over, no matter how many more patients,
women,
and children the CIA/oligarch-paid mercenaries kill. There is now
a leaked recording of the pilot firing the burst of unguided S-8KOM
anti-tank rockets that shredded the people sitting outside in the park.
Russia won't intervene, even if the junta foolishly begins carpet bombing
the cities. The R2P main-sewer media is braying even more shrilly than
before about how this is 'Russian aggression' (if this isn't a case of
'bombing your own people', not sure what is), and the Cameron poodle-thing
just pledged to send troops to Poland to 'help', as many average 'leftist'
sites embarrassedly ignore this major ongoing disaster, instead running
articles about how to have better sex. But I think average people are
*just* beginning to awake from the media hypnosis, as their economic
conditions continually degrade. The median personal income in the US has
fallen to $26,000 a year; that means that half the population in the US
has a yearly salary less than that. The ratio between that salary and
the cost of a car, house, or college eduation is much smaller than it
was when I was a college student -- and getting worse every year.
[Jun08'14] Poroshenko just about declared war in his speech yesterday
and then the Ukies began lamely firing unguided Grad missile batteries
into residential areas in order to kill more civilians in what looks
like a serious attempt to get the Russians to respond with an invasion
that could be used to justify a NATO invasion. There could be as many
as 5,000 or 10,000 Blackwater and Israeli special forces in place
in Ukraine (e.g., a letter from Ukraine to Derek Chollet in the US
DoD apologising for the "deaths of agents [Academi/Blackwater?] who
accompanied general Kulchytsky" in the shot-down helicopter was
leaked, which might be legitimate). No overt Russian response yet.
Obama praised the attacks as "an incredible outpouring of democracy"
(apparently bombing your own people's hospitals and rocketing
employee credit
union workers on their lunch break is actually 'democratic'
if executed properly). Obama is an incredible charlatan
and the western MSM is a stinking sewer still under amazingly
comprehensive control. But the US/UK/zionist west is taking a big
risk trying to take down Russian and China now. Diana Johnstone
remarked
that the servility of the 'old' europeans is extraordinary. It was eye
opening reading "Hidden History" by Gerry Docherty and James MacGregor,
in which the English and european elite spent an entire decade carefully
engineering WWI -- which ironically turned out to be the beginning
of their very own demise. The American 'Federal' Reserve (a private
bank) was created in 1913 partially in anticipation of funding this
human catastrophe. The unbelievable stupidity of it all, the way the
antiwar left (and right) and average people in every european country
completely caved and slavishly went along with it all was a towering
disgrace to the human race. And here we are 100 years later, with the
*exact same* stupid human tricks in play, opening the same old ethnic
Pandora's box, everybody flying their inner master race freak flag.
It's getting harder and harder for me to feel upset about
power down.
[Jun11'14] Poroshenko did a Grozny on Slavyansk and then announced he
will instruct his nazi army to provide an escape route to ethnically
cleanse the area, along with financial incentives for western Ukrainians
to settle there. I'm sure all the locals are now seeing the advantages of
'democracy'. This is probably just bluster/disinfo, since at this point
Kiev has no control of routes to the east or the eastern border (so it's
an 'escape' to Kiev?!). Meanwhile in Mosul and Tikrit in Iraq, ISIS
al-CIA-da 'rebels' overran Iraqi army bases in scenes reminiscent of the
highway of death and seized a bunch of Black Hawk helicopters and armoured
vehicles, not to mention almost half a *beellion* dollars from the Mosul
central bank, sending half a million locals fleeing to Kurdistan from
the fighting (and expected Maliki counterattack). The fighting 'just
happens' to be right around the oil fields that contain almost 1/8 of
the remaining oil in the world. ISIS will take some of the equipment
to Syria. What a great value for a $1-2 trillion investment of US-ian
tax dollars -- the creation an out of control rogue army of jihadis
abroad who are destroying two of the oldest civilizations on the planet,
and at home, mine-resistant armoured vehicles for domestic
police
departments (Indiana). The US may now drone/bomb ISIS in Iraq while
supporting them in Syria. Bush and Powell and Wolfowitz and Blair and
Campbell and Straw should be dragged into war crimes court. Just think
if that unbelievably large amount of money had instead been put into
preparing for the ongoing and irreversible reduction in the net energy
of fossil fuel -- $1-2 trillion could have bought a lot of photoelectric
cells, windmills, and grid maintenance and upgrade. Probably even Euan
Mearns could have gotten behind that redirection (sorry Euan).
[Jun16'14] I guess the 'west' now 'owns' the rump Banderastan Ukraine.
Right at this moment the Kiev army is literally flattening the city of
Kramatorsk with artillery bombardments, killing hundreds of civilians in
its ongoing attempt to get Russia to respond overtly to the killing of
Russian-speakers. Hardly a peep from GoogleMSNBCBSCNNBBC. The people
getting killed would be the people in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions
that the Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk yesterday called
"subhumans" who needed to be "cleaned from our land" (today they updated
their site to say they were "inhumans"). Great set of nazis you guys
to have 'acquired'! Very skilled at shelling apartment blocks and
shooting hospital patients. I hear they will also be needing some
methane in a few months, and uhh, they won't be able to pay for it.
Maybe Germany can send some. Oh, I forget, they get methane from the
pipeline through Banderastan. What idiocy for the EU-ians not to have
outed/blocked the idiotic US/CIA/Israeli/UK coup! Cowards! Overall a
disappointing disaster. The best twisted minds in the west are trying to
bring down Russia (and the EU!) instead of dealing with peak net energy
for industrial civilization. We really need to get these bozos out of
power before they cause an even bigger disaster, not to mention one in
our 'homelands'.
[Jun21'14] Russia responded to a Ukrainian artillery attack on a Russian
border station by saying that this lacked the appearance of a cease fire.
Russian humor.
[Jun24,'14]
Above, I underestimated the Saudis, who fund ISIS/ISIL
(as does Turkey). It looked like they were about to take a breather,
after the demotion of Bandar Bush and after experiencing heavy losses
in Syria, with virtually the entire Syrian population now against the
foreign mercenaries. But ISIS/ISIL have essentially taken control of
a moderately large part of Iraq and Syria's oil fields. Not clear what
prompted this (not only Saudi, prob. also Israel and Turkey and CIA/NATO);
many of the fighters are not from Iraq, and somebody must have been paid
off in Iraq to stand down let them get as far as they did (as occurred in
the two previous US invasions). This looks like yet another proxy war,
helped along by the fact that most Iraqis think that they were
better
off under Saddam than Maliki. This will help Saudi and Israel,
since the greatest oil field on earth, Ghawar, is very nearly empty for
practical purposes. That single oil field has supplied 6% or more of all
the oil ever used by humans on the entire earth. Looks like the humans
are in fine form this month. A curse on *every single* ethnic identity!
They are all cultural, not genetic constructs anyway (the Palestinians
are the descendents of the biblical Jews). Why can't stupid humans
keep ethnicity -- based on emotions that work in a chimpanzee troop --
to food, music, dance, and language where it belongs? It is a true
tragedy of the origin of language to have grafted such cognitive and
eventually technological and scientific and fossil fuel power onto a
hardly-better-than-chimpanzee-level social neural device that was not up
to the task of wielding that power. Here is my most recent paper
(PDF)
on the topic of the origin of language
(though I left out the part about the difficulty of
controlling the new power...). In other news, Austria has just
signed
a 'south stream' pipeline deal with Russia. This would get Russian
gas to Europe, bypassing Ukraine. However, construction of the part
of the pipeline that goes through Bulgaria was blocked in January 2014
on the recommendation of the EU. But that was before the Ukraine mess
exploded. With the western Ukrainians grabbing un-paid-for gas into
storage before it gets to the EU, and Europe possibly looking toward a
cold winter this year, the EU will likely see the light and reapprove
the pipeline (in order to see the heat and the power...). Though there
is tremendous hate of Russia in Bulgaria, it is likely Bulgaria will
go back to their original 2013 plan if the EU flip-flops. A fly in
the ointment is the possibility of a CIA-instigated Bulgarian 'Maidan'
by the same-old same-old methods -- death squads, bombs, and snipers
shooting at both sides. Bulgaria should look at the writing on the
Ukrainian wall and simply absorb such provocations without overreacting.
Who knows, anything is possible...
[Jun26,'14]
"There is no evidence reports of abuse were communicated to senior
managers" -- from a BBC report today, making sure that we all know that
there is NO EVIDENCE that senior managers (at the hospitals or at the
BBC) were ever told that Jimmy Savile (who worked for the BBC) was among
other things probably having sex with corpses, while bragging about his
rings made from the glass eyeballs of the dead. That makes me feel SO
much better about the senior managers at the BBC, and I'm so glad I pay
my $20 teevee tax this month even tho I don't watch teevee, because
I know they help get the truth out to the faithful who do have one!
And I'm sure 'senior manager' Thatcher wasn't told either when Jimmy
came to dinner at her house (I'm working hard here suppressing further
jokes about corpses) on the way to her eventually getting him knighted.
I guess that mainly leaves the victims themselves at fault for not
resisting the now dead Jimmy (well maybe except for the people in the
morgue... oh right, no corpse jokes). Well, the BBC says it was also
the fault of "leadership that lacked curiosity". I was thinking that
the problem was the lack of some other body parts. In prison, child
molesters are the lowest of the low and have to be protected from the
rest of the inmates. At the BBC, they can be stars because there is
*no evidence* the senior managers knew. Right.
That's about as believable
as the initial finding that there was no fault of 'senior manangers'
at NASA and President Reagan for overriding the outright refusal of
the rocket booster engineers to sign the take-off go-ahead for the Jan
1986 blast-off of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Richard Feynman had to
threaten to resign the Rogers Commission panel to force them to include
the real reason -- not a 'failure of communication' but rather management
knowingly overriding engineering reality that was communicated in a
crystal clear fashion to them. The Shuttle blew up soon after launch
for exactly the reason the engineers had said, killing all aboard,
because the launch was forced on a day that was way too cold, because
a teacher had to be in space for Reagan's state of the union speech
uplink (the pusillanimous wikipedia article doesn't mention anything
about the planned Reagan uplink, which was what was forcing management
to override engineering reality). The engineer who refused to sign the
take off order, Roger Boisjoly, was professionally shunned afterward, fired,
then rehired under Congressional order, then he resigned as a pariah.
He did get some some safety awards. He died in 2012 of cancer.
[Jun27,'14]
$6 billionaire Igor Kolomoisky's Privatbank publicly received
36 to 40% of the $3.2
billion in 'liquidity assistance' the IMF transferred to the National
Bank of Ukraine on May 7, the first portion of $17 billion committed to
Kiev by the IMF to help the stooge government survive. This was to make
sure that the banks didn't collapse in Ukraine, which could have hurt the
average person (it's all about helping the average person), because of the
'risk of contagion', which could lead to bank failure, which turns out to
be threatened by bad loans to oil trading companies, and funnily enough
these companies just happened to be owned by the bank's shareholders
(they must be the people who care about women and children...). I seem
to remember something about usng the money to pay Russia for natural
gas, but I must have gotten confused. I'm sure the average Ukrainian
is finally appreciating all the unexpected advantages of a Gladio color
revolution Nazi oligarch democracy, which should last just about long
enough for the criminal oligarchs to safely extract all their ill-gotten
gains from their own failing banks to London and New York and then
allow them to flee the smoking ruins of a former country. The
idiot
grins on these two Yurps seem to suggest that they think this is all
a capital idea. After all, WWI and WWII worked out so well for Yurp!
This combination of absurdity and criminality is hard for 'the average
person' who plays by different rules in regular life to comprehend.
It could make a guy angry (Minnesotan-speak). Real life is sometimes
more incredible than any fictional Matrix. Who needs aircraft carriers
when a bunch of cheapo Soros-style NGO's work more effectively?
[Jul01'14] Obama- and McCain-supported $1+ billionaire Poroshenko's
supposed cease-fire never really occurred, but now that it has officially
ended, the US-installed puppet gov't has resumed artillery bombardments
(of churches, hospitals, town centers) and attempts at ethnic cleansing
of eastern Ukrainian towns have increased (I think the correct term is,
"killing his own people", even if he does regard them as subhuman).
But the supply of convicts being sent to the front from Kiev is
getting low, and the locals have been fighting back with some success.
Russia is still sitting tight without overtly intervening (despite
considerable domestic pressure to do so) as I expected. Perhaps as many
as 100,000 Ukrainians have fled to Russia under the Kiev junta's bombing.
Amazing scrub of a major conflict from the main-sewer media.
[Jul04'14] 10 days after signing the South stream pipeline deal with
Russia (see pipeline above), Austria's largest bank crashes (stock)
after bad debts were revealed. No other banks have bad debts, and this
has absolutely nothing to do with the pipeline deal. Also the
Bulgarian bank runs were completely unrelated. Honest...
[Jul09,'14] I resent the fact that my tax dollars support
this
and
this.
The bombing targets are low-market-value humans regarded as untermenschen
by the hi-tech bombers, who regard themselves as a supremacist master
race (based on a genetic fantasy). Humanity has had more than enough
of the toxic untermenschen/ethnic-cleansing/master-race thing --
compare, Ukraine. Never ends well. Of course not one tiny peep
out of the main sewer media about how all the Palestinians ended up
being crammed into the Gaza concentration camp in the first place.
As far the MSM is concerned, it has been that way since time began
(which would be about 65 years ago). Here is Diane Sawyer
shamelessly illustrating
'rockets raining down on Israel' using footage of buildings reduced to
rubble by Israeli bombing of Gaza! I was disgusted but not surprised
to see the Obama and the Obama administration slavishly
supporting
it.
[Jul13,'14] After more than 1000 bombing runs, missile launches, and 500
tank shells aimed at a densely packed concentration camp (maybe 600 tons
of bombs), there almost 200 dead, mostly women, children, old people,
and disabled people. This massascre is OK with the MSM because the dead
and injured are only untermenschen. In fact, they call this "exemplary
restraint". The rest of the world is getting pretty fed up. [Jul 19
update: the senate unamimously passes a resolution supporting the Israeli
assault a few days after sending an additional half a billion of US tax
dollars to Israel.]
[Jul19,'14] MH17 has provided cover for the Gaza assault (Gaza death toll
up to 350, BBC ignores 15,000 demonstrators in London) as well as the
failed Kiev assault on Eastern Ukraine. I watched/read a few minutes
of the amazing MSM propaganda feed about MH17 etc (teevee, lies of our
NY Times). Amazing discipline gentlemen, but I'm hoping less people
are watching/reading/believing it than 10 years ago. But I don't know.
Iraq1's 1991 "unplugged incubator babies" and Iraq2's 2003 "nukes"
worked even though they were eventually exposed. But Assad's 2013
"chemical weapons" didn't work. Maybe the same here! The disifo is
flying thickly.
[Jul21,'14] The deliberate massacre continues -- the Palestinian
death toll is about 600, mostly civilians including 100 children,
while the Israeli death toll is 2 civilians and 25 soldiers. What a
bunch of servile spaniels the US Congress worms look like in the eyes
of the world, unanimously supporting the utterly pointless and criminal
apartheid state operation. This is starting to look more like the last
war in Lebanon, which Israel actually lost. Don't forget the large
natural gas field off the coast of Gaza. Rational people are tiring of
the cheap KKK imitation and are beginning to see the reality.
[Jul22,'14] The official USian MH17 story seems to be partially
disintegrating. The official story now is that the CIA relies
for its intelligence on youtube and twitter (why to we have to
pay so much for that??!). They don't bother with things like
this.
Uh-huh. I wonder if any of the confused robots watching teevee have
noticed the incredible idiocy of this turn. Probably not. After the
Syria debacle, this will further reduce USian street credibility. Here is
discussion
in the Ukrainian parliament between the Svoboda party and the Party
of Regions after somebody said the other party was killing their own
citizens. See I got it off youtube, just like the CIA, so it must be
true :-}.
[Jul26,'14] With the massacre death toll over 1000 with almost
250 of that children, the cowardly IDF lifts the press
gag
order and the Israeli press admits Hamas had nothing to do
with killing the three Israelis. According to Gallup, USians
over 50 support Israel, but it was refreshing to read that 51% of
people between the ages of 18 and 29 said Israel's attacks were
unjustified (versus 24% saying they were justified). These are
people who no longer get their news from the mainstream sewer
and will be less surprised by the coming storm. Meanwhile, the
ongoing demonization of Russia truly looks more and more like a US
attack on the EU (Nuland's "f*ck to EU"). There was a hallucinatory
statement today from General Dempsey about the situation. And
this
plan seems a little like the start of WWIII. Cameron is poodling and
the EU is acting limply. The only thing that could cause a change of tack
would be mass unrest, esp. in the EU. But little sign of that so far.
The collapse of the Yats government doesn't seem to have had any effect
on the propaganda barrage.
[Aug11,'14] Back on the grid. Things seem to have gone further downhill.
It looks like we are approaching seriously dangerous unpredictable
territory with reinflated stock/housing bubbles, the petrodollar/gas
pipeline Ukraine war, the second Libyan catastrophe, the third Iraq
catastrophe. The US/UK is provoking a firestorm in the middle of Europe.
New world disorder. Bummer.
[Aug14,'14] "American colleagues at the Pentagon told me, unequivocally,
that the US and the UK never would allow European-Soviet relations
to develop to such a degree that they would challenge the US/UK’s
political, economic or military primacy and hegemony on the European
continent. Such a development will be prevented by all necessary means, if
necessary by provoking a war in central Europe" -- top NATO admiral from
a northern European country told to Christof Lehmann. The current plan --
a continuation of US policies in Central American since 1980 -- is to use
proxy armies (here, Islamic jihadis and neo nazis). This is not likely
to be a winning strategy in the long run for preserving dollar hegemony
-- that is the plan where US banks print electronic dollars and people
in other parts of the world give US-ians actual stuff in return.
[Aug16,'14] The lapdog UK press' non-existent 'destruction of a Russian
military [sic] convoy' disinfo is outed today. Unfortunately, the
disinfo already did its dirty work. Good work, UK presstitute Shaun
Walker (for the Guardian) for your service to the man.
[Aug21'14] The Russian aid shipment still held up at the Russia/Ukraine
border today. Also today, Scotland Yard warns us that downloading
the terrorist beheading video is itself terrorism. Booga booga.
ISIS is everywhere! (and they have a big supply of those orange Abu
Ghraib jump suits). I'm surprised they didn't say that downloading
the video would give you Ebola! Maybe the anti-download order
is because the video is getting a reputation for probably being a
fake. [Update: Aug26: now even the MSM admits the video is probably a fake
-- though they remain sure Foley is dead. Note this means that
Bill
Gardner at the Telegraph who watched it must be a terr'ist... Also,
over the past few weeks, Saudi has beheaded more than 20 people; no
video at 6, but you can watch it on youtube without fear of GCHQ coming
after you]. The multiple fake bin Laden videos, equally certified as
authentic by the FBI, are a precedent. As always, one must ask, who
benefits. And never mind those Gaza beheadings. Getting beheaded by
bombs doesn't count as terrorism (tho I suppose downloading a video of
people getting beheaded by 'morally upstanding' bombs and missiles will
soon be 'terrorism' at this rate...)
[Aug24,'14] The Izzy's are back to beheading people in the Gaza
concentration camp that they've been running since 1948 (8 killed today).
Here is a hit
on an appartment block (with a 10 minute warning) that wounded 22 people.
Imagine how CNNBBC would report the reverse: "Hamas gave Israelis living
in an apartment block 10 minutes to evacuate before demolishing the
building with a missile, wounding 22 Israelis". In other news, Holland
had announced that it will not release the full info of the flight data
and voice recorders of MH17 (it hasn't released any at all). It's all to
protect the women and children. Collaborators! Kiev has not released any
information on the communications between the Kiev air traffic controllers
and MH17 -- probably because 'women and children' and because 'Russia did
it', I'm sure. Right.
[Aug28,'14]
As 'b' at moon of alabama put it, the
wheels
seem to be coming off of neocon Victoria 'f*** the EU' Nuland's
new Ukraine as the Kiev junta militias suffer large losses in
their attempted invasion of eastern Ukraine. It is true that by
lobbing artillery shells into the middle of eastern Ukrainian towns,
the Kiev neo nazis have successfully gotten the townspeople to
cower
in bombed-out basements with little water. But the junta
appears to be losing the war, and the conscripts (cannon
fodder) seem to be getting restless (demonstrations in eastern
Ukraine against conscription). Over the last few days, Merkel
has (finally!) made some conciliatory statements, as reduced
Russian trade following tit-for-tat sanctions has begun to
bite
hard (the EU *is* f***ed after all!). If Germans don't want to bail
out Greeks, I find it hard to imagine they will be enthusiastic about
bailing out a bunch of loser Kiev neo nazi's. But as the weather grows
colder, and Ukraine's gas debt to Russia continues to go unpaid, the gas
situation could deteriorate beyond mere threats, to actual withholding
of EU gas passing through Ukraine ('bail us out, or else' -- the EU
gets 30% of its gas from Russia and about half of that goes through
Ukraine). The ridiculous and sad end result of this vicious US and UK
cold-war/death-squad meddling half way around the globe (imagine Russia
fomenting a 'color revolution' in Mexican southern California) is merely
a destroyed Ukraine. All for nothing. This utterly stoopid US/UK policy
has also forced a more rapid flight from the petrodollar; Gazprom began
accepting payments for oil in rubles and yuan today. Talk about an own
goal! I wonder what the
British
lecturer in Ukraine who initially supported
Euromaidan thinks now (he hasn't said since he left). The
pizza
will probably get even worse... But if a casual observer like me
could have guessed this outcome many months ago, it is hard to believe
that German politicians couldn't have predicted it also. But they
went along with the US/UK coup anyway. Why? Some kind of blackmail?
Meanwhile back in the US, the latest Obomber Mr-Peace-Prize plan is
to bomb *both* sides in Syria (one of them armed by the US). I truly
hope that one day, that loser gets hauled into war crimes court.
As many of us predicted from before he was even elected (see 2007
above), he turned out to be a complete scam -- fully as bad as Bush.
There is no real difference between the parties; they are strictly for
show/distraction/blue-pill-ing.
[Aug31'14] Some serious blue-pilling from the silly EU/UK
politicians today! Kiev needs more cash (so they can buy more
Russian tanks from Hungary?!). 10,000 EU troops are going to invade
Donetsk under British lead, says the Daily Mail. The British
leading the French and Germans on behalf of the neo nazis?!
Really?! Look at the "best rated" comments at the bottom of
that
article. I'm hoping predictions of
a cold winter here are wrong. And, go
Dmitri!
[Sep03'14] The world didn't "stumble into WWI"; WWI was carefully planned
for over a decade. People say we could now "stumble into WWIII". Again,
if it happens, it won't be a stumble (but it will be a bigger fall...).
[Sep04,'14]
Pepe,
on the Kiev IMF bailout: "Money for nothing, [and your] tanks for
free" :-} . See also the latest excellently detailed
John Helmer article on how
the billions-strong IMF Ukraine bailout has been/is being offshored.
There is twenty times as much useful information there as in the average
Guardian screed on Ukraine (plus, John is a lot funnier).
[Sep09'14] Perhaps the Nuland comment was mistranslated to EU'ians
as a reflexive verb...
[Sep16,'14]
While the EU weenies were busy taking their
silly
pills, the Obama regime has managed to get a majority of its citizens
in favor of bombing Syria. This would be the same Syria that Americans
were against bombing last year, when the fake chemical weapons attack
story fizzled. This time, all it took was two fake beheadings. Bernays
would be proud. Americans are easy lays. Given that Russia shot down
the two 'test missiles' fired across the Mediterranean the last time the
US/UK was planning to bomb Syria, you'd think there would be some adult
discussion about this. The insanity of what is presented as 'reality' is
making it difficult for me to concentrate on doing anything productive.
And then there is Iraq. It's absolutely disgusting that 2/3 of the US
population supports air strikes that have started once again on Iraq --
a country that the US and UK visited a literal holocaust upon; 2 to 3
million Iraqis have *already* been killed by the US and UK including
half a million children. When people can't directly see the bloody
results of their decisions, they are absolute filth. Bernays would
truly be proud.
[Sep19,'14]
The "no" vote in Scotland happened because old people (over
55) got cold feet. Even with younger people getting older, I think
"yes" will win in another 5 or 10 years.
[Sep20,'14]
In their latest vote, the Ukrainian people have decisively
turned against the war fomented by the US/UK/EU, and against the nazi
parties partially in control in Kiev. Would have been better to have
come to this conclusion *before* shelling the industrial base of the
country, revving up ethnic hatred between two Russian dialects, and
handing what's left of the country over to oligarchs and nazis, but better
late than never. [Update: Sept23: Ruslana, the symbol of Maidan,
publicly
changes her mind after a visit to Donetsk]. Thankfully, Danish
EU weenie Anders "Fog of war" Rasmussen is retiring. Good riddance.
In other news, the John Kerry thing made new chemical weapons
accusations against Syria. What a pathetic excuse for a hairdo that
guy is! I suppose he figured that since the cheap beheading
psyop videos worked this
time (Cockney rhyming slang pun: "are you guys having a Turkish?" :-} ),
why not try the chemical weapons canard for the nth time? Woaaa, it's a
DIFFERENT CHEMICAL this time! We're seriously impressed. Meanwhile in
France, the 'wildly popular' Francois Hollande thing announced that lapdog
France will carry out air strikes for the US (they began bombing Sept 19),
but not in Syria, because that would 'strengthen Assad'. Hollande must be
trying to duplicate the wonderful success of helping the Americans turn
Libya into a dreadful shambles a few years ago. Isn't the 'left' great?
So much better than the 'right'. We need a machine that can project
weaponized-volume laughter at these t$rds.
[Sep28,'14]
The pusillanimous British MPs just voted for yet more remote control
bombing of muslim humans in their latest crusade by 524 to 43. Over 500
cowardly MP's caved! Didn't they used to say "off with *their* heads" in
this part of the world? Blair, Cameron, Labour, Conservative, what's the
difference? For real decisions of real import (deals with Saudi), there
isn't any difference at all. The US and their UK lapdogs are now bombing
Syrian oil wells and Iraqi grain silos, and Samantha Power is 'responsibly
protecting' the 'good jihadis' who will overthrow Assad. Remember when
the US/UK hitech-bombed (carbon fiber 'electrical short-inducing' bombs)
Iraqi power stations and sewer plants back in the day? We have reached
a situation where in Chris Martenson's words, reality doesn't have a
place at the table. That's not entirely true. The weird thing is that
there are still large chunks of reality-based reasoning. For example
buildings are made and they stand up for 20 or more years; airplanes
(including warplanes) are made and they don't fall out of the sky. To do
this, you have to deal with basic physics. There is no negotiation.
Either there is enough lift or not. The hard thing to take in is that
this reality-based behavior coexists with a whole other part of modern
life that is *utterly* non-reality-based, such as printing more debt
to 'stimulate the economy', so that aquifers can be pumped down at 10
times replenishment rate, or planning for massive economic growth and
a larger population -- more than a new UK of people in the world every
year -- when we have already reached world peak per capita energy use
by the people that are already here, and given that it is transparently
impossible to go on building another UK's worth of roads, buildings,
farms, power generation, copper wires, sewers, computers, cars etc every
year, forever. We have come to a point in history where it will not be
cyclical. When the water and oil and fish and soil run out, you can't
print water and oil and fish and soil. This time is really different.
A flimsy transition town 3D printer won't be able to print those things
either (e.g., it's literally made out of oil). The level of blue-pill
fantasy -- across the entire political spectrum -- absolutely stuns me.
And now, we are criminally bombing Syrian oil refineries, grain silos,
and blowing off people's limbs and heads in random Syrian villages --
to protect our mercenaries! Disgusting!
[Oct01,'14]
Obama is a war criminal. In response to protests at increased
civilian deaths in its latest attacks, the Obama regime "has acknowledged
that any strikes in Syria and Iraq are exempt from its standards
applied to other aerial attacks". Those would be the 'standards'
that have resulted in the deaths of *millions* of muslim civilians?
Meanwhile, the US/UK militaries are basically bombing
Syrian
government infrastructure (buildings, grain silos, oil refineries).
All the little American and British Eichmanns who approved this in
response to some cheap faked videos will not be looked upon kindly in
the fullness of time (I'm afraid that might turn out to be just a decade
or two hence).
[Oct09,'14]
Not much to cheer about these
days. Russian oil interests in Iraq are
not that different from US oil interests in Iraq.
I was desperately looked around for something... then
I found this one cheery report: angry Argentinians stoned
Jeremy Clarkson's Porsche because of its inflammatory license plate,
and he had to run/lumber away and abandon it on the road. :-} Light
for my dark day!
[Nov04,'14]
William Engdahl suggests
here
that the drop in oil prices was engineered by Kerry and Saudi in a move
to destabilize Iran, Syria, and ultimately Russia. The fact that the
US has been systematically bombing Syrian oil infrastructure/refineries
seems mildly consistent with Engdahl's ideas. If true, it certainly sounds
like a dangerous game given that we are already near the minimum oil
price required to keep finance of tight oil plays in play. Throw in
some additional possibly unintended demand destruction after an
additional possibly unintended crash (oil prices crashed in 2008, too),
and who knows what might happen in two years! This is no way to run an
industrial civilization. But I'm quite sure it will continue to 'work'
for another 15 years. After that, I'm (a lot) less sanguine.
[Dec13,'14]
The new deals Russia has made with China (oil, gas) and now
Turkey (pipeline) in response US coup in Ukraine and Russian sanctions
have turned into a bit of an 'own goal' -- they probably wouldn't have
happened without the attack from the west and the western sabotage of
the Russian pipelines (Ukraine and 'southern' route). Meanwhile, oil
prices remain 40% below where they were at the beginning of the year,
which is hurting oil producing countries which includes the US. In the
'US' part of the blog, I had guessed that the current oil glut ('glut'
is hardly the correct word for a 1-2% oversupply of the lifeblood
of industrial civilization, but whatever) might have initially been
triggered by the decline in Chinese oil demand which began early in 2014.
The causal sequence since the turn of the century seems roughly something
like the following. First, crude oil (i.e., high energy return on
energy investment oil) flattened and then peaked in 2005 (or 2008),
forcing investment in lower energy return on energy investment fuels,
which resulted in higher prices, which people paid for a while. The 2008
meltdown was initiated by a failure of transfer of risk of subprime loans;
banks had initially made a lot of money by offering loans to people who
clearly wouldn't be able to continue paying them, but then the risk
transfer system blew up. It was 'fixed' by public bailouts of banks
and by reducing interest rates to zero. The recession/depression that
began in 2008 saw people in the US/UK/EU driving less; but the slack
was taken up by new Chinese drivers. The zero interest rates in turn
impoverished conservative savers, but also conservative institutional
investors like pension funds who went looking for more yield in more
risky investments like junk bonds, which increasingly involved oil (I
unknowingly helped this along by paying extra into my pension). Now,
perhaps partly as a result of China cracking down on driving (I saw it
beginning to happen already in 2012 in Beijing) along with the Chinese --
like the US/UK/EU before them -- not being able to afford to drive more,
the risk part of 'junk' bonds was expressed, and banks are right now
passing around the subprime fracking hot potatos. The fracking companies
are still producing oil from just-fracked wells to try to pay the bills,
but have instantly choked off all investment in new ones. The fascist
US/EU/UK financial press chortles about all the pain experienced by oil
producers like Russia and Venezuela. But if oil prices stay low for a
year or two, we could easily get another 2008-like crash in some poorly
lit back alley of the banking system. Not good, since the average person
has not yet recovered from 2008. Since fracked wells decline so rapidly,
if there is no immediate economic crash, prices should go up 'naturally'
in a year or two. But that's a very long time for our short look-ahead
disaster capitalism system. It is relatively easy to get oil prices to
go back up immediately. For example, the US could start another war
around where the oil is. Here's hoping oil prices go back up soon.
Go, Chinese drivers -- now in the world's largest economy! Drive now
while you still can! Ghawar is almost empty!
[Dec27,'14]
For the past few weeks, I have had a more-than-usual unsettled feeling
about the world economy. Given that my short-term predictive power is
less than zero, this probably means now is the time to BTFD. But here
goes. After a year of highly unwise US/NATO moves against Russia,
Russia and China (and the rest of the world) are finally responding with
rational, forward-looking, self-defensive moves, as documented by
Pepe
Escobar, who argues that we are seeing the beginnings of a
major rearrangement of world politics and trade. Unsettling.
China continues to build an entire USA's worth of coal electric
generation capacity every few years and plans to continue doing
this for the next decade. Unsettling because of the dizzying speed
of change, not to mention peak low-EROEI coal, or CO2 (I make no
moral judgement about UE/EU/UK energy use vs. Chinese energy use --
the laptop upon which I type was partly made using Chinese coal and
transported to the California using Chinese bunker oil in 2011).
The normally self-confident Dmitri Orlov seemed unsettled
a
week and half ago, writing about unloved central
bankers. The indirect, somewhat lagging indicator
of US's central bank policy that I often look at -- the monetary
BASE
seems to indicate that the Fed has stopped indirect money injections
into banks in October [update Dec30: now restarted!?], despite the lack
of any feeling of recovery for regular people (i.e., not including
those who can buy and sell 3 million dollars houses, expensive
cars, and invest in 'art'). The spread between the cost of debt
(=money) in the US versus emerging markets is spiking rapidly
up.
But I always underestimate how high a 'wall of worry' can be
climbed. Last week, the rouble, though still depressed,
recovered
from the plunge Dmitri was talking about, perhaps as a result of
Russia's central bank spiking interest rates (or the simply the result
of vulture capital sloshing around the world's financial toilet).
And oil, which has dropped over 40% starting in July 2014, from
the rough $100 plateau it had been on since 2011, has
stopped
plummetting, at least for this week. Retail and food sales (plotted
on the same graph as BASE Fed graph above) have continued up (partly from
increased food prices, but now well above where they were before the
2008 crash). So I'm hoping that my feeling will pass and that another
2008-like crash is not about to start. After all, the operation of the
entire world is far too complex for one brain to really understand,
much less properly emotionally assess. The big picture, of which
I am *far* less uncertain about, is that there is still 15 years of
(moderately) happy motoring and happy gridding left. Even if there is
a 2008-like crash in 2016, there will be another 'recovery' after it.
Germany -- the world-leading paragon of renewable energy development --
after prematurely closing down several nuclear plants, commissioned more
lignite (hi CO2 output) coal-generating capacity in the past five years
than its current total usable wind and solar to date, in order to keep
its grid up (oh those dastardly 'coal lobbyists' -- i.e., the population
that wants a non-nuke-powered grid to always be up, even though wind and
solar turn off for part of every day). So I will carry on ignoring the
obvious signs of almost certain disaster beginning in about 15 years
(energy/climate/oceans/soil/minerals/water/food) as a result of our
catastrophic end-of-days attempt to continue increasing our numbers and
maintaining growth (1 million more vehicles every week after scrapping,
1.4 million new people a week after deaths, 87% of increase in primary
energy in 2014 from oil, natural gas, and coal) -- and continue re-reading
my quantum mechanics textbooks :-}
[Dec31,'14]
Well, the drooping BASE that I was blabbering
on about in the last post just jumped up big time (Fed graph
here),
suggesting that the Fed may have gotten back to another round of easing.
If so, this would be the start of the 5th round since 2008/2009, judging
by the four previous sharp upward deflections in BASE since then.
The latest jump (1/4 of a trillion dollars) was the largest ever jump
in the 2 week reporting cycle since the banking mess began in 2008
(for scale, from 2000 to 2008, BASE averaged about 3/4 of trillion
dollars, *in total*, and the average 2 week increase across 1985-2008
was 1/40 trillion dollars). Meanwhile, the economic confidence of
the average US-ian just went *up* to a new high (Gallup data
here
since the last recession. If you look at the price of oil in the previous
Fed graph link (plotted in blue, along with BASE in red), you can see that
the last time oil plummetted like this, it was followed in a few months
by chaos in the banking system (not considered to be causal last time).
It is worth noting that this time, other commodities such as iron ore have
also almost halved in price (iron ore didn't do that in 2008) as China
slows in the face of overbuilt ore supply, to levels below break-even
cost for a number of iron ore producers. Last time, the banking chaos
was 'fixed' by former Goldman Sach employee turned gov't advisor Hank
Paulson threatening the Congress into off-loading his banker cronies'
risky bets to the public, and zeroing interest rates for bankers, but not
for the public (because the risk of crony bankers f***ing up is less?! --
I don't think so). Perhaps the new boost is a preemptive response to the
oil price swoon. However, it is important to keep in mind that over the
next few decades as the entire humanized earth rides over peak net energy
of all kinds, peak soil and water, etc, it is going to be increasingly
difficult to use past performance as a predictor of future results;
it really *will* really be different this time. So taking a contrarian
view of all of this (e.g., assuming that whatever people are smoking,
it has allowed them to accurately see into the future :-} ), maybe this
means: don't worry, be happy -- new year!
[Jan02,'15]
I listened to and read some things by Susan Krumdieck (for example,
this video),
which made me feel a little less schizophrenic. I also enjoyed this very
informative
VICE
video on how sewage is currently treated in New York :-}
[Jan11,'15]
It looks like Gladio II (cf. 1980 Bologna
train station) has resumed (small event in Germany
today)
to keep peoples' eyes off the ball. Here are some aspects of 'the ball'.
Oil price remain well below the break-even price for a lot of fracked
tight oil. One explanation for the low price (e.g., Ron Patterson)
is that the increase in demand/usage grew just slightly slower than was
expected in 2014, relative to still-slightly-increasing 'all liquids'
supply (however much low EROEI stuff that may contain). This was
explained in part by lower Chinese demand increases starting in 2014. But
a 'glut' consisting of a 1% oversupply of something that is burned at the
rate of 1000 barrels a *second* wouldn't normally justify a precipitous
50% drop in its price, so these small supply/demand variations must be
being amplified by the broken/criminal/parasitic banking/derivatives/swaps
'industry' (Chris Cook). There is also the fact that quantitative
easing 'eased' right around the time oil started to go down (
Art
Berman). In any case, oil companies are desperately trying to
dump their subprime leases (e.g., undrilled leases that require
oil at over $100-$120 *and* interest rates near zero for capital
expenditures) in order to raise cash to keep up their debt service,
and they are madly retiring drilling rigs (as in halving the number
of drilling rigs in one month). A few months of this will result
in the loss of 250,000 (high-paying) jobs in 8 states as frackers
begin to go bankrupt (40% of the jobs created in the US since
2009 were in energy, not to mention the closer-to-home fact that
pensions have invested in these fracked oil junk bonds). The bad debt
here has been estimated to be as much as $2 trillion, perhaps
twice
the size of the real estate subprime mess that was the
trigger for 2008. This is easily enough real money to blow up
derivatives/hedging/insurance in a similar manner to what happened
in 2008. This could lead to another mini-depression, which could
suppress demand enough to keep oil low for a while. But I *do* agree
with Art Berman and Ron Patterson (to use Ron's analogy) that while
all the parasitic banker games can cause the water skier (oil prices)
to temporarily sway left and right, the boat pulling the water skier
(supply/demand) eventually calls the shots. Oil price is unlikely to stay
down for very long (i.e., more than a year) when people burn the stuff
at 1000 barrels/sec and when the companies that are developing the new
supplies -- which deplete faster than older wells and which require more
energy/money input to return the same amount of envery -- are rapidly
going bankrupt. Another problem was to distract people from the fact
that EU-ian's have been drifting away from supporting the US/UK (plus EU
administration) anti-Russian sanctions and pro-Ukrainian-Nazi military,
as the south of Europe and Ukraine continue to implode financially, and as
sanctions impact German and French industry. No wonder Germany and France
needed their Gladio II terror booster shots! The Charlie event was just
two days after France suggested dropping Russian sanctions on 5 Jan 2014.
Germany (Sigmar Gabriel, Frank-Walter Steinmeier) had said something
similar over the past few weeks as well. Now all that 'foolish talk'
(including recognizing Palestine) is completely out of the news and the
zombified French public has staggered out into the squares for mindless
'two minutes of hate' marches to protest the French 9/11. They all
conveniently forgot about France leading the charge to destroy Libya.
Ukraine? where's that? [Jan13 update: now complete with a
'Saddam
statue' Potemkin moment!] [Jan18 update: and a
Photoshop
out the immodest women (e.g., Merkel)
moment.] [Jan20 update: and now Hollande's popularity
skyrockets,
just like Bush after the 9/11 disaster]
[Jan19,'15]
A sad day today as major warfare has resumed in Ukraine with an attack
by Poroshenko's nearly bankrupt US/NATO/UK/EU-supported Kiev puppet
government on the Donetsk region.
[Jan23,'15]
It's all about smoothing (Bob Turner was always against smoothing, but
we really need some now :-} ). The current oil price swoon (more than a
50% reduction in price) is due in good part to a 'glut' of only 1-2%.
In the old days, it wouldn't have been possible to pile in and out
of fracking quite as quickly, from both an equipment point of view as
well as a banking/finance/debt point of view. By becoming more 'agile'
in some *but not all* aspects of the oil business, the free market is
causing ever more precipitous declines and rises. One thing in the
oil business that *is* smoothed is the output of a field. It can be
drilled and fracked relatively quickly, but then the production can't be
instantly shut off. Of course, a drilled well can be capped for later,
but in the context of wild price fluctuations, this is hard to do when
the bankers are knocking on the door. Because the oil can't be gotten
out instantly, and because it's hard to store large quantities of it, and
because drillers (and Saudi!) can't afford to cap wells, the price can go
very far down with a trivial oversupply. The second thing that usually
doesn't change rapidly is demand. We are now essentially at 'peak all
liquids', running around 85 million barrels a day (different definitions
of what is included in 'all'). Therefore, it's likely that there we
will see several more spikes and plunges because of these relatively
trivial over- and under-supplies due to different smoothing in production,
banking/finance/debt versus demand. The current spikes/plunges have been
caused by relatively trivial over- and undersupply. But in 15 years
(2030), there will be a chronic undersupply that will be at least 20%
rather than a mere 1 or 2%. That's when the real problems for industrial
civilization start. The problems come of age in another 15 years after
that (2045) when chronic undersupply will probably be more like 50%
(or 70%) and there will be another another 1-2 billion people around
using declining oil to grow food and drive around. Any vaguely rational
person looking at ths situation -- which has been known in basic outline
for two to three *decades* -- should be seriously alarmed.
[Jan27,'15]
The pigmen seem to see things the same way I do. Here is one describing
his friends: "I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying
airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they
need a getaway" -- former hedge fund director Robert Johnson speaking
at Davos. Perhaps some of them are realizing just how close to the
bottom of
the barrel the world is. Take the contrast between Saudi, which has
on the order of 3000 oil wells, and produces about 2,000 to 3,000 barrels
per day *per well*, and the US, where there are over 500,000 wells (yes,
that's 150x as many wells as in Saudi) that produce about 10 barrels per
day *per well*. This is because 400,000 of those wells in the US are
'stripper' wells -- which are basically retired wells that need horse head
pumps ('real' oil wells don't need pumps) -- which produce an average
of less than 2 barrels a day per well. That's bottom of the barrel.
When the water has swept out that last bits of the oil from the Saudi
'oil sponge' formations like Ghawar, things will likely change more
rapidly than I would prefer. On the positive side, we have at least one
more decade of 'happy motoring' left before the S begins to HTF.
[Jan31,'15]
The Kiev Ukrainian attack on Donetsk does not seem to be
going well. The Ukraine Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces,
Viktor Muzhenko, went on teevee to say the Russian invasion
was a hoax. That is, the US/EU justification for sanctions
on Russia is a hoax. Meanwhile, the conscripts (cannon
fodder) that the Kiev NATO junta wants to send into the grinder
to try to kill their countrymen and women and children are
fleeing...
to the Russian side. Real war is gruesome. There are always these
fake pious warnings on videos that show what it actually looks like,
but no pious warnings from the politicians or the people who call for
blood from their safe harbours.
[Feb08,'15]
A few days ago, Steve McNamara, the head of the London Licensed Taxi
Drivers Association, said that the "zealots of the cycling world"
are the "ISIS of London". Kewl. I presume that means that those
cyclists must now be armed with US weapons and supported by the CIA.
Now *that* should change the balance of power! (I've cycled in London
twice a day for 8 years). But seriously, this would all change if the
rules were changed to be like they are in Germany or other places.
If a cyclist hits a pedestrian, it's always the cyclist's fault; if
a car hits a pedestrian or a cyclist, it's always the car's fault.
It changes the balance of power without heavy weaponry. Meanwhile,
net increase in global light vehicles (new minus vehicles scrapped)
remains at more than one million additional vehicles per week along
with almost one a half million new people this week (again births minus
deaths). The US has just shut down over 1/4 of their drilling rigs
in a few months (image from Ron Patteron's peakoilbarrel.com
here).
What could possibly go wrong?
[Feb20,'15]
Another female cyclist was killed by a lorry
(=truck) today at a poorly designed
death trap
junction in London today. This is the fourth cyclist killed in less than
2 months during which a total of 29 people were killed by motorized
vehicles, most of the fatalities pedestrians (it's actually more
dangerous to walk than cycle in London because for a given distance,
you are exposed to angry/inattentive car drivers for a longer time).
Thankfully, Scotland Yard has been motivated to reintroduce its
"highway safety
operation" which included ticketing cyclists for "cycling on footpaths
and jumping red lights" (those would be the survivors) and drivers for
"driving without insurance and not wearing a seatbelt" (to protect
them when they're driving over cyclists?). That should fix the problem!
Health and safety, don't you know? It's tough cycling in London in
the time of peak oil. If I see a lorry/truck approaching, I often jump
up on the pavement (=sidewalk). Go ahead and ticket me Scotland Yard
(tho I always walk my bike on the sidewalk). The chance of me killing
a pedestrian is nil and I get to live to see another day. Cyclists make
up a full quarter of the morning rush hour, while freight makes up
only slightly more than a quarter. Clearly, in the time of peak oil,
current laws rate freight as more important than human lives. Who the
terr'ist now? British car culture still essentially views cyclists as
utter vermin. The attitudes of drivers here sometimes remind me of the
US in the early 1960's.
[Mar02,'15]
Despite getting older and somewhat wiser, I never ceased to be amazed
that "it always works": the Charlie Hebdo event has now raised Francois
Holland's popularity from an abysmal 8% before the event to 50% now!
I would say, "whatever", except that in the current tenuous economic
environment (you'd never know it from bull-to-bear indices which are at
record levels), the easily duped western public is unknowingly much more
dangerously close to the possibility of falling into all-out fascism --
triggered by a big economic dip and a few more 'events' -- than it has
been in a long time. It will be increasingly critical now to able to
de-fuse/ignore the next (and the next after that, and the next after the
next) false flag events if we are to make it past peak net energy mostly
in one piece. One thing to keep in mind is that if things turn really
sour, our *recovery* from fascism will not be able to look forward to
a perfect exponential increase in oil and natural gas usage like what
happened last time in the 1950's to put things back together. People will
have to get wiser (or not). It's possible! For example, the Russians
have wised up: even the 'liberals' avoided blaming the Kremlin in the
lastest provocation.
[Mar10,'15]
The CIA-Maidan-coup/IMF/banker/Nuland/F-the-EU plan for Ukraine suffered
a decisive defeat over the past month. I wonder what the sociopaths will
think up next. If it's like Iraq and Libya (and all the rest), they will
merely leave behind the hollowed-out, scorched, smoking wreckage of dead
bodies, ruined lives and buildings, a ruined economy, inflamed ethnic
hatreds, and then point their bloodstained noses and fingers elsewhere.
Though it has rarely happened, I can always dream that eventually,
somewhere, there will be a day of reckoning. I wonder what Paul Vickers
(uauk) thinks of the situation now. He cheered at the beginning (maybe
partly forced?), but fell completely silent on the topic over the past
6 months. The lethal game isn't over. Yesterday, the US began military
exercises in the Black Sea.
[Mar13,'15]
Zerohedge had a useful explanatory byline for "IMG approves $17.5
billion Ukraine bailout", namely, Greek pensioners are now paying
the IMF, which is paying Kiev, which is paying Gazprom, which
is paying Putin. Just imagine if Nuland hadn't created the
vicious
current reality of Nulandistan in the first place. The money could
have been used so more productively, with so much less toxic ethnic
hatred now permanently cooked into the stew. The western reporting on the
situation is as scary as it is childish (et tu, Steve from Virginia?! --
perhaps once central always central [intel]). Russia has responded
that they have working nukes and that the US shouldn't engineer coups
and then parade around 10 feet from the Russian border. Hopefully,
somebody will get the Strange/Breedlove's under control before something
really bad happens. Hey, we've got some oceans to empty, some acquifers
to contaminate, and half of the remaining harder-to-get fossil fuel
to deplete -- real work to do that a useless WWIII would get in the
way of!
[Mar26,'15]
Russian/US war games along the Russian border continue after the recent
temporary public absence of Putin. Poroshenko dismisses Kolomoiskii.
But Kolomoiskii has more than $1 billion dollars, is the employer of the
US vice president's son, Hunter Biden, and seems nonplussed as he raises
a private army to march to Kiev. I hope Paul Craig Roberts is wrong.
Eric Zuesse says: it's worrying when even Stephen Cohen is alarmed :-/
Looks like an all out invasion of Yemen (150,000 Saudi troops) has begun,
after the Houthis finally managed to toss out the US supported puppet.
The Mighty Wurlizter has an entirely different spin on this than it
had in Ukraine, where a US supported puppet was installed by a coup.
I must admit that I find it hard to imagine an effective invasion of
Saudi troops. Now, beheading, that I could see (oh, I forgot, friends
don't mention friends' little fetishes).
[Mar29,'15]
As I read Raul Ilargi Meijer's daily summaries of the thoughts of
economists and businessmen in Automatic Earth, I remain stunned at
how willfully blind they can be. It's obvious that economic and
business (and human biological) growth requires increased net energy.
By considering the past century of growth over a long enough time
window to average out the noise (e.g., 25 years), it's pretty clear
that 'economic' growth, human population growth, food growth, water
growth, etc, have all remained on approximately the same curve as the
growth of available net energy. All those other growths obviously
depend directly on energy (one barrel of oil equals
one year of
hard labor by a human; Americans currently access 25 barrels per
capita -- 25 twenty-four-seven servants per person). If the *energy
cost* of getting a given amount of net energy goes up, how could
this *possibly* be ignored when considering future economic growth?
Or population/food growth? Or growth in laying concrete? Yet with
all our immense summed knowledge, most people still have the luxury of
ignoring it. Primitive people *didn't* ignore this! After cultural
memories of having run into hard limits, every person, every joe sixpack,
intimately understood the relation between energy and starvation and
growth and stasis. That's what infanticide is about. That, perhaps,
is what
Easter
Island statues were for (before the islanders were mostly wiped
out by European diseases and slave traders -- correcting the wrong
Easter Island story I previously parroted above, in 2005, from Jared
Diamond). Sometimes I have wondered whether things could have turned
out differently if the caches of stored energy we found hadn't been so
concentrated, so that resulting growth wasn't as rapid. But I think
the problem is not just the rate of growth but also the mere continuity
of it. Our supercharged-by-science industrial civilization has simply
only seen growth in net energy availability and energy usage. Also,
by increasing the physical connectedness of the globe, our system
has been able to massively smooth out the bumps that would have been
experienced by a small neolithic tribe. The world has experienced 250
hundred years of continuous growth, from a population of 0.8 billion
people in 1765 to almost 10 times that many people (7.3 billion) today.
The most striking spike in the rate of growth occurs between
1910
and 1960, a graph taken from
this
post by Javier (his climate stuff is hopelessly bad, though
he is absolutely correct that a new glaciation would also be real bad).
This almost exactly coincides with the exponential increase in oil usage.
An important point he makes is that this happened *before* the green
revolution). As total net energy has flattened over the past decade
and readies its decline, many things that assume continuous growth
will break (and are already breaking). For example, our current money
system wasn't designed to work in the context of de-growth. But the
noise on most of the Matrix-like internet sounds the same as the last
year, even as energy growth flattens before everybody's eyes
in
plain sight! China reached peak coal in 2014! (that's sooner than
even I expected :-} N.B.: world peak coal probably not until around
2025). I now think that most of internet talk will never change, all
the way down, until we have 'grown' our way all the way back under one
billion :-} It *is* worrisome to consider is that as energy constriction
starts to reduce global commerce and connectedness (perhaps this
sudden
drop in manufacturers' orders is reflecting the beginning of another
major contraction), it will also reduce the amount of spatial smoothing,
leading to more spiky local outcomes. I hope I don't end up in the
middle of a spike in 15 years; but I have no idea of how to surely
avoid that!
[Apr08,'15]
I just came across
this
interview with William Catton. I got to it
from a short article on Ron Patterson's blog
here.
Catton wrote a prescient book in the mid 70's (finally published in 1980)
on human overshoot. At the time of the interview, he was was 82 (he died
in January of this year). Despite the topic, I was highly impressed at
his young and cheery attitude toward life! I need to learn a thing or
two from him! Collapse now and avoid the rush! (archdruid)
[Apr10,'15]
According to the EIA
blogged
here by Brad Plumer, world carbon emission apparently went flat in
2014, while economic growth apparently continued at 3%. Keeping in mind
that these numbers are often revised, some have concluded that we have
finally decoupled growth from energy. I have mixed feelings about that
since I think that humanity is well into a huge overshoot, and the last
thing we need is more growth. If we have saved some fossil fuel that
would have otherwise been wasted, that's good. But back to the numbers.
This could reflect the sudden flattening of oil and coal usage by the
Chinese in 2014 -- in the case of oil, probably the main cause of the
(temporary) oil price swoon. This could be something like the sudden
flattening of vehicle miles driven in the US that happened 8 years ago
2008. If you ask most people, I would bet they would *not* say that they
felt like they experienced 3% growth in 2014. Real wages have gone down
in the US and the number of people 'not in the workforce' has continued
up, even as 'employment' numbers have somehow simultaneously increased.
Certainly the bank accounts of some pigmen have grown, and some of that
counts as 'growth'. I think the most likely reality is that the growth
number was somewhat overestimated (or was biased by bulging pigmen
bank accounts), and the fossil fuel use was somewhat underestimated
(e.g., Beijing air didn't seem to be getting better). It won't be
possible to know if we are in a new steady-state-like regime for at
least a few years (at least until a flat top appears in the Mauna Loa
graphs
here
-- which it hasn't yet -- for a few years). But as Kurt Cobb has
suggested, perhaps this means that we are getting close to the end
of growth, and not from want of trying to keep it going. Now if
we could just stop adding 2 entire California's worth of new people
to the finite Earth every year! If you look at the graphs of
predicted
temperature curves from the Plumer vox article, you can see the 4 IPCC
scenarios: RCP-8.5, RCP-6, RCP-4.5 and RCP-2.6. Since the IPCC has used
the ridiculously cornucopian cargo-cult-like remaining available fossil
fuel estimates of the EIA (same guys Plumer was referencing), IPCC calls
the RCP 2.6 pathway the "strong mitigation" pathway. I think that that
pathway only slightly underestimates how much net energy positive fossil
fuel we will manage to find and use. "Strong mitigation" will happen,
even as everybody tries their hardest to not mitigate. Thus, though I
think human-induced climate change is bad, I think two California's a year
of additional mouths to feed/clothe/sewer/house/electrify/vehicle/iPhone
together with not enough energy/food/water/soil/fish will arrive first as
a much bigger problem. 3D printers won't help. Then after that hits,
we will have to deal with additional, mostly bad effects of climate
change. All the more reason to begin detailed, eyes-open planning for
degrowth now! Just because we are heading toward collapse, there is *no*
reason not to do it with grace and style :-}
[Apr17,'15]
A great quote from Albert Einstein: "He who joyfully marches to music in
rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large
brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This
disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at
command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how
violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would
rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my
conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act
of murder."
[May08,'15]
Most of the workers in Saudi oil fields are
Yemenese.
What could possibly go wrong?
[May09,'15]
"If the Brits want to be governed and gutted by the same people who
raised the number of foodbanks the way they have, by a factor of
seven in five years, and who fabricated the pretense of a functioning
economy by blowing the biggest bubble in British history in selling
off London town to monopoly money printing Chinese, Russian expat
oligarchs and other such impeccable and blameless world citizens, if
that’s what the Brits want, then let them have it." -- from
Raul
Ilargi Meijer.
[May21,'15]
It's nice to report good news sometime! Secretary of State,
John Kerry seems to have changed tack on Ukraine: "If indeed
President Poroshenko is advocating an engagement in a forceful
effort at this time [an attack on Donbass or Crimea], we would
strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of
activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy." (toward
the bottom of a May 12 press conference transcribed
here).
Nuland seems to have been sidelined, and Obama seems to be
withdrawing support from the increasingly psychotic Nazi junta
in Kiev. The US/UK coup in Ukraine seems to be grinding down,
and Ukraine is heading for default. Nuland's work is done --
another country utterly trashed for the forseeable future (cf. Iraq,
Syria, Libya, Yemen) by 'democracy'. Now she's on to
Macedonia.
[May24,'15]
Reading
this
article by F. William Engdahl prompted me to look back at how I
was thinking ten years ago (in 2004) after the saturation coverage
at the time of the Russian assault in Beslan that killed over 300 of
the hostages, including almost 200 children. I don't think I quite
had it right back then. Of course, I still think the killing was
horrible; but at the time, I didn't fully understand the context or
the involvement of Saudi, NATO, and the US vs. Russia. Despite one's
best efforts at objectivity, one can never underestimate how much one's
mind can be controlled. As hard as I try, I feel I am often 5 years
behind what is actually happening at the present moment. Closer to the
present, two weeks ago, it appears that the Macedonain police
successfully interrupted a
coup attempt manned by former Kosovo Liberation Army members who were
likely planning to execute a Macedonian Maidan (shooting at both sides).
The Macedonian government held off this particular assault, but no
doubt there are several more already in the works. It's easier to break
things than to make things, so time is on the side of the psychotics.
Look at the utter shambles made of Syria. And speaking of 'not getting
it right', look at what the 'left' said about Syria when the when the
chips were down a few years ago (Tariq Aziz etc). Few have admitted
how badly they were hoodwinked.
[Jul02,'15]
Uber is currently valued at $50 billion. This year Uber spent about
$1 billion but it took in only about $0.5 billion ($0.5 billion loss).
I know, this is all just because the company is not big enough yet :-}
In other 'tech' news, digital blackmail company Yelp (threaten businessess
with bad reviews if they don't advertise on your 'service' -- similar to
the way Google charges to put your link higher) has fallen on hard times
(not really, just 10% stock drop) after not finding a buyer.
[Jul04,'15]
My first instinct on the Greek vote is to
say, Go "No"! Walk like an Icelander!
Here is a summary
in that vein from Steve Waldman. For a different view, see
William
Engdahl) on "what stinks" about Varoufakis. Though
Engdahl comments on execrable Greek oligarchs and Syriza's
turning down of the Russian deal, he doesn't mention the role of
austerity in bailing out French and German banks' subprime, or
Goldman
Sachs in setting up the new 'debt intruments'
(most oligarchs in the world are not Greek),
though he surely must know. Five months ago,
Wayne
Madsen noted Varoufakis' connections with Soros, and described him
as a 'Soros Trojan horse'. I don't much trust my ability to understand
what is going on with such a torrent of disinfo; I am often several
years behind the curve. But this doesn't mean that all the actors
know what they are doing either. Mistakes get made. For reference,
Greece GDP is 2% of the EU. One thing to consider is that many other
potential banker victims (Portugal, Spain, Italy) will be eyeing the
proceedings; and together, they are a lot more than 2% of the EU. Thus,
the ongoing events have potential for amplification. Just having a vote
at all could alter the psychology of the situation. Engdahl is arguing
that Syriza is like Obama -- something that lets off steam but doesn't
change anything substantial, and in fact furthers the banker crackdown
on poorer people. Maybe so. Perhaps a "No" vote will just set up an
example of upcoming destruction for the other southerners to be afraid of,
especially since a lot of destruction of Greece by austerity has
already
happened! (graph from FT's Robin Wigglesworth). I will have to
wait to see what happens next since I can't guess. While Greece etc
was happening, the Chinese stock market has declined 25% in a week,
a loss which is equivalent to 10x the Greek GDP, and which bankrupted
many a Chinese street vendor and hairdresser (80-90% of Chinese stock
market is retail investors). I imagine the money guys are getting that
cannibalistic feeling again.
[Jul05,'15]
Examining how my expectations failed, the
Greek vote was "No" but by a much larger margin
than I was expecting. Then Varoufakis immediately
resigns
after a "No" vote (what he wanted, and on his own referendum),
which I was definitely not expecting. It suggests that he
will be replaced by a technocrat more willing to continue the
gutting
of Greece that begun way back in 2010. This *does* lean in favor of
the Engdahl view of Varoufakis as an Obama-like just-let-off-steam
kind of guy. It is also telling that the stock markets and currency
markets were remarkably calm, which is also not what I was expecting
(which is why I would be such a poor businessman). It remains to
see what will happen in the shadow banking system, and there is very
little public information about it, despite it manipulating sums much
larger than the ones referred to on teevee (tens of trillions of euro
derivatives vs. the total Greek debt of about a third of a trillion).
None of my uncertainty about predicting the outcome of distracting
'noise', however, makes me any less confident of assessments of the
coming 'long emergency' energy crisis -- and the guess that it will hit
big before climate change does. This is similar to the 'global warming
hiatus', which climate scientists regard as several-year-duration 'noise'
-- patently obvious from looking at locally noisy (i.e., in the 2-5 year
range) historical temperature records.
[Jul06,'15]
I just read the 2012 book
"The
Energy of Slaves" by Andrew Nikiforuk. It is a detailed, morose,
and well written book (historical first half is better), which really
opened my eyes to the early history of thinking about fossil fuel resource
depletion. I was already familiar :-} with the basic facts of current
depletion, and the
human
(slave) equivalent of a barrel of oil a decade ago. In rough outline,
Nikiforuk shows how fossil fuels initially substituted for human slaves,
then ballooned up to the level now of more than 400 effective slaves
per person in the US, transforming daily, life, housing, and work.
But I *was* surprised to see how many writers there were -- at the very
beginning of the exponential ramp up in energy usage around 1900 --
that almost completely understood the problem of eventual fossil fuel
energy depletion! In some respects, those people were even *more* aware
of it than 'enlightened' people today because they had better memories
of what it was like when human slaves performed those functions, and
more awareness of the contrast with how much more raw power fossil
fuels afforded. In this context, Hubbert's 1956 presentation to
the American Petroleum Institute was simply a restatement of what
was known from the beginning of the oil age. Looking coldly at the
simple math of population and energy, it's clear that the only humane
way we could have avoided the sh!tstorm on the way in about 15 years
would have been to have stabilized population *at the very beginning*
of the energy ramp up! The problem with doing it later is that if
people have a lot less kids -- N.B. they are already doing that! --
you end up with too many old people, because humans live a long time.
On the other hand, a more 'balanced' reduction in population only happens
with mass starvation, epidemics, or nuclear war. To merely *stabilize*
the population now at 7 billion would require an increased death rate
equivalent to that during WWI, the 'Spanish' flu (the biggie), Stalin,
WWII, and Mao, all put together, every year, for decades. As I said
above (8 years ago), discussing the very same thing, bummer. None of
this is to dispute the rapid rate of improvement in computer software
and technology. For example, look at Chris Urmson demonstrating
Google
self-driving cars. Totally amazing. None of the individual parts
of the system are new (laser range finders, computer-based video object
recognition and tracking, dynamics simulation, AI), but faster CPU's and
better software have made it possible to actually make this all work
quite well in real time. Self-driving cars -- and self-driving tanks
and cop cars -- will probably be ready for the market within a decade
-- just in time for the determined downslope in world oil production.
I agree with Roger Dupere in the comments: "Interesting to see all the
work involved in creating a driver-less car. I wonder why we don’t spend
as much energy to create a society that doesn’t need as many cars. We
need to rethink our cities so that fewer people would use cars, cities
created with the priority on peoples instead of cars." And it's ironic
to see Chris Urmson opening his talk by dissing public transportation
(example of a blind guy) because it's constraining, but then going on
later in the talk to describe people making decisions (drivers) as the
problem -- a problem that can be fixed by taking away their ability
to make decisions. Or as another commentator said: "I'm sorry Dave,
I can't take you to McDonalds".
[Jul07,'15]
A day later,
it's
pretty clear that the referendum was basically a psychological
operation 'morality tale' to distract attention from the previous
and continuing gutting of regular people in Greece (and Italy and
Spain and Germany). It will probably get even worse from here.
This will be on top of the effects of 5 years of misdirected
austerity, which since 2010, has shrunk Greek GDP by 25%, raised
unemployment to 25%, and raised youth unemployment to 50% --
all while the lucky Greeks that still have a job put in the
longest
working hours of people in any country of the EU. In 2010, just
before the first Greek bailout, and before the Greek economy cratered,
French banks managed to transfer their huge exposure to Greece to the
German, Italian, and Spanish publics.
And Goldman Sachs, who arranged the
complex
derivative deals in 2010 that concealed the extent of the bad
loans that were to be made to Greece, profitted well from that bit of
"God's work". The Greek pensioners will be effectively be paying
for those executive bonuses for the next 10 years. By the time
the pensioners have done all their paying, they will have had not
the slightest idea of where all the money went to. Average people
don't understand how banks simply create the money for a loan out
of the void at the moment the loan is given, and then are given the
right to charge interest for the created money. Similarly, I doubt
even Greek pensioners standing in line to get 50 euros from the ATM
could actually believe how their pension haircut will essentially
be paying for a Goldman Sachs executive salary several years ago.
As Henry Ford said: "It is well enough that people of the nation do
not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I
believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning". Sadly, the
operations on Greece look like a somewhat larger version of the
economic
terrorism described in detail by John Perkins' 2004 "Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man". Now, after an initial debt strangulation
of average Greeks by bankers has resulted in an unexpectedly
strong "No" from the people, it might be time for a
Greek
'Maidan' (i.e., a coup; see also
here). I wish I could rekindle
the admiration for humans I had in my youth. But I haven't arrived at
the last stage, when I don't wish!
[Jul08,'15]
Two days later, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that Tsipras was not
expecting the "No" vote when Syriza called for the referendum! A Trojan
horse after all. Tsipras just agreed today to another round of austerity
in return for a 3-year bailout, just a day after the vote to *NOT*
do this clearly supports the Trojan horse assessment. No means Yes.
Paul Craig Roberts has a clear suggestion of what happens next
here.
The EU is forced to back down a bit on looting the south (N.B.: mainly
as a result of the "No" vote!) in order to avoid any Greek turn toward
Russia so that the "f... the EU" US will be able to maintain pressure
on Russia via NATO. Tsipras will heed (has already heeded) the implied
Maidan/assassination threat and will take the deal. Since 2007, Greece
has reduced its oil consumption by 1/3. This will likely continue,
whether or not Greece withdraws from the Euro.
[Jul12,'15]
Well, the prediction in the prev post looks utterly wrong, just a few
days later! Germany and Finland seem to be setting up a Greek exit,
which will probably be disastrous for the Greek 99%. This, after Tsipras
proposed something to the Germans that was actually worse for Greece than
what had just been turned down at the polls. It is worth remembering
that Europeans fought *two* giant, catastrophic wars in the 20th century,
with only 23 years between them.
[Jul13,'15]
Well, yet another day-old prediction in the prev post itself looks utterly
wrong :-} The new 'deal' is that the Germans will get $50 billion worth of
Greek banks, Greek airports, Greek airplanes, Greek islands in return for
more Greek pension cuts (already cut 50%), and salaries paid with IOU's.
Those Europeans sure know how to live it up! (e.g., German and French
banks whose 2010 Greek loans were bailed out by European taxpayers --
that is, most of the bailout went to banks, not the Greek people).
I can't imagine other 'Europeans' will have even the slightest second
thoughts about the benefits of a European monetary union (Spanish,
Italian, Portuguese, and Irish debts are roughly $1 trillion each).
The $100 billion euro Greek problem debt of 2010 has been turned by
austerity into a $325 billion euro Greek problem debt today ($250
billion to Troika, $75 billion to banks). Go bankers! It is hard to
imagine the knicker twist that derivatives must be in, in order to push
eurocrats into demanding such humiliation! What a blizzard of psyops!
Each additional week of Troika strangulation of Greek banks increases
the needed (bank!) bailout by $10 billion. Southern Europe is turning
into Latin American disaster capitalism shock doctrine.
[Jul14,'15]
84% of the world population subsists on $20 per day ($7,300/year).
One way they do that is by using *a lot* less energy per capita (e.g.,
1/10 or 1/20 as much as EU/UK/US). A 'demographic transition' based
on bringing that 84% up partway to the per capita energy usage of the
EU/UK, the US, or Canada (top of the heap because it's also extra cold
there) would require sucking out most the remaining EROEI positive
fossil on the Earth fuel in less than two decades -- which is not
even physically possible. So this won't happen in a decade, or even
two decades, which is why the population will probably reach 9 billion
before it starts going down. We are outgassing CO2 at a rate
comparable
to the rate at which CO2 is estimated to have outgassed from the Siberian
traps, which together with outgassed sulfur (which thankfully we are
*not* outgassing in a big way), caused all life on Earth to almost go
extinct at the end of the Permian. Ironically, one of the mechanisms of
CO2 production at the end of the Permian was probably sudden burning of
buried fossil fuels due to heat from flood volcanism. This is beginning
to sound more and more like the sci fi novels I read as a teenager.
Bummer. But on the bright side, the CO2 outgassing at the end of the
Permian lasted for 10 or 100 times longer than we could manage even
if the most conucopian estimates of remaining fossil fuels were true
(they aren't). Always look on the bright side of life! Also, outright
worldwide energy shortages are still at least 15 years away.
[Jul14b,'15]
There are now more Syrian refugees (11 million) than Palestinian
refugees.
[Jul19,'15]
When a private bank makes a loan (say, to Greece),
it simply creates the credit-money electronically,
from the void (clearly described here in this
PDF,
straight from the horse's mouth -- the Bank of England). Then afterwards,
it may or may not have to juggle 'reserves' according to 'requirements',
but these can change on a whim. For example, European banks are now
levered above something like 30 to 1 (i.e., an effective 'reserve'
'requirement' of 3%). This means that a small amount of investments
gone bad (say in Greece, which is 2.5% GDP of total EU) can cause
bankruptcy (which literally meant breaking the banker's table where the
bankers did their deals). Creating money/debt costs the bank virtually
nothing (woohoo, they have to maintain an electronic money database).
They are supposed to be paid for picking borrowers that are likely
to pay it back, but they demand collateral (for example, your house)
to ensure this. Then the borrower has to repay the loan to the bank
with interest. When the principle gets paid back to the bank, the
created money effectively disappears back into the void from whence
it came. But the bank gets to keep the interest. Since banks don't
create any extra money for the interest payments, this system requires
constant expansion (getting money to pay the interest from money/debt
creation elsewhere). This system obviously won't work in the steady
state. If we don't take this ability -- to create money from the void
and then charge interest for it -- away from private banks, energy
descent will be even worse than it has to be. (N.B.: a contraction is
even worse than steady state). As Steve Ludlum just said
"The
banks have a death grip on us and our life-support system". I'm
embarrassed it took me so long to understand how this simple scam works.
The issuance of our medium of exchange needs to be taken out of private
hands, for the betterment of humanity. Money doesn't talk, it
swears
(Bob Dylan) -- as explained colorfully in
No plan
B by Reverse Engineer :-} The lack of understanding of the direct
connection between energy and growth is breathtaking. Money doesn't
cause growth -- energy does. Fixing the money system won't fix growth
(we are near the end of growth); but it could make life past the end of
growth a little more pleasant.
[Jul21,'15]
Why is the EU failing? Here is the best
overall summary I have read: a great piece by
Nicole
Foss at the Automatic Earth. The first problem is that
keeping the EU intact would require continuing transfers between
members. This is even apparent to BloombergView (in a piece by
Eric
Beinhocker). In the US, 28 states sent 2.3% of their GDP to the
other 22 states (this is because, e.g., the average Connecticut citizen
makes almost $40K a year while the average Mississipian makes just
over $20K a year -- almost the difference between Germany and Greece).
By contrast, the German contribution to the EU budgets was 0.2% of
its GDP and Greece received 0.2% of its GDP. Northern Europeans don't
realize how much money flows between US states, but more importantly,
would never agree to something vaguely similar (e.g., True Finns),
even if it would help them to compete against the US in the long run.
The problem is, that contrary to received opinion, Europeans are simply
too rayciss' for them to imagine being able to do the same thing!
More racist than Americans! It is unlikely that EU integration will
increase; rather, as the world energy/economy contraction continues,
things are very likely to come further apart. There are likely to be
additional episodes of "When German and French banks -- and
Goldman
Sachs -- attack". The primary underlying cause of current
situation was the enormous bubble in subprime Greek credit
emitted by shadow banking system of Germany and France --
not something under any direct control of the EU. There is a
mind-boggling
competition for rich people's money between left Greek politicians
trying to collect unpaid Greek taxes and shadow banks: having the
Greek government collecting taxes from deadbeat Greek shipping tycoons
actually cuts into shadow bank profits -- so the banks are *against* it!
This is an outright war on regular people by banks -- N.B.: including
war on middle-class German citizens, who have seen their purchasing
power erode! This is partly because the previous 2010 tranche of
failing private shadow banking loans are already being bailed out
by the publics of Germany, France, Italy, Greece. The big banks are
basically pulling a 'Latin America' -- on Germans, not just Greeks!
In the worse-off periphery, continuing austerity in Greece will have no
positive effect. It will further degrade the local economy, is already
prompting businesses to move out, and is a sure road to explicit default
and Grexit. The trust between EU countries, which itself wasn't enough
to allow true integration, is in the process of being irreparably damaged.
What a gigantic clusterf...! (except for those with the cash to
snap
up a few islands).
[Jul28,'15]
Overall number check-in: world GDP is $50 trillion, while nominal
derivatives and swaps are now up to $1.5 quadrillion (i.e., $1500
trillion, 30 times world GDP, or $225K per person, where the average
income is about $10K per year). This is 20% higher than 2008. The amount
of leverage in financial markets is insane. For example, Amazon announced
it made a profit for one quarter of about $90 million (0.4% of sales).
This promptly resulted in its market cap jumping by $40 *billion* in one
day -- that is, 500x the (unusual!) quarterly profit. The next day, the
market cap went down $20 billion. Amazon is a business that pays to ship
mostly very small products around in large vehicles using fossil fuel.
The amount of oil left doesn't change very quickly (a little less than
half left). We need *more* smoothing, not less smoothing for the end
of the age of moar!
[Aug06,'15]
As a result of low oil prices, vehicle miles driven has decisively headed
back up in the US, in the UK, and the EU (well, not Greece). Americans
drive a total of about half a light year every year. Though things like
record low home ownership rates in the US suggest that people in the US
are being slowly priced out of housing, they are clearly not yet being
priced out of driving more (perhaps its a consequence of them being
priced out of nearby housing!). Meanwhile, in the US, also as a result
of these very same low oil prices (more than 50% drop), oil *production*
has started to decline as a result of the 'creative destruction' of
light tight oil companies. This is because the moderate increases
in light tight oil fracking output combined with a sudden drop-off
in oil usage by China in mid 2014, which combined with a flattening of
industrial oil usage to create a small (1-1.5%) surplus in oil production.
Starting in 2016, we are likely to see a tense race between declining oil
production as energy return on energy investment gets evenr worse, and
declining oil use as a result of economic contraction. Given that a 1%
under- or over-supply of oil causes ridiculously wild oil price swings,
which then causes wild fluctuations in driving, we are likely to be in
for a bumpy ride over the next 5 to 10 years. And this is even before
the decisive world downslope begins in earnest. The downslope is not
likely to be any less bumpy.
[Aug11,'15]
I'm just reading Olaf Stapledon's 1937
Star Maker now.
It makes me think back once again to E.M. Forster's 1909
The Machine
Stops in relation to teevee and the internet and amazon, or the
English propaganda lead-up to WWI and Edward Bernays in relation to the
American election and Google (an advertising company). The fact that 100
years ago, people could so clearly forsee where things were going suggests
a dreary inevitability of human technological and social development.
I never understood this as a young man; I would have dismissed it as
mistake in understanding philosophy, history, or evolutionary biology.
Even the iconic flying car -- something I used to make fun of above --
will finally happen in a fashion. True, it won't be the original idea
of a 1950's rocket-powered multi-ton steel-tail-fin car (like the ones
I would fly around by hand when I was a litle boy) somehow magically
levitated, but rather a light, lithium-battery-powered drone helicopter.
This doesn't mean that anything people (boys) think of must happen.
Thought is strongly contrained by actual physics. There will be no warp
drives, or human colonies on Mars. But many of our monkey dreams of
1900 have come true, powered by fossil fuels. Though cheap supplies
are gone, less fruitful deposits remain to power another decade or
two of the realization of monkey dreams. Then there will be the power
downslope, itself also already visible to the some people 100 years ago.
Amazing.
[Aug16,'15]
Brian Davey has a clear description of alternate/complementary
explanations for current stagnation
here. The general conclusion
is quite sensible: you can't have growth without growth in net energy.
Over time, as net energy decreases as a proportion of total energy
extracted, a large and larger proportion of gross extracted energy
is lost. All the major measures of energy production (oil production,
coal production, natural gas production, nuclear energy production) only
cite energy produced without also trying to measure or mention how much
energy was used during production -- fair enough, because this is much
harder to calculate. It can be indirectly estimated in various ways,
for example, using money. For example, Steve Kopits has calculated
capital expenditure per barrel of oil, which was approximately flat at
$5/barrel from 1985 to 2000, but then began to linearly increase at 10%
per year, reaching almost $20/barrel in 2015. Capital expenditure is a
very rough approximation to the critical information we want, which is
*energy* expenditure -- e.g., in real, fixed, physical, barrels-of-oil
units, not adjustable, printable money/debt/etc units) for each barrel of
oil produced. Over time, as that number goes up, there is less net energy
available for each nominal barrel of oil or ton of coal 'produced'. A lot
of discussion of peak oil focusses on peak raw crude oil production (which
happened 5 or 10 years ago), or on peak crude plus condensate [e.g.,
pentane] (which is happening now) or on peak 'all liquids' production
(which will probably happen in another few years). But we could already
be at peak *net energy* of 'all liquids' production, because a larger and
larger amount of energy is gradually going into producing each barrel.
And things like ethanol is included in 'all liquids' as a real barrel,
despite providing essentially *zero* net energy (since it has to be
distilled). In this context, it may not be surprising that growth has
stalled. Growth requires energy. Banks can print money (every time they
make a loan, by simply changing an entry in a database); but that doesn't
'print' real energy; retrieving real net energy uses up other chunks of
real net energy. Per capita energy use in the US/UK/EU has only been
'uncoupled from growth' via displacing the site of energy use elsewhere
(e.g., China). This is not a good argument that economic growth can
occur without net energy growth. The open question is: how fast will
the future downslope in *net energy* be? In 2004, I was expecting that
peak oil (crude+condensate) would be around 2008. In 2008, production
was 74 million barrels/day. But after a dip to 73 million barrels/day
in 2009, as light tight oil fracking came online, we have gotten back up
to almost 78 million barrels/day crude+condensate production, almost 5%
higher than what I thought would be the peak (I was a lot more accurate
than the EIA, which in 2004 predicted we would now be over 100 million
barrels/day, which was off by almost 30%). I enjoy being surprised this
way because it means life will be better than I was expecting :-}
[Aug21,'15]
"Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French President ... would drop a racist
line, to flirt with his electorate, but by bombing Libya he sent
more immigrants to France than any left-winger would." -- Israel
Shamir.
[Aug24,'15]
Box cutter on the TGV? Yeah right. Why not use a banana (Monty Python)?
Je suis C I A.
[Aug28,'15]
China has been dumping treasuries -- $0.21 trillion, some via Belgium
since the beginning of the year, with $0.11 trillion of that in just that
last 2 weeks (N.B.: "trillion") -- because it needs money. This has had
little visible effect on US bonds, so far, which probably means that
the Fed has been 'monetizing' this -- that is, buying them using Fed
credit/money, which comes out of the void. Perhaps indirect knowledge
of the danger of this going on for a long time this explains some of
the recent bout of fear and loathing in stock markets. China selling
treasuries can be described as 'reverse QE'. QE (quantitative easing)
is giving additional credit money to banks (created out of the void by
the Fed), which is *on top of* those banks' already-granted power to
create credit money from the void when they make a loan. The problem was
that banks couldn't find enough people to give their created money to,
and thus weren't able to stay solvent via interest payments on their
created-from-the-void money, because they made so many bad loans.
QE is now considered 'normal'. It has resulted in a catastrophic
transfer of wealth to already-ultra-rich people. So far, the amount
of US treasuries sold is not yet huge. Total outstanding treasuries
are around $30 trillion, so China's selling is still under 1% of this.
China's total holdings are 3% of the total. But Saudi, the biggest holder
of sovereign wealth fund assets (not in the treasuries total above),
has also begun selling dollars to cover domestic spending because of
lowered revenue from lower oil prices. Adding together various oil
exporters, there is the potential for dumping several trillion dollars
of the $7 trillion in sovereign wealth funds to raise local cash (for
scale, the market capitalization of Apple plus Google plus Microsoft
plus Facebook plus Amazon is about $2 trillion). This could have a
strong destabilizing effect (cf., a 2% oversupply of oil from fracking
combined with demand destruction, halved the price of oil).
[Aug31,'15]
Oil just lurched upward from $38 to $48 in two days. Who knows what
caused this. I certainly don't expect oil prices to be this low in
a year, but I have been wrong in the short term many times before.
But I'm very sure about the long term. The long term is that energy
return on energy investment for fossil fuels is inexorably going down,
and that this will affect everthing made from fossil fuels, including
renewable energy devices -- just because EROEI is hard to calculate
doesn't mean it can be ignored in the long term! Completely off topic,
I must admit a bit of schadenfreude in hearing about trophy Picassos
being suddenly dumped onto the market to raise cash... [Update: a few
days later, oil flops down almost as much as recent uptick. I find the
ridiculously wild fluctuations (20%) in the price of such a critical,
continuously used, and fungible substance, which is used worldwide, and
whose worldwide reserves are well researched, and which change slowly
a telling indictment of how price is determined by economic systems.
Who in their right mind really thinks that the value of oil to humans
could possibly change by 20% in one hour??]
[Sep05,'15]
A lot of refugees in the latest psyops news are from Iraq, Libya, Syria
(4 million), and Yemen. Perhaps UK and EU-ians -- right *and* 'left'
-- who went along with the US-backed destruction of these countries now
need to step up and take some in, eh? Or send them to the US? (which
hasn't taken any!) Instead, UK and EU-ians fly their monkey flags and
Cameron monkey suggests more poodle bombing. *That* should help the
refugee problem, ya think?
[Sep11,'15]
The UK has poodled away more than
12
million pounds staking out the Ecuadoran embassy in London.
What an incredible waste of money! The British don't like Americans;
but then they do what the Americans want them to do -- like bombing
countries where the EU/UK refugees are coming from (maybe because
they were previously bombed/destabilized/droned/CIAda'ed???).
However, now that Russian
cavalry
is finally coming, the game may be beginning to change.
[Sep12,'15]
An unnamed British general said about the possibility of Corbyn being
elected, and then trying to scrap Trident: "The Army just wouldn't
stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to
jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use
whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can't put a
maverick in charge of a country's security". This rattled even a few
Conservatives: right-wing Tory Daniel Hannan said "We're not Bolivia
for God's sake".
[Sep25,'15]
If there are any extra VW's around London, I would give anything
to substitute them and their perfectly decent diesel engines for
the nightmare NO2-belching people-killer atrocities they have in
London black taxis. The NO2 pollution coming out of London black
taxis is probably 100x the supposedly dastardly VW's. It's criminal
(and truly deadly) that those filthy engines are still on the streets
(but I actually like everything else about them, including the drivers,
I *just* hate the engines!).
[Oct08,'15]
What a difference a month makes in Syria! This particular week,
it's looking like 'game over' for the US/UK/Saudi/Turkey/Is-supported
mercenaries/jihadis/death-squads that have made a shambles of the country
and killed a quarter of a million humans over the past few years (shame
on the 'lefties' who supported these freaks after getting fooled by
the fake poison gas false-flag). Russia did essentially nothing when
the US/UK/EU destroyed Libya. They then initially did almost nothing
in Syria. But then, in Sept 2013, as the 'bomb Syria' rhetoric suddenly
escalated in the US, the Russians shot down two possibly false flag
'test' missiles travelling eastward over the Mediterranean to points
unknown, and the US (and UK) congress worms suddenly backed off. And the
Russians pushed back after the US/Is coup in Kiev. Now, two years later,
the situation has rapidly evolved (Hizbollah/Iran/Russia action, staged
'refugee crisis'. I have no idea of what is really going on, but I don't
have a good feeling about what comes next. There is a mind boggling
brew of Russian and US and Israeli and Syrian jets, not to mention drones
and cruise missiles, all flying in the same Syrian air space (tho maybe
only 10 Russian jets total so far). And perhaps Iran and Hizbollah
on the ground. And nuclear armed submarines in the water. And the
US transporting a lot of military hardware to İncirlik. It's hard
to imagine the neocon crazies will suddenly give up now. However,
this is a rather different situation than the US 'turkey shooting'
Iraqi civilians fleeing down an exposed desert road in passenger cars,
or French jets strafing apartment blocks in Sirte. Now there is some
modern military hardware to contend with that can accurately shoot back
(incoming at Mach 2-3, 25 feet above the ground). Some have speculated
that even a small incident would be one way to fix the broken price of
post-peak crude oil. But since the oil price swoon was probably due in
part to 'conservation by other means' (people not being able to afford
oil), that is hardly a long term solution. I suppose I'm old fashioned
always trying to think about long term solutions...
[Oct11,'15]
The US has withdrawn its most modern but vulnerable (fast
ocean skimming missiles, jamming) aircraft carrier from the
Persian gulf. We are living in a dangerous time that combines
changing military situations with economic stress (e.g., biggest
reverse
repo spike ever in Sept).
[Oct28,'15]
The latest embarrassingly bad plan to try to rescue the failing
US/UK/Saudi/Is-supported 'orange revolution' regime-change plan in
Syria has been unveiled -- US soldiers as human shields. How the worm
turns!
[Nov05,'15]
Masked anti-fascist protesters in London today ended up outside the
building where Jennifer Lawrence was introducing the premier of the
latest rehash of the Hunger Games, in an ironic juxtaposition of Hollywood
fantasy and reality.
[Nov14,'15]
France has been foremost in promoting the
American idea that Bashar al-Assad is the main problem
in Syria. Now France is supposedly attacked by ISIS TM,
created
by the US to try to overthrow Assad, and the very ISIS being
effectively attacked by the Russians. However, never forget the
underlying psychology of the human monkey. The main effect of a
(possibly a false flag) public attack is that it makes people feel
insecure. It really doesn't matter much which side the attackers
are portrayed to be on, or are actually on (compare 9/11 and Saddam).
Insecurity makes people rally around the government, no matter what
it decides to do. The 'leftist' government has just declared martial
law, and will probably organize an attack on *Assad*. This works
like clockwork every time, like Goebbels explained so many years ago.
As with the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo, this disastrous security
failure of Hollande will cause his popularity to skyrocket again (!),
and we will see both 'left' and 'right' clamouring for a police state.
The 'left' will be tripping over itself in an attempt to out-fascist
and out-anti-immigrant the 'right'. In an interesting inversion of the
original Gladio, which was used to keep communists out of power in Europe,
the effect this time may be to keep Le Pen out of power. The magic
bomb-proof passport (Syrian this time) has already been found (never
leave home with your Kalashnikov without also bringing your
passport,
man...). Like 9/11, the final story has been set
in stone in the first day. 'Left' vs. 'right'
is irrelevant -- here is my annotation of
event
annotation of 'rightist' Bush's approval polls (collected by Stuart
Eugene Thiel). Instead of "Dance Monkeys, Dance", it's "Scare Monkeys,
Scare". The movement is worldwide. For example, in San Diego, hours-long
school lockdowns have become so common (in all cases, caused by pranks or
tests), that the San Diego unified school district has ordered overpriced
port-a-potties (circular seats on a 5-gallon plastic bucket) for
every
classroom. When I was a child in school, the crime/murder rate
was a lot *higher* than now, but school lockdowns with storm troopers
parading around with assault rifles was something we only saw in dystopian
movies. Now, kids grow up with almost full blown fascism and think
it's completely normal. We are on track to a privatized global police
state -- see Peter Phillips, "Twenty-First-Century Fascism" (PDF
here),
to go along with power down. I hope there is another way. Maybe Peter
Phillips' suggestion of negotiating with the 0.001% will work.
[Nov16,'15]
Twice as many people died on the Russian plane in Sinai, yet
the main-sewer media doesn't scream "Je Suis Metrojet A321".
And in Syria, about as many people have been killed *every day*
for the past *5 years* as were just tragically killed in Paris --
as the result of policies carried out by the US, France, UK, Qatar,
Turkey, Saudi etc., arming and re-purposing crazies to overthrow
Assad -- after their great 'success' in Libya. But their victims
are low-market-value humans that nobody in the main-sewer media cries
for. They don't count as tragedies. The French are now supposedly
bombing the very people they were supporting last week. Right.
They probably had to be careful to avoid the US helicopters
escorting
the ISIL guys [Update: Nov20: pic in prev link is probably a fake since the
same pic has appeared elsewhere w/o the helicopter -- see e.g.
here
-- my bad.
Here is the actual
'escorting' clip referred to in the article; the image of the helicopter
is too blurry to be determinate]. I guess it's no surprise the French
already hit a hospital after only a small number of sorties. And yet,
once again, a 'multi-center' drill was being conducted on the very day
of an attack: "Le hasard a fait, pour vous dire, c'est que le matin
au SAMU de Paris, avait été organisé un exercice sur des attentats
multisites. Donc on était préparés." -- Patrick Pelloux, a physician
and chairman of French trade union for EMT personnel, who incidentally
also happens to be a film actor. [Update: Nov19: "One such exercise was
held on Friday morning, the day of the latest terror attacks. In a twist
of fate, the simulated emergency was a mass shooting" -- Dr. Mathieu
Raux, emergency room chief at the Pitié-Salpetrière hospital in Paris.
That would be the third such 'twist of fate' after NY and London.]
[Nov18,'15]
France has now smote the terr'ists by bombing
"a sports stadium, a museum, an equestrian centre and several
administration buildings". I'm sure that will make the terr'ists
think twice next time (those would be the muscular white guys shooting
out of the black Mercedes?). Meanwhile, 'scientists' have created a new
viris, dubbed SARS 2.0, by combining coronaviruses from mice and Chinese
bats. It was designed to be more contagious for humans. This was done,
of course, to 'help' us, because we can now develop vaccines for diseases
that don't yet exist (oh right, now they do exist). If you give humans
too much free energy, they really start flying their freak flags.
[Nov19,'15]
I have only now finally appreciated the mechanism behind why antibotics
are fed and injected into animals bred for human food (this accounts
for the majority of antibiotic use in the world). I knew that animals
grew about 10% faster on the same food input when this is done. But the
mechanism is probably simply that intestinal bacteria, which can be a
substantial fraction of fecal weight, are inhibited from metabolizing
biomolecules in feed, allowing an animal to get fatter quicker on
less food. The expenses are, of course, great. But they are postponed
and transferred to other people, and so therefore injected antibiotics
and antibiotics in animal feed are a 'no-brainer' (unfortunately, this
is literal) for a business. The expenses are generalized antibiotic
resistance, unintended human consumption of antibiotics, and disturbed
animal gastrointestinal tracts. The gains are slightly less expensive
meat. In our sad fascist/corporate world, the only way this can be
reversed is if animal gut bacteria become resistant to antibiotics,
undoing the faster weight gain. It is not enough that this practice
has disabled legitimate human uses for antibiotics (blood infections,
traumatic wounds, post-surgical infections). And if the experience with
non-GMO and GMO crops is an indicator, even when GMO crops are less
productive than cheaper non-GMO alternatives (e.g., insect resistance
to introduced GMO toxins, or weed resistance to herbicides tolerated by
GMO plants, or merely lower productivity of GMO organisms), they are
still preferred for a while over more productive and less expensive
non-GMO organisms.
[Nov20,'15]
A new development in Syria in the past
few days is that Russia has located and
bombed
500 ISIS/ISIL's oil tanker trucks exporting stolen Syrian oil (to
Israel and other places). The zerohedge article is written as if the
US wasn't aware of the magnitude of these oil exports (though it does
make a good point that some banks must have records of $0.4 billion
in oil purchases). It is hard to believe that giant columns of tanker
trucks in the desert could possibly have escaped the gaze of current US
spy satellites. More likely is that the oil export operation is closely
analogous to al-CIAdah black-revenue-generating heroin-trade operations in
Afghanistan -- a venerable modus operandi dating back to the Vietnam war.
The estimated amounts of ISIS/ISIL oil are probably not big enough to
account for much of the current oil 'glut' that has crashed oil prices.
The current oil 'glut' is a 1-2% oversupply; but $0.4 billion a year of
stolen Syrian oil would be only something like 1/30 of 1% of our daily
oil (though note that there is a parallel contraband oil export trade
in Iraq). However, the majority legitimate output of devastated Iraq
(exporting madly to raise cash) has moved up 1 million barrels a day over
the past year -- from about 3 million barrels a day in early 2014 to
4 million barrels a day by mid-2015; this is almost 1% of world usage,
and along with reduced Chinese demand and a debt-fueled fracking bubble
(now popping), that production *has* contributed substantially to the oil
'glut'. In any case, interfering with al-CIAdah is a bold move by Russia.
But I don't want to overestimate my understanding of the situation
given the usual daily blizzard of disinfo. In 1944, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt said to the British Ambassador: "Persian oil ... is yours. We
share the oil of Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, it's ours."
The division of spoils is slightly different now, but now that king of
oilfields in Saudi is finally running out, the game must change.
[Nov23,'15]
The Cameron poodle is standing tall with plans to (1) bomb Syria (who
isn't these days? not to mention there are *definitely* not enough Syrian
refugees on the move...), (2) cut local police, and then (3) make 10,000
storm troopers available to pile into the streets and lock down the
'citizens' *after* the next terr'ist event. But with so much noise,
this UK chest beating was hardly audible.
[Nov24,'15]
A US-made F16 from Turkey shot down a Russian jet just inside the
Syria border, probably in the 'no-fly' zone *within* Syria that Turkey
recently established. This is not far from the location where Syria
shot down a Turkish F-4 reconaissance plane four years ago. This may
have been a retaliation for Russia bombing the ISIS/ISIL contraband
oil export business last week inside Syria (the super-obvious miles
of tanker trucks the US satellites somehow couldn't find), which was
almost certainly traveling out of Syria through Turkey -- both the oil
and the money (via Erdogan's son). But Turkey also buys a lot of oil
from Russia, imports more than half its natural gas from Russia, just
signed an agreement to lay a Russian supplied gas pipe in the Black
Sea last week, and profits from 5 million Russian tourists every year.
This latest event is only a few days after power lines into Crimea were
blown up (among other things, endangering nuclear reactor cooling systems
in other parts of Ukraine), is a week after the Paris event, and is a few
weeks after a Russian airliner was shot down in Sinai killing everybody
on board. Not the greatest news this month for world stability, but
hopefully this will all blow over without immediate overt escalation,
and retaliation will be indirect. Supposedly, we're all professional
here and no one wants WWIII, right? That said, I think it's virtually
impossible to know what's really going on now. Perhaps the main 'known
unknown' is to what extent the US/NATO/Iz etc allowed, motivated, or even
performed the shoot down. From the list above, it doesn't look like the
shootdown will turn out to be beneficial to Turkey. This is slightly
reminiscent of the mysterious 2013 'missile test' missiles fired across
the Mediterranean from west to east that were shot down by the Russians
a few years ago. The Russian response to this latest provocation will
likely be measured. It is possible that another even bigger provocation
from the US/NATO/Iz/'f*ck the EU' crazies may be on the way.
[Nov26,'15]
After reading
Andrew Korybko, I have expanded my perspective a bit.
Though the US might have given a green light to Turkey, perhaps
the situation is a little like the US giving a green light to
then-ally Saddam in 1990 (April Glaspie). The partial dismemberment
of Turkey (Izzy-supported Greater Kurdistan, since they
already get most of
their oil from there) might actually be the current plan, with Russia
doing some heavy lifting, and the US more or less cutting loose their
takfiri crazies in Syria. This makes sense given all the obvious easily
predictable negative outcomes for Turkey resulting from a direct attack
on Russia (see prev. post). The more conventional interpretation would
be that the US intends to continue the Assad regime-change plan despite
all the recent setbacks. But as before, I am hardly confident that I
really understand what is going on. Probably the US will do both at
the same time. These guys are never sated on chaos and must always
have moar.
[Nov28,'15]
The assassination of Tahir Elci virtually screams 'color revolution'
in Turkey, supporting Korybko's interpretation of events cited in the
previous post. Looks more and more like punishment from US/NATO/etc
for Turkey's Black Sea Russian pipeline deal. Ignore the 'Islamist'
chaff sprayed out all day by the whorespondents :-} in the main-sewer
media. Recent ISIS setbacks are likely to increase the flood of
retired death squad snackbars into the EU. Maybe the shoot-down order
didn't even originate with Erdogan, but rather his military slash
soon-to-be-junta.
[Dec04,'15]
Here is an
excellent lecture
by Steve Keen in which he shows that government running deficits is
a *parallel* mechanism of money creation to non-central banks making
loans. Because of this, if the government doesn't run a deficit
(money creation by the government via the central bank), in general,
the level of private debt (money created by non-central banks) has
to go up instead. This contrasts with the general misunderstanding
(e.g., my own) that created central bank money is further magnified
by non-central bank money creation. They *are* dependent, but the
central bank money creation actually *reduces* the need for private
money creation (private debt), and vice versa. A short history of my
successive misunderstandings (I don't think I'm fully understanding
this yet) is as follows: (1) banks actually have money that they lend
out, (2) banks have fractional reserve requirements and generate money
by relending deposits, as controlled by central bank policy, because
non-central banks need to take out overnight loans to pay people who take
out more money than banks have in reserves, (3) (non-central) banks simply
create money at the moment of the loan (see straighforward
explanation
in this white paper from the Bank of England), which creates an equal
sized asset for them -- but the central bank still indirectly controls
this by controlling central bank interest rates, and finally (4) what
Steve Keen said above: central banks (public debt) and non-central banks
(private debt) are actually parallel, and push-pull. I think one crucial
thing missing from the Keen picture is: (5) central banks are actually
*also* private.
[Dec06,'15]
Though Hollande's popularity predictably rose after the terr'ist attacks,
it wasn't enough to beat Marine Le Pen's National Front party in the
regional elections (she did best at 30%, versus Sarkozy's 'center'
party's 26% and Hollande's 'left' party's at 22%). The utter fantasy
of the 'news' with Americans, British, French, Russians, not to mention
the Israelis, all bombing 'ISIS' in Syria *at the same time*, leaves
my mouth agape. The Wurlitzer has never been played like this before!
With this kind of proven effectiveness, perhaps Rahm could arrange for
everybody's air forces to start bombing Chicago.
[Dec13,'15]
Everything is back to 'normal' in France. The 'socialists' and
'convervatives' got together to route the 'right' in the runoff elections
(they won by a 55% to 45% margin), after turnout surged by almost 10%.
The 'socialists' won by pulling out of several races so that the
'convervatives' could win so as not to divide the 'left' (that would be
'socialist' plus 'convervative') vote.
[Dec23,'15]
Renewable energy is growing. The tiny
yellow component at the top of
this
graph is world wind-and-solar. It has increased substantially since
2000, to slightly over 2% of total energy used. Now, you can actually see
the contribution it makes in the stacked bar graph ;-} , which is still
utterly dominated by fossil fuel. But look at that graph! Since 2000,
total energy use has been increasing at rate that is MORE THAN 10X the
unprecedented rate of increase of renewable energy production during that
same time period. All the renewable energy devices were manufactured,
transported, installed, and serviced almost exclusively using fossil
fuel energy (most US, Spanish, and German solar cells were made out
of Chinese coal). I find it difficult to put a positive spin on this.
As fossil fuel limits start to kick in, it seem unavoidable that by 2040,
the world will be using substantially less energy (despite there being
another 2 billion people added, AKA another 30 UK's worth of people,
food and water, houses, sewers, roads, wiring, etc). There is a 99%
correlation of world GDP and energy consumption. Fossil fuels won't stop
dominating this energy consumption graph until humans have scraped out
every last EROI positive bit of them. Then -- hopefully -- there will be
enough energy left to make *a lot* more bicycles :-} Human's disconnect
from reality is poignant to watch. Humans talk 'carbon-neutral' but
then drive and fly 'carbon-proud' (I fly several times a year myself).
The possible universe of our dreams probably isn't possible. I'm hoping
the one that actually happens won't be as bad as I fear.
Here
is a more clear-eyed positive vision. The main point is, we need/have
to scale back energy usage by 70-90%. This is more in line with the
reality of the components of increased energy sources since 2000 -- 10%
new renewable and 90% new fossil fuel. In 25 years (2040), if renewables
continue to increase as they have been since 2000, they would reach 10-20%
of our *current* energy usage. But in 2040, fossil fuel use will be much
less -- not for lack of trying, but simply because we will have run out
of the reasonably net-energy-positive reserves. Given uncertainties, that
will basically amount to 'using 70-90% less energy'. On the bright side,
that would still be substantially more energy per capita than stone age
humans used.
[Dec30,'15]
The danger of a 'color' revolution making a shambles of Turkey (via
excavating a Kurdistan out of several existing countries) increases by
the week. The support for this by the 'left' is a shameful replay of
the beginning of the Syria disaster in 2011. In 2011, Syria was still in
one piece. The 'left' fell for the 'poison gas' psyops back then. Though
Russia stepping in has so far prevented a complete Libya-fication of
Syria, there are now more Syrian refugees than Palestinian refugees, large
areas of cities in the country have been turned into wastelands of rubble,
more than a quarter of a million people have been killed, and things are
incomparably worse there than they were in 2011. The 'left' was horribly
wrong about Syria. A few weeks of mercenary snipers shooting at both
sides in Turkey would have the potential to create a new Turkish 'Maidan'
in short order. The Turkish banking system has been attacked by
c-eye-a-nonymous.
The last Maidan in Ukraine has resulted in turning that country into a
shambles, with the current Nazi-filled coup govenment's approval rating
*one-half* that of the government that was overthrown.
[Jan10,'16]
The 'refugee crisis' continues to destabilize
the EU (detailed article by Andrew Korybko
here
. As Korybko argues, it is looking more and more like
a 'color'-revolution-like psychological operation where a
small amount of force is expertly applied, and then expertly
broadcast to incite racist hysteria (they got every German to
google
'pfefferspray'), using the usual damaged goods assets (e.g., a few
wahhabi 'ronin' flushed out by Russian bombing). This is the downside
of language in a primate brain, something I have spent many years trying
to figure out.
[Feb04,'16]
The east EU 'color revolutions' continue. Look at what a great outcome
there was in the former Serbian republic. Once unleashed, the vicious
animal hatreds that explode out of the human primate brain are nearly
impossible to put back in the can. With non-human primates, that's
not a problem since they don't access to guns, bombs, and fossil fuel.
Perhaps we should be thankful that there is only another 15 years easy
fossil fuel.
[Feb13,'16]
'b' at Moon of Alabama compactly puts this latest development
in proper perspective: "Near Azaz, the U.S. ally Turkey is
currently shelling the U.S. ally YPG, which is fighting the
CIA-supported FSA." The US/Turkey/Saudi/Izzy/neocon crazies are
getting crazy that their chaos game is being threatened. All they
have on offer is more chaos. Google nooz doesn't rate this possible
start to WWIII as noosworthy. It's truly tragic comparing
before
and after in Syria. So-called leftists who initially supported
this (e.g., Sanders) are just as much to blame as the McCain, Rubio,
and Cruz things.
[Feb19,'16]
I hope that 'b' at Moon of Alabama and T Meyssan (US military -- vs. CIA
-- cooperating with Russia) are right, and Saker (US preparing for war
with Russia in northern Syria) is wrong (yes, I know, Meyssan was a
'Pentagon missile' disinfo guy in the past). Note that Turkey has 240
F-16's, which is easily 10x the fighter jets that the Russians have
in Syria. Hoping for the best (no attack on Syria by Turkey or Saudi).
Yet another possibility is that the US is setting up Turkey and/or
Saudi to have some of their infrastructure damaged by Russia (Saudi:
oil, Turkey: set up to have a greater Kurdistan broken off to further
the chaos in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria). And I was surprised by Merkel's
comment about the need for a Syrian no-fly zone (translation: Syrian
bombing only by the West -- she wants more refugees?). Perhaps she was
just feeding the 'wurlitzer'. It is pretty amazing to sample the twin,
fantasy world projected by the 'mighty Wurlitzer' (one example
here)
-- it's truly an utterly alternate 'reality'! But judging from the
derisive comments when similar articles are broadcast from UK 'news'
sites (home of the 'Syrian Observatory for Human Rights'), it's not clear
that the wurlitzer is working as well as it used to do. From these
many disheartening possibilities, one will emerge in the next month
or two.
[Feb24,'16]
A depressing juxtaposition of
'robots' and
'people'.
[Feb27,'16]
Absolutely no trace of the supposed recent slowdown in total
economic activity (approx. equal to total energy usage -- but see
below on total net energy) in the Mauna Loa CO2 graph
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html.
In fact, if you zoom in on the past 5 years
here, if
anything, it looks like there was actually a *spurt* of CO2 growth in the
second half of 2015, perhaps partly from increased driving in response to
low gasoline/petrol prices (ironically, virtually at the moment of peak
all-liquids). In fact, the rate of CO2 growth has increased by a factor
of 1.5x (from 2 to 3 ppm per year). Looking at the rate of growth graph
here,
it is quite obvious that the rate of growth (derivative) of CO2 -- not
just CO2 growth -- has been increasing steadily since the 1960's, from
about 1 ppm increase per year then to about 3 ppm increase per year now.
With respect to increased driving, at least in the US, total vehicle miles
driven has recovered from the unprecedented drop that began with the 2008
recession. Over the past 2 years, it has been increasing with a steeper
slope (80 million extra miles per year) than the very constant 1970
to 2008 average (50 million extra miles per year) (Fed graph
here).
Humans' cognitive disconnect from their basic physical reality, with
all their stupid green-washing and/or stupid denial, is comic and tragic
to look at. The max arctic sea ice extent will likely set a new
new
record low this year. Hey, lookee over here, what about that
Trump-thing or that Hillary-thing? One important thing to remember
is that total CO2 output does *not* measure total net (useful) energy
used; in fact, as average net energy (continues to!) go down, total
energy expended has to continuously go up just to keep net energy
*constant*. As energy return on energy investment falls below 10 to 1,
the increase in energy expended to keep net energy constant starts to
go up exponentially, with the slope rapidly increasing below EROEI of 2
(i.e., 2 units returned for one invested, which results in 1 unit net
energy). We're not there yet. Peak net all-energy is probably still
10 to 15 years away. Hitting peak *net* all-energy has always been my
definition of world SHTF. It's pretty hard to calculate -- we won't
know for sure until a few years after it has already happened.
[Mar13,'16]
Japan has a
stockpile
of 47 tons of plutonium. Dang that's a lot. The sphere of it at the
center of the Nagasaki bomb was only a few inches across. The whole
thing gives me the creeps. I don't have a huge amount of faith in the
people minding this stuff.
[Mar15,'16]
"It is great to be here, in a free Benghazi and in free Libya." --
David Cameron in Libya, Sept 2011, a few weeks before Gaddafi was killed.
The Libya of today has been turned into an awful wreck compared to those
poodle days.
[Mar21,'16]
The current oil surplus is about 2 million barrels/day
(a little over 2%). This 'glut' and the oil price
crash started in early 2014 (see recent articles by
Art
Berman and
Rune
Likvern). Where did it come from? Saudi and Russia are now producing
only slightly more than they were in early 2014 (about 0.15 million
barrels/day more). The US and Canada are producing almost 2 million
more barrels/day and Iraq is producing 1.7 million more barrels/day.
Thus the US, Canada, and Iraq have crashed oil prices, not Saudi and
Russia. This will soon cause major problems since esp. in the US, the
oil glut created by fracking was built almost entirely on debt. Now that
prices have crashed, that debt is going bad. The going-out-of-business
frackers have closed down drilling but continue to produce like mad,
trying to not go bankrupt, exacerbating the problem. This is capitalism
going 'full retard' with its 'blood supply' (that would be the 98%
of the oil that *was* burned to move stuff and make stuff [like food]
to keep the body politic alive). How is the 'surveillance capitalism'
of Google going to survive without oil for the self-driving cars?
What an odd spectacle to watch. I'm not presumptuous enough to think
something easy could have been done to fix this. Instead, I have the same
feeling about the current economic circus that I get watching an only
*slightly* old/young/sick/disabled animal being brought down by a lion:
the running prey is a pinnacle of biological complexity and perfection,
performing at *almost* 100%, that just happened to hit one critical
bad spot. The outcome of the coming of together in the next year of
(1) peak all-liquids, (2) tightoil/tarsands bankruptcies, (3) economic
constriction, and (4) 80 million more humans needing energy is hard
to predict -- if one only looks foward 9 months. That is like trying
to predict the weather next month. However, looking forward 10 years,
I am sure the 'glut' will be merely a fond memory.
[Mar27,'16]
The Syrian army has driven ISIS out of the ancient city of Palmyra.
Among other charming things, ISIS blew up the basement of the
antiquities museum. A few days before Syria cleaned out the
vermin, watch this State dept worm squirming in response to a
question about the prospect of this happening (video
here). That would be
ISIS TM, the official bogeyman C-eye-A-supported terr'ist group.
[Apr04,'16]
The UK spent 1/3 billion pounds helping to bomb Libya. As a result
of the bombing, Libya has been turned into a giant human catastrophe,
a staging area for CIA/ISIS attacks on Syria, and one of the sources
of the current EU refugee crisis. So the UK recently
generously
offered to give Libya 0.00005 billion pounds (50K) to fix things up.
That would be a destruction-to-help ratio of 6000-to-1.
[Apr17,'16]
I was very sorry to read that David MacKay just died, at the young
age of 48, from recently diagnosed stomach cancer. I crossed paths
with him when he was working with Ken Miller at Caltech around 1990 on
an analysis of the dynamics of Hebbian learning. He burned brightly.
He was a good man. Among many other things, he wrote a fine popular book
"Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air". And here is one of his last
posts, a plaintive note as he lay dying, sweating in bed, unable to turn
the heat down, begging that the hospital install some simple
functional
thermostats, as opposed to expensive and unused telephone/TV devices
whose flashing only served to irritate the dying cancer patients.
[Apr19,'16]
"The Polish Navy is practising for a US attack on Kaliningrad by
guarding the destroyers like the Donald Cook from Russian submarine
interception, so we have been caught provoking the Russians right at our
very border. And since we have officially taken part in the surprise NATO
military manoeuvre at armed-to-the-teeth Kaliningrad, and that has visibly
upset the Russians, we should demand from our American allies compensation
for the status of a front-line state, just like Egypt and Israel, which
collect $3 billion in aid every year." -- Stanislas Balcerac (quoted by
John Helmer
here).
[May09,'16]
Just saw David MacKay's last interview with Mark Lynas, which was given
an inflammatory title in the useless Guardian (the Lynas guy kinda creeps
me out photographing himself with the trophy he awarded to the deathly
ill MacKay). MacKay was right that (1) wind is intermittent, (2) so
is solar, (3) solar not great in the UK in the winter, and (4) people
won't want to pay more for energy. But he underestimated the current
contributions in the UK of wind and solar. And he underestimated the
cost of new nuclear, esp. if it includes a plan to clean up afterwards.
I was also surprised that he was surprised that carbon capture doesn't
exist. Carbon capture, like fusion, will almost certainly be the 'carbon
capture technology of the future, and it always will be'. The reason
goes back to MacKay's point number 4; it's expensive, meaning it's
expensive *energy-wise*. It's not vaguely possible to take it back
out of the air; there are no existing large scale demonstrations of
trying to catch it immediately after burning. His perspective probably
reflects actually having working with the people in the government who
are trying to put out this year's fires (by having the Chinese build
a nuclear power plant at Somerset). I'm not worried about the next
10-15 years. Unfortunately, rational discussion -- of the kind that
MacKay liked -- of the reality of 2030 is completely off the table.
I imagine it won't even be on the table as food and water shortages
related to the beginning of powerdown begin to appear in 10-15 years.
On the positive side, more electric vehicles (which MacKay thinks will
be here) are one positive way of dealing with intermittency. The amount
of power moving all those stupid people around in their 2 ton metal
cans, half the time driving just 2 miles pick up stuff, is equivalent
to all the power in the grid. Using intermittent power to charge local
vehicle batteries is a great way to avoid using/depleting fossil fuel.
In sunny places, it works well on a completely local basis. Of course,
it would be even better to just get out of the metal can...
[May13,'16]
The US/UK supports the ISIS liver-eaters in Palmyra; the Russians support
Bach :-} The
'civilized' west (the UK lapdog) responds that this was a 'tasteless
attempt to distract attention' -- perhaps, from the ISIS liver-eaters
they are supporting? or from people finally realizing that the 'poison
gas' scam was a psyop? Absolutely tasteless.
[May26,'16]
Paul Craig Roberts says we have entered the
looting
stage of capitalism. But it was always this way! The *only*
difference is that the looters have gotten slightly closer to tonier
neighborhoods (Greece vs. Panama). In scanning the news, it is easy
to get distracted by the usual daily nonsense (trumpillory, oil price
farts, some coal-to-solar-cell company when t-up). The world system is
creaking and groaning to adjust to a relatively moderate reduction in the
availability of low energy-cost energy. Total net energy consumption is
probably now just reaching no-growth. But even commentators aware of the
importance of energy in economic activity and the long term arcs involved
just can't seem to process the idea of 'finite' and the implications
of the approaching energy EROEI cliff (the exponential increase in
energy required to get a unit of net energy as EROEI heads to below 5)
-- despite some of them (e.g., Euan Mearns) even writing about it and
making useful diagrams about it! Dave Cohen would say, people are
simply permanently trapped in Flatland, and will be, all the way down.
I suppose that on this particular day, that includes me, because I remain
somewhat hopeful that because the daily adaptive motions of the world
mind are so far beyond the ability of any individual mind to understand
(using the kinds of trivial mental models individual minds are capable
of), I don't feel confident of being able to predict how things will turn
out (aside from the fact we will be using less net energy in 15 years).
So maybe it won't be as bad as the more logical part of my mind using
mostly simple linear models says it almost certainly will be :-}
[May30,'16]
Supposedly, according to data from around the world in which governments
have reported how much fossil fuel they used making useful energy,
the increase in fossil fuel use has flattened, with a bunch of fanfare
from the green-washing machines (e.g., John Vidal in the Guardian).
This is a little like asking people to weigh themselves and then tell
you what they weigh. Looking at the monthly mean CO2 at Mauna Loa
here,
it's clear that, by contrast, there has been a menacing spike in CO2 over
the first half of this year. Physics ignores monkey lies. Go, 500 ppm!
Actually, the biggest factor in the spike is probably not increased human
emissions, but rather the feedback from the hot El Nino year (CO2 traps
heat, more heat makes more CO2 by speeding the metabolism of composting
microorganisms); you can see a similar spike in the full CO2 record
here
in 1998, a record-breaking El Nino event and a very hot year also.
But some of the general increase in slope of CO2 increase over the
past decade might also reflect the continuing decline in the EROEI for
fossil fuel, which would have required increasing the amount of energy
used and CO2 produced in order to return even the *same* amount of
net energy. I'm hoping the spike just dies down next year (as opposed
to triggering some other positive feedback). But don't lookie there,
lookie here at this Chinese washing machine soap ad. Get John Vidal
and his Chinese-made mobile (cellphone) on it. Only by studiously
avoiding looking at one's own participation in the network of fossil fuel
energy use, we can pretend that everything will be all right tomorrow.
Because of the low price of oil, 86% of energy sector operating profits
went to interest payments in the first quarter of 2016, up from 50%
in 2015. This is obviously not 'sustainable' (hah) and if it continues,
will likely result in a banking catastrophe in a year or two. A lot of
people I know would cheer, saying that they hope they go out of business.
I hardly think of oil companies as benign; but the cheerleaders are not
thinking straight about their own personal fossil fuel energy supply,
which powers important things like their daily food and water.
[Jun02,'16]
Richard Duncan (no, not Richard 'Olduvai' Duncan),
who is a financial guy at Blackhorse Asset Management in
Singapore posted a very useful presentation on China
here that includes a
solid series of 25-year, zero-based graphs versus the usual financial
industry noise (what happened to oil price two hours ago) (N.B.:
it's a lure to get you to buy a subscription). I don't agree with
most of his world view, his view on credit creation, and his apparent
complete ignorance of the relation between economics, growth, and energy
(he would do well to read the other Richard Duncan for that), but the
raw numbers he assembled are useful and amazing (I did like his idea of
working toward a global minumum wage). For example, look at the graph
here
on Chinese cement production. China has recently had a 'crash' in
cement production, which means that its towering cement production
didn't increase by yet another 10% this year, but actually dropped
slightly. In the three years of 2011, 2012, and 2013, China produced
*more* (140% more) cement than the US did in the entire 20th century.
The stunning observation is that even with this 'crash', China will end
up producing in 2014, 2015, and 2016 more cement than the US did in the
entire 20th century, *again*. The simple flatlining of Chinese growth
in cement and steel and exports and imports has sent a deflationary
ripple around the world. I gave a peak oil talk in 2011 (PDF
here) pointing out that
the stunning linear increase in growth in Chinese coal use and oil use
that began (esp. for coal -- see my slide 52) in 2001, if it persisted,
would result in China consuming all world exports of coal and oil by 2025.
I had no prediction for when the increase would stop except that I knew
it would absolutely have to stop before 2025. So now, it looks like it
stopped, rather suddenly, in 2015, 'on its own'. However, it's important
to keep in mind that Chinese fossil fuel use remains jacked up to an
amazing yearly burn rate very different than the one in 2001, and *that*
can't go on even at a *flat* zero-growth rate for more than a decade
(AKA all twentieth century US concrete times 6), without running very
hard into world coal depletion. As a human yeast cell, I can clearly see
the edges of the barrel. But nothing really bad has happened, so far!
Maybe it will all work out!
[Jun09,'16] NIRP, the negative
interest rate policy, which includes things like paying people interest
when they take out loans, and conversely charging people interest to
leave money in their 'savings' accounts ran into an unexpected glitch
this week when German banks begain stockpiling tons of cash (literally)
to avoid the negative ECB interest rates. It's completely logical!
Finally, there will actually be lots of physical cash in the banks! :-}
-- so much for cashless, straight from the banker's mouths! I suppose
this helps when pensioners with inadequate savings are forced to drain
their accounts rather than see them whittled away. If you ignore energy,
negative interest rates are the logical thing to do, to stimulate 'grof'.
If you don't ignore energy, then it's obvious that having banks tax
savings accounts or having them induce people who don't have the means
to pay back a loan to take a loan anyway is hardly a, uhh, 'sustainable'
way to get more megawatts used. China will have poured more concrete than
*two* US twentieth centuries, just from 2011 to 2016. China merely going
flat in 2016 has threatened the stability of the world financial system.
You have to be completely insane to think that it would be a good idea to
continue this kind of 'grof' indefinitely, even if we could (we can't).
Of course, it's not fair, because the US got to pour their concrete first.
A rational approach would be to try to distribute the coming contraction
more equitably. But that topic isn't even on the table except with the
absolute looney fringe. If previous historical contractions are a clue,
it probably won't ever get onto the table.
[Jun16,'16]
The aggressive movement of NATO missiles and troops to the Russian border
is disturbing, not the least because any war gaming suggests that any
border crossing by NATO would result in a big NATO loss. Imagine the
US's reaction to Russia moving an equivalent amount of materiel (missiles
and troops) up to the California/Mexico border, pulling some destroyers
in up next to Tijuana, and then starting wargames with Mexico. This is
looking more and more like yet another new pearl harbor. I wouldn't
want to be living in one of the NATO poodle border countries. But the
utterly irresponsible 2 minutes to midnight B.S. is frightening in a Cuban
missile crisis kind of way. As long as nothing really bad happens, it
could just be a way of distracting people from peak energy and peak money.
But people won't stay distracted unless something really bad does happen.
So it might.
[Jun18,'16]
From the
BP
Statistical Review of World Energy, without the hot air.
Global coal consumption declined 1% (it has dropped similarly for a
few years now, mainly due to China). But increases in consumption of
oil, oil-like products, and natural gas more than made up for this,
so the total fossil fuel consumption went up. Renewables went up, too.
This year, the increase in fossil fuel use was more than the increase
in renewables. This was spun as renewables are saving us and replacing
coal. Wind and solar did grow rapidly, but because they only account
for a small component of total energy consumption (2%), their large
percentage increase *relative to themselves* (solar and wind) amounted
to less absolute increase then the increase in fossil fuel use. Also,
the growth in annual installation of wind and solar relative to their
annual growth is slowing, suggesting we are roughly 2/3 of the way to
maximum growth rate in wind and solar, so using current rates and assuming
some tapering in fossil fuel use, we might expect something like 7% of
total power from wind and solar by 2030, right around SHTF time. Also,
remember that 1 unit of solar plus wind requires 1 unit of fossil fuel
load balancing capacity using the most optimistic assumptions (nuclear
is not appropriate for this purpose). The reality is that we need to
save us from (too many of) ourselves. Not possible without a no-spin
discussion of the real numbers. Adding 80 million people (more than an
entire UK) per year to the earth's population (over 1% increase per year)
won't work for very much longer, esp. as total fossil fuels peak in a
decade and begin to go down. However, it is very likely to continue as
long as there is enough food.
[Jun25,'16]
In the aftermath of the close Brexit vote (52% to 48%, with the winning
Brexit side consisting of 36% of the eligible voters), Google says
that Britons have been madly googling 'what is the EU?' (dunno, maybe
where almost half of UK exports go to, while maybe 4% of EU exports are
imported to the UK?). Reading celebratory online comments in UK papers,
one does get a slightly 'brown shirt', ethnic cleansing'y feeling; but
it's not like that sentiment wasn't here before. In the great depression,
europe turned/voted right. It can be argued that this is why the EU was
created -- a somewhat undemocratic organization to try to save people
from themselves after the devastation of two wars in too quick succession
that utterly toppled europe from its world leading position. Hitler and
Mussolini were democratically elected, and the tabloid-whipped UK masses
voluntarily marched into battle (and then uselessly up out of trenches
into withering machine gun fire under the gun from their commanding
officers situated behind them). The US, by contrast, turned left in
the depression. Of course, this new depression could be different.
Though Trump is not Hitler (he's more like Berlusconi), there is
a bit of a 'brown shirt'y feel in the US, too. But back to the UK.
Young people here -- many of them having taken some of biggest hits
in debt, 400% increases in college fees, crap jobs, and stratospheric
rent -- pretty strongly favored Remain. The mood in London (and likely
in Cambridge, Oxford, Brighton, Warwick, York, Newcastle, Manchester,
Liverpool, Brighton, Cardiff, Bristol, Bath, and Warick -- map
here)
is shocked and somber today (one suggestion was for London and Scotland
to secede from the UK :-} ). Brexit defeated the left, Corbyn, the
Greens, the Scots, the Irish, the young, and the universities. It was
mainly a way of those disenfranchised by deindustrialization in the
smaller cities and depressed suburbs -- and older people -- to give the
government the Trump finger. Of course, it will probably Brexit them in
the foot/@ss if extreme right conservatives or a Blairite replacement for
Corbyn can marshall anti-immigrant emotion to form a new government --
"thanks for your vote, here's some more austerity and shock doctrine
for you". Not to mention that the most pro-Leave parts of the country
are the ones most economically integrated with the EU. Hard to guess
how it will turn out a few years down the line, though -- way too many
variables, with predictions ranging from positive effects on trade,
the City taking a hit (loss of EU passporting), the City flourishing
because of so many agreements to renegotiate, the UK dropping a bunch
of worker and environment and bank protection, the air actually getting
better without regulation because people can't afford their carz, or the
UK ending up as a US military outpost backwater. There is amazingly
little comment on net energy rundown, which to me is the elephant in
the room (remember when the UK didn't used to import oil?). I won't be
staying around, but I wish them the best of luck. Hope it doesn't end
up dismembered like Greece.
[Jun29,'16]
I am suspicious that such a big thing like Brexit could have happened
'by accident'. This is unsettlingly reminiscent of WWI. In the case of
Brexit, the disgruntled impoverished deindustrialized countryside has been
there since Thatcher. So have many of the immigrants. The fact that
the referendum came up at all, coupled with the expert anti-immigrant
whipping up by the press seems non-accidental (and not unexpected!).
It's even a little color-revolution-y. At first glance, it appears
that financial UK is in a poor negotiating position with the EU.
But perhaps there is a neocon element to this to keep the EU in line
on the neocon/NATO straight and narrow, and to weaken Steinmeier etc.,
and the recent small pushback against US/NATO from Bulgaria. And we
have to remember the source of the wave of new immigrants -- i.e., the
neocon/Hillary/Ford (death squad) destruction of Iraq, Libya, Yemen,
Ukraine, Syria, and now perhaps even Turkey.
[Jul16,'16]
It looks like Turkey narrowly managed to put off
the fate hinted at in the previous note. Robert Baer
mourns
on CNN that the undemocratic coup, quite obviously *not* supported
by the population, 'was not professionally done'. Oh really.
Now perhaps Turkey can make good on its recent suggestion, and that it
will stop trying to do the same thing to Syria. Before it was clear
that the coup had failed, California Democrat Brad Sheman
tweeted
"Military takeover in Turkey will hopefully lead to real democracy -
not Erdogan authoritarianism". I wonder how that would fly in your
homeland, Brad?
[Jul18,'16]
A
little
late, guys. Their article, supposedly debunking bad neuroimaging
experiments, is itself an almost perfect illustration of the kind of
tabloid, overstated, click-bait that has come to plague scientific
publication in the time of the internet, spurred on by the the lazy,
ever-more-bloated each year, bean- and altmetrics-counting university
administrations. It's kind of amazing to see the same pattern of excesses
replaying themselves in the decline of this empire. Before long, we
may be subjected to a new plague of 'preregistration' of hypothesis,
all lovingly managed by the scientific journal 'industry'. The lack
of historical perspective is disconcerting. This has the potential
to substantially degrade science by turning it (even further) toward
market research, advertising, and corporate cubicle drone-land.
Do we really want 'science' to be done by corporations? Like the
example of big pharma drug trials? Or perhaps, do we really want
all science to be drug trials? Has everybody forgotten how all
the publically supported research that made big pharma possible was
originally done? Hint: it wasn't done by the corporations of the time.
It's depressing to think that young scientists may soon grow up not
have known that it was ever different. [Update: Aug28: I knew it was
probably a bad idea to talk to the NYT columnist about the 'debunking'
article. She mangled my affiliation [now fixed] and then
used
only one quote, of course, taken completely out of context -- I was
dissing, not supporting the 'debunking' article for virtually the whole
phone call. This after I carefully explained out fMRI works in several
follow-ups. Oh well.]
[Aug24,'16] Settling in after our big move. As my former advisor,
John Allman would say, "two moves equals one fire" :-}
[Aug30,'16]
Despite Russia's withdrawal, the Syrian army has been doing reasonably
well against the US/UK proxy armies of ISIS/Al-Q. This US failure to
destroy Syria increases the chances of a direct US attack on the Syrian
government over the coming next year, probably more likely if Hillary is
elected (Wolfowitz supports her over Trump!). The neocon/Hillary/Ford
"Salvador option" death squad strategy continues. What a human
catastrophe.
[Sep01,'16]
Between 1970 (pop=3.7G) and 2010 (6.8G), global material extraction went
from 22 billion to 70 billion tonnes. As we miniaturize, we are actually
extracting *more* materials per capita (1.7x as much). That is, we are
growing less, not more, sustainable, even as population continues to grow.
De-materialization is a complete fantasy.
[Sep06,'16]
It turns out to be surprisingly easy to impose negative interest rates
on physical cash. Two dystopian ideas are to randomly invalidate random
serial number bank notes, and/or to impose a tax on cash withdrawal.
[Sep17,'16]
Well, unfortunately, my prediction above of a direct US attack on Syria
"over the the coming year" (because the US/Izzy/UK attempt to tear apart
Syria had bogged down) came true in only 2 weeks. The US (update:
with the help of the UK [natch], and Austrailia and Denmark?!) just
bombed a Syrian army position in Deir es-Zor with F-16's and A-10's
(for survivors) killing 60 or 100 Syrian soldiers, all in *support*
of an attack on the Syrian army by the ISIS head-choppers (the US
didn't bomb ISIS afterward when it found out its 'mistake', but the
Syrian army retook most of the territory). Though Russia convened
an emergency UN security council session today in response to the
bombing, and announced that "the White House is defending ISIS",
Russia is probably not in a position to directly strike back.
Here is Vitaly Churkin's
response to the attack on Syria ('diplomat' Samantha Power walked out
on the speech). But real information like this will soon be buried in
avalanche of manure from the neverending 'election' freak show.
[Sep20,'16]
Given the slight lull in the election freak show, the distraction
to the US attack on Syria has turned instead to be the
"kinder/gentler" Chelsea dumpster
bombing, followed by the supposed Syrian/Russian
attack on a Syrian aid convoy with the ever-so-dreaded
"barrel
bombs" (both links to to excellent articles by Scott Creighton).
The world as broadcast by America has become a continuous string of
psyops, very Matrix-like. I accidentally watched a few minutes of teevee
about this while getting lunch. The disconnect between reality and the
teevee is schizophrenia-inducing. Just read -- don't watch video.
[Sep21,'16]
An escalation of the Syrian conflict, possibly involving direct
US/Russia events is possible in the final throes of the US election
silly season. It may have already begun if the reports (e.g., Ziad
Fadel) of a Russian cruise missile attack on a US/UK/Izzy command and
control center north of Aleppo are true. Couldn't we all just get along
and do something more useful, like planning for the imminent (before
2030) energy crisis and retooling the money system so that it won't
blow up in the steady state? Looks like the answer is no. If there
are still historians writing 100 years from now, they will wonder how
such American-empire-wide insanity could possibly have been maintained.
If they don't have access to a video record, it will be hard to comprehend
-- like this latest development in the internet of thingz -- a
vibrator
(!) that calls home to the mothership. Don't panic, it's just market
research, to help make your personal devices even more useful than they
already are...
[Sep22,'16]
Andre Vltchek's apposite
translation of the burkini ban: "You can wear any
wetsuit
but not a
burkini. It
is exactly the same thing, but the wetsuit is our own invention (and
therefore it is right), while the ‘burkini’ was designed by and for
‘the others’ (therefore it is clearly wrong). Remember, only our
definitions are allowed on this Planet." -- Andre Vltchek.
[Sep26,'16] From this
PDF:
Americans' gun ownership is quite skewed: 50% of guns are own by 3%
of the population (average 18 guns per those persons). There were
other surprising things: the number of guns owned per adult has
doubled under Obama; but this was mainly people who already had guns
buying more. I was also surprised that only 22% of the population
owned a gun (6% have only a handgun, 5% have only a long gun, 11%
have both). It was hardly surprising that gun ownership is more
likely in rural counties, by veterans, and by conservatives. And
in other news, here's hoping that tonight's cage match comes off
without
(another) psyop.
[Oct04,'16]
The nuclear clock is ticking awfully close to midnight these days.
The recent US stunts in Syria provoking Russia are quite scary in
a reverse Cuban-missile-crisis way (tho few in the West remember
the US-missiles-in-Turkey component of the Cuban missile crisis).
Imagine the US response to the analgous case of Russian-supported
Mexican jihadis trying to overthrow the Mexican government
in order to re-route Mexican oil and gas pipelines away from
the US. The mouthing of US propaganda on Syria and Russia by the
mainstream media is just pathetic. Russian is running a
nuclear disaster
drill this week that involves 40 *million* people. Paul Craig Roberts
thinks that the only hope is either (1) Russia and China surrender to
the US, or (2) European vassal states rebel against the US. Neither of
those are sure shots.
[Oct05,'16]
Some commentators, upset that Americans are still following Kim
Kardashian's robbery instead of a possible imminent nuclear war, have
suggested that perhaps Americans will wake up if the US suffers a (even
more) clear loss in Syria. The problem with this approach is that the US
suffered a clear military loss in Viet Nam, over 40 years ago! Of course,
the US holocausted roughly 3 million south east asians in the process,
but the US *still lost*. Much more recently, the US essentially lost
in Ukraine. The clear message is that one -- or ten -- losses are *not
enough* to disrupt the Matrix reality distortion field! As long as there
is enough free energy to keep FoxCNNABCNBBC and the intertubes matrix
up, and the rest of the world scared by the huge US military, probably
nothing big can change. For better or worse, we are still at least 15 or
20 years away from the beginnings of the great power down. There was a
depressing article in the Guardian that at current growth rates, there
will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Thankfully, the
article overestimated how much accessible oil is left -- a Monty Python,
'always look on the bright side of life' moment to be sure :-}
[Oct07,'16]
American F-18's (upper right, upper left, lower left)
reputedly painted to look like Russian SU-34
(lower
left), in a photo from Christian Borys (Daily Beast), who
tweeted
"The U.S is painting their F/A-18's to match the paint schemes of
Russian jets in Syria. Standard training, but interesting nonetheless".
Could be a setup for (another) white helmets psyop/false flag -- or
as advertised, merely for training US pilots to face Russian jets.
The UN vote on "saving Aleppo" (i.e., saving US/UK ISIS, and maybe
some US special forces/human shields there) is at 3 PM this Sat.
It all looks spooky, but I still can't believe that the US military
will actually overtly attack a large number of Russian military assets
(even with the 10:1 ratio in military spending the US has over Russia).
In the past, the US military has only done overt attacks on countries that
can't shoot back -- like Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. I *hope*
the real question is, what distraction can/will be pulled to save face,
to get Hillary elected? On the other hand, in the unlikely event that
the US *does* initiate an all-out air attack on the Syrian government,
then the question will be whether Russia will back down again as it has
in all the previous US-initiated disasters in the middle east (Serbia,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen). Russian statements this time seem
somewhat stronger than in all those previous cases, there is more new
Russian hardware installed this time, and Syria (after Ukraine) is nearly
the last straw (save Iran).
[Oct08,'16]
While Kirby was
embarrassing
himself at a press conference about fake war crimes
in Aleppo, the US-supported Saudis massacred
450 people at a
funeral in Sanaa in Yemen in a double-tap strike. This will barely be
mentioned in the vile, servile main-sewer media.
[Oct10,'16]
The US (or at least whoever was in control of the Pentagon this month)
seems to have backed down a little (again) on a major escalation in the
attack on Syria, which was a relief, if a temporary one. It is easy
(for me!) to get obsessed with my partial understanding of particular
small events like this at the expense of the ocean of other significant
events -- that don't make the news anywhere -- that result from humans
consuming the final energy output (after losses) of 100,000 terawatt-hours
of oil, coal, methane, hydro, nuclear, and renewables every year.
Terawatt-hours (power times time) are units of energy, like joules.
The average *power* consumption of humans (watts = joules/sec) is
currently about 12 terawatts, which is 12 thousand gigawatts, which is
12 million megawatts, which is 12 billion kilowatts, which is equivalent
to the power output of 120 billion 100-watt average humans continuously
pedaling bicycles as hard as they can 24/7 (Tour de France cyclists put
out 200 watts average just during the time they are racing in the Tour).
With that much powered activity going on, no human can possibly understand
what is actually happening on any given day. It would be like asking one
cell in your body what it thinks all the other cells are doing.
[Oct12,'16]
Basic numbers update (to refresh my memory, some from Phoenix capital).
World GDP is $73 trillion (US GDP is $18 trillion). World GDP is
correlated r^2=0.99 with world energy consumption over the past 45 years.
Now let's move futher away from physical reality. US public and corporate
debt is $24 trillion (up by almost *2x* since 2008 crisis). Chinese public
and corporate debt is $22 trillion (up by *3x* since the 2008 crisis).
The world's stock markets are worth about $70 trillion and trade about
$0.2 trillion a day. The bond market including corporate bonds is worth
about $200 trillion (Chinese bond market is about $10 trillion) and trades
about $0.7 trillion a day. Finally, last but not least, the currency
market trades about $5.3 trillion *a day* (can't measure size in same way
since this is using money to buy money vs. using money to buy stocks).
This has much less to do with physical reality. Currently, although
computer currency trading has tripled over the last 3 years, it is still
only $0.2 trillion a day (~4% of total). After a few more computer
currency trading triplings, however, currencies could be thrashing around
full retard every day (e.g., see 6% drop in pound sterling in 2 minutes
on 7 Oct 2016, just past the stroke of midnight).
[Oct18,'16]
I was just googling Mark Ames yesterday to see what he might have
written recently about Russia and about "can't we just drone this
guy?" and found -- at this seemingly critical point in history
-- virtually nothing like the early heady days of The Exile!
His writing has seemed meager and lifeless after getting kicked out
of Russia back to the US. In retrospect, it made me think about The
Exile, which I used to avidly if a bit pruriently read, as a Pussy
Riot/George-Soros/color-revolution/C-I-eh/Lena Dunham/Broad City kind
of thing. Of course, it was a more conventional 'dick and whore riot'
thing. Which gave it street cred. Perhaps the reason he finally got
thrown out was that the Russians finally saw through the ruse (despite
their appreciation of p/d riot humor). He is an excellent writer,
and was amazingly productive during those years. In comparison to
going back to things I had thought about science ten years ago, I find
I am much less confident of my political judgements from ten years ago.
For example, despite wasting time on it, I don't know exactly what to
think about latest Assange kerfuffle (any more than I know what to think
of the recurrent Snowden phenomenon, which also looks like some kind
of limited hangout -- if he really was a problem, seems like he, too,
could have been quietly assassinated years ago).
[Oct19,'16]
Last week, Art Berman wrote
here
that world oil production has come into balance with world
oil demand, eliminating the 1-2% surplus that had resulted in
the crash of oil prices from over $110/barrel (in Sept 2016)
to under $50/barrel (by Jan 2016). The key graph is
here.
Since the beginning of 2015, the 1-2% 'glut' has kept oil prices
extremely low. This has encouraged people to drive more and buy vehicles
with bigger engines. The low price of oil prevented fracking companies
(who are mainly responsible for the 'glut') from recouping their debts.
They greatly reduced drilling, and kept them selling into a soft market
in order to make interest payments. It looked like it was just about to
blow up the 'subprime' fracking debt, which was used to buy leases only
profitable with oil at more than $100/barrel. But the sharp drop in new
drilling has just now flattened. We are now at the "Now what?" point
in Finding Nemo, where the fish have escaped the aquarium into the bay,
but are still in their bags. If oil shoots back up enough to put the
frackers back in business, it will probably cause an economic crash
a year later. This will start the whole process over again. On the
other hand, if oil stays low for a little longer, because oil companies
continue to try to pay down their debt by selling (slightly too much)
oil, the subprime oil debt could blow, which could itself cause a
reduction in economic activity like what happened in 2008, prolonging
the temporary production/usage balance. The 'undulating plateau'
long predicted by peak oil people (like myself) could really suck.
With such violent oscillations, it's virtually impossible to predict
what is going to happen short term; for example, we could easily spike
back up into a glut for a few more months (look at previous short term
events in the curve). However, it seems pretty clear to me that by 2020
-- after an entire US's worth of people (320 million) has been added
to the planet -- that it is highly unlikely that there will still be
a 1-2% 'glut', even if you include another crash in there between now
and then. Last year, 1 barrel of oil was discovered for every 10 used.
Before too long, this will catch up with us. Americans have been buying 1
all-electric vehicle and 1 plug-in-gas vehicle for every 350 gas powered
vehicles they buy each year (17 million year). That only covers 1/3 of
the yearly increase in the US population.
[Oct21,'16]
In China, housing has just gone crazy again, starting around the beginning
of 2016. Perhaps unsurprising given my proven complete lack of business
sense, this is not what I would have expected, given the flattening of
insane growth rates (pouring a complete US century worth of concrete
over *two* consecutive 3 year periods), and with building overhangs
and impending bankruptcies in the sticks with some empty partially
completed cities, falling exports, and so on. When it takes $1 million
to buy an apartment in Beijing, a massive credit bubble is once again
inflating.
[Oct24,'16]
On one hand Julian Assange said "I’m constantly annoyed that people
are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we
provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud".
On the other there is the recent sequence of (1) train suicide of the
wikileaks lawyer in the UK, (2) weird Pamela Anderson food delivery,
(3) more recent WL-founder Macfadyen death (lung cancer? he certainly
*looked* like a smoker), and (4) temporary public disappearance of Julian
Assange. WL has looked honey trap-ish for long time, and perhaps this
is to reestablish street cred, or as Scott Creighton suggests, maybe
there is some kind of internal intelligence squabble.
[Oct30,'16]
In the past, the US has lost wars (Vietnam), but without losing its
threat potential. And up to about 15 years ago, the US could still park
an aircraft carrier off the coast of an undefended third world country
and bomb it and cruise-missile it at its leisure without any danger of
shootback (Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria before 2013). Now,
there are relatively cheap fast anti-ship missiles that can prevent this
when launched in a swarm. Russia and China make them, and other smaller
countries are beginning to buy them. Anybody with an internet connection
can find out about them, but the Newspeak mainstream media pretends they
don't exist as it publishes monthly anti-Putin propaganda for the past 8
years that would make the old National Enquirer blush. Now think about
what would happen if the US started a war and one of the 'invincible'
beat-up-on-defenseless-small-countries and turn-them-into-hellholes
aircraft carriers was disabled or even sunk. The illusion would be
shattered. Now think about -- Why all the push toward war with Russia?
It almost looks like the neocon *goal* is to shatter the illusion of US
invincibility! I suppose it would still be OK as long as the aircraft
carriers are far enough away (but what convential-war use would they
be then?)
[Nov08,'16]
Toyota finally
announced
that they will be abandoning their non-selling hydrogen vehicle,
and are planning an all-electric long range vehicle. Though my
*short-term* business sense is nil, I was already warning (based on
common sense opinion at the time!) against the hydrogen vehicle
debacle in the very first version of my peak oil
PDF in 2004 :-}
[Nov24,'16]
The increase in national debt in the US and China over the past 8 years
looks pretty scary (the US debt-to-GDP-ratio doubled during that time,
while China's has probably quadrupled). Consumer debt in the US is
massively increasing (esp. student and car loans). Back in 2008, I would
never have imagined that debt could have smoothly linearly increased
like it did without *something* blowing up (in either the US *or* China).
After the election, bond interest rates suddenly jumped up by about 0.5%;
but they are only getting back to levels where they were in 2015 or 2013,
which is still well below where they were before 2008. I have difficulty
imagining bond interest rates continuing up (i.e., bond prices going
down because people are selling them), which would blow up the cost
of service on homeloans/carloans/studentloans/govtdebt/corporatedebt,
with widespread effects. It is not an accident that 75% of derivatives
are about interest rates; and it is worth noting that people with
home/car/student loans don't have derivative hedges. However, the size
of the current move is not that remarkable -- so far. But who knows.
Looks ominous and out-of-control, but I've felt that way for the past
10 years and nothing super bad happened (here in UK/US) then. So maybe
this next year will be uneventful, too (I'm hoping!). Of course, I
am incorrectly thinking about this in a goody two-shoes, patsy kind of
way, rather than more realistically thinking like seriously non-goody,
scheming, dirty-talking, financial 'legal criminals' do, taking advantage
of made-to-order laws they help to engineer. For example,
this
new Trump-related plan announced by Goldman Sachs (I guess that
counts as the 'government'?) 'helps' repatriate "overseas cash" (which
isn't even overseas -- it's mostly dollar denominated US treasuries
[=bonds]) by giving corporations a huge tax break -- so that they can
more easily use the proceeds from selling these bonds to get cash to buy
their own stock (as opposed to having to borrow money to buy their own
stock), which will then drive their own up stock prices up even futher.
What could possibly go wrong with eating your liver to feed your stomach?
Why bother with farming food, which is *so* old school? The trumpettes
probably wouldn't like the sound of this particular swamp (if they could
understand it). But, hey, at least Trump started out saying he doesn't
believe in
global
warming -- now that's *bound* to help with this
debt problem, right? Here is Raul Ilargi Meijer
summarizing
Alastair Crooke on limits to growth as the
real problem that everybody studiously refuses to talk
sensibly about. And finally, here is a somewhat breathless
alt-right
scenario that see Trump taking the fall for the next economic down draft,
which will self-implode and discredit the right -- N.B.: just because I
linked to it hardly means I agree with all of it! (e.g., Brandon never
mentions energy). However, the war on cash spreading across several
countries (new max peso note is now worth only $10) does suggest that
the time when the muppets get sheared is beginning to come into view
(I regard myself, unfortunately, as a muppet).
[Nov25,'16]
The comparisons between the effects of monetary policy in
different countries (US/Japan/Germany/Spain/Greece) in
this Richard Koo
video was very useful to me (again, just because I linked, doesn't
mean I agree with everything -- e.g., that the most important thing is
to preserve globalized 'free trade', race-to-the-bottom wages, China
pouring as much concrete as the US 20th century every 3 years, etc.).
He argues that the way the post-bubble recessions *should* have been
fixed would have been to invest in people (government borrowing money
to help non-banker people) instead of banks (quantitative easing, incl
buying $2.5 trillion government bonds), and not to keep interest rates
so low. Near zero interest rates have created huge stock/housing bubbles,
destablized pensions and social security, and have transferred enormous
amounts of wealth from poorer to super rich people. Currently, US house
prices have *never* been so expensive (expense defined as house prices
relative to salaries); affordability is *much* worse than just before the
popping of the 2008 real estate bubble. As many have noted, we are now
'off by one' -- we have low interest rates that make sense *after* bubbles
have burst, but now we are in a situation where interest rates are near
zero but *before* the stock and housing and bond bubbles (they caused)
have burst, and where there are now also huge bank excess reserves to
unwind. The 'unwind' is to absorb the selling of $2.5 trillion dollars of
excess reserves bonds, which would cause a huge spike in interest rates.
I note he mentions nothing about energy, which is the real basis of all
the money games he talks about. Even though they are hard to understand
(for me at least), we *can* change the money game rules. We can't change
the energy 'rules' -- that is, how much reasonably net energy positive
fossil fuel energy is left for use to use to rearrange the entire world
(including agriculture, which uses more fossil-fuel-derived nitrogen than
the entire pre-human biosphere), to use renewable energy, which is less
abundant and less convenient, before fossil fuel is too severely depleted.
Tick, tick.
[Nov31,'16]
Under the stated goal of fighting counterfeiting, 86% of the paper
currency was withdrawn from legal circulation in India a few weeks ago in
a shock-and-awe demonetization bid. The idea seems to be to force people
into using electronic payments in a country where 98% of consumer payments
are in cash. Electronic payments could then be taxed automatically to
overcome widespread tax cheating. Meanwhile, the comparatively small
amount of new legal cash is quickly being being withdrawn to matresses
for emergencies. Money currently in banks is frozen (the lines at banks
are to convert the banned notes, which many are still being paid with).
This is hitting the bottom 50% of the population hard (remember, 1/5 of
the humans in the world are Indian) and has instantly expanded the mafia
trading the banned notes, as well as expanded the police state. People
who can are trying to buy (even more) gold. The policy is still widely
supported for the hope that it might reduce corruption. This remains to
be seen. This may be a preview of what will unfold in other countries.
Given the instability in India, there may be increased danger of a
war/distraction with Pakistan over the next few months.
[Dec05,'16]
'Debt', esp. government debt, is often thought of rather abstractly
as a vaguely negative thing that doesn't particularly benefit
anyone. In fact, 75% of financial assets, much of which are
'instruments' that collect interest on debt, are owned by just 1%
of the population. So, translated, people with increasing 'debt' are
actually forced into more and more medieval-like tithing to the rich
lords for the priveledge of renting money -- something that takes
virtually no energy to 'produce'; when a loan is made, the total
assets of the bank are merely digitally incremented, thus creating
the amount of money for the loan at that moment (see this
PDF
from the Bank of England for why it actually does work exactly this
way; banks are money factories, not money warehouses). The amount
of consumer and government debt increased massively under Obama and
will likely increase a lot more under Trump. We are getting more and
more medieval -- except without all of the holidays :-{ . Since net
energy growth, which is more than 99% correlated with GDP growth is
also flattening, this will eventually pauperize most of the population
if the trend in increased financial parasitism continues unchanged.
A completely pauperized population will usually *not* revolt (too tired,
too hungry, too broke, too sick). The danger point is rather when a
reasonably well-fed population (70% of US-ians are seriously overfed)
suffers a unexpected set-back (cf., the French Revolution). That kind of
situation could easily occur over the next decade or two, well *before*
the net-energy-driven collapse begins in earnest.
[Dec13,'16]
The bond market is so big that the very
moderate interest rate increases over the past
few weeks has corresponded to a $1.7 trillion dollar
loss
in the value of bonds, and an almost $3 trillion dollar loss over the
past two months. This is almost equivalent to the increase in gross debt
during the entire Obama administration (~$4 trillion depending on what you
include). The bond market is sure big! This suggests increasing distrust
of the dollar. But other currencies are distrusted even more.
[Dec18,'16]
The Gig Economy
The Uber/Lyft/Deliveroo gig economy is in some ways a return
to the very origins of capitalism from feudalism, where peasant
villagers took company piecework back to their own houses, where
they provided their own work space, food, transportation, tools,
and medical care. There is a good video about this here:
The brutality of the
system is being lost on those who actually use these apps -- from
the Financial Times (!). The reference to the 1992 novel, Snow Crash,
shows just how depressingly predictable some aspects of the built human
world are.
But at one point, the video voice over says something about:
"digitalisation, which can't be reversed". It can, and will, be reversed.
The devices and infrastructure of the digital economy AKA the spam and
porn delivery system, are extremely resource (water, electricity, oil)
intensive to make, distribute, and maintain. An i7 CPU contains 1.4
billion transistors; it requires hundreds of washings with ultrapure
water under ultraclean conditions and several months of 24/7 power
without even a subsecond glitch to make one; immediate search results
are delivered across internet routers from server farms that together
consume more than 10% of total electrical generation, mostly from coal
(probably more if supply lines were traced to their source); getting
family pics off 'the cloud' uses tremendously more energy than cracking
open a local physical photo album. These devices won't be around in
their modern form for the long haul when net energy supply is much lower.
Hi-tech batteries and i7 chips are *not* going to be made by UberFab
subcontractors in their home ovens, and home contractors are not going
to have
ultra
high-speed pick and place robots lying around to assemble them.
I'm certainly not looking foward to less computers and internet and less
net energy, because then humans will probably just go back to feudalism,
with less vacuum cleaners, dirtier water, and maybe even a plague or
two (the population of Europe didn't recover to pre-plague 14th century
levels until the 17th century).
But maybe they could also bring back all the holidays? :-}
[Dec19,'16]
Good news for the holidays! Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people,
has finally been freed from the US-supported liver-eaters -- oh sorry,
I meant to say the 'moderate rebels' (as opposed to 'bad ISIS',
which would be the immoderate rebels the US is somehow 'fighting'
by using them to implement a 'salvador option'. There, I NPR'd it).
The US policy was shamefully supported until the very end by the
pitifully hornswoggled 'left' (I consider myself left). The Congress
worms just voted almost unanimously this Dec 8 to send
anti-aircraft missiles, to the
'moderate rebels', of course. What could go wrong? (maybe another
airliner 'accidentally' downed?). There are reports that NATO personnel
were captured by the Syrian army in Aleppo, and that this spurred a
secret meeting of the UN security council on Friday. Those were no doubt
'undercover agents' who had to infiltrate ISIS in order to help defeat
them, right? If we hear nothing more, then probably, those assets were
cashed during behind the scenes negotiations.
[Dec29,'16]
The top 25 holding companies with derivatives have total
assets of $14 trillion dollars and total derivatives
of $250 trillion dollars (from Pam and Russ Martens,
here).
Most of the assets and derivatives are in only 4 banks (Citi, JPM,
Goldman, BoA). Despite the record positive consumer sentiment in
the Gallup poll, it looks for all the world like we are not far from
the situation in 2006/2007, but with even more slack squeezed out of
the system. Of course, my short term business sense is nil, so this
probably means everything will continue shooting skyward for a while.
The 1% oil 'glut' is now down to maybe 0.5%; but if there is another
2008-like reset, there could be another downward bump on the bumpy
plateau of oil prices, leading to further lack of attention to critical
energy issues at the worst time possible. Even with a crash, however,
it is important to remember that we *will not* go on finding 1 barrel
and using 6 barrels forever ('forever' defined as 1-2 decades ;-} ).
The top-selling electric car is the Nissan Leaf, with only a quarter
million on the road. Total world electric vehicles are over 1 million
while total world vehicles are over 1 billion so total penetration of
electric vehicles is now roughly a tiny 0.1%. The uptake of electric
vehicles is increasing, but has been very slow. The turnover rate for
the US car fleet is 15 years. In the US, the total energy required to
run carz is about equivalent to the total energy used from the electric
grid. With numbers like that, it is clear that the oil demand side -- all
things held constant -- is not due to change a lot over the next decade.
Of course, nothing is constant; but it seems unlikely that the world's
car fleet will be mostly electric for a long time.
[Dec31,'16]
While the 'left' wallows in high dudgeon about Trump denying global
warming, it almost completely ignores the impending net energy train
wreck (global warming will be the second, somewhat later, train wreck).
As I get older, I am more and more impressed how well-placed people
(and science fiction writers!) were able to see certain aspects of
the future so clearly. I suppose this is merely a reflection of the
fact that technology can't really change many critical aspects of the
nature of the human species. Here is Admiral Hyman Rickover, a very
well-placed person, from a speech he gave *in 1957* (full speech
here):
"I think no further elaboration is needed to demonstrate the significance
of energy resources for our own future. Our civilization rests upon
a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil
fuels. What assurance do we then have that our energy needs will continue
to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is -- in the long run -- none.
The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect
our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They
could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We
cannot. Fuel that has been burned is gone forever. Fuel is even
more evanescent than metals. Metals, too, are non-renewable resources
threatened with ultimate extinction, but something can be salvaged from
scrap. Fuel leaves no scrap and there is nothing man can do to rebuild
exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were created by solar energy 500
million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume. In the
face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact
length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect:
the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living
off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy
to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift. Fossil fuels
resemble capital in the bank. A prudent and responsible parent will use
his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as
possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will
squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring
will fare."
[Jan02,'17]
I read an interesting revision (Gallagher, 1995
pdf
here) of the relationship between financial collapse in the 14th
century (Venice bankers versus Florence bankers versus the rest of the
European world and the Mongol Empire) and the Black Death. Though the
Black Death is often treated as deus ex machina, it was argued that this
was perhaps the first, most striking case in the modern world where
growth flattened, causing a crisis and then a deadly response from a
banking system that is not compatible with a steady-state or a contracting
economy, which created the mid-14th-century Depression to rule them all
(almost half of the entire human population of the planet died off).
The entire world appears to be moving toward a similar juncture in the
next one or two decades.
[Jan15,'17]
Another year begins. The world will burn another cubic mile of oil
this year (1000 barrels/sec, 150 tons/sec). There will likely be only
minor oil shortages this year, if any at all. A year of no shortages
(or no demand destruction) will be much less likely 15 years from
now, however, since we are currently finding only 1 barrel for every
6 burned. Rather than focus on that big picture, we (including me) will
be forced to focus on the micro picture ("Will there be a 1% 'glut' this
month? Will there be a 1% shortage this month"? Is my syllabus up to date
this month? Did you hear the latest trumpfart?"). I think there will
probably be a 0.5% oil shortage causing an oil price spike later this
year (if there is no huge economic crash). And I predict my syllabus
will be updated. But with respect to the picture 15 years from now,
these one-year-look-ahead predictions about tiny, almost random 'gluts'
and 'surpluses' (and trumpfarts) are almost completely irrelevant.
But after 15 years now of thinking about this almost every day, I am
finally realizing that we can all probably *only* operate this way.
We will probably *never* be able to take personally expensive action to
avert a catastrophe that is that far (a mere 15 years!) into the future.
We will have to wait until the catastrophe is only one month or one
week away to finally pull out all the stops and try to patch things up.
Another discussion we should be having now -- or rather should have
been having 50 years ago when limits to growth became common scientific
knowledge -- is how to fix our debt based financial system, which is
designed to work properly only with a permanently growing economy,
which requires a growing energy supply, not a steady state economy or
much less, a contracting economy. That also won't be discussed, partly
because most people have no concrete idea of how money and debt actually
work (there is a superb summary of how things *actually* work
here). It's a weird
experience to be slowly riding the glacier down to the sea, fully knowing
that where we are sitting will eventually break off and crash into the
sea, without ever getting up off our @sses to even walk backwards a
few feet! I wish another future was possible! I really don't want
to run low on energy, or live through 2008 squared! Unfortunately,
geology is utterly unmoved by what we animals want; it is only moved by
what we do.
[Jan16,'17]
I just read Alice Friedemann's
excellent, small, fact-filled book on
small
book on trucks and energy. Previously, I had written that trains
carried more freight than trucks in the US while the reverse is true in
Europe. In fact, trains in the US *do* carry more freight *measured in
ton-miles* than trucks; but measured only in tons, trucks carry a lot more
(trucks typically go much shorter distances). Trains use fossil fuels
in a stunningly more efficient fashion (10 times more efficient!) than
trucks measured in ton-miles, because of air and rolling resistance,
and because just-in-time trucks are not usually full, and because they
start and stop more on their shorter runs. She also set me straight
on why electrifying long distance rail in the US would actually *not*
be a good idea for now. Diesel locomotives already have electric motors
and they actually use fossil fuel more efficiently than suspended-wire
electric-only locomotives driven by centrally-generated fossil fuel grid
electricity (plant and transmission losses). Electric locomotives *do*
make sense for commuter rail, which accelerates faster, to faster speeds,
and which carries smaller loads. Of course, in fantasy land, the new
suspended wires for cross-country electric locomotives and electric trucks
would be powered by zillions of tons of distributed photocells in the
day, and zillions of tons of distributed batteries at night, all built up
into a completely new, special-purpose, country-wide transportation grid
parallel to the existing grid (because the energy used for transportation
is approximately equal to the energy used for the current electric grid).
Rail is now privately owned and already invests a higher percentage of
its earnings in equipment and rail maintenance than do truck companies,
which run on taxpayer subsidized roads (most road damage is caused by
trucks). The absolutely gigantic new investment that would be required
to electrify 100,000 miles of existing rail, repair and electrify 250,000
miles of abandoned rail, and electrify several million miles of roads for
trucks, and then battery-i-fy them all is simply not going to happen any
time soon. To begin to get an idea of what would be required, Siemens
electrified a one-mile, one-lane stretch of the I-710 for electric
trucks in LA for $13 million. Note that this was just for a few posts
and wires; the wires were powered by the regular grid, not the fantasy
distributed photocell-and-battery-arrays parallel grid which needs to be
as big as the existing grid. For why the parallel fantasy grid will not
happen soon if ever, see the previous post. It's a fine idea, actually!
The problem is that is would massively increase the cost of transporting
goods now to deal with a problem won't occur for at least a decade.
Accelerating a loaded train up a hill can draw 20 megawatts (my unit
of power is the 'cyclist', which is about 100 watts, so this is 200,000
cyclists of power :-} ). A standard 50 pound solar panel generates about
200 watts (=2 cyclists) of power in bright sunlight, so that means that
one train would require a minimum of 100,000 standard panels assuming
bright sun, no losses, no extra panels for charging batteries for the
2/3 of each day where there is no bright sunlight. In practice, many
more panels would be required for one train (e.g., 4x as many would be
10,000 tons of just solar panels for one train in one region -- N.B.:
that's equivalent to 170 fully-loaded 60-ton railcars of solar panels).
'Good people' will prevent such an expensive thing from ever getting
off the ground until it is way too late to do the right thing.
[Jan24,'17]
Susan Webber posted an article
here
at Naked Capitalism on the puzzle of why global productivity has slowed
down. There was no mention of energy. The first comment by Dick Burkhart
was, rationally, 'how can you possibly talk about economic productivity
without ever mentioning energy?!' Susan Webber immediately responded
that 'energy doesn't make any difference because the 2016 fall in oil
prices didn't cause a productivity uptick', and that 'anyway, we may have
reached peak demand'. The astounding apparent lack of understanding of
how modern industrial civilization works (including esp. the internet,
a major consumer of energy from fossil fuel!) demonstrated by Susan
Webber, who is highly intelligent and a voracious reader, does kinda
stun me. What an amazing non-sequitur! First, 'oil price doesn't matter
for productivity', then 'we may have reached peak demand'! It seems
distinctly possible that the reduced energy return on energy investment
is *exactly* why productivity is flattening, and why we have reached peak
demand! It's seems ludicrous to me discuss economics without discussing
energy, which is the fundamental basis of all productivity. I suppose
spending too much time with the 3-month-look-ahead people eventually
rots your brain. All the cute animals featured on the Naked Capitalism
page never ignore energy concerns for a second! Humans are modified
animals with a population pumped up by a century-long fossil fuel binge.
That population is about to go on a permanent fossil fuel diet. The other
animals will think, 'aren't the humans so cute when they talk to each
other about the productivity paradox using their cute human language?
It's a shame that they aren't doing so well.' :-}
[Jan29,'17]
Charles Hall has calculated that all the batteries currently in the world
can currently store less than one minute of global electrical output.
In order for renewable-energy-plus-storage to run our current grid,
we would then need minimally 1000x more batteries than we currently have
made in the entire world. Grid energy storage is still expensive to make.
We should do some anyway, at least until the copper, silver, and lithium
becomes too hard to get. Tesla is installing a large amount of battery
grid storage this year in California. This should substantially increase
our real-world experience with how practical it will be to drastically
scale this up. Notes that adding the cost of storage to, say, solar
cell electric will substantially decrease the energy return on energy
investment. Hopefully, Hall and Prieto's calculation of EROEI=2.6:1
for Spanish solar is too low -- because that would leave little room for
wouldn't leave much room for an EROEI bigger than 1 (one is break-even)
after the energy cost to make the grid batteries is deducted.
[Feb02,'17]
The demolition of Palestinian homes to make way for Israeli settlements
reached a ten-year high in 2016. Each year, US taxpayers effectively
give every Israeli a yearly stipend of roughly $1000, which helps to
make more of those 'facts on the ground'. We don't get to vote on
this because both parties support it. In 2016, an unprecedented
10-year military aid package of $40 billion was announced. As with
Darwinian evolution, the facts on the ground at the end of the day
are all that count. What we have here is state-supported Darwinian
evolution (I just gave a talk about evolution, so Darwin was in my
mind). Doesn't look like any of this will change with Drumpf/Kushner.
For something completely different, a friend sent me a link on
'mechanical
doping', the installation of small electric motors to assist
professional cyclists, who have been maniacally doping their bodies for
a century. I hadn't heard about this before (crikey, there's already a
wiki page on it!), but once told, I could immediately intuit the sequence
of events. Since the average power output of a Tour de France cyclist
is about 250 watts, and they allow things like electric shifting,
even a single low tech alkaline AA battery would be enough to spit
out 100 watts here and there (there is almost 4 watt-hours of energy
in an alkaline AA cell, which is equivalent to 100 watts for 2.5 min).
Reading this was making me feel tired and jaded by the usual stupid human
monkey tricks. But then I had to laugh when I read that 'super-doper'
Doctor Michele Ferrari, now permanently banned from the 'sport' during the
Lance Armstrong doping investigation, had earlier visited Istvan Varjas,
the bike motor guy, worried that the motors were going to cut into the
good doctor's drug doping business. Not to mention that the robotics
guys at JPL were appreciative, too ('dual use', man!). Finally, none
of this is to say that I wouldn't *love* to have one of these babies in
my crankset the next time some overweight slob in an SUV or a 4x4 roars
uselessly past me. I *am* a monkey after all!
[Feb06,'17]
It was shocking to come across this F William Engdahl's piece on
abiotic
oil. I have previously linked to his articles for what I regarded
as careful geopolitical observations, but this embarrassing piece really
undermined any confidence in his abilities. He says this 2017 blog
post was based on his 2012 book, which I had not read. By googling, I
found out that he was already promoting abiotic oil in 2007. Of course,
when a writer reaches beyond their direct scientific expertise, they
can always slip up. But this should be close to home for him, since
he has written so much about resource wars. What a slip! His latest
piece illustrates bizarre fantasies about the formation of methane, oil,
and even coal (!). It is easy enough in this day and age to use the
internet to read scientific papers debating abiotic oil (tho this is
the first I have heard of abiotic coal!). He has utterly failed!
[Feb09,'17]
For an utter fail in a different context, see the embarrassing
Amnesty International "human slaughterhouse" propaganda campaign
deconstructed
by Scott Creighton. The unmasking of the previous 'Syria chemical
weapons' scam, which prevented Obama from attacking Syria looked like
the agony of Syria might be winding down. Maybe this can be unmasked,
too, to stop Trump or whoever from re-escalating the war on Syria.
[Feb11,'17]
Oil companies have begun to pour 'money' (i.e., yet more debt) back
into oil exploration. This kind of money-pouring is based on a 6 months
to 1 year lookahead. This trumps the utterly useless daily 'oh, look,
oil/gas/etc price/reserves/inventory ticked up/down this Friday at 2 PM'
noise/nonsense that clogs zerohedge etc. Coupled with the shrinking of
the 1% 'glut' to under 1%, this means the oil companies must be expecting
an oil price spike within the year.
[Feb20,'17]
Jeffrey P. Snider (person, AI writing bot?!) seems to auto-generate
endless numbers of similar articles per day. Recently, he has
written hundreds of them on odd things happening with 'eurodollars'.
I still can't fully understand what his point is (except that there is
a problem/shortage/hidden-ness) with eurodollars. A 'eurodollar' is a
dollar-denominated deposit in a foreign bank or a foreign branch of a US
bank often used for transactions between two non-dollar currencies that is
not subject to normal US regulation (not restricted to euro countries,
so it should really be called an 'offshore dollar'). I remember
back in the 2008 day, that some people had suggested that the main
precipitating factor of 2008 was a 'eurodollar shortage'. The reduced
regulation on eurodollars means, among other things, that eurodollars
are not subject to Federal Reserve Bank reserve requirements. First,
we need to translate 'reserve requirement' into English: it means, the
amount of dollars that a bank is allowed to create from the void for the
purpose of giving out 'loans', which it then afterward borrows a fraction
of the created money at a lower interest rate for its 'reserves' so that
the loans/created-money are 'only' 10x as much -- great 'work' if you can
get it). In 2014, the Fed showed an average daily volume of eurodollars
of $0.14 trillion. Though this seems 'small' relative to, say, currency
market trading ($5.3 trillion/day), it seems that eurodollars are mostly
used to buy actual things via overnight loans/payments, more or less
like a futures contract, as opposed being mere parasitical 'money buying
money' in the currency market casino. But since eurodollars are not
constrained by the usual reserves requirements, this means that even
moar of them can be created from the void. So, this being my mental
work-in-progress, I'm still unclear how there could ever be a 'shortage'
of them; all the foreign banks would have to be bankrupt at the same time
not to be able to legally generate them from the void, which doesn't seem
to be true yet. Given that these are all essentially policy decisions
(e.g., reserves requirements), any 'eurodollar shortage' would seem to
have to be engineered. However, my understanding of the network of
international banks, which stand even above 'national' central banks
(which are actually private, like the so-called 'Federal' Reserve) is
not very deep. Plus, many of the details (e.g., stock holders in the
uber banks) are essentially state secrets.
[Feb21,'17] "Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in
a while then a layer of scum floats to the top" -- Edward Abbey
[Feb22,'17]
Scott Creighton has a top notch article
here
on the dreadful continuation of the Phoenix Program, Iraqi chapter.
Especially note the continuity in this policy from Bush, to preznit
'peace prize' (no pussy hats complained then), and now continuing in full
force with Trumpf. For shame, US-ians. Some day, when the US empire has
fallen and similar horrors come by here for an extended visit, people here
will ask 'how could people elsewhere possibly be so deaf to our horrible
experiences'? Their grandparents will be able to explain.
[Feb26,'17]
Rune Likvern made a useful back-of-the-envelope calculation of 2016 EROEI
of oil from Volve, a small independent oil production installation
that recovered about 64 Mb (million barrels) of oil,
here.
For reference, daily world oil+otherliquids usage is 96 Mb, so this minor
field produced almost a day's worth of world oil consumption over its 8
years of operation (now shut down). Likvern's estimates for 2016 were
EROEI=15, measured leaving the oil platform. The estimate for the net
energy available to the consumer was EROEI=8 (e.g., 6% of the *net* energy
leaving the platform has to be used to transport the oil to the consumer).
That's still a ways above the EROEI 'cliff' that starts around EROEI=2,
below which, the amount of energy that has to be invested to get one
unit of net energy goes up rapidly reaching infinity at EROEI=1, which
is zero net energy. Note that this is (was!) a *conventional* oil field
-- discovered in 1993, production started in 2008, offshore continental
shelf, salt-associated, in 80 meter deep water, reservoir depth ~2900
meters, 'secondary production' water injection used immediately for
pressure support w/5:1 water/oil output, in the Norwegian North Sea.
It is likely that the EROEI for current drilling and mining (light
tight fracked oil which has to be mixed with heavy to be refined,
deep sea/continental slope oil, tar sands) is worse than this, though
hopefully still above EROEI=3. The Hills group 'ETP model' suggestion
that we reached EROEI=2 for oil in 2012 is almost certainly wrong.
However, new discoveries, which incidentally dropped to a 50 year low
in 2016 (yikes!), *are* probably getting dangerously close to the EROEI
'cliff'. Also, Rune Likvern's estimate compares the energy invested,
which is high quality diesel and natural gas and helicopter fuel, with
the total energy contained in the output barrels of crude oil, not all
of which is useable as an energy source after refining (e.g., asphalt).
Finally, these estimates don't include the energy required to construct
and maintain the transportation and industrial infrastructure, which
relies partly on oil, and which is in gradual decline, in the US at least.
The ever-declining EROEI for all energy sources will soon lead, or may
already have led, to peak net energy, the most critical peak of all for
industrial civilization (which is more difficult to estimate than EROEI
of an oil rig). Despite their overwhelming importance, it is virtually
impossible discuss these topics rationally in 'polite conversation'.
And anyway, polite conversation is being drowned out by *utterly
irrelevant* Trump vs. the so-called 'left' distraction/nonsense.
[Mar03'17]
Fracked oil is called
*light*
tight oil because it consists of much shorter
aliphatic chains (heptane or less) than crude oil
(mostly longer than heptane) (see also Westexas writing
here).
Nevertheless, everything is piled together into "all liquids", which is
still creeping ever slightly upward (which even includes the essentially
zero-net-energy ethanol). In order to supply a refinery, light tight
oil has to be mixed with heavier oil, such as the low EROEI heavy oil
washed and cooked out of tar sands. Note that this only gets the specific
gravity (API) right even though it won't contain the same distribution
of chain lengths as real crude oil, and is increasingly being rejected
by refiners ("dumbbell crude"). Even as inventories of 'oil' in the US
have gone up, the US has inexplicably been importing *more* (real?) oil.
Since the bloodstream of industrial civilization consists of heavy diesel
and bunker oil (ships, trains, trucks), not gasoline, or the even shorter
aliphatic chains in light tight oil, we may be a little more dangerously
closer to real problems with our just-in-time world than it appears on
the surface. It wouldn't hurt to be cautious.
[Mar06,'17]
While the Ukraine breaks up in real time this week (Donbass
border/currency/coal/nationalization/deoligarchization), the British
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Boris Johnson, visiting the
Ukronazis in Kiev, focussed on the upcoming Eurovision song contest.
Go Boris. For entertainment, I then read Pepe Escobar who suggested
(supposedly based on an anonymous source) that Flynn got dumped because
he/Ledeen really wanted to attack Iran, which could certainly have lead
to major world oil problems. Maybe.
[Mar10,'17]
With hardly a peep from Trump, the US
'news', or the supposed 'left', the US has
sent
2500 combat troops to Kuwait, a staging ground for entering Syria.
This is probably just the first tranche. The autonomous operation of the
supply line machinery of state reminds me of the (much larger) buildup
to the Iraq war and strongly suggests that the US/Trump/military/whomever
have not given up on partitioning/destroying Syria.
[Mar13,'17]
The Mighty Wurlitzer seems to be gearing up for another US-supported
coup attempt in Turkey because of Turkey's resistance to the creation of
greater Kurdistan via partitioning Turkey and Syria. The Turks have seen
the results of the partitions of neighboring countries close-up and are
right to fear a partition of Turkey and Syria. The sudden injection of
US troops into Syria -- which could additionally serve as human shields
for the YPG -- could be related.
[Apr04,'17]
Yet another head fake 'dictator kills his own
people with chemical weapons' attack in Syria from the
Disinfo
Reifenstahl Helmets. Who needs long term memory when you have the
internet, right? Sheesh.
[Apr06,'17]
Today, CNN says: "Trump is considering military action in Syria".
My brain explodes trying to relate this sentence to reality.
It refers to a universe parallel to the one I'm in. Trump actually
controls the Pentagon? The US/Saudi/Izzy hasn't already employed a
'salvador option' al-Qaeda/ISIS to destroy Syria for half a decade,
killing nearly another half a million people? Trump 'considers' things?
Because of friggin' 'chemical weapons' brought to you by the Hollywood
Helmets and Nikki Haley's fake 'Colin Powell slash Samantha Power women
and children moment'? 'Humanitarian bombing'? Again, again,
a-f*cking-gain?
(Daily Mail report on fake 2013 chemical attack pulled after lawsuit
by British 'defence' contractor, Britam, so only avail on wayback).
Splutter, splutter. I don't look foward to declining net energy, but
now I'm now beginning to wonder if as humans start to run low on it,
they will actually pull even *more* of this shite! I was naively hoping
that our unwanted power-down might help to *cut* some of the crap.
[Apr06b,'17]
Update: Late in the day here, at 3 AM Syria time, 50-60 cruise
missiles were launched against a Syrian government airfield being
used to attack ISIS in Homs, perhaps just before the new false flag
'Assad uses chemical weapons' lie began to fall apart. This may be
reminiscent of when Bill Clinton bombed the pharmaceutical factory in
Sudan in 1998 during Monica. Or it may just be the beginning of a major
escalation against Russia, which could be real trouble. I am hoping the
first interpretation is right. Somebody could have Trump by the p@ssy,
but he could have just grabbed his own p@ssy. Of course, the spectacle
will be a big popularity boost for the SUV crowd, like when Bush bombed
Afghanistan. Fake 'leftists' with the urge to cheer (as they vilely
cheered for the original Syrian intervention) will have their knickers
in a vicious twist, because they supposedly hate Prez P@ssy for being
'evil', they hate Russia, and because Hillary would have bombed *so*
differently
(she would have used 75 pink-colored cruise missiles). But I doubt they
will be able to repress the urge to cheer.
[Apr07,'17]
The euro poodles (May, Merkel, Hollande, Tusk) and Trudeau from
Canada have now publicly weighed in in support of Trump and,
and are 'catapulting' the false flag. Just like the fake US
'left' poodles (incl Bernie!). What mental weaklings! Go
Bolivia!
I can't imagine most actual EU-ians agree with their spineless leaders.
The Russians claim that less than half of the US missiles hit the
Syrian air field, the others possibly jammed, spoofed, shot down, or
malfunctioned, and that few high-value targets were hit. However, given
the usual disinfo storm, it's impossible to really know what actually
happened. Ignoring the stomach-churning patriotic macaque-monkey
displays from all concerned, which will eventually die down, this is
not a US move from a position of power. Firing a bunch of expensive,
slow missiles from vulnerable destroyers near Cyprus because of fear of
getting US planes shot down is supposed to signal power, but it also
can demonstrate weakness, esp. if many fail. Russia is not likely to
abandon Tartus and will strengthen air defenses and offenses. China,
embarrassed by the attack during a dinner meeting with Trump in the US,
will have to respond indirectly. I'm going with interpretation one,
above (like Clinton's Sudan factory bombing).
[Apr09,'17]
I'm still guessing this is more 'Clinton Sudan factory bombing' than
'Cuban missile crisis'. Russia and the US are moving some military
equipment around, but they always do that, and there is no credible
evidence yet for major mobilizations. The US is continuing to bomb
northeastern Syria (opposite end). Some have suggested that the main
point of this was not to threaten Syria or Russia but to threaten China
(see, e.g., US aircraft carrier group going once again to the Korean
pensinsula). Big public productions like this tend to have multiple
uses. The Russian 'red line' joint statement was probably disinfo,
despite its wide distribution (Al Masdar News and Times of Israel,
but also Reuters and the Independent). Perhaps the most ironic result
has been the inability of the anti-Trump MSM to restrain itself from
monkey-flag-waving, which is turning this into a major popularity boost
for Trump, and which has instantly shot their own stoopid Russiagate
nonsense in the foot! Who knows, perhaps Trump actually thought through
that part of the sequence. If so, it's hard to imagine him thinking
foward to the next week. A pox on both their houses.
[Apr10,'17]
The ridiculous 'barrel bomb' canard resurfaces (Spicer presser
today). This psyop continuity from the Obama regime to the current
not-very-different oligarchs+bankers+generals+asshat Obama2 regime truly
shows that we have reached full-on '1984'. 'Any fool' knows that when
white hot iron shrapnel from a conventional bomb tears off a woman's
leg or a baby's head, this is virtually doing God's work, as opposed
to doing the same thing with an infernal 'barrel bomb', you terrible
Assad regime person. Sheesh. War is *defined* as ripping the limbs and
heads off of live humans, disemboweling them alive, and crushing them
in collapsed buildings, which only sometimes kills them immediately.
This isn't changed in the slightest by avoiding using the fantasy
'barrel bombs'. There hasn't been real visual reporting of what war
actually looks like since the American war on Vietnam. Wouldn't want
the stoopid human monkeys to actually see what they pay for every day.
They might get scared, or throw up. Besides, have you no care for (our)
women and children? I'm in favor of the old practice of putting heads
on pikes on the bridge. Since we now have big flat screens visible
in broad daylight, we could project magnified video of the heads
on freeway overpasses so all the sheeple mindlessly piloting their
ridiculous 200,000 watt 6,000 pound SUV's on their way to work could
see all the good effects of avoiding 'barrel bombs'. There would be
enough heads at one per day for almost three millenia, just from the
million muslims killed by the false-pretext US/UK war/genocide on Iraq.
It's no less barbaric than funding the things that ripped the heads
off of the living humans in the first place. Just because we can't
see them doesn't make it less obscene -- in fact, it makes it *more*
obscene. What's so great about the human monkey? Physics? Chemistry?
Some days, I prefer the physics- and chemistry-naive non-human monkeys.
When they rip somebody's head off, they have to do it by hand.
[Apr11,'17]
Still guessing this is *not* the second Cuban missile crisis.
Here is Stephen Cohen,
a sane voice, on CNN explicitly suggesting that it is. I'm guessing
he's wrong. He helpfully and calmly manages to broadcast the Russian
response, amidst the robotic braying of the hosts and Colonel Leighton
('we lied to you about Iraq, but this time is for real, man'). The
contents of the Russian response were, of course, completely omitted
from any other CNN 'reporting'. Yesterday, Steve Pieczenik
quite forcefully argued
that he believes the reports of the beginnings of a real military buildup.
From the disorganized commotion visible in Washington, it's not yet
clear what's up or what whoever is control in the US wants, besides
Spicer's blurt "The first goal is to destablize Syria". That was the
original goal! Nuclear war with Russia and North Korea is something else.
I'm still guessing that Pieczenik's 'buildup' reports may themselves be
catapulted disinfo; disinfo was, after all, Steve's life-long professional
occupation (tho he sure looked convincingly angry/honest in the video!).
And don't forget there still are many non-Dr-Strangelove types in the
military. The one thing that creeps me out a bit is Putin's comment
that the US Syrian attacks were planned before the poison gas psyop that
was supposedly their trigger, and that more psyops are in the works.
If true, it means the Russians, too, would already have been 'preparing
for hot war' before this. Just in case, here is a handy
nuclear
firestorm map app. But probably, this will all die down in a week.
It's all just the fog of not-hot-war (well, as long as you are lucky
enough not to live in Iraq/Syria/Libya/Yemen/Afghanistan, where over a
million people have been killed over the past decade). Finally,
here
is a helpful map of pipelines.
[Apr13,'17]
The Trump-Bartiromo
chocolate
cake freak show has moved the 'official' public presentation of
'government' to a new level of farce, even beyond the execrable Brian
Williams soiling his pants mouthing Leonard Cohen on 'beautiful'
missiles. Reality looks like a comedy skit instead of the other
way around. The wall-to-wall war whoops of the yellow press,
together with the fake videos, analyzed, for example,
here, which would
have impressed even their English forebears of pre-WWI 1913, may work
their 'magic' given another few months, tho I don't think they fool
younger people. I did witness them working on a number of my fellow
older academics, even one with an MD (!). On the positive side, the
Tillerson visit to Russia went off OK, and there was even a meeting
with Putin. Talking -- even the weird talking-past-each-other, robotic,
Kerry-like utterances of Tillerson versus the logical Lavrov -- is good.
As a result of Trump blowing up the Russia-US intelligence cooperation
hotline, the US has had to cut down on its Syria bombing operations
for fear of drawing Russian anti-aircraft fire. Eli Lake's re-blog of
Cernovich on Bloomberg is probably the usual disinfo.
[Apr14,'17]
The MOAB Afghanistan bomb is just another sorry re-run, analogous
to the perennially popular 'chemical weapons' of 'mass destruction'
canard, proving once again that there is no history. It even included a
fantasy 'tunnel complex'! (scheisse, these guys have *no* imagination).
Remember the elaborately illustrated and completely fake Tora Bora
multilevel tunnel complex repeatedly broadcast by the 'Mighty Wurlitzer'
of the NYT not to mention The Guardian? The reality turned out to
be a few small mountain caves. If anything, the immense power of the
internet seems to have even further eroded historical perception, except
in the special case of washed up rock groups and bad, old teevee shows.
The MOAB was originally called the 'Daisy Cutter' in Vietnam, where it
was used to blast away the jungle to make landing strips, that is, when
millions of gallons of dioxin-tainted Agent Orange and giant
tree
crushing bulldozers weren't doing this. The US
scraped/poisoned/bombed almost 10% of the surface area of Vietnam down
to dirt before it *lost* the war and left the contaminated wreckage and
2-3 million dead people behind. The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam
than were dropped in the entirety of the second world war, leaving
roughly 20 million bomb craters (from the 95% of the 750 pound bombs
that actually exploded), and a sh*tload of buried unexploded bombs that
kill to this day. Militarily pointless, the historical curiosity of
the MOAB is merely another sound bite for the disgusting Brian Williams
to slobber over. He won't, of course, mention that the US has *lost*
the war in Afghanistan, defeated by the stunningly inferior military
of the Taliban! The only US success there has been to protect and
resurrect the C-eye-eh opium trade back up to its original pre-Taliban
levels (before the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban had eliminated
the C-eye-eh opium business). One can only hope that whatever
continued
provocation of North Korea the MIC crazies and Trump come up with
this week has as *little* practical effect as the Afghanistan MOAB bomb
'tunnel complex' psyop. Already in 2004 (w.r.t. Iran), I had begun to
worry about the possibility of a new-new Pearl Harbor where a US aircraft
carrier gets sunk in order to firmly fix the US proles on a war footing.
Anachronistic aircraft carriers are pretty much sitting ducks for a
swarm of modern supersonic anti-ship missiles, and today are strangely
like the obsolete battleships sunk at Pearl Harbor that were used to
launch the US into WWII (the newest ones can go fast, but 65 mph is
still slow relative to a missile, and the ocean is still flat). I don't
think we're there yet. Trump's one-eighty into a neocon Bush/Obama
war pig was pretty fast, eh?, perhaps suggesting some kind of blackmail
(sex? via Kushner? assassination? Russia-gate?!). But I'm not denying
I will be a little relieved to see NK clear from the Matrix news feed
over the next week or two.
[Apr17,'17]
Quick relief! Looks like the 'aircraft carriers to NK' and the
'failed missile test' were both probably just @ss-covering disinfo
distractions. Who needs the MSM 'catapulting the propaganda' when you've
got zerohedge et al., who even added *2 more carriers* to their disinfo
load yesterday...
[Apr22,'17]
The upcoming 5G voice and data frequencies
will
get into the range of millimeter wave airport strip-search
body-scanning frequencies. These higher frequencies penetrate the body
differently, and despite being more energetic (energy equals h nu) require
more transmitters because smaller wavelengths are absorbed more easily.
The possibility of a full-metal-jacket fascist full-body panopticon
grows ever closer each year.
[Apr24,'17]
A
vimeo interview
(transcription
here
with a putative former Dutch currency trader, Ronald Bernard (still
involved in banking) succinctly describes the centrality of blackmail
in maintaining the discipline of evil. He says he is still alive
because he hasn't named any names. Minutes 22-27 almost sound like
a confession. What he describes is a refined, modern version of
practices that go back at least to Classical Greece, and probably
before. Kubrick's sanitized version in Eyes Wide Open conveyed the
same unmistakable feel. In two weeks, the multiple copies on youtube
and reddit and 4chan already have 'poison the well' flat-Earth, UFO,
and alien nonsense added. If disinfo (for now, I'm guessing it's for
real), this guy would have to be an absolutely amazing actor. [Update
Jun9:
part 2
of the interview].
[Apr30,'17]
The US killed almost 1/3 of the total North Korean *civilian* population
(2-3 million people) by bombing and napalming every major North Korean
city (Curtis LeMay) during the Korean war. Some of the death toll
was due to starvation afterward. North Koreans are not completely
insane; they have logical reasons to want nuclear weapons as a defense
against the US. On Wednesday, *South* Korea had to mobilize
8,000
police officers to suppress protests against the US installation of
THAAD missile defense systems there. The anesthetized, propagandized,
and casually vicious US masses support the 'war effort' (including much of
the 'left'). In a recent poll, at 47% to 39%, Americans wanted to shut
down their government if defense and homeland security spending was not
*increased* enough. The increased money for 'defense' would obviously
be better spent on fixing potholes in the decaying streets that I cycle
on every day :-} . But despite all the scary noises, I still think
this is basically all psyop/disinfo circus nonsense (tho installing US
anti-missiles at the Chinese border *is* dangerously first-strike-ey).
In a saner world, the most pressing problem would be how to deal with
the beginning over the next decade of an irreversible decline in net
energy available to run worldwide industrial civilization together with
declining fish, soil, freshwater, metals, and other critical non-energy
(but energy-intensive to obtain!) resources. A good first step would
be to actually talk about these problems, instead of the steady diet of
warmongery from the yellow press of the MSM.
[May12,'17]
Peak Oil Update/Summary
Starting around 2002, I first started following the oil more closely.
Looking at the data available then, I soon developed an expectation
that oil would peak around 2008. That year, oil price did spike
up to unheard of levels, and 2008 (or 2005 or 2011) very probably
marked the world peak in conventional crude oil production. However,
then came additions from tar sands, fracking, deep water oil, more
lease condensates (pentane), and more natural gas plant liquids
(butane and propane), and this resulted in 'all liquids' continuing
to slowly increase after 2008 until the present. Looking at
this
Fed graph of the monetary base money supply and total retail sales
excluding food, clearly something unprecendented in previous contractions
*did* happen in 2008. Perhaps this new disruption was only accidentally
coincident with peak production and price peak of low-EROEI conventional
crude oil. In any case, many of the people who used to write about peak
oil have now gone silent with the current lower price of oil and with
the current 1% oil 'glut'. Some peak oil people, such as Gail Tverberg,
who was one of the principals at TheOilDrum.com, are now predicting
that oil prices might go down and stay down permanently, because of
demand destruction. That is, oil is expensive enough to cause people
to cut back but not expensive enough for oil companies to make a profit
off of newer, harder-to-get oil -- and things are likely to stay that
way permanently. Another group of 'tech cornucopians' assume that the
1% of world power generated by solar and the 1% of world electric cars
will rapidly increase with solar roofs, etc, and this will keep oil
prices low instead by replacing oil use.
I think Gail and the tech cornucopians are both wrong. My summary is:
(1) the existing population of China and India are still way under US
kWh/person, but trying very hard to get there and they have 7x as many
people as there are in the US, (2) world population is still growing at
1%/year (more than one entire UK per year) and is projected to do this
for 30 more years (more than 7 additional US's worth of people), (3)
solar electric and electric cars are tiny (barely visible in stacked
graphs) and their growth rate is almost static, and even if 'Tuscan roofs'
and overpriced money-losing Tesla cars markedly increase (2x, 4x, 6x),
it would still only amount to a small fraction of total energy production
percentage and car percentage two decades from now [Update: May2019: Tesla
has sold a total of 21 solar roofs in California]. The bottom line is
that there would seem to be ample opportunity to increase oil demand
by 1% relative to the almost flat oil supply, and oil and natural gas
are far from being replaced by solar and wind as critical power sources
for industry, roads, fertilizer and food production, and transportation
(esp. ships/railroads/trucks). Now, in more detail.
First, the amount of the oil 'glut' is still tiny (less than
1%) relative to the 99%+ that got burned. Maintaining this knife edge
situation permanently seems unlikely. A slightly larger glut causing
even sharper price drops would have the potential to knock out more of
the oil industry leading eventually to a rebound price spike, while a
mere 1% increase would eliminate the glut entirely and a 2% increase
could cause another spike.
Second, oil discoveries over the past few years have dropped
to new record multi-year lows (6-8 units used for 1 unit discovered).
The eventual effects of using 600% as much oil every year as is being
discovered that year should be compared to the effects of having a 1%
glut or having some oil tankers parked in the bay.
Third, low kWh/person countries are willing to pay a lot more for
their initial increase in oil usage than richer countries are. This is
because the productivity increase from very-low-oil-usage to low-oil-usage
is much greater that the productivity increase from a soccer mom buying
an even bigger SUV. This suggests that robust oil demand will be there
for decades. China and India have more than 7x the population of the
US, but together, China and India currently use less oil (17% of world
total) than the US does (the leader at 20.5% of world total oil usage).
Even if China and India were to use everybody else's oil in the world,
they couldn't make it up to US per capita usage. Also consider that
countries with high gasoline taxes are paying 2-3x as much as people do
in the US. For example, gas in the UK costs $7 to $8/gallon, but people
still buy a lot of it, and some even drive SUV's (the mind boggles).
Fourth, population *increases* (as opposed to the effects of
modernization of existing population in low kWh/person countries) together
with low oil prices will continue to drive demand up. Population is
growing by more than an entire UK per year (two entire California's
per year), which isn't expected to top out until 2050 at the earliest,
which would amount to 7 more US's worth of people to support and provide
housing, transportation, food, and toys for. The 2008 oil price spike
did cause temporary demand destruction in the US and an actual drop in
car miles driven beginning in 2008, even in the face of continued US
population increases. However, low prices starting in 2014 immediately
caused an increase in US car miles driven, and immediately stimulated
US-ians to buy larger, less fuel-efficient cars (I see them from my
bicycle every day). The increase in US car miles since 2014 have brought
US per capita car miles back up to approximately where they were in 2003.
With coal fossil fuel, the sudden cessation of China cooking up insane
amounts of concrete to build a complete US interstate freeway system
every three years (they now have two) at the end of 2016 *did* cause
a sudden flattening of world coal usage. But it seems that oil and
methane are unlikely to experience similar sudden demand flattenings
(in the absence of world war) because oil and methane provide the power
for what goes over the roads and provide food and houses and toys for
the car occupants (not to mention the cars themselves, 20% of which have
to be replaced every year).
Fifth, the energy return on energy investment for oil has been
inexorably declining. The amount of energy used is still a small
fraction of the energy returned (perhaps 10-15%), but that is enough to
begin to cut into the total net energy available. Net energy -- not to
mention widely varying energy/barrel for different 'liquids' -- is not
considered when looking at 'all liquids' production, which consists
of crude oil plus light tight oil (heptane), plus lease condensates
(pentane), plus natural gas plant liquids (butane, propane), plus tar
sands, plus biodiesel (slightly net energy positive), plus ethanol (no
net energy!). Thus, some of of the apparent increases might actually
just be 'treading water' when looked at from a net energy perspective.
Of course, the people using the finished energy sources don't see any
decrease in the energy available per gallon; rather the increased energy
costs are absorbed by the rest of the system, which is what Gail Tverberg
is fond of pointing out.
Sixth, the cornucopian idea that solar and wind are a drop in
replacement for oil, methane, coal, and nuclear is wrong (Tverberg
agrees here). Solar and wind require substantial up-front investments
that most people won't be able to afford. The half of the population
that can't afford an unexpected $500 dollar expense are hardly going
to buy a $50,000 'Tuscan roof' solar roof from Tesla, which will maybe
break even after 20-25 years (Tesla's own calculation!); people only
keep a house for 10 years on average, and wouldn't easily be able to
take the roof with them. A few idle rich people will buy them (e.g.,
soccer moms guilty about their mammoth SUV's), and will be handsomely
rewarded with a $15,000 tax break because they are 'helping the planet'
(this is actually a transfer payment from the US population to Elon Musk).
These would be the same people that would casually emit 2 tons of CO2
on a vacation to see what's left of the 'global warming damaged' Barrier
Reef (as advertised in my UCSD retirement newsletter apparently without
irony). They may also have an extra $10,000 for the house batteries and
inverters to carry them through blackouts better than the proles in less
tony neighborhoods. Though this may help to create a few gated/walled
'Elysiums', a la Rio, it won't measureably affect the composition of
the global energy supply. Even if growth rates in solar and electric
car batteries were to increase (they are actually flattening now), it
would take a very long time to swap out the 99% of the gasoline cars
on the road. In the US, the replacement rate for cars is about 18%.
This means if almost 100% of new car purchases were electric cars, we
could replace most of the cars with electric in a decade (and presumably
beef up the electric grid, since the energy currently used in cars is
about equivalent to the total energy used in the current electric grid).
But when only 2-3% of new car purchases are electric, and buyers retain
gasoline cars for longer distance travel, it would take decades before
gasoline demand is greatly reduced. Even at current low car replacement
rates, lithium and esp. cobalt supplies for batteries are already tight.
In the case of container ships, railroads, and long distance trucks,
there are no drop-in electrical replacements on the distant horizon.
A lithium truck battery capable of powering a long distance truck
currently weighs almost as much as a fully loaded 80,000 diesel truck,
which reduces the payload of an electric truck to almost nothing.
Of course, a long distance electric truck could stop to recharge every
fifty or a hundred miles, but that won't be a 'growth industry'. Half of
freight, however, travels less than 100 miles on trucks, where batteries
might be practical. But it's important to remember that ships and
trucks and trains are replaced at a much lower rate than passenger cars.
There will never be even medium distance (>30 min) electric passenger
planes if these even ever arrive.
Seventh, solar and wind are currently utterly dependent on fossil
fuel -- for making concrete, float glass, steel, mining silver and
other minerals, diesel transport, pavement/bridge maintenance, tires,
installation, service, electronics manufacturing. Supply chains are
getting longer and more reticulated rather than shorter and more local.
An iPhone is assembled by transporting the outputs of 200 suppliers
distributed across the world using fossil fuel. There is no Biosphere
(Steve Bannon!) equivalent for industrial civilization -- this would
be a demonstration project showing that it is actually possible to
design/mine/manufacture/transport/service some basic fragment of what is
needed for industrial civiliation using only renewable power (water, wind,
solar). It may or may not be possible. It's an empirical scientific
question. It doesn't *have* to be possible just because we want it to be.
Eighth, the peak in methane production -- esp. fracked methane --
is probably still a few years off. Some oil usage could in theory be
replaced by methane (e.g., compressed gas busses already on the road).
However, there is robust demand for methane (1) for heating (2) for
electrical generation as coal and nuclear plants are retired, (3) for new
natural gas peaker electric plants to buffer the intermittent effects
of more solar/wind, and (4) for making fertilizer to grow food in
more and more depleted soils for the expanding human population.
Compressed natural gas cars are still rare, and compressed natural gas
isn't practical for ships (except liquified natural gas tankers :-} )
or for trains. It could be used for some trucks. This suggests that
increased methane use is not likely to strongly reduce oil demand.
Finally, we have to consider how this interacts with the current
business cycle, which looks a bit long in the tooth. Should there
be a 2008-like contraction (or worse), it would result in demand
destruction in the US like that observed in 2008. But the US only has
5% of the world's population. After another crash comes, there will be
some recovery, and even through the year of the crash, roughly a cubic
mile of oil will still be burned and forever lost (tho a small amount
will laudably be used to make, deliver, and install solar cells :-} ).
A crash will likely cause more contraction in the business of exotic,
harder-to-get oil, further impairing supply a few years down the line.
I had previously expected oil prices to already be higher by now --
I expected a spike by the end of 2015, and when that didn't happen,
I expected it to happen in 2016. Oil prices went up a little, but no
2008-like spike. I still expect a spike by the end of 2017, as oil usage
comes up against fast-depleting light tight oil but also slowly-depleting
but mostly already-depleted conventional Saudi oil. But even if that
happens, there will likely be another oil price crash soon after the
spike, similar to what happened immediately after the 2008 spike.
I have done an exceptionally poor job of making accurate short term
price predictions, partly because a 'glut' of 1%, which is what I more or
less regard as 'noise' from the point of view of the long term survival
of industrial civilization, can completely crash prices (and that is
precisely why I would have made an absolutely terrible businessman!).
Burning a cubic mile of oil per year, however, is *not* noise. Because of
that, with my geology cap on, I remain much more sure that by 2030, we
will be in a new era of continuously declining net available energy --
right about the time that people across the world will supposedly be
trying to increase fossil-fuel-driven investment in alternative energy
beyond just Elysium soccer moms. This is likely to be a difficult time
for most people on the planet. I'm still hoping it doesn't turn out
like Blade Runner, Elysium, or Ghost In The Shell.
[May14,'17]
A killer whale that recently died in the UK after becoming entangled in
fishing lines there had body fat that consisted of 0.1% PCBs (1 part
per 1000) -- a staggeringly high concentration. I've always wanted
to scan the enormous brain of a killer whale. This is one area where
environmental controls are worse in Europe than in the US. If I ever
get a hold of one, I shall scan with care!
[May16,'17]
A few days ago, the US via the Kurds
made
a deal with ISIS fighters (no doubt overlapping some of the
people the C-eye-eh was funding) who were holding an important dam
hostage in Syria. They would be allowed to leave if they didn't
destroy the dam. They left, and were then bombed by the US as they
were retreating through open country. Hard to say who ordered this
(like with the bombing of Syrian soldiers in Deir es-Zor last year).
Obviously, it sabotages future negotiations in several arenas. A double
double cross. There can be no intent except to further inflame the
already catastrophic situation. This is what we blow money on instead
of fixing our decaying cities.
[May24,'17]
I just came across
these
graphs from Market Daily Briefing (mdbriefing.com) showing the Bank
of Japan balance sheet (central bank assets). It is clear that something
went completely haywire in 2013, when the central bank started buying
"central government securities" (JBG's, Japanese government bonds),
linearly increasing its holdings from the 2002-2013 average of $1.2
trillion (dollars) to a stunning $4.8 trillion currently, a quadrupling
over just 4 years. Although I have read about increases in central
bank purchases ("quantitative easing") by other central banks beside
the Fed, this graph still amazes me. This has generated very little
inflation in Japan. For this to have occurred, almost three and a
half trillion dollars must have been lost to deflation over 4 years.
One wonders how many more 2008-like, gross transitions in monetary
behavior can occur before something seriously breaks!
Here
is a paper modeling how to 'unwind' the BoJ situation, which suggests
that the Bank of Japan will have negative net assets for 100 years if
the quantitative easing ended now (no sign of it ending). It concludes
there should be a "loss sharing" agreement between the central bank and
the government (that is, the central bank loses money it created from the
void, regular people lose actual salary). I tried to get some feeling
if
"are we
dangerous here?", but failed to figure out what this really means
in concrete terms that I can understand. "I think we *are* dangerous",
though the paper quotes the example of the Czech republic being in this
situation since the 1990's, but recovering.
[May25,'17]
The Manchester bombing -- for now accepting the official narrative,
complete with the trademark magic bomb-proof ID card -- is an absolutely
classic example of "blowback" (a word coined by the C-eye-eh itself).
The family of the accused "short-tempered and gullible" bomber are
Libyans involved in MI6 plots to overthrow Qaddafi back in the 1990's,
and involved with the ISIS/al-Qaeda death squads that reentered Libya
well before the UK/France/US overthrew Qaddafi, and then had the death
squad guys kill Qaddafi with a bayonet up his rectum (what Hillary
laughed about). As Libya has descended into utter chaos afterward,
regular people -- but also a lot of the disgruntled death squad guys --
fled back to Europe. This is virtually the textbook definition
blowback:
you reap what you sow (see also summary by
b
at MoA). But pay no attention to that -- the 'real' problem,
according to the UK, is that the US leaked the bomber's identity.
If only that had been kept secret, all would be well and the UK's
involvement in destroying Libya would have 'worked'. Riiight.
And remember, the only places that have real 'civilian deaths'
are the US/UK/EU. There are no 'true civilians' in other
countries because they are not part of the US/UK/EU 'master race'.
[Update: May30: check out the ridiculous 'redacted photos'
here.
Given that there are so many perfectly competent Photoshoppers in the
fashion industry, it's weirdly almost as if the amateurishness was
intentional.]
[Jun15,'17]
London is a city absolutely terrified of fire as a result of the Great
London Fire of, uhhh, 1666. They have routine fire drills where people
are flushed out of their swimming pool showers at the exercise place in
only their towels onto a rainy 40 deg F street. Yet somehow, the English
fear of fire often doesn't seem to penetrate into the places where it
would count. I am reminded of fire several years ago in an English old
folks home that trapped and killed a bunch of poor old people because the
fire escape ladder was made of wood and burned up before it could be used.
Or the time when the fire alarm people started a fire in a school building
by drilling through the floor into, what else, the fire alarm circuitry
from the floor below (personal experience). Or the recent Grenfell
Tower fire, where members of the fire brigades initially told people to
stay inside their flats in a poorly designed burning 27-story building,
recently covered with decorative but flammable cladding, that had no
sprinkler system. When the firemen went inside, they discovered horrific
scenes of piles of bodies in the narrow single-file stairwell and rooms
filled with unconscious people, only able to rescue a few. There are
probably well over 100 dead, tho media focussed on much lower official
death tolls (there were 120 flats in the building, so there were probably
~600 people in the building). The building was a poor-person council
flat tower right in the middle of the richest parts of London, Kensington
and Chelsea. The $11 million cosmetic external cladding job no doubt
made it easier on the eyes of the nearby rich-ies. But the police are
on the job -- they have arrested and already tried and imprisoned for 3
months someone who took a picture of a burned dead person who had jumped.
Now *that* will no doubt make future fires proceed more smoothly. *None*
of the people responsible for the decisions that led to this catastrophic
fire have been arrested, nor is it likely that they ever will be.
The flammable cladding (flammable plastic core with aluminum covering)
was manufactured by an American firm. The version they used in London
is banned in the US and the EU for use on buildings taller than 40 feet,
but allowed on high-rises in the UK. The fireproof version is only a
little more expensive. This shows an utter and criminal lack of simple
common sense. [Update: Jun28: a stunning 120 other apartment blocks in
the UK are covered with the same dangerous, flammable cladding.]
[Jun19,'17]
To protect ISIS -- those would be the guys the US is also
supposedly 'fighting' -- the US shot down a Syrian jet that
was bombing ISIS, just a few weeks after Russia
took out some big
C-eye-eh-and-Izzy-supported takfiris on May 28. After the Syrian jet
shoot-down, Russia broke off the Syria cooperation agreement again.
But it is unlikely they will shoot down an American jet. It is also
unlikely that the US will try to kill any Russians. Iran, however,
almost immediately launched some ballistic missiles against ISIS in Deir
Ezzor in a more significant move (this is where ISIS is still squatting
on some of Syria's best oil fields in the east, near Iraq). The bottom
line is that Trump/Hillary = no difference at all. 'Hillary' (rather, the
underlying military-industrial complex) would have done the same thing,
probably even sooner. The current 'president' is merely a lightning
rod for the proles -- "hope and change for a different demographic",
as Linh Dinh says. If you eliminate the small, meaningless cosmetic
flourishes (e.g., visas, wall, Paris accords, Cuba) the election has
been almost utterly immaterial to actual policy (economic/banking,
military, social, energy/climate). The main difference is merely
which irrelevant @ssface you have to look at on the teevee. Just don't
watch the teevee. The Pentagon is still clearly trying to partition
Syria using the Kurds (in the region where Syria, Iraq, and Iran border
southeastern Turkey). So far, not working that well. US-and-
Izzy-supported
ISIS continues to
lose
ground.
[Jun27,'17]
It is important to keep *all* the major factors influencing the
progress of human affairs -- energy, water/soil/food, population,
technology, debt -- in mind at the same time (cf. club of rome).
Chris Hamilton has long emphasized demographics (see recent post
here).
The problem in trying to predict exactly what will happen over the short
term is that small differences in growth can easily cause 'gluts' or
'shortages' in the 1-2% percent range, which can cause economic havoc
that obscures the long term picture. Chris puts a too much emphasis
on a demographic 'ice age', the fact that the growth in population
in OECD plus China plus Brazil plus Russia has now flattened to 0%
per year from the almost 0.6% per year growth 'enjoyed' over the past
4 decades, and that it will go slightly negative (-0.1%) twenty years
from now. However, in the case of oil, so far, continued growth China,
Russia, Brazil and the 'rest of the world' (India, Africa, and others)
has kept world oil consumption increasing. And *global* population
growth is likely to remain above 0.5% per year for another 20-25 years.
Chris thinks the rest of the world won't be able to afford to consume
at closer to OECD levels: "India plus Africa and the poorest parts of
the world are still growing... but alas, they simply haven't (and won't
have) the income, the savings, the access to credit to ever consume at
Western or even BRICS levels of consumption)". Surely, he is right
that they won't/can't get there; but the real reason is that getting
there would require extracting the ever-dwindling remaining fossil fuel
energy resources at a rate that is physically impossibly greater than
current extraction rates. Another factor is the ever-dwindling
energy
return on energy investment, which means that slightly more energy
is lost every new year to obtain the same amount of usable net energy.
There is an absolute cut-off at EROEI of 1:1 (no net energy). But the
practical hard EROEI cutoff is probably closer to 10:1, because of the
requirement to maintain energy extraction infrastructure (extraction,
refining, transport, roads, the grid, electronics) before any of the
extracted energy can be used to do other things -- like making steel for
non-energy-extraction purposes, heating and cooling homes and businesses,
growing and transporting food, pumping water, manufacturing things (e.g.,
'renewable energy' devices :-} ), constructing buildings and roads,
keeping the internet up). As we are forced to resort to less and
less rich resources (fracking, tar sands, deep water, Arctic), EROEI
inexorably declines. Contraction from hard/geological/physical energy
constraints will eventually overtake the gentler contraction from slowing
of growth/demand. Precisely predicting the future -- i.e., exactly when
the curves cross -- however, is a much harder thing to do (actually,
the curves can only meet, because geology and physics always wins over
what the brains of humans merely *want/demand*). There is little doubt
the curves will have met before 2030, when world population will very
likely still be growing, and I will be 75 -- assuming I survive my twice
daily cycling until then :-} . This is not rocket surgery, but pretty
much exactly what limits to growth predicted in 1972. It's the biggest
elephant in the room that the main-sewer media never dares to touch.
Instead, yesterday, we got yet another f'ing round of fake
'chemical
weapons'. Perhaps the most hallucinogenic passage in that Reuters
article is: "The United States has taken a series of actions over
the past three months demonstrating its willingness to carry out
strikes, mostly in self-defense, against Syrian government forces".
Perhaps Russia will need to bomb some Mexican police stations near the
California border, "mostly in self-defense", eh? At this rate, The
New York Times is going to need a whole new section devoted to "Fake
Chemical Weapons Reports"! The state of the US/UK press is pretty
pitiful. The London Review of Book decided not to publish
Seymour
Hersh's most recent, bland, investigation into
'fake chemical weapons attack #19' -- even after
they paid for the investigation! It came out in
Die
Welt. But aren't the NYT and CNN supposed to be *against* Trump,
and so would want an article exposing Trump having faked intelligence?
I guess supporting the chaos-making neocon policies in Syria with the
latest fake chemical weapons psyop just mentioned above trumps even
Trump-bashing at NYT and CNN. Scheisse. It's worth pointing out that one
of Seymour Hersh's previous pieces was a fantasy re-telling of the fake
'bin Laden hit', to try to give it more gravitas. His latest is suspect,
probably disinfo to absolve our Syrian contras (Syrian bombs supposedly
caused everything according to Hersh). The Matrix is real and has many
layers (eyes back to your fondle device, facebook calling...).
[Jul12,'17]
The so-called 'obesity paradox' (that being moderately fat increases
survival when compared to being normal weight) is a typical example of
an utterly useless, sound-bite crap/disinfo created by dishonest medical
statisticians and then catapulted by the attention-deficit, click-bait
media. It was originally proposed in 2003 for *chronic kidney disease*
patients (so it must be good for you, too...), which proves that you must
stay calm, and continue to eat more meat and cheese. Once you make some
sensible adjustments by excluding people who smoke (they die, but are
generally thinner), and excluding people who are wasting away from cancer
(and kidney disease!), it's clear that any BMI above normal substantially
increases chance of early death. A study published in Lancet looked at
10 million people, with 1.6 million recorded deaths, across 14 years
(239 studies in 32 countries over 45 years). After excluding current
or former smokers, those with chronic disease at the start, and those
who died in the first 5 years (leaving 4 million people), the result was
that every 5 units of BMI above 25 (a generous definition of the top end
of 'normal') results in 31% increased risk of early death (before 70).
There is no 'obesity paradox'.
[Jul19,'17]
How not to die cycling.
I'm was thinking I should write a short book, 'How not to die cycling'.
So here it is -- just 2 pages. I've been a regular cyclist for about 35
years and most recently, have cycled to work twice daily for the last 15
years in San Diego and London, and so I have had decades-long personal
experience with 'stupid car tricks', yet have survived to tell the tale.
Whenever I query people about cycling without letting on that I do,
the first things out of their mouths are typically some combination of:
(1) cyclists ride dangerously and have been known to kill people, (2)
the roads aren't designed for bicycles so cyclists shouldn't use them,
(3) adding proper cycle lanes could only cause traffic to get worse, (4)
the small number of existing cycling lanes have already wrecked traffic,
(5) cyclists are unfairly setting themselves up to be killed by drivers,
which causes unnecessary anguish to the drivers, (6) cycling will get
you killed, which is why they themselves would never do it, (7) killing a
cyclist who is not wearing a helmet should only be a misdemeanor, (8) only
poor people use bicycles, (9) all cyclists are angry vegans who ignore red
lights, or (10) cyclists don't have cars and so don't pay for the roads.
Since this is the basic mindset of the pilots of the 200,000-watt
6,000-pound steel cans speeding past my 100-watt, 165-pound flesh-covered
device, the first, most important rule of safe cycling is: 'the
car is *always* right'. Never argue with, yell at, or touch a car.
Muttering under your breath is OK. This especially applies when they
unfairly cut you off, or even seriously endanger your life. In fact,
at such critical points in time, it's esp. important *not* to let social
emotion and language interfere with visual field attention and expert
sensorimotor performance. Even though the person in the big car may
be obese, which means that I am subsidizing their bad-diet 'sick care'
(I pay for it, they use it), and even though they just gunned their
200,000 watt engine in order to race past me up to a red light -- I just
think, Zen-nnnnnn.
*Do* get in front of cars at stoplights so they can see you when they
start back up, esp. at the right-most edge of a protected left (if you
are turning left), or at the left-most edge of a right turn lane (if you
are going straight). Go partway into the crosswalk at a red light (safer
for you, and unblocks cars turning right on red). This usually won't
make the cars angry because they are often on their cell phones when the
light is red. When they look up and see you, their anger will be less,
and since they are stopped, they have a *lot* less kinetic energy.
When going around a parked car, get out into the point in the lane where
you will need to be to clear an opened door *before* you immediately come
up to the parked car. Since this maneuver has the potential to enrage
some drivers since you are momentarily occupying more space than they
think you deserve, once you pass the parked car, immediately, sharply
steer closer to the curb, which the angered chimp driver will interpret
as a submissive move, and which provides some protection from an attack.
Always strictly respect lights and stop signs, wear reflective strips
and gloves, use bright rear flashing red lights in the daytime, and wave
to attract peripheral visual attention using visual motion, esp. at
cross streets. Use a rear-view mirror (mine is at the end of my left
drop handlebar).
As long as the speed limit is around 30 mph, busy multi-lane streets
are actually *safer* than less-travelled 2-lane roads because people
are less likely to be on their cell phones. On less traveled streets,
be extra wary when a car approaches from behind, since this is where they
will be looking down, using their cell phones, and swerving toward you.
Never cycle along either side of a truck (hop onto the sidewalk if
necessary). Never cycle on a road where the speed limit is over 40 mph
(energy equals mass times velocity *squared*).
If a car driver gets visibly angry, or angrily revs their engine,
hop off onto the sidewalk and walk the other way. The driver
may not even be mad at you, but beware anyway. In a
local
example, an SUV driver, angry that a bus wasn't going fast enough,
raced around the bus to 'punish' the bus driver using the bike lane,
knocking an experienced cyclist off of his bike into the path of the bus,
killing him.
If it is raining or just starting to rain, you must utterly avoid
metal sewer covers or metal plates, which can be ridiculously slippery.
When absolutely forced, cycle over them in a perfectly straight line.
Also, remember that heavy rain can dangerously conceal/fill large
potholes. Cycling in fresh snow works, as long as you remember to take
turns less sharply. New snow on top of partially-melted-and-refrozen
snow requires extreme caution. And in London, when making a left turn,
watch out for moss, which can grow in the middle of the street :-}
It's tempting to whiz past a stopped line of cars because, given
that they are stopped, they seemingly can't do as much damage to you.
This is OK coming up to a red light where there are absolutely no gaps
in the car line(s). However, with two same-direction lanes, a car may
have stopped short to let an opposite-direction car make a left turn,
and the left-turner will be so caught up in socially bowing to the car
that graciously surrendered some precious road space that the left-turner
won't see you, even if you are right there, barrelling down the middle
of the right lane, wildly gesticulating. Also, if you are in the middle
of an open right lane, a car in the same-direction lane to your left may
suddenly dart out in front of you without looking or signalling (or do
that and then make a sudden right turn). So extreme caution is required
whenever passing a car. Expect them *not* to signal. Expect them *not*
to see you, even when they have just passed you, or you just passed them.
Expect them to underestimate your speed and turn right, right into you.
If you fall off, tuck and roll. Don't put your hand out. A cracked rib
heals *a lot* faster than a frozen shoulder. It's worth imagining how
you would fall off in different environments while riding. Proper falling
style is critical to avoiding serious injury. Road rash heals quickly.
Finally, never forget that cycling with cars is *always* a life and death
situation, like gladiatorial combat, so don't cycle if you are emotionally
distracted, or even slightly inebriated. Eat a healthy vegan diet,
just like the gladiators did :-} . If you play video games, remember
that cycling with cars is different. It's for keeps -- no packets of
'health' to pick up if you f**k up. So there you go! Time to get on
your bike and stay alive! Don't *pretend* to be 'Terminator' by buying
a pig car named 'Terminator', you girlie-men and girlie-women! Live the
real thing! You'll die of old age waiting for the US to create perfect
Netherlands-style bike lanes. Got to get out onto the street now!
Your cycling cockroach, Marty
[Jul29,'17]
The recent almost unanimous House (419-3) and Senate (98-2) passage of
the bizarre Russian sanctions bill creeped me out. It looks like Trump
will sign it, since it is completely veto-proof. It sure did spring
forth fully grown from fetid neocon well! As several commentators
have said, it's like one of those 'elections' with only one candidate,
who then gets all the votes. Though it would seemingly
mostly
punish Europe, will the EU react with more than words? This is
a direct attack on the EU's energy supply. It's also an attack
on Boeing (?!) and Caterpillar. The US gets 50% of its titanium
from Russsia, with 35% of Russian titanium being consumed by Boeing
alone. Seeing the lemming-like up-take of this seriously old-school
anti-Russian hysteria from such august sources (not!) as
National
Propaganda Radio amongst many intelligent people I know also creeps me
out, big time. This is what it must have been like back in 1912 under the
expert assault of the yellow British press in the lead-up to WWI. Almost
a year of nightly Russia-gate has not produced *single thing* of any
substance, despite the nightly shrieking on the teevee. It's seems pretty
obvious the emails were an internal leak. I guess any kind of
adult
conversation of what humanity is actually facing is utterly
off the table. Instead, the US looks like it is preparing to
overthrow
the Venezuelan government. Two recent US attempts to overthrow
governments (Ukraine, Syria) created chaos in those countries, killed and
ruined countless people's lives and buildings and streets, but have not
so far actually 'worked' the way they were initially advertised to do.
On the other hand, creating (even more) chaos in Venezuela *would*
be a good way to get oil prices to go back up.
[Aug11,'17]
'NK will attack Guam' is still being sprayed around like cat piss.
Like they say at the San Diego Zoo, 'stand back, the lion's range
is at least 8 feet'. China responded that any US attack on NK will
be met with Chinese force, but that China would remain neutral if NK
attacked first. Seems unlikely that the US military would want attack
first and fight China. While the US military is happy to 'turkey shoot'
civilian cars with depleted uranium bullets from hi-tech warplanes,
it would much less enthusiastic about fighting the Chinese military.
Newspeak will now temporarily back away and spray us instead with a
zillion stories on groping Taylor Swift. The US public supports a US
attack on North Korea -- if they attack first. Since they won't, this
would require another 'Gulf of Tonkin'. There is always a slim chance
that a new false flag (like the original fake Gulf of Tonkin incident)
could be quickly unmasked in the internet age. Well, one can always
hope. The problem is that a single 9-11-like nuclear event somewhere,
not necessarily involving major loss of life, is the ace in the hole
that would surely 'work' on the psyches of Amerians et al., and would be
more difficult to unmask. The precarious economic state of the current
'recovery' unfortunately makes something like this a distinct possibility
(though still low probability).
[Aug22,'17]
With Bannon out, every last facade of populism is removed, and Chump
Trump has now been completely Obamified (Scott Creighton!). The more
than 16-year-long Bush/Obama/Trump war continues without a blink, in a
style (e.g., C-eye-eh drug trade) that is barely distinguishable from
what happened in the 1960's in Vietnam or the 1980's in Central America.
Talking about Chump Trump is a complete distraction from the 'continuity
of Goldman Sachs government'. Talking about Chump Trump (and nonsense
nazis and confederate statues and antifa) distracts our gaze from the
continuity of interlocking global banking/military/corporate oligarchy
actually running the show. Trump is *utterly* irrelevant.
[Aug26,'17]
According to Rune Likvern, light tight
oil companies in the US are paying about
6%
on their debt, and remain deep in debt (1/5 of a
trillion dollars since 2008), with 1/4 to 1/3 of proceeds
going to debt service. (see also this excellent
review
by Chris Martenson). Light tight oil (AKA oil fracking) has never made
a profit! All the production started since 2014 (after the oil price
collapse) is very likely to produce very large financial losses in the
not too distant future. Even at this late date, I still regularly
experience futile urges to raise the alarm. With the geologically
illiterate pseudo-left, I just hear, 'let the ebil oil companies go
bankrupt' -- which would be just after that person drove into work, or
got off a plane, or picked up some food, grown with fertilizer made from
natural gas, delivered to the food store by diesel, in their gasoline
car, over asphalt roads. From the pseudo-right, it's 'what bubble?' or
'we need more creative destruction' -- equally without clue, driving
around in even larger oil-powered vehicles. Oil is merely what makes
the world/food/manufacturing/shipping/internet go round. No biggie.
Neither side has the vaguest inkling of the difficulties in continuing
business as usual with an ever growing population as we reach the bottom
of the barrel (fracking, Arctic oil, UK oil now has a 90% water cut).
Both think another mile or two of Elon Musk tunnel will save the day,
perhaps on Mars. Both hardly give a thought to using bottom-of-the-barrel
fossil fuel to literally scrape the bottom of the deep seabed 'barrel'
to decimate populations of 100-year-old, mercury-laden slimehead fish
(AKA the 'orange roughy'), after wiping out the easier-to-get fish nearer
the surface. Perhaps it's better that most people don't know, because
then they would behave even worse. 'Sustainable' me harder.
[Sep21,'17]
Intrepid
'scientists'
at the Francis Crick Institute are editing genes in
temporarily cultured human embryos in order to eventually
"improve IVF treatments for infertile couples and also help
doctors understand why so many pregnancies fail". In other work,
'scientists' managed to use CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering to
inactivate
human-cell-infecting endogenous retroviruses in pigs (PERVs, yup)
in preparation for growing organs for zenotransplants (pig to human).
The sheer insanity of these activities boggles my mind. We are rapidly
running down the carrying capacity of the earth measured in fresh water,
topsoil thickness, fossil fuel energy resources (oil, coal, natural gas),
fertilizer production (completely dependent on fossil fuel natural gas),
metal ores, uranium ores, rare earth ores, animal and plant species,
ocean fish (including literal bottom-of-the-barrel 100-year-old fish that
live in the deep ocean), as we acidify the oceans, fill them (and the
remaining fish) with small plastic particles, kill off remaining coral
reefs, and create giant underwater deserts just off of our coastlines
from fertilzer runoff, mostly the result of industrial meat production.
Every single one of these things would be helped by LESS PEOPLE (and
less meat), not MORE PEOPLE. The argument that we need MORE PEOPLE to
support the aging population is faulty, esp. when they are generated via
expensive cell culture, or kept alive via Blade-Runner-like transplants of
organs grown in genetically-engineered pigs. It's utterly obvious that
adding two California's worth of new humans to the earth every year is
a REALLY BAD IDEA for supplies of fresh water, food, soil, fertilizer,
concrete, metals, and energy; this is hardly the way toward supporting
the already existing population in an even vaguely sustainable way.
It's also obvious that money would be better spent trying to eliminate
the causes of the need for transplants (e.g., diabetes is the most common
reason for the most common type of transplant, a kidney) rather than
trying to grow human compatible organs in pigs. Yet it remains almost
impossible to discuss the elephants in the room in polite company,
or insert any reality into preposterous articles like the ones above.
I don't claim that I don't live in a glass house myself; I have spent
my life studying brain organization (though I didn't have any kids,
the single most growth-promoting thing than any individual can chose
to do). Probably nobody will ever be able to rationally talk about
growth and population, all the way up to the crash later this century.
Of course, you might be thinking, what about Trump's insane speech
at the UN threatening to wipe out 25 million people? (how you like
him now, Trumpflakes? South Korea wisely responded by sending $8
million of symbolic nutritional and medical aid to North Korea).
As I've said from the beginning, idiot Trump is just a nonsense
distraction that should be utterly ignored. I agree with
Caitlin
Johnstone: "Trump isn’t extremely awful because of the few ways
he’s differed from other recent presidents, he’s extremely awful
because of the things he’s got in common with them". The Democrat's
position is actually the same as Trump's -- except that they would use
more politically-correct, identity-sensitive language to describe why
they were forced to wipe out people. Virtually all the Democratic worms
who are defending 'your' insurance-industry-sponsored Romney-care just
voted to increase military spending *even more* than the ridiculous
increase Trump had asked for. Hillary said she was ready to 'totally
obliterate' Iran. Trump is a sideshow! The multitude of 'everyday'
decisions made by people that when combined result in unsustainable
growth is the only real show in town. *That* show must go on -- until
it can't, starting in earnest around 2030. I'm not above it all;
despite my pseudo-outrage, I just put my head down and go to work.
Seeing clearly doesn't really change anything.
[Sep29,'17] Now that
C-ISIS-A is going down and Izzy is panicked, bring on the Kurds!
We're only sending mountains of military hardware and troops to somebody
else's countries for another couple of decades, 'to help', because
we're 'good people'. Dontcha know, the white helmets poison sonic
Russian football election attacks? And save the Kurds! And
facebook
is chipping in to help you, too!
Once one figures how things work, the firehose of propaganda, from
facebook, the C-eye-eh, google, techno cornucopians, the NYT, and on
terr'ism, diet, pharma, energy, and banks just doesn't work any more.
The big problem is that it takes many years to 'figure out roughly how it
all works'. By then, you're old and gray, and your skin is less silken.
And if somebody makes it to old age without having attained a decent
grasp of most of the big picture, they probably don't have enough
remaining patience (or enough remaining patent cerebral circulation for
that matter), to successfully 'hit the books' and get there. Catch 22,
man.
[Oct12,'17] In tier-one
Chinese cities, house prices are now 50-100 times yearly income (
Andy
Xie). This means, roughly 100-200 years of paying 50% of your
salary to pay off a loan. Put this together with flat or declining
fossil fuel net energy (which powers most manufacturing, building,
food and fertilizer production, transportation etc), and two more
California's worth of people added to the earth every year, and I
would have to say that 'it probably *is* different this time'. Not in
a good way. Of course, I am still hoping that we can muddle through
without a kaboom as we sail into these new waters. The midterm elections
coming up will give Americans the chance to choose between 'Goldman or
...Goldman' (Ken Barrows), so that is unlikely to result in any real
change (contra Andy Xie). One aspect of fracking that I didn't catch
on to in the beginning of the fracking boom was the extreme lightness
of the product -- it's basically already gasoline, or even lighter.
This has helped to keep gasoline prices low. But gasoline is actually
not the most critical transport fuel: heavier kerosine and diesel and
bunker oil are (in the early days of oil refining, gasoline was simply
thrown away into rivers, which is why they sometimes used to catch fire).
The thing that could easily upset the apple cart is oil depletion --
esp. true crude from which diesel is made -- overtaking ongoing usage,
and eating up the miminal current 1% 'glut'. I fully expected that this
would have already happened 2 years ago. Just because my prediction
was off doesn't mean that the reasons for making it have gone away!
The main fly in the ointment is much-more-frothy-than-oil-production
financial bubbles (e.g., companies taking out record loans to buy their
stock, students taking out record loans for college). Bubbles deflate
faster than they inflate: fear is more powerful than greed. Hopefully,
the financial/societal system can continue to function at a basic level
after those bubbles pop.
[Oct19,'17] The US/Izzy attempt to
use the Kurds to destabilize three countries (Iraq, Syria, and Turkey)
suffered a major setback this week when the Iraqi army bloodlessly
retook the Iraqi oil fields in Kirkuk, occupied since 2014 by the Kurds,
and used as a huge slush fund by Barzani. This result appeared to
be due to a combination of internal dissension, along with Kurds and
US/Izzies overestimating the resolve of echo other to do something
when the ultimatum came from Iraqi government. This is excellent
news for the stabilization of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Detailed and
separate summaries by Pepe Escobar and Alexander Mercouris are
here.
Penny and Scott Creighton have written sensibly about this for years.
Once again, the so-called 'left' was completely, uh, hornswoggled.
[Oct29,'17] James Stafford of
Oilprice.com has estimated that 'mining' an average bitcoin (which
involves *extremely* inefficiently finding a way to represent all
previous transactions) requires consuming the energy in 20 barrels
of oil, which weighs roughly 3 tons. This makes 'sense' because the
current price of a bitcoin is about 100 barrels of oil, which is utterly
preposterous. One barrel of oil produces about 20 gallons of gasoline,
which, when burned in a 25%-efficient internal combustion engine is
equivalent to the physical work produced by a human slave doing
one full year of hard labor.
World bitcoin mining uses 40 times more energy than what is currently
required to power the entire worldwide Visa network (which handles an
astronomically larger number of transactions). This is what humans
are wasting their precious stored fossil fuel on as we sail over peak
net energy. For shame, humans.
[Nov06,'17]
There has recently been a lot of discussion about
'the
trouble with scientists' — they have confirmation bias, they
don't publish negative results, they make new findings appear more
different from existing findings than they actually are, they change
their hypotheses after collecting data, blah, blah, blah. All true; and
it was all true 100 years ago. The new proposed 'solution' is to have
'preregistration' of hypotheses, all managed by friendly corporations who
will also archive all your data and your fetid 'pipelines' in order to
'supercharge your workflow' and help with data constipation. I remarked
previously that turning everything into a pharma trial (praised in the
article above as 'ahead of the game', yeah, right) and handing all
your content over to a 'disinterested' corporation is probably not
a good idea. But even it there really was a 'disinterested party'
(there isn't), this could easily result in unintended consequences.
Look at what happened with mandatory sentencing. That was supposed to
result in a 'more fair' sentencing by removing supposedly biased human
judicial oversight. The result has been a human catastrophe, much worse
than any hypothetical result of 'bias'. An unintended consequence of
this new 'fair' system, instituted starting around 1980, is that the
US, virtually alone in the world, has increased the percentage of its
population in jail by a factor of *five* from its 1920 to 1980 average.
With 4.4% of the world's population, we now have 22% of the prisoners in
the entire world, a world record incarceration rate that is approaching
1% of our entire population. One could imagine a similar unintended
consequence of a large corporate preregistration bureaucracy, intended to
'help' scientists behave better — essentially, a scientific jail
that would 'rehabilitate' wayward scientists. Science as we know it,
with all its warts, could begin to be accidentally strangled.
[Nov11,'17]
What, no energy?
Here is a comment I recently posted in response to a report of a
Vienna workshop on the "Evolution of Social Complexity". The
blog
post by Peter Turchin was entitled "An Agenda for Research on the
Evolution (and Devolution) of Social Complexity".
================================================================
I was somewhat stunned to not see energy supply listed as a challenge
to social sustainability. Population increases (currently two
California's per year) and technological evolution, including
robotization and the internet, are both utterly dependent on an
increasing energy supply.
Food production and distribution currently depends mostly on our
currently flattening fossil fuel energy supply. For example: (1) making
nitrogen fertilizer from methane, (2) pumping water, (3) making steel
for farm implements, (4) tillage, (5) seed production and planting, (6)
harvesting, (7) distribution and refrigeration, (8) road construction
from concrete (limestone cooked in a coal furnace) or asphalt (from crude
oil) (9) road maintenence, (10) food-store construction and maintenance,
(11) marketing and internet, (12) car transport to food store or truck
transport to doorstep.
Our current world energy mix is oil, coal, methane, biofuels/waste,
hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar in that order. The wind and solar
components are growing. But their growth is not even keeping pace
with our increasing energy usage! Wind and solar growth are not
actually causing a reduction in fossil fuel usage, which is still
nominally slowly growing (though we may be near flattening of net
energy increases from fossil fuels).
We still burn a full cubic mile of oil per year (1000 barrels a second,
which equals 150 tons a second). Currently wind and solar worldwide only
account for a few percent (roughly 1% wind and 0.5% solar) of total energy
usage (not 'capacity', which isn't actual usable energy). Making wind-
and solar-energy-producing devices is currently utterly dependent on
fossil fuel. For example: (1) making concrete by cooking limestone,
(2) making steel for turbine blades, (3) mining and transporting iron
ore, copper, silver (solar cells), neodymium (magnets), and many other
elements, (4) installation and service cranes and vehicles, (5) silicon
wafer production, (6) float glass (melting silica over a bed of molten tin
to make both sides of the glass pane very flat), (7) regularly washing
dust off arrays of solar cells, (8) making batteries by mining lithium,
cobalt, nickel, (9) chip fabs to make all the computer tech.
Currently, adding solar and wind is not resulting in any *capacity
reduction* in fossil fuel plants since the entire grid has to be
supported by dispatchable fossil fuel plants when solar and wind
basically go off at night, and sometimes, during the day.
We are currently growing (population, energy usage) with no obvious
way to replace the current flattening in net energy from fossil fuels.
This is about to turn into a permanent net energy reduction from fossil
fuels over the next decade. Last year, we discovered 1 unit of oil (top
component of world energy usage) for every 6 units we used. Obviously,
that can't/won't go on for very long.
You might say, 'good riddance to dirty fossil fuels'. Unfortunately,
those would be the fossil fuels that kept up the internet, delivered
all your tech doodads via bunker fuel on container ships, then
diesel or coal-electric trains, then diesel trucks. It would also
include the fossil fuels that kept you fed, kept the lights and
refrigerator on, kept you supplied with water. And of course, I'm
sure that you plan to never fly anywhere using kerosine jet fuel.
It would seem that by far the largest open question is whether
industrial civilization can in fact be constructed, powered, and
maintained solely on 'renewable' energy. It's an empirical question,
perhaps best answered by trying to construct an 'Industrial Sphere'
version of the hated Steve Bannon's BioSphere -- to see, emprically,
whether it is actually possible to make everything you need for
industrial civilization (steel, concrete, roads/trains, computer
chips, solar cells, food, water, waste disposal) using entirely
renewable energy.
It might be possible. Or not.
================================================================
The only response was that the conference wasn't about energy (yeah,
but it was about complexity, which requires energy), that energy
problems are still only "looming in the background" because people are
"not experiencing energy problems", and that "fortunately there still
are several decades left to solve these problems and I am sure there are
even much better energy solutions by using magnetic force not discovered
yet but it is still very good you keep on addressing the issue". Whew, no
need to worry, because when the going gets tough, Dr. Who-like scientists
will solve it by "reversing the polarity". You might be thinking, I
shouldn't insult the human 'yeast' in their beer barrel for not knowing
about the interaction between exponential growth and the finite supply
of sugar in the beer barrel. But the problem is that the human 'yeast'
have actually constructed their f-ing barrel, all by themselves! At least
*some* of them know exactly how it works! Shouldn't we be talking to
*them* at this critical point, instead of scriptwriters?
[Nov12,'17]
The recent coup in Saudi has attracted worried attention from those
paying a little attention to world events. The recent news in outline
is that just a few days after Crown Prince Jared Kushner left Saudi
(could be unrelated, of course), Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) purged and
arrested/detained some extremely rich Saudis and has begun impounding
their money; and Mansour bin Muqrin, son of the former intelligence
service director, died in a suspicious helicopter crash. MBS has
threatened Lebanon with war, forced the Lebanese prime minister to
resign, and is currently holding him under house arrent in Saudi,
which so far has only provoked a measured verbal response from
Hezbollah. And finally, MBS has promised 'reforms' (woohoo, women
will be able to drive). Previously MBS (together with US and Izzy)
continued funding Bandar Bush's ISIS in an attempt to overthrow
the government in Syria, motivated the Yemen war (now causing the
largest famine in recent world history, an actual genocide, not like
the fake one in Serbia in the 90's), and organized the blockade of
Qatar. Here are 5 recent quite different takes on some of this:
Henderson,
Madsen,
Meysann,
Martenson,
and
Koenig.
Here are some of the main 'big picture' points to weigh. First,
it is now clear that Russia has, at least temporarily, blocked the
Saudi/Izzy/US-supported destabilization and dissolution of Syria (tho
Syria has experienced hellish destruction and loss of life). Second,
the price of oil has stayed low-ish, partly the result of US fracking,
and from demand whose *rate of increase* has slightly slowed. Third,
there had been a marked drawdown of Saudi investments in US bonds since
2014 probably a result of their cash flow problems (see next). Fourth,
growing Saudi internal demand for oil and everything else from a growing
population have put great stress on the Saudi oil-revenue-derived budget.
Fifth, Iran and Hezbollah have further improved their ability to defend
themselves after the shocking defeat of the Izzy army in Southern
Lebanon by Hezbollah in 2006. Sixth, Trump (and the UK) has continued
shopping massive amounts of weapons to Saudi. Seventh, Russian and
Chinese defensive weapon systems have continued to improve, reducing the
ability of the US to pull a carrier into port and fire away. Eighth,
Saudi is arranging an IPO for Aramco, the world's largest energy company,
in 2018. Ninth, it has long been rumored that Saudi has overstated
their oil reserves (they almost doubled them without explanation at one
go in the late 1980's); the final watering out of Ghawar, discovered in
1950, which has supplied roughly 5% of all the oil that humans have ever
burned, may be near. Finally, Saudi, but also the US, have increased the
shopping of oil and weapons to Asia in the 'pivot to Asia'. Quite a lot
of things to keep in mind at once, many of which seem to, or do, conflict.
Some commentators have emphasized the loss of US and Izzy dominance in
the mideast, esp. focussing on Syria. Others point to the Saudi coup as a
way to quickly replenish US treasury investments with the impounded money.
Other mention a weakening petro-dollar, or a petro yuan. Others suggest
that this will just result in a small kerfuffle to motivate slightly
higher oil prices. Yet others think 'Trump' is draining the Saudi swamp
(The new Mr. ISIS, MBS, did also detain the original Mr. ISIS, 'Bandar
Bush'). I can't claim not to be confused, and it's possible that some
of the individual actors are confused themselves. But, as much as Izzy
demands it, I don't think a major attack on Iran is practical or planned,
which would be a big disaster.
[Nov19,'17]
Talking to nominally 'left' people these days is a hallucinatory
experience for me (for what it's worth, I consider myself 'extreme
left'). The other day, I heard an encomium to the 'genius' of Robert
Mueller (!), hoping that he will somehow discover, a frigging year
later, that the John Brennan psyop known as Russiagate was 'true',
and that an internal DNC leak by Seth Rich, who was subsequently
killed under suspicious circumstances, had nothing to do with it.
I find the idea that the election was 'hacked' utterly preposterous.
As William Binney recently noted, the intelligence agencies could
instantly
prove (or disprove) Russian hacking with their internet-monitoring
vaccuum cleaner. How can people still believe such nonsense after a
year of absolutely nothing? And what about the fact that there is so
much sh$t flying around during one of our so-called 'elections' that
you'd need a Star Wars-sized nuclear powered sewer pipe hack to compete?
Hillary didn't fail to get elected because the 'election' was 'hacked'.
She didn't get elected because many people just didn't like her, and
many people didn't want 'more of the same'. Russia had nothing to do
with that. But more importantly, what concrete difference would it
have made if we had gotten Hillary instead of Trump? The differences
are completely "Squirrel!! It's what's for dinner" (or rather, today,
I should say, "Elephant!!"). I always ask 'left' people, would Hillary
have brought us a non-Goldman-Sachs government? Would it have brought
us less tax cuts for rich people? Would she have prosecuted (even one)
banker criminal? Would she have brought us less war (e.g., on Syria)?
Less 'defense' spending? (the Democrats gave Trump even more than he
asked for). Less threats against Iran? Would she have done something
about the Saudi genocide of Yemen? Would she have reigned in the
Google/Amazon/Facebook/Palantir/Narus panopticon? Would she have
dropped insurance-industry-supported Romney care (oh sorry, don't
know how I got that confused, I meant Obama care) for single payer?
These are the real, non-'squirrel' things that count. When she had
some power, Hillary helped manage the destruction of Libya, formerly
the wealthiest country in Africa, and the one that had its wealth most
evenly distributed. Libya has descended far after 'we came, we saw,
he died (Hillary laughs)'. The unprovoked destruction of an entire
country (not to mention killing its leader with a bayonet up his rectum
-- what Hillary was laughing about) is a real war crime comparable to
the bad things that Trump has done so far (e.g., Trump's several times
as many drone strikes as Obama). I *certainly* don't like Trump
either,
but the reality is, as I argued before the election, Trump vs. Hillary
is mostly 'Squirrel!!'. And we would probably still have had to
suffer through Russiagate, anyway, with the Uranium One Clinton bribes.
Trump is just hope and change for a different demographic. Of course,
they won't get their hope and change either. The Trump muppets will
merely be pitifully shorn by 'their' 'friendly' billionaire, who is 'one
of them' because he sometimes wears a baseball cap. Important never
to forget that language is riding around on top of a standard model ape
brain chassis.
[Dec18,'17]
Tesla's grid battery, which can store 130 MWh (it's equivalent to just
2000 electric car batteries) was tested today and managed to inject 100 MW
of power into the grid for half an hour (50 MWh of energy) without event.
Good so far (for a tiny drop in the energy storage bucket).
[Dec22,'17]
Paleofantasy indeed!
Just got around to reading Paleofantasies (2013) by Marlene Zuk. I picked
it up because of her background in evolutionary biology. Quotes from the
more daft evolutionary fantasies of 'modern paleos' were mildly amusing,
though they were intermixed with scientific information in a way that I
found to be weirdly awkward. In the end, I found the 'paleo' debunking
incomplete and ultimately quite misleading.
Her two main points were that it is hard to be sure of what 'paleos' were
actually doing/eating etc, and that human evolution hasn't 'stopped'.
One main example of the second point is that population differences
in adult lactose tolerance seem to have evolved relatively rapidly and
recently after the origin of the domestication of animals for dairy.
She also addresses the 'paleo' idea, originally popularized by Jared
Diamond, that the neolithic revolution was a disaster for humans as
measured by stature and skeletal and dental evidence of disease. This was
likely the result of suddenly increased population density (because of
suddenly increased food supply) together with not-very-good sanitation,
which increased transmission of human and animal-borne diseases, and
lastly, the sudden restriction in the range of things eaten. She points
out that this eventually went away as humans got better at cities,
and that stature and disease markers recovered by about 4000 years ago.
But I found her overall message garbled and somewhat misleading. With all
her effort to make fun of non-evolution-based 'paleo' ideas, she was
quite weak on basic primate evolutionary biology and physiology and
anthropoid/hominid/hominin evolution. For example, one of the clearest
pieces of dietary evidence in dentition is the early evolutionary increase
in the thickness of enamel in cheek teeth (molars) relative to apes, the
lowering of cusps, and the use of even the canines for grinding, all of
which clearly point to an early change in diet toward hard-to-chew seeds
and nuts and tubers - millions of years before the origin of agriculture.
We still have those same kind of teeth.
Also, a quick comparative glance at the gastrointentinal tract of daily
meat-eating animals shows radically higher stomach acid than humans, which
is an adaptation to a high animal protein diet, and which helps to kill
dangerous bacteria. Similarly, the long, large diameter, bulbous, large
intestine of humans is adapted to fermenting plant fiber, and doesn't look
at all like the smoother, shorter, thicker-walled large intestine of a
carnivore (or even an omnivore like a bear or raccoon) that is adapted to
dealing with the putrefying bacteria that accompany regular meat eating
(good summary
here).
She makes a big deal of the recent (10,000 years ago) dietary-driven
evolutionary adaptation in European populations of post-translationally
keeping the enzyme coded for by the lactase gene around into adulthood
(lactase is there in all mammalian babies to help digest mother's milk,
but levels normally fade in adult mammals). But that is a miniscule
evolutionary change compared to what would be required to turn our vegan
teeth, saliva, stomach, small intenstine, and colon into those of a
real carnivore.
Another clear human adaptation confusingly presented is the early
evolution of bipedalism together with improved temperature regulation
as a result of hairlessness and improved sweating (the last two are harder
to date in the fossil record). Those all suggest that 'paleos' *did*
in fact routinely do a lot of long distance exercise. Zuk merely casts
doubt on how often modern 'primitive' humans 'run down' animal prey
(it's not that common). But that hardly covers all the reasons why
early humans might have routinely walked long distances, and it doesn't
explain those unique human adaptations.
Finally, the discussion of human diseases is contaminated with
'geno-fantasy'. One can hardly explain the recent rapid increase in
obesity as 'genetic', or as the result of 'rapid human evolution'.
Clearly, it is a result of a recent change in diet interacting poorly
with essentially unchanged genes and physiology. This goes against her
main, over-simplified, trade-book-y, hypothesis that 'there is no paleo'.
Though language and cooking and fossil fuels have made it possible
for us to eat whatever we want (e.g., twice-a-day grilled meat), this
doesn't mean there isn't a preferred diet for humans. It was possible
for small populations of Inuit to scrape out an existence (for many
centuries!) on the very boundary of climates capable of being inhabited
by humans, using neolithic technology, eating mostly meat. But the cost
was greatly reduced life expectancy, increased heart disease, and chronic
osteoporosis (and even then, they ate seaweed whenever they could get
it!). Remarkably, by analogy with sickle cell anemia, they even developed
a
deleterious
mutation (it causes high infant mortality) that blocks them from
regularly going into ketosis, which would otherwise have constantly
occurred on their unhealthy low-carb, high-fat diet; apparently, constant
ketosis caused by an extreme high-fat/high-protein diet is evolutionarily
worse than higher infant mortality (N.B.: ketosis can occur on a high carb
diet during fasting, which may have different features than continuous
high-fat/low-carb ketosis).
So there *was*, in fact, a typical 'paleo' lifestyle! On the basis of
our guts, teeth, body shape, and physiology, it likely involved a mostly
whole foods plant-based diet, and a lot of long-distance exercise.
[Jan05,'18]
Futurism
Here's a review of Futurism's
'the
remarkable breakthroughs from 2017' with a jaundiced eye.
First, seven earth-like planets were
discovered by looking at variations in the brightness of one pixel.
The actual one-pixel data should be constrasted with the nonsense
'interpretive dance' computer graphics of colorful Avatar-like planets
fed to the 'news'. These planets are 40 light-years from us. This wasn't
properly explained. The fastest thing we have launched went about 100,000
miles per hour (that's 36,000 miles per hour from the rocket and 66,000
miles per hour from the Earth's orbital motion). The speed of light
is 186,000 miles per *second*. Our fastest thing went 29 miles per
second (1/6400 the speed of light). Therefore, at current top speed,
it would take about a quarter of a million years to get to Trappist 1
(the red dwarf). On our current trajectory, it seems highly unlikely
to me that humans will be in a position to detect the unbelievably weak
signal an amazingly reliable probe would send back a quarter of a million
years from now. Interesting, but not relevant to our imminent overshoot.
Second, '5 new particles' were discovered at the LHC. The 'particles'
last for on the order of one picosecond (one trillionth of a second) and
were detected by examining 250 trillion collisions winnowed from a much
larger number that weren't examined. The raw data consists of 5 peaks
in a mass spectrum between 3000 and 3100 MeV (a proton weighs 938 MeV),
rising out of the background noise. This will "shed light on how quarks
bind together". Interesting, but not relevant to our imminent overshoot,
or even nanotechnology, much less molecular biology.
Third, SpaceX successfully re-launched a booster, which was considerably
cheaper than the re-usable Space Shuttle. Since the Space Shuttle was
originally mainly conceived of as a way to launch military satellites
with an overlay of useless human tricks, this more sensible approach
will result in cheaper launches for military satellites (the military
went back to regular rockets some times ago). Interesting, but hopefully
not relevant to our imminent overshoot.
Fourth, there was the lamb fetus in the ziplock bag 'artificial womb'.
I had already complained about this utterly pointless 'medical' research
here.
This was supposedly for better maintenance of preterm infants, though it
was not clear where the human equivalent of the 'support lamb' that the
ziplock back was plumbed into for oxygenated blood and waste disposal
would come from. Ghoulish, and not interesting at all, and I seriously
hope *not* relevant to our failing medical system, where 75% of the
'diseases' 'treated' are completely avoidable, since they are due to bad
diet (too much meat, diary, oil, smoking, sitting), with a staggering
more-than-70% of the population now overweight or obese.
Fifth, Futurism reports on using CRISPR to edit genes in a human embryo
(the first procedure using "donated clinical-quality human eggs").
This method is only applicable to in vitro fertilization (it was done
without mosaicism by co-injecting a defective sperm and the repair enzyme
into the oocyte). This provides a ridiculously resource-intensive way -
in a world that already has too many people (as in two entire California's
worth of new people added every year) - to make *even more* viable people,
and would require all pregnancies to be in vitro, Brave New World style.
Also ghoulish, and hopefully, won't happen.
Sixth, the Chinese Academy of Science conducted the first 'quantum
encrypted unhackable' video call. This will supposedly have implications
for how "information is transmistted and secured". Interesting,
but not relevant, even to the military. There is no reason to bother
with trying to decrypt messages! Standard encryption with long keys is
completely unbreakable once it's already 'on the wire' or 'in the air'.
Virtually all surveillance and hacking is instead done at the weakest
link, say, Intel VPro, where a sub-basement-level minix system running
on a separate processor accesses your disk and talks to the internet
even when your computer is 'off', or a keylogger gets keystrokes while
you are typing your 'secret message', or by using a buffer overflow, or
by an insecure out-of-order microprocessor, or by looking at semi-public
metadata (where you clicked).
Finally, seventh, CRISPR was used to edit genes in a person with a rare
genetic metabolic disorder (Hunter syndrome) using a virus to insert code
into liver cells using engineered zinc-finger nucleases (proteins that
cut the DNA at particular code locations, so the inserted gene doesn't
get pasted in randomly, possibly activating 'cancer' genes, AKA genes
that are used even when you don't have cancer). Though the puff pieces
describe this as a 'cure', it is not at all clear that this will work yet;
and it certainly won't stop the brain damage from the syndrome because the
CRISPR-enabled enzyme it won't get past the blood brain barrier either.
Given that Hunter syndrome is an extremely rare X-linked (i.e., usu. in
males) disease with an incidence of 1 per 160,000 and since it is not
clear that this hi-tech fix works better than infusing the missing enzyme,
this is essentially irrelevant for human health. Expanding this to a
large number of other diseases and 'gene-defects' (oh, say, like the
'gene defects' that 'make' you get colon cancer when you eat way too much
meat?) seems super-energy-intensive, dangerous, and impractical (changing
your genes so your adult colon somehow becomes more like that of a bona
fide carnivore without messing anything else up?). Won't happen - ever.
All of seven of these 'advances' are energy-intensive and essentially
irrelevant to the energy starvation of industrial society coming down
the pike around 2030. We're in a fundamentally different situation than
futurists
from the late 19th and early 20th century, who envisioned a night
out on the town, in a top hat, on a seatbelt-less convertible flying
car with a quaint hand squeeze-horn, and underwater gondolas strapped to
hapless whales. Back then, all the stored energy was still there for our
taking, with only English coal nearing its peak. But even back then,
many scientists and engineers were fully aware of energy depletion,
and Aldous Huxley foresaw our CRISPR future in 1931. Now in 2018,
the energy wolf is finally at the door.
[Jan12,'18] As the Fed has slightly
raised the target Federal Funds rate above zero (now in a band from
1.25% to 1.5%), it has in parallel raised interest rates on what it
pays banks for "excess reserves" deposited back with the Fed (1.5%).
This absolutely preposterous dole for large banks rewards them for *not*
making loans by paying them interest on a giant pile (still over $2
trillion dollars) of excess reserves that these large banks risklessly
deposit back with the Fed. A portion of the money deposited has actually
been generated from the void as loans from the Fed. In 2017, these
outright welfare checks to banks for doing nothing amounted to
$30
billion. While fascist thought control corporations pay
internet trolls to debate the morality of guananteed basic income
for the working poor, filthy rich bankers have just gone ahead and
arranged with their criminal buddies in 'big government' (a misnomer,
because the Fed is *privately* owned) to pay themselves $30 billion
in 'guaranteed basic [gold-plated?] income' a year. Since the
2007 recession, 'Obama/Trump' zero interest rate policies combined
with zero punishment for banker crimes has instead punished savers,
destablized pensions and social security, transferred massive amounts
of wealth upward with the 'everything bubble', and moved the world
ever closer to the combination of fascism and feudalism accurately
forseen a long time ago by Huxley and Orwell. I put Obama/Trump in
scare quotes above because the Fed is not controlled by the government.
Recently released Fed discussions from 2012 on monetary policy show they
completely consciously created the 'everything bubble' (PDF
PDF here). It's amazingly depressing to see this looting
occurring in plain sight, concealed by nothing more than cheap,
weekly "Squirrels!". This week's 'squirrel' is "sh$thole countries".
The so-called 'left' 'rises up' to 'defend' Haiti as if a 'principled
denunciation' of a friggin' *word* could have even the tiniest
practical positive effect on Haiti, while the so-called 'right'
dances a little jig, both utterly oblivious to the bait and switch
occurring before their eyes. It's fine for banks or the military or
Republicrats to *actually turn* multiple countries into sh$tholes,
but merely *calling* a country a a sh$thole is somehow unbelievably
"shocking and shameful"? Right. While the faux outrage rages,
here is an example of how richies steal money in plain sight:
a
set of waivers issued two weeks ago to pardon criminal
behavior of big bank robber barons, the most recent in a long line
of such pardons, described in slightly more understandable terms
here
[Update: OK, so I laughed at
the video
projection of "sh$thole" onto a Trump hotel; but it only serves to
give the distraction more legs. Also, it doesn't matter whether he really
said it or not, since it's an unbelievably perfect sound bite].
[Feb05,'18]
Money 'printing'
Here is an attempt to cut through and disable the jargon surrounding
the creation and control of money in as compact a manner as possible.
The amount of public confusion and misdirection surrounding the creation
of money and taxation and government spending is amazing, considering
that the real 'money people' have known how this actually works
since the Renaissance (or earlier). Here is a straight-talking
PDF
from the Bank of England that describes how banks create money at the
moment of a loan. A excellent longer summary by Jim Kavanagh is
here.
But, first, gold. Some suggest going back to gold-backed money. But that
is not far enough back! The original trick of creating money out of the
void *pre-dates* modern paper money. For example 16th century goldsmiths
in Florence who stored deposits of physical gold realized they only had
to have a fraction of the gold deposited with them actually on hand.
This is exactly equivalent to the modern right of private banks to create
money out of the void: maintaining 10% gold reserves means creating 10x
as many certificates (proto-money) as there is actual gold. The problem
with 'gold bugs' is that if this 'gold printing' *weren't* allowed in a
modern gold-based system, then the fixed gold supply would not be able
to wax and wane as needed, like fiat money does. The waxing and waning
is actually a critical thing to have, when it's in the right hands.
Second, as already mentioned above, it is absolutely crucial to understand
that money *is* actually created at the moment a loan is issued.
Most money is actually 'printed' this way by regular banks, *not*
by central banks. The key points are: (1) money can be created only
by certain privately-owned entities, (2) the creation of money this way
takes virtually no energy (mark a ledger, enter a figure in a database),
(3) private institutions can profit from interest charged for the
created-from-the-void money, (4) real energy-intensive things like
houses are pledged as collateral for the loan, and these real things
can be seized/stolen by the bankers if the intrinsically worthless,
created-from-the-void money is not repaid, (5) the money created from
the void does *not* include the money that will be needed for interest
payments, so the system is inherently unstable without continuous growth,
and finally (6), when a loan is paid back, the created money disappears;
the fact that the rate of destruction of money is independent of the
rate of 'printing' is what provides the crucial waxing and waning of
the money supply.
Third, the economy doesn't work primarily by taxing people and
using the proceeds to do things. Rather, the great majority
of money that is actually used to do things is created by private
banks (*not* the Fed!) in the form of loans and bonds, using the
out-of-the-void method described in point two. A full
97%
of money is created by banks (not the Fed) making loans; just 3% of
money is created by the 'government' (not really the government since
the Fed is private). Banks have increased the amount of money by over
10% per year. This is extremely profitable for them (they effortlessly
create money from the void, you have to do real hard work to get paid
money in order to be able to pay them their interest).
Fourth, the proper function of progressive taxation
simply to correct runaway wealth accumulation by
extremely rich people, which destabilizes society,
rather than to raise money for public works. There is no
social
security/medicare solvency problem.
Fifth, what to do about this? The ability to create money from the
void *must* be taken away from private, profit-making enterprises.
Private money creation does not fundamentally differ from counterfeiting,
which is already not allowed for (other!) private businesses. The ability
to create loans (=money) should only be given to public, non-profit
institutions (compare, the bank of North Dakota, Lincoln's greenbacks).
These institutions would be in a better position to deny credit for
useless, damaging, parasitical things like stock buybacks. Progressive
taxation should be reinstated/reinforced to curb the excesses of extreme
personal piggishness inherent to winner-take-all capitalism. We need to
reinstate the high tax rates (94%) we had on super richies 70 years ago!
Sixth, bitcoin? No. Bitcoin is a purposely amazingly inefficient
way to run a distributed ledger. The 'purposely' part is that
the difficulty of 'mining' (updating the ledger) is adjusted to
make the rate of mining constant. This has resulted in bitcoin's
estimated yearly energy consumption reaching 47 TWh at the beginning of
Feb 2018. The Feb 2018 yearly rate approximates how much energy all
of Singapore uses in a year. A bitcoin transaction is 100,000 times
the cost of a functionally equivalent VISA transaction. This rate of
energy usage is up from 38 TWh, just *one month* ago (go
here for
estimates of energy usage). The *one month* increase in bitcoin energy
use equals how much energy Sri Lanka (population 20 million) used in one
year. Bitcoin is an utterly preposterous waste of (mostly coal) energy
that won't go on for much longer. Certainly, this is no way to 'fix'
the money problems described above. It's just a purposely inefficient
distributed encrypted ledger. Though some of the accounting tech might
persist, the part of bitcoin that requires using massive amounts of energy
to create money, which takes virtually no energy to create, must go away.
Finally, we *really* need to fix those money problems *before* net energy
constraints force a contraction of industrial society. When the 10%
per year increase in 'money', which means 'loans', which means 'interest
bearing debt' runs into net energy constraints that will impact the real,
non-money, energy-requiring economy (e.g., building roads, houses, making
iPhones) over the next 20 years, debt repayment will implode and banks
will try to seize the energy-dense 'collateral' of the entire world.
This is actually already happening because per capita net energy has
flattened, but the rate of money creation has not. We have to fix the
system by disbanding private banks before the real contraction starts.
We will have enough real problems to deal with without bankers gumming
up the works by trying to steal literally everything under the sun.
The money madness of the last 10 years will be just a prelude to complete
insanity if we don't start frankly discussing this. I'm still guessing
that the 3 horsemen of the apocalypse will arrive in the order of:
money, energy, and finally climate -- assuming that the 4th horseman,
the small but growing possibility of a nuclear war (egged on by the
stoopid and dangerous Russiagate hysteria), doesn't intervene. So we
should fix money first!
[Feb08,'18]
I sure would hate to be stuck as a human fighting the machines responsible
for the huge, instantaneous vertical market moves today and yesterday,
for example, a human running a pension or a sovereign wealth fund (well, I
suppose I *am* stuck 'fighting the machines' since I have been paying into
SS and other pension plans since the 1970's). The 'extreme fear' that is
following last week's 'extreme greed' looks like it will be in town for
a while. Google's News' 'Business' headlines today are a hoot: "Twitter
Has Good News for Once: Its First Quarterly Profit". By contrast, near
speed-of-light machines slicing 8% off the Dow in two days ($2.5 trillion
in market capitalization!) doesn't appear. Must be 'fake news', eh??
Google sez: muppets must remain calm and continue buying the dips during
'shearing operations'. Tomorrow, Friday, will probably be another rough
day [Update: Fri, Feb 10 wasn't so bad after all because the muppets
followed their instructions and bought the dip] [Update2: From
this
comment at zerohedge on "short gamma" strategies (betting on the
sign of the second derivative of the price of an *option*), it's pretty
clear we have arrived at the 2018 equivalent of the 2007 'toxic waste'
of bundled subprime loans. Sure seems like there is likely to be a big
sewer stoppage sometime this year as all this cr@p tries to go down the
drain at the same time. It's unfortunate that some of the 'bundled t&rds'
in this sewer plug will probably include parts of my pension...].
[Feb11,'18]
'Finite' delusions
I just unwisely wasted some of my ever dwindling remaining
lifetime listening to Cory Doctorow giving an immensely
irritating talk at UCSD (via youtube) at CalIT2
"Scarcity, abundance
and the finite planet". What a nincompoop! He is supposed to be
a science fiction writer, so therefore in theory knows something about
science and technology.
He talked about the wonderful discovery that some of the best selling
items from Ikea became lighter and more tightly packed over time.
One of his examples was the "Billy" bookcase. The "Billy" bookcase is
a complete piece of cr@p Ikea particle-board bookcase that is not fit
for the stated purpose of holding books. It works well with tchotchkes
and stuffed toys. If you actually fill it with books, the pin-supported
shelves will sag, especially any place where there is a little humidity.
There are millions of Billy's in landfills, outgassing formaldehyde
from their plastic coated particle board. I am embarrassed to say that
several came from me. At the end of their short life, I easily snapped
the shelves with my foot over a curb to make them fit into my garbage
can. This was *before* they were lightened. I was incredulous when
Cory then used the small-percentage lightening of the "Billy" bookcase
(which no doubt resulted in even more rapid sagging) as an argument for
why we will be able to manufacture 6 times as many Billy bookcases for
rural Indians and Chinese, so that they can all be brought up to the
level of rich San Franciscans! I'm sure the ultralite, 1/6 less heavy,
Billy's could easily hold some origami figures. There are two complete
California's worth of new humans generated every year. He mentioned the
Club of Rome. How could he possibly imagine that we can construct two
complete California's worth of new Billy bookcases, not to mention houses
and streets and sewers and furniture and cars and meds and iphones, every
year for the forseeable future, until everything looks like San Francisco,
and not turn the entire planet into a Blade Runner-like smoking ruin?
Then, after 'solving overshoot', he complained about the 'inefficient
design' of his 'just good enough' electric drill. This would be something
like a variable speed 1/3 horsepower electric motor with a plastic case
attached to a gearbox driving a ball-bearing chuck capable of holding
hardened bits of different diameters. Actually, quite good. So maybe
Cory did some coding at some point. But did he ever think concretely
about what's actually in an electric drill, or even cursorily think
about how an electric drill is actually made? His idea was that instead
of buying a 'just good enough' electric drill, we should be able to order
a much better one to be synthesized on the spot, apparently from something
like a 1990's-model Star Trek replicator. It would then get used once,
it would somehow record how it got used, send the information back to
the replicator so that the next time, an even more perfect electric
drill could be synthesized on the spot. Before resynthesis, magically,
all its parts (copper, steel, plastic, ball bearings, ball bearing races,
gears, chuck, rubber) could be 'recycled' in an 'energy efficient' way.
What a blithering idiot! Sure, some of these parts are now manufactured
by computer controlled machine tools. But those are merely automated
versions of the hand mills and lathes of old, still programmed by humans
so that the movements are efficient. The jump from a hand mill to a
computer controlled mill is miniscule compared to the jump from a computer
controlled mill to a magical Star Trek replicator that can take completed
electric drills as raw material, somehow cleanly disassemble the plastic,
rubber, and metals, then magically redesign them to be 'more efficient
for whatever inexpert thing Cory happened to do with the drill that one
afternoon', and then, unbelievably, spit out a completed new drill, not
to mention instantaneously transport it to Cory's ostentatious mansion
for another inexpert single use. This from a talk entitled "Scarcity,
abundance and the finite planet". Somehow, Ikea selling an even more
crapified Billy bookcase for the same price as the slightly better,
earlier, heavier one (so the just-deceased penny-pinching fascist
billionarie, Ingvar Kamprad, could collect even more loot in his bank
account) is supposed to be 'evidence' that we will soon have magical
energy-efficient electric drill replicators??? Rather than any concern
about how much energy an electric drill replicator would use, Cory instead
worried over 'privacy concerns' -- what, that everybody will know what a
dufus Cory is with an electric drill?? No, it was that Google Drill will
attempt to covertly convince him to do unnecessary drilling. Sheesh!
Nobody called him on his whole ridiculous replicator fantasy. Instead,
they asked about body hacking.
Perhaps too much listening to utter fantasy/nonsense like this is why
I see people in black clothes blithely walking across the middle of a
street at night, into traffic, without looking. When I (rarely) drive, I
go very slowly at night to avoid hitting the Newtonian-mechanics-impaired
youth (probably Cory's video should have had a warning about how drills
are *no good* for body hacking). Mechanized manufacturing is actually
*more* energy intensive than old-style human-driven assembly lines.
The only reason mechanized manufacturing is increasing is because there
is currently, briefly, cheap enough fossil fuel energy to displace the
human version. That won't last very long as declining net energy starts
to bite. One might argue that we need people like Cory to spin tall
tales to distract people and make them feel good. But the fact that such
utter nonsense could make people feel good (and not mad, like me) just
makes me sad, scared, and lonely -- and a little less angry, I suppose :-}
[Mar04,'18]
I admit I'm feeling uneasy about about the Ides of March, when
many new wars have been started (Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq2,
Libya, Yemen). The war shrieking in the execrable NYT is more
deafening and daft than usual ('North Korea' helping 'Syria' with
'poison gas', really? what, no barrel bombs?), as noted by
Michael
Chossudovsky and
Edward
Curtin. Given recent setbacks, a new US/Israeli-initiated war at
this time seems strategically foolhardy, and unlikely. But, even so,
I'll be happier if we make it to June without any new really bad thing
happening.
[Mar10,'18]
There is only one future
A couple weeks back, I read (HT Pete Markiewicz) an
article
by a younger guy who was complaining that the thrill of the grimy future
of 'Minority Report' was wearing thin because of all of the drearily
similar copies. Touchingly, he longed for something more like the
first 'Star Trek' (!), which was originally pitched as 'Wagon Train to
the stars' :-} . I bet he never saw 'Wagon Train'. I felt his pain,
but I think he utterly missed the point. It isn't that people have
gotten un-original. The problem is: *there is only one possible future*.
It is skynet/alexa/surveillance/stasi/sexy. Aldous Huxley could already
see this, 90 years ago.
As one ages, the number of possible paths that one can take into the
future inevitably shrinks. Over time, it seems more and more as if
the path that was actually taken was the only one possible (well, maybe
barring a few unlucky breaks). When I think back on how technology has
progressed, it feels the same -- and I don't think it's just because
I'm older.
Take touch screens. They just *had* to be. Touch screens were originally
developed in the 70's, but already by the 80's, they were in sporadic use.
The original orange-on-black MRI scanner interfaces on GE machines from
around 1990 were touch screens. They were a nightmare of completely
non-standard, modal, full-page panels, often using "Cancel" to mean
"Save current parameters and go to next modal screen". I particularly
remember "Rx AHD Scan", an abbreviation for "prescribe ahead scan",
which meant "while the current scan is running, set up the parameters for
the next". I think they detected x-y by interruption of infrared beams
from the screen edges. They were irritating to use and always covered
with hospital bacteria suspended in primate finger oil. But they were
the future. Now the whole world is an oiled touch screen.
It was *always* going to be touch screens. Virtually all sci-fi
from the 80's onward had people caressing touch screens, even though
practical consumer versions weren't there yet. I unconsciously responded
to the 'modern-ness' of the sci-fi touch screens, but unlike a true
businessman, I didn't consciously grasp the overwhelming importance of
the stroking/grooming aspect. In fact, it is only relatively recently
that neurophysiologists discovered 'stroking-tuned afferents' -- these
are specific, small caliber afferents in the skin that only respond to
very slow stroking/grooming motions across the skin (about 1 cm/sec).
They look just like pain afferents.
Touch/grooming interfaces may be infantilizing and mesmerizing and not
very good for 'real work', esp. if it involves language or code, or visual
or sound design. But *nothing* could have stopped them. There was only
one possible path foward, one possible future. Touch screens. Of course,
this single future of touch interfaces had to be actually constructable.
But capacitive touch surfaces are very old, and reasonable resolution
screens were already there in the 1970's. It was just a matter of time
before armies of engineers would generate the optimized indium tin oxide
capacitive touch screens of today.
This doesn't mean that everything that people 'have always wanted' will
get made. Some perennially wanted things, like flying cars (flying
carpets!), are intrinsically impractical, and will probably never be
common because of basic physical constraints (fuel energy density,
aerodynamics of car-shaped objects as heavy as a land car). A shame,
considering all the youtube videos we could have looked forward to of
flaming berserker 'air traffic rage' incidents :-}
Finally, coming back to skynet/alexa/surveillance/stasi/sexy/IoT, we
are obviously heading there, full speed ahead -- with touch screens,
of course. If there were less people on the earth, and if a larger
proportion of our high-quality, high-density energy sources remained --
ironically, all generated by localized *failures* of the biosphere to
properly recycle energy -- I'm sure we would get a lot closer than we
currently already are. Because that is the *only possible future*, I'm
less disturbed than I used to be by the fact that the energy will run
low before we can make it so. That said, having industrial civilization
run low on energy will be spectacularly 'disturbing', and is certainly
not something I look forward to in the slightest.
[Mar19'18]
I started, obliquely, by listening to a John
Helmer interview (starting just after minute 34
here)
on the latest curious event in Salisbury (N.B.: just down the road from
Porton Down, the infamous UK chemical and biological weapons factory
and test site). This occurred just before the Russian election. Helmer
points out that the Skripals made it to the Salisbury Mill pub, the Zizzi
restaurant for dinner, then the park bench before falling unconscious,
frothing at the mouth. He says the policeman who went to the Skripal
home got sick immediately and is now in the same Salisbury hospital
with the two Skripals (hospital is open for business). The policemen
who visited the pub and the restaurant didn't get sick. Helmer suggests
that the immediate source of the poison was in the Skripal home. It is
unclear why the policeman visiting the home got sick immediately, but,
by contrast, the Skripal's made it through the pub and dinner before
falling ill. Helmer's guess is that a mistake by Skripal was capitalized
upon by the British government to try to turn it into another
'Colin Powell vial'
(the lie that helped start the 2003 war on Iraq). A Skripal mistake
sounds a little implausible, but the US/UK can never get enough 'vials'.
Chris Martenson (more trustable, a toxicology PhD!) suggests
here,
by contrast, that the fast action of nerve agents means that the Skripals
must have gotten got exposed somewhere immediately after leaving the
restaurant on the way to the park, not at home. Also, he contradicts
Helmer with citations that the sick policeman first found the passed-out
Skripals (vs. going to their home). He also notes that a number of
other people who attended to the passed out Skripals *didn't* get sick.
This suggests the policeman as a possible source or carrier if it was a
nerve poison. No evidence of what happened has yet been publicly released
(and none probably ever will be).
Craig Murray reports that the first
successful attempt to synthesize novichocks was by
Iran
in 2016, cooperating and reporting to the Organisation for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which added it to their database.
Perhaps this can be used to attach it to Iran, though it completely
undermines the UK claim that only Russia could have synthesized it.
Picking a war with Russia now really wouldn't be a good idea. Hopefully
it's just a way to boost the fragile May, who after the event, is now
finally ahead of Corbyn.
But Corbyn has quickly 'seen the light', or rather the polls, and is now
on-board with 'keep calm, and blame the Russians'. Over the weekend,
it suddenly made perfect sense that it was a genius Russian strategy
to publicly execute an old man in the UK with nerve toxins, right before
the Russian election, as the propaganda campaign has spread virtually
worldwide via utterly supine mainstream media 'journalists'.
For something completely different, here is a
clip of a Nov
2017 UK teevee show, Strike Back, that had a novichock plot
(yet, they use the word "novichock") similar to the official
story of what happened, courtesy of @Syricide (go
here
about halfway down). Forget the military-industrial complex -- we live
in the screenwriter-intelligence services complex!
Finally, several have discussed what they ate. It's not hard at all to
get food poisoning in the UK esp. in the ubiquitous chain restaurants;
my wife and I had multiple experiences, some extremely severe :-{ .
This explanation seems unlikely, however, given that one hour is a
little fast-acting for typical salmonella, campylobacter, norovirus,
or listeria food poisoning.
The main question is whether a larger war at the US/Russian border in
Syria (a la Magnier) is about to break out. There are some rumblings
of US and Russia moving more equipment around than usual, and it's
still March. Hopefully just the usual disinfo/chaff.
Update: Mar22: Here is
Thierry Meyssan
with his usual mix of intriguing and bizarre. Though he was one of
the first to point out the foreign source and support for 'ISIS'
in Syria, he was also responsible for the original 'no plane hit
the Pentagon' disinfo. Here is yet a different take by
Israel
Shamir (scroll down to addendum at end of article). Here is
Gregory
R. Copley highlighting possible connections between Skripal
and Christopher Steele, hinting that Skripal might have authored
the Steele dossier. Finally, useful comments (#108 and #128) by
"Old
Microbiologist" containing actual information.
Update: Apr4: Porton Down scientists refuse to knuckle under to May/Johnson
pressure to declare the poison Russian, and so the official story is
starting to come apart, tweets are deleted, etc. But May/Johnson have
won, because they only needed their shite to stick to the wall for a
few weeks.
Update: Apr8: British 'authorities' bizarrely report that the Skripals
two guinea pigs and a cat were locked up in the Skripal house until the
guinea pigs died of dehydration and the cat was reduced to such a state
that it had to be put down. Keep calm and blame Russia...
Update: May7: A good summary of the
current state of the affair, which is
too
ridiculous for words, by Stephen McMurray.
[Apr08'18]
Izzy snipers pull a Stephen Paddock last week, shooting 100
unarmed people marching out of their open air apartheid prison
(the imprisoned Palestinians make up half of the population of
Izzy), killing 17. Most of the presstitutes simply
ignored the
story. The servile 'left' press (gag) like the 'Guardian' described it as
a "clash". Yeah, that would be like when South African police 'clashed'
with black demonstrators; sorry, but snipers shooting unarmed people
from 300 yards is not a 'clash'. Gilad Atzmon contrasts the
pious pronouncements with reality
(includes Corbyn, the 'anti-semite', hah). And here is the
Onion.
The toll of people injured by live fire bullets has now risen to to 750
untermenschen, oh sorry, I meant people.
The real absurdity of the situation is that the people being shot are
the ones who are genetically related to the biblical inhabitants of the
Levant (i.e., the Palestinians), while the people doing the shooting,
who booted the Palestinians out of their homes just 70 years ago,
are genetically closer to Azhkenazi Khazars from the Caucasus,
typically with only 0-3% Levantine ancestry (see papers by
Eran Elhaik in 2013
here
and 2017
here),
who only converted to Judaism around the 8th
century (see also papers by Paul Wexler on the
Irano-Turko-Slavic
origin of Yiddish). Imagine what the Guardian would have published if
something analogous had occurred in Alabama (police snipers shooting into
a demonstrating crowd of unarmed blacks, injuring 100 and killing 17).
But that whole massacre has been quickly forgotten because the Bezos-Post
has now is telling us again that once again, just as the US 'tries'
to 'pull back' from the war on Syria (trans.: our liver-eating ISIS
proxies get defeated again, which would be the ones we're supposedly
'fighting'), the Syrian government 'strategically' responds with a
'chemical attack', which is 'faithfully' reported by the
'lights,
camera, action' White Helmets, pulling the
U.S. reluctantly back into the war. Riiight. Good summary
here
at Moon of Alabama, and on-the-ground reports
here from Vanessa Beeley.
The problem is, unfortunately, you *can* fool most of the people, most
of the time. I am slack-jawed at how many times the 'chemical weapons'
nonsense has been effectively re-used on Americans since 'what My
Lai?' Colin Powell's monstrous fake poison vial lie. The effectiveness
of this nonsense on the minds of the rest of the world is less and less,
with each repetition.
[Apr10'18]
The Ides of April
War fever is increasing and the Bezos/Google/Beeb mighty Wurlitzer
continues to catapult anti-Russian hysteria and 'chemical weapons' Douma
psyop (now with Glen Greenwald's approval! tho he says he's against the
war). Izzy attacked the T-4 Syrian air field with eight air-to-ground
missiles launched from planes over Lebanoon and Russia outed them.
The Saker has made a useful list of possible AngloZionist options
here.
An all-out US/Izzy attack on the US/Russian border in Syria or Iran
seems unlikely, given the unpredictable outcome, and the chance of
uncontained escalation. The context of this operation is very different
than the Iraqi 'turkey shoot' since both Syria and Iran can now shoot
back in a way that was impossible for Iraq in 2003. They have modern
anti-aircraft, anti-missile missiles, and Iran probably has some fast
surface-skimming cruise anti-navy cruise missiles that could damage
attacking US ships (within range), forcing them to stay inconveniently
far away. The military, and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff know this.
On the other hand, the US empire is staggering a bit and strongly in need
of some kind of mafia/bully action to reestablish street cred. And there
is the not-very-intelligent, 69-year-old Bolton swamp-thing, made
'National Security Advisor' just a few days ago. The previous salvo of
59 cruise missiles at a semi-empty Syrian air base -- almost exactly a
year ago on 7 April 2017, at a cost of a mere $100 million dollars, with
a substantial number likely shot down -- could be repeated. A larger
attack could probably only be launched in a week and a half from now,
which is about how long it will take the US etc ships to get there.
Since US-ians have probably forgotten about the previous fake chemical
weapons attack that was used as a pretext for the 59 missiles last year,
perhaps a similar symbolic attack will work again for them. Though the
rest of the world would view it as the 'emperor with no clothes', that
would be OK for now, as long as no kid pipes up to point out the obvious.
The world energy situation is a lot more dangerous now than it looks,
and perhaps some of the (sociopathic) 'adults' in room are thinking
further ahead like me. When the energy going gets really tough (it's
not tough yet), another extra-big 'new Pearl Harbor' may be required.
One possibility is a small (false-flag) nuke in an American city.
I suppose I should count my blessings that the fake chemical weapons
shtick still 'works' :-/ . And perhaps the recent FBI escalation of
porn-o-gate can serve as a new 'squirrel' (an absolutely classic 'wedge
issue', porn-o-gate has actually *increased* Trump's approval amongst
his core supporters), to keep the proles' eyes off the ball.
Update: Apr11: Reuters reports: "Russian envoy to Lebanon: Any U.S.
missiles fired at Syria will be shot down". Russia Today reports: "Any
US missiles fired at Syria will be shot down, *launch sites targeted* --
Russian envoy to Lebanon".
Update: Apr12: The threat of war seems to be receding (I'm hoping!),
perhaps because some adult actually understood the Russian envoy's warning
above. Imagine the US response if "Pyoootin" had threatened a massive
bombing attack with intent toward regime change -- in Mexico.
The deep state neo-cons have been temporarily beaten back, but are no
doubt already planning the next 'unpluged incubator babies', to try
to re-re-resuscitate the C-eye-eh/Izzy/Saudi-supported ISIS crazies
defeated by Syria, Russia, and Iran. Meanwhile in Salisbury, 'comical
UK' has decided that the Zizzi restaurant and the Skripal house will
need to be destroyed (not just the cat and guinea pig?). And Nigel has
run himself over with his car. It's worth remembering that though the
Russians could do some damage to US assets in Syria, they remain
seriously outgunned, and could be
easily overpowered by a sustained US/Izzy attack. That could result in
dangerous escalation.
Update: Apr15: Trump/whoever replayed the symbolic Sudan
pharmaceutical attack and/or the 2017 Syria attack, hitting
just a few targets, including a former chemical weapons company
already neutralized by OPCW and currently producing cancer drugs,
hence, safe to bomb. The bombing also conveniently destroyed
(non-existent!) evidence of chemical weapons making, the supposed
reason for the bombing, just before the OPCW inspectors were due there,
in an installation in the middle of a dense city (the
damage at
Barzeh did not seem enough for "76" half-ton missile warheads).
The Syrian defense against this symbolic attack seemed to be surprisingly
successful; Syrian air defenses apparently were able to shoot down many
of the incoming missiles. One suggestion was that older US missiles were
used to drain some of the Syrian air defenses, but this seems like an
unlikely US strategy. The suspicious thing to me is that this symbolic
attack did not seem very scary (esp. considering how much
just
how much the US spends relative to the whole world on this cr@p);
and the attack ships and planes kept a respectful distance. Through all
this, the Syrian army continued to mop up the US/Izzy/Saudi-supported
ISIS psychos. Perhaps, secret negotiations with the Russians dialed
down the size of the US attack. Or perhaps, a larger attack was called
off because of the beginnings of a Russian response (advanced Russian
radars 'painting' attack ships and planes). Or perhaps larger attacks
are still coming when when the rest of the flotilla arrives in a week.
The Russians really have no good response options to a larger attack.
Syrian Pantsir air defenses could be overwhelmed by large enough number
of modern cruise missiles (though it would be hard for the US to go a lot
over 1000-2000). The only Syrian/Russian defense would be to attack the
missile-launching ships and jets with the most modern Russian weapons.
Last week, the Russians said they would attack the source of the missiles,
but they didn't, perhaps because of a gentlemen's agreement that Russians
would not be targetted. However, if unprovoked, false-flag-driven US
attacks escalate to real targets (e.g., Russian S-300/S-400/Yakhonts) or
if the US troops recently dropped off in Syria get publicly involved, the
Russians may finally be forced to respond. Their only possible response
could endanger the whole planet. More likely (I hope), is that the US
will just back down for now (at least until the next new Pearl Harbor).
Update: Apr17: It seems possible that many of the FUKUS
missiles aimed at defended Syrian air fields (military and
civilian) were downed in the air over Syria, without any Russian
shots fired at their sources (ships, planes, submarine). If
this
report at Moon of Alabama is correct, the US military has a
serious problem; this would seem to confirm the poor results of last
year's (2017) test cruise missile attack on Syria. It's important
to maintain a skeptical position about what exactly happened, given
the usual amount of disinfo/chaff surrounding such an event.
Here
is a useful comment for some background on the practical problems of
air defenses. Finally, it's important to remember that this was still
a rather limited, symbolic US attack -- limited number of high value
targets and low missile numbers compared to an all-out conventional
attack. However, if the FUKUS weapons used were in fact the latest
available, and if many were downed, one unintended consequence of
this attack is that the mafia-like 'enforcer' image of the US empire
(and the F and UK hanger-on-er components of FUKUS) has been
further damaged.
The newer JASSM cruise missiles attacking Barzeh almost all got through
(according to the Russians), which might have been a test by the US (not
a very rigorous test given that Barzeh was undefended!). What happens
when all the US warships arrive in the middle east next week will be key.
I'm guessing they will stand down, to respect the dawn of a new Cold
War II. I am hoping we have made it through the Ides of March, mostly in
one piece! The US still occupies (admittedly, very thinly) the
30%
of Syria that contains most of Syria's oil, water, and gas (don't
mention the war/oil, I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it).
Update: Apr19: It seems possible that the US *did* in fact only use very
outmoded, easy-to-shoot-down cruise missiles (except at Barzeh), probably
because the US military wanted to make sure that the attack didn't look
like a direct attack on the Russians. If so, we are all in the strange
position of relying on antiwar elements in the US military to promote
world peace. I doubt Trump was responsible for the limitation of the
attack (Trump IS the swamp). For comparison, 66% of American registered
voters supported the attack, with only 23% opposing it (Apr 14 poll).
Virtually all major newspapers supported the attack. The core voter-base
for Trump actually opposed the attack. Tucker Carlson on Fox is a
truth teller. Left is right and right is left. How utterly depressing!
Update: Apr22: What explains the virtual silence on (or grudging
support for) the Syria attacks by a majority of US-ians? I came a
across a recent comment, probably at saker or moon of alabama (can't
remember where) that made sense to me, since I have thought the same
thing myself over the years. The reason to ignore the war is that deep
down, US-ians (myself included) know that their position at the top of
the world food chain depends on the fact that the US spends much more
on its military than any other country, and relies on implicit and
explicit death threats as well as occasional death from above to keep
its temporary position on the top of the heap. I doubt most people
are strongly convinced by the chemical psyops, esp. since they have
now been re-run so many times. However, as long as there
are cars and gas and Home Depot and Amazon and iPhones and
low interest rates, they can manage to suppress any conscious
cognitive dissonance thoughts. The practical problem is that if
cars and gas, etc, are impacted, which is likely to occur when
the next downturn comes in a year or two, people may sour on the
'world policeman' (world mafia don) role, in which case, stronger
medicine would be required to keep them on board. A real or
false
flag attack on one or more sitting duck US navy ships would instantly
harden the war support from grudging to strong enough to instantly muzzle
the internet opposition. This has occurred *many* times in history to
galvanize support for imperial wars. I sure hope we make it through
the Ides of April (and May) in one piece!
Update: Apr30: Somebody (possibly Izzy) missile'd an
ammunition dump in Syria last night, setting off a huge
explosion (2.6 on the Richter scale) near Hama. Here is
some good material on the background to the situation from
John
Helmer. And here
is one assessment of the propects going forward by
Paveway
IV. Initial reports in the alt media elicited a huge, almost
instantaneous response from the hasbara trolls. And the
'Lies
of our Times' has now weighed in to warn us that a
retaliation is surely on the way. A critical part of every
'pearl harbor' is to first set up expectations. Damn the 'Ides
of May'. But to end on a 'lighter' note, here is a suggestion
from Canthama that the attack was not Izzy, but rather
ground-based,
and finally here is a satirical
mashup
pic (bring on the 'yellow cake'). The fog of disinfo from both
sides remains thick -- hard to know what actually happened.
Update: May05: Now hoping we get through May and June without a large
Izzy or US attack on Syria, which could precipitate a truly stoopid,
major, own-goal war. Amazingly, it is possible that the World Cup in
Russia on 15 July may have some effect on the timing of a possible
new attack on Syria (from the time as a kid that my late father
would turn American football games into a contest between good and
evil, I have hated professional sports). Trump is an irrelevant
puppet leader, 'bedeviled' by the ridiculous Mueller wielding only
... uh, Stormy Daniels, after almost two (!) years of Russiagate
has fizzled. It's just psyop/Kabuki for the proles, which includes
most of the 'left' *and* 'right' (e.g., see this
pitiful
article by Mike Whitney, and see this nice
map
that shows the two 'different' sides that are *both* being entertained
by the show). The odds are still against a large war because of the
possibility that a good part of the world's oil and gas supply could
be interrupted if Iran is attacked. It's worth noting that this would
hurt 'the world' more than it would hurt the US That's not a good
thing, because it might make some of the crazies -- who don't realize
how vulnerable the US military would be in a confrontation with a near
peer -- more bold. Saner (military) heads realize that it would be a
bad thing to (further) demonstrate that vulnerability. And oil prices
are already going up as the 1% 'glut' finally gets used up.
Update: May08: Though Trump's preposterous
cancelling-the-Iran-agreement speech won't convince hardcore
Trumpflakes that Trump *is* the swamp, they will now be permanently
conflicted/disabled, like Obama supporters trying to explain
away Obama, the previous bankers-and-war preznit. I think that
people are overestimating the effect of this latest 'Trump' Syria
'squirrel'/stunt/charade. The Syrian army is winning against the
US/Saudi/Izzy-support ISIS etc. terrorists. However, if there is another
new pearl harbor, all bets are off.
Update: May09 [4AM GMT]: So soon (in less than a day!), I may be
proved wrong. Syria has fired back at an Izzy provocation for
the first time in almost 4 decades, after withstanding 100 or more
Izzy attacks on Syria during that time. We will see tomorrow if
a larger war breaks out. There will be a desperate attempt by
the Mighty Wurlitzer to get the US involved. Interesting that
the first Syrian strike-back in decades happened with Nutty
dining in Russia, in a weird anti-parallel with Trump 'chocolate
cake' missile launch in April 2017. Sheldon Adelson is
meeting
with Trump in Washington tomorrow (Iran/Syria has nothing to do with it,
of course).
Update: May10: Izzy
declares success, which as translated by Bernhard
(MoA), may mean they are temporarily pulling back from
further immediate attacks on Syria. A substantial number
of attacking missiles were again shot down (for example
movie
and
still from
over Damascus), and 30 Izzy jets did not enter Syrian air space, firing
their missiles from 60 miles away. Here is a summary of Syrian
air
defenses by Wael. Syria will continue slowly but surely cleaning out
the US/Saudi/Izzy-supported ISIS/jihadi/takfiri/al-Qaeda head-choppers
from Syrian cities and the Syrian countryside. Here is a
brave
Syrian manning a Pantsir short range air defensive missile
battery in Syria that had just run out of missiles, who dies trying
to dash back to drive it out of the way of an incoming
Israeli
suicide drone. Finally,
here
is a report of what happened from the viewpoint of the SAA (translation of
SAA FB post by Canthama).
Update: May13: Summary: the fact that Syria successfully shot back
for the first time after being attacked roughly 100 times by Israel over
the past few decades is highly significant.
Update: May14: Now watch as the embarrassingly supine press
once again (cf. the even more deadly 2009 Operation
Cast Lead and 2014 Operation Protective Edge, which both
took place under Obama) gruesomely tries to justify terrorist
snipers
shooting unarmed demonstrators
in
the head (a
massacre
today: 58 killed, 2800 wounded), because
'Iran', because 'terror', because
'clash',
because 'you made us kill you', because 'human wave attacks', because
'unfortunate propaganda attempt' (Raj Shah). How can you live with
yourself, presstitutes? But average US-ians, despite the Wurlitzer,
despite the hasbara trolls, are finally starting to wake up to the
reality of the apartheid nightmare, where half of all the people in Israel
(almost 4 million people), descendents of the 3/4 of a million people who
were terrorized out of their homes in 1948, are being held without the
right to vote in hellish, open air, sniper-ringed, concentration camps.
My mind is bruised. I want to resign from the human race.
Update: May15: Many on-the-ground
pics
from the Daily Mail.
[May07'18]
Americans still often look to Europe as more sophisticated than the
US, hundreds of years later. But look at what Germany, France (with
the UK's help) have done to southern Europe, esp. Greece, Spain,
Portugal, and Italy. First, they created a 'sort-of' joint currency.
But go
here
to see how they have been careful not to make it *actually* like
the US dollar, which is a real joint curency between US states; the
Germans are keen to prevent what actually happens in the US from happening
in the EU -- that is, where "German taxpayer's [would be] used to fund
other member states". By contrast, California and New York taxpayers
*actually do* fund the 'flyover' states.
Stripped down to basics, the 'EU' (i.e., German, French banks, Goldman
Sachs) gave southern Europe huge loans -- not out of generosity, but as
a method of bankers making money on the interest payments. They made
a lot of money from it during the 2000's boom. But when the bubble
popped, instead of spreading the pain of the pop around, they extracted
almost everything from the south, *halving* the standard of living of
hard-working regular people in Greece.
Is the European south corrupt? Of course! Think Greek shipping magnates
bribing rich middle eastern country leaders for help attacking Libya in
return for the prospect of shipping stolen Libyan oil, just prior to the
war on Libya. But what the EU did in simple terms after the 2007-2008
crash was to literally take money from poor Greeks to pay rich German
and French bankers. Regular Germans didn't profit; but they didn't get
squeezed to pay German bankers anything like regular Greeks did. This is
not any more sophisticated than the impoverishment of flyover country
in the US (and don't get me started on the ridiculously meat-centered
Euro diet :-} ; that's not sophisticated, or humane, or environmentally
possible, either).
Finally, this isn't to say that interstate transfer
payments in the US are adequate! If California and New
York actually *did* fund the flyover states properly, we
might have slowed the inexorable movement toward outright
fascism.
This is a lesson not just for the US.
[Aug28'18]
The US/UK/France (and the Bolton-thing) have recently warned in
unison that they will attack with more air strikes if there is
another fake chemical weapons 'gassing-his-own-people' broadcast from
the UK/US-run White Helmet movie production company. This is all
in the context of the Syrian Arab Army getting closer to removing
most of the remaining US/UK/Saudi/Izzy-supported liver-eaters from
Idlib. In response to the US threats and in support of the Syrian
offensive to reclaim this chunk of their country, the Russians have
assembled a
large
naval armada. Though this whole picture is a little
WWIII-ey sounding, insouciant
Americans seem unfazed, with consumer confidence exploding to an
18-year
high -- right before what looks like a oncoming crash (N.B.:,
tho I linked to Karlin twice here, he is at least half disinfo, and a
serious motor mouth, so read critically). Given the ineffectiveness of
previous symbolic US air attacks, the US/UK/France/Saudi/Izzy attempt to
destroy Syria looks like a failure. The amount of death and destruction
brought about in Syria by the US/UK/France/Saudi/Izzy (and aided weekly
by the servile NYT and BBC/Guardian) has been enormous and terrible.
Of course, the small Russian force at Khmeimim would have no way to block
US forces/CENTCOM if the US were to enter into a full scale conflict.
Though the base there is defended by a few S-400 batteries, they could be
eventually overwhelmed by a determined large scale US attack. However,
at this moment, it doesn't seem like the US has the stomach for an all-out
attack, and is content to set up small bases oilfields stolen from Syria.
So Syria, with a small amount of strategic Russian and Iranian help, has
been able to reclaim a subtantial portion of their country. The whole
situation may rapidly change, however, if a serious economic downturn
provokes unrest and the US starts a bigger war as a distraction.
[Sep11'18]
What a 'perfect' day today for some
laughably preposterous
propaganda
pics from al-Jazeera, in the buildup to what will probably be yet
another symbolic attack on Syria as the Syrian government gets ready
to retake Idlib from al-Qaeda (AKA liver-eating head choppers).
Anybody with their mind in normal operating condition would be able
to see through a flimsy psyop like this (what, no duct tape? :-} ),
in the same way that some people saw through the completely fabricated
Colin "What My Lai?" Powell chemical weapons nonsense that was used
to justify the destruction of Iraq and the slaughter of a more than a
million Iraqis in the aftermath, never compensated, never punished.
Unfortunately, the wet noodle minds of most of the American public will,
amazingly, be convinced again. They won't bother to check out
'behind
the scenes' videos of psyops (this one from Iraq)
that occasionally leak, or Newspeak MSM
bait
and switch Syria antics (BBC) occasionally caught
out by astute observers, or realize that the Syrian army
has actually called a temporary cease fire in Idlib
today
in deference to the planned psyop on this special day (some
outlets
appear to have jumped the gun by a few days :-} ).
I'll admit to still being naive and a bit staggered that the
'chemical weapons' nonsense could be replayed, virtually
verbatim, virtually every frigging year, 15 years after the
well-documented Iraq fake chemical weapons, and yet still be swallowed
whole! Not to mention, including a half a year of Skripal
chemical
suit bozo nonsense ('health and safety' don't you know?). The fact
these cheap tricks continue to work suggests that most American minds
are quite weak.
However, 'controlling the narrative' doesn't work against modern
anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, where actual physics
still counts. Iraq didn't have those and paid (and continues
to pay) the price. The physics of modern defensive weapons is
likely to constrain the US/UK/France attack to again be merely symbolic,
and not a trigger for the use of nuclear weapons (well, I certainly
hope so), as argued by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
here.
The idea is that the weak mind of the average American will be satisfied
with pure narrative, without the need for any real results.
[Nov04'18]
The PPI disaster
Back in 2001 when the 'purple pill' ad blitz was on, I remember making
fun of the ads for a pill that were based entirely on its color and
that didn't mention anything about what it was for. That ad campaign
cost half a *billion* dollars. But I didn't look into it deeply. And I
didn't give the vile ad people their due (they knew they were going to
make a lot *more* than half a billion dollars). Today the purple pill
(esomeprazole) makes $5 billion in global sales every year out of $25
billion yearly profits for all PPI's.
As it turns out, the purple pill ad campaign was because the 20 year
patent protection on omeprazole, introduced in the late 1980's,
was about to run out. The purple pill was the same drug (!), but
re-patented through the efforts of lawyer armies, because the synthesis
was improved to reject the less-active mirror-image version of the drug.
It was renamed esomeprazole, and its price was increased by 10x over
the similarly-active enantiomeric mixture (both mirror and non-mirror
versions).
So what do these drugs, and many similar knock-offs, do? They are
'proton-pump inhibitors'. *One* of the things these drugs do is inhibit
"gastric H+/K+ ATPase", which generates stomach acid (in "parietal cells"
in the stomach lining). The short-acting PPI's rapidly block stomach
acid production to almost nothing, then wash out relatively quickly.
If you eat a high protein diet, which strongly stimulates the production
of stomach acid, this can help with the resulting heartburn.
However, proton pump inhibitors don't actually work very well
to fix dyspepsia (indigestion); in fact, they only help in
about 30% of cases compared to 25% helped by a placebo (
Pinto-Sanchez et al.,
2017).
Then, there are a lot of 'side effects', which are really 'main effects'
because they reflect things the drug directly targets. We call them
'side effects' merely because we don't like those other main effects.
A large study in Germany (80,000 people) found an association between
proton pump inhibitor use and dementia. There are several possible
mechanisms. Chronic use of PPI's downregulates the alpha3 subunit of the
adenosine receptor, which is found in not only in gastric proton pumps but
also in similar proton pumps in the brain. Also, PPI's have also been
shown to enhance amyloid beta production (what's in Alzheimer's disease
plaques) (
Badiola
et al., 2013).
Another study found that proton pump inhibitors reduce nitric oxide
synthase activity. Nitric oxide synthase is a critical component in how
tissues signal blood vessel to dilate when those tissues need more oxygen.
Nitric oxide signalling (involving nitric oxide synthase) is also thought
to be critically involved in the formation of memories in the brain
(NMDA-channel-mediated synaptic strengthening).
The effects on nitric oxide synthase may also be why proton pump
inhibitors are implicated in impairing cardiovascular health (
Sukhovershin and
Cooke, 2018). The mechanism may be that a circulating nitric oxide
synthase blocker (ADMA) is increased when PPI's block DDAH, which normally
reduces ADMA. Sorry for the triple negative -- the bottom line is that
proton pump inhibitors reduce nitric oxide synthase, which is critical
to maintain healthy blood circulation, and so can damage the heart.
Another side effect of PPI's is to modify bone remodeling.
Osteoclasts (cells that break down bone and intimately work together
with osteoblasts, which help create new bone) work by generating
protons (acid) using a similar proton pump to the one in the stomach
lining (
NIH Genetics
Reference). The PPI's may modify that other proton pump by
affecting one of the protein subunits it shares with the gastric
proton pump. It is possible that this explains the association
between long *or* short term PPI use and bone fractures (
Ito and Jensen,
2011). Fractures may actually result from inappropriate stengthening
in one place causing more stress in another (cf. fractures resulting
from the osteoclast-inhibiting bisphosphonates). It is easy to get the
exact wrong answer when using ultrasimple, one-step reasoning methods
('PPIs slow osteoclasts, which should help bone') on the ultracomplex,
billion-step, homeostatic system of every multicellular organism.
Yet another 'side effect' caused by
PPIs is interstitial nephritis (
Blank
et al., 2014). Though this concern was originally raised in 1992
(!), recent studies with large number of patients (500,000) showed that
taking PPI's increased the risk of this rare but serious disease by 5
times (to 1 per 10,000 person-years; N.B.: don't forget to multiply that
low risk by almost a billion people taking the drug).
Proton pump inhibitors are strongly addicting when used long-term.
After long term use, your body will adapt by doing its best to correct the
imbalance in gastric proton pump activity induced by the drugs by upping
the activation of the proton pump by whatever means it can. If you then
dare to stop, you will immediately experience a burst of too much stomach
acid and worse-than-usual acid reflux, which will cement your resolve
to keep taking the PPIs. To withdraw from them, you have to go slowly.
But, but, but, you are saying, 'what about the scourge of esophogeal
cancer'? 'Isn't that a good reason to put up with the brain and bone
side effects'? The answer is turning out to be poignant.
A large recent study (800,000 people in Sweden)
found that long-term PPI use was actually associated
with an *increased risk* of esophogeal cancer (
Brusselaers
et al., 2018). This follows up on an earlier 2011 study showing
an association between esophageal cancer and PPI use (
Nason et al., 2011).
Other studies have shown that proton pump inhibitors do *not* reduce the
risk of esophageal cancer (adenocarcinoma type) in patients with Barrett's
esophagus, which is a predecessor of esophageal cancer (
Hu
et al., 2017). Another study showed that proton pump
inhibitors may actually help *cause* Barrett's esophagus! (
Alsalhi
and Dobrian, 2015). Finally, other studies have shown that PPI's
can contribute to the formation of carcinogenic bile acids. PPI's also
strongly increase the stomach's production of gastrin, a growth factor,
which may contribute to cancer cell growth.
Despite the hype, amazingly, there is *no solid proof* that treating
acid reflux symptoms with PPI's prevents esophageal cancer. Instead,
a gigantic world-encircling business has been created, medicating as many
as 15% of all humans in some countries based only on a facile advertising
narrative that merges simple antacid effects together with the common
experience of heartburn deep in the esophagus together with the scary
word, 'esophageal cancer'.
Esophageal cancer has increased by 600% over the last 25 years, which is
why people are rightly scared of it (there are two types, squamous cell,
whose incidence actually fell slightly, and adenocarcinoma, which rose
massively). It now accounts for 1% of all cancer diagnoses in the US
and is more lethal than many types of cancer (18% survival at 5 years).
What could possibly have caused this? This is utterly different than the
almost stable rates of all other common cancers (a few percent change
per decade). Is it possible that people's diets have somehow changed for
the worse so rapidly? This seems unlikely. People have increased the
amount of fat and protein they have been eating, but the differences from
25 years ago are not that huge. Obesity has continued its almost linear
increase which began before this period and continued through it, but
without suddenly jumping up 25 years ago. And if you are as old as me,
I'm sure you remember all the heartburn ads on the teevee in the 1960's
("speecy-spicy, meecy-micey"), long before the incidence of esophageal
cancer began to skyrocket.
Such a huge increase in a particular cancer -- by analogy with smoking --
is much more likely due to something that was recently introduced into
our 'diet', starting around 25 years ago.
One prominent 'dietary' change is that proton-pump inhibitors were
introduced around 25 years ago and have grown into a $25 *billion* dollar
a year business since then, turning them into one of the most commonly
prescribed drugs worldwide. Can't be the whole story, but 'just saying'.
The simple bottom line is, reduce acid reflux by eating less animal
protein and less fat (i.e., eat more whole plants and little free oil).
The long-term use of PPI's may damage the brain, bones, heart, kidney,
and the esophagus itself (!). Don't get addicted to PPI's! If you are
addicted, wean yourself off slowly.
[Nov25'18]
Bitcoin and Bunker Oil
Some
'creative
destruction' in action, in China.
I can't say that I have been unhappy to see the
crash
in bitcoin (I've been hating on it here for almost 2 years).
The idea of purposely massively increasing the complexity of a pointless
computation (the simple encryption of the bitcoin ledger) in order to
keep the rate of success constant is one of the most idiotic things I
have ever seen! This has led to the utterly obscene waste of a yearly
amount of energy roughly equivalent to what all of Denmark uses in a year.
I have always thought that money is really just a measure of useable
energy, but blowing this much energy out of our @sses for no reason,
without getting anything physically useful in return just boggles my
practical mind; it's like backing currency with gold by mining the gold,
but then lauching it into the sun.
Bitcoin is a tragic commentary on the stupidity of humans *who know
better*, right around the moment of peak worldwide energy use. At best,
the distributed encrypted ledger part of bitcoin may persist in some form;
the ridiculous energy waste part must go away. I know I shouldn't pick
just on the poor bitcoin 'miners'. They're really not any worse than
people who buy ever larger SUVs with ever more gigantic tires, which
use 2-4 times as much fuel as necessary, in order to transport a single
person to the exercise place, strictly because it puts the proud primate
driver in a higher, more dominant driving position on the freeway, so
that they can symbolically 'mount' the poor slobs driving what used to
be called passenger cars, all while actually endangering the SUV driver
(because SUV's roll over more easily than real passenger cars) along
with with pedestrians and cyclists (as my broken bones can attest).
But back to the numbers. Two articles
here
and
here
suggest that problems with diesel and heavier fuel oils are set to blow
up spectacularly in the next 1-2 years, somewhat out of left field.
One reason is the upcoming regulation in 2020 against using the dirty
high sulfur fuels that power the 'cargo cult' container ships that deliver
everything to everybody. This could create knock on effects on available
diesel and kerosine. The diesel moves all the baubles unloaded from the
container ships (but also all of our food!), across land, to our doors
and stores, by train and truck. The kerosine is used for jet fuel.
The interaction is because both diesel and kerosine come from the
heavier-than-gasoline fraction of crude oil. That would be the fraction
that is reduced in light tight oil (fracked oil). Container ships may
have to change to using low sulfur diesel (versus the heavier, dirtier,
higher-energy-density, bunker fuel, or high-sulfur diesel). Assuming the
regulation isn't immediately rescinded, this could temporarily drive
up the price of 'sweet' (low sulfur) crude oil to the crazy levels
last seen in 2008, which would mostly likely trigger an even greater
contraction than the 2009-2014 period [Update: Dec02: new article
here
describing how price for heavy sweet crude oil is set to diverge from
other types of oil]. On the 'positive' side, the economic crash would
probably lead to an immediate oil price crash (like what occurred early
in 2009).
Of course, there are many other factors to consider. For example, annual
car sales in China, which have increased yearly for three decades,
just fell abruptly to flat this year. On the other side, incipient
upward pressure on diesel is already apparent; over the last 6 months,
the price of diesel relative to Brent crude has already spiked in Europe
to the highest levels in 6 years as a result of local refinery problems
and the fact that a much higher percentage of passenger cars in the
EU/UK use diesel than in the US. Finally, it may be that decline in
the availability of heavier oils is *already* in the process of driving
ships to use relatively lighter diesel, even without the new regulations
(why so concerned now? it's not like bunker oil was ever 'clean'...),
and that the regulations are merely a way to try to cushion the blow.
Unfortunately, any realistic talk about the transition from fossil
fuel to 'renewable' energy is still far beyond what can be allowed in
'respectable public discourse'. The cr@p I read in popular science
journals (or in Science and Nature, themselves, for that matter)
about energy just stuns me. The simple reality is really
pretty
obvious. The overall picture of how the rundown of limited fossil
fuel will likely impact industrial civilization was already generally
clear to the 'interested reader' in the 1970's, almost *half a century*
ago! Since then, some 'renewable' wind and solar has been installed,
and the average American now imagines that the problem is basically
solved. But how much 'renewable' wind and solar energy do we have now,
after 'all that growth'? Most people assume wind and solar forms a
subtantial percentage of our daily energy gulp.
In reality, wind plus solar constitute only 3% of overall energy use
in the US, and only a tiny 1.5% of total world energy use (Americans
shouldn't make fun of the 'undeveloped' places that use less 'renewable'
energy, because that's where all their baubles and many of their renewable
energy devices come from). All that new 'renewable energy' doesn't even
cover the *increase* in energy use *in one year*! As the article says,
it would be better to rationally discuss the coming degrowth, despite its
unpalatability, before planet wide upheaval occurs. It *would* be better;
but it is highly unlikely to happen, because people (including me on most
days when I am running a brain imaging center and not writing here!) only
want to hear good things about our bad habits. So-called 'leftists'
are supposedly 'against climate change'; but then, they (1) have kids,
(2) eat meat and dairy and fish, (3) fly in airplanes (equivalent amount
of fuel to driving there), (4) drive SUVs to the exercise place, (5)
buy big screen teevees made out of coal in China and transported here
with bunker fuel, (6) run brain imaging centers :-} , and so on (well, I
don't do the first five...). Those kinds of things are primary drivers of
climate change, in approximate order of badness. The problem is obvious.
The only way to solve it is to reproduce less, use less, travel less,
and eat more plants. Merely 'believing in the reality of climate change'
means nothing at all.
[Dec21'18]
Some
reports
suggest that the US may be starting to move a small number of
personnel out of Syria and Afghanistan. However, there have
been many previous reports of the US 'leaving' Iraq, Syria, and
Afghanistan, but the US military is still there (for 18 years in
the case of Afghanistan!), so skepticism seems justified. Major
arms delivery operations such as 'Timber Sycamore' have continued
(originally Obama). But if any Syria and/or Afghanistan withdrawal
is true, is this related to some planned additional disastrous
action, for example, in Ukraine or Venezuela? It has been pitiful to
see the so called 'left' press in the US and UK and France going
ape
over any suggestion of the tiniest reduction in the half-century-long,
horrible, continuous destruction of the middle east, Afghanistan,
and Libya. Don't worry boys and girls, I fear the sh$tshow will go on.
[Jan26'19]
"Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope.
But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want
you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. I want
you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you
to act as if the house is on fire, because it is." -- Greta Thunberg,
16 years old
[Mar21'19]
Fossil Fuel Energy and the Boeing 737 MAX Crashes
The recent crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX were actually all about energy.
But first, let's look at the immediate cause of the crashes. What follows
is merely an educated guess about what happened, in advance of the full
investigations.
The first fatal crash of the new Boeing 737 MAX (Lion Air, October 2018)
was followed just 5 months later by a second fatal crash (Ethiopian
Airlines, March 2019) with many similarities to the first crash. In both
cases, a good guess as to what happened is that a single angle-of-attack
sensor failed (a little fin sticking out of the fuselage below the
cockpit to measure the nose-up/nose-down angle relative to the air flow
direction), causing a newly added automatic rear stabilizer adjustment
circuit (MCAS) to conclude that the plane was nearing a stall and then
forcing the nose of the plane sharply down for 10 seconds at a time,
with loud verbal cockpit stall alarms. In both cases, the pilots didn't
realize what had caused the sudden nose-down and manually corrected it
by pulling up to level. The system then repeatedly re-armed itself and
repeatedly did more nose-downs, prompting repeated pilot corrections.
Multiple cycles down/up cycles caused gradual loss of altitude until
the planes eventually hit the ground, killing everybody on board.
Many pilots were apparently not aware of the existence and/or the
operating characteristics of the new MCAS addition to the 'electrical
trim system'. The electrical trim system, which is an old system,
normally automatically makes small adjustments to the horizontal tail
stabilizer to keep the plane flying level, for example, as heavy food
carts are wheeled up and down the aisle.
In both cases, the pilots might have been able to regain control of
their planes if they had realized what was causing the problem and had
switched off the modified electrical trim system and manually uncranked
the horizontal stabilizer setting from its extreme nose-down position.
The MCAS addition to the electrical trim system is only enabled when
the flaps are up and the autopilot is off, a situation that typically
occurs in a window soon after take off. If the angle-of-attack sensor
vane had failed, the plane would have taken off normally, but then the
MCAS system would suddenly have leapt into action the moment the flaps
were fully retracted. One day before the Lion air crash, a non-flying
pilot getting a ride in the cockpit of a 737 MAX prevented a similar
disaster by switching off the malfunctioning electrical trim system soon
after take-off. That very Lion air plane was the one that crashed the
next day. The pilot may not have told enough people how he saved the
previous day's planeload of people from possible death.
The sequence of events that led to these disasters was complex, involving
the coming together of financialization, regulatory capture, business
competition, a dangerous 'hack' redesign, an inadequate software spec,
a poor user interface, and failure to inform and train pilots. But it
is important to realize that the principal motivation for all of these
changes was energy.
The 737 was designed 55 years ago and started out as a stable plane,
with relative short landing gear. The first design entered service 51
years ago. As it was upgraded with larger more efficient engines and
lengthened, its original design features and stability were somewhat
compromised. For example, one hack was to armour the tail in case it
hit the runway on takeoff or landing. But the plane remained relatively
safe and gained about 8% in fuel economy over the original, extending
its range.
Recently, competitor Airbus had introduced an even more fuel efficient
model that was around another 8% more efficient than the 737 predecessors
to the 737 MAX. Increased fuel efficiency across all carriers has been
achieved primarily by increasing the diameter of the ducted fan so that
the fan produces more thrust relative to the thrust coming from the
(more noisy) jet exhaust. Because it would have taken much longer to
design, manufacture, test, and get a new fuselage approved (e.g., that
would allow longer landing gear), it was decided to upgrade the 737 MAX
with even larger engines.
The turbo fans in the new, larger, 757-derived engines in the 737 MAX
were so large that the engines had to be mounted even more forward on the
wings to avoid hitting the ground on take-off and landing. The landing
gear couldn't be lengthened very much because of space constraints
on where they are stowed after take-off. The more forward engines
changed the center of gravity. But more importantly, their even larger
nacelles (housings around the ducted fan) generated additional lift,
especially when the angle of attack was steeper (e.g., during takeoff).
When combined with their more forward position on the wing, this resulted
in a nose-up rotation (torque) during high-thrust, high-angle-of-attack
conditions, such as during take-off.
The danger, appreciated by the designers, was that the additional
nose-up rotation could increase the angle of attack enough to
cause the wings to stall (suddenly lose lift), which is one of the
major ways a plane can fall out of the sky (for example, see
this
video). To 'fix' this and make the plane 'fly the same' as previous
737's, which would also avoid having to fully retrain pilots, the
electrical trim system, which normally makes small adjustments, had a new
module added to it (MCAS), which could make extremely large adjustments
when it detected an angle of attack that looked like it could lead to
a stall. Since this critical 'hack' was relying on a single sensor,
if that sensor failed, the new MCAS system could potentially make
the plane dangerously unstable, requiring that the pilots switch off
the previously much less forceful electrical trim system. Amazingly,
a dual redundant angle-of-attack sensor system was an upgrade option,
not standard equipment.
The decision to go forward with this dangerous compromise in the intrinsic
flying stability of the original 737 design was a result in the gradual
change in the business culture of Boeing. Over the past decade and a half,
the original engineer-led administration of Boeing had been gradually
taken over by non-engineers from the financial 'industry'. This made
it easier to take the decision to extensively modify the aerodynamic
design of the existing 737 rather than to design a better, safer new plane
with a new fuselage. It also motivated the decision not to require more
extensive pilot re-training, and to charge extra for the redundant sensor,
which being so critical to safety, should have been standard equipment.
This wrong decision by Boeing could have been corrected by regulatory
oversight. It was not corrected, however, because of 'regulatory
capture', which is where Boeing itself gained control of some aspects
of regulatory oversight from the FAA, which essentially allowed Boeing
itself to approve the safety of its own new design.
Backing out to the larger picture, the main driver behind the disastrous
cluster of compromises was energy efficiency. It's worth emphasizing
that the latest design was less than 20% more efficient than the original
50 year-old 737 design, so we are clearly getting close to theoretical
efficiency limits. This is a real world example of how a device was
re-engineered by real corporations to save energy. It is easy to point
a finger at a takeover by the financial 'industry', and I do. But don't
all the people that want to fly for less deserve a tiny bit of credit of
their own? Since jet fuel is something like 40% of the operating cost
of an airline, making planes more energy efficient directly translates
to lower ticket prices.
Now, back out to the largest picture. In the near future, industrial
civilization is going to have to radically increase its energy efficiency
as net energy from all fossil fuel peaks and larger amounts of lower net
energy 'renewable' energy is added (currently, wind and solar energy
constitutes 3% of US total energy use and 1.5% of total world energy
use), all while steadily increasing world population. There is nothing
unique about this particular Boeing story. Similar set of constraints and
design and cost and safety compromises are part of millions of different
advanced devices created by industrial civilization that we use every day.
It might feel good to snap our fingers and demand a 'green new deal'.
But designing and constructing and testing and refining and optimizing and
costing real world devices (e.g., a modified electric grid) is entirely
different, involving long trails of compromise, in the process of bumping
up against immoveable real world constraints (e.g. in the case of a plane,
either there is enough lift or their isn't).
The aggregate performance of current human society (corporations,
regulators, consumers) in the Boeing case does not bode well for
navigating through the much larger redesigns that will be required in
a decade or so.
In summary, seems clear that this plane would never have been designed
this way from scratch. It was a deadly 'hack', driven fundamentally by
energy efficiency and penny-wise-pound-foolish cost saving (one sensor
for a system capable of crashing the plane! Scheisse!), capped finally
by weirdly de-skilled designers lacking common sense.
[Update: Apr4]: Boeing
today admits their hardware/software was
at fault, and their stock price immediately
spikes
upward. Boo.
[Update: Apr5]: UJW sent me this useful
technical
source on the 737. Also see
this
report on why it might not have been physically possible for the
pilots to recover from the MCAS electrical stabilizer trim malfunction,
even after switching it off, because the forces on the manual trim
wheels during a stick-back, horizontal-stabilizer-induced dive would
be too great for a pilot to budge by hand (the trim wheels
pull cables directly attached to the stabilizer jackscrew,
which changes the angle of the stabilizer all the way back
in the tail). This may explain why the pilots of the doomed
Ethiopian plane switched the electrical trim system back on after
disabling it (initiating another faulty-sensor nose-down). Here is
confirmation of that scenario by former fighter jet pilot
Bjorn
Fehrm. Here is what the
trim wheels in action look like :-} :-}
[Update: May11]: The level of
pilot-user-interface f@ckup by Boeing described in
information
filled post by Peter Lemme is breathtaking! It was bad enough
to engineer a 'hack' plane that required a software hack to protect
against the nose-up torque due to extra lift from the larger-nacelle,
too-forwardly-placed engines. But now it emerges that a deadly user
interface change was made in two long-standing cutout switches that affect
the horizontal stabilizer controls. Previously, in the 737 NG, it was
possible to *just* cut out the automatic pilot control of the electrical
stabilizer motors (which includes the MCAS hack to the autopilot, which is
the one that caused the dive because of a malfunctioning angle-of-attack
sensor), but, crucially, to leave the electric motor control of the
stabilizer intact ("electric trim", controlled by buttons on the stick).
On the 737 MAX, the two switches were apparently reconfigured so that
both did the same thing: either MCAS plus electric motors, or both
off! (scroll down almost to the end of the article to see the deadly
change they made). This essentially directly caused the crash because
the runaway, faulty-sensor-caused dive resulted in so much force on the
stabilizer that the hand cranked cable-driven 'spinning wheel' fallback
system for adjusting the stabilizer was physically impossible to turn
(not to mention the pilots would be pulling back on the stick with 80-100
pounds at the same time).
[Update: May28]: Unfortunately, it turns out
that an independent design modification of the previous
generation of 737's (NG = "next generation", about 7,000
currently flying, includes -600/-700/-800/-900, first flew
in 1997), makes recovery from a 'runaway stabilizer' situation
more
difficult. A 'runaway stabilizer' situation could be caused by the
failure of electronics controlling the stabilizer motor (N.B., this is a
different situation than the MCAS system angle-of-attack sensor failure
that probably led to the crash the two 737 MAX's).
To understand this, I first needed to RTFM for Flying 101 (see e.g.,
here,
posted 12 March, 10 days before my original posting :-} ) and realize
that there are actually *two* (!) moveable elements in the horizontal
stabilizer - the 'elevator', which is the small moveable flap at the
back end of the horizontal stabilizer controlled by the stick, and then
the larger horizontal stabilizer surface itself (this larger surface is
what is moved by the 'jackscrew', either by the automatic trim system
or by the manual trim wheels). This results in a more complex control
characteristics. Since the elevator is mounted on on an already moveable
surface, these can cancel each other (an informative short PDF is
here). Thus,
the large stabilizer could be saying 'nose down' but being cancelled
out by the elevator/stick saying 'nose up'. Another critical piece of
information is that the bigger stabilizer can beat the smaller elevator.
Now back to the long-standing 737 NG design changes. In order to
accommodate extra buttons on a larger 'flight management computer', Boeing
made the manual trim wheels smaller diameter. At the same time, they
made the (moveable) horizontal stabilizer surface larger. The result of
both of these changes was to decrease the mechanical advantage of the trim
wheels. Experiments with simulators show that it was possible to get into
a situation where the manual trim wheels cannot be turned fast enough to
avoid a crash. This is not as directly a fossil fuel conservation issue
as it is the 'slings and arrows' of everyday design compromises. Just in
case you need motivation to fly less, check out the simulator video about
10 min into
this
video of trying to manually trim a 737 NG (N.B.: *not* a 737 MAX in
a runaway stabilizer situation :-/ To get out of this, a pilot could
use the 'roller coaster maneuver' (periodically diving to reduce force
on the jack screw), but that would only work if the plane was already
above about 8000 feet altitude...
[Update: Jun12]: The 'engineering rot'
motivated by the more than decade long financialization
of Boeing extends beyond the 737 MAX. Here is a
report
on faulty "slat tracks", not only on 737 MAX but on the more commonly
operated previous 737 NG models. The slat tracks support moveable wing
leading edge surfaces that are extended move forward during take off
and landing for extra lift.
[Update: Jun14]: Yet more
info on the incremental approach to
disaster.
The MCAS, already there in 737 NG's to deal with the already slightly
hacked (larger, more forward) engines in the 737 NG (600/700/800/900) was
expanded to lower speeds in the 737 MAX by removing a G-force threshold
which was in place to only allow the MCAS to turn on during high speed
maneuvers. This extension only happened in 2016 (!) when Ed Wilson,
the chief test pilot for the plane flew the 737 MAX prototype. But even
then, they could have avoided the stunningly stupid decision to wire up
the dangerously modified MCAS to a single, failure-prone angle-of-attack
sensor and charge extra to wire it to the other one. The FAA looks
terminally ill.
Conclusion 2019. Yes, it's regulatory capture and financialization and
"management caps" (cf. Challenger disaster), but it's even more scary when
you have to ask, where has the common sense of engineers gone?? This is
all stuff passenger jet airplane engineers have known about for decades!!
The engineers who have made all the 'helpers' that are slowly but surely
de-skilling the hoi polloi seem to have been de-skilled themselves!
[Update: Nov19,'20]: Here is
a good wrap up from Bjorn Fehrm on
the
actual fix for the 737 MAX MCAS system. It turns out that the deadly
behaviour of the new MCAS stall-preventer was just a few lines of code.
The system was re-arming itself incorrectly because it was listening to
the wrong data stream (re-arm after any trim made by the pilot) versus
the correct source (re-arm when angle-of-attack goes back to normal).
The result was that any attempt by the pilot to fix things given a broken
sensor would repeatedly force the plane into a dive and eventually
overwhelm the attempt by the pilot to keep the plane from diving.
The fixed system now makes one correction for a too-steep angle-of-attack
(which the pilot can overridde if it came from a bad sensor), and then
waits until the angle-of-attack gets back under the danger zone to re-arm.
[Apr6'19]
I jumped the gun a bit around 2005 when, for the first time, I put a
bumper sticker on our car. It read "Ghawar is dying". I know, who was I
to complain, as I was still driving to school at the time and flying all
over creation. We gave our car to Wayne, the guy who painted our house.
He said, "but I just want to know, who is Ghawar?" :-} Ghawar carried
on for another decade after that, but is now actually really starting
to die. It is down to 3.8 million barrels a day, which is still 4% of
total world oil usage from a single field, and this is after tossing
in a grab bag of "all liquids" into the world total, which includes
cr@p like ethanol that basically results in zero net energy (it has to
be distilled, using a lot of energy). The single supergiant field of
Ghawar, discovered in 1950, has provided humans with more than 5% of all
the oil humans have *ever used*. It comes from a Cretaceous hot period
where an unimaginably large mats of plankton fell to the shallow ocean
bottom and got buried before the biosphere had a chance to recycle it.
Ghawar will be seriously missed.
[Apr14'19]
The Unfortunate, Harsh Reality of Energy Decline
The reason schmucks like Mark Z pay $10
million a year for security (and possibly an
escape
chute out of his filthy conference room) is because they know what is
on the horizon. The combination of: (1) peak oil, (2) the US/EU/UK/Japan
trying to continue using the same amounts, (3) China plus India plus
Africa plus South America trying to get partway up to US per capita energy
consumption 'standards', and finally, (4) the unsuitabilty of renewable
energy as a drop-in replacement for declining fossil fuel together spell
obvious near term trouble. We are burning a cubic mile of oil per year.
We won't be able to maintain this in just a few years.
The coming reduction in oil burning will be partially offset by increases
in 'renewable' energy. But it's critical to note that, to date, all
the increases in 'renewable' energy have *not even offset* total yearly
increases in energy usage! Currently, after all the remarkable recent
growth in renewable energy (wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, wave),
it only accounts for 1.5% of world total energy use (3% in the US).
You will be mumbling to yourself, 'efficiency', 'more solar', 'when
evil oil companies go backrupt', 'lithium batteries for all', etc.
And no doubt, 'renewables' will make up a somewhat larger percentage of
electricity generation in the future.
But there are two giant 'flies' in the ointment. First, electricity
accounts for only about 1/3 of total energy used. For example, if we
wanted to electrify our entire US transportation fleet, we would have
to double the size of the grid and make absolutely insane numbers of
lithium batteries.
Second, 'renewable' energy has a much lower energy return on energy
investment that many people suppose. Part of this is from 'practical
considerations'. For example, the actual output for 50,000 solar cell
installations in Spain (an almost optimally sunny place for solar cells)
was 1,375 kWh/m^2 a year. Contrast this with the 'nameplate output' --
which is what you would expect from artificial simulations of sunlight at
35 deg latitude N in the summer (roughly Germany, N.B.: north of Spain) --
was 1,800 kWh/m^2 a year. The Prieto and Hall's (2013) study was one of
the few studies that have used *real data* from a huge solar installation.
Their original wide energy return on energy investment calculations (N.B.:
Hall was one of the originators of EROEI calculations) suggested that
Spanish solar returned 1.5 net units of energy for 1 input energy unit
(that is, total energy output of 2.5 units given 1 input unit). In 2017,
they redid calculations and got a somewhat higher net energy output of
4.9 given 1 unit input energy (EROI=5.9), but crucially omitting energy
storage costs and labor costs. For a closed-loop future 'renewable'
system not depending at all on fossil fuels, these would have to be
included.
Prieto's personal opinion is that the energy costs of maintaining a solar
generating plant, *when energy storage is included*, has a net energy
output of approximately zero. That is, the total amount of output energy
equals the total amount of input energy, which currently, is mostly from
fossil fuel. This means solar energy gathers enough energy to make,
service, and store the solar energy, but with nothing left over to do
anything else with the output energy. His opinion carries a great deal of
weight for me given that he is virtually unique in having *actually run* a
country-scale solar energy plant (50,000 installations). The energy costs
of the solar panels and inverters are only about 1/3 of the total energy
cost of constructing and running such a plant, so even if the devices
were infinitely cheap, the net energy produced would still not be large.
Consider this set of useful bullet points from Hall et al. (2008) on
the energy return on energy investment for *oil*:
At an EROI of 1.1:1 (net energy=0.1), you can pump the oil out of the ground and look at it.
At 1.2:1, you can refine it and look at it.
At 1.3:1, you can move it to where you want it and look at it.
The minimum EROI to drive a truck, is 3:1 at the wellhead.
If you put anything in the truck, like grain, you need EROI 5:1 (including truck depreciation)
With depreciation for truck-driver/oil-worker/farmer (to support families) you need an EROI of 7:1.
If you also want education, you need 8:1 or 9:1.
If you also want health care, you need 10:1 or 11:1.
It is difficult to directly compare oil to solar because of differences
in energy loss in different parts of the system and because energy storage
radically differs between the two. Fossil fuels almost effortlessly store
their energy (put gasoline in a tank). Wind and solar, by contrast, have
exactly zero storage: the energy they generate must be used immediately,
exactly at the time it is generated, else it is lost. One way of using
the energy is to store it with some losses (charge a battery, pump water
back up a dam, electrolyze water and capture and compress the hydrogen).
In contrast to nearly self-storing fossil fuel, the hefty storage costs
for 'renewable' energy are *not counted* when calculating the cost of it,
so the fossil fuel costs and 'renewable' energy costs are not directly
comparable. Another critical point is that since wind and solar are only
'ON' about one third of the time, three times as much renewable generation
capacity must be installed to replace an equivalent output fossil fuel
plant, in order to be able to store energy when it is available. But even
more than 3x energy generation and storage is needed, because there can
be several week lulls in the wind, or several weeks of cloudy weather,
and because there will substantial losses putting into and getting it
out of the grid and storage. Finally, virtually no storage has yet been
constructed (all batteries ever made hold ~10 min of grid energy! the
entire output of the Tesla battery gigafactory is equivalent to about
1 min of grid storage per *year*).
Electric motors are very efficient compared to internal combustion
engines, so at first, they look like a slam dunk. The 35 kWh of energy
in a gallon of gasoline only yields about 9 kWh of usable energy for a
typical car (75% lost as heat), which seems like (and is) a big loss.
A solar cell directly charging a lithium car battery, then outputting
the energy immediately into driving does a lot better (only 10-30% loss,
depending how much of a lead foot you have and how much you use the much
less energy-efficient and hard-on-the-battery 'fast charging'). But the
gasoline won't slowly discharge if not immediately used. And you can
quickly refill the tank. And if the solar energy goes into the grid,
maybe into storage, and then comes back out at a different time, another
15-30% is lost. And if you charge the car battery at night, the energy
will likely have come from fossil fuel, not solar, so that part of your
energy draw goes back to losing up to 65% of the original fossil fuel
energy as heat when generating electricity (stationary generating plants
are 10% more efficient than mobile car engines). On the other hand, if
solar cells charged batteries or pumped water, there would be still be
another 25-35% of losses. Thus, the commonly used 'correction factor'
of 3x when comparing fossil fuel to solar is completely unjustified
(the idea is that solar electric energy is worth 3x what fossil fuel
energy is worth because of 65-75% waste heat mentioned above).
To take one concrete example, looking at a diesel locomotive (burning
diesel to drive a generator to charge a battery to turn an electric
motor), you might think that it would be a slam dunk to run the electric
motor directly from the grid. When you work out the numbers, however,
it turns out that grid/transmission losses for long distance rail lines
are high enough to make it more efficient to burn the diesel efficiently
and locally (in a very efficient high-compression diesel engine) than
to burn fossil fuel at a power plant and transmit it to the locomotive
over long power lines (see Alice Friedemann's book, When Trucks Stop
Running). Of course, you will say, 'that is not renewable!'. And of
course it isn't.
So instead, we might have a completely theoretical system with billions
of photocells and batteries (for the night and for cloudy days) laid
alongside the train tracks, or an armada of (completely theoretical!)
floating super-low-hydrodynamic-friction solar cell barges powering one
container ship. Nothing like this has ever been made. If it truly
was an energy efficient system to make and run, it seems likely that
there would at least be some small demo systems constructed by visionary
green entrepreneurs. Instead, it's crickets. Siemens strung a mile of
cable for a trolley semi-truck system in LA and ran a few tests with
no followup. It seems quite possible that those systems may not be
'renewable' either. The Tesla ponzi is trying to get deposits for its
short range electric trucks (to help it not go bankrupt later this year).
Perhaps, some short-range electric trucks will be delivered in a few
years (if Tesla doesn't collapse). This is not to disparage short range
electrified transport, which *is* more efficient (think New York and
London subways, ca. 1900).
So let's try to do the numbers. If we assume no storage losses and
the ability to use the energy produced at the instant it was produced,
a standard 40 pound residental solar cell with a surface area of 1.8
m^2 will generate about 2500 kWh a year (based on Prieto's measurements
over 3 years on 50,000 solar cell installations in Spain, which gave
1,375 kWh/m2-year).
First, we need to calculate losses due to DC to AC convertors (to attach
to the grid) or AC to DC convertors (to charge a battery), which lose a
few percent each way. Then, these convertors are typically undersized
from being able to handle peak output, to save money, which can lose
another 20-30%.
Second, we need to factor in losses for storage. If the Tesla battery is
always directly connected to your home panel during the day, you will lose
about 15% of the energy to charge it (depending on how fast you charge
- faster charging more wasteful). But you need to drive the car, too,
so most of the time, you will have to get the energy to charge it back
out of the grid with a 15% round trip grid transmission loss. Or perhaps
you could get it out of your Tesla power wall with a 15% round trip loss.
Note that if all the extra energy goes into your powerwall, the PowerWall
has to be big enough to always accept energy if you want to take credit
for the total yearly output of the solar cell; if you don't want to use
fossil fuel energy when you get your solar energy back from the grid
in the evening, it will have to instead come from a grid storage system
(batteries, pumped hydro) (same 15% lost there as with the PowerWall).
Again, this is all hypothetical since all the batteries ever made by
humans can only store roughly 10 minutes of world grid energy. Finally,
you lose another 15% getting the energy back out of the *car* battery
after you lost energy getting it out of the PowerWall. The losses there
can be greater if you drive like a d$ck.
That comes to a total loss of roughly 60%, so that works out to at most
1000 kWh usable in a year from one panel. There is about 35 kWh in a
gallon of gasoline, so about 900 kWh in a standard 25 gallon SUV tank.
We get 225 kWh usable (25% of total) out of a tank of gasoline after
burning it. So that means that the solar panel (assuming it's in Spain
:-} ) will give us a hefty 4 fill-ups per year (assuming no bad hail
storms crack your solar panels). Since the average US driver needs
about 30 fillups and has less sun than Spain, they would each need a new
electric SUV, at least ten 40 pound solar panels, plus enough storage
to cover a few days. Once storage is included, this solution will only
work for rich people. For comparison, consider that the average price
of 'consumer' Tesla 3's so far sold has been $60,000. Finally, this
just *powers* the car; but it doesn't make the car (esp. the chips in
the car), repair the car (or the roads!), or dispose of or (partially)
recycle the car.
What I find most maddening about reading renewable energy debates on
the web is that (1) the promoters completely ignore the *energy costs*
of making and maintaining energy storage, and the fact that electricity
only provides 1/3 of our daily energy, while (2) the naysayers completely
ignore fossil fuel depletion. Both ignore the additional CO2 that will
be generated whether we use fossil fuel for cars and trucks and trains
and container ships *or* whether we use fossil fuel to make renewable
energy devices and storage devices and electric carz.
Finally, there is a constant haze of straw men. For example, renewable
advocates assume that anyone discussing renewable energy difficulties must
be a 'Malthusian' for not believing in infinite growth on a finite planet.
Similarly, the 'fossil fuel proud', have similar sentiments about anyone
who talks about realistic geological/energy constraints on extraction
of declining high EROEI fossil fuels.
The problem is straightforward. Renewable energy devices are simply *not*
drop replacements for our current humungus energy draw (250 kWh per day
per person in the US), based now almost entirely on declining net energy
fossil fuel. Analysis of the energy output of existing large-scale
installations *without* storage (Spain) suggest that adding *energy
storage* would substantially reduce available net energy to barely
positive.
The blindingly obvious conclusion is that we have to immediately
start planning to use massively less energy. This reality
is ignored by both 'left' and 'right'. We can't continue
what we are doing by 'becoming green', through fantasies of
solar
roads. But we also can't continue what we are doing by continuing
to draw down rapidly depleting fossil fuels. Judging from: (1) the
speed of previous energy transitions (biomass to coal, coal to oil, oil
to natural gas), (2) the fact that all the growth in renewable energy has
not even covered our yearly increase in energy use, and (3) the continuing
depletion of bottom-of-the-barrel fossil fuel, the facts on the ground
very strongly suggests that available net energy is going to begin to be
severely constricted in the next 15 years. Energy equals the economy;
money is fun, but mostly irrelevant. You can print money but you can't
print energy. We need to focus discussion on the coming reality, harsh
as it is.
[May08'19]
Graceful powerdown: no fun (but there are worse alternatives)
Reading an article like
this
(by Michael Schellenberger, a 'hero of the environment',
WTF?), then seeing it cited in places like
this (Ilargi at Automatic Earth), with a superficial analysis bugs me.
I know I should just let it go, since perhaps my dream of a more adaptive
powerdown is faulty. But I still have a useless urge: 'somebody wrote
something on the internet that I have to correct'...
Ilargi's conclusion that we simply have to use less energy
is of course correct. But his analysis that 'renewables have
failed' is misleading (based on Schellenberger's parrotting of the
original Der Spiegel article, which has been machine-translated
here).
Yes, renewables *are* in the process of failing as drop-in
replacements for much more energy dense fossil fuel - e.g.,
the fossil fuel that was used to make a great majority of
our current 'renewables' (even when it isn't as obvious as
this :-/
). 'Renewables' growth is no longer
exponential; this year's growth (180 GW) was
the
same as last year's (esp. due to the big Kahuna, China). By contrast,
the yearly growth of CO2 from energy usage is still increasing (1.7%
this year).
*Of course* 'renewables' cost more - when storage is counted - than
mining of stored energy in fossil fuels! But that's not because their
implementation was 'botched'! Their increased cost follows directly
from the fact that their net energy return is less! And if that weren't
true, they would have already been used long before the current tight
oil fracking madness of using debt to chase after the dregs of fossil
fuels in the source rock that lies below real, now emptied, oil fields.
And it is also true that one must honestly
consider downstream effects of all energy
generating devices (analogous to nuclear waste), which are
not
trivial in the case of solar panels. Factoring in downstream costs of
'renewable' energy can only further reduce the net energy and increase
costs relative to fossil fuels, esp. when fossil fuel users dishonestly
do not include considerations for downstream costs (global warming).
But despite all of that darkness, 'renewables' very probably *are* net
energy positive, esp. if we bite the bullet, use them during the day, and
mostly power down at dusk. Ilargi merely says that using energy generates
waste, and that renewables are not drop-in replacements for fossil fuels.
The blinders part is not thinking about how renewables might be able to
help buffer power down. I agree with Nate Hagens in that we *have*
figured out a lot of things. For example, we fully realize that our
industrial civilization 'amoeba' is rapidly fouling its one and only nest
(atmosphere, oceans, fresh water, soil, other living things). Now is the
time to seriously get to work planning renewables-buffered power down.
I agree it is important to disabuse people of the notion that renewables
are a drop-in replacement for fossil fuel that will allow us to continue
our staggering 250 kWh per person per day energy usage (in the US, with
the whole rest of the world madly trying to get up to that ridiculous
level), as I tried to do in some detail last month.
But, given the choice between cold turkey mad-max collapse beginning
a decade after fracking starts to fail, and a slightly buffered
collapse with some renewable local grid power on at least during
the day, who in their right mind wouldn't take the second? For a
similar perspective, see Islandboy's (Jamaica) comment
here (on his own article on commercial
electric vehicles). Islandboy is too sanguine about 'renewables', but he
lives closer to the ragged edge than most US-ians. US-ians current 250
kWh per day total energy usage is *10,000 watts continuous* per person.
Since a human performing hard labor can generate about 100 watts,
this means that each US-ian currently effectively has 100 human slaves
laboring 24/7. There will be few 'unexpected benefits' of powerdown.
Now maybe a graceful powerdown isn't possible because people in the
empire's homeland won't seriously even think about it until their
backs are literally up against the wall (like they already are out in
the marches), but I still think it's worth trying to talk about it!
Ilargi's 'analysis' is similar to that of the late Roger Andrews (who
just died of cancer), who used to write at Euan Mearns Energy Matters.
Like Ilargi, he did good analyses as far as they went (tho his - and
Euans's - climate denial stuff was/is truly embarrassing). I suppose
he just didn't care because he already saw the writing on his own
wall... (should have eaten more plants, man!).
[Jun23,'19]
Medical research and development is detrimental to health
(PDF
here)
As a scientist, sometimes funded by the National Institutes of
Health, I have always been fascinated by the natural world, from
physics to chemistry to molecular biology to neuroscience, and
remain so. I also think it remains worthwhile to fund scientific
research as a way of increasing human knowledge. I start with these
two statements because I would now like to argue that most research
and development into how to improve human health has degenerated
into almost complete uselessness for its stated purpose, and may
actually be making human health worse on average.
It is scientifically and medically uncontroversial that the great
majority of Americans are unhealthy (over 70% are now overweight or obese,
with outright obesity inexorably increasing at 0.5% per year), and that
most eat an unhealthy diet that is too high in animal protein, oil, and
manufactured 'food', and far too low in starchy vegetables and grains,
beans, fruits, and green vegetables. This unhealthy style of eating and
the attendant negative effects on human health has now rapidly spread
(N.B.: past tense!) to the rest of the world (China, India). For example,
the chance of a getting a stroke after age 25 in China has now reached a
staggering 40% (vs. 'only' 25% in the US). The decline in the quality of
'fourth quarter life' (now progressing to the third and second quarters)
has generated a huge industry of well-meaning chemists, biologists,
psychologists, and legislators, as well as profit-driven corporations,
who are researching ways to try to fix this.
For the relatively small proportion of people in the medical system
with rare genetic diseases or traumatic injuries, medical research
has had extremely positive effects. But for the great majority
with chronic 'diseases', the combined activities of research,
policy-making, and profit-making is actually making the situation
worse. The situation has many similarities to the problem of too
much atmospheric CO2. Despite increasing amounts of research and
understanding of the resulting climate change, and increasing
research, understanding, and construction of alternative 'greener',
and more efficient use of energy sources, the level of CO2 in the
atmosphere has inexorably increased (about 0.5% per year for the
past four decades, like obesity). In fact, the rate of increase
in CO2 appears to itself be increasing. The climate situation is
in part an example of Jevons' paradox. Jevons originally studied
the effects of increased efficiency of the Watt steam engine on the
usage of coal. The paradox was that the more efficient engine
caused a huge increase in coal usage, completely overwhelming the
gains from the increased efficiency of the Watt steam engine.
The situation with human health research and its commercialization
is a bit analogous to Jevons' paradox. An obvious 'good' like
better understanding of human disease (cf. increased energy efficiency)
paradoxically causes a worse outcome as human health declines even
though ever increasing amounts of knowledge-based treatments are
deployed (cf. overall increased energy use). I will argue that
current research into understanding and treating human chronic
disease is now actually harming people's health.
How could we have come to this dire conclusion, given the well-meaning
intentions of most of the people involved in research and industry
(well at least the lower echelons)? I think that it is the unavoidable
outcome of the dynamics of industrial civilization.
There is only one primary 'disease'
There is only *one* primary 'disease' in older modern humans, despite
the fact that it is confusingly called by hundreds of different names.
This 'disease' is not really a disease, but simply the effects of bad
(overly calorie-dense, overly animal-protein-dense, overly oil-dense)
diet. The majority of modern health care and health research has utterly
failed to fix this 'disease' by using vaccines, drugs, and surgery,
and by completely ignoring diet. Again, this is not to downplay the
great advances made in treating the unlucky few with a major genetic
defect or a traumatic injury.
This one bad-diet 'disease' amazingly includes *all* of the following:
heart disease (the biggest killer), atrial fibrillation, artery disease
(atherosclerosis in the coronary, carotid, lower back, erectile, not to
mention miles of other lesser arteries), failure of nitric-oxide mediated
arterial dilation (also everywhere), high blood pressure, heart attack,
aortic and brain aneurysms, type II diabetes (insulin insensitivity
from intramyocellular lipids), kidney failure, kidney stones, macular
degeneration, retinal bleeds, Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia,
Parkinson's disease, strokes from clots, strokes from bleeds, deep vein
thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, gallstones, breast cancer, endometrial
cancer, uterine fibroids, prostate cancer, colon cancer, hemorrhoids,
colitis, leaky gut, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, acid reflux,
esophageal cancer, erectile dysfunction, lower back degeneration and pain,
multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, lupus, Type I diabetes (autoimmune pancreas
damage from leaky gut combined with islet cell mimicry by dairy proteins).
*All* of these 'diseases' were basically unheard of among young and old
people eating starchy, plant-based, low oil, low calorie-density diets.
Denis Burkitt knew most of this by 1950, by comparing old Ugandans to
old Britons.
These 'diseases' are intimately interrelated. For example, as arterial
function begins to fail (atherosclerosis, failure of nitric-oxide mediated
arterial dilation), the body sensibly increases blood pressure to ensure
adequate perfusion. This can then cause an aneurysm or rupture retinal
vessels or increase the chance of a stroke, or if controlled by blood
pressure medications, cause underperfusion and oxygen deprivation of
the body, bones, and brain.
Or consider the various forms of dementia including Parkinson's disease.
To me, they all look like a bunch of different forms of 'inability to
take out the garbage', whether the garbage be amyloid, or tau protein,
or alpha-synuclein, or the latest new waste-product-of-the-day. There is
nothing intrinsically wrong with the naturally occurring waste products.
They're just not being cleaned out. Genetics can affect these diseases.
For example, those with the ApoE4 allele have a 'genetic risk' for
Alzheimer's. But even people with *two* copies of the ApoE4 allele
living in Nigeria, where they are still eating a real 'poor people diet',
rarely get Alzheimer's in their old age.
The main modern cause of ill health in old age is diet, the particular
composition of the more than *half a ton* of solid food that each person
eats per year. But why is *medical research* not helping?
Commercial science
The first problem is what Jeff Nelson calls 'commercial science'.
Industrial food, supplement, and pharma companies have figured out that
the best way to spend their advertising budget is to fund 'science'
rather than direct advertising. This 'science' is often performed by
taking large populations (or meta analyses) of people who are all eating
bad diets (low variance, but large 'n', allowing detection of small,
irrelevant effects), performing 'corrections' (e.g., eliminate people
with existing heart disease when attempting to see if dairy causes heart
disease), exploit correlations (e.g., nut-eaters tend to exercise more,
which will guarantee that nut-eating is 'healthy'). The result is
complete nonsense: 'butter is back', 'eat chocolate to lose weight',
'bacon is a health food', 'beans are poisonous', 'nuts cure heart
disease', 'carbs make you fat', 'avoid nightshades', 'eat fish for heart
health', 'olive oil is heart healthy', 'take DHA supplements else you
will get dementia', and so on. This nonsense is then spread at zero
cost to the food, supplement, and drug companies by social media.
This has resulted in utter confusion and mental fog surrounding diet,
with people randomly avoiding carbs or gluten, eating even more meat and
fish (N.B.: fish is meat) and more eggs, avoiding fruit or some random
vegetable, thinking they are protein-deficient (they're eating 2-3x too
much protein), and taking giant piles of daily drugs and supplements.
They think carbs like potatoes make them fat, but somehow never get
around to googling the simple fact that french fries are *five* times
as calorie dense as potatoes (hint: it's not the carbs). Diet fads
debunked decades ago (e.g., consider Atkins, the original 'paleo/keto'
idiot, who died overweight, at 72, of heart disease, after a previous
heart attack) repeatedly surge back into fashion. 'Commercial science'
studies generate one random, misleading headline after another, each
of which fades, but each of which fails to report facts known for
many decades that a low oil, plant based diet is the *only* thing
that has been shown to actually *reverse* heart disease, diabetes,
retinal damage, and many other diet-induced 'diseases' (Denis Burkitt,
Walter Kempner, Lester M. Morrison, T. Colin Campbell, John McDougall,
Caldwell Esselstyn). We already knew this answer scientifically by 1950!
The reality is that there was really no need for any further research -
at least from the standpoint of trying to improve human health.
Doctors ignore and denigrate diet
The second problem, which is related to the first, is that most
doctors ignore diet - the roughly one *ton* of solid food we all
eat each year. They massively underplay the significance of diet
for health, and often eat bad diets themselves (cf. more than 50%
of doctors smoked in 1950). They also assume that patients won't
be able to make any significant change in their diets. The stark
reality of the situation is so stupifying, that it is hard to
believe it is actually true. Dietary-induced *reversal* of heart
and retinal disease and diabetes in a cohort of 18,000 patients was
*already published* by 1950 (Kempner). For a more recent study,
look at the stunning data table in Esselstyn's 2014 study
PDF
here. By contrast, the best contemporary high-tech treatments (blood
pressure meds, statins, stents and other devices, surgery) developed with
increasingly higher tech methods over the past *70* years of research
at the cost trillions of dollars, can, at best, stop heart disease
from getting rapidly worse. *No* modern medical treatment can reverse
heart disease (e.g., stents have zero effect on all cause mortality).
Yet these basic research facts are almost completely unknown by both
patients and doctors. And when patients bring it to the attention of
doctors - even when they are physically demonstrating the good effects
of having improved their diet on their own body, they are often ridiculed.
Most doctors have not even heard of Walter Kempner. Most have literally
zero training in nutrition. Virtually no doctors will tell their patients
that a dietary change can actually *reverse* their heart disease.
They then prescribe meds and procedures that at best keep it from
getting worse. There are many things that doctors can legally bill for.
Amazingly, advice about diet - perhaps the single largest effect on
health - is not one of them. This situation borders on criminality.
The food/restaurant business will *always* serve hyper-attractive food
The third problem is that it is structurally impossible for the industrial
food and restaurant businesses to give up making hyperattractive, overly
calorie-dense food. Although there will always be niche markets and niche
menu items, any company trying to market uniformly less attractive food
will fail. The attractiveness of food is fundamentally determined by
its calorie density together with its saltiness. It is no accident that
all restaurant food contains massive amounts of fat, sugar, and salt.
It is no accident that this kind of calorie-dense food has always been
the food of the nobility. It will be more attractive to humans forever.
Any food or restaurant business ignoring this will go out of business.
When I (very occasionally) go to the airport and see all the middle-aged
man-breasts with a 7 months pregnant-looking belly below, and a secondary,
below-the-belt belly, barely able to walk down the hallway, I think,
'seize the day, man'. But that catastrophic epidemic wasn't caused by a
day of overindulgence. Instead, it was caused by relatively *tiny*, but
reliable, daily overindulgences. A weight gain of a few pounds a year
results from eating merely 20 or 40 extra calories per day, every day.
This is an 'overindulgence' that is almost undetectable on a daily basis.
But the end result over decades is a catastrophic 100 or 200 pound weight
gain, which results in hundreds of modern 'diseases' (note that this
ignores the extra calories you have to eat just to maintain the extra
100 or 200 pounds without gaining additional weight).
It is stunningly obvious what has caused this health catastrophe.
Each modern human has to run a daily gauntlet of hyper attractive,
hyper calorie-dense foods with 2 or even 3 times the 'right' calorie
density of about 700 calories per pound. With junk food, not only is it
2-3x too calorie dense, but then it has been further 'weaponized' (e.g.,
Doritos) by careful research into which precise complex and unobstrusive
spice combinations work the best to prevent satiety. Bad food is in
your face 24/7 (grocery store, restaurant, teevee, cell phone, double
bacon grilled cheese burger pizza with oil sauce). Douglas J. Lisle
has very clearly described all this 15 years ago as 'the pleasure trap'.
But as long as people are not constrained by low salary (living on a few
dollars a day) or by being locked into a feeding ward (e.g., Kempner :-}
), any business without hyper attractive, hyper calorie-dense food fare
on offer for the unconscious human limbic system will fail, period.
An excellent recent illustration of this is the rise of what could be
called 'corporate veganism'. Despite all diet chaff, people *have* begun
to become unconsciously more and more aware of the dire consequences of
eating meat, cheese, eggs, and oil for human health, the environment,
and animal experience. Corporations have, of course, picked up on this.
The solution is 'corporate veganism'. Enormous flows of venture
capital have resulted in the engineering of 'vegan' foods with the
calorie-densities similar to hambugers, fries, and shakes. An example
is Beyond Meat (pea protein based vegan hamburgers), which just had
its best-ever quarter, a tiny $40 million in sales, which generated
$6.6 million in losses; but its stock price values the company at $12
billion dollars - one quarter of a Tesla and almost half a Twitter.
It will be *no problem* growing 450 pound 'vegans' using this approach.
It won't have the slightest effect on the inexorable decline in health.
In fact, it could actually make it *worse*, since people will feel
protected because they will think they are eating 'better' (cf. vaping).
It would be impossible to legislate better diet; you can live without
smoking, but you can't live without eating. 'Good diet' laws would
merely immediately generate a huge black market for hamburgers and fries.
It is only practical to research/develop/patent 'single point-of-contact' drugs
Fourth, a basic problem is that the main kinds of drugs and procedures
that can be researched (e.g., that a researcher can get a grant to
study), developed (e.g., that can be studied to determine efficacy in
a population), and patented (this is what drives everything) are what
I call single point-of-contact drugs and devices. This also applies to
the supplement industry, which is just another arm of the pharmaceutical
industry.
There is a tremendous and justified tendency toward using reductionistic
research strategies because these have been shown to work spectacularly
well over the history of science. These rely on focusing on a single
chemical or nutrient by controlling other inputs as carefully as possible,
and make the underlying assumption that the world is essentially linear
(effects simply add). However, just because the strategy works doesn't
mean that it doesn't have biases. It is critical to regularly zoom out
to the bigger picture, especially when studying biology where complex
interacting (cyclic) networks abound, in order to see what Bill Wimsatt
(my PhD thesis advisor) has called 'reductionistic research biases'.
The apparent specificity of a single-point-of-contact drug is especially
misleading. It is true that the initial effect of a drug might be
specific (e.g., irinotecan chemotherarapy blocking the action of one
particular topoisomerase [DNA twisting] enzyme, which causes the DNA to
sometimes snap, which kills dividing cells). But the problem is this one
targetted reaction catalyzed by a target enzyme or receptor is embedded
in a cyclic network of reactions.
The first effect of blocking a node (usually by modulating the link
between two nodes) is invariably an 'attempt' by the network to undo the
effect through homeostatic feedback control. For example, alcoholic
brains with increased action of inhibitory GABA-A receptors as a
result of omnipresent alcohol compensate by increasing excitatory
mechanisms (e.g., glutamate-based) to cancel the extra inhibition
to get excitability back to normal. However, virtually every node
branches, so there are invariable multiple downstream effects. The
end result is often 'side effects', which aren't really side
effects, but main effects. We only call them 'side' because we
try not to look off to the side. For example, there are
27
steps between the node that statins block (HMG-CoA reductase) and
cholesterol; many of the intermediate steps have branches.
To give another example of the complexity of highly-optimized biological
meshworks, consider amino-acyl tRNA synthetases, which are enzymes that
load particular amino acids onto particular transfer RNA's. These enzymes
are essentially where the genetic code (mapping between RNA triples and
amino acids) literally resides, since in the absence of these enzymes,
it is possible to attach any amino acid to any transfer RNA.
Recently it was discovered that amino acyl tRNA synthetases are involved
in pathways promoting vascularization (!). Vascularization is critically
involved in the growth of cancer tumors. So these enzymes will soon be
targetted by anti-cancer drugs. As you can imagine, there might be
'side effects' of literally targetting the genetic code. This is an
excellent example of gene 'pleiotropy'. It is true that single genes
(almost always) code for single proteins. But the mapping between genes
and macroscopic traits is complex; there are few genes that cleanly map
to a macroscopic trait. In this case, a gene for an amino acyl tRNA
synthetase maps to defining the amino acid meaning of one word in the
genetic code *and* to causing blood vessels to form!
As I have written before, it is, in theory, possible to research, develop,
patent, and market complex combinations of chemicals. But, the explosion
of different possible drug combinations and doses of each chemical
limits practical tests of combinations to at most 2 or 3 chemicals or
nutrients. There aren't enough people on Earth to objectively test all
combinations and levels of even 20 drugs on real groups of people. And
20 drugs is a teeny tiny fraction of the millions of natural compounds
we routinely injest in natural food (natural chemotherapy!). All of
this shows that single-point-of-contact drugs *or* supplements can never
be a replacement for the hundreds of millions of different chemicals
(and their breakdown products) in a whole food plant based diet. It is
important to also realize that touching a few nodes in the network with a
few single-point-of-contact drugs is never going to be able to compensate
for the network-wide failures induced by eating an overly rich diet.
Changing (e.g., cholesterol, blood pressure) by drug does *not*
equal changing it by diet
For a concrete example of how a reductionist mindset leads to an
error in reasoning, consider the obviously incorrect conclusion
that changing the level of some compound (e.g., cholesterol) by a
drug that specifically targets one point in the metabolic network
(in the case of cholesterol, blocking one enzyme in the mevalonate
pathway) is equivalent to changing the circulating level of that
compound by diet changes. A statin drug touches a single node while
a diet change involves changes in millions of ingested chemicals,
which simultaneously affect a very large number of nodes. The
chance that the effects of lowering cholesterol by statins vs.
lowering cholesterol by diet change are 'the same' is essentially
zero.
This has been shown by comparing large feeding trials to large drug
trials. Already by 1950, it was known that a low fat plant based
diet was capable of drastically lowering blood lipids to the same
levels as large statin doses do today (e.g., Kempner, 1948, article
still shamefully behind a paywall
here).
However, unlike statins, low fat whole food plant-based diets
actually *reverse* heart disease (confirmed using modern techniques
by Caldwell Esselstyn
here), lower blood pressure,
reverse retinal disease, reverse diabetes (among other things),
reverse arthritis, and so on. Statins, by contrast, have been
associated with *increases* in diabetes, perhaps via 'side' effects
on the gut.
There is an analogous contrast between drugs and diet in the case of
blood pressure. Lowering blood pressure with drugs does *not* equal
lowering blood pressure with diet. Lowering it with diet also reduces
diabetes and arthritis; the reduced arthritis leads to more activity, the
same blood-pressure-lowering diet also reduces blood lipids, improving
arterial function, and many other things. The reason blood pressure is
high in the first place is because the body is trying to provide enough
oxygen to tissues through damaged arteries. The body is not stupid.
Merely lowering blood pressure doesn't fix any of those other things, and
in fact probably deprives tissues all over the body of adequate oxygen,
which causes other problems.
Changing (e.g., a carotenoid) by taking supplements does *not*
equal changing them by diet
A closely related reductionistic reasoning mistake is assuming
that if a compound is found at high levels in healthy people, that
ingesting that compound in the form of a concentrated pill will
help less healthy people.
There are many examples of how this reductionist thinking has failed.
This mistake in reasoning applies not just to big pharma drugs, but also
to 'natural' drugs. Carotenoids (a large group of related compounds)
tend to be found at higher levels in the blood of healthy people, or
people who have survived cancer. Using reductionist thinking, large
clinical trials were performed by feeding unhealthy people high levels
of a single carotenoid. The result was no effect or in some cases,
a clinically significant *reduction* of health in the carotenoid arm
(e.g., *increase* in lung cancer). The effect was bad enough to suspend
some of the trials.
There was a similar result with vitamin E, stimulated by the finding
that it is also higher in healthy people. Feeding high levels of one
of the vitamin E's to less healthy people had a deleterious effect on
heart health. This doesn't mean there is anything wrong with carotenoids
or the vitamin E's or resveratrol, but it does mean you shouldn't eat
one purified carotenoid and or one vitamin E or resveratrol! (sorry,
supplement guys). You simply *have* to eat a whole food plant based
diet which includes not only real green vegetables, but also legumes,
fruits and grains.
The social implications of eating a *real* poor person diet will never go away
Fifth, there are negative social implications of eating a good diet.
The most healthy human diet is a starchy, green-y, vegetable-y,
bean-y, low meat, low fish, low oil diet, which is critically a
low-calorie-density diet. This is the diet that poor, rural people of the
'third world' ate 50 years ago (fewer and fewer still do). Of course,
that is not the diet that poor people *now* eat in the US or Europe or
even China. Poor people in those countries now actually eat a diet of
similar composition to the diet of the rich nobility of old. The problem
with recommending a 'true poor person' diet is that it means one must
firmly and finally turn one's back on European cuisine and its imitators,
the diet of rich nobility, whether in Europe or Thailand or ancient Egypt
(mummies - i.e., rich people - had body-wide atherosclerosis and gall
bladder disease).
This is a hard (=impossible) sell, whether to Americans long used to
eating high meat, high oil, high cheese high-calorie-density diets,
or to Chinese and Indians, only recently pulled up by their own
bootstraps to daily meat and increasingly dairy consumption, or even to
some 2-dollar-a-day poor rural person actually currently eating well,
but seeing how the rest of us eat on their smart phone. In all cases,
doing the right thing seems like a social step down. It will never *not*
seem like a social step down. It *is* a social step down. The diet
of the rich *is* more attractive. Most people in the world now regard
eating calorie-dense chicken and fish and pizza as a basic human right,
along with access to health care, most of which is now being used to
try to fix the results of eating too much chicken, fish, cheese pizza
(the original pizza had no cheese!), french fries, and ice cream.
Just look at wikipedia, the mouth of big brother. It describes the
healthy, starchy, low calorie-density diet of John McDougall - the
diet of millions of formerly fit older rural Chinese and Indians and
Africans before they adopted hyper calorie-dense, meaty diets similar
to the standard American diet - as a "fad diet", "poor advice", and as
"extreme and out of keeping with nutritional reality". To be fair,
it is true that a healthy diet *is* 'out of keeping' with our current,
disastrous 'nutritional reality'...
More medical research can't fix this!
Sixth, the realization that the cure to 75% of middle and old age disease
is simply to eat a starchy, low-calorie-density, 'real poor person'
diet doesn't require any more medical research. It's not that I'm
not interested in the latest microperimetry machine (which can image
the retinal at the same time as the retina is precisely stimulated to
find which parts are still viable). Those machines are amazingly cool.
But looked at from a larger perspective, it is absolutely useless to make
tools for imaging diet-induced retinal damage at finer and finer scales.
This kind of research and development distracts from the real cure.
The fix isn't more research but rather, just going back to a whole foods
plant-based, low oil, low calorie density diet. Having all the fancy
machines and drugs tends to obscure that simple fact, and unconsciously
implies that there will be some latest drug to fix diet-induced retinal
damage. At best these drugs are like statins. They can sometimes stop
things from getting worse so fast, or at best keep things the same.
But as a single-point-of-contact, patentable drugs, they all have side
effects, and many have to be repeatedly injected into your eyeballs
with needles.
There is simply no possibility that there will be a pill or an injection
or a supplement to fix the myriad bad effects of a bad diet. It would
have to contain tens of thousands of chemicals; there would be hundreds
of thousands of side effects. No amount of 'deep learning' can fix this.
The only answer is to eat a better diet.
And even if the magic pill approach were in fact possible, it would
*still* make health worse, by a Jevons'-like effect. Already now, if
people go on a statin or get intestinal bypass surgery, they often gain
weight (it takes a few years in the case of bypass surgery). This is
partly because people feel protected, and so actually eat an even worse,
even more calorie-dense diet. It is similar to the observed effect
of automobile air bags; because people know they are more protected,
they have adapted by driving more dangerously, and have cancelled
out the substantial gains (if driving style had been held constant)
in life-saving from air bags.
Research into genetic differences is equally useless. People are not
'born fat' - China and India didn't get unhealthy 'because genes'.
It's simply because they have changed over to overly calorie-dense,
hyperattractive food. Their genetics might make them somewhat more
susceptible to 'bad diet disease'. But that's really besides the point.
They are getting more and more unhealthy, just like Americans, because
of how they are eating. Genes are *irrelevant* to fixing this.
Unfortunately, there is probably no way out of this pickle
The good news is that the solution to the great majority of the 'medical'
problems experienced by older people, and now, increasingly young
people (e.g., Type II diabetes and fatty liver disease now appearing in
teenagers) has been scientifically known for 70 years, and more generally
known for thousands of years. However, the bad news is that the dynamics
of late stage, worldwide, corporate industrial civilization will likely
continue to make the problem worse for at least the next decade.
For example, over just the past few years (2014-2017), millenials
have experienced double-digit increases in diet related diseases
like type II diabetes, this despite more and more of them being
'vegan'. Over the past decade, rates of colorectal cancer have gone
up the fastest amongst the youngest cohorts, along with other
obesity-related
cancers. Note that it is trivially easy to eat an enormously
unhealthy, high oil diet that is 'vegan'; and this is likely to get even
easier with the recent onslaught of 'corporate veganism'.
When experimenters feed rats the standard American diet, the rats get
morbidly obese within a month. If the experimenters put them back on
standard healthy rat chow, the rats will actually fast for more than a
week, hoping that the experimenters will take pity and bring back the
'good stuff'. The basic brain mechanisms here are no different than an
addiction to nicotine or cocaine, but with one key difference. You can
live without nicotine or cocaine, but you can't live without eating.
This makes it tremendously difficult to get over the trap of unhealthy
high calorie-density, ultra-pleasureable foods. Just like a cocaine
addiction, your nervous system will become adapted to hyperattractive,
hyper-calorie-dense foods so that correct calorie-density foods
(average of 700 calories per pound) will taste lifeless. If you
are already overweight, you have to not only eat less attractive
food, but you have to forever eat less total calories - that is,
the extra calories that are currently required just to *maintain*
your extra weight. The inexorable increase in obesity worldwide
as a result of the 'diet disease' shows that this will likely
never occur by choice.
One way to get over the hump is a week long water fast. This can
quickly restore the pleasure of less calorie-dense foods. But note
that this doesn't require knowing anything about dopamine or the nucleus
accumbens. People have known about the positive effects of water fasting
for thousands of years. Similarly, there is a reason that gluttony
(also pronounced 'meat-o-ny') has always been one of the deadly sins.
People understood the main principles here long before there was any
research into the limbic system. Medical research hasn't really added
much to our basic understanding of the problem.
Because the amount of excess calories needed for several pounds weight
gain per year is so small (20 to 40 calories a day), even a slight daily
disturbance caused by hyper-attractive overly-calorie-dense food is all
that is needed to explain our health catastrophe when spread out over
30 years.
It should embarrass us humans that no other animals (well, aside from
the animals closely associated with humans like dogs and cats, and
industrially-farmed animals like the obese chickens we eat) get fat and
unhealthy in the wild. This shows that *all* animals have the ability to
regulate their caloric intake incredibly precisely - on average deviating
by *less than 1%* from the appropriate number of calories eaten, which
is what is required in the long term to maintain a steady body weight.
Humans have all of the same mechanisms that animals have for doing this.
The fact that so many of us are fat and unhealthy as a result of diet
suggests that our *food environment* is the main problem (waaay too much
hyper attractive overly-calorie-dense, overly meat-and-dairy-dense food),
not our genes, or stress, or over-protective mothers and distant fathers,
or lack of health care.
The only way to fix the problem is for individuals to take personal
responsibility for fixing their diets. This problem can't be fixed
by surrendering personal responsibility to an app, or a dystopian,
intelligent, locking refrigerator. It can't be fixed by surrendering
personal responsibility to more regulation. For more regulation to work,
it would have to be stronger than the business interests involved in big
food production, restaurants (including 'corporate vegan'), big pharma,
big surgery, big hospitals, and big medical research, which it isn't.
And even then, for regulation to work without personal responsibility,
it would have to be totalitarian, like the dystopian social credit
system currently being constructed in China, but further supercharged
by internet access to your refrigerator lock ('I'm afraid I can't let
you have that salami, Dave'). Though anything is possible, it seems
unlikely to me that there will be large changes in the exercise of
personal responsibility over diet over the next decade.
Conclusion
More medical research will never be able to fix 'bad diet disease'!
In fact, it wll continue to have a Jevons'-paradox-like effect: people
will feel protected by the latest biotech, and will give up more and
more personal responsibility for controlling their diet, so that any
positive effects of the tech will be cancelled (and more!) by them gaining
weight at a faster clip by eating even more unhealthy food, including
'corporate vegan' food. The paradoxical conclusion is that continuing
medical research and development simply cannot improve the average health
of humans; in fact, it will probably make it slightly worse overall.
The solution to the majority of developed nations disease load is to change
to a lower calorie-density diet containing a lot less meat, dairy, and
eggs, and much higher amounts of starchy vegetables and grains, legumes,
fruits, and green vegetables.
However, this obvious solution will not be adopted, because it is not
a viable business model in any non-totalitarian situation where the
consumer's limbic systems are given a choice. Instead, the worldwide
obesity crisis will continue to get worse over the next decade until
it finally runs into the brick wall of declining net energy. *That*
will eventually 'fix the problem', but in an unruly, chaotic way.
[Jul20'19]
Older Can Be Better When it Comes to Studies of Diet and Human Health
Following up on last month's post, I was motivated to write after watching
a recent Pam Popper video where she was responding to comments complaining
that the studies she was citing were 'too old' and that 'could she include
some new research?'. She made a good response that the results of older,
well-constructed studies are not somehow invalidated merely by time;
that's not the way science works. But I think her response was too
measured. The reality is that newer studies are actually substantially
less informative and substantially more confusing than older studies
because the majority of the study-able world population has adopted a
bad diet, and because the lobbying power of industrial food and pharma
is now much stronger.
To take a concrete example, population
studies from 50 years ago clearly showed that age-matched rate of breast
and prostate cancer were spectacularly lower in populations eating
whole food plant based diets low in meat, diary, fat, and oil (Japan,
Kenya, Uganda). 'Spectacularly' means 10 or 20 times less common than
in populations eating a rich (high meat/fish/dairy/oil) western diet.
Older studies also had the opportunity to study people who migrated
from a healthy diet place to a bad diet place to see the effects of a
diet change against a fixed genetic background.
Another historical example from 75 years ago was the striking downward
spike in heart attacks and stroke caused by the 'deprivation' of meat
and dairy and eggs in Europe during WWII, which rapidly 'resolved'
after the war (so much for emotional stress causing heart attacks...).
The first problem with newer studies is that they are studying populations
that have mostly changed their diets to a rich western diet. The result
is that the effect size of dietary differences is massively diluted,
because instead of the rare case of being able to compare a population
eating 35% of their calories from fat (Americans) to a population eating
8% of their calories from fat (Okinawans), most studies can only compare
populations eating 40% fat versus 38% fat. I'm not making this up; the
so-called 'low-fat' group in the PREDIMED 'Mediterranean' diet study
ate an estimated 38% of calories from fat! (see Table S9, hidden in
the fine print in the Supplementary Appendix available as a PDF
here).
If you study 50,000 people, you might be able to squeeze out a
statistically significant but utterly meaningless effect from such
a ridiculous comparison. But even in better-conducted studies not
supported by industry (e.g., a recent Nurses study comparing 35% total
calories from fat to 28% from fat), the good effects of less fat (30%
improvement) pale in comparison to the enormous 1000% (or 4000% in
the case of dairy and prostate cancer) differences seen in the earlier
studies.
A corollary is that when people migrate now, the effects of study-able
dietary change partially controlled for genetic background are much
smaller because people have already been eating a bad, overly rich diet
in their home country.
Because of the fog of newer, larger, tiny-effect-size studies, it
is *much* harder to make out the main points. For example, go on
PubMed with the default sort-by-date and search breast cancer and diet.
You will be very hard pressed to find the original 50 year old studies
with showed gigantic 10x/1000% (bad) effects of high level of dietary
meat and fat. For example, you would have to know the name of Ernst
L. Wynder (who established the link between smoking and lung cancer)
in order to find his critical 1960's studies of diet and breast
cancer and colon cancer. And when you found one (e.g.,
here) you can see
that many have not even been digitized (not even the abstract!), and so
are lost to history.
Something similar occurs in all scientific fields as earlier
easier-to-measure effects are 'used up' by initial researchers, leaving
smaller effects to newer researchers. However, in many basic research
fields, the *raw material* such as a mouse brain, is very similar to a
mouse brain from 1950. By contrast, the 'raw material' of diet, like
the rural Chinese diet of the 1950's (and the villagers eating them with
their LDL=70), hardly exists today anymore.
The second difficulty with newer studies, already mentioned in detail last
month, is that the power and sophistication of lobbying by industrial
food and pharma has increased. In 1950, big pharma was smaller.
These interests have strong influence on the kind of studies that can
be done. For example, the 2013/2016 PREDIMED study mentioned above was
funded by olive oil and nut companies, a classic example of 'commercial
science' (part of which ended up having to be retracted in the case of
the PREDIMED study!). This corporate influence takes advantage of the
now more common politically correct reluctance to simply tell people,
'if you want to get healthy, just stop eating that sh$t' (including
things like heart-deadly olive oil).
The bottom line is that at least in the case of studies of diet and
human health, older may often be often better.
[Aug19'19]
Negative interest rates
Over the past 6 months, negative yielding bonds have ballooned to $15
trillion, and are now increasing at a rate of $1 trillion per *week*.
This is the weird situation where you have to *pay* interest on a
'deposit' (buy a bond), and you actually *get* interest for 'taking out
a loan' (a corporation selling a bond). To a normal person, it seems
impossible that the situation of charging interest for a *deposit*
could persist for very long, and negative interest rates have rarely
occurred historically.
However, listening to Stacy Herbert and Max Keiser, I finally realized
that the obvious reason for this is that people are assuming that bond
prices (which are inversely correlated with their interest rate) are going
to increase in value even more than their already inflated price, so it
'makes sense' to buy a bond that won't return all of your investment,
if you were to hold onto it, because you will be able to sell it for more
in the future (I'm just incredibly dense when it comes to money jargon).
Unfortunately, the buying and selling that is causing this is extremely
short term, despite the fact that the nominal maturity on some of the
bonds has reached a ridiculous 100 years. This situation has persisted
in the EU and Japan for some time without anything blowing up. Even more
amazing when you consider that the bond market is a lot bigger than the
stock market.
This is a way of maintaining continued inflation, for example, when
low or even negative interest rates lead to increases in house prices.
The official rate of inflation is preposterously low because housing
and food and gas prices are effectively excluded (go to the Chapwood
Index
here to find the
real rate of inflation on stuff that people actually buy - about 10%
per year, which means that interest rates should be about 10% in order
for a deposit to break even). However, despite all this, house prices
seem to have finally flattened, inventory is building, and starts are
flattening,
as millenials are hopelessly priced out, and as boomers begin to downsize.
In the past, when long term interest rates go below short term interest
rates as they just have, a contraction has always resulted within a
year.
Here
is a graph of 10 year treasury rates minus 1 year (blue) compared to
the 5 year rate (red), and you can see the blue line just went below
zero. It seems likely that a contraction is occurring or about to occur.
It never ceases to amaze me how long these thing go on, even when everyone
can see the slow-motion writing on the wall.
[Aug24,'19]
As I watched Iraq in 2003 helplessly pummelled by overwhelmingly superior
US airpower in the attack by the US based on what I knew was a lie at
the time, I thought to myself, if I were any country outside the US,
I would be thinking right now, very seriously about upgrading my air
defenses. 16 years later, Iran has done exactly this. This is a great
advance because it will finally inhibit the US (and Izzy) from attacking
poor, less powerful countries at will. Although the sheer mass of the
most-expensive-in-the-world military of the US would of course inflict
terrible damage, Iran would be able to shoot back much more effectively
than 2003 Iraq could. The resulting worldwide damage to the reputation of
over-priced US military equipment would be devastating. Because of this,
US military will push back much more strongly against an order to attack.
I say this with full knowledge that I have continuously benefitted and
will continue to benefit from the US/UK/EU having terrorized the rest of
the world with its most-expensive-in-the-world military. I also realize
that as the US empire gets more and more creaky, it is likely that the
benefits/tributes to me will be reduced.
[Sep13'19]
Jared Diamond was (partly) wrong on agriculture
I read both 'left' and 'right' sites. On the 'right' sites, I am getting
awfully tired of all the wa-wa-ing about how the New World Order is
planning to 'take our meat' and 'make us all eat plants' because 'climate
change isn't real'. My knee jerk response is to wa-wa instead, 'why do
I have to pay large health insurance premiums so that the bloated "bad
diet care system" can waste mountains of resources trying, vainly, to fix
the hundreds of different problems caused by physiologically essentially
vegan hominins eating too much meat and dairy'? And by the way, the
same science that brought us climate change and a comparative analysis of
animal guts, also brought us 2GHz cell phones containing 1 billion parts,
so if you guys *really* don't believe in science, then you won't mind if
I take your cell phone, since who believes in those woo-woo 'invisible
electromagnetic waves' brought to us by the same ebil science cabal?
Sometimes, 'right' sites even mention Jared Diamond in this context, which
brings me to the topic that I had actually set out to write about today
:-} I wanted to take issue with part of Jared Diamond's 1987
declaration
that agriculture was "the worst mistake in the history of the human race".
Jared Diamond is a master of the sound byte, and in my earlier years,
I remember parrotting this to other people. One thing he was referring
to was the fact that the stature and health of people in early cities,
which were made possible by agriculture, was initially poor (this was
the particular point I would often quote to other people).
The reason for reduced stature, bad teeth, and increased evidence of
disease was not probably not agriculture, per se, but more likely the
inexperience of humans in managing concentrated sewage and rodents and
insects and animal-borne diseases, all brought on by concentrating people
in poorly designed early cities, all made possible, as Diamond points out,
by agriculture. After a millenium or so of experience with designing
cities, however, human stature recovered.
By contrast with Diamond, I think the 'worst human mistake' happened
a couple of hundred thousand years before! That was the invention
of cooking (fire). From the evidence of residues in teeth, it
seems that cooking was mainly used to make it easier for hominins
to eat high energy-content vegetables (hard grains, roots and
tubers). Together with the earlier evolution of thick enamel, lower
cusp molars, and lowered canines for efficient chewing/grinding of these
higher-calorie density foods in australopithecines, cooking by Homo
erectus probably substantially contributed to setting up conditions
for being able to support an even bigger, even more energy demanding
brain, and probably had a role in the origin of language (the origin of
language perhaps based on a coming together of sexually-selected vocal
learning with serial visual scene comprehension - see PDF
here).
But cooking could also be applied to meat! Hominins have an essentially
vegan gut that is utterly different from a carnivore gut. Carnivores have
ultra high acid stomach (3x human, to deal with high protein and injested
bacteria), short small intestines, short thick-walled large intestine
(to deal with putrefying bacteria), ability to synthesize vitamin C,
etc, etc. The human gut has changed slightly from the chimpanzee gut as
a result of cooking/fire; but humans guts are still at the far vegan end
of an omnivore gut, with little resemblance to that of a typical (true)
omnivore (e.g., a bear). Cooking combined with hunting made it possible
for hominins to eat more meat than essentially vegan chimpanzees do.
Cooking deals with the injested bacteria problem, makes meat more
digestible, and makes meat more palatable (more plant-like!) to vegan
hominins. Unlike carnivores, humans are not intrinsically attracted to
grasping and biting a squirming, fur-covered prey item, tearing open
its abdomen, ripping off its skin, and biting into warm, blood-filled
muscles with the help of scissors-like (carnassial) premolars (which
we don't have). Though some chimpanzee packs (but not others) eat a
tiny bit of meat, they do so only very occasionally (they only eat a
baby monkey on 'special holidays', as it were), with meat providing
at best 1-2% of yearly calories. And they always have it with 'salad'
(a wadge of leaves stuck into their cheek).
For much of the history of fire, it wasn't a general problem for
essentially vegan hominins to eat somewhat more (cooked) meat than their
guts were originally adapted to deal with, since they were probably
mostly cooking plants. The result was some minor adaptations of the
gut for dealing with higher calorie-density food (e.g., somewhat shorter
large intestine). The reason this wasn't a problem was because typical
hunter-gatherers were actually 'gatherer-hunters', getting the great
majority of their calories from plants. And up until the twentieth
century, it was only the nobility that suffered 'bad diet disease' from
eating an overly meat-, diary-, and oil-rich diet, because the average
person couldn't afford to do this. However, once humans discovered
fossil fuel, it became possible for *everyone* to eat the diet of kings
and queens, every day. This has led to a health catastrophe, with 70%
of the US population overweight or obese and with obesity growing
at 0.5% per year, and even faster among younger people. If there
were no economic and net-energy-based catastrophes on the horizon,
we would probably have been able to achieve almost 100% overweight
or obese a few decades from now. Look what happened to poor
Kanzi
(2013 pic) from eating a standard American diet.
I suppose you could fairly complain that the problem was not just
fire/cooking, but then the addition of language, and last but not least,
the addition of fossil fuels. For better or worse, the fossil fuels will
begin to go away in the next decade. A few more decades of energy decline
will then probably go a long way toward solving most 'bad diet disease',
but with a terrible, heavy hand.
Finally, this was only one of Diamond's points about the sequelae of
the invention of agriculture. I liked some of his other points :-}
[Sep17'19]
The "father of the sand flea" and the Fed
I vividly remember reading about Abqaiq and Khurais (oil field that were
attacked on 14 Sept 2019) almost 15 years ago, in the late Matt Simmons'
"Twilight in the Desert", a book about the coming decline of the largest
oil fields in the world (Matt apparently drowned in his bathtub in 2010!).
Abqaiq means "father of a sand flea" :-} . No one expects the Spanish
Inquisition! Something like this, tho long possible given the difficulty
of air defense for distributed oil field infrastructure, was mostly off my
radar (there were supposed to be Patriot missile batteries there, tho?).
If this results in an extended bump up in oil prices, it may temporarily
rescue US frackers (even though they produce inferior, lighter, less
energy-dense oil to that currently being withdrawn from the market!).
Also, the US hardly buys any Saudi oil now, so this would hit other
countries harder.
The published satellite photos of the large spheroidal tanks (one
of the targets of the attack) show 4 unusual identically placed
pinprick
holes, all of which somehow didn't cause any tank to explode
(because pure methane?). Maybe the Houthis did do it (my guess).
It is true their claimed drone number didn't match the number
of holes. Maybe a Nuttyahoo re-election plan? Maybe the latest
neocon Iran-war-pretext false flag (or combined w/one or more
of previous)? Maybe actually Iran? (seem unlikely) or Iraq? (even
less likely). Maybe self-sabotage? (unlikely) It's hard to tell for
sure what really happened at this point. Tulsi Gabbard's
tweet
was a good laugh!
Perhaps the *perception* of the event had something
to do with the spike in 'overnight repo rates' to 10%
(should be similar to Fedfunds rate) described
here and illustrated in this new St Louis Fed data series
here. It is still
difficult for me to understand this ridiculous and purposely obfuscatory
financial-speak, or to determine if this is just an accidentally magnified
regular calendar event (like I've seen in Fed graphs of various kinds
of repo activity that showed quarterly spikes such as this St Louis Fed
graph of
reverse
repos), or a sign of deeper instablility. My understanding of 'repos'
and 'reverse repos' is that they are short term agreements between banks
to swap "cash" for "collateral" (treasuries, mortgage-backed securities)).
Somehow big banks suddenly simultaneously stopped trusting each other to
be good for an *overnight* loan in... 5 minutes?? They actually
didn't want 10% interest?? It doesn't make sense.
Here is how the fix was described by the Fed: "This repo operation
will be conducted with Primary Dealers for up to an aggregate amount
of $75 billion. Securities eligible as collateral in the repo include
Treasury, agency debt, and agency mortgage-backed securities. Primary
Dealers will be permitted to submit up to two propositions per security
type. There will be a limit of $10 billion per proposition submitted in
this operation. Propositions will be awarded based on their attractiveness
relative to a benchmark rate for each collateral type, and are subject
to a minimum bid rate of 1.80 percent."
Apparently, things don't make sense either to St Louis Fed president
James Bullard who recently told the Financial Times, "Something is going
on, and that’s causing I think a total rethink of central banking and
all our cherished notions about what we think we’re doing". Riiight.
"Something is going on" is about as informative as what I said :-/
The amount of leverage in the current system is stupifying. For example,
in less than two weeks, negative-yielding debt plunged from $17 trillion
to $14.5 trillion (for scale, the US GDP is $19 trillion). When debt
is paid off, money is destroyed by definition (though it could have been
used to immediately create debt elsewhere). The money changers seem to
be totally out of control. Currently, the currency markets involving
the dollar turn over $6.6 trillion a *day*, up from about $1 trillion a
day in 2000, already an utterly preposterous amount of money just going
in circles. Sensible humans should reign them in before they really
break something.
[Update: Sept 18] The Fed did a second 'repo' (first plus second =
$0.13 trillion total) and announced a third for tomorrow, after
the spike in the overnight interbank lending rate (2% -> 5% or
even 10%, see e.g., BGCR graph [blue line] at bottom of
this page) didn't
immediately calm down. This was all incongruously accompanied by a Fed
0.25% rate *cut*. The spike means that the criminal big banks suddenly
decided to not trust each other, and only trust getting an *overnight*
loan from a Fed 'repo'. They are literally saying they don't trust each
other to be solvent for 1 day. Perhaps the banker richies are pulling
this stunt to try to get another round of 'QE' welfare. If so,
it's time for pitchforks. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with
it again! As with last time (2007-2008), the problem might have had
something to do with the Euro/China/dollar mechanism, where dollars
are generated (though loans/bonds) outside of the US banking system.
This is where some of the first bailouts went last time (American tax
payers bailing out European banks). However, if this all goes away in
another few days, maybe it's just another one of the quarterly charades,
where banks temporarily rearrange things so they can pretend for a few
days that they are not insolvent for the 'regulators'.
[Update: Sept 19] The misnamed 'liquidity' problem is still here.
How stoopid is it to call it 'liquidity'! It should called by what it
really is: the 'no honor among thieves' problem, or the 'when filthy
criminal bankers sudden stop trusting each other' problem.
We need a g*dd*m surveillance camera at the Fed 'window' so we
can all see the faces of the squealing pig bankers when they
make their entreaties there. Here is another article showing how
some new hidden banker games (interest rate derivatives) have
exploded
from $2.6 to $6.5 trillion *per day* just over the past 3 years. They are
called "over-the-counter interest rate derivatives". "Over-the-counter"
here literally (and purposely confusingly) means "under-the-counter" -
that is, non-public trades!
[Update: Sept 20] The 'liquidity' problem (i.e., the 'criminal
bankers distrusting each other' problem) had now apparently faded
after the Fed announced a future series of 2-week term repos, and
supposedly, the bankers are now trusting each other again (after
a total of almost $0.3 trillion of 1-day 'overdraft protection'
injected this week). There is a good reason bankers don't trust
each other; they assume they are all scammers just like
these
guys. In fact, the whole supposed 'liquidity squeeze' is probably a
manufactured rich-person blackmail scam to get more public-supported bank
welfare (than they are *already* getting!). Given that the relevant
operations are mostly hidden from the general public (e.g., $2.5
quadrillion/year in interest rate swaps, AKA $2500 trillion/year), it
is difficult to know what the truth is. We really need some pitchforks.
[Update: Sept 21] On Sept 20, Friday night, Trump's 'defense'
sec'y Mark Esper announced additional troops to counter "the Iranian
attack". It would take several months of build-up for the US to launch
a non-trivial attack on Iran. Such a foolhardy thing seems unlikely at
this point. In any case, it would take another event of some kind (false
flag, etc), to get the unwilling but anesthetized population behind it.
Until something like that happens, it's back to the holding pattern.
[Update: Sept 22] Wolf Richter (plus esp. comments on the article)
puts the recent Fed 'repo' action, the first
by the Fed since 2008, into useful historical perspective
here,
which (finally) made me to understand why many of the repo data
series were discontinued at the St Louis Fed website: the Fed simply
stopped doing 'repos' when they changed to outright bailouts/buying
('quantitative easing'). However, Wolf's description in the comments
of 'mortgage backed securities guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie Mac' as
'the best, most liquid collateral out there' made me laugh; it reminded
me of bankers joking about 'toxic waste' in 2007 (MBS's are some of the
things banks were swapping to get their 'cash'). Some of this toxic waste
'guaranteed by the government' is multiple defaulted loans on the same
house set up by criminal banks.
Another problem with the article is that it doesn't call out
'socialism for big banks' for what it actually is: most 'excess
reserves' (QE money injected into banks by the Fed visible in the huge
spike rising up from *zero* before 2008 in this Fed graph of
EXCSRESNS) are
sitting in the 4 biggest banks (JPM/WF/BOA/Citi) and those banks make
20% of their profits from Fed-paid interest on excess reserves (Danielle
DiMartino Booth). These banks are *still* being rewarded for having made
enormous bad bets that caused the last crash. Put into understandable
terms, the public has offered huge loans to huge banks because they did
stupid things, who then in turn, instead of paying the public back, have
deposited the loans at the Fed, where the banks make risk free money on
them (interest generated from the void at the Fed, IOER). This is on
top of the 6% the Fed pays banks for their required stock ownership in
the Fed. Meanwhile, old lady savers get less than 1% on their deposits.
It's absolutely preposterous when you put it into standard English!
Finally, my thinking is more along the lines of commenter "Nat" and
"Patrick" on the Wolf Richter article, who suggest that this latest
'emergency repo' might have been a case of hidden QE because of the
opacity of whether the repos are actually repo'd (instead of getting
the cash back, the counterparty could just sell the collateral).
The hidden source of the problem could have been a eurodollar problem in
some overseas bank, like in 2008, or some big bank shenanigans with oil
futures (bringing us back full circle to "the father of the sand flea").
We must bring the money-changers shenanigans into the light of day.
The public needs a webcam at the Fed 'window', NOW! As commenter
"timbers" says, an actual people's Fed would establish a ceiling for
interest rates for student loans and credit cards, not for pig banks
making risky bets.
[Update: Sept 25] I'm beginning to wonder if the supposed gigantic
pile of bank "excess reserves" is actually there! What sane banker would
pass up a chance to get 5% or even 10% interest on a virtually risk free
overnight repo loan/swap when rates spiked on Sept 17? Perhaps I just
have difficulty thinking 'criminally' enough!
[Update: Sept 26] The Sept 17 overnight rate spike hasn't come
back, the Fed has done daily overnight loans/repos, and finally today,
they no longer seem to be oversubscribed.
[Update: Sept 30] Well, the overnight repo spike came back on Mon!
This is now officially being called the normal 'end of the third quarter'
repo spike (which hasn't happened since 2007, but whatever). Probably
gone in another day or two. Also begs the question of what caused the
previous spike. The publicly available information about money/credit
flows is clearly just the tip of the iceberg, so I don't think I can
claim even a basic understanding of what is happening. There weren't
any excess reserves at all before 2008, so why is reducing them now
causing a problem? Too much information missing for me to know.
[Update: Oct 05] I'm beginning to wonder if the repos business,
which has continued this week, is really about oil after all, but maybe
about fracking, not Abqaiq. New oil discoveries have hit a
70-year
low. Overall decline in rate production in the
Permian basin, which includes a mix of old and new wells,
is about 22%. But the first year decline rate of new fracked
wells there (and elsewhere) is about 70% (see the informative
back and forth between David Hughes and SRSrocco in comments on
SRSrocco's
article on the Permian shale). Since the sweet spots always get
the first attention, this means the 'sour spots' are worse than this.
If fracking hasn't been able to make money with the sweet spots,
a bunch of additional 'sour spots' are unlikely to help. Then,
there is the spectacle of the king of all planet earth's oilfields,
Ghawar, discovered around 1950, actually in the process of
dying.
If the fracking 'revolution' does in fact peak
before it ever makes money, it will turn out to be disturbingly
like We Work, which was probably never intended to actually make money,
but was instead merely a mechanism to siphon $1 billion of the money
temporarily flowing through the operation into Adam Neumann's pocket,
and then implode, perhaps also imploding the commercial property markets
in London, New York, and Los Angeles for good measure.
[Update: Oct 08] Here is a
description
of the repo problems from a repo insider, not the most unbiased of
sources since he is directly involved with actually having caused the
problem, but with detailed information (I couldn't understand all of it
because of some of the jargon). His estimate of the daily repo market
is $1.3 trillion, which should be compared with $75 billion/day ($0.075
trillion/day) that the Fed was providing. He suggests the problem was
caused by security buyers ("bank repo desks", "cash providers" to banks,
e.g., him at Curvature Securities!) seeing the repo interest rate spike,
getting greedy because it looked like the rates might go even higher
(N.B.: partly because they weren't buying!), thereby making the spike
go very high, until the Fed was forced to step in. These are hardly the
kind of rats you want to have to rely on when there is an actual panic!
These guys are simple criminals. Stop socialism for banks! I liked
the comment by Yogapith "I read all the article. Please God destroy this
greedy civilisation."
[Update: Oct 17] On Oct 16, the 'Fed repo offers were
oversubscribed' again. This last happened one month ago at the
beginning of the crisis. My attempt to translate into English,
is the same as before: the criminal banks don't trust each
other even for an overnight loan. Given the article cited in
my last update, maybe it's also criminal bankers merely waiting
to make a killing on a spike in overnight rates. A comment at
this
WolfStreet article by Eastwind suggests that the problem is instead
that the "bank repo desks" (mentioned above), who apparently are a *third*
party mediating between banks needing cash and banks willing to lend
overnight in return for 'collateral', stopped intermediating for some
reason, and that the cash lender banks couldn't lend directly because
of new post-2008 lending limits even though that had 'money' available
to the "bank repo desks". Sounds like complete BS to me (oooh, the
"ebil regulators"), but the entire operation is so opaque/secret that
normal people will never be able to find out what is actually happening.
[Update: Oct 20] The latest suggestion is that the
impetus for the Fed repo panic was the side effects of
Japan
(!) starting to unwind its
huge QE, which really took off in
2013.
At the time, I read a paper on how it
would be 'no problem' to unwind the central bank purchases (
PDF
here). I don't know why the zerohedge and the ABC Australia graphs
don't match (I think the ZH graph is wrong).
[Update: Oct 27] The 'repo madness' problem has not gone
away; the Fed just doubled their money injections from $75 billion
to $120 billion per day. This means the problem had nothing
to do with 'end of the quarter tax payments' or other nonsense.
The 'liquidity' problem was probably a failing Deutsche Bank, which
is 4x the size of 2008 Lehman. This is a 'Eurodollar' problem -
dollars created by loans by banks outside of the US. Given the
preposterous gutting of all the rest of the world by cancerous
financialization,
this is probably *positive* in the next few months for stocks and bonds.
The practical look-ahead of the 'captains of industry' (not!) is now
down to a month or two. Hope you don't have any kids.
[Update: Nov 02] The WSJ today reported that in late Sep 2019,
right around when repo madness started, there was a huge spike of
computerized CME Eurodollar futures trading. The CME group also does
SOFR futures (secured overnight financing rate futures). This may
be another reflection of some kind of Eurodollar problem.
[Update: Nov 04]
This
zerohedge
article harks back to my original plausible hypothesis that the repo
problem was directly created by banks like JPM in order to get more
'over-draft' protection and to inflate the ridiculously over-inflated
stock market, etc bubble even higher. It is critical to note that these
are the same banks that own the Fed. If this hypothesis is true, these
bankers a similar criminals not even slightly different than organized
crime. It's worth saying it again. These banks actually *own* the Fed.
It's not the 'Federal Reserve', it's the 'Private Reserve'.
[Update: Nov 11]
Here are
two
useful
articles by Pam and Russ Martens that suggest that we are getting
close to a repeat of 2008, as a result of banks having found yet
more non-transparent scams around last year's regulation attempts.
The main structure of money is in private hands. Privately-owned
banks are granted the ability to create money from the void by making
loans (the money goes back into the void if the loan and interest
are paid off), and crucially, the ability to charge interest on this
created-from-the-void money. Those flows of bank-created money are
much greater
than the flows in taxes/government spending. But in addition, private
interests have the ability to constantly engineer new, ever more complex,
non-public, interbank 'money plumbing', that constantly increases
the amount of money relative to assets. These 'innovations' are only
controlled by regulations with a delay. Thus, we have a permanent 'Red
Queen' situation. The regulators will at best be able to catch up to
last year's 'innovations' by the worldwide banking cartel.
As we sail over peak net energy, world growth is flattening, probably
for good. Our current money system controlled by the banking cartel is
predicated on continuous growth, not steady state, much less contraction
(money created from the void by loans does not include the money needed
for interest payments, so that money must come from other loans), and
is certain not to function well during the coming continuous worldwide
contraction. But economic expansion *cannot* continue without the
continuous extraction of even more net energy, which is very unlikely
to be available. We have great difficulty even maintaining the current
flow of net energy (see e.g., fracking, which remains net in debt as a
result of its low net energy). But unfortunately, the amount of social
and political power that the worldwide banking cartel currently has over
governments is still way too great for any substantial change in this
system to occur. It seems more likely that we are going to have to wait
until there is an even bigger catastrophic system failure than 2008.
Never forget the key points! The Fed is private, not public. It's not
just US banks. It acts in the interest of its owners, which are large
banks across the world, not in the interests of the publics of any
individual country. As the Fed expands the term length of their recent
repo offers, this means that the injected money is starting to stick
around for more than one day, getting closer to 'quantitative easing'
- that is, where the Fed merely gives large amounts of money to big
banks by buying their 'crap' and holding it for years. As always,
the criminal madness continues much longer than you expect (stupid
non-business-savvy me expected a crash 3 years ago!). So that means,
the criminal madness must continue for at least another year :-}
This *doesn't* mean it's *not* criminal madness. The
criminals will never be prosecuted (they weren't last time)
until pitchforks come out. Here is one of the criminals
getting
nervous, and here is a good
description by Wolf Richter of how the Fed
literally
brags publicly every quarter about how it has transferred wealth from
the bottom 99% to the top 1%. The US isn't at pitchforks yet because most
people can still get food. Not only that, people can still get *trucks*,
even if it involves a 7 or 10 year loan - look at this stunning graph of
light trucks sales
divided by domestic auto sales now, preposterously, approaching 5:1
(car dealers make more on loans than selling 'cars', if you can call those
monstrous trucks that). But eventually, the rundown in high net energy
resources will eventually impact trucks, then food for the bottom 50%,
and the 'color revolutions' will come home, like they came in Egypt or
Syria, when food became expensive. When the going gets tough, it will be
more important than ever to *keep the focus* on bankers run amok - despite
being hungry (and stop buying those stoopid gigantic overpriced trucks!).
[Update: Nov 14]
Here is the list of the 'primary dealers' (N.B.: all Wall street trading
houses) with access secret access to almost free money from the Fed.
Note that these are *not* banks that loan money to people and businesses.
Some subset of investment banks below is who the privately-owned Fed is
secretly bailing out with short term super-low-interest rate loans:
-------------------------------
Amherst Pierpont Securities LLC
Bank of Nova Scotia, New York Agency
BMO Capital Markets Corp.
BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
Barclays Capital Inc.
BoA Securities, Inc.
Cantor Fitgerald & Co.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Credit Suisse AG, New York Branch
Daiwa Capital Markets America Inc.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Goldman Sachs & Co LLC
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
Jefferies LLC
J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
Mizuho Securities UCS LLC
Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
NatWest Markets Securities Inc.
Nomura Securities International, Inc.
RBC Capital Markets, LLC
Societe Generale, New Rokr BRanch
TD Securities (USA) LLC
UBS Securities LLC
Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
-------------------------------
As George Carlin said, "It's a big club and you ain't in it".
[Update: Nov 17]
Here is a good explanation
here
of criminal banking cartel, the privately-owned Fed, giving money to
their member banks. If a regular person did something like this, it
would be plainly and obviously criminal.
[Update: Nov 23]
The private Fed is back to giving virtually free money to the banks
that own it (yes, that's actually the way it works). Note that
the recipients of the money are secret, as is information on whether
overnight and longer term loans were actually even paid back! Here is
a
graph
of assets held by the Fed showing the initial giant increases which
began in 2009 and the current resumption of 'purchases', which began
at the end of Aug 2019. To see the effects, look at sociopathic
Nick
Hanauer here explaining how all this works to his advantage with a
straight face. Here is roughly his message:
'I took $10 billion from you rubes because you cooperated with me,
and because you don't understand how the system works. But you are
*so* stupid, you think that the minimum wage for poor people must
be suppressed *even further* below inflation, in order to give me
another billion, not that I need it, but I will of course take it.
In your utter stupidity, you don't realize that by groveling in your
austerity to sociopaths like me, you are threatening to blow up my
wonderful gig, and end up getting angry crowds coming to set my yachts
on fire'.
The amazing thing is that average non-sociopathic people are so trusting
and comfortable with the sociopaths that *they can't even believe it*
when the sociopaths voluntarily come up to them, and tell them how
it all works, straight from the horse's mouth. Nick's self-serving
point is, 'don't mess up my gig by hurting yourself even more than you
are now'. The thing he leaves out is that since sociopaths like him
control all the levers of power and esp. the banks and money creation
and the private Fed, there is *no possible* credible strategy to
force such a change in course. Of course, *he knows that*! So the
only way forward will be more austerity for the rubes - until
pitchforks.
Unfortunately, violent 'pitchforks' are historically the *only* way that
human inequality has *ever* been lessened.
[Update: Dec 08]
I still only vaguely understand the difference between (1) the
'repo market', where overnight or 3 month loans at low interest rates
(e.g., 1.5%) have to be secured (the bank taking out the loan has to
pledge 'securities', e.g., treasury bonds, but which are essentially
themselves effectively loans) and where more recently, the Fed itself
started lending again into this market, (2) the "federal funds market",
which is 'unsecured' (why is this an issue?), and finally (3) the
"Fed's discount window", which apparently has a higher interest rate
(2.5%). What a purposely ridiculously confusing mess. The Fed
used to 'intervene in the repo market' all the time back before
2008, but then apparently stopped doing this 'because it was paying
interest on excess reserves' after 2008. Those two things don't
seem like remotely the 'same thing' to me. I tried reading
this
from Wolf Richter, but couldn't deeply understand it. One number
that stuck out was the $4 trillion daily balance in the repo market.
This $4 trillion is borrowed at low interest rates in order to invest
in higher interest rate things like mortgage-backed securities. It all
sounds like some precarious ponzi scheme that would be illegal if the
amounts of money involved were much smaller, but which is somehow legal
because the amounts of money cycling around are in the *trillions*.
These secret criminal banker games must be stopped! They add nothing
worthwhile to human life and merely function as parasitical drains on the
resources of people who actually make things, teach people things, etc.
This nonsense must stop if we are going to have any chance of responding
adaptively to declining net energy.
[Update: Dec 10] Here is a zerohedge
article
quoting from a BIS white paper (N.B.: BIS is the Bank for International
Settlements, which is owned by central banks, which are owned by
large banks, yup) that offers a new explanation for the Sept 2019
'repocalyse', that large banks stopped providing loans into the repo
market because they were afraid of hedge funds blowing up. In fact,
some hedge funds did begin to get large withdrawals around this time.
The parasitical hedge funds borrow in the low interest (1.5%) 'repo'
market in order to use the money to sell derivatives, for which they
charge a higher percentage fee (this is interest rate arbitrage),
using a hard-to-understand cyclical re-borrowing scheme that has a
suspicious resemblance to opening a new credit card to pay the interest
on a previous, maxxed out credit card. First, I just want to say that
it's highly frustrating reading zerohedge because of the giant piles
of right-wing, kill-the-poor cr@p that you have to wade through on
the site. But, there is also occasionally useful information of the
"from horse's mouth" kind (BIS) that is harder for a layperson to track
down (or interpret) by themselves. All these things sound abstract,
but when the amount of money we are talking about is so large ($4
trillion daily balance in the repo market, i.e., 1/5 of the yearly US
GDP), these mostly secret money games have a real potential to blow up
the whole system.
Through zerohedge, I also found this helpful
interactive
diagram, which tries to unpack some of the financial word salad,
and which shows (black) arrows connecting hedge funds to "dealers"
to US and foreign banks and finally to repos (liabilities/loans
from the Fed). Finally, here is a jargon-filled PDF commentary
Countdown
to QE4? on these issues from Zoltan Pozsar (now at Credit Suisse,
formerly at the US treasury and the Fed, where he was involved in repo).
His conclusion is that the Fed will begin "buying coupons" (I hate this
ridiculous terminology). I think it means buying a certain kind of
bond, which is a way of saying, loaning money, which is a way of saying,
creating more money, which is what the Fed was doing in 2008 and 2009
immediately after the previous crisis. Pozsar's argument is that this
will have been precipitated by large banks purposely withholding loans
from the repo market to cause it to seize up on purpose, in order to
extract more bailouts from the Fed. The goal/result will be to further
enrich bank executives and stockholders. Just because this stuff is
hard to understand doesn't mean that we shouldn't be out in the streets.
The Gilet Jaunes are not afraid to talk about this stuff. And that's
even after the Israeli-trained French police have gouged out hundreds of
Gilet Jaune eyes by shooting them in the face with tear gas cannisters.
We need to talk more frankly about how our money system can be reformed
preferably before it blows up (but afterward OK, too :-} ).
[Update: Dec 13] A set of even more gigantic repos
have been preemptively announced by the Fed in order to
stave off end-of-the-quarter/year financial chaos. These are
extra-low-interest rate loans at 1.5% to *secret* parties (e.g.,
hedge funds), who are distressed because they have made bad bets,
and who get this special treatment for their bad behavior because
they are run by super-rich-people, who are more important
that the rest of us slobs. The Fed is literally inviting
these f$cks to steal even more money! We have a government
of unaccountable, unelected bankers. If there was ever a time
for pitchforks, fellow slobs, this is it! Even some frigging
US
senators get it!, though the supposedly 'left-wing' (hah!) media
completely filtered out the Senate hearing.
Meanwhile, the US and China, the two largest economies in human history,
have now "agreed" to two totally different trade deals, by negotiating
on... Twitter.
[Update: Jan 04] The Fed just initiated a huge 'reverse repo' on
Jan 1 ($64 billion). This utterly idiotic 'operation' is where the Fed,
'pawns' some of its assets in order to get a cash loan from big banks
(the Fed needs money!?), who then get *interest* in return (generated
from the void) for completely risk free lending to the Fed. This is
literally welfare for big dangerous banks.
[Update: Jan 13 Here is an
excellent
article by Pam and Russ Martens on the shifty MMT-for-banks operations
of the NY Fed (it ain't "Federal", it's private). Just about every
day, Ziohedge has an article on how MMT for poor people will blow up
the economy. But the scales are starting to fall off people's eyes -
just read the comments.
[Update: Jan 27 Over the past few weeks, a suggestion as to
why hedge funds started to blow up was that they were somehow involved
with Euro and Japanese negative interest rate bonds (remember there were
already roughly $15 trillion of these by summer 2019). Negative interest
rate bonds only 'work' if the interest rate is expected to get even
more negative. Any return to even zero interest will cause a big loss.
The EU part is worryingly like the start of 2008. The international
banking cartel purposely confusingly called the 'Fed' is *not* tied to
one country.
[Dec18'19]
The only fix is 'less'
Everybody is exercised about plastic in the ocean. Me too. I blow
a fart in the general direction of people drinking water out of small
one-time-use plastic bottles. I sternly warn people that much of the
cr@p they put in the blue bin can't be recycled (e.g., thin plastic fruit
containers, plastic wrap, filthy styrofoam, dirty forks, etc.) and goes
into the landfill only after having been laboriously sorted out of the
stream on a fast moving conveyor belt by human pickers. Then I hit them
with the fact that since China has begun rejecting our plastic garbage,
the recyclers haven't even been able to sell their 'good stuff', and
that even the best of the best (SF Recology) can't find enough buyers
for their sorted plastic bales, which are piling up in warehouses (it's
simply much cheaper to make new plastic).
But then, something comes along that just upsets my
conceptual applecart. Here is an article summarizing the
source
of ocean plastic. The actual truth is in some ways more horrifying
than plastic cr@p on the beach, in a stinky landfill, or even in a whale
stomach. Here is source of microplastics in the ocean (8 million pieces
per cubic meter distributed throughout), which could be one million
times worse than previously realized:
35%: synthetic textiles (60% of clothing)
28%: car tires
24%: city dust
7%: road markings
4%: marine coatings
2%: personal care products
The textiles come
from the $1.5 trillion global fashion industry, which
generates
10% of all CO2 emissions, and is the second largest consumer of water (far
ahead of fracking). Some of the particles come from new clothes
sent
to the landfill or incinerated after being returned after
online purchases (cheaper than hiring human checkers to verify they
are resellable). Second is car tire particles. As you can see, it
won't be possible to fix this problem by 'recycling' plastic, getting a
(plastic!) water filter to avoid plastic bottles, or buying an electric
car (about half plastic). The problem is much deeper and much harder
to solve. That is, it is essentially *impossible* to solve.
Solving the plastic problem is similarly impossible to solving the
problem of 'getting off fossil fuels'. Virtually all 'renewable' (i.e.,
re-buildable) energy devices are made from fossil fuels. Virtually all
goods and people are transported by fossil fuels. Virtually all food
is grown, harvested, and transported using fossil fuels. Virtually all
food is fertilized with fossil fuels. Virtually all chips, computers,
and the internet are powered by fossil fuels. All concrete and steel
is made with fossil fuels. Current 'renewable' energy supplies only 3%
of total world energy (2% wind, 1% solar), and its growth is slowing.
All the recent growth in 'renewable' energy has not even covered the
*increase* in yearly world energy usage. If we actually 'got off fossil
fuels', the world economy would instantly collapse and there would be
mass starvation.
The only fix is 'less'. People on both the 'left' and the 'right' won't
like this. They will claim that 'it' (actually, geology, thermodynamics,
physics, chemistry, engineering) is a 'right-wing' or 'left-wing' plot,
respectively, or childishly hope that fusion, exoskeletons, 3D printers,
nanotech, hydrogen, electric cars, quantum computing, or Elon Musk will
save us (they won't). But geology and thermodynamics could care less
about humans, and the 'great simplification' will likely get underway
by 2030.
It would be nice to have some rational discussion of humanity at
the crossroads of 'less'. But instead, we will only get more of
bankers colluding under the cover of the ever-present, boring,
irrelevant so-called 'conflict' between the Trump-d$ck vs. the
political correctness show. It's depressing to watch the so-called
'left' imploding itself in slow-motion. What just happened to the
so-called 'left' in the UK should be a wake up call here. With daily
'anti-semitism' purges and smears lovingly broadcast by the Beeb (not to
mention Islington Labour spending a quarter of a million dollars trying
to stop saxophonist Gilad Atzmon from playing a jazz gig in London!),
and with the Labour Brexit waffling despite the clear vote, the 'Labour'
party has virtually imploded itself. It has somehow managed to unite
the working class behind Tory Eton toff/d$ck Boris, who now amazingly
think of Boris as 'a normal working class guy'! From this
election
map, you can see that 'Labour' has managed to do even worse than the
Brexit vote. One of the Tories' first actions after winning has been
to ban boycotting Israel (wot the 'working class' wants?!). Meanwhile,
in the US, with the silly Schiff impeachment circus (successor to the
failed Russiagate farce) now itself floundering in the polls, and the
main-sewer media ignoring/disabling Sanders and Gabbard, the US Democratic
party is consciously arranging for the same dismal outcome here.
The main wild card is whether the Fed allows the bankers' criminal
money games to blow up their faces before the election, by *not*
injecting *tens* of trillions of dollars. Their restarted repo
business so far has only been 'small change' compared to the
$29
trillion cumulative injected during Obama from 2007 to 2010. The Fed
may very well let the 'everything bubble' explode this time, which could
bring down the Trump-thing. It's wrong to think of the bankers as a
united cabal. Rather, they are like a twitchy pack of hyaena-wolves,
ready at a moments notice to tear up one of their own limb from limb,
like they did with Lehman in 2008. And blowing up the system will allow
ultra-rich cash-flush investors to scoop up tangible assets cheaply.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Unfortunately, no matter what happens, rational discussion of the net
energy cliff that industrial civilization is slowly inching toward is
probably off the table forever.
[Jan26'20]
An excellent but distressing article by Jim Kavanagh
here
on the aftermath of the Soleimani assassination, particularly
with respect to how the impeachment hearings might fit in.
The upshot is that conservative christian republican
neocons may have been able to order the hit in return for
republican support in the Senate against the (equally neocon!)
Democrats
running the hearing. A pincer like move to initiate a war that if
started could destroy Iran, Israel, and the US. Avoiding a war on Iran
is critical, but now mostly out of the news cycle. Instead, we have yet
another silly bugga-bugga - the coronovirus psyop - to distract the proles
[Update: Feb03,'20: maybe this was potentially more serious! See update
here.]
When the banker cartel was setting up WWI, they did not know what the
outcome would be. But the potential destructiveness of war, bad as
it already was then, was much less than now, and there were a lot less
people in the world, and there was still a lot of easy-to-get (high net
energy), energy-dense fossil fuel for the taking, and the world wasn't
as interconnected.
It's not clear what could change the course of events when the
media is so effectively controlled. A few days ago about
a million people
turned out in Baghdad to march against the US occupation of Iraq, one
of the largest peaceful demonstrations in history; but the US media
narrative fog described it as "hundreds". Anyone with an analytical
mind, a web browser, and a free half an hour, could find out the truth,
anywhere in the world. But protecting one's mind from the mental
poison gas narrative that reblankets the human mental world every day,
now increasingly delivered via antisocial media, which is controlled
and filtered by world-spanning advertising corporations spawned by the
CIA slash military intelligence, is mentally exhausting, and moreover,
not particularly conducive to normal social relations at home or work.
This is a terribly difficult problem, and the bad guys have most of the
goods. To take an example from a completely different field, consider
the latest 'lipoprotein(a)' bugga-bugga. "It's genetic"! "We're working
on it!". "Get the test!". "Ask your doctor!". Unless you happen to
have a solid background in medicine *and* diet (a completely different
field, not studied at all in medical school) *and* molecular biology,
you will just probably google over to the top links, Harvard Health and
Amgen Science's "10 Things to Know About Lipoprotein(a)", and find out
that you are probably genetically cursed and your only salvation is that
big pharma just happens to be working on the fix that you desperately need
(a new siRNA drug to turn off the 'lipoprotein(a) gene', a gene whose only
apparent purpose is to kill you /snark). It takes an extreme dedication
to good mental hygiene to be able to resist this daily full court press,
just as it does to keep a good diet. It's the same in the case of war.
Enough of the population can almost always be dragged along given a year
or two of propaganda. There is probably no way to stop it.
[Jan30'20]
The Guardian boldly humiliates a salami
The supposedly 'left' Guardian just boldly took the decision to
ban
ads from oil and gas firms. A world media first! A huge moment!
The Guardian finally protects the delicate ears of their readers from
dirty oil and gas companies!
What total utter BS/nonsense! The current sources of total world
energy use (not just electricity, only 1/3 of the total), which can
be trivially found by googling, are roughly: oil=34% coal=27% gas=24%
hydro=7% nuclear=4% wind=2% solar=1% biomass=1%. That means that fossil
fuels currently provide a cool 85% of our total daily energy gulp.
Those proportions have hardly changed over the last 40 years. Wind and
solar additions have *not even covered* the yearly increases in total
energy use.
Fossil fuel is overwhelming important as an energy input to food
production (fertilizer, plant farming, factory farms, transport,
refrigeration), water (pumping, sewage treatment), roads/rail/ships
(concrete, asphalt, steel), heating (gas, oil), steel and all
mineral and rare earth production (mining, refinement), the 24/7
internet, plastic (cars are half plastic by volume), constructing
houses/hospitals/bridges/wind turbines/etc, constructing transport,
continual maintenance on all of the above.
Does how I *feel* about fossil fuels (advertising) make
one whit of difference to *how necessary they are to
the continuing daily existence of 7.8 billion people on
the earth*? How I *feel* toward fossil fuels is an irrelevant
joke! This weirdly made me think of a classic Kliban cartoon:
People humiliating a salami. If the supposedly 'left' Guardian had
one teeny, tiny ounce of true grit, they would instead say something
more like:
(1) our continuing life on earth is now *utterly dependent* on fossil fuels
(2) high net-energy supplies of them are rapidly being drawn down
(3) there are *no* drop-in replacements for fossil fuels
(4) be very afraid
That is the unfortunate truth: there is no plan B. Regardless of how
people 'feel' toward fossil fuels, but also, regardless of how much
climate damage they do, we will run them down at full blast until their
net-energy is too low (we are getting close - the fact that frackers
are still net in debt today is an oblique indication of the reduced
net-energy of fracked oil and gas. Take a look at this graph of
Asia
Pacific oil consumption and Asia Pacific oil
production from Matt Mushalik's article
here
and try projecting it even 5 years into the future. Of *course* we got
the good (high net-energy) stuff first! Of *course* it is now taking
more and more energy to get energy! Of *course* we will get as much of
the rest as possible! Whether or not you or I "feel dirty" about this
is irrelevant.
Renewables can't come close to preserving our current state of affairs.
The coming decline in fossil fuel extraction coupled with reduced
net-energy of what is extracted is going to hit industrial civilization
very hard over the next two decades. Then starting two to three decades
from now, while net-energy continues to decline, climate change is going
to make it difficult to grow enough food for those that are left because
of fossil fuel CO2 and from methane (leaks, tundra, cows). Fingers will
point in various directions, but most people won't know what hit them.
Protecting our eyes from seeing oil company ads is seriously *not* bold.
True bold is so far outside the 'Overton window' it's not even funny.
[Feb08'20]
The corona-panic (scroll down for lastest update)
Last week, a showy paper was published on biorxiv suggesting that
multiple AIDS-virus-like short amino acid sequences were found
in the hypervariable parts of the cell-surface spike protein
region of 2019-nCoV, but not other coronaviruses (see
pdf
here). Following a huge outcry on social media,
but more importantly, a number of technical criticisms
(mainly, overlap regions were too short), that paper was
withdrawn.
Here is an earlier (2010) paper that inserted
complete HIV genes into coronaviruses from bats
pdf
here. In possibly related news, the Chinese have begun using
anti-AIDS drugs to treat the virus (N.B.: dubious off-label drug use
is a well-known way to expand drug markets). Then there was the Bill
Gates-funded Oct 2019 simulation (3 months before the current coronavirus
outbreak) of the possible devastating impact of a fast-spreading
coronavirus in South America, modeling 65 million dead, described
here.
The "Event 201" web pages were recently updated to say that 'this was
not a prediction, but just a simulation'. In an interview
here, Francis Boyle
suggests the virus was an unintentional/accidental release of a weaponized
virus from the BSL-4 Wuhan facility. But he presents no specific positive
evidence for the weapons angle.
More detailed initial overviews of the
recent biological papers can be found
here
(first link from EpochTimes, FalunGong, pro-Trump, read anyway) and
here
and
here
(the last two links are from James Lyons-Weiler). Lyons-Weiler suggests
that the virus was most likely lab-generated, probably during attempts to
make a vaccine (in China or elsewhere), and then it somehow escaped. In a
recent comment on his own latest post, James notes that the expression
vector pShuttle-SN has a coronavirus spike protein embedded in it,
which reflects the fact that recombinant research with spike proteins
has been going on for some time.
Whitney Webb has a detailed,
and rather alarming summary (from Jan 30)
here
and Dan Sirotkin (with father Karl
Sirotkin) has another summary (from Jan 31)
here,
both with lots of references to recent US military support
for gain-of-function studies (insertion of genes to make
'super-viruses' for 'defensive' purposes, and supposedly to try
to understand disease processes) after the US government ended
the moratorium on this kind of research in 2018. The Chinese
have done similar gain-of-function research, and Wuhan Institute
of Medical Virology has had a long-standing partnership with
USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Fort Detrick was
closed
down in July 2019 for poor containment facilities, but reopened
a few months later. About at the same time, there was an outbreak of
a mysterious respiratory illness at a skilled nursing facility
about
a 1 hour drive away. Similarly, see the
long-standing USAID/PREDICT/Wuhan collaborations in the
acknowledgements
of this recent paper on the discovery of bat coronaviruses that use
the same receptor as middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus.
Thankfully, the high degree of optimization and functional overlap in
biological systems, coupled with our seriously incomplete knowledge of
how they actually work makes them quite hard to engineer :-} Also,
remember that this is an RNA virus, which means that it mutates more
rapidly (RNA is much less stable than DNA), which means that it can
easily disable itself (N.B.: most mutations are neutral or deleterious).
One wonders what the real story is! As usual, there is a huge amount of
disinfo/chaff surrounding this, and the real story will probably never
be fully known (cf. Lyme disease and Borrelia, Ricksettia, and Babesia
in relation to military 'research' on ticks). The new coronavirus,
however, hasn't turned out to be extremely dangerous, at least, so far
(if the official numbers are correct)! Signs that we are reaching the
peak of new infections should reduce the chance of this incident being
used as the impetus for a 'BioPatriot' act.
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb12,'20]:
Here is another
good
article by James Lyons-Weiler, further supporting the idea that the
virus was not a bioweapon, and that some of the problems with the virus
may have stemmed from the implementation of a new Chinese vaccine law
put into effect on 1 Dec 2019. The vaccination program may have used a
vaccine containing a spike protein. Why is this a problem? -- "Because
prior animal studies showed high mortality following re-challenge
in vaccinated animals". Here are his three references (
1,
2, and
3), showing
how immunization against SARS followed by challenge with an actual SARS
infection (SARS is a coronavirus) results in a *more severe* pneumonia
than does a SARS infection alone. So maybe it's a good thing it will
take a long time to make (another!) vaccine! (don't just yell anti-vax;
read the dang science articles).
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb16,'20]:
James Lyons-Weiler has now changed
one of his conclusions on the basis of the new data,
and concludes that the spike protein in CoV was in fact
from
a bat after all (because a 2005 bat sequence was a better match
to the new CoV spike protein than the spike protein in the artificial
p-ShuttleSN sequence) - so he concludes probably *not* genetically
engineered. However, there remains the possibility, mentioned above,
that the rate of lethality of the infection, which is higher in China
(supposedly over 2%) than outside China (negligible), may by partly
due to the Chinese vaccination program rolled out on 1 Dec 2019.
It's important to keep a skeptical stance, e.g., how are the Chinese
actually testing whether a sick person actually has the virus? A hand
held infrared thermometer is hardly a specific diagnostic tool.
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb20,'20]:
The second half of Adam Taggart's video
here
has a clear description of the scientific evidence for 'antibody-dependent
enhancement', where a second challenge with a virus (after a previous
infection *or* a vaccination) results in a much more serious disease.
This applies to Dengue fever (a flavivirus) as well as coronaviruses
SARS and 2019-nCoV, and suggests that it may be more difficult than
usual to develop a vaccine that is not actually harmful. I am still
guessing that the rate of new infections is peaking and will soon die
down. Finally, it's critical to remember to: (1) compare the (so far)
very small number of deaths with the much larger number of 'routine'
deaths in the US and China from less scary sounding diseases like the
regular flu and non-coronavirus pneumonia, and diarrhea, and, (2) be
very skeptical about the accuracy of the current tests for "infection",
upon which the whole narrative is based.
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb23,'20]:
Here is a
yet another video
from Francis Boyle, again arguing that 2019-nCoV is a weaponized
virus that accidentally escaped from P4 containment, though once
again, he does not provide direct evidence for this. In what
may be just a co-inki-dink, Charles Lieber, one the world's top
nanotechnology experts, well funded by the Dept of 'Defense', was
arrested on 28 Jan 2020 for not disclosing contracts and salary derived
from Wuhan University of Technology. The possible relevance is
recent
proposals for making a 2019-CoV vaccine based on delivery of RNA
coding for virus proteins inside of nanoparticles (essentially artificial
viruses). Probably just a co-inky-dink, I think.
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb25,'20]:
Another coincidence is that in Fall 2019,
Wuhan may have gone live with a large deployment of 60 GHz 5G
(difficult to confirm if this is true, particularly the 60 GHz part,
since the 5G spec also includes much lower frequencies like 3.5 GHz).
Note that the 60 GHz band is unlicensed (57-71 GHz), partly because
it is the approximate location of a water vapor (oxygen) absorption
band. This reduces its range but consequently also reduces the
interference from potentially zillions of other transmitters, and
which could allow, as well as require (!) increased transmit power (and
hence, absorption). For more practical info on 60 GHz, see this 2018
white paper, "What's next? opportunities in WiFi with 60 GHz" (
PDF
here) or this recently shipping
60
GHz hardware with phased array antenna (this is a transmitter with
enough power that you wouldn't want to stand right in front of it; it's
designed for point-to-point connections that could replace stringing
ethernet cable around a warehouse). Together with the onslaught of
the standard American diet in China, not to mention really-not-good
air, not to mention a lot of smoking, not to mention the fact that
2019-CoV infection is now being 'diagnosed' in China with a CAT
scan (WTF?), it is certainly scientifically sensible to consider
additional possible causes for acute respiratory disease in China
beyond *just* 2019-CoV! It's always easy to over-focus one's (or the
public's!) attention on a convenient single cause. Again, the Wuhan 5G
rollout is most likely just a co-inky-dink, but it's important to keep
an open mind in case any real data comes along (here is a
good 2015 scientific
talk on the sometimes deleterious effect of RF on biology).
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb28,'20]:
The ongoing coronavirus story seems to be the
psychological impetus for the relatively minor stock market drops of the
past week. I say 'minor', because I am putting this in the context of
the ridiculously inflated bubble gains that preceded it. These drops
have supposedly wiped out $5 trillion dollars of value in the world.
In two days. What idiocy. Isn't it about time that we whipped the
money changers out of the temple?
But back to the virus, it seems to be spreading outside of China, after
China may have been able to slow down new infections. However, there is
still a lot of uncertainty due to variable methods and accuracy of testing
(CAT scans?!). It seems to be most dangerous for people in their 70's
and 80's, just like the more serious flu that comes around every 5 or
so years. But note that it has not killed anywhere near the number of
people (yet!) that the flu routinely does every 5 years or so, so it's
important to keep things in perspective. Also remember that there are
a *lot* of things that are more likely to kill people in their 70's
and 80's than to kill young people! One thing that *may* be different
about this virus from the flu virus is that the symptoms can be *more*
severe upon a second infection, *after* you have developed immunity (i.e.,
either from an infection *or* a vaccine). So probably better to put off
getting it the first time :-} as long as possible (like dengue fever).
But even *that* conclusion is based on what happened with the SARS
coronavirus and with dengue fever, not with *this* coronavirus.
As to the question of whether the virus crossed over from bats or was
an escaped experiment or weapon, there has clearly been a lot of genetic
engineering performed on coronaviruses, and particularly, coronaviruses
from bats. This is not proof it was synthesized, however, regardless
of how suggestive the experiments might seem. For example, go back
and read
this 2015
paper, with authors from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Harvard,
Univ North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Zurich. The authors clearly
describe engineering a more infectious coronavirus (gain-of-function).
From the abstract: "Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system, we
generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of
bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone". They did
this "to maximize the opportunity for pathogenesis and vaccine studies
in mice". But note that this is *not* the same virus as 2019-nCoV and
note that this does *not* provide any direct evidence that the current
virus was (or was not!) weaponized.
In conclusion, until I see more hard evidence about: (1) what specific
tests are being used (e.g., PCR, using which sequence?) to determine if
sick people actually have this coronavirus, and (2) that it is actually
*this* coronavirus that is killing them (PCR can't tell infection load),
I remain pretty skeptical about the current hysteria. Looking back
over what I wrote above, I can see how I was a bit hornswoggled myself
at the beginning (I just wanted to use that word again :-} ) by the
bioweapons angle. It's particularly important to keep one's skeptical
head screwed on tight for a 9/11-like circus like this one, esp. given
that it may result in lots of people being quarantined.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar03,'20]:
The fear porn continues to fly. It's a great
gig for the nooz outlets, for the stupid anti-social media personal
control and surveillance devices known as smart phones, and it keeps
everybody's eyes off the ball. Just try to ignore it. Currently,
it's mostly an disinfo-demic.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar05,'20]:
The sudden pause in economic activity due to the
quarantine of 1/3 of China could provide a 'helpful' explanatory cover
for difficulties in managing the the pause in real growth, as China
suddenly stopped constructing, for just one example, an entire US 20th
century of highways every 3 years. Similarly in the US, it can serve
as an explanation for why the enormous 'everything bubble' of overvalued
stocks, real estate, frackers, unicorns, and so on is beginning to pop.
It wasn't rogue central (and other) bankers; it was just unlucky virus.
Nothing to see here.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar08,'20]:
Here is an
eminently sensible video from Mic the
vegan :-} There was a recent report that the cruise ship Californian
had the virus *before* getting on the ship. Then there were all those
vaping (lung problem) deaths that peaked in June 2019. I think the vaping
deaths were probably still just a concidence (until somebody tests one of
the bodies or the survivors).
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar11,'20]:
I agree with Jon Rappoport that this latest overblown
epidemic is different than previous overblown epidemics (swine flu
1976, West Nile virus, SARS, MERS, swine flu 2009, Ebola, Zika).
The difference is that the sheer worldwide extent of the fear porn
propaganda has eclipsed all of the previous sorry episodes by a
substantial margin despite deaths not even close to the small death
tolls from the previous overblown epidemics. The only reason I can even
dare to say this is because I'm not on @ssbook, censortube, twitface or
other anti-social media where "treating tragedies as hoaxes" instantly
erases you, supporting the hysteria. For me, I think it's a tragedy to
not eulogize the 100 people a day who die on US roads or the 700 people
a day who die on Chinese roads. Today, the university here casually
announced that all of its employees need to cancel all of their *personal*
travel plans. Many have meekly complied. This is turning into a true
9-11-like psyop. Eeek. At least Harvey got jail time today!
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar12,'20]:
As the 'everything bubble' begins to deflate (N.B.:
*not* mainly the result of the beer virus, but merely triggered by it),
it will hit lower classes much harder, as economic contractions always
do. These are people who won't get paid if they don't go into work,
and who might not have health insurance in case they get really sick.
So they will be tempted to go to work sick in order to make the rent.
Unlike university professors at UCSD, which just shut the entire campus
down for the rest of of the year, but will still get paid, the underworld
of outsourced staff and gig workers supporting the university is going
to get hit hard. All the hand-sanitized pwogwessives huffing and puffing
about being safe from the beer virus plague have little appreciation for
the the lower class gig workers who support them as they fill up their
oversize SUVs with now cheaper gas and toilet paper, while supporting
fossil fuel disinvestment (hah!). The net result of shutting down UCSD
will probably be to *increase* the spread of this not-very-scary virus.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar13,'20]:
Some long informative comments
here
from Old Microbiologist. However, as with Francis Boyle, he presents
no positive evidence of a military origin. There appear to be up to 5
different virus strains out there. Given that, keep your skeptical head
screwed on tight when the mind control media blares out "tested positive"
in the "overflowing ICU". It wouldn't be ethical, but I wonder what
would happen if you took 20 healthy 60 year olds, and couped them up
in the ICU with a bunch of flu patients and started dosing them with a
cocktail of toxic AIDS drugs together with some 'just-whipped-this-up'
clinical trial drugs.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar15,'20]:
The toxic narrative that is developing on the so-called
'left' is that Trump and Boris have 'bungled' the virus response. Just
because Trump and Boris are vicious, blithering idiots bumbling around
like drunken frat boys does *not* mean "WE MUST HAVE Skynet NOW"! Seeing
people's minds turned into mush by the barrage of medical propaganda
is scary. This is like the 9-11 psyop all over again. Do we really want
a Chinese-style lockdown complete with zombie barricades like
this
and
this?
Watching the so-called 'left' descend into outright fascism is seriously
depressing. What does the 'left' want? Real-time RT-qPCR (real-time
reverse-transcriptase quantitative polmerase chain reaction) tests for
every person in the country every week? That's just a billion test
kits per month, each of which has to be processed in a lab. It should be
no prob to whip those up for multiple strains, update them if new strains
develop, and deal with the standard Bayesian problem (zillions of false
positives when applying a noisy test to mostly negative population).
Under penalty of what? Full police state lockdown of the entire
country? (except of course people delivering food and keeping the water
running and stocking the shelves at WallMart...). That we need to dump
a trillion dollars into pharmaceutical companies to accelerate vaccine
anad/or test kit and/or processing lab development? A forced vaccination
program afterward?
It's not even clear that a coronavirus vaccine would help! Some
experiments that have been done with animals with SARS-I coronavirus
vaccines suggest that immunity to the virus, generated either from
infection with the virus itself or a vaccine might actually result in
*more* serious disease! (cf. the Dengue fever vaccine). Or compare
HIV vaccines. After billions of dollars and decades of work, *there is
no* working HIV vaccine! The latest HIV vaccine test was just aborted
last month after it was shown that it was completely ineffective in
blocking HIV infection. And after decades, it remains unclear whether HIV
infection as defined by current methods is even the cause of the family of
AIDS diseases. C'mon, so-called 'left' - be careful of what you ask for!
Finally, 300,000 (or 700,000) people were dying of pneumonia in China
every year from various chronic illness combined with various different
viruses and bacteria *before* this particular coronavirus came on the
scene. This new supposed 'epidemic' is almost certainly *not one thing*.
Late today (Sunday, Mar 15) they pulled out the bazookas! The Fed dropped
interest rates to zero, then also dropped bank reserves requirements
to zero starting Mar 26! Infinite QE for criminal banks! Meanwhile,
back in CA, at the same time, the 'liberal' guv just announced that
everybody over 65, or with heart disease, diabetes or lung disease has
to stay home. Unfortunately, I have to conclude that this is in fact
turning into another 'New Pearl Harbor' to scare the monkeys out of
their wits, since the first one has started to wear off (however, if you
stock toilet paper at WallMart, there will no doubt be an exception that
requires you to report for work...). Prevent COVID terr'ism! If your old
neighbor tries to go outside, or if you see a group of people standing
dangerously too close to each other, call the guys in the biohazard suits!
Make America healthy again. Riiight.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar17,'20]:
Here are some recent
sensible voices in the wilderness!:
Insights into the
Corona-panic (subtitled) by Wolfgang Wodarg (or dubbed into English
here), the
excellent
A
swiss doctor on Covid-19, and
Does the 2019
coronavirus exist? [PDF], by David Crowe. I sent an email to my wife
on the topic that must have triggered a 'thought-crime' surveillance
filter as it went through Proofpoint (mx0b-0016e101.pphosted.com)
in Sunnyvale, CA. It was a plain text email containing no links.
The result was that the email bounced back to me without even getting to
her spam box (this was the first time this happened across thousands of
messages I have sent her). It was essentially live-censored in flight
(I managed to get the exact same text email to her by first simply
zipping it). My university has basically closed down and even the Dean
is now 'working from home' (isn't the Dean supposed to go down with the
ship?! :-} ).
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar18,'20]:
The absolutely *worst* thing about this
clusterf*ck is that when the virus subsides, as these viruses always
do, the scared monkeys will conclude that 'we were saved by the
lockdown!' as they pick up the pieces from the shambles created by
the lockdown. There will be absolutely *no* evidence presented to
back up the idea that the lockdown had anything to do with this!
People will conveniently forget all the many previous seasonal lung
infections that all went away on their own *without* any lockdown.
They will forget that 3,300 people die *every day* on the roads
(about the same as the 4000-5000 *total* supposed coronavirus
deaths so far!). But the terr'ized population is now primed for new
lockdowns, forced testing, and forced vaccination (as was just
rolled
out in Denmark this week). As CK Hopkins
jokes,
"just take your pills, get back to Facebook, and check up on Idris!"
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar20,'20]:
Excellent article from a few days ago by John Ioannidis
here.
See also
"On
corona, the media, and propaganda" by swprs.org. Normally in the US,
2.8 million people die each year, which is 7,600 people/day, or 54,000
people/week. Normal world deaths are about 170,000 people/day, or 1.1
million people/week. Snap out of it, people! Viral pneumonia in old,
sick, immune-compromised patients has always been difficult to treat,
and there have never been magic drugs to cure it, and there won't be
any for covid. Covid *may* be a little bigger and badder and meaner,
and will likely kill a number of old, unhealthy people a year or two
before they otherwise would have died (like a worse than average flu
year does). But trying to 'fix' this by strangling the world economy
in the midst of the violent crash of the 'everything bubble' (*not*
mainly due to covid!) is very likely going to be seen a few years from
now as a supremely stupid and dangerous misstep that may unleash a
terrible backlash.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar23,'20]:
I already linked this above, but here is
one of the best sites, in my opinion, on the epidemiology of the
virus:
A
Swiss doctor on Covid-19. Peter C. Goetzsche recently
published another excellent summary of the mass panic
here. The total number of presumed covid-related deaths worldwide
(probably inflated because most of victims were already very sick)
are not even a rounding error on the 170,000 people that normally die
every day in the world or the 1.1 million people that die every week in
the world. Or even the number of people that have died in the current
(non-covid) flu season (average year estimated at 500,000 deaths by WHO).
By contrast, the catastrophic effects of strangling the worldwide economy
by ordering small businesses to close (increased poverty for the bottom
half, while bailing out super-rich gamblers) are likely to cause a much
greater death toll in the end.
Don't forget the risks of spending a week on a ventilator independent
of any disease. This requires mechanically pushing high-oxygen air into
the lungs filled with fluid at higher-than-atmospheric pressure and does
long-lasting damage to the alveoli (why not thoracentesis?). There is
even a name for this iatrogenic 'disease': ventilator-induced lung injury
(VILI). Probably worth considering before trying to panic-buy your own
ventilator on Amazon...
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar24,'20]:
Excellent summary [3-page
PDF] by Peter C. Goetzsche of the present situation:
The
coronavirus mass panic is not justified and here is
a collection
of the sensible dissenters all in one place at the Off-Guardian.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar27,'20]:
A few random links to pass the time during this
ridicuous and dangerous hysteria/panic.
"It's all fake!":
locked-down Wuhan residents heckling a Chinese official a few
weeks ago with some good-old-fashioned 'American spirit' :-} .
And Jason Goodman searching for Bellevue's missing
'pop-up morgue'.
But more seriously, here is a good
2008
background video from Michael Greger on the history of pandemics,
pointing out that all these viruses originally came from the domestication
of animals: measles from cattle rinderpest, smallpox from camelpox,
whooping cough from pigs, typhoid fever from chickens, influenza from
ducks, leprosy from water buffalo, coronaviruses from horses, pigs,
and so on. As societal conditions improved in the twentieth century,
these diseases all declined. But since 1975, infectious disease mortality
reversed its decline and has increased until the present.
One main reason is that animal viruses have been made more dangerous by
the trench-warfare-like conditions of highly cost-efficient concentrated
animal feeding operations refined in the late 20th century. The trench
warfare analogy isn't incidental. WWI trench warfare was probably partly
responsible for breeding the unnatural, super-deadly 1918 flu strain by
continually feeding fresh recruits into the diseased viral replication
chambers (i.e., the trenches) when the previous batches of recruits died.
Concentrated animal feeding operations are very similar to WWI trenches;
they are enormous virus replication chambers with tens of millions of new
'recruits' cycling through where death doesn't matter. Normally, when
organisms die quickly from an extra virulent virus, they don't transfer
the virus as efficiently, and so viruses universally evolve to be *less*
deadly as they pass through more naturally spaced populations as opposed
to the CAFO 'trenches'.
The second reason for the increase in infectious diseases, of course,
is that humans have penetrated (even) further into, disturbed, and made
biocontact with previously less-visited ecosystems.
Here is common sense on civil liberties from Forbes (!):
Coronavirus
could infect privacy and civil liberties
forever, by Simon Chandler. And another common
sense article, from uhh, the Wall Street Journal:
Is
the Coronavirus as deadly as they say?, by Eran Bendavid and Jay
Bhattacharya.
Here is a good article from Canada:
Strictly
by the numbers, the coronavirus does not register as a dire
global crisis, by Richard Schabas. Remarkably, the UK
(uk.gov) recently declared, as of 19 March 2020, that
"COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence
infectious disease (HCID) in the UK". Also, watch
Professor
Neil Ferguson here, Director MRC Centre for Global Infectious
Disease Analysis at Imperial College, *massively* dialing back his
highly inflammatory Mar 16 paper, which helped launch this dreadful
worldwide 'medical martial law' lockdown, in a video call to Parliament,
all while recovering from covid. It's worth noting that the Department
of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London is a key
partner in the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium, together with the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
And finally, from Wolf Richter on the lockdown fallout:
Helicopter
money for wall street for rich people and
Why
the unemployment spike is even more horrid than it appears for
poor people.
[The corona-panic: Update: Mar29,'20]:
From NY, there have been occasional younger
patients with severe symptoms and a few younger deaths - *but
that happens with the regular flu, too!*. As in other countries,
the disease remains by far the most severe in older patients with
comorbidities. Here is an excellent hour-long interview with
John Ioannidis,
professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford. Perhaps the
most striking point, later in the video is, *if* this virus had *not*
been identified and grabbed by the disaster-mongering media and passed
around by @ssbook, would we even have been able to distinguish this
year from previous years of normal, every-year, 500,000 worldwide deaths
(from influenza-related diseases)? Also, see latest updates on the fine
site
A Swiss
Doctor on Covid-19.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr01,'20]:
New York City has the
most
inhabitants of any city over 65+ years old by a huge
margin (1.2 million New Yorkers are over the age of 65, twice
as many as second place city, Los Angeles - graph from
Jen
Hood). This has obvious implications for the higher death toll there.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr02,'20]:
The strategy of defining a "Covid-19 death" as an already very sick
person who died after testing positive with somewhat flaky PCR tests,
or merely a CAT scan (really?), will continue to inflate the death
toll due to this virus alone and divert attention from all other
causes and deaths. Autopsies are being suspended (vs. no suspension
of autopsies with more serious diseases like hepatitis, tuberculosis,
PRION diseases!) so we will never know the true numbers. The death toll
has been further inflated through the use of toxic nucleotide analogue
chain terminators (e.g., ribavirin, remdesivir), HIV protease inhibitors
(lopinavir, ritonavir) (really? block a protein that's not in covid?),
high corticosteroid doses, high antibiotic doses (e.g., azithromycin),
acetominophen, and ibuprofen, *none* of which have been shown to be
effective, as well as from lung damage and sepsis from overuse of
ventilators (oxygen toxcitiy, overuse of high pressure). Ventilators
prevent coughing, can introduce other infections, and can permanently
damage the lungs and vocal cords (VILI - ventilator induced lung injury).
This inflated death toll taken out of context of other deaths, has then
been breathlessly incorporated into click-greedy 'counter' and 'flatten
the curve' (see below) websites to utterly panic the population. Finally,
by mainly testing sick people as opposed to random population samples,
the lethality of the virus has been *greatly8 exaggerated.
So what is the current prospect? It is likely that during the next
week, the death toll will increase sharply, further terrifying all the
aging upper middle class McCarthy-ite-like dorks hiding out in their big
homes behind bales of toilet paper. The death toll will still be far
below the normal yearly flu death toll that in previous years has evoked
little media interest, including numerous previous cases where hospitals
overflowed. But this time, with all terrified upper-middle-class eyes
on the counter, those people will act like the world is ending.
But out of sight of the terrified yuppies, the bottom half of the
population recently tossed out of their jobs, tossed out of their
health care, and running on a few weeks of savings are buying guns
along with their toilet paper (83% year-on-year increase in handgun
sales this month). If they don't get money to buy food over the next
few weeks because of a glitch in money delivery (CNN reported the checks
could take 20 weeks to arrive) or get evicted for not paying the rent,
riots could erupt on short notice. They'll be coming for more than just
your toilet paper.
Practical people in government know this, and they know that there is
no way that the military could control angry crowds erupting out of a
65 million strong pool of unemployed people, many armed, with nothing
to lose. So I predict that there will finally be some attempts to
reign in the dangerously irresponsible media coverage over the next week
to avoid something really bad from developing about 3 weeks from now.
I'm guessing that there should be clear evidence in the main-sewer media
of cooler heads having prevailed in two weeks (by April 15).
Go
here
see why the "flatten the curve" simulations - the whole basis
for the disastrous lockdown - is a *complete crock*! None of the
simulations continued running them after the simulated lockdown ended.
Not unexpectedly (you don't need math to understand why), the same
non-flat spike in deaths occurs in the models as soon as the lockdown
ends because some infected people remain (duh!). 'Flatten the curve'
only works with an infinitely long lockdown.
Finally, for a breath of fresh air and some return to sanity, see this
excellent
new
video from Sucharit Bhakdi, a good man.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr03,'20]:
With all the breathless fear porn reports on the
sewer media of "ICU's overflowing!", "Emergency rooms overflowing!",
"Long lines to get tested!", and "Makeshift morgues!" (e.g., repeatedly,
worriedly emailed to me!), the reality on the ground for many hospitals
is that they are almost deserted because of having cancelled all of
their normal business (e.g., 'elective' surgery like tumor removal)
in preparation for a Medieval plague that likely won't ever arrive
for most of them. Citizen visits to a hospital the day after the
teevee has shown overflowing lines there have revealed
no lines, deserted
waiting rooms, and parked ambulances. Of course, a few overflows
*have* occurred; but those occur every year! It's more important
to consider the big picture. It seems likely that many of these
hospitals are hemorrhaging cash, which in some cases has forced
pay
cuts for frontline physicians and nurses.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr05,'20]:
The next two weeks in the US will be a useful test of mental fortitude for
vetting the analytical abilities of your friends and online alt-press
sources (et tu, Wolf Richter, Moon of Alabama, Saker, Xymph, Ilargi,
Unz?!). As the 'covid' death toll nears its peak in the US, the media
has pulled out all the stops with 24/7 fear porn covid coverage.
The 'lockdown left' at National Propaganda Radio yesterday showed
how to terrify your kids into crying on the air by talking about My
Corona (well-to-do kids across the world are now being imprinted with
'self-lockdown' as a normal state of affairs, similar to seasons); there
are unfounded internet rumors of martial law (who needs that when people
lock themselves down?!); a prominent story about Beverly Hills shops
boarding up their windows to keep out the zombies, suggests impending
riots; Anderson Cooper, former CIA guy, tells us that there were 911
coronavirus deaths on April 1 (hah), and so on.
Jon Rapopport has very usefully pointed out that gathering together a
bunch of fundamentally different kinds of deaths (even if it is not
very many deaths as deaths go) and then focusing the public's weak,
terrified minds on a *single* cause is a time worn 'political magicians'
trick. When someone dies at 80, overweight, with heart disease, high
blood pressure, and diabetes, perhaps a smoker, perhaps breathing the
worst air in the EU or China, *why should covid19 get all the credit*?
And what if the pneumonia death blow was actually caused by another,
commonly co-occurring but not-tested-for virus in that person?
And what about other diseases that take down a lot more people even
than the inflated covid totals? For example, heart attacks and strokes,
previously unheard of in old people eating starchy, 'poor-people' food,
now claim the lives of 66,000 people per *month* in the US, every month.
Perhaps we next need to lockdown In-N-Out Burger! But don't look
over there, look over here: We must save lives! Doctors and nurses are
9-11 heroes! Being able to maintain rational thinking under emotional
pressure is uncommon and highly valuable in a friend.
There is one kind of data that can't be biased by taking a bunch of
people out of the 'co-morbidity bin' and putting them into the 'there
is only one cause!' 'covid bin' - namely, all deaths. The re-binning
may explain why deaths from the pneumonia this year have fallen
of a cliff in NY. So far, the *all-deaths* curves for different
countries are unremarkable compared to previous years. Even in
Italy,
the all-deaths curve has not yet exceeded the bad flu season of 2016-2017.
In another month or so the answer will be available. Amazingly - well
amazing to a sheep-person - this will likely turn out to be an average
all-deaths year in most countries, including China and the US.
The economic and political damage done by this psyop will be enormous,
unpredictable, and could easily turn out to be worse than the virus.
It will certainly most severely impact the bottom half of the population.
We are witnessing the controlled demolition of the world economy - this
is 'austerity' on steroids. Another bad result is that the frightened
sheep will conclude that 'the lockdown saved them', and will *even more*
meekly walk back into their houses next winter. Armoured personnel
carriers and the Stasi are *so* last-century for the modern totalitarian.
But for a free thinking person, it may be time to find friends made of
sterner stuff.
Here is a superb second interview with
Knut Wittkowski,
an old biostatistician and epidemiologist from Rockerfeller University
who is now retired, and who can therefore speak frankly without threat
of retribution. One of his points is that the lockdown may actually
be *prolonging* the epidemic! Here is another interview with
Andrew
Mather by Mike Robinson and Patrick
Henningsen (Andrew's sound is a bit choppy but worth
listening). For 'strategy', see the utterly vile
Bill
Gates. And see
What
you CANNOT say about coronavirus by James Corbett for social studies.
I'll end with a new quote from the utterly repulsive Bill Gates,
explaining how he sees 'all-lockdown all the time' working in the future:
"Eventually what we'll have to have is certificates of who's a recovered
person, who's a vaccinated person ... Because you don't want people moving
around the world where you'll have some countries that won't have it
under control, sadly. You don't want to completely block off the ability
for people to go there and come back and move around. So eventually there
will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global
reopening up". We must stop this, people, while there is still time!
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr06,'20]:
Once the fear porn starts to wear off in another
few weeks, there is going to be an unbelievable blizzard of cooked
statistics and explanations and 'hero doctors' to justify the insane
decisions, made in parallel by governments across many different countries
(but not Sweden! Go Sweden!) to shut down the entire world's economy.
To cut through the cr@p, just pay attention to all-cause mortality,
which can't be faked by shuffling deaths into different bins.
I forced myself to choke down Gavin Newsom's press conference
today (CA gov). Thankfully, he got over his tic of saying
"surge" every other sentence. But the 'big news' was that
California was shipping out a pile of unused ventilators to
other states. Instead of asking about how the lockdown is
destroying
hospitals by taking away all their business, or asking why
the lockdown has not reduced the increase in flu deaths (10x covid
deaths!) the best the servile press worms could muster was 'shouldn't we
have kept those unused ventilators?'. Investigative journalism has died!
And why can't *one* reporter ask about basic numbers such as the CDC's
graph of pneumonia mortality including covid, which suggests this is
a
still a
standard pneumonia/flu death year!
On the way back from checking my MRI magnet as an 'essential person'
(one of the 'proud' few with 'papers' that allow me to visit my campus!),
I was treated to a fawning interview, on the execrable NPR "Marketplace",
with a female @ssbook executive, describing a gaggle of new censors
they had just hired. She described the censors as 'curators' (kewl)
for the newsfeed, hired to help filter out dangerous dissenting articles
on covid, and said that they were all (formerly? gelded?) journalists.
This is getting like the former East Germany where people directly or
indirectly involved with the Stasi comprised nearly 2% of the population -
to make everybody 'safer'.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr08,'20]:
From sniffing the air around the web today,
it looks like we might have officially transitioned into the
"covering-our-asses" stage. I say, don't focus all of the coming
anger on the politicians, but also call out the supposed 'scientists'
who aided and abetted "The Great Madness". They are also responsible
for the upcoming terrible toll of evictions, foreclosures, widespread
failure of small businesses, and suicides across the world that
are being unleashed as we speak. They should be made to pay, too.
Instead, they will be showered with money for lining up at a new,
revolting 'corona science' feeding trough, similar to what happened
with the HIV/AIDS boondoggle 25 years ago. That didn't buy much in
the end, eh? - after blowing many billions of dollars, there is still
no AIDS vaccine, and the AIDS drugs are as toxic, not to mention just
as directly immune-system-suppressing (!) as they were 20 years ago.
Finally, here is where to find useful graphs describing the current
(unremarkable) pneumonia/flu/covid season in the context of previous years
in the
US
(CDC percent deaths from pneumonia/flu/covid) and in the
EU (all-cause mortality).
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr09,'20]:
This looks like signs of "covering-our-asses"
desperation at the CDC. Go to the CDC covid19 site and look at out
Table 1.
As you can see in the second and third columns, the expected number
of pneumonia deaths was running about 3500 per week, which was within
in +/- 10% of last year. Then on Apr 4, the number of pneumonia
deaths dropped off a cliff (47% of expected) as the number of covid
deaths jumped. Also remember that on Mar 24, the CDC issued
new
policies that a "covid" death could be reported without requiring
a positive covid test! This new wave of unverified "covid" deaths is
now coming through.
This is reminiscent of the 2009 swine flu scandal at the CDC when they
were receiving samples from states later in the outbreak that were
virtually all swine flu negative. The CDC's response was to tell the
states that they should stop sending in samples and just call all the
cases swine flu. The subtext back then was that they has a sh$tload
of unsold but now-unneeded swine flu vaccine doses. This scandal was
only uncovered later via FOIA requests to the CDC, which refused to
provide any data, and so then to individual states, who did provide the
incriminating data.
One reason for race to lockdown I haven't thought about for a while is
the possibility that the virus was an escaped gain-of-function experiment
involving serial lab animal passage (or perhaps, even an outright military
bioweapon), and that some government officials were privately made aware
of this. Researchers (US, Chinese, military) have been tinkering with
bat coronavirus spike proteins and other functionality such as ACE2
ligands for years. I think this remains a possibility, but I am not
expert enough in sequence analysis to assess the probability of this.
That it may have turned out to be not as virulent as perhaps originally
feared is probably just a reflection of our imperfect understanding of
biological complexity - the stunning, unmeasureably complex interactions
that happen as a virus sweeps through large populations.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr10,'20]:
The CDC numbers for the week ending 4/4/2020 that I
reported on one day ago have now changed, probably due to a combination of
new data and new data reporting policies; the number of reported pneumonia
deaths went up as well as the percent of expected deaths (47% to 58%).
But there was still a sudden drop in pneumonia as 'covid' deaths jumped
up. Browsing around the web, it looks like the covid-19 re-binning first
reported in late March from New York (no positive covid test required
to list a death as covid) has gone countrywide. Here is
another
example from Minnesota, from a few days ago, describing
statewide instructions on how, essentially, to fake death
certificates, from a doctor who is also a state senator; hospitals
are getting paid a lot more ($39,000) from Medicare if a patient
is put on a ventilator. And here is another report from
Montanaon how 'covid-19'
death certificates are being manipulated.
A critical piece of information to keep in mind is that the normal
pneumonia epidemic that sweeps the US (and the world) every year killing
an average of 45,000 people in the US (and half a million or more
people in the world) is *never* stopped by (flu) vaccines or drugs *or*
lockdowns! Tests show that the flu vaccine is effective in less than 10%
of cases of flu-like illness, among other thing because there are many
different other viruses that cause flu-like illness. What causes the
'flu' (defined as a large collection of different viruses!) to go away
is a combination of herd immunity and viral mutation during passage
through the population, *not* vaccines or drugs or lockdowns. Covid,
unsurprisingly, is turning out to be similar.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr12,'20]:
The NYT's
money
shot will be used to try to whip the crowd back into shape
(e.g., see Unz using it this way in his comments section, for shame,
Ron). It leaves out the crucial contextual fact that NYC has
*by
far* the most people over age 65 of any city (1.2 million,
the next closest city is LA with 0.48 million 65+). The much
more important worldwide covid death total is less than 1/5
the normal yearly worldwide pneumonia/flu death total, which
*every year* causes *nobody* to bat an eye. Here is a new
Ioannidis
study showing that for most people, the risk of covid resembles the risk
of driving, even in the hotspots, and that we should focus our efforts on
protecting high-risk elderly individuals. Fight the power! A vicious,
dystopian medical/information/industrial/banker complex is being rapidly
constructed by google, @ssbook, apple, Jared Kushner, criminal bankers,
Anthony
"Schnabel" Fauci, and the military, all during the largest upward
transfer of wealth in human history during the controlled demolition of
the world economy. It's now or never, do or die a slave (good to see
Caitlin Johnstone starting to regain her composure!).
For the latest science, see the reliable 'swiss doctor on covid' from
Swiss Propaganda Research
just updated today.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr13,'20]:
The sound of Fauci trying to shift blame
suggests to me that that the adults in the room have finally
realized that they must relax the lockdown/impoverishment of the
bottom third of the population before the weather gets hot. There have
been incredible lines at food banks while ugly bankers are given
*trillions*
of dollars to cover their gambling losses. They are filthy criminals!
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr14,'20]:
Michael Greger just posted information-filled
video on the recent evolution of flu viruses from 2011 entitled
Flu factories.
I predict it won't be popular with chicken-breast-eating boomers,
karens, and millenials, who will instead want to keep eating their
chicken breasts but demand safety in the form of having their chickens
and pigs also vaccinated. In fact, I just read in Science last month
that there is already work on trying to vaccinate European *wild boar*
against factory-farm-evolved pig hemorrhagic fever (like ebola) that
has been transferred into wild populations.
Good luck with that. There is no HIV vaccine after billions of
dollars and 30 years of work (latest test HIV vaccine failed a few
months ago). And the current flu vaccines only help maybe 1/8 of
people with the particular strains of flu they are made against,
but which constitute only 1/8 of of the sicknesses presenting as
"flu" (remember, there are a quarter of a million *known* human
viruses, and they all evolve every year) - so we've got 1/8 times
1/8 equals 1/64 of the problem covered, well, at least when the flu
vaccine isn't making a subsequent flu infection *more* severe
like
it did in 2009.
Probably nothing that a new 'Bill Gates Vaccine
Partnership Institute' at the NIH headed by
Anthony Quack
don't-shake-my-hand Fauci with a trillion dollars of funding couldn't
fix, right? I'm sure we could all adapt to getting a weekly vaccine
injection from our 5G-enabled refrigerators to 'keep us safe'.
Finally, with respect to the current virus, it remains a possibility
that it was the result of an escaped gain-of-function experiment,
either from the Wuhan Institute of Virology's Disease Engineering
Technical Research Center (a stone's throw from the infamous wet
market) or from USAMRIID, both of which have had multiple biosecurity
breaches. As far back as 2008, 'health research' at University
of North Carolina on civet coronaviruses involved passaging them
through
mammalian ACE2 receptor cells, possibly using kidney or brain cells.
And bat coronaviruses with ACE2 receptor binding were already
in
the lab by 2013. For more details and
lots of references to the original scientific literature, see
harvardtothebighouse.
Of course, despite its good references, that site is also being used
to 'catapult the hysteria' (N.B.: besides having been in jail for
sexually abusing a 13-year-old, the Harvard-educated author of that
site previously worked for the NSA!). It would be a true testament to
human ingenuity if the gain-of-function crazies were able to beat the
efficient semi-'natural' evolution of hyper-virulence made possible
by WWI-trench-like concentrated animal feeding operations like those
illustrated in the Greger video. But, wherever the virus came from,
the robust layered defenses of biology have won in the end; the new
coronavirus turned out to be just another bad pneumonia year, mostly
killing older individuals with comorbidities (the strongest correlation
being obesity), like pneumonia viruses have *always* has done.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr15,'20]:
One of the great ironies of the idiotic 'auto-fascist' lockdown is that
it is also executing a controlled demolition of the bloated 'sick care'
healthcare industry! The great majority of hospitals remain empty, after
having cancelled all their normal business but only having received
a trickle of the expected covid cases. All the hastily constructed
'overflow' facilities in the US and the UK have gone completely
unused. As a result, hospitals are hemorrhaging cash, and the
vulture
capitalists, who literally
own the doctors and nurses in them, are
laying
off nurses and doctors and cutting their pay. Despite the 'sick
care' industry's terrible track record trying to use surgery and drugs
to fix the terrible, pandemic toll of a bad diet (obesity, heart disease,
diabetes, strokes, cancer, autoimmune disease and so on - way more carnage
than covid), it has nevertheless grown to 20% of the economy in the US.
Though I have often complained about that bloat (and am positive that
the composition of one ton of food every human eats per year is *much*
more powerful medicine than drug-and-surgery hospital medicine), I
respect doctors and nurses because they have typically gone into the
field with the intent to help people. I have only pure hatred toward
the vulture capitalist money changers who are now profitting by throwing
them out of work. Instead of implementing a Stasi-like witch-hunt again
neighbors without masks, how about calling out those f--kers instead,
you lockdown 'left' loonies?
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr16,'20]:
Last week, Tucker Carlson
highlighted this
March 30 quote from Michael Ryan, Executive Director at the WHO Health
Emergencies Program: "In most parts of the world, due to lockdown, most
of the transmission that's actually happening in many countries now is
happening in the household, at family level. In some senses, transmission
has been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units. Now we
need to go and look in families and find those people who may be sick
and remove them and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner". This
quote was favorably parrotted in Bloomberg News and the Times UK.
I don't watch Fox news and I'm not right wing, but I absolutely agree that
we must stop this dystopian totalitarian overreach NOW! We have to block
the next lockdown *before* it gets off the ground! I don't even have
kids, but you have to be brainwashed to think that yearly lockdowns with
"safe and dignified" removal of your family members by an all powerful,
global 'covid protective service' is OK. This has nothing to do with
Trump or Tucker Carlson. It has to do with what you consider 'normal'.
If this is your normal, I want nothing to do with you.
As usual, an excellent breath of fresh air and scientific
sanity comes from the latest update at
A
swiss doctor on covid-19. Let the "
The Great Retreat" continue!
- even as 'everybody now dies of coronavirus'. All the upper middle
class stay-home-with-full-salary covidiots who prophesied exponential
doom will conveniently forget how scared and wrong they were, but more
critically, they will forget (1) how much they damaged the lives of
poorer people, (2) how many trillions of dollars in losses they helped
cause, (3) how they helped initiate the greatest upward transfer of
wealth as super rich people soon begin buying distressed assets, and
(4) how they promoted totalitarian surveillance, forced injections, and
'vaccine ankle bracelets' courtesy of the vile Bill Gates. For shame.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr19,'20]:
About 3 weeks ago (beginning of April) I was expecting to see clear
signs by now that sanity was beginning to prevail and that the insane
and dangerous lockdown, which has resulted in throwing the bottom third
of the population out of work, not to mention out of their health care,
would be winding down before even more damage occurs. And there have
been some signs of that as the embarrassingly incompetent daily 'health
press conferences' have gotten less hysterical about the ventilator
inventory and have begun to discuss reopening society.
However, there is a fly in the ointment, given the
preposterous 'criteria' some health administrators seem to
be using (e.g., in CA). Because testing is still ramping
up, and is still confined mostly to people with some kind of
respiratory symptoms, that means that the number of 'cases',
defined
as someone with a positive PCR test, will continue to increase as more and
more people are tested, even if the number of cases relative to the number
of tests doesn't change (indicating infection rates aren't increasing).
Anybody who has taken introductory statistics (really, anyone with a high
school math background!) should know this. But the health administrators
at the press conferences seem so clueless that I am beginning to wonder!
This doesn't even consider that the PCR test has been shown in some cases
to have as high as a 50% false positive rate (!). These horribly faulty
'criteria' could further delay reopening the world's economy.
And this doesn't consider the inflation of the covid death total
as a result of the the new CDC rules, now in place now for a month,
that don't even require a positive covid test in order for a death
to be put into the covid bin. For example, NYC recently added about
3,800 deaths to the covid total, 38% of all NYC 'covid deaths',
without
a (faulty!) positive covid test.
An example of this continuing madness comes from New York City, where on
Apr 16, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that he does not expect NYC to open
until July or August (!). This immediately made me think (with a Cosa
Nostra accent), "Nice city you've got here; it would be a shame if it
accidentally caught fire..." Seriously, aren't there *any* adults in
the room? These people can't *really* be thinking that they are going
to be running a NYC lockdown in July at 90 degrees, 100% humidity?
Over the weekend, there were some demonstrations in downtown San Diego in
favor of reopening the city. They crowd was an interesting concoction
of small business people, Trumpies, and lefties in Guy Fawkes masks.
There was a deafening din of honking from passing cars and big trucks, and
the police looked uneasy. Few people were wearing masks, and they were
standing 'too close'. The nooz only interviewed a small businessman with
a mask who argued we should be reopening and finished with an agitated
older man (with his mask off!) saying that these people were somehow
endangering his immune-compromised daughter. The police eventually set
up a road block to stop the cars and trucks from driving back and forth
and honking, but they didn't arrest anyone for 'not social distancing'.
This didn't have the atmosphere of a peecee antiwar demonstration;
there was palpable, overt anger.
Doug Lisle and Jen Howk
here,
discuss the worldwide numbers suggesting that the death rate is 0.1% to
0.2%, which is similar to the flu. They are rightly frustrated that there
has been weirdly little focus on trying to determine that critical number,
for example, by some random sampling of populations - a straightforward,
inexpensive strategy that any epidemiologist would have advised.
John Ioannidis and colleagues at Stanford have just now done that,
performing antibody tests on a random sample of 3300 people in Santa
Clara county. They found 2.5% to 4.2% of the county infected, a rate
50-85x larger than previously thought in that area when using the
statistically nonsensical 'test-only-sick-people method', suggesting
that the covid virus in fact has similar lethality to the seasonal
flu. John Ioannidis summarizes the finding in a new short video
here
(the scientific paper can be found
here).
This new video seems to be getting a little more traction on youtube
this time. I can only hope that whatever is left of the free press
will finally pick their b@lls off the floor and begin to report this.
Note that this has nothing to do with lockdown versus no lockdown -
it's about the raw lethality of the virus once you get it; it's the
critical thing you need to know to determine whether or not to lockdown!
But of course, few 'news' reporters will have the courage, understandably,
to risk their jobs. Instead, the yellow press will frame this as a
left-right issue or a Trump issue, they will *completely* ignore the
science, and they will continue to catapult what has become Russiagate
3.0, because that's what will make their vile financial overlords more
money. Tragic. The resulting madness of crowds, with their frightened
minds concentrated on entirely the wrong thing, reminds me of early 19th
century London. There everyday people were terrified of 'night miasmas'
so they would tightly seal their windows at night to keep them out,
sometimes killing themselves and their family from hydrogen sulfide
poisoning - because they were also routinely dumping their chamber pots
into their basements.
I suppose I'm now hoping that sanity
begins to return by the beginning of May!
This
is *not* a still from the film version
of 1984. Here is the critical
first
step in 'fighting' the coronavirus.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr22,'20]:
It is a good sign that the main sewer media seems to be slightly
toning down the wall-to-wall hysteria. For example, the media finally
begrudgingly reported that the population infection rate is 50 or 100x
higher than previously reported (in healthy people). But then it rarely
draws out the key significance of this finding, which is that the virus
is *much* less deadly than originally feared.
But there is still endless yammering about 'hero nurses' and we must
continue lockdown 'until we get the vaccine'. The critical fact
that after decades of trying, there has *never* been a successful
vaccine for a coronavirus (the ones they made for SARS actually
made the disease *worse*!) somehow doesn't make it into the reports.
And there is never any recognition that the large range of viruses
causing flu outbreaks *always* go away on their own, and *never* by
vaccine (e.g., SARS!). I also hear endless comparisons with the 1918
flu. But there is ample evidence that covid is *unlike* the 1918 flu,
whose extreme lethality was probably bred in trenches where lethality
has no downside for viral transmission (because fresh living 'recruits'
constantly get added), and which unusually killed many more young people
(most of whom, incidentally, died of bacterial infections, according to
FireFauci
himself!). The basic covid death numbers are never put into proper
context. For example, there was an absolutely awful article in the
Economist with scary red death spikes; they could have cut the cr@p
fancy graphics and just posted a link to this single useful
EuroMOMO graph. They even mentioned
EuroMOMO, but cast aspersions by saying they couldn't find the death
numbers in the graph, which is trivial to find from their front page.
Whatever.
A good chunk of the alt press is not much better and unfortunately often
has similar 'eyeballs' monetary incentives to 'catapult the hysteria'
to the main sewer media (e.g., Chris Martenson trying to 'debunk' the
Ioannidis Stanford study in the context of his long stream of hysteria
videos having driven massive increase in hits to his site). Nevertheless,
it boggles my mind a bit to see the nonsense at sites across the entire
political as well as subject-area spectrum (e.g., ziohedge, Moon of
Alabama, Ilargi/automaticearth, peakoilbarrel, wolfstreet, Tim Watkins, Matt
Taibbi, Ron Unz, xymph, World Socialist Web Site, Paul Craig Roberts,
and many others). I am guessing that part of the 'sheeps from the goats'
here might come from the perceived self-health of the commentators.
The 'lockdown left' (e.g., commondreams) continues to suffer a
'rebound case' of the worst TDS ever, and has tied itself in knots
defending the lockdown, working in white priveledge (!), all the
while somehow missing the fact that real starvation is next on the
docket for Africa. Listen to this interview with David Beasley, exec
director of the UN's World Food program warning of the risk of
biblical famines in
Africa caused by interruption of supply lines and border closings for
'safety'. The interviewer so desperate to catapult the hysteria and
Trumpify things that she seemed unable even comprehend what Beasley
was saying.
In polls, many people report being worried about the surveillance
implications of contact tracing, vaccine certificates,
and so on. They are certainly right to be worried.
right
to be worried But one thing this supposed worry omits is that all the
personal-tracking-device mechanisms for surveillance constructed over the
past 10 years by google and @ssbook and twitface are *already* operative!
So, people are worried about surveillance, while already having been
surveilled, and yet they want even *more* surveillance for their own
'safety'?? That's logical...
Many on the so-called 'left' are celebrating the crash of oil
and negative oil prices, even while running to the porch to pick
up something shipped across the ocean with diesel, put on a diesel
train, then a diesel truck, then a gasoline van to their doorstep.
If it was food, it was grown, watered, fertilized, and harvested
using fossil fuel. Because of the temporary, but large, glut
(almost a 30% drop in oil US usage because of the lockdown, N.B.:,
which means that 70% was still used, world numbers are roughtly 20% and
80%) coupled with the inability to store large amount of oil,
massive
changes are rippling through the oil patches.
From a small oil producer (stripper wells) from the comments at
peakoilbarrel.com: "Everything is being shut in today in our
field and throughout our Basin. All of it. Leases that have
been in continuous production since prior to WWI. Leases we have
continuously produced for over 40 years". Though there has been
a lot of talk of inflation as the filthy rich are bailed out with
trillions of dollars for their bad gambling bets, it is pretty clear
that we are now entering a *deflationary* whirlpool as predicted
by astute commentators in the oil business (see Petro from
way
back in 2016). This will result in the destruction of
never-net-profitable debt-based low energy return on energy investment
oil business (deepwater, fracking, even tar sands), which will sharply
cut into production. But then, at an unpredictable time over the next
few years, the price will spike as, perhaps, a war breaks out, or as the
constricted demand finally catches up to constricted supply. We are
still adding two complete California's of people (80 million people)
to the world every year. They will need houses and concrete and steel
and sewers and roads and cell phones (for tracking, of course!) and
food and clothes and computers (for Zoom, of course) - 80 million more
units of these, just for next year, 80 million more the year after that.
Very little of that stuff is going to be made with the 3% of total human
energy use that comes from wind and solar.
Finally, in San Diego, some parks were partially opened, perhaps a result
of the angry demonstrations over the weekend. One organizer of last
weekend's downtown San Diego demonstration, Naomi Sori, was arrested
for 'not social distancing' and is facing a fine and 90 days in jail.
Since the covid death toll is only 10% of the yearly death toll from
inhalation of second hand smoke, maybe that means we should have two
and a half years in jail for smoking where other people can smell it?
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr29,'20]:
Over the past week, the youtube censors were busy scrubbing useful
content (e.g., Dr. Daniel Erickson's video, Andrew Kaufman's channel).
Now google presents you with the 'debunking' videos but not the originals.
Cameron Kyle-Sidell's brave video on lung damage and death from widespread
inappropriate use of ventilators got him reassinged from the ICU.
Locally, in San Diego, even though the roughly 100 covid deaths haven't
remotely approached the 350 deaths in the unsung 2017-2018 flu season, we
have gotten a 'masks forever' decree. There were appalling suggestions
today by local tinpot health dictators on how parents should wear masks
in the home so children will learn that everyone will always wear masks,
everywhere, forever. It makes me think of the mass hysteria of the Salem
witch trials. In a year or two, many 'Ann Putnam' figures may apologize,
but the damage and death they will have caused can't be undone.
Here was a useful article from a NY doctor, Daniel G. Murphy:
"I've
worked in the coronavirus front line - and I
say it's time to start opening up". For some
detailed background on how vaccines can go wrong, see
The
Dengvaxia disaster was twenty years in the making -
what will happen with a rushed COVID-10 vaccine? from
Children's Health Defense on the dengue virus vaccine (dengue is a
flavivirus). Finally, here is a less scrubbable version of the
Daniel
W. Erickson COVID-19 video. The original version was
scrubbed by youtube as were subsequent attempts by many other
people to re-upload it. Here is a new interview with Andrew
Kaufman, whose entire youtube video channel was scrubbed, now on
LondonReal.
Here is the latest powerful intervsew with
Knut
Wittkowski. And finally,
Iain
Davis on health problems (increase in all-cause mortality) from
the lockdown in the UK.
It's likely to be a hot summer because of the sudden reduction
in atmospheric aerosols as a result of the sudden drop in flying and
driving; the temporary effect could be as much as 25% or more of total
warming since 1750. Continuing the lockdowns into the summer could
result in third-world-like ruptures of food supply chains and riots in
big US cities. I'm still guessing there are some adults in the room who
realize that this would be highly counterproductive and much worse than
covid, and who will begin to reign in the tinpot dictator governors and
mayors, and the fear porn yellow press.
[The corona-panic: Update: May02,'20]:
According to
Newsweek
(!), Fauci funded the Wuhan bat coronavirus gain-of-function
studies, temporarily outlawed in the US, with a total of $7.4
million through the NIH. How come this embarrassing excuse for
a human, the dancing Fauci, gets to tell us we won't ever be
able to shake hands again? He should be in jail!! The second
(gain-of-function) part of the project was *just* cancelled on 24 Apr
2020. If you want to be creeped out, check out this short
Paul DeRienzo interview
with Harry Vox, recorded in NYC in Oct 2014, on the subject of the
"Lockstep scenario" (one of 4 scenarios) described in this
2010
PDF. With all the gain-of-function nasties that have been made or
reconstructed in the lab (e.g., the 1918 flu, which was *much* nastier
than covid19), it's easy to imagine the possibility of a 'booster shot',
when the corona hysteria starts to fade in a few months.
From Jim Stone: "How does coronavirus know it should not go into Wal
Mart but that it should INFEST small businesses?
[The corona-panic: Update: May04,'20]:
Today, the CDC currently lists a total of 38K confirmed covid deaths
here,
with deaths starting to trail off for the (N.B.: less fully reported)
weeks ending 4/25 and 5/2. However, this is about half the current
'official' news media number of covid deaths (67K) posted
up
front on the site (both sample numbers from May04). Two weeks ago,
the two numbers were about the same. The CDC says this is beccause
"of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death
certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting
purposes" and because the higher number comes from "case notifications
received by CDC from U.S. public health jurisdictions and the National
Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) and includes both
confirmed and probable deaths". Hopefully, this is actually true, and we
have not reached the point of "doublethink" (George Orwell) with this "
virus of
mass destruction" - the practiced ability to think two contradictory
thoughts at the same time.
Here are two other useful links with data going back a few years to
put things in slightly better historical perspective (from the
CDC
and
EuroMOMO). It's worth
noting that graphs showing one kind of disease (e.g., flu/covid) as a
percentage of all deaths (CDC graph) are the most sensitive to changes
in reporting 'standards' (e.g., changing to not requiring a positive
covid test to declare a death from covid, or counting a heart attack
death with a positive covid test as a covid death). The numbers
most resistant to manipulation are all-cause mortality (EuroMOMO
link). Here is an excellent article from Iain Davis on the
statistical
mess that has been created in the UK by new, special-purpose
death-reporting rules that were instituted partway through the epidemic
that only apply to 'covid' deaths but not any other type of death.
The CDC did the same thing around the same time (24 March 2020).
Because there are additional deaths due to the lockdown (e.g., heart
attack victim failing to go in soon enough into a semi-closed hospital),
it will be more difficult to objectively assess the lockdown.
In the US, it is eminently sensible to be suspicious of the pharma-funded
CDC given previous well-documented shenanigans there at the end of
the 2009 swine flu 'pandemic', where the CDC was internally finding
that almost none of the samples being sent to them were positive for
swine flu, yet were telling hospitals sending in data to report all the
cases as swine flu, presumably because they had prepared a huge number
of swine flu vaccine doses that would no longer be needed. Now, there
is a much longer line of vaccine-makers lining up at the new covid trough,
not only in the US but across the world. Bill Gates is now the largest
funder of the WHO.
I am seriously *not* looking forward to the end of May.
That's probably when some critical supply chains may
begin to snap, bringing our Wile E. Coyote suspended-in-air
moment to an end. Hospitals in California have reported a
$14
billion dollar loss over the last month as a result of postponing
virtually everything in order to prepare for the covid 'surge' that never
came (in San Diego, the 2017-2018 flu season killed almost 3x as many people
as covid). This has probably resulted in increased deaths that should
be reported along with just 'covid' deaths. But our tinpot California
governor just announced the lockdown will go all the way through to the
end of May. Good luck with that :-{
Finally, it's good to see Pennyforyourthoughts regained her balance
:-} and pointed out that Woodstock and Altamont occurred in the middle
of the H3N2 Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968/69, which killed 1 million
people worldwide.
[The corona-panic: Update: May06,'20]:
I really got steamed up this morning
when I read the latest plans for 'reopening' UCSD
here,
which involve testing the entire student body with the flaky RT-qPCR
(real-time reverse-translation 'quantitative' polymerase chain reaction
test) and then tracking them all up the wazoo.
This is George Orwell's vision of "a boot stamping on a human face,
forever", unfolding right before our eyes. As I've already said, it
doesn't matter if it's a 'right' or 'left' boot. It's a frigging boot!
And for what? To protect the overpaid, comorbid faculty? The students
aren't going to get sick! They're the ones that are acquiring the herd
immunity that makes viruses go away! Like the H3N2 Hong Kong flu that
killed a million worldwide, the year of Woodstock and Altamont.
If this is what the university has become, I don't want anything to do
with it!
It won't be long before the students will be required to get a forced,
experimental, Bill Gates La Jolla biotech electroporated DNA gene therapy
'vaccine' injection for the great privilege of coming to campus to
receive wisdom from the execrable comorbids.
Now, I still regard myself as super, extreme, far left. But take a watch
at this video all the way to the end, of an ex-marine chiropractor from
San Diego non-violently talking the Sacramento fascist riot police into
standing down.
He's a Mario Savio from the right! Truth to power! Where is the
f***ing left? They've utterly lost their way! Their hysterical panic
reminds me of the Salem witch trials.
[after some anger management] Finally, check out the latest comprehensive
update at
A
Swiss Doctor on Covid 19.
[The corona-panic: Update: May07,'20]:
The effects of vaccines designed to cause immunity to one virus may have
paradoxical effects on infection by other viruses. For example,
this
study done by the US military and published in Jan 2020 showed that
getting a flu vaccine *increased* the chance of a subsequent coronavirus
infection by 36% (go to Table 5). It's worth noting that a large flu
vaccination program (VIQCC or QIVc - containing 4 flu virus types)
was rolled out in Northern Italy in late 2019.
[The corona-panic: Update: May09,'20]:
An unpleasant development that had slipped under
my not-very-good radar was the May 1 proposed House
of Representatives bill, symbolically numbered
6666,
the "TRACE Act", to frighten the proles. The text is vague but menacing:
"To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants
to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID19, and
related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units
and, as necessary, *at individual's residences*, *and for other purposes*".
The proposal contains an awful lot of money ($100 billion for one
year), which is two and a half times the size of the entire NIH budget.
It was introduced by Bobby Rush, a 73 year old Illinois congressman
[Update Jun13,'20: Bobby Rush took part in an 12-19 Aug 2019 even
in Rwanda underwritten by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundataion and
Rockerfeller Brothers Fund]. I remember him well from the 1960's.
He was the co-founder of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers.
The Black Panthers were heavily compromised by the FBI CounterIntelPro.
I never trusted Eldridge Cleaver (ghost written articles in Ramparts)
who went on to try to market fashionable men's trousers with codpieces.
But Fred Hampton was the real deal (and was killed by police in the middle
of the night). But back to Bobby Rush. After the Black Panthers, he
eventually went to Divinity school. Then last year, he endorsed Kamala
Harris, but when she dropped out, he went to work for Michael Bloomberg.
Writing those last sentences makes me feel like somebody put something
in my water.
As the 'all-COVID-all-the-time' death toll mounts, doctors have reported
that the number of adminssions for heart attack and strokes have dropped
by
half.
If you think that it's possible that unhealthy Americans halved their
heart disease overnight, then best to keep that diaper over your mouth
because I might accidentally flick some spittle in your general direction.
The depths to with the so-called 'left' has sunk amazes me. Thanks to my
AAAS subscription, in a Community Digest discussion thread 'debunking'
the 'woman virologist who shall not be named', I read this: "Here is a
link to a site that has some pro vaccine jewelry and other items that
celebrate science, women in science etc". The site is "dissentpins".
This is "dissent" in the 21st century - pro-vaccine shirt pins. It is
pure Orwell. Even though 'there is only one future', that doesn't make
me hate it any less.
[The corona-panic: Update: May13,'20]:
Yesterday, the head of the California State University system handed
down a decree that almost all classes will be conducted virtually in
Fall 2020. This looks like the beginning of the controlled demolition
of non-elite university systems.
The constant idiotic media drumbeat of 'second wave' scare pieces,
the demand for a vaccine before the possibility of reopening (in the
context of the likely impossibility of making such a thing!), and the
Salem-witch-trial-like hysteria that will likely reoccur during even the
whiff of the next flu season (and during every succeeding flu season)
suggest that non-rich-person universities are going to be gradually
dismantled over the next decade into dour, online gulags for 'the rest
of us'. This will definitively bring to a sudden halt the ridiculous
inflation in the cost of college.
It has been soul-destroying to see my fellow academics virtually peeing
their pants in fear, worried about the students infecting them, while
at the same time, barely seeing the momentous changes that are occurring
right in front of their eyes, and not even raising a whisper in protest.
I suppose the best I can say at this point is that it has been a good run!
One wild card is what will be happening during the later part of this
likely extra-hot summer (because of reduced aerosols). If a localized
disruption of food supply chains were to occur in a major city with
the bottom third of the population out of work, starting to run out of
unemployment benefits, and out of food, this could easily result in a
major riot. The resulting social disruption could refocus fear on real
things, and might have the potential to restore some power to the few
remaining 'adults in the room'.
Finally, here is an excellent interview with
Professor Dolores
Cahill debunking the covid-19 narrative. This is a re-upload and
youtube will no doubt soon censor the video, so if the link is bad,
just google "Dolores Cahill covid" to find another re-upload.
[The corona-panic: Update: May17,'20]:
The best single (zero-based) graph (scroll down one page) on the
overall progress of the 'pandemic' in the US is from the
CDC
itself. It is a weekly (not cumulative) all-cause mortality death
count. Go
here for a comparable
graph from the EU.
You can see that the spike in deaths over a few weeks in early April 2020
(N.B.: which must have come from an early-mid-March peak of infections
that had already occurred *just before* the lockdowns were put in place)
was slightly higher than the 2017-2018 flu spike (but not as high as
earlier, not-shown yearly peaks). This is not the final answer because
the most recent weeks will still need to be incremented a bit as the
last of the data trickles in. But the overall picture is roughly correct.
Note that since this is a weekly graph, not a cumulative graph. When you
put this in the context of all deaths, the total excess deaths (assuming
generously that they were all 'because covid') compared to the 'unsung'
2017-2018 US flu season, is at most 20,000 deaths, which is a drop in
the bucket of 2,800,000 million total US deaths every year. This is
something like 0.7% excess deaths, in the range of year-to-year 'noise'
(it's normal that a different exact mix of things will kill people in
different years).
But the excess deaths in the spike were probably not all 'because
covid'! For example, a number of those excess deaths were due to
the fact that the number of emergency room admissions for heart
attacks and strokes (the leading cause of death) has dropped by
*50%*, because people were too afraid to come into the hospitals
(many almost deserted!), and get separated from their family, and
instead just toughed out their heart attacks and strokes at home,
sometimes dying. In fact, the 'covid collateral damage' deaths may
account for a larger part of the total excess deaths than covid! A
new BMJ study
suggests that only 1/3 of the excess deaths were in fact due to covid.
The excess deaths total also includes unnecessary deaths caused,
for example, by Cuomo when he ordered nursing homes to take back old
people who had been infected with covid, which resulted in carnage there
(compare in Canada, where *80%* of the 'covid' deaths were in nursing
homes, with tragic scenes where most of the staff fled in fear, leaving
old people wandering around dehydrated and hungry).
I know that graphs and data don't make any difference for most people,
because the 'Salem witch trial'-like psychology is still raging in over
half of the population. I was more hopeful a few weeks ago that the
madness would have begun to fade by now. But now, there are literally
billions of people who have been wearing their 'tin foil' face diapers
for so long that they will be extremely fearful probably for the next
year to ever go outside without one; it just won't feel safe to them.
Those people have failed to practice 'media distancing' (Brendan O'Neill).
It's worth keeping in mind, however, that when the fear finally passes,
and the horrifying (and more deadly) economic consequences begin to play
out, as in many previous historical episodes, the snitches and petty
tyrants (e.g., the Oregon official who sent Child Protective Services
after a woman who dared to re-open her salon business), will finally be
harshly dealt with.
Looking forward, the thing that worries me is, when I look back at the
Depression, is that there was a vicious but almost invisible crushing of
bottom half of the population. There were probably 1-2 million excess
deaths from deprivation and despair during that time. However, life
for the top half of the population went on, more or less like normal.
There was no uprising. Though people did begin to get radicalized, the
inequality-lowering investments of the New Deal, and especially, putting
unemployed men to work with the CCC succeeding in heading that off.
However, the New Deal was possible because we were on the perfect
exponential increase in fossil fuel energy usage that won't be
possible this time. The intent this time, I think, will be to cement in
devastating austerity. We can print money but we can't print net energy;
net energy, not money, is what drives a recovery.
I'm really uncertain as to what might happen next! If there is
no uprising [N.B.: written 1 week before George Floyd killing], in
parallel with what happened during the Depression, we could be looking
at multiple millions of silent excess deaths, just in the US, over the
next few years as just a fraction of the 50 million instantly-lost jobs
lost slowly come back and the unemployment payments that are currently
suspending Wile E. Coyote in midair expire in late summer 2020. If these
excess deaths occur, amazingly, I think they won't be very visible or
'newsworthy' because they won't form a peak, but rather they will just
'raise the whole curve'. Many of these will be deaths from despair.
The deplorable media, online and otherwise, will try to completely
scrub this order-of-magnitude larger human catastrophe caused by the
ill-considered lockdown from the public consciousness.
A different possibility is that social order could begin to
catastrophically break down toward the end of what could be an extra-hot
summer. Rich New Yorkers (the top 5% of the population) have already
fled the city to their second homes, perhaps with this expectation.
Currently, I would guess that this is less likely, because the natural
tendency of people to rebel has been pacified by personal surveillance
devices and software.
One of the things that I bring up with people obsessed with 'Trump this'
or 'Republican that' is the larger/global scene. Trump didn't cause the
coordinated worldwide lockdown. Trump isn't using the military to shoot
hungry people trying to leave their houses in Uganda. Trump didn't create
the totalitarian surveillance state now being further developed with the
"TRACE Act" (and many parallel proposals). Almost all of this infernal
worldwide apparatus *already* existed before the covid coup, and was
constructed by the multinational CIA, NSA, Amazon, Google, Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn and so on, and accepted by people into their lives
voluntarily, in exchange for pitifully minimal 'conveniences'.
As Jon Rappoport points out, this is a 10,000 year war; there is no
quick solution to ending the entrancement and unconscious fear that
permeates the minds of a majority of the population, fighting off the
surveillance medical/industrial uber-state, and taking back control
from the worldwide banking cartel. The only way to end this lockdown,
and the next lockdown, and the one after that, will be for people to
free their minds. Perhaps the threat of the military coming door to
door to perform forced injections of creepy Microsoft viruses and 'gene
therapy' into everybody's body may finally cause more people to wake from
their stupor and raise an objection. Dealing with Microscoft Windows
is bad enough - I *definitely* don't want the putrid filthy Bill Gates
permanently injected into my own genes, in my own body, maybe with CRISPR!
[The corona-panic: Update: May27,'20]:
The hysteria is beginning to fade, though more slowly than I
was hoping for. The horrible economic demolition caused by the
preposterous world lockdown of healthy people is just beginning to
be played out. Over the past two months, as many of us predicted, a
couple of hundred billionaires have *each* gained about a billion dollars
of wealth, at the expense of the rest of us. The vaccine czars
pump
and dump in plain sight but nobody pulls out their pitchforks.
Suicides in many US counties have outnumbered 'covid' deaths. People
have put on a year of 'standard' extra weight in just two months.
Psychiatric drug prescriptions have doubled. Child and spouse abuse
is through the roof. The 50% drop in emergency room heart attack and
stroke cases means people are now having heart attacks and strokes
at home. Seeing people walking around in the bright sunlight with
their face diapers on, scuttling away from me like frightened animals
is pitiful and deeply disturbing. It has been truly amazing to witness
the menacing power of narrative delivered through social media, coupled
with temporary bailouts, that keeps a majority of people in a disabling
mental fog as the roaring dystopian biomedical industrial surveillance
train bears down on them (us!). Unfortunately, until net energy starts
to bite in another decade or so, I admit that one possibility is that
'there is only one future', and that it is a dystopian one, administrated
by sociopathic billionaire oligarchs such as Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt,
Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
But that is exactly why we must RESIST NOW! As the depradations of the
covid coup unfold, keep a wary eye on the controlled opposition. For
example, a few weeks ago, Naomi Klein published a good article
here
on the "New Screen Deal" outlining some of the dystopian futures currently
under construction. However, one possible additional goal of an article
like this, published in the billionaire Omidyar financed Intercept, may
be to convince sensible people that 'resistance is futile' - mei ban fa.
Resistance is *not* futile. It begins with day to day interactions.
If you are on the street in a mask, I'll ignore you as if you weren't
there. If you seem like a snitch, I'll assume so until proven otherwise.
The filthy f-cks constructing the coming dystopia aren't waiting around
to see what happens. They are acting now, and so should we.
[The corona-panic: Update: May30,'20]:
Modern biology
It's unfortunate the way modern biology has followed modern physics.
Back in the glory days of phage, you would grow a ton of phage in
bacteria, then filter it to get the cellular crap out, spin it down on a
density gradient, extract the virus layer, and then get the DNA out of
it for direct sequencing, or infect bacteria with it to verify that it
'works', or make classic EM (electron microscope) pics from zillions of
copies of the virus. I remember looking at phage pics in Encylopedia
Britannica at the library when I was in middle school in the 1960's.
But now, that's all so 'old school'! The 'modern physicist' biologist
simply takes a nasal swab containing human cells, whatever bacteria and
viruses the person breathed in, plus theoretically, a 'new' respiratory
virus, and wipes it onto a dish of VERO cells. These are a green monkey
kidney cancer cell line (like all cancer cells, they are aneuploid,
i.e., have the wrong number of chromosomes). This makes total sense
since this is supposed to be a *human* *respiratory* virus (!?). Then,
after the cells have grown for a while, you fish out some of the soup,
don't purify it at all, and stick a little dab of the whole mess into
some reverse transcriptase to get a mess of DNA out of whatever RNA is in
there (mostly monkey cellular), then put that DNA mess into a PCR machine,
with a probe sequence taken from a database, and turn the machine up to
'11' (i.e., 45 cycles). The fact that both the human and monkey genomes
contains at least 5x as much retroviral DNA as is it does working gene
DNA is ignored.
To 'assemble' the 'novel human virus', you then take a preexisting
sequence of another virus from a database, then fish out different chunks
from amplified DNA soup and paste it all together with complex software
that has adjustable parameters for 'matches'. It's impossible to make
decent EM pics since the supernatant soup supposedly containing the
virus consists almost entirely of monkey cancer cells and cell fragments,
blebbing off membrane vesicles. There are a few round things in there of
various random diameters. After picking out *one* sort-of-good-looking
one in *one* published paper, you are done!
You then hand things over to your trusty protein structural computer
graphics guys who dock a bunch of protein models together into a colorful
representation of the 'virus' to put on the teevee.
This nonsense really began in earnest with HIV, and, uhhh, Fauci.
Kerry Mullis, the Nobel-prize-winning inventor of PCR (he came up with
the idea for PCR in the late 1980's), called these methods nonsensical.
He spent years arguing that HIV had never been shown to be the cause
of AIDS.
Now, we are stuck with Fauci and the 'covid rouge', forevah.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun11,'20]:
Here is a useful quote from the conclusion to John Ioannidis' most recent
paper:
"While COVID-19 is a formidable threat, the fact that its infection
fatality ratio (IFR) is typically much lower than originally feared,
is a welcome piece of evidence. The median of 0.26% found in this
analysis is very similar to the estimate recently adopted by CDC for
planning purposes. The fact that IFR can vary substantially also based
on case-mix and settings involved also creates additional ground for
evidence-based, more precise management strategies. Decision-makers
can use measures that will try to avert having the virus infect people
and settings who are at high risk of severe outcomes. These measures
may be possible to be far more precise and tailored to specific high-
risk individuals and settings than blind lockdown of the entire society."
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun12,'20]:
Here is a
video
worth watching from a brave Iraq war veteran, Erin Marie Olszewski,
who is now a registered nurse, and who came to NYC from a
hospital in Florida to work at the epicenter of covid. Here is
another copy of that video as a backup.
Finally, here is a different interview with her on
Highwire. This
contrasts strongly with the prevailing narrative, and the content
lines up with the report from two months ago from another nurse,
Nicole
Sirotek, as well as an NYC intensive care doctor,
Cameron Kyle-Sidell
(now also reassigned). This is in AOC's district. If the content is
real, this is about killing black people, and could partly explain why
the black death rate in NYC from covid is twice that of whites there.
When you google Erin Marie Olszewski today, the top link is a video posted
by that execrable loser and health care industry shill, ZDogg (25K views -
check out the comments!), which somehow ranks above a link to the actual
videos of Olszewski herself (a million views across various copies).
The plan is probably to try to ride this out without attracting any
undue attention by google re-sorting their links so that the 'debunking'
ZDogg video is at the top and the actual content is harder to find.
This uncomfortably makes me think of Seth Rich, who was killed in a
'robbery' (where the robbers failed to take his wallet); he almost
certainly was the internal source of the Hillary email leak.
There are a number of unusual aspects of this story,
including a book contract with Simon and Schuster
(July 2020 release - I ordered it). Here is a
Florida
non-profit Erin was previously (no longer)
involved with in 2019, Florida Freedom Alliance,
which was suggested to be a controlled opposition group
here.
Finally, looking back at some earlier NYC nurse videos I had linked to, I
noticed that
this
video by 'Karlee Sunshine', reporting for an anonymous NYC nurse,
probably Erin, with very similar content, was initially rapidly censored,
but has now re-appeared on youtube (un-censored?).
However, at this point in time, esp. for someone with hands-on experience
with intubation, anesthesia, and hospitals, Erin Marie Olszewski's report
has the definite ring of truth for me.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun14,'20]:
Here is an excellent paper by physicist Denis G. Rancourt that cuts
throught the constant barrage of media and social media cr@p by putting
monthly all-cause mortality graphs into historical context:
No
plague and a likely signature of mass homicide by government
response [PDF]. He also has an excellent paper reviewing
all of the randomized control trials of masks that have been
done, *all* of which showed, without exception, that masks
*don't* work for preventing viral respiratory infections.
After 400K reads at ResearchGate, amazingly, ResearchGate
censored
the paper (!). It is now available (PDF
here).
I read those papers together with Alastair Crooke's recent
For
this to slip would be the end of empire.
It still remains possible that people on the left and right with
analytical minds might be able to rise out of the powerful stupor induced
by a combination of the covid lockdown psyop together with a US 'color
revolution' race war psyop. It's now or never US-ians! Food shortages
could well be on the way; the price of staples has gone up 70%. Food is
a lot more important than toilet paper. Bobby Rush's Bill-Gate-supported
House Bill H.R. 6666, now renumbered H.R. 6800, has now passed the House.
Recall that this provides $100 billion for contact tracing 'research',
almost 3x the size of the entire NIH budget.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun15,'20]:
Excellent news today that the Association of American
Physicians & Surgeons just filed a lawsuit (PDF
here)
against the federal Department of Health & Human Services
for its banning of HCQ. There is an excellent possibility
that Cuomo could get caught in the flack! And here is
J.B. Handley's excellent well-documented, comprehensive summary,
Lockdown
lunacy: the thinking person's guide.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun26,'20]:
Off-line a bit finishing my human cerebellum paper :-} Going back to
reading 'news', I found the continuous blare of 'second wave' fear porn
and lockdown madness from National Propaganda Radio et al. absolutely
mind blowing! It washes over the feeble brains of the masked male Karens
demanding hikers already at 5 feet put on masks, or the masked barista
traumatized by an unmasked client, which barista has now collected $40K
from other Karens to help him recover from his 'trauma' (he should have
just worn 2 masks). Meanwhile, out of sight of the Karens (and the still
unreasonably fearful comorbid faculty), the economy (and the university)
momentarily hovers like Wile E. Coyote in mid-air.
One explanation for the rise in 'cases', is that as the economy slowly
opens, so do hospitals, and hospitals are now being faced with a
blizzard of delayed operations, knee replacements, cancers, delayed
heart problems, delayed diabetes, and so on. As these postponed
people come in, some in worse shape than they would have been because
of hospital lockdown, they get tested with one of the many
unscientific
PCR tests, the hospitals get their Medicare reimbursement
increment for treating 'covid' (and an even bigger reimburse
if the hapless knee replacement 'requires' getting put onto a
vent), and then there is a 'resurgence of hospitalizations'.
So far, no trace of excess deaths visible
here,
but we will have to wait a few weeks for the numbers. I will be surprised
if a *death* (vs. merely a 'case') spike turns up (well as long as the
chaotic and deadly hospital panic of early April isn't reprised).
A fly in the ointment is that economic deprivation causes death, suicide,
and so on (many US counties have had a suicide excess death spike that
is bigger than the covid excess death spike). Depending on how fast
the Wile E. Coyote economy is plummetting in a few months, there could
easily be a spike in 'economic death' in the Fall. Another fly in the
ointment is the biggest-in-50-years Saharan dust clouds circulatiing
toward the US southeast. The small suspended particles in the dust
cause respiratory distress.
Finally,
Evidence
Not Fear has a useful summary of our difficult
situation, and here is a good article on
PCR,
HIV, and covid. It was good to see Erin Marie Olszewski's
video still up, and now
with 1.2M views.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul08,'20]:
Here is an excellent, well-documented antidote to the utterly vapid
mainstream 'reporting' on the 'second wave' and 'cases' by
J.B.
Handley. The bottom line is deaths. In a few weeks, if
there actually was a 'second wave' (as opposed, e.g., to extra
'cases' from retesting the same people and lumping them into
the 'case' bin as many states do, or merely testing more people
that are now returning to the hospital for delayed treatments for
other things), it should appear as unexpected all-cause mortality.
To see that graph from the CDC, which is updated weekly, go
here
and scroll down about 2-3 pages. No trace yet.
The execrable 'news' makes it appear that bodies are
piling up on the streets in Texas. But take the time to
look at the *actual* state-by-state deaths per 100,000
here.
Texas has one of *lowest* rates of covid death of any state!
In other creepy developments, the 2016 John
Hardie review on the (in)effectiveness of face
masks (tested with dentists and respiratory viruses)
was scrubbed from Oral Health (still available on web.archive
here).
How is this different than burning banned books?
More ominously, a new article in New England Journal of Medicine
here suggests
that rather than requiring mandatory covid vaccination for adults (there
is no previous mandatory adult vaccination plan), 'employment suspension'
should be used, in order to coerce people to accept a covid vaccine.
That will be the general plan on how to get around the Nuremburg
principles against forced medical treatment. If this goes through, it
could eventually be applied to many other 'emerging diseases' and many
other medical treatments. This is an absolutely awful development that
must be resisted. Pam Popper is now organizing resistance against forced
medical treatments. If this isn't stopped, when the old eventually people
like me eventually die, children will only have known the menacing power
of the corporate/pharma/military state, and won't even realize what has
been lost. They already assume it's natural for everyone to wear masks
all the time.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul10,'20]:
"There are many good people in the NHS and whilst I do not plead
forgiveness for myself, I do plead for them. Most are on low pay,
they joined for the right reasons as I did and have been bullied and
threatened that if they don't 'stay on message', they don't eat. I know
that if a way could be found to assure staff within the NHS of safety
against reprisals, there would be a tsunami of whistleblowers which I
have no doubt would help end this complete and brutal insanity. I am
finding it increasingly hard to live with what I have been involved
in and I am sorry this has happened. To end, I would simply say
this. Politicians haven't changed, the country has just made a
fatal mistake and started trusting them without question." - from
an
anonymous
whistle blower who claims to be a consultant at a major
hospital in Surrey, UK (originally published
here). Sounds plausible, but not so far verified.
There was an
insightful follow-up
comment on the UK whistleblower article describing one possible scenario
behind this psychological operation. The main idea is that the virus was
expected to be more lethal than is turned out to be. From the beginning,
there have been published papers on gain-of-function experiments with
SARS-like coronaviruses, including insertion of ACE2 binding domains.
I read through many of those papers way back in March (links above).
But as time passed and population testing showed that the virus turned
out to be much less lethal than initially feared, I attributed the
bioweapon idea (as opposed to a mere accidental escape) as 'poisoning
the well' disinfo/misdirection. Over time, there has been sporadic
indirect evidence of earlier (e.g., Spanish sewage), and perhaps even
earlier June 2019 Maryland respiratory virus outbreaks and/or the June
2019 peak of 'vaping lung' (even complete with 'ground glass' xrays).
But none of those (possibilities) really distinguish between natural
cross-over, accidental release, and bioweapon. Reconsidering the weird
simultaneous worldwide intensity of the fear porn (locking Nigerians and
Ugandans into their homes without food), however, makes me a slightly
less firm in my early March belief that this was a 'natural' event.
Finally, it's worth commenting on the long swabs used in nasopharyngeal
covid tests, which hit social media a few days back. It has already
prompted a usatoday 'debunking' that your 'blood-brain barrier' was safe
from the swabs (true). The long swabs are designed to sample from the
nasopharynx, which is well below the olfactory mucosa. The olfactory
mucosa lies just below the cribriform plate, a thin, sieve-like bone
whose holes allow the fine olfactory nerves to pass through into the
brain cavity in order to connect with the olfactory bulbs. Here is a
post-covid paper that explicitly suggests directly sampling the
olfactory
epithelium for covid tests. The standard swab
instructions (aim for the bottom of the ear) should
keep the swab well below the olfactory epithelium, but
here
and
here
are pics of people getting swabbed in a car at a higher angle. If
this is supposed to be a nasopharyngeal
swab (hopefully not!), this looks like an attempt to sample the olfactory
epithelium (or sever the olfactory nerve...). It certainly seems possible
that inadvertent damage to the olfactory nerves could be responsible for
some reports of olfactory disturbance. Though nasopharyngeal swabs have
long been used, why not use sputum? For example, here is a
paper
comparing nasopharyngeal swabs to sputum for detection of respiratory
viruses with RT-PCR. Sputum came out better.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul14,'20]:
Happy Bastille Day! (so quiet!). It's pretty clear that the
burst in the number of new tests in early June visible
here,
is a primary reason for the wave of new 'cases'. From that graph, you
can see that there has already been a plateau in the number of tests
by mid-June. The recent news now suggests that there is soon going
to be a shortage of tests. How 'convenient' for 'proof' that the new
lockdowns are 'working'! It's literally criminal that the media can get
away reporting the number of new cases without the number of new tests
or the number of re-tests of the same person.
This is a disastrous recipe for lockdowns of healthy people, forever.
It's absolutely critical to keep an eye on excess mortality
here,
which can't be affected by numbers of tests or misclassification
('covid knee joint replacements', 'covid heart attacks', 'covid cancer',
'covid diabetes+COPD'). Death reports are delayed by 2-4 weeks from
the breathless 'reports' of the vile main sewer media of 'overflowing
Texas ICUs' and 'surging hospitalizations'. But excess death is the
most/only important thing - it can't be faked or biased or miscounted.
I will just have to wait it out, and then maybe remind people of what
they were thinking last month. No fear, as they used to say.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul21,'20]:
James Corbett made an excellent video here:
Your body, their choice.
The reason he speaks somewhat oddly in this video is to avoid getting
his channel cancelled by the censors at youtube. As global 'capitalism'
(international banking cartels, big pharma, big surveillance/social
media, and the military-industrial complex) tightens its totalitarian
noose around humanity, we are unmistakeably heading back to something
like the old USSR. Low-volume 'samizdat'-like youtube replacements are
already appearing.
The Mighty Wurlitzer, with the financial help of big pharma, has been
hard at work plowing the minds of the public, and people are already
thinking to 'themselves' (hah!), 'yeah, I guess it's *not* like my body,
my choice, after all'.
So here are two talking points against mandatory/forced vaccinations.
(1) The first 'Mighty Wurlitzer' gambit (recent example from the
supposedly 'edgy' Vice!) is to say that you can't control your body
because forced vaccination is a matter of public health. But there
are many *other* matters of public health that could mandate forcing
things into or out of your body using this reasoning. For example, most
people currently eat meat from animals that have been given antibiotics
(3/4 of all antibiotic usage in US) to make the animals grow faster under
the energy-efficient and trench-warefare-like conditions of concentrated
animal feeding operations that result in breeding dangerous viruses (e.g.,
H1N1) as well as dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria (e.g., MRS).
This suggests that people should be forcibly prevented from eating meat
(or allowed to eat meat, but be suspended from their employment and not
allowed to fly and not allowed to cross state lines and not allowed to
go to school or go into a store), in order to reduce meat eating and
make the rest of the public safer, and to avoid future pandemics.
(2) The second gambit is to say that someone who subsequently gets sick
after refusing a vaccine will unfairly burden the communally supported
health care system. Given that 3/4 of the chronic health conditions
that our bloated pharma-soaked 'sick care' system is currently used for
(e.g., heart disease, artery disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type
II diabetes, cancer, vascular and other dementia, acid reflux, arthritis
and other auto-immune conditions, joint replacements) are directly caused
by eating too rich of a diet featuring a large amount of meat and oil,
an analogous argument for saving shared health case costs could be made
for forcibly preventing people from eating meat and oil.
Just for the record, though I don't eat meat and avoid purified
oils, I'm *against* forcibly preventing other people from
eating those things! For a pick-me-up, read the latest from
John
Rappoport.
Though the 'Mightly Wurlitzer' religiously censors
reports of lockdown-induced death (since covid
is now the only morally important cause of death!), here
are two summaries of recent studies looking into this
in
the UK and
in
the US.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul24,'20]:
The CDC just updated their all-cause mortality stats yesterday
here.
You can now see a very small second wave spike in the country
overall, and also in the 'hot spot' states (compare that data to
the the hysterical predictions from Imperial College London
here).
But you can also see a second wave spike in most of the other states
(I plotted the graphs for all 50 states, using the dropdown).
One possibility for the small reboound is a second wave of covid
infections. But another possibility is that the second spike is
also the result of deferred and/or belated treatment. During the
lockdown, emergency room admissions for heart attack and strokes were
down 50%. Personal expenditures on health care services has
collapsed.
Cencer surgeries were postponed as were pacemakers (personal acquaintance)
and many other relatively serious interventions. Some of the deaths
in the 'second wave' could include a second heart attack after having
had one at home. Or a postponed catheterization gone bad. Given the
extremely liberal reporting requirements for covid (e.g., young man dies
in motorcycle crash of 'covid'), it will be difficult to disentangle
this at a later date.
Since the manifold bad effects on health of having almost 1/3 of the
working population thrown out of work again with the second lockdown
and old people re-isolated don't have official 'cause of death'
attributions, the lockdown will likely never get its due in death.
For example, a few weeks ago, Florida decreed another 60 days of
cruelly denying relatives and spouses visitation of locked down old
people. Part of the lockdown of senior 'care' even included taking away
old infirm people's ipads to block remote contact (see heart-breaking
descriptions of the appalling inhumanity of 'health care' workers
sent to Pam Popper).
Here is an estimate of excess deaths from the lockdown
from
the UK. In the US, the eviction moratorium expires today. But concern
for human experience and science doesn't really matter. Control of the
narrative is everything.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul27,'20]:
Letter to a friend
Well, just because you said you missed my rants :-} . . .
You are right that to get rid of all RNA fragments detectable by PCR that
you need level 3 or 4 measures. But it's entirely another question as to
whether those fragments actually work. You can hardly get an infection
from a piece of a Neandertal bone, but PCR gets the whole genome from it.
Sure, we could turn the entire world permanently into a level 3
containment facility. But is this a realistic or desirable plan for
the rest of our lives?
The infection-fatality ratio estimated even by the CDC is 0.25% but
others put it even lower (e.g., Ioannidis meta-analyses) because of
underestimating infections, as you point out (and this assumes that
a virus that has never been classically isolated from sick people and
verified with EM [without passaging through animal cancer cells!] is
the cause of those matching RNA fragments).
And what if we got something real bad that actually kills young people
like the 1918 flu? Then we go to level 4, forever? In Canada, *80%* of
all covid deaths were in filthy old folks homes where much of the staff
had fled, with the hungry and dehydrated locked-in demented wandering
around excrement-stained rooms, with feeding tubes unserviced for weeks.
Completely criminal.
Go
here and
scroll down, and plot the data (all cause mortality) by selecting the
US (or better, California, since the US number is dominated by NYC) from
the dropdown and tell me that this is remotely anything like the 1918 flu.
Right now, the economy is Wile E. Coyote, already off the cliff but just
before he starts falling. Perhaps a quarter of people haven't made
their housing payments in *July*. The cash injection together with
extra benefits has kept things from collapsing with almost 1/3 of all
working age people idled. The lockdown has crushed small businesses,
which provide 50% of all jobs in the US. Many of those businesses won't
be coming back. Commercial real estate is a catastrophe in progress.
The income of the bottom 1/3 of the country has been crushed and has been
transferred directly to our corporate oligarchs. Virtue signalling talk
about how poor lives matter is a ridiculous joke.
There has been a 50% drop in hospital admissions for heart attacks and
strokes during the lockdown. People have been just having them at home,
while most hospitals were empty. You can bet that that this is adding
to all-cause mortality, supposedly 'because covid'.
When the benefits start to fade in a few months (currently gov't transfer
payments are 25% of income, down from 32% last month, still way over
2010-2019 avg of 16%), there is going to be a biblical wave of evictions,
bankruptcies, foreclosures, bank failures. But it will all be good,
because the only important thing is to get rid of Trump. Then Dementia
Joe will fix everything - by declaring a national mask order.
What do you think about forced vaccinations? OK, maybe not forced,
but employment suspension if you balk, can't fly, can't get into the
grocery store. Because remember, it's not like "My body, my choice".
It's "My body, your choice" (read it in the 'edgy' Vice, and weep). Fine.
But why don't we apply that logic all around? Since H1N1's et al. were
'developed' in factory farms, then how about suspending people from
employment if they eat meat? Sounds fair to me. Avoid zoonoses people!
Do it for virtue signalling vegan me and all your friends. Keep us
all safe!
Stay sane! - - cheers, marty
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul29,'20]:
Another weekly update of the CDC all-cause mortality stats is out today
here
(scroll down). The 'second wave', is now just barely visible
in the national data. However, in Texas, there was no 'first wave'
at all! The 'second wave' in Texas is actually the first wave, and
is occurring despite the lockdown. It is somewhat worse than the
2017-2018 flu season, though not as bad as earlier bad flu seasons
(or anywhere near as bad as the NYC panic/ventilator catastrophe).
One thing to note is that many people are now being put onto ventilators
in Texas near the US/Mexico border (near Juarez). Hopefully not shades
of NYC 'sign your life away onto a ventilator with no relatives to
run defense'. Finally, other states like Oregon, still on lockdown
didn't have a first wave *or* a second wave. Finally, on the subject
of lockdowns, it's worth looking at the data from Europe
here. Scroll down to
the bottom and you will see that no-lockdown Sweden has totally rocked.
Finally, for a sane, well-documented, up-to-date summary, check out the
superb
A Swiss
doctor on covid-19, just updated for August 2020.
[The corona-panic: Update: Aug03,'20]:
Are you brave, guilty, and smart enough?
Here is a new ongoing
NIH
funded clinical trial at Yale on the effectiveness of pressure
messages on vaccine acceptance. Remember, the FDA and the CDC each
get roughly half their budgets from vaccine companies. It's sorrowful
to see what 'science' has become in the time of covid. This is like
anthropologists working for the CIA - psychologists drawn in by the
giant enticing cache of federal covid blood-money.
This 'clinical trial' is using 10 different "pressure messages" compared
to control messages (irrelevant message on bird feeding, generalized
message about vaccines being good) to see how effective the pressure
messages will be in convincing people that they should get the vaccine.
Here are all the messages, with the eventual winners no doubt to be
prominently blasted out through the 'Mighty Wurlitzer' in a month or two:
Control message: 2/15 of the sample will be assigned to the
pure control group, which is a passage on the costs and benefits of
bird feeding.
Baseline message: 3/15 of the sample will be assigned to a control
group with a message about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines.
Personal freedom message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned
to this intervention, which is a message about how COVID-19 is limiting
people's personal freedom and by working together to get enough people
vaccinated society can preserve its personal freedom.
Economic freedom message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned
to this intervention, which is a message about how COVID-19 is limiting
peoples's economic freedom and by working together to get enough people
vaccinated society can preserve its economic freedom.
Self-interest message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned to this
intervention, which is a message that COVID-19 presents a real danger to
one's health, even if one is young and healthy. Getting vaccinated against
COVID-19 is the best way to prevent oneself from getting sick.
Community interest message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned
to this intervention, which is a message about the dangers of COVID-19
to the health of loved ones. The more people who get vaccinated against
COVID-19, the lower the risk that one's loved ones will get sick. Society
must work together and all get vaccinated.
Economic benefit message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned
to this group, which is a message about how COVID-19 is wreaking havoc
on the economy and the only way to strengthen the economy is to work
together to get enough people vaccinated.
Guilt message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned to this
message. The message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the
health of one's family and community. The best way to protect them is by
getting vaccinated and society must work together to get enough people
vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the guilt they will
feel if they don't get vaccinated and spread the disease.
Embarrassment message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned to this
message. The message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the
health of one's family and community. The best way to protect them is by
getting vaccinated and by working together to make sure that enough people
get vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the embarrassment
they will feel if they don't get vaccinated and spread the disease.
Anger message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned to this
message. The message is about the danger that COVID-19 presents to the
health of one's family and community. The best way to protect them is by
getting vaccinated and by working together to make sure that enough people
get vaccinated. Then it asks the participant to imagine the anger they
will feel if they don't get vaccinated and spread the disease.
Trust in science message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned
to this message about how getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the
most effective way of protecting one's community. Vaccination is backed
by science. If one doesn't get vaccinated that means that one doesn't
understand how infections are spread or who ignores science.
Not bravery message: 1/15 of the sample will be assigned to this
message which describes how firefighters, doctors, and front line medical
workers are brave. Those who choose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19
are not brave.
Meanwhile, the
LA
Times explains that because the 'vaccines' (now including things that
used to be called gene therapy) probably won't work well, we'll still have
to wear
masks
and socially distance (wasn't that one of the whole frigging
points of the vaporware vaccine?!), and may have to get multiple shots
every year. Oh joy. I've always wanted to drive my immune system crazy
at *least* 3 times a year with adjuvants like whole killed mycoplasmas
(when the immune system detects bacteria or bacterial toxins in the blood,
that's a big red flag, and it pulls out all the stops). I've always
felt that I've never had enough inflammation and auto-immunity in my
life, but now, because I'm brave, angry, embarrassed, guilty, and know
science, I'm ready to get the Dersh's needle repeatedly plunged into my
arm (not!).
[Update: Aug06,'20: looks like Americans are finally wising
up! On May 6, 55% said 'yes', they would get a coronavirus vaccine
if it became available; on Jul 30, that number was down to 42%. Excellent!
Of course, the article reporting the poll is filled with arguments pushing
the vaporware vaccine, and trying to embarrass people who said no].
[The corona-panic: Update: Aug06,'20]:
San Diego Councilmember Barbara Bry has reported that, beginning Aug 5,
San Diego residents will be able to report violations of the County's
COVID-19 emergency order to the "Healthy Compliance Call Center".
This 'yelp on steroids' 24/7 'service' strongly resembles the Stasi in
the former East Germany, which at its height, employed a full 2% of the
population to snoop on the rest of East Germans. One wonders how long
before there will be another snitch line to report 'bourgeois traitors
to the proletariat'? Or people having sex with the unvaccinated?
[The corona-panic: Update: Aug09,'20]:
Backfire
As might have been expected, my ham-handed
"letter to a friend" backfired. I got back a scolding
"embarrassment message" ("pressure message" number 7 from the
Yale
clinical trial), about how priviledged parents not getting their
children vaccinated (I thought that was not allowed in CA?) were infecting
other kids with measles (but didn't the other kids get the vaccine?).
As it turns out, I actually got the real measles when I was a kid (no,
it wasn't from refusing the vaccine, but rather because the vaccine
didn't exist back in 1961). Living in a clean middle class household,
I easily made it through.
The scolding message was followed by a forwarded message from UCSD
administration that a quadrivalent vaccination for the flu will now be
required for students, staff, and faculty to be able to come onto campus,
probably on a yearly basis. I wasn't sure whether this was an "I told you
so, this shows how wrong you were", or an "well, maybe you had a point".
To preserve the friendship, I didn't ask.
But it made me think of my own skin (and the skin of other older people),
possibly on the way to becoming an adjunct faculty there. Since I
am 65, I might be forced to take the special 65-and-older "
Fluad" vaccine,
which like other flu vaccines not only contains mercury (a bacteriostatic
that also serves as an immune-system stimulating adjuvant, but that also
interferes with dopamine receptors!), but also contains squalene, a more
powerful adjuvant, along with 4 times the virus dose. The rationale
for all this is that the immune systems of 'old people' - defined as
unhealthy, overweight, metabolically compromised, artery-diseased,
high-blood pressure, multple-pharma-drug-taking old people with high
degrees of inflammation - responds less strongly to the antigens in
vaccines than do the immune systems of younger people. But I'm healthy,
not obese, my blood pressure is normal, my LDL is 70 (I'm not taking any
drugs), and I can cycle at 21-22 mph for an hour on my bike, faster than
many of the undergraduates.
Squalene certainly enrages the immune system. For example,
this article
demonstrates that "one intradermal injection of this adjuvant
lipid can induce joint-specific inflammation in arthritis-prone DA
rats. Histopathological and immunohistochemical analyses revealed erosion
of bone and cartilage".
Getting regular forced injections of squalene is a horrifying idea.
After changing my diet 3 years ago, my joints have been radically less
inflamed (I had previously experienced bouts of knee and shoulder
arthritis, a decade ago, now resolved). Squalene adjuvants were
implicated in Gulf War syndrome (1990/1991 Gulf War). For example,
this study
showed that 95% of Persian Gulf veterans with Gulf War syndrome had
antibodies to squalene (100% in those too impaired to deploy), but 0%
of healthy controls (or other autoimmune disease controls) had them.
Note that squalene is normally present in joints as a lubricant, and is
present in the developing and adult brain. There is even a little bit
in olive oil. But under normal conditions, squalene - or olive oil, or
joint fluids - are never directly injected into muscle or the bloodstream.
Regular squalene injections sounds like a great way to erode your knee
joints until they need to be 'replaced'. Owww and yuck. The only
possible objection to a forced vaccination is religious. Remarkably, at
a university, there is no category of 'scientific objection'! (N.B.: I'm
not denigrating religious beliefs here or saying anything about my own).
Since 1986, pharmaceutical vaccine makers have had blanket immunity
from any liability for harm caused by their products, a remarkably broad
exception not enjoyed by any other industry or person. And there has been
a lot of harm. The secret 'vaccine court' (the "Office of Special Masters
of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims"), which was initiated in 1988 has
paid out over $4 billion in secret damages to the 1% of supplicants whose
cases make it to the stage of being heard in secret procedings of that
'court'. Note that *68%* of all compensations in the years 2006-2017
have been paid out for injuries from *flu vaccines*. The WHO and the CDC
each receive *half* of their funding from giant pharmaceutical companies
($1 trillion revenue per year), *who make for-profit vaccines*. These are
simple facts that anyone with an internet connection can quickly verify.
In that context, with those obviously perverse incentives, what sane,
intelligent person would *not* be circumspect?? I would suggest, don't
get the Windows-1984 vaccine service pack, until you have believable
verification that the needle has been plunged into the arms of Bill and
Melinda. Like the Microsoft execs, Steve Jobs, and Facebook execs, who
were emphatic in not allowing their kids to touch their own companies
products, they're not stupid. Don't be stupid, either (
don't
drink the hand sanitizer, I meant kool-aid...).
[The corona-panic: Update: Aug23,'20]:
Will we ever regain perspective so we can focus on bigger problems?
The worldwide societal madness that has resulted from losing
perspective and concentrating all attention on a single, relatively
minor cause of death (in the context of all death!) is beginning to
seriously sap my mental health! (esp. the sudden police state rollouts
in Victoria Australia and NZ). Like many logical people, I am getting
a sinking suspicion that the covid madness is never going to go away.
We are going to go on ticking up the covid counters forever, something
never done for any other disease.
I have tried to point out to people that almost 60,000 people die
per *week*, every week, in the US, which is almost 3 million deaths
per year, every year, and the great majority of those deaths
are *not* covid, and tell people to look at graphs of
all-cause
mortality for perspective (N.B.: which includes lockdown-caused
deaths such as a 50% reduction in hospital visits for heart attacks AKA
'ride out a heart attack, or not, at home'). But the 24/7 drumbeat of
covid propaganda has been so powerful that people now greatly overestimate
deaths from covid. The percentage of the population in the US that have
died from covid is 0.048% using the CDC's numbers, which still includes
things like 'heart attack with positive covid test', and 'cancer with
positive covid test', 'motorcycle accident with positive covid test'.
By contrast, when 1000 people in the US were asked what percentage of the
population had died of covid in the US (PDF of Jul 27 results
PDF
here) their estimate was 9%. This is about 200x the actual
number of confirmed deaths. Similar huge overestimates were
found in the UK, Germany, France, and even Sweden. The media,
social and otherwise, has injected related misinformation regarding
the distribution of deaths by age. Another recent poll
here
found that Americans overestimated the percentage of deaths in people
under 24 by a factor of 50 (they estimated 8% of deaths 24 and below,
when the actual CDC number is under 0.2% of deaths). The distortion
of reality was greater for 'Democrats'. In reality, driving is more
dangerous than covid for young people.
Luckily, people aren't as gullible if you ask them something
a bit more personal. Despite the wall-to-wall pro-vaccine
propaganda, including a program to get evangelical ministers
to tell their congregations to get vaccinated, a full 1/3
of Americans would *not* get a covid vaccine in a
a
new poll. The average person can see that huge wads of money are
being hosed in the direction of big pharma for the purpose of trying to
create and test a vaccine in 1/10 or 1/20 of the time it normally takes.
They also have a vague understanding that giant pharma companies are
protected from any liability in case something goes wrong, just like the
bad old days, when a company could simply dump poison into the river,
day in day out, no questions asked. But in this case, the 'river'
is your own body.
To try to counteract this, organizations have begun to roll out mandatory
*flu* vaccines, which more people are familiar with (though they probably
don't know that it's a *really* bad idea for an over-65 person to get a
yearly or twice yearly flu vaccine that contains a squalene adjuvant,
the probable cause of Gulf War syndrome). Despite many trial balloons
introducing the idea of forced vaccination, this 'no' to a vaccine has
been holding pretty steady over the past few months.
If there was a speck of moral fiber in the media, instead of telling
'comorbids' to be afraid, they would instead tell them that daily cycling
and a whole foods plant-based diet are *way* more powerful than vaccines
and face masks against covid :-}
But covid and vaccines aren't our biggest problem! I hinted that we
really need to divert our attention to bigger problems right around the
bend. So for now, let's assume the best - that people will eventually be
able to get covid (0.048% of the US population died) back in perspective,
as a bad flu year, comparable to the 1957-1958 Asian flu (0.064% of
the US population died) or the 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu (0.048% of the
US population died, the year of Woodstock, exactly the same percentage
as covid).
Backing out to the really big picture, we are facing a
much bigger threat to industrial civilization in the form
of a loss of net energy from declining fossil fuel. This will
begin to hit hard over the next decade. Take a quick look at
this
one graph from Matt Mushalik and try to project that even 10 years
into the future. I'm not ignoring the problem of greenhouse gasses,
but rather trying to refocus attention on scientific possibility.
For example, two tons of concrete are made for every person in the
world, every year. There is no current way to make and deliver concrete
(e.g., the 30,000 *tons* of concrete in a wind turbine foundation) with
wind and solar, without using fossil fuels. There is zero research into
'solar concrete'. And this is with perhaps only 10 years to go before
fossil fuel scarcity begins to seriously impact concrete production.
Or take diesel. It moves container ships, railroads, and trucks, which
deliver *everything* (e.g., food). Or take your laptop, made out of
coal in China, delivered by bunker fuel and then diesel to your door.
Putting solar on the roof won't somehow cancel that fact.
The problem of declining net energy from fossil fuels can't be fixed by
a drop-in 'new green deal'. The numbers are off by one to two orders
of magnitude, not even considering storage. Currently, solar electric
accounts for 1% of total world energy use and wind accounts for 2% of
total world energy use. This is after a major build out, and without
creating any form of storage. All of the solar and wind *ever* built
hasn't even covered the *growth* in total energy usage over the past
decade!
To my mind, energy is a *much* bigger problem then covid - and it has
not even vaguely entered people's consciousness. I wonder if it ever
will become apparent! As things start to break down from lack of net
energy, people may to busy trying to keep ricketty systems running to
even realize the source of the problem. One can still hope that the
covid madness will eventually subside and people will be able to turn
their attention to this *much* bigger problem.
To have a chance at dealing with the energy problem, we *also* have
to have a frank discussion about money. Most money is created by
commercial banks at the moment of a loan, *not* by the Fed. This means
that commercial banks are in the policy drivers seat - *they* are the
ones who primarily decide who gets their created money and so *they
decide fiscal policy*, not the government. For example, they are
currently deciding to create money (through loans) for the purpose of
companies buying their own stock, and many other similar parasitical,
financialized, unproductive activities. Those unproductive activities
should be criminal (like they used to be!). Unless we wrest the some
of the creation of money from commercial banks, we are going to have a
really rough passage through the coming bottleneck.
"Where does money come from?" (2012) by J. Ryan-Collins,
R. Greenham, R. Werner, and A. Jackson is a good short book
explaining money, money creation, and banking. To get some idea
of where the banks are currently heading us, take a look at
Blackstone's
push into the Pentagon. Teevee 'politics' is utterly irrelevant!
Blackstone is *right now* deciding how worldwide society is being
reconfigured by AI-controlled "common governance structures". Steven
Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone gave MIT a third of a *billion*
dollars to help work out the details. Funny how things like that weren't
mentioned in the CITI 'conflicts of interest' online training course I
just took, at the urging of the university "Compliance Analyst" . . .
I suppose that would be asking fish about water.
[The corona-panic: Update: Aug27,'20]:
It's over!
It's officially over! It wasn't like the 1918 flu!
Now, we just need to convince the scared primates to
take off their muzzles and go back about their business!
All-cause mortality data out yesterday from the CDC
here
definitively shows that the small 'second wave' (which was actually a
first wave, because there *was* no 'first wave' in places like Texas)
is now over. Since that death data takes a few weeks to come in, deaths
have actually been falling since the beginning of August (from infections
that occurred up to a month before that). The bottom line was that it
*was* a bad flu season, after all. And that is even including all the
lockdown-caused additions to all-cause mortality (50% drop in emergency
admissions for heart attacks, now being had at home). Now is the time
to cancel the new normal before any more damage is done!
Here in CA, the gruesome, power-mad governor slash potentate has instead
decided, under conditions of massive state budget deficits, to allocate
$1.7 *billion* in precious state dollars to companies like PerkinElmer
in order to roll out massive testing of asymptomatic people during his
latest scam, the "Twindemic" (=flu+covid) (what, no covid goggles?!).
Even the CDC recently updated its policy on testing to
explicitly
advise *against* doing this! Unfortunately, after an outcry from
'public health experts', the CDC backed off a bit (but didn't revise
the recommendations) and said it was OK to test asymptomatic people who
come into contact with 'cases'. The RT-qPCR tests have a substantial
false positive rates, depending esp. on the number of exponential DNA
amplification cycles used, which vary widely. Given basic Bayesian
considerations (prior probability), doing massive testing of asymptomatic
people, or repeatedly re-testing asymptomatic people is an excellent way
to increase the proportion of false positive tests, and essentially keep
the state locked down forever. California is beautiful (and we are among
the few born here); but unfortunately, we are now making preparations
to leave.
[The corona-panic: Update: Sep01,'20]:
I just saw
this
article in the NYT, describing the high false positive rate of PCR
tests as currently performed. Of course, this is *exactly* what me and
many other people have been saying for the last 6 months. The PCR tests
are all 'turned up to 11', and give waaay too many false positives.
I guess I should be happy that the execrable NYT has finally 'come clean'
after sophisticatedly scaring the crap out of the entire country, throwing
the bottom third of the population out of work, destroying a third of
all small businesses, cratering the economy, all while transferring
*trillions* of dollars to vicious American oligarchs.
But this *isn't* rocket science. The PCR test was invented in the 1980's
and is very well understood. Anyone with basic knowledge of molecular
biology techniques *already knew in Feb 2020* that a PCR test run with 40
(or 45!) amplification cycles is likely to find junk and give a completely
unacceptable rate of false positives.
This is just another in a long line of 'lies of our Times'. The NYT is
a vile propaganda rag! Remember the fake weapons of mass destruction
that launched the real, $5 trillion dollar war that demolished poor Iraq.
When the chips are down, you can always count on the NYT to *lie* in
support of the oligarchs. Just don't read it. When you are looking for
guidance on how to understand a new threat, always *look elsewhere* first.
[The corona-panic: Update: Sep05,'20/Mar03,'21]:
Six critical considerations for vaccine safety
Rational discussions in public about vaccines and vaccine safety
are now so politicized that it's important to step back and
review the basic science (e.g., discussion of much of the basic
science discussed below is now banned on supposedly 'left'
twitter).
Here are six critical considerations to keep in mind when considering
vaccine safety. All six of these are well-understood in the
vaccine-making community.
Remember that vaccine makers are the *only* major business in the US
(N.B.: previously not the case in the EU, but now made US-like for
the covid vaccine) to have blanket immunity from being sued for any
harm caused by their product. Their release from liability dates to
1986, when Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
This greatly reduces the motivation to 'first, do no harm' for this
incredibly profitable industry. More thorough testing might reveal
harms; but since there is no liability, it is more profitable to go
ahead and do those harms as long as they are not too common. Because of
the extensive harms caused by vaccines, a secret 'hush money' vaccine
injury court (confusingly named the "Office of Special Masters of the
U.S. Court of Federal Claims") was set up in 1988, with awards funded by
an additional $0.75 tax on all vaccines (i.e., this limited 'industry
liability' is essentially publicly-funded!). The total settlements
paid out so far are about $4 billion, in recent years, mostly for flu
vaccine harm. However, all the settlements are only paid subject to
non-disclosure agreements that have a 10x clawback of the publicly funded
settlement money if any award recipient discloses their award amount,
or the reasons for their award (e.g., which vaccine). These facts are
easily verified, though many people are unaware of them. Because of
the unique situation surrounding vaccines, it is absolutely essential
that the buyer beware! And that the buyer maintain the right to *not* buy!
(1) Antibody dependent enhancement: enhanced infection
First, administration of a given vaccine sometimes
*enhances* the chance of a viral infection, either by the
same or a different virus. An example was the large
US
military study (see Table 5) which showed a 36% greater
chance of a coronavirus infection after recruits received a *flu*
vaccine. A new study found a positive association between
COVID-19 deaths and influenza
vaccination rates in elderly people worldwide. The editor had
to add a note that 'correlation doesn't equal causation'. Funny
how they don't do that with the correlational mask studies showing
that masks work, but whatever. Another randomized control study
in children showed that flu vaccine recipients had
5
times the risk of other respiratory virus infections
including coronaviruses. Any reference to a
summary of
that research paper in BMJ was recently censored by Facebook as
'dangerous' (who needs scientific peer review when you have Facebook
so-called 'fact-checkers' watching big pharma's back, eh?). Here is
a recent review of antibody-dependent enhancement that appeared in
Nature
Microbiology. The only way to test this is to wait for vaccinated
people to get re-exposed to the virus and compare them to unvaccinated
people also re-exposed, as was done with the animal experiments.
There are very few direct comparisons in the medical literature between
large groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated children looking at health
outcomes that cover a large number of vaccines. One recent
peer-reviewed
study by two brave doctors measuring relative incidence of office
visits showed that office visits for ADHD, anemia, asthma, allergic
rhinitis, sinusitis, eczema, and behavioral issues were 3 to 6 times as
common for the vaccinated cohort. This could be the result of increased
infections due to antibody dependent enhancement (two weeks after this
study was published, in a Lysenkoist move, the Oregon Medical Board
shamefully suspended the medical license of Paul Thomas, one of the
authors; more info
here).
(2) Antibody dependent enhancement: cytokine storm
Second, the administration of a vaccine can actually cause a subsequent
infection by the agent the vaccine is supposed to protect against to
instead be *more* severe and *more* deadly. This was well documented
with animal studies in the case of *all* laboratory vaccines previously
created against SARS, a coronavirus closedly related to Sars-CoV-2 (
ref1,
ref2, and
ref3).
Another example occurred in 2009, where persons getting
the 'seasonal flu' vaccine had a *more* serious disease upon
infection with the 'pandemic flu' (this was verified with
experiments
on ferrets). Yet another example of vaccine-induced
increased disease severity occurred with Dengvaxia,
the dengue fever vaccine, which motivated the WHO to
paradoxically suggest administration of the Dengvaxia vaccine
only to people who has already gotten dengue fever (!). Go
here
for the details. Yet another example of this occurred with respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV). The bottom line is, getting a vaccine sometimes
makes the disease it is intended to protect against *more* deadly.
(3) Unintended damage from molecular mimicry
A well-known case of deadly immune system molecular mimicry is Type
I diabetes, where antibodies generated against cow's milk protein (casein)
breakdown products (casomorphins, perhaps entering the bloodstream via
leaky gut) cross-react with insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells,
permanently killing off the islet cells, which requires that the person
get daily insulin injections for the rest of their life to prevent death.
Closer to home was the 2009 GlaxoSmithKline Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu
vaccine, which caused thousands of cases of incurable, lifelong
narcolepsy.
The mechanism was eventually tracked down to molecular mimicry between
one of the pieces of flu protein which was used in the vaccine and
proteins on neurons producing hypocretin/orexin, which were killed
by autoimmune attack after vaccination (see, for example,
ref for details).
In more crude terms, the vaccine caused their immune system to permanently
burn out a part of their brains. Similarly, the Gardasil vaccine has
been observed to cause uncontrollable choreic movements, possibly from
autoimmune attack on parts of the basal ganglia of the brain (e.g.,
dopamine receptors there).
Another potential case of molecular mimicry is the fact that a protein
that mediates cell fusion needed to form the human placenta, syncytin-1,
has a very strong similarity to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (what the
mRNA in the vaccine codes for) currently being used in experimental covid
vaccines. Remarkably, the characteristically mammalian syncytin-1 gene,
which plays a key part in mammalian live birth (versus egg-laying),
originally evolved (about 200 million years ago) from an endogenous
retrovirus, which originally used it, of course, for cell fusion.
The obvious implication is that coronavirus vaccines directed against
the spike protein need to be tested to see if they interrupt pregnancy
or cause sterility.
On Dec 1, Wolfgang Wodarg and Michael Yeadon filed a petition to
suspend further vaccine trials until this issue can be addressed,
first in animals. The current level of Lysenkoist censorship
is pretty frightening. The public petition was available
here
for only a few days until it was scrubbed (the
original 2020 news page article pointing to it is still up
here);
a copy was also scrubbed from reddit. I found it
here
on the wayback machine. This is not
a new issue; for more background, go
here
and
here.
It's worth noting that attempts were made to exlude pregnant women from
covid vaccine trials, and participating women in some trials were even
required to be on contraceptives.
(4) Reactions to adjuvants and carriers
Fourth, adjuvants are commonly added to vaccines to strongly stimulate
the immune system to produce antibodies. Immune-hyper-stimulating
adjuvants have long been known (e.g., accidental self-injection
of "complete Freund's adjuvant" described in PDF
here).
The reason for adding adjuvants is that the intended antigens in the
vaccine (e.g., protein fragments) might be (N.B.: correctly!) regarded
by the body as not an infection risk. Incidentally, this is
why immunity generated by an actual infection is usually more
effective and generalizable to new infections than a vaccine.
Michael Yeadon, former top exec at Pfizer, now cancelled from
Twitter, has a nice summary that was saved from the void
here.
But back to adjuvants, aside from the obvious problem that an
adjuvant might stimulate the immune system to inappropriately
produce antibodies to other things in the blood beside the vaccine,
possibly causing unintended cross reactions (e.g., auto-immunity),
there is also the possibility of producing antibodies to the adjuvant
itself. If the adjuvant happens to be a naturally occuring molecule,
the results can be harmful. For example, squalene is used as an
adjuvant in the Fluad vaccine for over-65-year-olds (CDC doc
here).
Squalene was strongly implicated as the cause of Gulf
War syndrome (1990/1991 Gulf War). For example,
this study showed that
95% of Persian Gulf veterans with Gulf War syndrome had antibodies
to squalene (present in 100% of those too impaired to deploy), but 0%
of healthy controls (or other autoimmune disease controls) had them.
Note that squalene is normally present in joints as a lubricant.
Injecting squalene into rats can cause rheumatoid arthritis (
ref1,
ref2,
ref3).
A yearly flu vaccine for an old person might be a quick route to otherwise
unnecessary joint replacement, and might not be caught because it's
'normal' for old people to get their joints replaced.
The new mRNA vaccines combine polyethylene glycol (PEG, longer chain
version of ethylene glycol radiator fluid) with mRNA and lipids by
passing them through a membrane, which results in a virus-capsid-like
lipid nanoparticle carrier (with attached PEG) for the mRNA in aqueous
solution, which extends the life of the unstable RNA once it has been
injected, and helps it get into cells. However, PEG is not a new
component of injectable and oral 'therapeutics' and has been used to
improve the pharmacokinetics of a large variety of injected and oral
proteins and drugs. It has also sometimes been used in vaping fluids to
make fake smoke and to extend active ingredients, and used to be added
to cigarettes. As a result a majority of humans in the US already have
anti-PEG antibodies, with almost 10% having extreme allergic sensitivity
to PEG. When combined with immune-system-stimulating adjuvants (e.g.,
squalene in some of the mRNA vaccines), there is an obvious possibility of
generating health-threatening 'side effects'. No doubt, once anti-PEG
antibodies become a big enough problem (if they aren't already) in
the population, companies will move to a different lipid nanoparticle
protector, rinse, and repeat.
Finally, an over-stimulated immune system can generate
too many antibodies, and esp. auto-antibodies. This
recent
paper suggests a pathological role for "exoproteome-directed
auto-antibodies" (that is, auto-antibodies that bind to extracellular and
secreted proteins that are supposed to be there), specifically in the
covid disease. By overstimuating the immune system, vaccine adjuvants
could actually exacerbate this problem.
(5) Contaminants
Fifth, in order to be able to grow large amounts of viruses to
make vaccines, immortal 'workhorse' cell lines are often used.
Normal cells are not immortal and eventually die in cell culture
because they refuse to divide. By repeatedly passaging cells through
growth medium, it is possible to generate an immortal, essentially
cancerous, cell line by artificial selection. These cells will grow
and continuously divide and are invariably aneuploid (wrong number
of chromosomes) like all cancers, and contain many other mutations.
One common example are VERO cells, a line of monkey kidney cancer cells.
Another example is MRC-5 human fetal lung cells (buy them
here),
or the T-Rex 293 HEK human kidney cancer cell line used by AstraZeneca.
Once these cells have been used to propagate and multiply the
viruses for a vaccine, the cellular material is separated as best
as is possible from the viruses that the cells produced. However,
even small amounts of stray human or monkey DNA, or human or monkey
cancer cells are an obvious risk for vaccine recipients (go
here
for quotes from FDA meetings where the possibility of induced malignancies
was discussed). Note that potential bad effects of cellular contaminants
would take a minimum of 10 or 20 years from time of injection to *begin*
to be detected, since cancer cells divide slowly and only kill you
with their last few doublings. Even after 10 years of cell division,
an initial handful of cancer progenitor cells would still only form a
microscopic, undetectable tumor.
Another contaminant that has been described
in vaccines are mycoplasmas (e.g., video
here),
which are tiny reduced-gene-count bacteria without cell walls that can
live inside human eukaryotic cells. These can cause chronic infections
(e.g., often found with AIDS) but can also cause autoimmune reactions
when they leave cells encased in host cellular membranes, activating the
immune system, which can then mistakenly target one of the associated
self-antigens.
Vaccine manufacturing uses many chemicals, some of which
are toxic. They are supposed to be removed from the final
product and hence, are not listed as ingredients. However,
sometimes these intermediate manufacturing chemicals (e.g.,
the AEBSF (aminoethyl benzenesulfonyl fluoride) and PMSF
(phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride) used to manufactorue Gardasil)
aren't
removed, and can cause (phenylmethylsulfonyl
fluoride)
death.
(6) Vaccine-derived infections
Finally, if a vaccine contains an 'attenuated' virus, there
is a possibility that injecting it will actually result in a
life-threatening infection. This isn't a theoretical possibility.
For example, in Africa, there have been *no* cases of wild-type
type-2 poliovirus infections for more than 20 years. However,
the *vaccine* for type-2 poliovirus was discovered to be
causing large scale outbreaks of "vaccine-derived poliovirus",
with resulting paralysis and death (read this
recent
article documenting this in
Science magazine). Because of this,
the type-2 vaccine was withdrawn from the three-type polio vaccine
mixture for Africans in 2016. A replacement type-2-only polio vaccine
was substituted. But this was immediately discovered to be causing more
vaccine-derived polio outbreaks (the article doesn't mention why this
wasn't caught when the vaccine was 'tested'). A third type-2-only vaccine
is now in development. One wonders why the obvious solution of simply
stopping using the type-2 vaccine is not on the table, since wild-type
type-2 polio has been eradicated (perhaps in large part by improvements
in sanitation). Disasters like this are one of the motivations behind
mRNA vaccines (see below).
Some background
It's worth digging a little deeper to understand how and why some of the
'side-effects' in the first four cases arise. Vaccines are designed
to cause the body to produce antibodies to components in the vaccine.
Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins with a small binding pocket at the end of
each of the arms of the "Y". They bind specifically to *small regions*
of other proteins (including possibly other antibodies!) and/or other
molecules in the body. A typical protein consists of a folded chain
of several hundred amino acids. An antibody will bind to regions of
the folded protein that only span 5-7 amino acids. Given that there
are tens of thousands of different proteins, the problem is obvious:
an antibody might bind to the accidentally same-locally-shaped region
on *more than one protein*. But just as important, different people
produce different antibodies. The first four numbered problems listed
above are bascially problems due to molecular mimicry (review
here).
None of these considerations are unique to vaccines. For example,
a throat infection with streptococcus bacteria may generate antibodies
that bind to proteins on the strep bacterium, but also to a particular
brain region. Luckily, antibodies are mostly kept out of the brain.
But they *can* get in sometimes and cause terrible auto-immune damage
(e.g., in multiple sclerosis or the vaccine-induced narcolepsy case
described above).
But vaccines are unnatural challenges to the immune system, which has
evolved to deal with natural organisms and viruses. The body has never
before seen, for example, an adenovirus with chunks of code for covid
spike protein inserted (one vaccine candidate). Or take a flu vaccine;
the body normally first encounters this respiratory virus in the lungs,
not by having it injected into a muscle, from where it gets into the
bloodstream without first stimulating the immune system in the lungs.
This means vaccines should be tested thoroughly to try to simulate how
evolution has harshly 'tested' the body's immune response to pathogens
- by eliminating the bodies that produced lethal cross-reactions and
favoring the bodies that didn't, or favoring bodies that were able
to better manage the forest of cross-reactions. This is especially
important given that vaccines are given almost exclusively to healthy
people ('first, do no harm'!). Since deadly or permanently life-altering
reactions to vaccines are not common, it is particularly important to
thoroughly test them and directly weigh the harms they cause against
the benefits they are supposed to provide through the use of control
group *not* given the vaccine. This is simply scientific common sense.
Amazingly, it is *almost never* done when testing vaccines! (a randomized
non-treatment group; instead the 'non-treatment' group is typically given
another vaccine!). Vaccine companies have had to be forced by lawsuits
to include a real (saline) control.
mRNA 'vaccines'
Some of the new 'vaccines' being developed that consist of RNA coding for
one part of the virus are a somewhat different can of worms. In theory,
mRNA should be broken down relatively quickly and not be subject to
problems with infections from live or attenuated viruses, or problems with
cancer cell line contamination. However, RNA vaccines are potentially
like genetic 'therapy'. The vaccine mRNA contains a modified pseudo
uracil that makes the mRNA more thermostable than real biological mRNA.
In animal experiments, even real biological mRNA has sometimes been shown
to be capable of incorporation by reverse transcription into the genome,
possibly as a result of endogenous reverse transcriptases. Remember that
1% of the human genome is genes for proteins but as much as 8% of the
human genome is dormant endogenous human retroviruses that contain reverse
transcriptase genes; also, the patient may have an active infection
with a retrovirus. This may be a remote possibility (e.g., the required
primers would not be there), but it's worth an empirical investigation.
More troubling is the evidence (2017 Moderna study
here)
that the PEG-ylated lipid-coated mRNA in vaccines (paper describes
H10N8 and H7N9 mRNA flu vaccines) can cross the blood-brain barrier
and get inside neurons. In the first place, having neurons express
spike protein may interfere with synaptic function. Many degenerative
brain diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's) are
caused by inappropriate build-up of proteins or protein fragments
(tau, amyloid, alpha-synuclein) in neurons and at synapses.
A second twist comes from a recent paper showing that bare spike
protein itself can get past the blood-brain barrier and
get into the
brain. This may explain brain problems from covid infection;
but it could equally describe brain problems from an mRNA vaccine
producing bare spike protein, which then gets into the brain.
It is known that syncytin-1 is overexpressed in inflammatory
auto-immune diseases like multiple sclerosis (review
here).
Unfortunately, as already mentioned above, there are similarities between
syncytin-1 and the covid spike-protein.
A third point is that having many different cell types generate a
spike protein for which immunity is being generated could result in
an autoimmune attack on many different cells, including neurons
in the brain or spinal cord. This is particularly an issue
after the second booster injection, when an immune response
will already have been stimulated, and because the mRNA lipid
nanoparticle vaccines get into a lot more different cell types
than standard attenuated virus vaccines. For more details, see
this
comment by J. Wes Ulm, also published as a
BMJ
Rapid Response, and the rest of the thread), explaining
why his old medical colleagues have been reluctant to get
vaccinated; see also comment by Igyarto et al.
here,
rejected by the editors of a top immunological journal (because
"the climate is not appropriate"). There are a number of reports of
vaccine-induced choreic movements (e.g., starting about 1:30 into
this video)
that may reflect mRNA vaccine-induced autoimmune damage.
Finally, even leaving those unique problems aside, mRNA vaccines are still
subject to the other considerations described above, since their goal is
to evoke an immune response, which can in turn evoke antibody-dependent
enhancement or unintended molecular mimicry. The plan to truncate
Phase 3 testing of these never-before used, barely tested vaccines (by
immediately giving the vaccine to the placebo group) is unprecedented,
short sighted, and dangerous. This is the largest human biological
experiment every performed.
Effective non-vaccine treatments
Last, but not least, and actually, most importantly, given
that there are already extremely effective, cheap, and safe
treatments for the covid disease if is caught reasonably early,
including
ivermectin,
high-dose
vitamin D (also
here),
hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and lowly zinc, there should be
much less emphasis on forcing a multitude of expensive, barely tested,
and potentially dangerous vaccines onto a mostly healthy public that
has little risk from the disease. There is simply no reason to use a
virtually untested, experimental, emergency-use-authorization drug when
tested, safe alternatives exist.
[The corona-panic: Update: Oct13,'20]:
Crimes against humanity
Three positive updates in the fight against covid crimes.
First, there was an amazing randomized control trial of
vitamin D and covid. Shamefully, this was the first RCT on
vitamin D and covid. A good overview by Matt Ridley is
here.
Briefly, in Spain, very sick covid patients were randomized into two
groups, 50 who got a large dose of vitamin D upon admission and 25 who did
not. 50% of the non-vitamin D patients ended up in ICU and 2 died; 2% of
the vitamin-D patients ended up in ICU and none died. This is a stunning
25x difference between the groups. If some measly billion dollar pharma
drug was found to have a 30% positive effect, further trials 'denying
the unmedicated arm' the new drug would be stopped on 'moral grounds'.
Instead, the vile major main sewer media and other vile 'health'
officials instead badmouth vitamin D as conspiracy theory. Compare
with the recent remdesivir study, which showed that it was
completely
useless. Not treating admitted covid patients with vitamin D is
simply criminal. Throwing billions of dollars at criminal big pharma
is a disgusting obscenity.
A second bit of extremely positive news comes in this
explosive video by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich,
Crimes against
humanity, describing an international class action damage lawsuit
to collect damages for covid lockdown crimes. Probably fearful of being
sued by a competent law firm, Google/Youtube has allowed this video to
remain up, uncensored, for a full 10 days, now at over 1 million views
(tho trying to share it on facebook/twitter, of course, generates
a warning).
[Update: Oct20,'20: see next.] Go, checks and balances!
This lawsuit may have had something to do with the WHO suddenly reversing
course on lockdowns, and announcing that the infection-fatality ratio
was 0.14% (the same as the seasonal flu).
Finally, Physicians for Informed
Consent submitted an evidence-based letter (
PDF
here) to the University of California, urging them to reconsider
their flu vaccine mandate, on the basis that the mandate has no scientific
justification (it has none!).
[The corona-panic: Update: Oct20,'20]:
Fuellmich video censored
Well, clearly our google mind-rulers aren't that
afraid yet (see previous post). The Fuellmich video stayed up for 17 days
(1.5 million views) before google/youtube finally censored it. Here is a
copy
re-uploaded
to youtube and one of many other copies on
bitchute. For now,
I found them quickly with a google search. It's may be just a matter of
time, however, when the google search for copies will fail. It's worth
making contingency plans for that. Remember, search was possible before
google; just less convenient and requiring more personal memory. So keep
your brain working well by eating a whole food plant based diet!
[The corona-panic: Update: Nov04,'20]:
Non-Covid-related excess deaths
Scott Atlas summarizes data
from the
CDC that suggests that at least one-third of the excess deaths this
year from from the lockdown itself. Here are data for several subgroups:
Hispanic: 40% excess deaths NOT Covid related
Black: 46% NOT Covid related
White: 38% NOT Covid related
Age 25-44: 77% excess deaths NOT Covid related
Age 65+: 39% NOT Covid related
This is especially tragic for people dying in the prime of their life
(77% of excess deaths in ages 25-44 were NOT Covid related). Jeffrey
Tucker has a more detailed accounting of the CDC data in
Death by lockdown.
It was also *completely* predictable, before the lockdown started,
which is why the WHO has *never* (before Gates-pharma-corrupted Tedros)
suggested lockdowns as a viable strategy to combat any disease.
In fact, the most recent data suggests that lockdowns actually
*increase* total
deaths from a pathogen when the next season is included (see
e.g., increasing deaths approaching the upcoming flu season in the UK
vs. Sweden). We must fight back against the non-scientific, power-mad
fear mongers!
[The corona-panic: Update: Nov07,'20]:
The largest own goal in history
Here is a very good
summary video on covid,
with a UK perspective.
[The corona-panic: Update: Nov18,'20]:
The first large RCT on masks and covid
The *first* large randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the effectiveness
of real world masks during the height of the covid epidemic is now
finally published! This was *in spite* of the best efforts of several
major medical journals to suppress it. Up until now, the only real world
randomized controlled studies of masks were done for other respiratory
viruses (masks have virtually no effect).
The endless supposed 'science' fobbed off by the media on the
effectiveness of masks involved small, uncontrolled correlational
studies, experiments with masks on hamsters in aquariums, and endless
stunningly stupid computer graphics simulations. All of these have only
very minor relevance to real world mask wearing. About as much relevance
as the 'science' of Guardians of the Galaxy has to space flight. I have
programmed computer simulations of neural networks and created attractive
computer graphics. I hereby take back whatever good things I might have
said about the value of simulations :-}
The results of this large study (starting
with 3000 masked vs. 3000 unmasked, PDF
here) were clear:
there was no statistically significant effect of wearing masks on covid
infection rates in the mask wearers. There are no comparable large RCT
studies out there for masks and covid. Silly computer 'scientists'
playing with animation software be damned! This verifies that covid
behaves like other respiratory viruses with respect to surgical masks -
it can go through them.
[The corona-panic: Update: Nov27,'20]:
Lysenkoist censorship continues
Lysenkoist censorship of
science in starting to get a little scary. Over the past few
days, the historic Danish RCT mask study described above has
now
been labeled "False information" by
Fakebook. Peer review is so old school, don't
you think? - Fakebook 'fact checkers' now trump the
real
science of face masks!
Or look at this
powerful, sensible
video by Michael Yeadon, a former chief scientific advisor at Pfizer
for decades. It was yanked from youtube in just 2 hours.
The censorship seems to get triggered
by more views. For example
Tom
Woods' talk talk from the Mises Institute (more a popular talk than
a strictly scientific talk) stayed up for a while, but was eventually
pulled when it got over 1.5 million views.
We are quickly arriving at the 'Google Archipelago' (title of Michael
Rectenwald's 2019 book). Equally as scary as the censorship itself
is many people's response to it - both a lack or recognition of
censorship, but also the bland acceptance of this kind of censorship
and self-censorship as normal. This is esp. scary for me when I see it
among scientists. Eesh.
Thankfully, there are still some scientists with a backbone who are
willing to speak out and take the heat. Here is a fine up-to-date
summary of the testing debacle from a European perspective:
PCR-based
covid testing has failed.
[The corona-panic: Update: Dec09,'20]:
PCR cycle threshold, infectivity, and the forever lockdown
The implications of the
recent
comprehensive study of cycle threshold
and infectivity are clear. Here is a
direct
link to the one PCR graph to rule them all, and here is my
annotated version. 'Positives'
that require a cycle threshold of 35 are *100%* false positive as
defined by ability to culture the virus from the sample (even Fauxi
admits this). But more importantly, 'positives' that require a cycle
threshold of even 25 are still almost 50% false positive! Given that
PCR tests in the US and EU are currently run up to staggeringly
over-amplified levels of 40 cycles and 45 cycles (!) respectively,
checking for 'positives', this means that it will never be possible
in some states to escape lockdown because of 'cases', which will can
never drop below the false positive level. For example,
California lockdowns kick in
at more than 7 'cases' per 100,000 per day, an absolutely preposterous
standard that can never be escaped with a test that produces 100%
false positive when run above 35 cycles on asymptomatic college kids,
who are shamefully being tested here every two weeks.
One suggestion for how we might be able to get out of this ridiculous
situation is that once Biden is installed, the standards for lockdown
could be adjusted to adopt 'case' thresholds that respect the basic
statistics of the PCR test. The previous faulty 'case' thresholds can
then be blamed on 'Trump having bungled the lockdown'. However, for
California, the current 'case' threshold for 'free living' (less than 1
'case' per 100,000 per day) is so utterly ridiculously low, raising it
to a scientifically reasonable level may not be possible without the
dictatorial governor and 'health' officials losing face, so that the
only practical solution for a number of people will be to move out of
the state.
It remains to be seen, however, whether a backlash finally arises as
the economic carnage of the lockdowns unfold in 2021.
None of this means there isn't a respiratory/clotting disease to treat
(concentrated in old, poor people with multiple comorbidities, many black
and latino). But there are extremely effective, dirt cheap medicines
that if used early, are incredibly effective in stopping deaths
from Covid et al. These include vitamin D, steroid inhalers
(budesonide), hydroxychloroquine (anti-malarial/anti-parasite)
and the cheap and safe anti-parasite drug,
ivermectin
(a meta-analysis of 23 studies, *all* positive
here). It is absolutely criminal
that the government has shovelled upwards of 5 billion dollars
of tax dollars to pharmaceutical companies to create expensive
experimental vaccines that are so toxic that they require
resuscitation
units to be attached to the vaccine shot centers (because of
anaphylactic shock, possibly as a result of pre-existing antibodies to
the polyethylene glycol [PEG] used to protect the lipids encasing the
mRNA) and hyper-expensive and utterly useless antivirals like remdesivir,
while literally prohibiting doctors from using cheap, life-saving drugs,
early on, before the problem is impossible to treat.
The NIH, FDA, and CDC are intellectually and morally bankrupt. The only
officially approved 'drug for COVID' is remdesivir, which is *known*
not to work! For an up-close taste of pure evil, see the
2012
FDA discussions on whether to allow human tumor-derived cancer
cell line debris in vaccines (allowed in many vaccines, and present in
a number of the non-mRNA-based covid vaccine candidates). It's getting
to the point where the monetary corruption and regulatory capture by big
pharma is so complete that the only way to fix this might be to 'Great
Reset' the NIH and FDA and the CDC themselves, 'burn that sh$t down',
and start over :-Q
[The corona-panic: Update: Dec24,'20]:
'Science' in the Matrix
In November 2020, the WHO recently updated its defintion of herd immunity from:
Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease
that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or
immunity developed through previous infection.
to:
'Herd immunity' also known as 'population immunity' is a concept used
for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain
virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.
Since @ssbook and tw@tter define the WHO as 'science', this means that
half a billion years of the real biology of the vertebrate immune system
has now been defined as 'unscientific'. The old versions of the WHO
explanation have already been wiped from the wayback machine, and are
now only available from citizen screen captures (!). The next step in
our descent into Lysenkoism is to rewrite college textbooks to reflect
this new 'reality'. Now is the time for real scientists to speak up
before it is too late.
[The corona-panic: Update: Dec28,'20]:
Understanding 'cause of death'
If you have a heart condition and then get covid and
die, then of course, covid killed you. However, if you
have a heart condition and get the covid *vaccine* and then
die
a few hours later, your cause of death
was your heart condition, of course (here is a
similar
case). The reason behind this is that vaccines are, by definition,
'safe' (even when they haven't been properly tested), and because only
an 'anti-vaxxer' who hasn't been properly 'fact-checking' would think
otherwise.
[The corona-panic: Update: Dec31,'20]:
Definitive study: there is no asymptomatic transmission
A definitive study on whether asymptomatic transmission of covid occurs
was just published in Nature Communications. This study followed almost
ten
*million* people. A very small number of asymptomaptic 'cases'
(i.e., positive PCR test but no sickness) were found. Their contacts
were traced. There was *no* evidence of transmission of disease by
supposed asymptomatic infections.
This study removes the rationale for lockdowns, masking, and covid
testing of healthy asymptomatic individuals. The entire scientific
basis for the hugely destructive worldwide lockdown looks null and void.
This is what 'science' or a 'scientific mindset' is actually about.
You set up a test, look at the data, then crucially, *change your
thinking and actions* based on the results. You might have wanted the
data to come out one way than another, or you might have already made
policy based on thinking the data would turn out one way or another.
But after definitive data has been analyzed, it is time to change thinking
and policy based on it. That's what all the silly 'science is real' or
'science matters' signs should actually imply.
If the yellow press read any science, or spent a few minutes googling,
they could all easily find out that the the 1918 flu was 20-100x as
bad as covid (depending on country, and that's assuming all the 'covid'
counts are correct). They could all equally find easily find out that
lockdowns themselves have killed a lot of extra people; even the CDC
estimates that only 2/3 of the excess deaths in 2020 were
from covid.
For example, in San Francisco there were 5x as many suicides as 'covid'
deaths.
But unfortunately, we live in an alternate reality where science does
*not* matter, and @assbook and tw@tter 'fact checker' censors and bullies,
and tinpot dictator governors rule people's weak minds by decree. Today,
the new San Diego mayor, who just accepted a *doubling* of his salary to
$200k, issued an executive order to fine people $1000 for 'illegally'
eating in an outdoor restaurant. It is critical to push back against
this creeping Nazification. Nazification by degrees with no pushback
is a road to ruin. 'First, they came for the outdoor diners, but I
wasn't an outdoor diner . . .'. Fight back people before it's too late!
With no pushback, we will be locked down forever.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jan15,'21]:
Almost 1 in 1000 vaccine deaths in Norway
Norway vaccinated 33,000 people causing 23 deaths, which is almost 1
in 1000. The vaccine deaths are almost 5% of the total number of deaths
from covid itself in Norway. The health authority said "For those who
have a very short remaining life span anyway, the benefit of the vaccine
may be marginal or irrelevant". You don't say! Wouldn't that be the
*very grannies* the vaccine was designed to save?! This is turning into
something analogous to the Dengvaxia disaster, where the WHO advised
that it was only safe to administer the vaccine against dengue fever to
people *who had already had dengue fever*, because vaccinated people who
hadn't yet gotten dengue were dying when they got it, while unvaccinated
people recovered. Since the WHO has redefined herd immunity as only
due to vaccines and not natural infections, it's looking more and more
like the goal is to force vaccinate all healthy people. Since there
is no evidence that the vaccine prevents transfer of the disease, you
will still have to social distance and wear masks forever. Fight back,
healthy people!
Here is an eye-opening
set
of links collected by Mark Crispin Miller showing some bad things
that can happen when healthy people are given the the covid vaccine.
Caveat emptor!
[The corona-panic: Update: Jan26,'21]:
Excellent article
We just read an excellent article by Jeffrey A. Tucker, "
All hale
the reopening!". We sent this to a supposedly 'left' friend who,
instead of responding to even a single point of its content, tut-tut-ingly
informed us that they had 'fact-checked' AIER in Wikipedia (Wikipedia
is run by former porn king, Jimmy Wales), and found that AIER had some
libertarian writers, and condescendingly wondered whether we were aware
of this (you mean, about Jimmy Wales? :-} ). I still imagine a world
where the evil people who ordered the children of the entire world to
wear masks for almost a year, which result in deformations of the jaw
(more narrow dental arch, development of a toothy grin, more cavities)
will have to pay - say, by having deforming mouth braces forced onto them.
Or imagine we brought back the stocks and pillory. There are probably
a decent number of people who wouldn't mind being given the opportunity
to spit upon Newsome.
Instead of addressing reality - such as the
likely fact that the COVID lockdown policies will
disporportionately hit black Americans *for the next decade*
PDF
here - see esp. Fig. 6 - the pitiful so-called 'left' is now
uncomfortably shifting in their chairs trying to find some way
of explaining to themselves why they allowed their inordinate
fear for their own comorbidity to severely damage the lives
of poorer people across the globe. The US has just suffered the
sharpest
rise in poverty rate in more than 50 years. So much for the utter
sham of BLM (in Seattle BLM now has a 7% approval rating among blacks,
the lowest of any group). We need more personal lawsuits.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jan29,'21]:
Possible ADE disaster and its aftermath
As I have noted many times before, all previous attemtps to develop
a vaccine to a similar coronavirus, SARS-CoV-1 (the original SARS)
resulted in serious or lethal antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE),
where a vaccinated animal did much worse when infected with SARS after
vaccination as a result of hyper-immune responses, especially in the lungs
(e.g.,
ref).
The exact mechanism of ADE is not entirely worked out. One theory is that
it may occur when 'non-neutralizing' antibodies are generated that may
have the effect of hiding the virus from the immune system by binding to
it, allowing it to rapidly replicate. This might be the state of things
after the first injection of a 2-injection protocol. There have been
some reports possibly consistent with this (Norway, Scotland, Gibraltar,
Israel) where a large number of deaths from COVID occurred immediately
after the administration of the first injection of a 2-injection protocol.
Another equally troubling possibility is that when a 'properly vaccinated'
cohort is hit with a slightly mutated virus, the resulting disease
is more lethal. Big pharma is aware of this but also aware of the
potential for profit, and has already announced that a 3rd injection with
a modified spike protein is in the works. This is a little like a 'binary
weapon', where each part alone has little effect, but when combined, are
deadly. There are already hundreds of scattered reports (e.g.,
here)
of things like this occurring.
A real possibility is that the next passage of a slightly mutated
SARS-CoV-2 (which is mutating all the time) through the population could
result in an increased chance of death in people who have been vaccinated.
If big pharma is successful in ramming through mandatory vaccination,
it might not even be possible to *detect* this negative effect of the
vaccination if most vulnerable people have already vaccinated; instead,
the greater lethality will be incorrectly attributed to a more lethal
virus.
This could then result in even more stringent forced vaccination programs
with 2 or 4 or 6 or 20 injections per year, given the relatively trivial
cost to big pharma of synthesizing new mRNA's on their self-described mRNA
'vaccine' platform. It is trivially easier to insert/synthesize a new
mRNA sequence than to develop a new 'killed' virus vaccine. The eventual
overall result might be an ever worsening lethality of the disease,
a textbook example of a nosocomial - i.e., hospital-caused - disease.
The animal research on ADE is there. The profit motive is there.
The possible elimination of a control group due to forced vaccinations
is there. We must retain the right as free humans to *not* be vaccinated.
Of course, anybody who wants to get vaccinated should be free to do so!
How this all works out is anybody's guess. None of the vaccines have been
tested in this way, despite the fact that the ADE effect is well-known
not only in the coronavirus vaccination literature, but with vaccines
against other viruses (respirary syncytial virus, dengue fever virus).
As the real-life 'joke' goes:
One rat says to another: "Are you going to get the covid vaccine?
The other rat replies: "Nah, I'm going to wait for the human trials"
Finally, and most importantly, all this exclusive attention to
expensive vaccines has lethally distracted attention away from the
dirt-cheap, safe, *highly effective* drug treatments that are *already
known* to *greatly* reduce mortality if given before the disease
gets out of hand, including vitamin D, ivermectin, azithromycin,
budesonide/steriod inhalers, HCQ. These drugs also work against
influenza viruses (excellent PDF summary by Dr. Lee Merritt
here). In poor
countries where these commonplace drugs are being used (available
without prescription at drugstores), the covid death toll is a tiny
fraction of what it has been in the US - as in 1/100 the percentage of
infected people dying from it. Big pharma and Anthony Fauci's jihad
(fake articles, fake clinical trials, daily fake press conferences)
against these cheap and effective drugs in order to protect experimental
vaccines and hyper-expensive anti-virals (e.g., remdesivir) may have
cost a quarter of a million US lives. These guys could eventually be
prosecuted for mass murder.
The *only* way to fix this is for people to wise up and see that big
pharma does not have your best interests in mind and just say no.
Most doctors are unlikely to help because their jobs are on the line.
Big pharma's interests are simply fundamentally different than yours
and mine.
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb02,'21]:
2020 60K increase in US all-cause mortality inconsistent w/300-400K covid deaths - until Jan 2
As the covid psyop panic crescendoed back in April 2020, I said back
then that the most critical thing would be to keep an eye on
all-cause mortality, which should be difficult to misclassify
(dead is dead). Well, by late December 2020, the numbers
(from the CDC) had come in for virtually all of 2020. James
DeMeo has totalled them up from CDC websites in a preprint
(PDF
here).
In 2010, there were 2.5 million all-cause deaths in the US. The average
increase in all-cause deaths per year over the past decade has been
45,000. This is largely the result of increases in US population, so
in 2020, there were 2.9 million deaths. The 2020 increase in all-cause
deaths over 2019 was 62,000 deaths, which was slightly above average
(but for comparison, 2015 saw 86,000 more deaths compared to 2014).
At the time (late Dec 2020) the CDC was also reporting that in 2020, there
were 316,000 deaths from Covid-19 ('400,000' in the mainstream media).
These basic numbers are incompatible. For covid to have caused an
additional 315,000 deaths, there would have to have been 250,000 *less*
deaths from everything else - an extremely unlikely occurrence.
One reasonable explanation is that a *large* number of deaths (250,000)
from other primary causes than covid were mistakenly classified as
covid ('covid' heart attacks, 'covid' cancer, 'covid' strokes, 'covid'
diabetic deaths, 'covid' bacterial pneumonia, not to mention 'covid'
car and motor cycle accidents).
The numbers just mentioned above were the death counts on Dec 31,
2020. But then on Jan 2, 2020, the number of total all-cause deaths
for 2020 was incremented from 2.9 million to 3.2 million, which
allowed for increased all-cause deaths compared to 2019 of 320,000
(see DeMeo above, Table 1B). According to the CDC data, 270,000
people suddenly died in the last week of 2020 (normal weekly deaths
are 50-60,000). Celia Farber has a summary and some comments
here.
Here are web archives of the CDC pages showing
the big (300K) jump in CDC all-cause deaths from
Dec
30 (2.9M) to
Jan
06 (3.2M).
I don't know enough about CDC data posting patterns to know if this is
'normal'. On a number of their death count websites, the CDC states that
final all-cause mortality data normally takes a few weeks to filter in
(final death certificate reports). They don't mention anything about
large end-of-the-year 'corrections'. This has a strange resemblance to
the sudden turnaround on the 2020 election night.
The CDC has lied about stats before. It would take a audit
of the CDC to get to the bottom of it. Since the CDC (with
major funding from big pharma and Bill Gates) would no doubt
stonewall, it would require a state-by-state audit of the all-cause
mortality data they submitted to the CDC. Sharyl Attkisson
did just
that for swine flu case numbers after the 2009 swine flu debacle.
The CDC stonewalled her request back then, so Attkisson went to
the individual states and got their data showing that virtually zero
percent of the swine flu tests the states were submitting to the CDC were
swine flu positive during a time when the CDC was reporting almost 100%
positive along with an order for state to *stop* submitting tests and
instead classify all flu-like deaths as swine flu (N.B.: the CDC had a
pile of what would now be unneeded swine flu vaccines to sell).
Given the context of the previous bald-faced lies by the CDC about swine
flu tests, it's not irrational to question whether the 2020 death data
has been tampered with. It sure is disheartening to have arrived at
this point.
[Update: go
here for Feb 21, 2021 update of DeMeo paper].
[The corona-panic: Update: Feb15,'21]:
This is child abuse
Here is some video of the
prison-like
hell that school boards are preparing for kids as they return from
'virtual' to 'school'. The response of the school board to the teacher
was to order her to remove the video. Luckily, a local news reported
picked it up.
These people have utterly lost their minds. This can only be described
as child abuse. Children barely get coronavirus infections; and contact
tracing evidence suggests that children essentially do not transmit
coronavirus to adults. No doubt, the kids will still have to wear
jaw-altering masks.
Things are getting scary people. The only way this can stop is if people
just begin to say 'no'. Fear has never been a valid excuse for committing
atrocities against other humans, especially young impressionable kids
whose rate of suicidal ideation has skyrocketed during the covid psyop.
These school board members should be procecuted for child abuse.
Perhaps when the Salem-witch-trials-like covid craze/fear finally
subsides, some of them will get sued.
Tessa Lena has just assembled a useful list of scientific
and other references at the end of her long article
Pandemic, meet
Panopticon. Panopticon, meet Pandemic.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr11,'21]:
They are losing
The following unedited quote from Dr. Leana Wen (Mar 10 on CNN) shows
that the the forced vaccine 'great reset' freaks are *losing* in their
attempt to impose biomedical dictatorship/apartheid:
"But there are many more people, millions of people who for whatever
reason have concerns about the vaccine, who just don't know what's in
it for them. And we need to make it clear to them that the vaccine is
the ticket back to pre-pandemic life. And the window to do that is
really narrowing. You were mentioning about how all these states are
reopening. They're reopening at 100%. And we have a very narrow window
to tie reopening policy to vaccination status. Because otherwise, if
everything is reopened, then what's the carrot going to be? How are we
going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine? So that's why
I think the CDC and Biden administration needs to come out a lot bolder
and say, 'If you are vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here are
all these freedoms you have'."
People are waking up to the possibility of global corporate medical
evil in a way that they weren't before the whole covid operation was
rolled out. Imagine, 'a vaccine so safe you have to be threatened to
take it'! That may be why another $3 billion (!) was just dumped into
the $1.5 billion already allocated for vaccine propaganda. That makes
it by far the largest advertising/propaganda campaign ever rolled out in
human history - to convince people that an experimental vaccine is safe,
in order to treat a disease with an overall infection-fatality ratio of
0.15%
(i.e., 99.85% survival, no worse than a moderately bad flu).
Here is a quote from Michael Yeadon (from an
Apr
5 interview with Willem Engel):
"Once an infectious disease is endemic, it's nonsensical to prevent a
tiny proportion of people moving from A to B. The variants narrative is
completely fallacious. I'm immunologically trained and can see gaping
holes in the story. As an illustration, note that the most-different
variant is still 99.7% identical to the original sequence. There's no way
on earth that a 0.3% change will allow a variant to not be recognized by
the immune system as the same virus. It's as if I put my baseball cap on
back to front expecting not to be recognized as Dr. Mike Yeadon. Worse,
once you realize it's all lies re: variants, you surely get a wash of
fear. Why have they all but closed borders? Whay are they making top-up
vaccines? Why have global medicines regulators decided no safety studies
are required? What's happened and happening does not add up. Once
you accept that, you should become sceptical. There's risk of being
told you're silly if you ask questions. The far bigger risk is NOT
questioning things. No one is going to come and put all this mess right.
Only we can do that and only if enough of us say "I'm not putting up with
this nonsense a moment longer". Please do that. I can't communicate
how vital it is that you do."
For the complete story, watch this new
Yeadon
interview (Apr 11) by Taylor Hudak, which covers all the main points;
it's a rare video that is worth listening to all the way through.
It's one worth sending to someone still on the fence. Yeadon has
long been censored from twitter and youtube. Here is his
latest, most excellent
interview from Journeyman Pictures (Apr23), which only survived on
their youtube site for a few days (bitchute link above).
Slowly but surely, people will come to
realize that *85%* of the covid fatalities could
have been prevented if cheap, available treatment options
had
not been completely censored (watch this stunning Dr. Peter McCullough
interview). The *same people* (e.g., Fauci) are responsible for: (1)
funding the gain-of-function research (e.g., inserting an ACE2 receptor
and furin cleavage site into a bat coronavirus) that likely created
the problem, (2) killing a quarter of a million people just in the US
by badmouthing and blocking the use of cheap, safe, effective existing
treatments, and (3) rolling out untested experimental vaccines worldwide
that have caused additional harm and will likely cause future harm
(ADE). These people have massive conflcts of interest (e.g., the NIH,
CDC, and WHO hold vaccine patents and are essentially vaccine company
subcontractors) as *billions* of dollars are shovelled to global pharma
and Bill Gates. These criminals *must* eventually come to justice.
Never again.
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr28,'21]:
Pfizer explains why you should be afraid
Check out page 67-69 of this Nov 2020 description of
the Pfizer Phase 1/2/3 clinical trial (in 146-page PDF
here).
It describes the reporting rules for secondary adverse events
(SAE's) that occur in *unvaccinated* people who have been exposed to
vaccinated subjects ("the study intervention"). Here is an example:
"A [unvaccinated] female family member or healthcare provider reports
that she is pregnant after having been exposed to the study intervention
[i.e., a vaccinated subject] by inhalation or skin contact". This needs
to be reported as an 'EDP' [an 'exposure during pregnancy']. Pfizer
even required reporting secondary contacts with a vaccinated person:
"A male family member or healthcare provider who has been exposed to
the study intervention [e.g., a vaccinated person] by inhalation or
skin contact then exposes his female partner prior to or around the
time of conception". These events had to be reported within 24 hours,
according to Pfizer. There is more under "Occupational Exposure" at
the bottom of page 69, where it explicitly describes that since these
adverse events do not pertain to study *participants*, that they will
be stored in a different database.
Up until now, I was somewhat skeptical of claims of problems resulting
from contact with mRNA-vaccinated subjects because I was had trouble
imagining a plausible mechanism. But the fact that Pfizer was explicitly
looking for adverse events after mere exposure or a vaccinated person
has given me pause. In fact, I am beginning to feel positively "oogie"
now (to quote the execrable R. Maddow). But what could Pfizer have
been expecting as a mechanism of harm? I could imagine that right
after vaccination, a subject could be shedding excess spike protein.
The spike protein itself has a variety of negative effects when
*injected* into animal experiments (and even gets past the blood
brain barrier). But I couldn't find any experiments where animals
*inhaled* SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (or where inhaling it interfered with
pregnancy, menstruation, etc). The only thing I could find was
a single
study on acute lung injury from inhalation of SARS-CoV-1 (original
SARS) spike protein. Another possibily to consider is that an unfortunate
subject might end up with spike protein mRNA reverse-transcribed into
the DNA of some of their cells, perhaps as a result of a concomitant
retrovirual infection, which could result in chronic shedding of spike
protein if the insert ends up downstream from an activated gene. I don't
know of any positive evidence for this (animal studies). But another
possibility that just came to mind now is that the body might excrete
excess synthetic mRNA or even the generated spike protein as human lipid
encased exosomes, which are often shed in large numbers during an illness.
Perhaps there is more to the rapidly growing number of reports of problems
(e.g., unusual menstrual bleeding) after casual contact with vaccinated
subjects than I had originally suspected! Yikes.
[The corona-panic: Update: May05,'21]:
'Covid' after vac - the bare spike protein is toxic
There was an interesting post from
John Day
(the section toward the bottom quoting from the "COVID-19 Treating
Physicians list" courtesy of "Jeremy"), wondering about why so many
subjects seem to be getting severe 'COVID' and dying immediately after
the first mRNA vaccine shot (e.g., Gibraltar, many care home 'outbreaks',
Israel, Seychelles). Previously, I had been thinking that this might
be a case of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). But the problem with
that is, how could one expect 'COVID' to miraculously appear in each of
these environoments coincident with the first shot?
The "COVID-19 Treating Physicians list" suggests instead that
the sublethal and lethal effects are directly the result of spike
protein production. The spike protein itself (generated by the lipid
nanoparticle encased mRNA) is a pretty deadly toxin, esp. when it
is generated inside blood vessels (see below). The amount of spike
protein generated in different people is no doubt somewhat variable,
depending on the vagaries of where the injected nanoparticles
end up. However, recent studies have shown that circulating
SARS-CoV-2 vaccine antigen is detected in the plasma of
detected
in the plasma of vaccine recipients. Standard side effects like a
splitting headache are probably the result of a shower of small clots
or brain blood vessel inflammation that the body is able to clear
in a few days. The obvious permanent brain damage that
sometimes occurs,
however, can be horrific - as is the way in which the medical system
casually discards their own injured (see the frightening vid).
Given the experimentally demonstrated toxicity of the bare spike protein,
the idea of using a stabilized mRNA vaccine to force many different
cells in the body to produce potentially much higher levels of spike
protein than would be produced by most natural covid infections seems
completely reckless. The bare spike protein has been shown to damage
endothelial cells, which line blood vessels (raw manuscript
here
and formatted version
here).
Here is another study
showing
the same thing. The bare spike protein can directly
cause
blood clots by aggregating platelets.
The bare spike protein can induce
brain
inflammation and scarring (brain pericyte
immunoreactivity). The bare spike protein can
cause
lung damage. The bare spike protein likely
binds
amyloidogenic proteins (that cause neurodegeneration).
The receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein
binds
heme and hemoglobin even better than its 'normal' target,
the ACE2 receptor. Finally, the bare spike protein can
get past the
blood-brain barrier and into the brain. Adenoviral-vector vaccines
also cause production of the spike protein (N.B.: a separate issue is
effects of adenovirus vaccine before it has even gotten into a cell;
e.g., the adenoviral vector vaccine (ChAdOx1) itself has been show
to form complexes with platelet-activating anti-platelet factor 4
antibodies and to directly cause inflammation, which fuels
vaccine-induced
immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia - the paradoxical combo
of clotting and low platelet levels initially described
here, perhaps
via human protein contaminants).
In the context of these toxicities, it is perhaps not surprising
how deadly the covid vac's have been compared to any previous
vac. The voluntary monitoring systems in the US, UK, and EU have
reported about a total of about 13,000 deaths (EU=8,500, UK=1,000,
US=4,000) and about 1.2 million adverse reactions (numbers
here,
US covid vaccine deaths updated today from
3,500 to 4,000). The official figures suggest a
cover-up
of massive proportions. The US Vaccine Adverse Events
Reporting System (VAERS) was started in 1990. The 4,000 deaths
reported to VAERS from the covid vaccines account for almost *half*
of the total vaccine-induced deaths ever reported to the system
since its inception! This is the most harmful vac in history by
a long shot; after the year is up it will probably turn out to
be 100x worse than any other vaccine in terms of death reports to
VAERS. Here is a great 30 min interview with the unimpeachable
Peter
McCullough (Apr 27th) on effective existing treatments, which
could have prevented 85% of the deaths in comparison to the risks of the
vac's (esp. see his comments on the "Trusted News Initiative", which
was announced Dec 10, 2020, just before the official vac rollout).
[Update: Also see also excellent May 12 interview with
Pierre Kory]. It is
impossible to exaggerate the level of deception and regulatory agency
capture. The NIH, which tried to scare people away from taking ivermectin
is a co-owner of the Moderna patent; Fauci is on the remdesivir patent;
the CDC and WHO get almost half of their budgets from big pharma and
Bill Gates.
Finally, it is well known that voluntary adverse event reporting
systems seriously underreport harm. A $1 million dollar
2007-2010 Harvard study on 376,452 patients given 1.4 million
doses of 45 different vaccines showed that VAERS only captured
1% of of adverse events, including deaths, actually experienced
by those same patients when they were explicitly tracked (PDF
here).
The unavoidable conclusion is that the true level of carnage from the
vaccine is much worse. The Peloton treadmill gets pulled for 1 death,
but thousands of vaccine deaths don't even register! Yet another
terrible perverse incentive against reporting vaccine-induced deaths is
that survivors cannot collect life insurance if someone dies of from
the covid vaccine because it is only Emergency Use Authorized and not
fully approved (!).
The New 'Mighty Wurlizter' combines (1) government and media
propaganda (the $4.5 billion dollar covid vaccine advertising plan),
(2) science propaganda (many scientists now have 'golden handcuff'
covid grants, and (3) big tech censorship (Twitter/Facebook/Youtube
blocking censoring peer-reviewed scientific papers that don't agree
with the official Pravda-like narrative, or continually deleting
large private groups of people trying to communicate about
their
vac injuries). The withering assault has literally transported
many weaker minded people into an alternate reality 'Matrix'
with many features of a cult. Check out the idiotic parenthesis
inserted by the press censor into the second sentence of this
Salk
press release describing how the spike
protein damages blood vessels (I lampooned it
here).
The censors inserted that sentence after the
article was first published (original version from web.archive
here)
when they realized that people might 'mistakenly' get the idea that an
mRNA vaccine making tons of spike might not be good for you. However,
there still many people who have not yet succumbed to the deafening
blasts - perhaps something like 25% of the population in the US.
Those are the ones who will eventually lead the rest back to reality.
[The corona-panic: Update: May12,'21]:
Fauci agonistes: "I did not have scientific relations with that lab"
Senator Rand Paul did a good job questioning Fauci
in this
7
min vid. The main outline of the story of the NIH outsourcing
gain-of-function research to Wuhan via Peter Daszack's EcoHealth
Alliance was already known over a year ago to any person
with an internet connection (e.g., see my posts
here
starting back in Feb 2020), but it's good to see
that however belatedly, the story might finally be
getting 'legs'. See esp. the new comprehensive article by
Nicholas
Wade. Gain-of-function is Fauci's bread and butter, and
not just for SARS and not just at Wuhan. Here is a
PNAS paper from Aug 2020
showing that Fauci's NIAID has been funding an entirely separate line
of "gain of function" research on the Zika virus, also with the Wuhan
Institute of Virology. Also, Wuhan Institute of Virology is far from the
only NIH/EcoHealth Alliance outsourcing operation (see e.g., the
Lugar
Center, a US military bioweapon lab in Tbilisi, Georgia).
Fauci is potentially implicated in two overlapping crimes: (1) a
decade and a half of using some of his $7 billion/year budget to
fund the wretched gain-of-function research on SARS in the first
place, and then (2) preventing the use of cheap, extremely effective
treatments (ivermectin, HCQ, zinc, vitamin D, budesonide) that
could
have prevented 85% of the deaths (Peter McCullough), in order
to aid big pharma by prioritizing vaccines. We are talking about
possible responsibility for causing 'holocaust'-level numbers
of deaths. It's possible that he even might be being set up to
take the fall and then suffer a 'heart attack'. Bring on
Nuremberg II without delay!
The American people continue to 'vote
with their feet' on the vacs, with
vacs per
day dropping to almost half of the peak reached at the beginning
of May 2021. This will likely prompt even more starkly authoritarian
attempts to force more vaccination, which, however, could backfire.
[The corona-panic: Update: May14,'21]:
You'll wear a mask forever if you don't get vaccinated
It's quite apparent to anyone who watched
Fauci's testimony in the
Senate in response to Rand Paul's questions three days ago, and who then
went and read the funding statements in any of a large raft of papers from
Ralph Baric, Shi Zhengli, Peter Daszak and others, that Fauci committed
perjury in his testimony. Perhaps Fauci is finally being hung out to
dry in a limited hangout! For example, a critical point not mentioned in
the Senate testimony is that funding sources included USAID-EPT-PREDICT
(USAID is a CIA front); it's not impossible that covid was a
US
bioweapon attack on China (see also
Josh
Mitteldorf). Though the Mighty Wurlitzer half-heartedly tried to
blackhole the Fauci/lab release story, it has oozed out again around
the edges of the internet.
So today, Dementia Joe announces that if you don't get
vaccinated, you will have to wear a mask forever (
American
Sharia?! - we always *knew* it was never about health). For a
small number of people, this might increase the chance of suicide.
But I think a substantial portion of the population of the US
is right now thinking "f___ Biden!" and "f___ masks!". I would
estimate that Biden's annoucement was a big, personal FU to between
one-quarter to one-half of the country. It makes me laugh thinking how
this is supposed to work. Polls show that the *vaccinated* are
much
more fearful of covid than the unvaccinated on every measure!
Now the vaccinated right-thinkers will be torn between virtue-signalling
with their masks ON versus being mistaken for one of the unvaccinated
untermenschen with it OFF. Hah! Then there are the vaccinated who
simultaneously think everyone should be force-vaccinated *and* that
it doesn't
work!.
I think this is primarily an ill-advised and
somewhat panicky response to vaccination trends
easily
visible in this CDC graph. Getting McDonalds to
hector
comorbids with 'trusted information' while they eat 'health food' -
or the Ohio vaccine lottery - is a sign of desperation. The 'masks
forever' order could also be an attempt to distract attention from the
Fauci mudhole. More and more people are finally beginning to wise up to
the possibility that the government/bigtech/bigpharma alliance may not
have average people's best interests in mind. After a year and a half
24/7 media blackout on cheap, effective treatments for covid that could
have saved 85% of the 'covid' deaths, the truth is finally leaking out -
e.g., see this latest
excellent
interview of Dr. Peter McCullough.
I am not a pollster so I don't have a strong prediction for what will
happen next. I would think that to many people, Biden's decree
reads
like a joke. But I wouldn't be surprised if it motivates people to
purchase even larger numbers of 9 mm 'vaccine passports'. What's next if
the sheeple don't all submit and get their shots? Yellow star tattoos and
'work' camps to keep the vaccinated safe? Scheisse! The 'war on terror'
is being transmutated into a 'war between Americans'.
There is now a race on to get the emergency use authorization (EUA)
upgraded to a full approval. One fly in the ointment for full approval
is the very large number of adverse events and deaths reported to VAERS
for covid vaccinations, which is roughly equal to the total number of
vaccine adverse events and deaths reported to VAERS from its inception
in 1990 until Dec 2020 (!). This means the covid 'vaccines' are stunningly
more lethal than any previous vaccine (100x worse than any previous shot).
But even *those* numbers don't take into consideration that reports
to VAERS may have been throttled starting in late Jan or early Feb.
For example, half of all covid vaccine adverse events (and 35% of
deaths) in the VAERS database are dated to Jan or older. During that
time period (Dec 15 to Jan 31), 36M injections were given. The other
half of adverse events (and 65% of the deaths) in VAERS are dated
to have occurred between Feb 1 and May 7, during which more than *6*
times as many injections were given (226M injections, peaking in early
April, now back down to late January levels). Some of this is because
the distribution of early vaccinations was somewhat slanted toward less
healthy people (but also included a lot of frontline health care workers).
But it's seems likely that there is a backlog of reports 'in limbo' not
yet released to the public database. The CDC has a well-documented
history of massive lying during pandemics to support big pharma
(e.g., 2009 swine flu false reporting scandal uncovered by
Sharyl
Attkisson by getting data from states after CDC stonewalled).
They must not be allowed to get away with it again.
[The corona-panic: Update: May23,'21]:
My comment on the Nass/Kennedy petition to the FDA
Here is my comment to the FDA supporting the Meryl Nass and
Robert F. Kennedy Citizen's Petition to the FDA, requesting that
the Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA's) for the covid vaccines
be withdrawn. To read (and comment) on the petition
go here.
As of May 23 (the petition posted May 16), they have received 8,251
comments but only 2 have been posted (!). [Update May27: 3,500 of 13,000
comments received now posted].
I am a full tenured professor and research scientist (neuroscience)
and currently direct an MRI imaging center at San Diego State University.
I personally know people injured by the vaccine (my wife's relation who
had heart problems immediately after, a young woman dental assistant who
suffered sustained unresolved dizzyness, and a graduate student who went
into a coma after the second shot.
I have carefully read and agree with all the cogent points made in this
Petition. I have previously read thousands of papers from the original
scientific and medical literature on molecular biology, virology, covid,
and treatments for covid.
The VAERS system has recorded a shockingly large number of deaths
associated with these vaccines (May 10, 2021, VAERS total is 4,434 deaths
associated with covid vaccines). These reports are primarily made by
medical personnel. But many medical personnel are not even aware of the
existence of this system. Because many of the reports currently appearing
in the VAERS system are dated to January 2021, and because careful study
of the rate of reporting to VAERS has shown that VAERS only captures
1% to 10% of actually occurring adverse events, the true death total
from these experimental treatments is likely even more horrifying than
what has already been reported. These numbers are much higher than the
numbers of deaths that resulted in previous vaccines being withdrawn,
and amazingly account for almost half of all vaccine-associated deaths
ever reported to VAERS since its inception in 1990!
The notion that someone testing positive for covid after a traffic
accident counts as a 'covid death', yet anyone who drops dead a day
after a vaccine injection is a 'random association' because the vaccines
are 'safe and effective' is ludicrous. The dispensing of experimental
vaccines in non-medical settings is likely to have compromised informed
consent for these experimental treatments as well as compromising
monitoring for adverse events, esp. if these events occur several
weeks later.
Finally, I am especially troubled by the moves to cast aspersions on,
or to outright ban, effective non-vaccine treatments that have been
shown to be effective in a large number randomized controlled trials
such as chloroquine drugs, ivermectin, vitamin D, and budesonide.
The clinical trials in which near lethal doses of of hydroxychloroquine
were administered, despite the fact that the proper dosing of these
drugs has been known for decades was particularly egregious.
My suspicion is that these other effective treatments 'needed' to
be banned in order to permit the Emergency Use Authorization to be
approved for the experimental vaccines as a sole 'effective' treatment.
The loss of life this misdirected policy may have caused is frightful
and possibly criminal.
I have been dismayed by the level of misdirection in
what should be trusted sources of information for the
public. For example, the first version of a recent press release
(https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/)
from the Salk Institute stated:
"LA JOLLA - Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2's
distinctive 'spike' proteins help the virus infect its host by latching
on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that the virus spike
proteins also play a key role in the disease itself."
This press release was then rapidly revised to the following (revisions
in ALL CAPS), not based on any information from the paper itself:
"LA JOLLA - Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2's
distinctive 'spike' proteins help the virus infect its host by latching
on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that the virus spike
proteins (WHICH BEHAVE VERY DIFFERENTLY THAN THOSE SAFELY ENCODED BY
VACCINES) also play a key role in the disease itself."
In conclusion, I strongly support the Petition to revoke all EUA's for
the experimental covid vaccines, and especially to prohibit their use
in children, who have only been and will be harmed by these treatments.
I also strongly oppose using coercion and compulsion to try to force
people to take these experimental treatments.
[The corona-panic: Update: May27,'21]:
Crimes against humanity
Mike Adams, in a somewhat
over-the-top post, has nevertheless made a
very
interesting point that if: (1) the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein turns
out to have been genetically engineered in gain-of-function experiments
funded by the NIH and the CIA (USAID), and (2) the spike protein
itself is sometimes very toxic to human endothelial cells, lung cells,
and possibly even brain cells, then the *vaccines* using a virtually
identical engineered spike protein are an obvious source of liability
to the US or Chinese government officials. This could mean that a
genetically engineered potential bioweapon is being force-injected into
the world's population.
This may explain the ridiculous lengths to which governments have gone
to force this experimental treatment down everyone's throats so that no
'control group' is left against which to measure harm, esp. when the 'flu'
season arrives in winter 2021/2022, which will be the first real-world
test of whether the experimental vaccines cause antibody-dependent
enhancement (ADE). Hopefully Japan will continue to hold out! (currently,
only 1% vaccinated there). The video last month of troops in camouflage
going around to nightlife spots injecting hapless foreign-born
'volunteers' was creepy enough. In India, people have sometimes stoned
the vaccinators when they roll into town; or in another case,
200
villagers jumped into the nearby Saryu river to avoid the mandatory
vaccination teams. Resistance is *not* futile. In good news, after
re-approving ivermectin for treating covid a few weeks ago, the death
rate in India has rapidly plummetted.
Finally, the US senate just unanimously passed a law today to ban using
tax dollars to fund biological weapons research in China. Great.
But how about banning it in Tblisi, Georgia, and North Carolina
and Fort Detrick, too?! The evidence that the virus was probably
engineered, already an obvious possibility in early 2020, is now
pretty
strong.
[Update: May28: See Mike Adams (N.B.: who could
easily be controlled opposition) on an
anonymous phone call
that he says successfully forced him to take down to take down a podcast
and publicly apologize for his May 27 article on new Nuremberg trials for
crimes against humanity (by threatening to take down his domain name).
A similar personal threat was delivered to Mercola a few weeks ago,
forcing him to take down his own published articles on . . . vitamin D!
Remember, this could easily be a ploy to try to scare the real opposition.
Don't be afraid.]
In other news, the cyberattacks predicted by Klaus Schwab (as well as
a number of observers last year), look like they are now being rolled
out (Solar winds, gas pipeline, JBS, which is largest meat producer in
the world).
[The corona-panic: Update: Apr31,'21]:
So now China has infiltrated Fort Detrick . . . riiiight :-}
As the fact that the virus was probably engineered together
with the fact that the spike protein is toxic finally starts to creep into
the consciousness of the scared covid sheep, it could potentially result
in a loss of control of the covid narrative and the vaccine narrative.
This is particularly poignant because of the the ridiculously inflated
death tolls, which were caused by PCR 'turned up to 11', death-reporting
rules changed just for 'covid', hospital cash payments just for 'covid',
not to mention massive real deaths from withholding ivermectin et al. and
waiting until people were too sick to recover and then killing them
on ventilators (see this superb May 19, 2021 interview with
Peter McCullough).
So now, the mainstream media has had to do a sudden 180 deg flip
of the narrative in order to get out in front of the slow-moving
sheep-awakening, in order to keep control. In order to make this
look credible, it looks like Fauci, and perhaps Gates, and Klaus
Schwab are going to be retired from the limelight to make it seem
to the sheep that 'something has been done to fix this' (I would
prefer a perp walk, but I'll take what I can get). In a somewhat
frantic-looking attempt to keep control, the story has to be
China,
China, China! [Update: Scott Creighton's youtube channel
was cancelled again specifically for this vid -
bitchute
backup here (start at 4:50)]. The latest, most
preposterous, example of this is that now, China has supposedly
infiltrated
Fort Detrick (for shame Joe Hoft for catapulting this nonsense,
which has already been sprayed all over the web - that's why I put a
"DI" in your bookmark, Joe). Hah! The most critical thing is to
take everyone's eyes off the huge DoD funding of 200 biowarfare
labs spread across the world, including the one at the
Lugar
Center in
Tblisi,
Georgia.
On the vaccine narrative, it will be critical for the propaganda to argue
that 'we didn't know the spike protein was toxic' (they already did),
and anyway, you signed the form that says you are taking an experimental
treatment, so sorry about that, but it's your fault if you got hurt,
and it's all for the children and the immuno-compromised. Any you will
have to repeatedly take it anyway, and we will force you to, if you try
to resist. So, resist! Resistance is *not* futile!
In the meantime, here are some Schwabian cyberattacks on your
global
meat supply chain to force you into eating more toxic plant-
and GMO-derived fake meat. Don't eat toxic fake meat - just eat more
real plants!
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun06,'21]:
Fauci 'outed' by Bezos' WAPO . . . riiiight :-}
It's important to step back and put all the froth about bagman Fauci
- but also possible bioweapons - in perspective. The Fauci emails
were obtained from a FOIA sent by Bezos' WAPO and BuzzFeed (Trump
'pee-tape' guys). There are a few choice passages on setting
up the 'humans interfering in the wild' and 'emerging diseases'
narrative. But overall, they make Fauci look like the
small-time thug that he
actually is, having others ghostwrite fake articles on 'natural origin',
with Jeremy Farrar (head of the Wellcome Trust), Francis Collins (head
of the NIH), and Peter Daszak (Fauci's money launderer at EcoHealth
Alliance, which anyway got a shit ton more money from USAID (DoD/CIA)
than it did from Fauci. The treatment of Fauci in the main sewer media
gives embarrassing new meaning the word 'presstitute'. Amazon (Bezos
again) disappearing Fauci's book is consistent with a move to retire
Fauci from the limelight.
Some of the lesser rats are now running for cover;
Kristian Andersen, from the Scripps Research Institute here
in La Jolla, who privately warned Fauci that covid
looked
engineered and then turned around and wrote a high-profile propaganda
article for Nature Medicine saying it absolutely wasn't, just
nuked
his Twitter account. Here is an
excellent audio interview on the details with
Meryl
Nass; see also her
excellent blog.
But the important point to keep in mind is that even it *was* a
bioweapon, covid turned out to be *not that deadly*. The Drosten
PCR fraud, together with
cash-strapped hospitals simply withholding common sense early treatments
like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and budesonide and vitamin D
along with lockdown-caused death (50% of heart attacks in 2020 were
'treated' at home instead of the emergency room), is plenty enough
to explain the relatively small overall increase all-cause mortality.
It still remains the case that the average age of death from covid is
*above* the overall average age of death. It's just not that deadly!
Hospitals have remained 'socially distanced' - that is, empty!
A large part of the new narrative is to try to get people scared of
covid again so that the toxic childhood vaccine schedule put in place
in the decades after the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act,
which removed all liability from drug companies for vaccine injuries
and deaths, can be rammed down the throats of adults across the world
forevermore, by totalitarian decree.
The almost instantaneous acceptance of the most recent narrative change is
remarkable to see, with a majority of the public now thinking covid was
a lab leak and almost a quarter thinking it was intentional. There is
already a
Bruno
Ganz Hitler video on it :-} . The difficulty of the new narrative,
however, is that it has also made people (rightly!) more suspicious of
the experimental gene therapy vaccines. The VAERS deaths are now over
5000, even with all the throttling of the reports and massive hospital
administrative pressure on health care workers to *not* report vaccine
injury. This is by far and away the most deadly vaccine every rolled out
by a factor of 50 or 100. And we still won't know whether the 'vaccines'
cause antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE, increased severity of disease
after vaccination) until the 2021/2022 flu season.
It's clear from the plummetting vaccination rate (
CDC graph
here) that half of the US population has definitively decided (many
after their first shot), f*** that, perhaps from personal reports of
people that were injured or killed (the small uptick on the downslope was
the approval for teenagers, now played out). The crucial question now,
is whether increasingly totalitarian measures will be as easily accepted
as were the initial prison-style lockdowns were. The fact that some US
states have given the big FU to vaccination passports is cause for hope.
As I have said before, a big wild card concerns the details of how the
Greatest Bubble in Human History pops, perhaps sometime later this year.
Though people often respond to grinding, long-drawn-out adversity and
impoverishment by hunkering down and becoming more pliable, sudden
changes in fortune can literally cause a revolution. The bad guys
have not won yet (though there will, no doubt, be more 'cyberattacks'
and other false flags, as predicted by Klaus 'Swab' to muddy the water).
It's good to plan ahead since we know from history how revolutions have
virtually always been tamed, subverted, and Napoleon-ized.
[Update Jun7: here is an excellent
Twitter
thread from CJ Hopkins making a similar point that the sudden
'official' swivel to 'lab leak' is just more fear porn. If this doesn't
work, we have cyberattacks and aliens on the docket!]
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun16,'21]:
New properties of the spike protein - it strongly binds hemoglobin
Here is an interesting preprint,
SARS-CoV-2
proteins binds heme and hemoglobin, from April 2021. They show that
the receptor binding domain (RDB) on the spike protein, whose affinity for
the ACE2 receptor is often touted as an explanation for why SARS-CoV-2 is
so transmissible, actually binds hemoglobin with a much greater affinity.
The competitive binding is so strong that adding hemoglobin to cell
culture blocks viral replication, presumably because the binding to
hemoglobin prevents the spike protein from binding to the ACE2 receptor.
But there is something critical normally carried by the heme in hemoglobin
- namely, an iron atom - which is crucial for oxygen transport by
the blood. Binding to the heme (or the 'socket' into which the heme
along with its iron atom fits) could potentially lead to free heme
and free iron in the blood, which can cause inflammation and clotting.
If the spike protein is involved - and this paper suggests it is - similar
considerations apply to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein generated by cells
after injections of spike protein mRNA nanoparticles (inappropriately
called 'vaccines') or injections of an adenovirus with a SARS-CoV-2
spike protein insert, because of the fact that the spike protein
is often cleaved off and circulates throughout the body.
This may be part of the reason for the spectacular increase in
vaccine-related deaths that have been reported to the VAERS
system (almost 6000), which is surely an underestimate.
It takes an amazingly sociopathic liar to view
the following graph of the
historical VAERS data and then state with a straight face that 'there
is no safety signal' in the all vaccine deaths graph. One wonders what
a 'safety signal' visible to the big pharma shysters in control of the
FDA would have to look like!
[The corona-panic: Update: Jun19,'21]:
Pharma gone wild
Here is one of the latest
new
nightmare 'vaccine' candidates - a self-assembling protein ball,
studded with 60 copies of the spike protein. Many of the bad side
effects of the current mRNA 'vaccines' probably come from the spike
protein snapping off from the membrane after it has been synthesized
and damaging the lining of blood vessels, causing platelet aggregation,
damaging the heart, neurons, piling up in the ovaries (judging from
where the lipid nanoparticles go), etc. Since the receptor binding domain
(RBD) of the spike binds to hemoglobin much better than it binds to ACE2
receptors, it may end up booting off heme-iron and causing a toxic iron
build up.
The bad precedent being set here is that the molecular biology mad
scientists have been let loose to generate new nightmares every week,
with the attractive financial prospect of billions of doses of their
potions being regularly force-injected into the entire world under
emergency use authorization (as it breathlessly says in the article),
with virtually no testing. When bad things happen, they will drop the
last one like a hot potato and quickly move on to the next nightmare.
In particular, new mRNA 'vaccines' are truly trivial to manufacture; all
you need is the sequence. The possibilities are endless and frightening.
An especially bad aspect is that anything that can be called a 'vaccine',
regardless of what it actually is will be able to negotiate complete
release from liability for the manufacturers. This is because any
'vaccine' is *by definition* is always 'safe and effective', no matter
what. This definition is enforced by the fearsome power of the media
and internet corporations, which are owned by the same people who own
big pharma (e.g., BlackRock). There is thus no incentive to minimize
side effects, death, etc, since they literally don't exist on youtube or
in the corporation-censored 'conversations' between people on Facebook
and Instagram. The insurance companies are in the game - if you say
that you have died from an EUA vaccine, your relatives can't collect
your life insurance; your health insurance coverage stops if you are
injured by a vaccine.
On days like this, I am feeling less chagrin about the fact that
biomedical research will begin to be curtailed on the downslope of net
energy, which will begin in earnest this decade. If people begin to
wake up, we may go from 'defund the police' to 'defund the Universities'.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul02,'21]:
Pregnancy: no safety signals? - updated
Last year, there were warnings about possible cross reactions of
antibodies to spike protein with syncytin-1 (a retroviral-derived
placenta protein). More recently, it was revealed that cationic lipid
nanoparticle shells of the mRNA vaccines selectively accumulate in the
ovaries (Japanese study, in monkeys, obtained by FOIA), suggesting that
the mRNA might also be selectively delivered there.
But those things were theoretical risks in humans. Now we have this
study in the 'real world' (from the non-public V-safe database),
just published
in NEJM.
The numbers that several commentators focused on are found in Table 4,
and its footnotes, where spontaneous abortions (defined as happening at
less than 20 weeks) were recorded as 12.6% (104 out of 827 pregnancies).
This is compared in Table 4 with an expected number of spontaneous
abortions (which they defined as 10-26%).
But several commentators pointed to the second (cross-symbol) footnote to
Table 4, which states that 700 out of the 827 women received their first
dose of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine in the *third* trimester. This is
clearly a highly biased subsample of the population from Table 3, where
participants were more evenly divided into trimesters. The data from
Table 4 shows that all 104 of the spontaneous abortions happened to
the 127 women who got the vaccine in the first and second trimesters,
but then divided by all in the 'completely pregnancy' subset (827)
to get the apparently normal rate of spontaneous abortion.
All of this confusion results from the fact that the subset of the
data was defined by 'completed pregnancies' together with the crucial
fact that all the pregnant women were only followed for a little over 2
months, so that most of the 'completed pregnancies' sample would come
from women in the third trimester. By making some assumptions, Viki
Male calculated the rate for first and second trimester spontaneous
abortions and got normal or extremely below normal numbers. Given the
highly biased sample and the extremely short followup, this a very flimsy
basis for public health policy for pregnant women.
My initial outrage at the study was partly because
I jumped to the conclusion that this was yet another
example of CDC and FDA finding 'no signal' in data, like the
absolutely unambiguous safety signal in the VAERS data of
vaccine-associated
deaths by year. The fact remains that the paper was written
in a confusing way, mostly a direct result of the exceedingly short
follow-up time. And none of this explains why there is a worldwide,
full-court propaganda push to vaccinate all living humans - including all
pregnant women - on the basis of a mere 2 months of extremely incomplete,
biased data.
The level of scientific revisionism is beginning to remind me
of the former Soviet Union. Robert Malone, the co-inventor
of mRNA vaccines (at the Salk Institute in 1989), was just
written
out of the Wikipedia page on the invention of
mRNA vaccines. That would be after Linked In
cancelled
him . . . for talking about mRNA vaccines. We are
living through an unprecedented, sophisticated,
global propaganda war.
[The corona-panic: Update: Jul09,'21]:
Latest UK data suggests covid vaccine may be causing ADE
One of the original, long-known concerns about the safety of coronavirus
vaccines is the possibility of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE)
or 'pathogenic priming'. This is where a vaccination against a
disease results in a more severe disease than would have occurred
if the animal/person had *not* been vaccinated. This problem
occurred with all previous SARS-CoV-1 vaccine candidates tested
in animals (as I and many other people have been hammering on
since
the beginning). But it has also occurred with other viruses and
vaccines such as the Dengvaxia vaccine for dengue fever, and 40 years
ago, the original paradoxical effects of the respiratory syncytial virus
vaccine (RSV), which greatly enhanced the disease rather than protecting
against it.
The lastest data from the UK strongly hints that the covid
vaccines may be causing ADE. Here is the latest (June 25th)
Technical
briefing 17 [PDF] from Public Health England entitled "SARS-CoV-2
variants of concern and variants under investigation in England".
The critical data are found in Table 4:
Delta variant cases:
7,235 - Fully Vaccinated
53,822 - Unvaccinated
Delta variant deaths:
50 of 7,235 - Fully Vaccinated cases = 0.69% died
38 of 53,822 - Unvaccinated cases = 0.07% died
Case rate comparison: 7235/53822 = 0.13x for vaccinated
Death rate comparison: 0.69/0.07 = 9.86x for vaccinated (!)
First off, the death rates are very low, especially for the unvaccinated,
so in the greater scheme of things, 'Delta' is not very dangerous
(99.93% unvaccinated survived it, which is less dangerous than the flu).
The virus is evolving toward greater infectivity and lesser virulence,
as viruses typically do.
But there is an obvious difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated.
The *case rate* was almost 8x higher for the unvaccinated (this is
assuming that the numbers are comparable and that the UK hasn't lowered
the PCR cycle threshold for vaccinated like the CDC did in the US, to
make it appear that there were fewer 'cases' in the vaccinated). But the
*death rate* from the Delta variant in vaccinated people was almost *10x*
the death rate in unvaccinated people! Avoiding becoming a PCR 'case'
is good; but I am sure that avoiding death is why so many people have
submitted to taking and untested experimental gene-therapy vaccine.
Of course, this doesn't take into account any systematic differences
in the vaccinated and unvaccinated population, which could lead to a
Simpson's paradox situation. Vaccination rates in the UK are quite high;
the latest numbers from the BBC are: "Wales has vaccinated 90% of those
aged 18 and over with at least one dose, while Scotland has reached 88%,
England 86% and Northern Ireland 81%".
It is absolutely critical that a hard core of people refuse the vaccine
in order that we have a decent control group a few years down the line
in order to be able to do the science on ADE. The clinical trials
control groups have all destroyed by vaccinating them. If everyone
is vaccinated, there will be no way to detect ADE! It will instead
mistakenly be attributed to a more lethal virus. We must resist universal
forced vaccination! Just say no if you don't want it! It is a universal
fundamental human right to be able to refuse a medical treatment.
The fact that the vaccinated may be so much more vulnerable to death
during the summer bodes poorly for the next flu season. The crucial
battle will come in November. If the vaccinated start dropping like
flies from 'covid', there could be a big push to blame the 'filthy'
unvaccinated. There is already a precedent with the bizarre concept of
'one-way' masks and vaccines, prevalent among my colleagues ('I wear a
mask and get vaccinated to protect you, but those things do not protect
me, so you have to wear a mask and get vaccinated to protect me').
We must call out this ridiculous 'one-way' nonsense for what it is
right now. If more vaccinated are dying, maybe we should to paraphrase
John Stewart, look at the f---ing vaccine!
Refusal is hard because: (1) the demand for treatment is coming from
global pharmaceutical corporations that have zero liability for harm but
stand to profit (the Pfizer covid vaccine is already the second-largest
pharma drug in history in terms of profits), (2) the demand for treatment
is advertised 24/7 by media and social media corporations that are all
owned by the same investment corporations (e.g., Vanguard, BlackRock)
that own controlling interests the global pharmaceutical companies, and
(3) the 'health agencies' like the FDA, CDC, and WHO who also demand
vaccination are getting half of their operating funds from big pharma
and Bill Gates (they are essentially big pharma contractors), and (4)
there are many 'cross-links' - for example Google funded Peter Daszak's
EcoHealth Alliance! Thus, it is no accident that the controlled media
literally *defines* anything that can be called a 'vaccine' - such as
experimental genetic therapy with stabilized mRNA or chimaeric DNA
adenovirus vectors - as 'safe and effective'. That's dogma, hardly
'science'.
The regulatory capture was so complete by 2020 that *no* animal studies
were done using the new experimental covid genetic therapy 'vaccines'
before they were given to humans. This is completely unprecedented for
a brand new 'vaccine', and certainly for a brand new form of genetic
therapy (N.B.: the FOIA'd Japanese monkey study showing biodistribution
to the ovaries only used the lipid nanoparticles, but without the mRNA
inside). The damage caused by the spike protein was only discovered in
animal studies that were done *after* the 'vaccine' rollout in humans.
This dangerous precedent must be immediately rolled back before it
metastasizes into other new dystopian 'medicines'.
Finally, it will also be critical that a hard core of already vaccinated
people refuse the upcoming 'booster shots'. There are two safety
considerations there. First, before the vaccination program started,
there was already a sizeable population (5-10%) with allergic reactions
to PEG, one of the components that stabilize the lipid nanoparticles in
the mRNA vaccines. Now that roughly half of the US population has been
injected with PEG together with immune-system-stimulating cationic lipids
as well as immune-system-stimulating spike protein (generated by the
injected mRNA), it is likely that the percentage of severe PEG allergies
has been substantially increased. We need a hard core, no-booster group
in order to be able to do the science and detect that additional potential
harm (e.g., instant death from an anaphylactic reaction).
The second safety concern (see short
Sukarit Bhakdi video
here) is that injecting spike-generating mRNA into a person who
already has robust antibodies against spike protein may cause a strong
auto-immune attack, for example, on any cells lining blood vessels that
have picked up the spike mRNA (or the transgene spike DNA in adenovirus
vector) from the booster shot and that are expressing spike protein
on their cell membranes. Immune system caused damage to the tight
junctions between the cells lining arteries is probably behind many of the
damaging cardiac and circulatory system 'side effects' of the 'vaccines'.
As always, these aren't 'side effects' - they are main effects.
Finally, back at the ranch (the US), there was another VAERS update
today. The covid-vaccine-associated death toll is now nearing
10,000 (for comparison, above 17,000 in the EU). Here is a graph
of historical data from VAERS (up to Jul 09), showing the
total
number of deaths from any vaccine by year. The FDA says it doesn't
see a 'safety signal' here. I hate to think of what kind of a 'safety
signal' it would take for these big pharma prostitutes to take notice.
The whole corrupt system needs to be sidestepped by thinking people
before the world is locked down into one of the dystopian nightmares long
envisioned by science fiction writers (e.g., the 'Mechanical Hound',
a robot dog with a drug syringe, in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
from 1953).
The eventual inability to maintain the civilizational complexity required
for worldwide medical martial law is one of the few positive highlights
of the consequences of the continuing rundown in available net energy.
[
Update: Jul14: The emerging vaccine disaster in Israel, one of the
most vaccinated countries in the world, looks potentially worse than
the UK data. At the beginning of the vaccination campaign, during the
flu season, infections were about 20x more common in the unvaccinated
compared to the vaccinated, partly because overall vaccination rates were
low. But in July 2021, symptomatic infections are now running 5x
more common in the vaccinated compared
to the unvaccinated. This is what motivated
Pfizer's 'booster request' to the FDA. A similar thing is
now showing up in US data from Los Angeles and New York: *vaccinated*
Americans are helping spread the Delta variant. We won't know the
definitive answer as to whether this is actually ADE until the next flu
season rolls around in November. Could be a doozy.]
[
Update: Jul15: Another 2,000 vaccine-associated
deaths were added to VAERS today. The criminal
heads of the CDC and FDA have looked at this
latest graph from the VAERS data (up to Jul 16) and have actually
declared that they cannot see a 'safety signal'. These new gene-therapy
'vaccines' are the most dangerous in history. The level of censorship
has reached such preposterous levels that you can actually get blocked
on @ssbook for sending this graph, which is *taken directly from the
VAERS government database*! We have now officially reached the Frank
Zappa stage where the curtain has been lifted and you see the brick wall
at the end of the theater. We have to act accordingly.]
[
Update: Jul31: Another data release from Public
Health England (Technical Briefing 19, dated 23 Jul 2021 (numbers
from PDF here) confirms the pattern described above:
Delta variant cases:
28,773 - Fully Vaccinated (not incl 54,092 partially vac'd)
121,402 - Unvaccinated
Delta variant deaths:
224 of 28,773 - Fully Vaccinated cases = 0.778% died
165 of 121,402 - Unvaccinated cases = 0.136% died
Case rate comparison: 28773/121402 = 0.24x for vaccinated
Death rate comparison: 0.778/0.1360 = 5.7x for vaccinated (!)
The main points are: (1) the Delta variant is *less* dangerous (2) there
are a larger absolute number of deaths in the *fully vaccinated*, and (3)
the rate of death per infection of Delta in the *fully vaccinated* is *6x*
the rate of death in the unvaccinated. This looks like antibody-dependent
enhancement (ADE). I was not able to verify if the UK has been copying
CDC fraud of selectively avoiding PCR tests only for the vaccinated,
which would make the vaccines look better than they are for avoiding
infection. Taking the data at face value, the numbers show that the
vaccine lowers the chance of infection, but if you are infected, you
have a much higher chance of dying, which cancels out the first effect.
Thus, for the most important bottom line - namely, death - the vaccine
has zero positive effect.
If the data are divided by age, there is an apparent positive effect
of vaccination for people > 50 (1.6% of vaccinated died vs. 5.6%
of unvaccinated died). There is no effect for people < 50 (0.026%
of vaccinated died vs. 0.028% of unvaccinated died). The percentages
are different because larger numbers of older than young people have
been vaccinated. However, this does not take account of vaccine induced
deaths, which number about 1500 from the voluntary yellow card reporting
system in the UK. It is clear that for younger people, the vaccines are
all risk, no benefit. But because of the inadequate voluntary vaccine
adverse events reporting, it is hard to say definitively whether there is
even a net positive effect for older people, once vaccine-induced deaths
are included. Finally, older unvaccinated people include people too
sick to tolerate the vaccine, and hence extremely susceptible to covid
(same thing happens with the flu - the positive effect of flu vaccination
disappears when taking into account the fact that flu-vaccinated older
people are healthier than non-flu-vaccinated people).
[The corona-panic: Update: Sep05,'21]:
Latest UK Delta variant data divided by age
The latest covid data on 'variants of interest'
from the UK (Technical Briefing 22) was just updated (
PDF
here). The following data, divided by age, was extracted from Table 5:
Delta variant deaths/cases (younger than 50):
37 of 62,403 - Fully Vaccinated cases = 0.059% died
99 of 212,989 - Unvaccinated cases = 0.046% died
Delta variant deaths/cases (50 and older):
1,054 of 51,420 - Fully Vaccinated cases = 2.0% died
536 of 6,724 - Unvaccinated cases = 8.0% died
From this, it is clear that there no benefit at all of vaccination
for people under 50. There is an apparent strong benefit for people
over 50. However, one problem with assessing that benefit is that older
unvaccinated people (e.g., people too weak to be vaccinated or dying
of another disease) are considerably unhealthier on average than older
vaccinated people. In the case of the seasonal flu vaccine, once this
bias is taken into consideration, the apparent benefit of vaccination
disappears. Compared to the previous Technical Report, the death rates
appear to have moderately increased in both vaccinated and unvaccinated,
but are still below the rates for the initial Alpha outbreak.
Given that there is no evidence that the vaccine restricts infection or
transmission, and actually *increases* the number asymptomatic spreaders,
this strongly supports restricting vaccination to the vulnerable, as
suggested by Robert W. Malone. The risk/benefit for people below 50 is
clearly unfavorable, once vaccine-induced deaths (e.g., abnormal clotting,
strokes, heart damage) are considered, especially considering how many
people have to be exposed to vaccine harm in order to save one person
(look at the small number of total deaths in people under 50).
However, when we turn to the more vulnerable, we also have to
consider that vaccine-induced deaths are more common in older people,
along with the likelihood that many vaccine-caused deaths have been
classified as 'unvaccinated' deaths (because you are not 'officially
vaccinated' until 2 weeks after the second dose, and because the
toxic
heart-damaging spike protein is generated by both covid as well as
the vaccine). This means that the minimum age for vaccination at which
benefits exceed risks is probably higher than 50.
Force-vaccinating college students and kids is an atrocity (e.g.,
73 permanently blind children in the VAERS). Naysaying and outright
preventing the use of cheap, effective treatments early in the disease
(i.e., at home) by threatening doctors' licenses, when these drugs
are by far the most effective (by stopping progression to deadly
remdesivir and a deadly ventilator), is another atrocity, which
has been responsible for a large number of 'covid' deaths across the
world. One can hope that the architects of these horribly misdirected
policies will eventually be brought to justice. It was an excellent
sign that the Indian bar association has sued WHO scientists
WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan for killing people
by misleading them about ivermectin (India's covid death rate is now
back down to rock bottom in the world, after reallowing ivermectin).
Somebody should sue the lying Rolling Stone and Rachel Maddow and on
the same basis.
We still won't know whether or not we are going to get antibody-dependent
enhancement (ADE) - which should more clearly be called "vaccine-enhanced
disease" - until the upcoming flu season. We can still hope that
this will somehow be the first coronavirus vaccine to *not* cause ADE.
However, if ADE does occur, as many virologists are expecting, it will be
critical to have an unvaccinated population in order to be able to detect
it, in order to avoid more harm in the future. The mainstream narrative
will try to cast this as the evolution of a more virulent variant, which
the public will not realize is counter to the known pattern of natural
evolution of viruses which is virtually always in the direction of *more*
infectivity and *less* virulence. They may nevertheless fail.
Finally, in the current unprecedented situation of a worldwide vaccination
campaign right into the teeth of an epidemic, there is the unfortunate
possibility of an *un*-natural evolution of the virus in a direction of
*enhanced* virulence, in a manner similar to what happened with the 2015
vaccine-induced Marek's disease disaster in chickens, where the Marek's
disease vaccine was banned and vaccinated flocks had to be liquidated
to prevent the extra-virulent disease from spreading. Luckily, all
the covid variants we have seen so far are not strongly more virulent,
so let's hope it stays that way! Also, though Americans have gotten
obese (almost 80% of covid hospitalizations are obese people), like the
obese factory chickens that most Americans eat (10x the percentage of
calories from fat that real chickens had in 1900), thankfully, we don't
(yet!) have to live like factory chickens do, and hopefully, this will
save us from a Marek's-disease-like scenario.
[The corona-panic: Update: Oct06,'21]:
Vaccine clusterf$ck: original antigenic sin and suppression of innate immune system
For the time being, let's set aside the descent of the world into
totalitarianism (good protest poster from the internet: "Imagine still
believing any of this is about a virus"), and just consider what an
amazing clusterf$ck this worldwide vaccine rollout has turned into from
a biological standpoint.
The latest data from highly vaccinated countries is pretty damning
on the complete loss of effectiveness, even for preventing death
in older people. That that was supposedly the last holdout, after
it has become apparent that the vaccines do nothing to reduce
viral titers in younger people and only suppress symptoms, making
the vaccinated into the long-dreaded asymptomatic superspreaders.
We are now getting infection spikes in September, way before the
flu season. The most vaccinated countries are experiencing the
highest case and death rates. Natural immunity is at least
7x
as effective as the vaccine (other estimates are
25x better). In the US in August 2021, the vaccine
had
almost no effect on infection or hospitalization (DoD Project
Salus on Medicare beneficiaries) 4 months after vaccination (see slide
13, which shows that breakthrough rate is only slightly less than
vaccination rate, and is rapidly rising). It's a total failure!!
The virus has evolved around the spike-only vaccine, exactly as as many
had predicted. This is especially obvious when looking in detail at
how
the virus has evolved; mutations are overwhelmingly concentrated
on the spike protein (the only thing in the vaccines) and not on the
other 26 proteins in the virus. Tellingly, this concentration *didn't*
occur in the first waves in 2020 before the vaccine.
Even with all the mangling and cheating in data collection such
as lumping vac-caused deaths into 'unvaccinated' (because you
aren't 'vaccinated' until 2 weeks after the second dose), the
widespread
euthanasia of unhealthy old people with midazolam and ventilators and
remdesivir (a failed Ebola drug, which blows out their kidneys causing
their already-impaired lungs to fill with fluid), and the criminal
bad-mouthing of effective early treatments, the truth about the bad
effects of the vaccine on the immune system is finally starting to
leak out.
It will take a while for the true believers to come to grips with the
data now emerging, and many may feel compelled to defend their decision.
Certainly, I will continue to defend anyone's right to decide to have
gotten the injection. But many are already uncomfortably waking up -
not even counting those who were seriously injured by the vaccine,
or the relatives of the perhaps 150,000 that were killed outright
(see Steve Kirsch, Jessica Rose). For example, a good 2/3 of the US
population is already against vaccine mandates. That number includes
many who were vaccinated. Or look at NYC, where vaccine passports at
restaurants have caused them to lose half their business, which must
include vaccinated people in highly-vaccinated NYC.
The mRNA vac's are turning out to sometimes have very bad effects on the
immune system. The not-too-concealed goal of big pharma, which many of us
guessed right at the beginning, was to turn the entire world's population
into vaccine junkies. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer has said as much.
The thought of damaging the immune systems of the world's population
so that they will require being re-vaccinated every 6 months must be
his wet dream. It should also be his ticket to Nuremberg-style crimes
against humanity trial.
(1) Original Antigenic Sin
The first bad thing, which Geert Vanden Bossche had previously warned
about, is that the single-sequence, single-protein mRNA vaccine exerts
huge, consistent, unnatural selection pressure on the virus to evolve
around the vaccine, especially if the vaccine is widely injected right
in the middle of a pandemic. This wouldn't have occurred with natural
immune responses during a pandemic because different people make different
antibodies and get simultaneously infected with a constantly mutating
set of different strains. Instead, we have generated nearly identical
immune responses across the world's population, by having everyone making
antibodies to an identical copy of the spike protein, which is only 1
out of about 27 proteins in the virus.
The artificially speeded viral evolution induced by the vaccine then
interacts horribly with what has been called 'original antigenic sin'.
This describes what happens when the immune system gets exposed to a
new variant, which it recognizes as related to an earlier infection.
The response is to re-activate T-cells and remake the antibodies -
now no longer working because of vaccine-induced selection, or worse,
now causing ADE (enhanced infection, or worse, enhanced disease) with the
new strain - that were made first time around (rather than running a new
metabolically expensive selection process where alternate DNA splicing in
T-cell are selected for the best binding cells). A substantial number of
people may have now disabled their adaptive immune systems for defending
against covid. This could have been avoided by limiting vaccination to
old vulnerable people, as Robert Malone has always argued, so that young
unvaccinated people at no risk from the virus could have achieved herd
immunity by natural immunity without exerting strong selective pressure
on the virus. The virus would then not have rapidly evolved its way
around the vaccine.
This abnormal weakened immune response should be contrasted with the
robust protection after natural infection. By generating antibodies
to multiple different strains of spike, but also to multiple different
non-spike proteins (the other 26 proteins in the virus), 'origin antigenic
sin' is no problem for unvaccinated, because the reactivated original
antibodies are much broader spectrum than the narrow Alpha-spike-only
antibodies in the vaccinated. Thus the reactivated antibodies still
work - as has been confirmed by studies in Israel showing that natural
infections defended against re-infection 10-20x better than the vaccine
does. The unfortunate truth is that a number of the vaccinated may
have semi-permanently damaged their adaptive immune systems with respect
to covid.
There is no easy way to fix this; you can't go in and nuke the 'original
sin' T-cells (well, without blowing out your entire immune system with
chemotherapy the way AZT nuked the immune systems of people supposedly
with 'AIDS' causing, well, 'AIDS'). Gees, I hope somebody at Pfizer
doesn't get any ideas . . . :-{ . They will probably try to increase
the dose of the same-sequence boosters to 'fix' this (like the ones in
use in Israel). But re-exposure to the same antigen can cause another
well-documented paradoxical effect - "tolerization" - where the 'booster'
causes *even more* suppression of the immune system. With re-exposure to
the same antigen, the immune system may decide that it's not a good idea
to have so much inflammation, and dials itself down. This is probably one
way the immune system can recover from accidentally generated auto-immune
responses. This has also been documented with intramuscular parasite
infections (immune response is reduced to avoid muscle damage).
Then there is the profitable prospect of an endless series of boosters
with different mRNA sequences, the most obvious target being a new spike
protein sequence for the Delta spike. This will surely be tried for fun
and profit. But these might not work at all given 'antigenic original
sin'! So you would get all side-effects but no additional protection!
Given the supine FDA, they will likely be able to ram these through with
no more than a week of 'testing'. Complete clusterf$ck.
(2) Covid Vaccines Suppress the Innate Immune System
The second thing that has become apparent is the finding that the modified
nucleoside in the mRNA vaccines (pseudo-uridine replaces uridine in
the vac mRNA) actually *strongly* suppresses the innate immune system.
The reason for the pseudo-uridine (indicated by a 'psi' in a genetic
sequence), was that it makes the mRNA less subject to immediate breakdown.
Your body is rightfully suspicious of mRNA code floating around in the
blood or lymph and quickly raises a strong inflammatory response to it
in order to chew it up. This is why gene therapy had been such a dud
over the past 3 decades, esp. when they tried to chronically administer
mRNA based gene therapy to someone missing a gene. Basically, when
you run the dose high enough to cause sufficient protein translation,
the inflammatory effects of the mRNA together with the toxicity of the
cationic lipid nanoparticles (cationic since RNA is negatively charged)
were together so bad that they sometimes killed patients in just a
few days. The strong immune reaction to injected mRNA is exactly what
initially led Robert Malone to recognize that mRNA gene therapy could
potentially be used as a vaccine instead.
To solve the toxic lipid nanoparticles problem, some new cationic lipid
formulations were found (tertiary vs. quaternary amines) that weren't *as*
toxic (though they are still listed as toxins in their chemical safety
data sheets!). To solve the inflammation and rapid breakdown problem,
uridine was changed to pseudo-uridine, which was shown in 2005 to
inhibit the innate
immue system.
But think of what that last point means. The longer lifetime
of the pseudo-uridine-containing mRNA implies that the innate
immune system (e.g., CD8 natural killer T-cells that would
deal with invaders mRNA-containing without having to wait for an
adaptive immune response) has somehow been dialed down.
Waaay
down. The pseudo-uridine mRNA itself may help enable this,
but the exact mechanisms still aren't exactly known. It could be a
direct action of the pseudouridine on Toll-like receptors. It could
also be something like the extra stability of the pseudo-uridine
mRNA allowing a much greater generation of spike everywhere in
blood vessels, which the body detects as an auto-immune problem,
and therefore dials itself down. Or it could involve an autoimmune
attack from more stable spike mRNA getting into immune system cells
and having immune system cells themselves be attacked. Or it could
(also) involve the spike protein itself; for example here is a
study
[PDF] showing innate immune suppression by spike protein, but also
by an interesting protein generated in an alternate open reading (ORF)
that is entirely contained within the SARS-CoV-2 spike gene (this is
only also found in the dubious RaTG13 sequence, the supposed 'ancestor'
of covid). In support of spike protein involvement, traditional monkey
VERO cell grown covid vaccines (presumably no pseudo-uridine) have now
been shown to suppress the immune system (see next).
The vaccine have been shown to drop natural killer T-cells
(CD8 cells), which are easily tested in a blood panel, to
well
below normal levels after the second shot.
[Update Oct30: A study
using a more traditional monkey VERO cell-cultured covid vaccine *also* demonstrated
clear suppression of innate immune system (e.g., CD8 cells).
These observations could be part of the explanation for the following:
(1) the vaccinated are getting sick with covid, (2) reports from
multiple sources
of a 20x spike in cancers (e.g., endometrial cancer) that started this
year, perhaps because the normal killer T-cell surveillance of abnormal
body cells has been reduced, and (3) widespread reports of reactivation of
dormant retrovirus infections (e.g., shingles, Epstein-Barr virus, herpes
simplex, cytomegalovirus) in the vaccinated, because the killer T-cells
would normally kill a cell that had accidentally reactivated some of
its retrovirally-inserted DNA, but they have now been called off the job.
It's not clear how long this innate immune system suppression lasts.
For cancer to (re)appear, it would seem like it would require a relatively
long-lived effect in some people (at least several months). This is a
second, distinct hit to the immune system, alongside 'original antigenic
sin' maladaptively interacting with rapid viral evolution induced by
the single-sequence, spike-only vaccine.
Fauci and the heads of big pharma should really be brought before
Nuremberg style courts. They are potentially sabotaging the immune systems
of half of the entire world, while artificially speeding evolution
of the virus, and all after they almost certainly created the f-cking
thing in the first place, during US and Chinese military gain-of-function
experiments - and finally, all for insane, government-mandated profits!
Criminals!
We shall have to wait to see how this all plays out. Many people
are getting rightfully suspicious of the medical industrial complex.
It's telling that the mainstream news-a-ganda has had to run stories that
"it's a conspiracy theory that the hospitals are trying to kill you".
Fauci and his gang of thugs *have* to be stopped before this gets forced
into children, who will be the last unvaccinated holdouts capable of
achieving effective herd immunity. It's impossible for herd immunity to
ever come from overly specific mRNA vaccines. We have to stop vaccinating
now before it's too late.
[The corona-panic: Update: Oct25,'21]:
Yes, Fauci and Collins should be in jail - but what happens next?
It looks like they are finally getting ready to throw Fauci and/or Collins
under the bus, even as he gets on teevee everyday with his sociopathic
grin and threatens your kids with his syringe. Francis
Collins, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, already
announced his resignation to spend more quality time with
his family, I mean his lawyers. The lies upon lies
are
finally starting to unravel publicly.
As with Cuomo, who got dumped for groping and was never prosecuted for
killing grannies by dumping infected people back into nursing homes, Fauci
may be taken down for torturing a few dogs instead of for his true crimes
of funding the very creation of covid, and then funding and promoting the
new deadly gene-therapy vaccines, remdesivir (remember AZT, another toxic,
remaindered drug that Fauci resurrected to great profit for big pharma?),
and then promoting the entire totalitarian apparatus of fascist forced
medical treatments and digital tyranny 'vaccine' passports (not to mention
killing
even
more grannies than Cuomo. The reality is that Fauci was a key player
in helping to kill several million people throughout the world.
Though I will be satisfied to see Fauci's (and Collins' and Walensky's)
name smeared and forgotten, I fear that, as with Cuomo, his replacement
could be *even worse*. Like Cuomo, Fauci may get off scot free. He is
a war criminal who should be brought before a Nuremberg tribunal and hung.
Finally, there will be a time where all the collaborators in
the WW2 sense (like many of my academic colleagues) will be
shamed as well. "We didn't know" doesn't cut it. If you every
wondered what you would have done in Nazi Germany, now you know.
My colleagues made their choice. In the fullness of time, they will
need to own up to what they approved of. Here is an excellent
letter
to a colluder by Margaret Anna Alice that precisely captures my
thinking. As with WW2, collaborators will tell tall tales of how they
were actually all closet resisters.
But what happens next? As information about the failed vaccines has
trickled out, some of the already-injected people are becoming suspicious
of the boosters. The not-yet-injected are hardly being convinced by the
prospect of boosters forever, esp. ones that *no longer work* or make
you even *more* likely to get infected (latest UK data). If substantial
numbers of the injected end up with persistent immune system problems,
or pulmonary hypertension from lung microclot damage, and eventually see
increased deaths, larger numbers of people may become aware and get angry
for having been tricked into taking it. This has the potential for a
complete breakdown in social order (Fauci would do well to remember the
end of Mussolini and his wife).
The latest 'nooz' stories on how the vaccinated are supposedly dying
*less* not only from covid but also from 'other diseases' reminds me
of the ABC 'nooz' story that "hospitals are not trying to kill you -
that's a conspiracy theory". They are responding to what more and more
people are beginning to think. The idea that vaccines are a fountain of
youth is glaringly inconsistent with the fact that all-cause mortality
in people under 50 has risen to abnormally high levels in the US and the
UK - and not as a result of covid deaths. Several other commentators
have noticed that the CDC is now reporting a large jump in the number of
deaths classified as "Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory
findings, not elsewhere classified". To see these numbers go to
this CDC page and scroll to
the right to find the column "Sympto...", and then scroll down to recent
weeks (the rows are deaths by week for 2020 and 2021, non-cumulative).
"Not elsewhere classified" deaths were about 1% of all deaths throughout
2020. But starting in Jan 2021, that number started to increase.
In recent months it has accounted for almost 7% of all-cause mortality.
Something is not right. If the tables do turn on the vaccine narrative,
there could be serious breakdown in social order in some places.
People might even learn the names of Albert Bourla (Pfizer), Larry Fink
(principal shareholder of Pfizer), Stephane Bancel and Tal Zaks (Moderna),
and Alex Gorsky (Johnson and Johnson), rolling in their Federally
granted and mandated billions. Such a backlash was war-gamed in the
Johns Hopkins pandemic simulations of 2017 and 2019. As the growing
pushback to vaccine mandates and tyrannical digital handcuffs threatens
to complicate the rollout of the new totalitarian world system, the
general public's need for social order after more widespread breakdowns
could be the wedge, together with supply chain shortages, by which the
worldwide digital prison is finally accepted by the population as a
necessary evil. However, even the best war-gamed battle plans can go
out the window when the enemy (us!) is engaged. We are fighting WW3.
We still have a chance to win!
---------------------- most recent updates below - earlier scroll back ---------------------
[The corona-panic: Update: Dec03,'21]:
Eyes Wide Shut, democratized
As the Ghislaine Maxwell trial starts, it will probably only scratch the
surface of Epstein's operation and throw up distracting prurient chaff.
However, the main outlines of how the operation worked had already leaked
out through the seams on the internet, along with his little black book,
so it won't matter if nothing more significant is revealed by the trial.
Clearly, many rich/famous/powerful people were lured to Epstein's
mysteriously obtained lairs in New York, his 8,000 acre New Mexico
Zorro ranch, his Paris apartment, and his private Caribbean island
(just across the bay from St. John Island), in order to take sexual
advantage of desperate, pretty, underage girls. But more important,
there is substantial evidence that many of these encounters were filmed
(e.g., reports of hidden cameras in every room of his New York mansion).
Could these savvy, rich, and powerful people have possibly *not* guessed
that something like this was going on? I think not. Many must have
suspected or known that filming was occurring; and yet they willingly
submitted to this potential blackmail. This wasn't about mere access to
underage prostitutes, who are widely accessible to people of such means
and power - and in many safer and more discreet venues. It is critical to
see that accepting an invitation from Epstein and Maxwell is a *conscious*
entrance into a blackmail agreement. The cost of admittance into the
that exclusive club is to be documented doing something that normal people
would regard as heinous. The danger of it all is part of the excitment.
It is part of the glue that bonds ultra-rich and powerful sociopaths to
each other.
There is a long history of this that dates back at least to classical
Greece. Plato described the hierarchy of love: first love of things, then
of women, then of young boys, which only one step below the pinnacle of
love of ideas. Old men having sex with young boys was no more acceptable
to the average Greek of the time - that would be the 90% of the population
of classical Greece that wasn't able to vote in the so-called Greek
'democracy' - than it is to the average American of our time.
But how on earth does this relate to vaccination? Before a recent talk
by Peter McCullough in San Diego, he mentioned something that set off
a weird echo of the unsavory hyena pack of the ultra-rich - that many
people who have taken the vaccine *know* it's vaccine is dangerous, but
precisely because of this, they want to force the unvaccinated to take
the same risk. There is an element here of Eyes Wide Shut, democratized.
Online forums on vaccine side effects clearly demonstrate that many
people who *want* to take the vaccine clearly fear it. The execrable
Rachel Maddow described it as "oogie"; from leaks about Newsom's side
effects (probably Guillain-Barre), it's clear he himself took the real
thing, despite wanting to protect his children from it. When people
experience side effects caused by microclots in their body and brains,
this is described as showing that "it's working". But that is really
a euphemism. People consciously or unconsciously know they are at risk
of being damaged, perhaps permanently. Many younger people have accepted
this, many coerced by college 'health' administrators, even though many
knew that the risk of covid itself was small.
A little like ultra-rich and ultra-powerful people being offered a chance
to visit and perform on Epstein's soundstage, average people can see that
vaccination serves as the ticket to enter a select club. The awful truth
for the hoi polloi is that the 'perks' of this select club are merely the
'right' not to be a slave, and to be able to participate in society.
But since this 'right' can be taken away without warning when 'fully
vaccinated' is redefined, accepting the 'vaccination invitation' is
tantamount to agreeing to continual invasive bodily interventions.
Many people have now been through this dangerous initiation rite that
has probably already killed at least 150,000 Americans (see Steve
Kirsch, Jessica Rose). Much like super-rich people coercing other
super-rich people to join their club through participation in forbidden
abusive rituals, a sizeable chunk of vaccinated people now want to
coerce the unvaccinated people to do the same. The unvaccinated
must be forced to endanger their own lives, supposedly 'for the
good of others', esp. the vaccinated. The fact that the vaccine
does nothing to stop infection or transmission, and so cannot
possibly help others, is irrelevant because the real reason for
coercing the unvaccinated has nothing to do with safety ("
my
medicine won't work unless you take yours"). Rather, it is
a group-bonding ritual involving shared bodily mutilation, like
circumcision.
The 'for the good of others' propaganda attempts to engage psychological
mechanisms that most healthy humans have to join together into
cooperative groups - one of the key ingredients in the incredible leap in
language-based power of humans compared to other animals. The propaganda
has arranged a perversion of those mechanisms that otherwise would be put
to better use, like cementing together a small village. The mechanisms
themselves - 'for the good of others' - aren't bad. Their commandeering
by a coalition of big pharma, big tech, and big government across the
entire world, however, is bad - really bad.
--------------------------- end "The corona-panic" updates ---------------------------.
[Mar19'20]
Another "New Pearl Harbor"
Unfortunately, it has become crystal clear over the past week that we are
in the middle of a second, worldwide psychological operation, a second
'New Pearl Harbor'. As just one example, consider the new (Mar 18)
"Defense Production Act" slipped under the radar that authorizes the
president to require companies to prioritize government contracts and
orders seen as necessary for the national defense. The US and many
other countries are basically experiencing a coup!
Over the past decade, my best guess on the rough temporal ordering of the
'three horsemen of the apocalypse' has consistently been: (1) money,
(2) energy, and then (3) climate. But as usual, I was tone-deaf and
naive to the endless possibilities of 'scared monkey control' to speed
things along!
First, the horseman of money. The obvious-for-years 'everything bubble'
is now finally definitively popping. The corona-panic has conveniently
taken people's eyes off of the catastrophic 'shearing of the muppets'
that is occurring as we speak, as the private banking cartel deceptively
known as the Fed unloads worthless stocks onto the public (essentially by
diluting the currency). The stock market is now down 30% from its peak;
but it probably has another 30% down to go, which will cut many people's
retirements in half or more. The muppets will continue buying the dips
all the way down. Note that we could easily experience a 1930-style
headfake up, even for a year, which will help to keep the BTFD buyers
in for their final shearing. The criminal bankers have never let a good
crisis go to waste and right now are dumping their toxic waste onto the
public in plain sight (e.g., worthless stock allowed as collateral for
1/4% loans to big banks a few days ago). This has potential to develop
into the greatest upward transfer of wealth in human history as the
vultures swoop in to pick up distressed assets.
But then, the second horseman, of energy - peak oil and more generally
peak net energy - also definitively happened this week! The corona-panic
together with the idiotic, self-imposed "Even Greater Depression"
will take people's eyes off of peak energy, too! The sudden demand
reduction has crashed oil (and incidentally, instantly cleaned up the
bad air in northern Italy - the worst air in Europe - and the terrible
air in northern China, two facts partly responsible for the clustering
of deaths!), which will finally definitively crash the non-money-making
tight oil frackers. Like peak money, peak oil is also occurring under
the radar because of the self-imposed reduction in demand. But the
permanent reduction in high net energy fossil fuel resources also means
that usual rebound in growth that has occurred after every previous
crash may be extremely anemic this time because there might not be
enough net energy to fuel it. If you are thinking green will save us,
remember that all the wind and solar that was added in the past decade
(currently accounting for about 3% of total world energy supply) has not
even covered the total increase in world energy usage over the same time!
The upcoming reduction in net energy input from fossil fuel will begin
to hit hard over the next ten years. On the bright side, the enforced
savings now will help us a decade from now.
Previously, I was envisioning people gradually reducing the size of
their small tanks (euphemistically called "cars") as oil eventually
drifted upward in price, as frackers gradually crashed, and the tiny, but
persisting 'oil glut' cleared. But the sea change of the corona-panic
slash self-imposed-depression is managing the transition overnight.
People are leaving their giant SUVs parked when they are not out on their
toilet paper runs. This will cement peak oil into place and permanently
change people's behavior.
The demands from the 'responsible left' to "please, lock me down,
now!" are highly disturbing to me (though I would lie if I said that the
image of politically-correct Marin county firmly locking itself down
didn't raise a faint guilty smile). For example, earlier this week,
progressive Denmark passed a law mandating forced testing, forced
vaccinations, and forced quanantines. It will supposedly expire in
a year. The self-imposed, 'left'-driven totalitarian lockdown is
frightening to behold.
The lockdown is *selectively* strangling the economy - by throwing the
bottom half of the population out of work by the forced closing of small
businesses, caused, for example, by universities closing and students
going home. These marginal workers are living paycheck to paycheck,
often with poor health insurance and no savings.
Bizarrely for me - as still nominally 'far left' - seeing Americans buying
bullets somehow cheered me up a little :-} (via a tut-tut-ing reporter
on National Propaganda Radio). This reflects a long-standing cultural
difference between Americans and Chinese; Americans are a little more
feisty and somewhat less compliant. Already 62% of the public (75%
of repugs, but also 50% of democraps) thinks that the corona-panic
in the media is overdone (though they respect the CDC's corona-panic).
I might be tempted to say, 'go, flyovers' - but let's not forget that the
flyovers hardly put up any resistance to the last 'New Pearl Harbor'.
I think we're all just f-ed. By the time people wake up to the sea
change that will have been completed a few years from now, accompanied
by a massive upward transfer of wealth, many new social conventions will
be set in concrete, just like last time. It is an irritation to forever
take off your shoes and get x-rayed or millimeter-waved in order to fly.
But in a few years, after weaker air carriers get pruned, air travel will
be greatly reduced, and you might very well need proof of vaccinations.
But that would be a minor inconvenience. I'm more worried about the long
term effects of grinding deflation on day-to-day life and a not so low
grade 'medical martial law' that never ends, a few years from now. I am
afraid that our world energy party is now definitively taking a darker
turn. As much as I have complained (by now, maybe for 5 years!) about
the bubble being 'just about ready to pop', I am certainly not looking
foward to what comes next. Once the worst-case scenarios fade, and the
lockdowns are moderated, people will begin to pop back toward normal
in a few months. But I think the landscape will have been permanently
altered for the worse.
[Mar23'20]
Beware untested vaccines
The corona-panic has focused people's attention on vaccines, vaccines,
vaccines, please make us a new vaccine, now! There has already been a
lot of effort and interest in that direction, even before the crisis.
However, vaccines require careful testing, which can take years, to
make sure that they respect the Hippocratic oath: "first, do no harm".
Three cases come to my mind where initial vaccine development turned
out to actually be worse than nothing. I've already linked to some of
these studies, but I thought it was worth gathering them here.
First, in 2009, the seasonal flu vaccine interacted negatively
with the 'pandemic flu' (that is, the worse than average flu that
comes by every 5-8 years). The negative interaction was first
picked up in epidemiological data, but then verified with
experiments
on ferrets (ferrets because of similarities in angiotensin receptor
to humans). Basically, people (or ferrets) who were vaccinated against
the seasonal flu had an *increased* chance of getting the pandemic flu,
and experienced a somewhat more serious course of the disease.
A second example was the "Dengvaxia" disaster. This was a vaccine
against dengue fever, which was rolled out in 2016. From information in
the field, they found that people who hadn't previously been infected
with dengue actually did *worse* (e.g., died) if they got the vaccine
before their first encounter with dengue fever. This resulted in the
paradoxical WHO recommendation that only people who had already gotten
dengue should get the vaccine for dengue!
Finally, closer to home, during the original SARS coronavirus outbreak,
a vaccine for SARS was developed and tested in animals. Again, it
was found that animals given the vaccine and then challenged with SARS
actually did *worse* than animals simply infected with SARS (
paper1,
paper2,
paper3).
In the flu and SARS cases, the problem appears to be excessive
inflammation (a 'cytokine storm') that results from a strong immune
reaction, which in the context especially of a lung infection, can be
worse than having no initial immunity.
Of course, I don't mean to suggest that this happens with all vaccines,
or even all vaccines to SARS, for that matter. It's just that it might
take a while (as in several years or several decades) to actually come
up with a good vaccine that doesn't actually do more harm than good.
After 30 years from trying there is *still* no working HIV vaccine; and
closer to home, no one has ever made an effective coronavirus vaccine.
Not-fully-tested vaccines will be particularly dangerous in the context
of govenments passing forced vaccination laws (e.g., Denmark).
But people don't want to hear the facts. They *must* have a better
pill, now. They can't imagine a real world in which a better pill might
not actually be possible. At the same time, the health care industrial
complex, a full 20% of the entire US economy, is also more than ready to
help with a new pill, now. Congress is ready, too, to help them 'help'.
So what can a single person do to help themselves *right now*?
Just immediately switch to a whole foods plant-based diet, which will
greatly reduce inflammation and turn you into one of the survivors :-}
If more people did this, it would reduce the chance of contracting other
animal viruses. It's cheaper, and reduces the chance of getting one
of the multitude of diseases that kill or plague most people in their
older years (heart disease, atherosclerosis, pneumonia, diabetes,
stroke, arthritis, dementia, many different autoimmune diseases,
breast/colon/prostate cancer, colitis, DISH, ankylosing spondylitis,
etc, etc. Remember, for the great majority of things people go to the
hospital for, there is really only one main disease: bad diet disease.
[Apr27'20]
Controlled demolition of industrial civilization: the covid coup and peak net energy
Despite thinking and writing (endlessly) since 2002 about the coming
of peak oil and more importantly, peak net energy, I did not correctly
predict how the crisis has unfolded. To be fair, few other commentators
did either. After the initial shock wore off from reacquainting
myself with basic geological facts around 2002 (my ugrad major in 1978,
embarrassingly, was in geology, but I ignored geology for two decades!),
I expected, rather like the Druid, that there would be an elongated,
grinding passage over peak net energy with wild price fluctuations
(esp. price spikes) and slow adaptation to increasingly constricted
supply.
Instead, what happened as we went past world peak *conventional* crude
oil around 2005-2008 and descended into a zero-interest rate regime,
was that fracking, first for natural gas and then for light tight oil,
almost doubled the declining-since-1970 oil output of the US back up to
its 1970 peak. However, this was achieved *without making any net money*!
Frackers remained net in debt *before* the covid coup. Though dollars
don't directly equal energy units, this persisting debt of the frackers
was a strong indicator of the low energy return on energy investment
of fracking compared to conventional oil. Fracking also introduced a
whole new toxic brew of chemicals into the water supply but also into
the east coast natural gas supply that is piped into everybody's furnace
and kitchen and burned there.
As the 'everything bubble' began to burst at the end of February
2020, it was evident that the temporary reduction in demand would
have the possibility of causing cascading failures starting with
frackers, then extending to the banks funding the frackers, and so on.
But then I began to think a little deeper about the big picture of how
the 'covid coup' fits in, stimulated initially by reading
Jim West
(from left field).
The frackers would have had enough trouble surviving a 'normal' crash
of the 'everything bubble'. The covid coup, however, has caused
an instantaneous, completely unprecedented 20-30% drop in world
oil consumption, which resulted in *negative* oil prices on Apr 20.
One possibility is that the 'covid coup' is being used to wipe out the
low energy return on energy investment frackers *on purpose*.
Why would anyone want to do that? One reason is that the zero interest
rate regime has made it possible to run large scale, extremely wasteful,
very low energy return on energy investments schemes for years without
making any money (compare Tesla, Uber, Lyft, WeWork, Netflix). If a
'normal' crash had unfolded, it might have been possible to resuscitate
the frackers with bailouts so they could eventually see another day
if oil prices eventually spiked. A complete covid wipeout might make
that impossible. But I still didn't answer the question.
Why would fracker-business-as-usual be bad? The reason is that it is
essentially a temporary operation of borrowing precious oil from the
future, which could result in an even more abrupt civilizational crash
by energy strangulation afterward. Oil still runs absolutely critical
parts of the economy such as container ships, diesel rail, diesel trucks,
food production and refrigeration, fertilizer, and so on. The 'lockdown
left' cheers the demise of polluting oil companies but doesn't realize
their daily bread - not to mention all their delivered Amazon tchotchkes
- depends almost entirely upon them. 'Renewable' wind and solar energy
only accounts for 3% of total world energy used by humans; and that 3%
has *not* even kept up growth in total energy use over the past decade.
And the ongoing crash is likely to cause a *reduction* in the growth of
renewable/rebuildable energy.
By 'pre-crashing' the economy with the 'covid coup', the frackers
will probably be wiped out while at the same time wiping out enough
demand to 'make up for it'. To get a feel for the magnitude
of change that is already underway, read Art Berman
here.
The other 'advantage' of the 'covid coup' is that it has
scared the cr@p out of all the human monkeys (despite only
killing roughly the same number of people the seasonal flu kills
*every* year!) so the people are paying less attention than they
should to the instantaneous application of ravaging austerity
to the bottom half of the population. We are seeing the
greatest
upward transfer of wealth in all of human history, but we see no
'word on the street'! That vile excuse for a human, Bill Gates, just
bought a $50 million dollar house in San Diego (Del Mar), but this is
reported in glowing terms by the 'press', all while the bottom 1/3 of
the population in San Diego is out of work and going to food banks (40%
of the population in San Diego visited a food bank this month).
Of course, this is actually a 'kinder gentler' lockdown, since we are
still a rich country. In Nigeria, by contrast, security forces have
killed
more
Nigerians in the process of enforcing their draconian lockdowns than
Covid-19 itself has. This is because in many poorer countries (e.g.,
Nigeria, Uganda), the 'covid coup' has involved locking people completely
into their homes without even allowing them to go out and get food,
under threat of death. The government has arranged inadequate, weekly,
biweekly, or even monthly food deliveries, to avoid people mobbing food
trucks because, preposterously, this would break 'social distancing'.
The global spread of this utter insanity is terrifying and may result
in widespread famine in Africa.
The bottom line is that we may be seeing a 'controlled demolition'
of industrial civilization that will respect the ever decreasing
available net energy. This central reality of peak oil
(and peak net energy) is *so* out of sight that virtually no
commentators have mentioned energy at all. One possible fly in
the ointment for an 'orderly' controlled demolition is that the
sudden
reduction in aerosols may be in the process of causing a equally
sudden jump in average world temperature (e.g., an additional 0.5 to 1
deg C on top of the 2 deg C increase since the 1750 baseline). We may be
facing an extra-hot summer. That could result in a breakdown in social
order and a loss of control. It is an open question how much of what
is happening was planned. Think back to the unpredictable unfolding of
events during the French Revolution. Though the final dismal outcome
was predictable, there were many surprises along the way!
[Jun21'20]
The covid coup - four months out
It has now been almost four months since my initial realization in mid-Feb
that the covid psyop was in fact yet another "New Pearl Harbor", even
bigger than 9-11. It's worth stepping back to try to guess what's next,
and see where some of my previous predictions were wrong.
First, the covid hysteria has gone on a lot longer than I had expected.
Though it was clear to me from the outset that this psychological
operation was the biggest thing since 9-11, I had nevertheless
mistakenly assumed that once the basic numbers about the actual
fatality rate came to light and as the early April 2020 peak in
deaths began to recede into the distance, that after a few months,
people would have begun to come to their senses. For example,
the median infection/fatality ratio for people under 70 years old
turned out to be a tiny 0.04% (see Ioannidis meta-analysis
PDF
here). Instead, the continuous, self-maintaining, social media
fear porn together with the actions of tinpot dictator 'health'
officials have resulted in continuing the effective clampdown, with
all-masks-all-the-time orders rolled out across the *entire earth*.
Surrounded by incredible technology, people are acting mentally like
medieval peasants.
Equally unexpected by me, the population has remained surprisingly
subservient, passively donning their 'prison mouth bracelets'
with little resistance across both blue and red states. At many
universities, where I have the most direct experience, virtually
all face-to-face classes remain cancelled for the Fall, and all new
research activity remains at a standstill. In a recent survey,
a
third of scientists said they are looking at leaving neuroscience
research due to the covid lockdown.
I had been expecting riots in poorer communities from the very beginning
of the lockdown, in response to the bottom third of the population
having been thrown out of work. But I didn't specifically predict
race-based riots, and of course, I couldn't have predicted the trigger.
But even now, one major driving force behind the riots - catastrophic
lockdown-induced austerity - has not even reached public consciousness!
Again to my surprise. I suppose this shouldn't have been surprising to
me, given that the 'left' couldn't immediately predict what the effect
of the lockdown on poor people would be.
Another thing that has surprised me is how much of the
population apparently remains fearful and has not been able to
clearly see that a large portion of the sudden spike in deaths
was straightforwardly caused by the lockdown itself. The sharp
spike in deaths, popping out from the background death rate,
conicides
too perfectly across multiple countries with the exact onset of
the lockdowns there. In some cases (e.g., the *80%* of 'covid' deaths
that occurred in nursing homes in Canada), the causality is all but
established. It's not hard to imagine what happened when low paid help
fled in fear, leaving hungry and dehydrated, and demented, 'inmates'
wandering in fear around an excrement-smeared, locked-in building,
with only 1/10 of the normal staff 'tending' to them in space suits,
with all the normal oversight from relatives, which prevents the worst
abuses, locked out. Much of the 'covid' spike was actually a
worldwide
nursing home disaster! (see same content as banned video
here).
Interestingly, infants were unscathed. Probably as
a result of infants being locked out of the hospitals,
there was an unprecedented 30% *drop* in excess infant deaths
compared to previous years, with the beginning of the drop
coinciding
exactly with the beginning of the lockdown (breakdown by age
here
showing this is virtually all under 1 YR, and full paper
here).
This is likely to have been caused by treatments the infants *didn't*
receive (e.g., the rate of vaccination has dropped precipitously during
the covid hysteria).
Yet another thing is that 'fear of covid' has prevented many people from
seeing how distorted the death statistics are, with 'covid' heart attacks
and strokes (those would be consequent to a 50% drop in emergency room
visits for heart attack and strokes, because terrified people are now
having them at home), 'covid' car accidents, 'covid' opiate overdoses,
and even 'covid' suicides. An example of the last: a distraught man who
tested positive for covid tries for 'death by cop' by shooting at the
cops, who return fire, hitting him 8 times, and then his death is added
to the 'covid' total (the lockdown has inundated suicide hotlines with
calls). Add to this the fact that on Mar 24, more than 2 weeks before
peak covid deaths, the CDC no longer required a positive covid test to
log a 'covid' death. Add to this the fact that some of the roughly
100 different covid qRT-PCR tests out there have huge false positive
rates (none have never been tested in real-world patient settings).
Add to this, the fact that the number of 'cases' are not controlled
for ever increasing numbers of tests. Add to this overusing the much
vaunted but deadly ventilators, partly because of fear of 'covid' (the
ventilator gasses are sealed from the room air) as documented
here.
Add to this the recent revelation of literally
criminal
drug trials, attemping to discredit hydroxychloroquine, a cheap,
non-patent, long well-understood drug, by giving unconscious patients 4-8x
overdoses in order to make HCQ look bad compared with $1000-a-dose big
pharma anti-virals like remdesivir. The final result is a recipe for
'covid' to *never* go away!
But now on to the horrible economic effects of the lockdowns.
Critically, those are only beginning to be played out! Once the rent
and mortgage (30% of American didn't make their housing payment in
June), and student loan payment, and tax and eviction holidays end,
and unemployment benefits for roughly 40-50 million unemployed people
(a quarter to a third of the entire workforce!) start to end in the
Fall, there will be waves of defaults and evictions and foreclosures and
additional small business failures (41% of black-owned businesses have
already failed), collapses in state budgets (which have to be balanced),
as a result of catastrophic loss of revenue, causing further waves of
layoffs, hospitals going bankrupt (most have been empty because the surge
never came for the great majority of them), airlines operating at 20%
capacity, zoos going bankrupt, failing museums being repurposed (e.g.,
the Field Museum in Chicago is now being used for blood donations!), and
in general, the destruction of money (the converse of 'money printing',
which occurs when loans are made). Despite the towering amount of
concomitant 'money printing' (loans to bail out criminal bankers and
hedge funds), this may temporarily actually make money *more* valuable
relative to things (deflation).
Flush with much of the newly created cash, the oligarch overlords are
beginning to sop up some of the distressed 'human assets'. But there will
be many unfortunate humans left over. Again, this will be deflationary
for wages, causing more of the mess above.
Now, put that lockdown-created clusterf**k together with the end of the
latest business cycle together with an election between a sunsetting
Trump and Dementia Joe. It's absolutely mind boggling. Biden seems to
be ahead in the polls, despite barely being able to read the teleprompter.
If he wins, at least the riots will likely end. Depending on how hard the
recession hits, the constant 'covid' drumbeat may temporarily be dialied
down a bit, and the lockdown may even be loosened, because 'things will
now be being done right', 'because Trump is gone'. But that will have no
effect on the huge economic contraction that will finally begin play out
big time in early 2021. I am assuming (hoping?) here that the food supply
chains will remain mostly patent throughout this chaotic 2021 contraction.
The so-called 'left' will support the gradual introduction of
hyper-bio-medical surveillance and bio-social-credit scores, assuming
anyone is paying attention amidst the coming chaos. In the absence
of the arrival of an endlessly over-advertised 'second wave' (assuming
the lethal hysteria of early April isn't repeated), I am still hoping
that the madness will begin to wane, and the massive push for a vaccine
may temporarily be muted. But it certainly won't go away. The lead
editorial in Science magazine on Jun 5, written by NIH and pharma
execs (what's the diff?) explains how we can't just dump a huge wad
of money *temporarily* into vaccines - but instead that we need to do
this proactively and continuously. That enormous mountain of money is
going to come back and bite us in our immune systems, with DNA and RNA
'vaccines' ('Windows 1984'), new adjuvants, vaccine chips, maybe even
CRISPR, among other evil 'goodies'.
As the harsh austerity begins to grind people down, many may simply
continue to hunker down, try to save money, and not revolt at all.
Assuming that the so-called 'left' will be in power (tho it's still
possible Trump could still score another upset), this may be analogous
to the way the antiwar movement evaporated overnight after Obama was
elected, and stayed evaporated, despite Obama continuing Bush's wars
for all of his 8 years, and starting more new wars at Bush did (e.g.,
the Libya, Syria, and Yemen catastrophes).
By the end of 2020, the oligarchs will be engaged in the process of
scooping up state-sized buckets of distressed *physical* assets as they
did at the beginning of the Obama administration. This is rapidly turning
into greatest upward wealth transfer in *all of human history*. Where is
the disgusting so-called 'left' on this topic?? By 2022, the US (and much
of the rest of the world) will begin an inexorable move toward high-tech
neofeudalism. 2021 will be the 'mother of all debt entrapments', as
Catherine Austin Fitts says. She's a little over the top, but worth
watching
here
(ignore Greg). As she says (see also
James Corbett),
*this is WWIII*. Things are coming to a head. A glance at
M1 shows that we are clearly
in a different situation than we were in 2008 when the
BASE money supply was
inflated; but virtually all of that was the result of an increase in
bank excess
reserves (incidentally, you can also see that excess reserves are
being massively inflated again). By contrast with excess reserves,
M1 is the 'real', visible money supply.
The Bezos's and Zuckerberg's and Schmidt's of the world must be laughing
their @sses off. The controlled crowds bring out their pitchforks,
and they decide to, wait for it, topple and deface a statue of
George Washington! Then, in righteous rage, they settle on another
'revolutionary' move - to rename Columbus, Ohio! In a more rational
world, after having watched the billionaire oligarchs shovelling hundreds
of billions of dollars from the rest of us into their bank accounts in
preparation for buying up most of the rest of the world, virtually in
broad daylight, the crowd should have been motivated instead to have
rousted one of the oligarchs out of their mansion or off their yacht
and dragged them through the streets. But no. Long live King Bezos and
King Gates. Poor black lives still don't matter; over the Father's Day
weekend, 102 people, mostly poor black, were shot in Chicago, with 14
deaths (including 5 minors, one toddler), mostly in drug/gang related
violence. That is returning to the higher level of violence from thirty
years ago. Social media is mind control which occludes reality.
The first step in liberating your mind is to just throw away your personal
surveillance slash social mind control (and contact-tracing) device, and
just sit there and think. Learn some biology. Learn how money works.
Read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" on money, banking, and war.
It's getting late. Peak all-liquids/oil definitely happened in 2018.
It's all down from here. A new, harsher world is dawning and we need to
claw back wealth and control from the 0.01% before they literally kill us.
[Aug16'20]
After a total *7* people in the state of Victoria, Australia
(population 6.3 million), all over 70, died of 'covid',
bringing total deaths to . . . 56 (!), the state introduced
shockingly
draconian anti-'covid' measures, including authorizing police to
enter residences without a warrant and smashing the windows of people
in cars without masks. We have officially transitioned from Huxley
to Orwell. If more people don't resist now, major freedoms could
permanently be lost.
[Sep08'20]
The covid coup - six months out
It has now been about 6 months since the corona coup hit in the US and
around the world. This has been a weird coming together of totalitarian
lockdown and Salem witch trial-like madness, accepted by many in a
Stockholm
syndrome-like way, together with the American Gladio slash American
ISIS slash American Red Guard of the BLM riots. This powerful one-two
punch has seriously destabilized the mental balance of more than half of
the population in the US, with no clear sign of when normal, non-fearful
thinking may return. Who, 6 months ago, could have imagined Fauci
proposing that everyone in the US should wear goggles for a flu without
being laughed off the stage? Or who could have imagined a 'fiery but
mostly peaceful' demonstrator in Portland with his feet literally on fire
after running through a burning molotov cocktail (thrown by his friend),
*with a covid mask on*?
The people most able to see through the fog are small business owners who
have been jerked around by arbitrary restrictions that have transferred
vast amounts of wealth to the oligarchs, and many people in the bottom
socioeconomic third of the population whose lives have been most
immediately endangered by the coup. But many of those remain pacified
by unprecedentedly large but temporary bailouts, loan forebearance
(avoid loan default by adding missed payments to debt), and eviction
postponements. Those people are using this pause to pay down their high
interest credit card debt - a rational move (the last time this happened
was in 2008-2009). Over half of small businesses have permanently closed.
The voices of more sensible scientists are finally starting to be
heard against the madness. For example, here is a paper (
PDF)
showing that coronavirus positives from tests using 30+ PCR amplification
cycles, which would be essentially all of the current 'cases' that the
main sewer media pastes in our faces every day, are NOT infective; at
40 amplification cycles, the hyper-sensitive test is picking up small
harmless virus shards, maybe not even covid. And on the legal side,
Pam Popper reports on an excellent and innovative lawsuit against
Emperor DeWine of Ohio that argues that covid was *not* an emergency,
and therefore that his dictatorial decrees are not valid (video
here);
and Childrens' Health Defense has filed an
injunction
lawsuit against the University of California for
ordering mandatory *flu* vaccinations for every person on
campus (almost half a million people at UCSD, with squalene
adjuvants for people 65+). And of all things, last week, in
the usually execrable "Lies of our NY Times", there was
suddenly
sensible article on the scam of 'cases' determined
by covid tests 'turned up to 11'. Here is a
superb video from
Ivor Cummins summarizing the current science of covid. [Update: Sep10,'20:
good to see Johnday's Blog is finally coming around :-} ] [Update: Sep18,'20:
and finally finally finally Paul Craig Roberts!] [Update: Jan2021: even
more delayed, Ilargi!].
But for every small step forward, there is still a continuous
daily blitz of fear porn from the irresponsible media, social
media, and much of the alt media. Fewer deaths somehow seems
to prompt more draconian restrictions, especially for
hapless
college students, who are often being tested
twice weekly and held in solitary confinement, despite
zero
hospitalizations for 26,000 positive tests in one recent survey.
Many professors I have talked to remain pitifully concerned about
their 'comorbitities' and are filled with 'fear of students',
strongly favoring continued imprisonment and constant testing of the
students, despite having virtually no contact with them. They have
ridiculously misplaced trust in the meaningless PCR tests, but without
having the slightest understanding of how they actually 'work'.
In fact, many professors are worried that the flaky hyper-sensitive
false-positive-ridden PCR tests are not sensitive enough. I feel like
asking, if you want 100% positive, by bother with a test? Why not
use a magic wand? Or just dump all young people into covid jail?
And their prayers for a vaccine remind me of a cargo cult. I have
become utterly disgusted with many fellow academics. The situation
is even worse in Australia and New Zealand, where a full-on
police
state has been rolled out in response to a tiny number of deaths.
Horrifyingly, a solid majority of the population supports this Stanley
Milgram experiment writ large!
In the tradition of never letting a serious crisis go to waste, big
pharma (with Moderna getting a billion dollar federal contribution from
the Trump admin) is pushing through an untested RNA 'vaccine' that will
skip phase-3 trials, big military/surveillance/Google/Twitter/Facebook
is pushing for a Chinese style social credit system, and big banks are
pushing to attach that credit system to a completely digital, no-exit
money system. This is full Black Mirror, whose writer gave up, because
vile reality overtook the darkest fantasy he could concoct.
Last but not least, on top of the irrational fear of illness *and*
American Gladio *and* all-digital currency policed by social credit, add
a never-before-seen run-up to a US election where many Republicans will
go to the polls but many Democrats will vote by mail. This will ensure
a drawn-out, race-infused, flammable dynamic, with Trump initially way
ahead the day after the election, but then his lead slowly chipped away
by vote-by-mail trickling in over several weeks, extending an emotionally
charged election night circus over a whole month. I'm sure the main sewer
media executives and Wolf Jackoff are greedily looking forward to this
'election night' that keeps on giving. But Trump will probably win in
the end, I think, as intended. If you analyze this unsentimentally as yet
another color revolution, the BLM protests have had the effect of *shoring
up*, not reducing, support for Trump.
[Update: see excellent second
half of Scott Creighton's Sept 16, 2020 video on this exact topic here.
One of the few positive things that comes to mind is that the weather
is getting colder - a disaster for restaurants forced outside, but
perhaps something that could dampen the enthusiasm for a useless,
distracting-from-the-real-issues civil war and yet more 'fiery but
mostly peaceful' 'protests' :-} . To my surprise, stopgap economic
measures have postponed the main bad effects of the worldwide lockdown
for several months longer than I had been confidently predicting in my
earlier posts. However, the bad effects can't be postponed indefinitely.
The ridiculously inflated stock market bubble will eventually collapse
(and no, a 5% drop is not a 'collapse'). The rental/eviction crisis
will eventually unfold. Food supply chains could even break down.
And none of this addresses the elephant in my room - the imminent decline
in net energy positive energy sources. We are now using 6 barrels for
every 1 barrel we find. Early on, I suggested the the covid psyop was
a means of conserving oil by crashing the out-of-control frackers and
out-of-control demand. In my mind, this remains one of the most likely
contributing factors for explaining the the unprecendented global rollout
of harsh lockdowns.
One can point hopefully toward the centuries it took before the Roman
empire completely fell apart. But, by contrast, given our just-in-time,
only-3-days-of-food-on-the-shelf modern economy, still heavily reliant on
rapidly declining fossil fuel stocks to deliver that food and everything
else, the pace of events is very likely to be considerably faster.
If there ever was a time to man up, think calmly, and resist, it is
now! The future is especially hard to predict during chaotic (in the
mathematical dynamics sense) times like this, because relatively small
amounts of force here or there can lead to outsized results! *No one*
was predicting something like Napoleon during the early stages of the
French Revolution. First, let's do everything we can to avoid another
set of Napoleonic wars! Second, we need to get the focus back on where we
are going to get the energy to keep some form of industrial civilization
going and simultaneously how we can humanely downsize energy use! You can
create ('print') money from the void, at the moment a commercial bank
makes a loan. But you can't 'print' energy. Energy, not money, matters.
[Oct22'20]
Astra Zeneca's stock rebounds after their vaccine trial death turns out to
be a 'placebo'. Whew, right? In the fine print, however, we find out the
'placebo' was not saline but another vaccine, for meningitis. The death
was OK, however, because that other vaccine was already 'licensed'.
The reason the trials are done this way is so the new vaccine will look
better than it would against saline. It goes without saying that this
is a preposterous way to objectively measure the safety of anything -
by comparing it to something else that is so dangerous it can kill you.
The biggest problem with the vaccine tests is that they are
not testing for the biggie - antibody depedent enhancement
(ADE). For example, the adenovirus type-5 vectored vaccines
like Astra Zeneca's increase the risk of HIV infection
(Oct 19 Lancet letter from senior HIV researchers
here).
More worryingly, all previous SARS vaccine candidates had this effect
- they made the SARS disease *worse* after vaccination. A widespread
not-properly-tested but forced vaccination plan sets up the likelihood
that next year's wave of COVID-21, or whatever they decide to call it,
will be a self-fulfilling prophecy much worse than this year, just like
Bill and Melinda were smirking about "the next one" in this
absolutely revolting
video. Fight back for your body, your health!
[Jan19'21]
Monetary motivation for the covid operation?
Maribel Tuff wrote an interesting set of 5 long comments
here
about possible motivations behind the corona coup. One key observation
is, why did all these disparate countries all board the corona bus so
quickly and without obvious application of force? In the first few
months, my guess was that they were privately told that this was in fact
a lab leak of an experimental virus made for vaccine purposes or even
perhaps that it was an actual bioweapon. Though it was obvious that
there had been manipulation of bat coronaviruses, including insertion of
ACE2 binding spike proteins, I paid less attention to that over time, as
the ominous totalitarian features of the lockdowns, forced vaccination,
and so on grabbed my attention.
She suggests, instead, that the thing that scared everybody was the
possible collapse of the dollar system. There was, after all, the weird
repo crisis just before covid, where large banks stopped trusting each
other for an overnight loan at 10% interest (!). The crucial idea is
that *without* the virus threat, the huge additional creation of $6
trillion new dollars with another $2 trillion on the way in less than a
year (compared with $9 trillion created across all the years since 2008,
up until corona), should otherwise have massively destabilized the dollar
system. A 'side benefit' of the corona psyop is that small businesses are
being looted in favor of US oligarchs, not just in the US, but worldwide.
This is an interesting hypothesis. All in all, however, the
analysis doesn't remove my fear of the impending totalitarian
system and the 'internet of bodies' (check out Alison McDowell
here
for some atmosphere) that the bottom half of the population is in the
process of being clamped into. If large numbers of people accept the
new system now, it will be very hard to get out from under it at a
later date.
P.S.: there is 10 kg (22 pounds) of silver in a Tesla. Apple, Samsung
et al. use a lot of silver. If the price of actual silver explodes,
companies like them could be the efficient cause.
[Mar21'21]
The main mechanisms of the covid coup one year later
The mechanisms by which the minds of many people across the planet have
been swept into the maintained catastrophe of the 'covid' 'pandemic' are
reasonably complex. It's worth stepping back to try to briefly summarize
the main points. In many cases, the disaster has been pushed along by
insidious positive feedback loops where a first action precipitates a
second action, where the effect of the second action is to cause more
of the first.
(1) Catapulting fear
The original story of a bat virus crossing over to human played upon
basic human fears of 'contagion' (the plague, leprosy, Ebola, generalized
"cooties"), kept alive by a constant drumbeat of Hollywood movies of
killer viruses coming from 'primitive jungles'. This is of course at
odds with the actual origin of the viruses most problematic for humans,
which have come from concentrated animal feeding operations, and before
that, from domesticated animals (e.g., measles from cattle rinderpest,
smallpox from camelpox, whooping cough from pigs, typhoid fever from
chickens, influenza from ducks, leprosy from water buffalo, coronaviruses
from horses and pigs). The reality is both less scary and harder to fix.
The second source of fear is the reasonable possibility that the
virus was an accidentally-leaked gain-of-function experiment from the
military virology lab at Wuhan, to which Fauci and NIAIDS outsourced
gain-of-function experiments when they were temporarily discontinued
in the US in 2014. Or perhaps it came from a Fort Detrick (
closed
down in Aug 2019
for
a lab leak and
$104
DoD money withheld afterward from USAMRIID and USAMRICD; June/July
nearby care home deaths; vaping odd respiratory
deaths), or from the US military bioweapons
Lugar
Center in Tblisi, Georgia. This fear may have been used to scare
governments into compliance.
A third source of fear is 'variants' (which have occurred with RNA
viruses since the origin of life) that could lead to 'immune escape',
another overblown meme that if it were true would long ago have led to
human extinction.
A final source of fear it is the inflated death toll, brought about
by the flawed test (see below), and the unique death-reporting and
autopsy-banning rules (see below), autopsy-banning rules, which were
applied exclusively to a 'single' disease, biasing statistics when making
comparison to every other disease for which the rules *weren't* changed.
For example, even the CDC estimates that only 6% of 'covid' deaths were
caused only by covid.
The over-the-top, worldwide 24/7 fearfest is an instance of positive
feedback. The initial bolus of fear/schadenfraude is no different
in principal than the local rag using a salacious headline. But the
positive feedback of fearful viewing leads to catapulting more fear
using a single meme spread by social media, which is unlike a notable
local event, which naturally loses its appeal after only a few days.
This effect is similar to the way Trump-bashing was a daily goldmine
for CNN (N.B.: whose numbers are now dropping).
(2) The PCR test scam
From the beginning, the worldwide use of the PCR test with the cycle
threshold turned up ridiculously high (40-45), but while studiously
avoiding reporting the number of amplification cycles (an exponential
process) when the test went positive, has been a premeditated way
to launch and maintain the worldwide covid operation and focus all
wordly attention on one cause. Attempts to culture the virus from swab
samples show that 'positives' that require 35 cycles are already 100%
false positives. Even 'positives' requiring 25 cycles are are still
50% false positive. This simple trick has swept together a variety of
comorbid causes of death into a phantom single cause.
The CDC then changed the rules for reporting cause of death just for
this one single 'cause', for example, not even requiring one of the
often false positive PCR tests, and then prohibiting autopsies, again
just for this one cause of death. This leaves out utterly ridiculous
things like 'covid' death by car accident and 'covid' death by gunshot.
This has resulted in a permanently contaminated, inflated death toll.
The early worldwide fearfest quickly led to restricting access to
hospitals for anything but 'covid' and the furloughing of staff.
This resulted in hospitals immediately bleeding cash because the
hospitals were quickly emptied of all normal patients. ICU's are
designed to run at periodically 100% full (or even 120% full) and will
continuously lose money with 'socially distanced' partial occupancy.
The government then provided large sums of per-covid-patient or
per-covid-patient-on-a-ventilator special 'pandemic' money (often over
100K per 'covid' patient) to the financially floundering hospitals. The
new 'covid' death reporting rules and the hospital cash crunch together
with special 'covid' money again led to destructive positive feedback,
which further increased the faulty 'covid' disease and death counts.
This completely leaves aside the question as to whether the virus has ever
been traditionally isolated, e.g., by purifying the lung fluids of a set
of sick 'covid' patients, making electron microscope pictures of viral
particles, and direct sequencing (not PCR). All current 'isolations'
have relied instead upon growing samples from a swab in monkey VERO
cells and using PCR (not traditional sequencing) to amplify sequences
from probes and then matching them to probe sequences presumably from
the one-and-only 'covid'. My feeling is that the virus does exist;
but it is very unclear how much it correlates with the heterogeneous
group of respiratory diseases known as 'covid'. The sweeping together
of multiple diseases into a single cause is reminiscent of HIV and AIDS,
not coincidentally engineered by the same big-pharma-money-compromised
bad actors (Fauci).
(3) Big science
In a move similar to special 'covid' funds for hospitals, huge sums of
research money (e.g., from Fauci's 6 billion dollar NIAIDS 'war chest')
have quickly been announced and distributed for 'covid everything',
ranging from funding virologists doing basic research, to hamsters in
cages separated by a mask, to research into how to convince people to
take a vaccine ($1.5 billion in the latest 'covid' porkfest), to endless
simulation studies (like the original faulty simulation by Gates-funded
Niel Ferguson at Imperial College London, just the latest in a series
of failed hysterical simulations by Ferguson), to MRI of 'covid'.
The result has been a positive feedback similar to hush money. Academic
virologists (and 'covid' related research from soup to nuts) are now
eagerly finding out how virtually aspect of animal and human biology and
psychology and sociology all revolve around 'covid'. The researchers
I have talked to are terrified of saying anything 'against' 'covid' (or
the preposterously high PCR cycle thresholds) for fear of having their
newfound funding cancelled. The bottom line is ever more 'research'
into everything 'covid' for years into the foreseeable future, as
if 'covid' was the only thing in the world.
(4) Big pharma
The onset of the crisis resulted in many billions of government dollars
instantly being poured into big pharma for bulk pre-purchases of
net-yet-existent vaccines. This creates obvious positive feedback for
more vaccines. A friend went to the doctor looking to get her sore hand
x-rayed after falling off her bike; instead she was immediately offered
4 vaccines (tetanus, shingles, flu, and covid). She had to argue to
just get an x-ray.
Since the vaccine makers have had no liability for any harms caused
by vaccines since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, and
since any compensation for damages stingily doled out by the secret
'vaccine court' (only $4 billion so far) are paid for by a $0.75 tax on
every vaccine, they have no incentive to accurately monitor for injury
(the VAERS system is voluntary!) or minimize injury. Obviously, mass
death would scare people away; but delayed bad effects (e.g., 2000 cases
of lifelong narcolepsy from the Pandemrix vaccine) are 'no prob'.
The dystopian biosecurity state being feverishly prepared all around us,
featuring forced or almost forced vaccination has an obvious positive
feedback on vaccine usage - which has already ballooned from the small
number of vaccines I received as a child in the early 1960's. In a few
years, we could be looking at another great leap forward in forced or
nearly forced vaccination of adults for multiple 'diseases' or 'variants'
every year or even every six months, esp. since mRNA vaccines are so
quick to crank out (vs. growing virus in mega gallons of cancer cell
lines using mega gallons of fetal calf serum).
Another positive feedback loop was big pharma and the criminal Fauci
trash-talking simple, cheap, effective drugs that could have prevented
*most* of the deaths from 'covid' (and deaths by ventilator) like vitamin
D, ivermectin, zinc, hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, azithromycin,
vitamin C - all in in favor of expensive, toxic, re-purposed pharma
drugs like remdesivir (originally a failed drug for Ebola, cf. AZT).
The needless additional death toll then feeds back into the fear.
(5) Big tech/media
Big tech/media has gone public as the menacing, world-spanning Soviet
Pravda-like operation it always was with surprising speed. Supercharged
human and algorithmic censorship now defends big pharma, lockdown,
and silly 'Democratic' wokeism in bigtech-intermediated conversations
between individuals. This has resulted in positive feedback of people
censoring themselves in order to keep their accounts open. Here are some
of the latest 'innovative' methods. Facebook will shut down a person's
account for linking to a 'dangerous' article, but will then leave the
'offending'
article up to punish as many readers as possible, and make
them turn on the writer. Patreon now demands that users
remove
content from their personal web sites - N.B.: content not on Patreon
- including factually correct information that is critical of vaccine
developers or big pharma.
(6) Lockdown and masks
Despite clear data that lockdowns have had virtually no effect on death
rates (death rates in Florida vs. California, North vs. South Dakota),
they continue to be imposed by ignorant, power mad 'health' administrators
across the world. Lockdowns are the largest disaster in the history of
health policy. The costs (e.g., postponed treatments, suicides, higher
heart disease, health sequelae of business failure, eviction, bankruptcy,
homelessness, keeping people out of sunlight) are just beginning to play
themselves out. Despite deciades of randomized controlled studies on
masks showing that they have little effect on transmission of respiratory
viruses (or for that matter, on preventing post-surgical wound infection),
including a large (n=6000) study in Denmark during the initial 'covid'
outbreak, mask mandates continue across the world. 3 million masks are
used every minute, approaching 2 trillion per year. Many are ending up
in the ocean where they will take several hundred years to decay.
The positive feedback here is that many people have gotten so used to
wearing them that they feel unsafe without them, and many seem loathe
to stop wearing them even though scientific studies show that they
don't work. Constant propaganda tries to suggest they will never go away.
The lockdown has crushed small businesses (especially black-owned),
restaurants, travel, music, theater, museums, and other human creative
arts, and has almost instantaneously transferred trillions of dollars
upward to transnational corporations and billionaires, who now have more
control than ever before in human history. We are seeing the creation
of worldwide fascism in the classic Mussolini sense of fascism - the
coming together of corporations and the state.
There has been a lot of social, mental, and educational damage to
children from the lockdown, and disproportionately to poorer children
(e.g., catastrophic drop in math performance). There is positive feedback
there, too, as children, even more than adults, are coming to view the
current disturbing dysfunctional situation as 'normal'.
(7) How to escape
The Salem witch craze eventually wore off, but it took a full year
and a half. The everything bubble is going to crash spectacularly,
sooner or later, as all previous bubbles have. This could have the
effect of waking people up from their dazed submission, allowing them
to more clearly discern the digital slavery being prepared for them,
which many 'little Eichmanns' among us are participating in constructing.
People need to find their consciences before it's too late. There are
many of us and few of them, but time is short.
[Mar26'21]
Even Biden's dogs know
It's not an accident that Biden's dogs attacked staff and security.
Dogs are very perceptive of the cognitive state of their owner/master.
If an owner is unconfident, dogs will quickly detect this and respond
to potential threats more aggressively (the source of many 'bad dog'
problems). If they are restrained, making defensive responses more
difficult, they will become even more agressive (the non-confident owner
pulls worriedly on barking dog's leash). Biden's dogs simply detected
that Biden was seriously cognitively impaired and acted accordingly by
taking charge of his defense.
[Apr08'21]
Ukraine war escalation?
The declaration of war on Russian Crimea (
March
24th Decree No. 117/2021) by Zelensky, president of Ukraine (current
approval down to 30%) - no doubt egged on by the cashiered Obama-ear
neocons now back in the saddle in the 'Biden' administration - may be
responsible for the recent large daytime (i.e., casual) movements of
Russian military equipment within Russia as well as the possible closure
of the Crimean bridge. Over the next month or two, the long running
(since 2014) low intensity war in Donbass may heat up. The US and NATO
have been moving (so far) moderate amounts of troops and equipment toward
Ukraine. The main sewer media of course completely buried the original
provocation while concentrating instead on 'more important' things like
the Geroge Floyd case. If something does blow up, Rachel Maddow can then
go back spluttering "Putin! Putin! Putin!", as if the whole conflagration
came out of the blue. If a war starts, it will delay the 95%-complete
Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, denying the EU
access to cheap energy and damage vaporize EU and Russian investments
in it. As the Saker says, this may be planned as a 'continental 9/11'.
It would destabilize both the EU and NATO. Though this disaster would
at first appear to be a big 'win' for the neocon crazies in the US,
it is worth remembering that 1/5 of all USD were 'printed' (lent
into existence) in 2020. There is a chance this could all
backfire
spectacularly (from Andrei Martyanov). But there is also still some
hope for no war. Predicting the future is hard :-}
[Update Apr6: Saker
open thread 5 from the Saker]. [Update Apr7: Russia issues NOTAM
(notice to airmen) after Ukraine shelling] [Update Apr8: Sitrep
from Alexander Khodakovsky, and Saker
open thread #7] [Update Apr9:
Perhaps cooler, more sensible heads have
prevailed as the Ukronazis dial down their threats. Let's hope
this is true.] [Update Apr12: support for de-escalation from Andrei
Martyanov and Auslander.]
[Dmitri Orlov suggests that Russia may evacuate
people in the no-man's land of the breakaway republics between the
NATO-armed east and the border with Russia. NATO has now concentrated
40,000 troops near Russia's western border. Now we just have to
make it safely through the summer.] [Update Apr15: US backs down on
sailing warships into the Black Sea; a good sign, but also consistent
with a planned war, since the ships would be vulnerable. The possibility
of a false flag remains (withdrawing troops from Afghanistan on
9/11 is sort of satanic, eh?). The new sanctions and expulsions of
diplomats is not a good sign. Good discussion from Scott Ritter here,
starting at minute 86, and finally, an excellent, informative interview
with Mark
Sleboda.] [Update Apr16: Worth noting that there is some natural
gas and fracked oil in Donbass.] [Update Apr17: Planned assassination
of Lukashenko in Belarus interrupted incl. dual US citizen; Russia has
moved a lot of military equipment into the Black Sea - not enough for an
invasion, but a big deterrence.] [Putin's speech is translated here.
It was mostly on the pandemic with only veiled and metaphorical mention
of Western aggression, quoting Kipling, and only a brief mention of the
foiled Belarus/Lukashenko coup/assassination plot, a reassuringly cool
and professional speech (see comment by Larchmonter).] [Update Apr24:
Russia has begun withdrawing its forces at its borders with Ukraine now
that Ukraine has backed down. For now, it's de-escalation. But the
factors responsible for the early April escalation remain in place.]
[Jul06'21]
Afghanistan, Iran, oil
As the non-stop vaccine propaganda, threatened vaccine mandates, and
unexplained leaps in the stock market continue unchanged, there are
several events that seem not to have received enough attention (from
myself included, distracted as I am personally by the ever encroaching
medical/big-pharma fascism).
First, the weird Afghanistan withdrawal. After all these years, why now?
(of course, I was against going there in the first place). It's not
like necons et al. have gone away; in fact, there seem to be more of
them around than ever (e.g., Nuland, Susan Rice). The hasty Saigon-like
retreat yesterday, which involved not even telling our Afghan 'allies'
before turning off the lights and leaving Bagram in the middle of the
night - which resulted in widespread looting before our 'allies' got
control - was just weird. It feels like there was some kind of secret
negotiation to motivate this. Not enough info out there for me to
understand what led up to this.
Second, the dialing down of the anti-Iran rhetoric. Again, why now?
Perhaps it is related to the next point.
Third, the rising price of oil suggests a real supply side constraint,
even though the headlines are distracted by OPEC 'disputes', which in
the past were about quotas to stop overproduction, not underproduction.
Conventional crude peaked around 2008 (conicident with the last big oil
price spike), but the advent of US fracking (what used to be called
'tertiary recovery', because it implied a last ditch effort) almost
doubled US 'oil' output (scare quotes since light tight oil a much
lower specific gravity than crude oil). This temporarily brought the US
output back to its 1970 peak, but with a different overall composition.
But the low price of oil during that whole process resulted in net
overall *increase* in debt for frackers (though of course, lots of money
was gained by rich individuals and investors).
If the covid psyop - which caused an unprecedented large drop in world
oil consumption - hadn't been rolled out, oil prices would probably have
spiked last year. A few electric cars here and there has not made a
visible dent in the one cubic mile of oil we burn per year. In fact,
it will increase demand for other kinds of fossil fuel (more methane
to charge more electric cars at night). We may finally run up against
hard supply limits later this year. This could cause a 2008-like spike,
which as before, could destabilize the financial system as it propagates
through supply chains. Economic activity utterly relies on bunker fuel
and diesel for container ships, trains, and trucks. If the trucks ever
stopped running, the shelves would be clear of food in just a few days
in our just-in-time economy.
In talking to supposedly 'left' friends (I still consider myself left!),
I find it nearly impossible for them to come to grips with how utterly
dependent on fossil fuels industrial civilization is. They can only think
'fossil fuels bad', as causing slow climate change, which of course
they do. But they think nothing of how many things there are in our
industrial world that have no obvious drop-in replacement for fossil
fuels, like flying, container ships, long-distance trains and trucks,
road and bridge maintenance, concrete, steel, industrial agriculture,
fertilizer, drilling, mining, wind turbine manufacturing, etc. There is
no practical way for these things to be powered by wind and solar, even
in the most hallucinatory of future scenarios. And the 'left' has no
understanding of the fact that *all* of the growth in wind and solar has
just covered yearly growth in total energy use, *without replacing any*
of it!
The problem with oil price as a signal is that it is ridiculously
sensitive to relatively tiny surpluses or deficits. The supply side
deficit that caused the 2008 spike in oil prices was small. Similarly the
surplus that caused oil prices to plummet during the US fracking craze
was equally small - just 1-2% below/above demand in both cases.
For better or worse, it looks like a small production deficit is finally
re-emerging. If this continues, it is likely to wreak havoc all out of
proportion to the 98-99% of the market that *did* get supplied. I wonder
how it will interact with the increasingly fascist medical/big-pharma
mandates. The covid psyop has depended on fear (Delta, Lamda around
the corner). I don't have any useful intuition as to how adding (even
more) fear in the form of economic fear will affect our increasingly
dystopian world.
[Jul15'21]
South Africa - after the lockdown
In South Africa, 70,000 troops were mustered in 2020 to lock down healthy
people in the country. This caused severe disruptions to everyday
life and further impoverished many of the poorest people in the county.
Riots are exactly what many of us predicted would be the result of the
draconian, unprecedented, idiotic, and completely ineffective policy of
locking down healthy people, all back in Mar 2020.
As
riots
flared up this week, the government managed to call up only
2,500 troops after some of the worst was over - a large number of
businesses, shopping centers, transport vehicles, and food and goods
distribution centers were looted and burned. Unrest tracker map app
here.
The widespread coordination of these events and the weird withdrawal of
the police and military suggests that there might have been additional
top-down 'color revolution-like' incitement. For example see
this
speech by a politician exhorting the crowd to go into neighborhoods
to kill and burn down houses, delivered while wearing a mask (!).
The summer of 2020 in the US was a foretaste of something similar.
[Aug19'21]
Injecting children in a stadium? For real?
In Australia, 24,000 kids were
ushered
into a stadium (?!), without their parents, by soldiers, and injected
with vaccines, with reports of 3 immediately dead. If that doesn't wake
people up, I don't know what will!
[Mar19'22]
Controlled demolition - part 2
The limited war in Ukraine has temporarily distracted most people from
the covid operation as that narrative has started to fall apart as
personal experience of pharm-induced damage grows. The blasts of the
'Mighty Wurlizter' have resulted in a mind-boggling 30% of Americans,
evenly split between Demo and Repub, polling in favor of using nuclear
weapons against Russia, with over 80% of the US population ready to
'cancel' Russia! One wonders whether it is the same Karens - e.g.,
Arnold Schwarznegger, who said "screw your freedoms" to Americans that
were objecting to mandates - who now are worried about the 'freedom'
of Ukrainian Nazis (funded by the jewish billionaire oligarch Ihor
Kolomoiskii, now absconded to Switzerland).
Even a trace of historical knowledge of what happened in 2014 is utterly
absent in the main sewer media - social and otherwise. Remember the
Nuland phone call? "We've spent $4 billion on Ukraine. F--- the EU! Yats
is our man!"). That was only 8 years ago (for details, see my 2014 posts
above). The extent of 'history' seems to contract slightly every new
year. There has been little mention of the additional $5 billion poured
into Ukraine since 2014 to fund 'research biolabs', mercenary training
centers, and so on, or of the new 2022 promise to infuse an additional
$10 billion into the corrupt and almost non-existent Ukraine government
[update July2022: now at $50 billion].
The attempt to 'cancel' Russia is real. 400 corporations have suspended
operations inside Russia. A third of a trillion in Russian money in
banks has been frozen/stolen. Russia has been mostly cut off from the
SWIFT interbank system. Most Russians have correctly interpreted this
as another fullblown WWII situation (where perhaps 30 million Russians
perished). However, sanctions on Russia may backfire [update July2020:
*have* backfired]. Like a much larger version of what happened in
Canada when Turdeau temporarily seized bank accounts over the truckers
demonstration (it initiated bank runs as businesses withdrew money
until Turdeau backed off a week later), blocking Russia from SWIFT and
seizing Russian assets is causing the rest of the world to immediately
begin cooperating better to find ways around the dollar and the potential
'cancellation' of *their* account and payment options. Even timid Germany
has begun to repatriate its gold held in New York, perhaps recalling $2
billion in Venezuela's gold reserves was frozen/stolen by London.
This increased cooperation could start to undermine world dollar
dominance. This is the thing that allows US banks to generate dollars
from the void (through loans - $6 trillion since covid) and use this
created money to pay companies to ship real things across the ocean
to us, made with real resources already shipped across the oceans
to China (an iPhone contains a majority of the elements in the
periodic table). There are already arrangements to begin buying
Saudi oil in yuan, and for India/Russia trade to be conducted in
rubles/rupees, which if it occurs will be completely unprecendented
over the last 5 decades. This will be a slow process, but with serious
consequences down the line. It may also be yet another event to try to
catalyze the move to a one-world central bank digital currency.
Larry
Fink, BlackRock, agrees. That would be Larry
"We are forcing behaviors" Fink.
This will be a disastrous turn in the direction of totalitarian control
if it succeeds.
The damage to supply chains for energy, food (a fifth of world
wheat comes from Russia), and fertilizer is initially likely
to cause all sorts of shortages and damages and in poorer
countries across the world, including in Europe (e.g.,
Portugal).
Check out fertilzer prices
here.
The US sanctions are effectively attacking the EU! For now, Russia has
kept some gas to the EU on even without a way to get paid for it, but
this will likely change soon. The EU was getting almost half of its
coal and oil from Russia. Over the next few years, this could begin to
undermine the dollar as a reserve currency as other countries keep less
of their reserves in dollars. It's almost looks like that is what the
West is intending to do, given that none of the responses to the attempt
to 'cancel' Russia could have been unexpected.
We are now sitting in a situation similar to the Cuban missile crisis,
but in a propaganda fog of unbelievable proportions, implemented by
intermediation and second-to-second molding of interpersonal communication
by the information/military/industrial complex. A comedian and dancer
(
skilled on his
stilettos, now a feature, not a bug, in our woke Weimar republic), is
now probably broadcasting from a green screen studio in Poland. But none
of this matters to 80% of the population! They're just watching
video game clips
passed off as great victories over the ebil Poootin.
But I have no idea of how this will play out in the short term! We live
next to large military installations, and we don't have a basement, so
hoping for the best! Biden's and Pelosi's brains are barely working,
so other hidden committees are competing to 'run things'. The result of
so many interacting parts is likely to be pretty chaotic - deterministic,
but extremely difficult to predict. If things start to go pear-shaped
(British-ism!) for US world dominance, there is a real possibility
that the neo-cons currently controlling war policy could
seriously
and catastrophically escalate the war on Russia.
In the longer term (this decade), the rundown in net energy has not
stopped running down, and it will eventually result in unavoidable
simplication. At this point, I am actually hoping that reduced net
energy will begin to take a bigger bite before a full SkyNet can be put
into place - this despite the very unpleasant reality of what that means
for everyday life.
All of the recent machinations around oil, which seem to be purposefully
gumming up the works, will - either by accident or by design - cushion
some of the supply side problems by demand destruction, so oil prices
may be see-sawing for some time (not just up).
[May05'22]
Gradually, then suddenly
The pace of world events seems to be quickening. During any given
day there are so many things simultaneously happening across the
world that it is utterly impossible for a single human to comprehend.
Instead, my puny human mind tries to sniff odors in the wind and guess.
Some of the recent odors include the disappearance of Tucker Carlson,
Lopez Obrador, Recep Erdogan, Walensky, General Milley, Gonzalo Lira
(again), and more CA banks being consumed by NY banks. An escalation of
the Ukraine war seems imminent. Edward Dowd's tweet kind of
captures my
mood. :-{
[Jun20'22]
Slaughter that is invisible in the 'news'
The hundred billion dollars that the US and NATO have pumped
into Ukraine since the US/NATO-organized 2014 Maidan coup (hired
snipers shooting at both sides, see above) have resulted in a
horrifying
slaughter of 160,000 Ukrainians, with similar numbers horribly
injured. This is like three total-US-casualty-Vietnam's, occurring
all in one year (N.B.: not counting the 2-3 million Vietnamese,
Cambodians, and Laotians killed in the American war). Take it
straight from the mouth of Serge Varlay, a BlackRock recruiter:
"Ukraine
is good for business". Absolutely horrible.
[Sep'09]
Same old horror breaks my heart
It's horrifying to watch (in closeup via simplicius76 and askeptic on
substack, Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, @militarysummary on youtube)
the human destruction arranged in Ukraine by the neocons (e.g., Nuland,
Blinken). This dates back to before the 2014 Maidan coup, initiated
by having professional snipers shoot at both sides. Obama himself (who
brought in Nuland) is probably part of the team that controls the doddering
80 year old 'president'. The disastrous offensive by the Ukrainians
has barely budged the front lines, but at the horrific cost of *another*
2-3 total-US-casualty-Vietnam's - in just 3 months. The war is a weird
combination of WWI trench warfare together with advanced night vision
and electronic fire control.
A lot of the casualties in the recent offensive resulted from the fact
that Russia didn't use its layered defense to allow advances through
the first layer but instead vigorously defended the first layer.
Despite having US/NATO weapons and US intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (ISR) as well as 'advisors', the numerically inferior
artillery of the Ukrainian army has resulted in massive loss of Western
hardware, and the ill-advised 'meat assaults' have resulted in terrible
death, and as many amputations as in all of WWI (!! partly because of
better retrieval of wounded than in WWI). Another reason for the mismatch
is that US/NATO military training had focused on anti-insurgency warfare
more appropriate to previous US attacks on defenseless 3rd world countries
that have no air defense - a very different situation than Ukraine.
The part that is the most soul destroying is to see the effectiveness
of superior Western psychological warfare - which goes back to the
Tavistock Institute from the early 20th century. There is a strong
resemblance to what happened in 1991 in Yugoslavia, where a gaggle of
different but closely related ethnicities were previously intermingled,
intermarried, and generally peaceful, now strictly sorted and hateful.
Or look at how the neocons divided Sunnis and Shia in Iraq, where under
Saddam, they were intermarrying. Or brother fighting brother in Syria.
Or what happened in Libya where an actual slave trade reemerged after
the US/NATO bombed Libya and killed Qaddafi. Or look to the future of
Azeris and Armenians, about the blow up again. Russians and Ukrainians
are Slavic brothers, speaking virtually the same language. Yet they
are massacring eech other on the battlefield as directed by neocons
and a former-comedian president who somehow became a half a billionaire.
When the war ends, the carcass of Ukraine, with some of the most fertile
soil on the planet contaminated with inhalable depleted uranium dust
and unexploded cluster munitions, will be picked over by multinational
corporations, and ethnic hate between virtual brothers will be further
cemented into place, leading to permanent social dysfunction, which
will aid the depradations of the corporate harpies. It doesn't matter
that US weapons have become inferior/impractical compared to current
Russian weapons. US mind control is superior.
The mind control that creates the 'universal soldier' is so strong, and
so well-oiled from centuries of refinement well before Tavistock, that
it is hard to see how this could ever be overcome. This is especially
true. for young, less experienced men who form the core of every army
(until the fresh army gets decimated and you eventually end up with the
70 year old tank commander who was recently captured by the Russians).
I remember the power of the mind control pull from when I narrowly avoided
the Vietnam draft (by 6 months in 1972), as the son of a conscientous
objector to the Korean war who whose neighborhood was hit by shrapnel
from a stray anti-aircraft shell when he was growing up in Honolulu
near Pearl Harbor. This all makes me feel old and depressed. I going
to get on my bike.
[Oct03'23]
Nobel travesty is a slap in the face to hundreds of millions injured and 10-20 million killed
It is an absolute travesty to have awarded the Nobel prize to two
idiots who figured out that using modified uridine in mRNA injections
suppresses the innate immune system, which is one of the body's primary
defenses against infection and cancer. These idiots' 'discovery'
has led to the suppression the immune systems of 2/3 of the humans
on the planet, and together with the lipid-nanoparticle delivery
system for spike mRNA is likely responsible for the deaths of
10
to 20 million people and injuries to hundreds of millions of people
across the globe. The proximal kill rate of the vaccine estimated from
all-cause-mortality data was about 1 death per 800 doses, well above
the infection fatality ratio for unvaccinated covid.
This award will increase the horrible ongoing
CIA/bigpharma/bigtech/bigbanker/government push to roll out and mandate
hundreds more of these toxic LNP modified-mRNA genetic therapy injections.
Truly a sad day for humanity.
This is perhaps the first Nobel prize awarded for *increasing*
mortality. The laureates pitifully display their prizes
wearing
face masks. I am embarrassed to be associated by name with so-called
'scientists' like this.
[Oct15'23]
Every war starts with a false flag slash LIHOP
Despite a massive uniform press propaganda barrage including a re-run of
the 'Iraq incubator babies' psyop, there has been a stronger reaction,
not only from the global south, but esp. from younger people in the US,
UK, and France and against the plan to ethnically cleanse 1 million
people out of northern Gaza into southern Gaza, which already has 1
million people in it - an even larger version of what happened in 1948.
Israel fighter jets are bombing apartment buildings (several thousand
residential buildings, incl. using white phosphorus on a
children's hospital ) and
bombing
roads in northern Gaza filled with people
fleeing
the bombs.
Today, there was a pause in the bombing, because of the weather
(?). Or was it the UNRWA report of a case of smallpox in
Gaza?! (where'd that come from!?). The 'beheaded babies' and "
mass
rape" stories were overturned
more quickly.
More people now notice that Israelis are "killed/murdered" but people in
Gaza just "die" and their hospitals "explode"); and they visualize what
the controlled press would say if the tables were turned. Israel has
kept the power off for the 2 million people in the open air prison
of the Gaza ghetto. However, before I could even finish the post,
large airstikes have resumed, including reports of the use of cluster
anti-personnel bombs (outlawed, but OK to use on Palestinian 'human
animals' as described by defense minister Yoav Gallant).
Also, last week the US dispatched 2 aircraft carriers, 2 cruisers and 7
destroyers, 5 frigates, and a few submarines, which overkill for Gaza,
which is about the size of Chicago. A likely target is Syria.
An attack on Iran would be foolhardy, given that they can defend
themselves. But all bets are off if Israel decides to try to force all
2.3 million Palestinians out of their homes into Egypt, somehow past the
closed cement walls at the Gaza/Egypt border.
Always remember, virtually
*every* war has been
started by using a false flag slash LIHOP. The most critical
thing is to maintain logic in the face of weaponized emotional propaganda,
originally refined and codified by the Tavistock Instiute at the turn of
the twentieth century. Having the internet certainly helps! Given the
continued development of sea skimming antiship missiles, the approaching
US armada will not sail without substantial risk. A large sunken US
ship could be yet another 'Pearl Harbor' (a classic LIHOP false flag).
Also, remember the USS Liberty! How many 'new Pearl Harbors' before
people finally learn? "I can’t believe it’s Israel season again
and I haven’t even taken my Ukrainian decorations down!"
[Oct22'23]
Approaching a turning point
Let's quickly review the last two decades of US/UK/neocon-initiated wars
and foreign government take-downs that were promised us after 9/11 (Nov
2001, via Gen. Wesley Clark - the countries were Iraq, Libya, Lebanon,
Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran). There are waaay too many moving parts
and hidden actions for me to possibly predict how this will turn out.
But taking a several decades-long view, it's clear that we may be reaching
something of a turning point.
There are analogies with the long view of the peak oil debate. When peak
oil actually did occur for crude and condensate in 2008 spiking oil
prices, it was rapidly but temporarily suspended by fracking, which
amazingly temporarily doubled US (light!) oil production (now rapidly
depleting). So most people ignored the warnings and assumed that the
problem had been solved. It remains perhaps the biggest looming problem
for the maintenance of industrial civilization, despite its current near
invisiblity ('renewable' energy hasn't even covered growth in recent
energy use; fossil fuel still over 80% of total energy).
The 2003 Iraq war showed US air power effortlessly overcoming Iraqi air
defenses and tanks (depleted uranium), not to mention the effortless
aerial "turkey shoot" massacre of a retreating army plus civilian
motorcade (google "Highway of Death").
Air defense is not a new thing. But the utter one-sidedness of the Iraq
war made it obvious to the entire world that better air defense against
US air power - and better anti-ship and anti-tank weapons - were the
most important things for all of the surrounding at-risk countries to
acquire, all of which are much less expensive than jets and warships.
The US bombed hospitals in Vietnam; the unfortunate reality is that all
non-US/EU/UK countries need air defenses for their hospitals.
The 2006 Hezbollah defeat of the Israeli military during Israel's invasion
on Southern Lebanon, showed the the value of inexpensive modern anti-tank
weapons.
However, the subsequent almost effortless color revolution destablization
and then complete destruction of Libya in 2011 was a replay of the 2003
Iraq war, and it strongly re-emphasized the central need for all lesser
countries in the world to acquire modern air defenses.
The destabilization of Syria (under Obama), beginning in 2011 (almost
simultaneous with the onset of a hundred year drought there), where the US
and Israel hired/created ISIS, and then kicked things off with multiple
fake 'chemical weapons' and 'beheading' psyop videos, initially looked
like it was going to turn into yet another neocon 'victory' (defined
as the creation of a failed state). However, the Russian defense of
Syria created a decisive turn in events. Though the US still occupies
Syrian oil fields and steals their oil, Syria did not fall, and managed
to reclaim some territory from ISIS.
The 2014 Maidan coup, engineered by Victoria 'f-ck the EU' Nuland using
professional snipers who shot at both sides, overthrew the government
of Viktor Yanukovych and and started 8 years of the nazi-i-fication
of the Kiev government (supported by jewish oligarchs!). Once again,
this looked like an almost effortless 'color revolution' neocon win.
It resulted in the almost continuous shelling of the eastern, Russian
part of Ukraine, which killed 14,000 civilians over 8 years. But then
Russia finally invaded eastern Ukraine and put a stop to the shelling.
The ongoing war has killed perhaps 100,000 Russian and a staggering
400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. The success of Russian army against a
large standing US/NATO-supported and equipped army (numerically more
than the combined armies of Germany, France and Spain) as well as the
fact that Russia overcame economic sanctions and foreign bank account
wealth confiscation, however, was another very clear signal that the
world balance of power was beginning to change.
Now we have the aftermath of the 2023 Hamas Al Aqsa flood attacks.
As already mentioned, the opening event looked like a 9/11-like
stand-down/LIHOP operation on the part of the IDF (N.B.: Israel was
involved in the creation of Hamas as a way to divide Gaza from the
West Bank). Israel is once again threatening to "wipe off the map"
what they call the "human animals" in Gaza and the West Bank, with the
heaviest ever bombing of the Gaza open air prison camp, which contains 2.3
million people with nowhere to go. The bombing has damaged or destroyed
30% of the residences in a region smaller than Chicago, with water and
power and food cut off. If Palestinians could be ethnically cleansed
from Gaza, Israel would acquire 1.6 trillion cubic feet of recoverable
natural gas off the coast of Gaza.
As Israel lines up tanks just outside Gaza and continues to bomb Gaza,
southern Lebanon, and Syrian airports in Damascus and Aleppo, this
looks like an impending human catastrophe. However, there are several
critical differences between then (2003) and now. First there are
political considerations. 80% of Israelis blame *Netanyahu* for the Oct
7th invasion. Virtually the entire global south (aside from India) is now
willing to speak up against an Israeli invasion. China has spoken against
the invasion and is sending warships to the Mediterranean. Russia see
below. The crisis has motivated the immediately surrounding countries to
begin to set aside their differences. Many of them export oil and gas,
which could be limited, just as the US finishes virtually emptying its
strategic oil reserves down to about two weeks. Younger people in the
US are now strongly against continued Israeli military support and action
(overall 52% of US-ians oppose sending more military aid).
Then there are military practicalities in no particular order. Turkey has
broken with NATO's one-sided support for Israel, depriving the US of
some local air bases and complicating refueling and delivery of materiel
(but consider that Jordan, Greece, and the British air base on Cyprus
are hosting delivery of US military supply planes and military 747's).
Turkey has warships in the Mediterranean. The US has had to transfer
artillery shells initially planned for Ukraine to Israel. A number of
concentrations of US troops around the mideast (e.g., Syria, Jordan, Iraq)
don't have strong enough air defenses. US-supplied Israeli Iron Dome air
defense rockets are in short supply before any of the real missiles have
been fired. Iran now has major domestic missile and drone production and
has purchased some high quality Russian air defense and anti-ship missles.
There are completely up-to-date Russian air and antiship defenses in
Latakia at the Khmeimim air base. Russia has initiated 24/7 patrols of
aircraft over the Black Sea armed with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles that
can reach the US aircraft carrier flotilla already there and the second
carrier flotilla that is on the way. The days when an aircraft carrier
could pull in and fire car-sized shells onto the harbor unmolested are
coming to an end. Hamas has US anti-tank weapons that were 'leaked'/sold
out of massively corrupt Ukraine, the definition of 'blowback'.
If the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza (the last crusade) begins in
earnest, there is the potential that a multi-front war could rapidly open
up that neither Israel nor the US could surely control. As Scott Ritter
says, the US would now likely outright lose a war with Iran. This may
explain why the Gaza invasion seems to have been temporarily paused.
Even though 'everyone' is aware of these new political and military
realities, they have not been 'officially' recognized. However, if
they were to be made more explicitly visible by battlefield defeats
(as they have been in Ukraine), then more countries will be emboldened
to publicly state that the emperor has no clothes and act accordingly.
The world is turning more multipolar. I'm still hoping that
world outrage will stop the Israelis from completing a Palestinian
starvation/genocide. I'm still hoping a carrier-sinking false flag
slash LIHOP (or the Samson option, for all my friends in London!) remain
off the table! John Helmer has a useful interim summary
here.
[Dec10'23]
Will they get away with it?
Since I last wrote, the Israelis have dropped the conventional
explosives equivalent (50,000 tons) of *two* Hiroshima nuclear
bombs on hospitals, mosques, churches, schools, and apartment
blocks in Gaza, with airplanes and 1 and 2 ton bunker buster
bombs supplied by the US, which has been feverishly sending
C-130's to Israel stuffed with yet more terrorist bombs, non-stop
over the past month and a half. Israel may have even used
enhanced
radiation weapons.
The cruelty, sadism, and psychopathy of Israel and the US government
is on view to the rest of the world, so much so that even the BBC
and Reuters and CNN have had to occasionally resort to truthfully
reporting on it. Israel is doing more to promote real 'antisemitism'
than all the neonazi groups in the world combined. It's impossible
to know how many people have died under the rubble. Israel has
killed
the 4 people in Gaza hospitals who were counting how many people
have died. There could be 40,000 dead in Gaza - worse than what happened
in the fire-bombing of Dresden.
The 'music festival massacre' and the 'babies in ovens' psyops have
been exposed. Most of the non-military music festival deaths, the
incinerated cars and bodies, were from Israeli hellfire missiles,
indiscriminate Israeli gunship rounds, and tank shells fired into houses
with hostages and babies. The 'babies in ovens' was just made up, but
faithfully blasted out by the Mighty Wurlitzer. As with 9/11, there
were Israeli stock exchange traders who knew about the attacks in advance.
Back on campus, objecting to Iarael killing 10,000 Palestinian women and
10,000 Palestinian children by crushing them to a fast (or slow agnozing)
death under collapsed buildings, burning children with phosphorus bombs,
and destroying half a trillion dollars worth of hospitals and libraries
and homes and belongings is 'anti-semitic', else jewish billionaires
will take away their blood money donations. Luckily, a solid 75% of
young people aren't buying it, despite the purges. That may be enough
to lose Joe Dementia the election. These would also be the young people
recruited to fight a war against Iran for Israel.
Israel was founded by European Jews who terrorized three-quarters
of a million Palestinians out of their homes, culminating
in the Nakba of 1948, supposedly because of their genetic
connection to the land. But the scientific truth (e.g.
here
and
here
and
here)
is that most Ashkenazi are not even genetically semites, but rather
Khazars from what is now Ukraine and eastern Turkey, who only converted
to Judaism in the 7th century. The amazing reality is that Palestinians
are much closer genetically to the original 2000-year-old biblical Jews
than someone like Netanyahu/Millikowski, easily visible by complexion.
The Arabs had nothing to do with WWII. Yet the virulently racist
Israelis regard Palestinians as 'human animals', untermenschen, less
than humans - people whose 'seed' they must erase because they have the
wrong genes. Imagine a white leader in the US calling for erasing the
seed of all blacks! The Israelis call the endlessly repeated bouts of
killing thousands of Palestinian humans, 'mowing the lawn'. Currently,
a majority of Israelis think the IDF is *not bombing Gaza enough* (would 3
or 4 nuclear bombs on civilian infrastructure in Gaza be enough for these
good Israelis?!) and they support the idea of Palestinian 'transfer',
and if that doesn't work, racial extermination.
Even though a majority of Americans are now against sending more
military aid to Israel (and 2/3 in favor of a ceasefire), the seamless
control by the Israel lobby over Congress and the White house and the
press has resulted in virtually unanimous override of popular American
opinion, blocking every attempt at a ceasefire. Here is the
shameful
spectacle of the black US ambassador to the UN's lone vote to veto the
rest of the world's desperate call to stop the massacre with a ceasefire;
he is raising his hand to defend apartheid policies *worse* than late 19th
century Jim Crow in the US, or apartheid Africa. Israel has far more
control over the US government than the American people do. As Whitney
Webb has written, we are one nation under Epstein/Mossad/pedo blackmail.
The lobby has them, literally, by the balls. Jews are 2% of the
US population but account for 50% of total campaign donation to the
Democratic party and 25% of donations to the Republican party.
Despite the terror bombing, Israel has not beat Hamas,
and the IDF has suffered a large number of casualties.
A substantial fraction of their armored vehicles and
electronic/radar posts have been destroyed by anti-tank weapons.
But Israel has won big against Palestinian hospitals,
professors,
mosques, churches, and civilian men, women, and
children, stripping large numbers of civilian men
naked in cold weather in front of a bomb pit to stage
fake
Hamas surrenders. IDF soldiers have shamelessly videoed themselves
planting an Israeli flag over a conquered and gunpoint-emptied Gaza
*hospital*.
There are many reasons for the 9/11-like LIHOP false flag operation
(Israeli response inexplicably delayed, then over-the-top 'Hannibal'
response), that was used to kick off this latest grotesque massacre
besides the genocidal and the drive to 'erase the seed of the Amalek'
(based on complete historical fantasy). Two big ones rarely mentioned
in the Lugenpresse are: (1) Israel wants to steal the natural gas field
off the Gaza coast, and (2) there are proposals to bypass the Suez canal
with a new canal to the Mediterranean through northern Gaza.
The key question is: will they get away with it? The violations of
human life are grotesque and sadistic, but importantly, more visible
than before, so more Americans are finally beginning to see through the
shrieking propaganda and fake Israeli news. Israel defenders on the
left now find themselves in an uncomfortable bed with Zionist Christians,
who outnumber Jews in America by three or four to one.
As the terror bombing continues, destroying even more of Gaza, leaving
2+ million humans without homes, food, and clean water, risking cholera
and other large scale killers, Israel is getting ever closer to killing
or expelling all of these hungry, sick, bombed homeless people into the
desert. So far, the rest of the Arab and Persian and Turkish and Chinese
(and to a certain measured extent, Russian) world has condemned Israel.
But none have undertaken substantial economic or military moves, with
the exception of a move away from the petrodollar by the tiny United
Arab Emirates and naval blockade by the Houthis in Yemen. Whether that
level of inaction will continue as Israel executes its final solution
remains to be seen.
There is also the question of what all the US military hardware
transported to the mideast is for (2 US aircraft carriers, several other
country's aircraft carriers, various other flotillas from the US and
other countries). The US military knows it can't successfully launch and
attack on Iran, and what good is an aircraft carrier for fighting Hamas?
I suppose the US could start bombing Gaza hospitals, too, but there aren't
that many left. Also, the military knows that the aircraft carriers are
vulnerable to modern missiles possessed by Iran and Russia and possibly
even Yemen, and so for the most part has kept them far enough away (but
one recently entered the Persian Gulf). Perhaps the most likely target
is Syria (again), Lebanon, Yemen, or just generalized intimidation.
Israel carried out a smaller massacre back in 1982, when they killed
20,000 or so people, mostly civilians, by bombing apartment blocks
in southern Lebanon. The US and the world didn't do anything about
it back then. Israel may actually get away with it this time, too,
killing 20-40,000 Gazans and expelling the rest, causing thousands of
additional deaths, as horrible as that is to contemplate - a catastrophe
worse than the original Nakba.
But as a mentioned in the previous post, things are slowly rounding
a turning point. A larger and larger percent of the world can now
consciously see Jewish racial supremacism and Jewish cruelty for what they
are (some perhaps wondering whether there might be something after all
to the idea of sacrificing goyim children to Moloch). Of course, every
ethnic group has their own ethnocentric 'inner master race' tendencies.
But these are typically wholesomely and humanely exercised via food,
music, and dance. The Israeli version closely resembles what happened
in Europe in the 20th century. In addition to burning the Palestinians,
they are burning their holocaust/anti-semitism card. Though the world
has failed to stop the current massacre, I am still hoping that this
will be the last time the world allows something this evil to happen.
Unfortunately, the logical part of my mind tells me it will first have
to get even worse.
[Mar05'24]
Understanding history deeply can take a long time
Since I last wrote back in Dec 2023, Israel's action have become,
if you can imagine it, even more grotesque, sadistic, and Nazi-like,
bragging about running over bound people with tanks, bombing even
more hospitals and blocking the delivery of medical supplies,
starving
a boy with cerebral palsy to death, shooting kids and their mothers in
the head (Twitter censored the link), and recently slaughtering over 100
starving people running toward the 'bait' of a humanitarian aid food truck
(
the
flour massacre). Israel has
killed
or seriously wounded over 100,000 Palestinians (1 in 20 in Gaza),
including killing at minimum 10,000 children and 10,000 women, and
has utterly destroyed the homes of almost 2 million people in a
relentless
and vicious physical and psychological war. Egypt is being
bribed
with a $10 billion loan package to help with the genocidal
ethnic cleansing by shovelling starving people into Sinai desert
tents surrounded by high concrete walls. Given unexplored rubble
together with the fact that hospitals, morgues, and the people who count
deaths have been relentlessly bombed, the true death toll is
almost
certainly much higher.
This is in-your-face human sacrifice - they *want* you to see it. It is
held up to the face of the world as a fait accompli, as in 'we can do this
and you can't stop us', and 'if you object, we will ruin your career and
cancel your endowment'. The result has been that virtually the entire
world outside of the US and EU 'leaders' (and outside of a majority
of US boomers and Christian fundamentalists, the last outnumbering US
jews) have become utterly disgusted with the white jewish supremacist
colonial Israel project, as the black US representative to the UN
embarrassingly vetoes all attempts at stopping the slaughter, which is
worse than anything that occurred in the Jim Crow south. This week we
had the clown world spectacle of the US dropping token 'humanitarian'
aid on Gaza (to try to appeal to young people in the US who can better
see the reality through the propaganda haze in this case) while the
US is at the same time continuing to supply Israel with two thousand
pound bombs and shells to drop on the inhabited moonscape of already
destroyed apartment buildings, all directed by US supplied drones and
military intelligence, with the Israel government propped up by billions
in non-military economic aid each year. If US politicians weren't
completely controlled by the Israel lobby (or by Epstein/Mossad blackmail
material), the carnage could have been stopped overnight by the threat
to suspend this military and economic aid. But instead, dual-nationality
President Blinken (stepfather Samuel Pisar was Robert Maxwell's long time
consigliere) bombs Yemen, the only country that has directly stood up
to Israel. The lobby's power is so great, even AOC doesn't
dare
utter the word (she 'supports Ukraine', too).
There is no 'left' vs. 'right' - both are on the
other side; *all* the presidential candidates (Biden,
Trump,
JFK Jr, et al.) unconditionally support Israel
continuing their slaughterfest, despite the fact that
2/3
of Americans are now in favor of a permanent ceasefire. But actually,
that's not what I set out to write about today...
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I wanted to write about how time-consuming it is to deeply understand
history, especially as it is literally happening to oneself, from
a personal perspective. I'll start with AIDS.
I grew up (well, I was leaving graduate school in 1984) during AIDS.
Though I already had a good basic understanding of molecular biology, I
didn't know very much about the immune system or retroviruses. So I got
suitably scared of AIDS. I swallowed the oxymoronic idea that a positive
antibody test means that 'you are infected' (huh? aren't antibodies good)?
I watched healthy looking Arthur Ashe, Freddy Mercury, Rudolf Nureyev,
and our departmental grants guy apparently die of it very rapidly (they
probably actually died of AZT, which destroys the bone marrow and the
immune system). Then, when less people were dying (as the AZT dose was
dialed way down with HAART - so-called 'highly effective antiretroviral
therapy'), I kind of forgot about it. I got the Hep B vaccine in
the early 1990's because it became a requirement to work with animals.
I was somewhat suspicious (I skipped out on the third shot), but I didn't
overtly fight the system.
I didn't look into HIV/AIDS more deeply until 20 years later.
As I've mentioned previously, some of the strange facts associated with
HIV-is-the-main-cause-of-AIDS hypothesis are: (1) retroviruses had never
previously been associated with disease (after all, about 8% of the human
genome consists of them compared to 1% for genes), (2) the HIV virus was
never isolated from sick patients using standard EM methods (3) AIDS came
to be 'diagnosed' with a PCR test 'turned up to 11', over the strenuous
objections of Nobel-prize-winning Kary Mullis who invented PCR, (4) in
combination with point 2, the 'rules' were suddenly changed, just for
HIV: if you had antibodies, that meant you were infected, not protected!
(5) Gallo 'accidentally' stole his Nobel-winning RNA sequences from
Montagnier, (6) AZT, an expensive, highly toxic, chain-terminating,
*immune-system-destroying*, *failed* leukemia chemotherapy agent never
intended for chronic treatment, was 'pulled out of retirement' for
AIDS, but then shown to be worse than nothing when given chronically,
(7) AIDS and HIV never spread into the heterosexual community in the US,
even to sexual partners of infected people, (8) AIDS never exploded across
Africa like it was predicted to do, (9) HIV never followed the infectivity
pattern (periodic peaks) of *any* other virus that has ever been examined,
(10) HIV supposedly somehow routinely 'caused' utterly different diseases
in different places and times (Kaposi's sarcoma, cytomegalovirus, and
mycoplasmas in the US, but tuberculosis and malnutrition in Africa),
(11) a successful vaccine was never made after almost a *trillion*
dollar, 35 year investment. There have been excellent muck-raking
documentaries about all of this, but their effect has been minimized.
The same Fauci was running that show from the beginning.
None of this is to deny the reality of the initial bump in loss of life,
esp. early in the epidemic, before the bathhouse scene was cleaned up
(where men would have 100's or 1000's of partners while simultaneously
taking amyl nitrate 'poppers', antibiotics, multiple stimulants, cocaine,
opiates), or that tuberculosis in an immune-suppressed person (e.g.,
immune suppression from taking chronic AZT!) in Africa can be deadly.
Despite all that, you can *still* be cancelled today for disputing the
'HIV is the cause of AIDS' matrix (e.g., this common sense
review
of the issue was
cancelled
from the literature in 2019, 5 years after its initial publication!).
The parallels between the AIDS operation and the covid operation are
quite remarkable: Fauci = Fauci, dodgy virus 'isolation' in both cases,
death by administration of a single, toxic, previously-withdrawn drug
(AZT failed for leukemia = remdesivir failed for Ebola!), toxic drug
'conveniently' has exact same side effects as the disease itself (AZT
immune suppression = remdesivir causes kidney failure leading to fluid
filling lungs causing respiratory distress and ventilator), toxic drug
is promoted as only effective treatment, the use of 'PCR gone wild'
(too many cycles), weird infectivity patterns (no HIV spread to hetero
sex partners = other NYC boroughs, rest of Italy unscathed), death from
just about anything gets attributed to the 'new plague'. In retrospect,
it's possible to clearly see the same scripts already well worked out
in the 1980's, being followed three decades later, but now with the
super-charged mind control power of the internet and social media.
But let's go back further in time. There was the 1976 swine flu scare
(I was an undergraduate at the time). The country-wide hysteria was
beginning to take off after just a handful of supposed swine flu deaths.
But it got rapidly deflated when a handful of people died from the hastily
cooked up vaccine, and the whole mess was soon forgotten or became
the topic of jokes.
This leaves out many intervening operations that had varying amount of
'success' (at scaring me and the proles), including West Nile virus, mad
cow disease, SARS, MERS, swine flu 2009, Ebola, Zika. Most of those came
and went without upending society. I was increasingly suspicious of them
at the time, but also increasingly aware that there was the potential for
any one of them to have been blown up into a major worldwide 'operation'.
So motivated by reading in the 2010's about the thousands of
cases of permanent narcolepsy (immune-mimic damage to hypothalamus
hypocretin/orexin neurons) from the rushed 2009 Pandemrix swine flu
vaccine, I started to look back even further, to the expansion of
the vaccine schedule in the 1960's in response to the 'terrors' of
measles, chicken pox, the mumps, whooping cough. I had contracted
and recovered from all of those things (since I was born in 1955).
But I had never looked into the historical data on measles, mumps, and
whooping cough deaths. When I did, it was obvious that the childhood
mortality from all of these diseases had already massively declined to
almost nothing by the time that each of the vaccines were introduced,
showing that improvement of living conditions - as the country came
out of the Great Depression - was the main effect, not the vaccines.
For the basic data supporting this, see Jordan Henderson's comprehensive
substack series
here with graphs of disease deaths and vaccine introduction
from all around the world (and J.B. Handley 2018 article
archived
here). Back in the day, when I was recovering from measles and so
on, I had paid less attention to them. I suppose I unconsciously reasoned
that since my experience of the diseases were not too bad, the vaccines
were probably OK. The story turned out to be very similar to the story
about antibiotics (yes, I know antibiotics are critical for deep [e.g.,
battlefield] wounds, and for lung infections in old people); constant
antibiotics for minor 'everyday' things is *not* why life expectancy
improved in the mid 20th century).
So only even more recently did I go back further in time to polio,
starting by reading Forrest Marready's book (h/t JonnyK). The first
well-documented outbreaks were at the turn of the century. They happened
to coincide with the rollout of lead, copper, and arsenic-containing
insecticides, and eventually lead arsenate - a sticky substance that
adhered to the apples, so less of it was washed off by rainfall
like earlier more water soluable salts like 'Paris green' (copper
acetoarsenite). The need for these insecticides were partly the result
of the unintended escape of the European Gypsy moth (possibly from a
Boston professor's office who was looking into using them as a cheap
silkworm replacement), which was then decimating US east coast orchards.
Of course, this wasn't the only toxin around. For example, it was
common in the early 20th century to administer mercury salts to children
for stomach upsets as a purgative. As the toxicity of lead, arsenic,
and mercury became clearer, these pesticides were used more carefully,
though not formally banned completely until 1988 (they still
persist to this
day in subdivisions built over former orchards). And thankfully,
administering mercury to kids for stomach upsets waned in popularity.
There were anomalous 'polio' observations even back then - like pets
and farm animals coming down with 'polio'. The human infant stomach is
positioned nearer to the anterior horn (spinal motor neurons) than in
adults, so the combination of a viral alimentary tract polio infection
together with an ingested toxin might increase the chance of paralysis.
But note that the virus part of the explanation wouldn't be able to
explain multiple unrelated animal species also getting 'polio' during a
human outbreak. By contrast with the fecal-oral route of polio virus
transmission, the standard method of 'transmitting' polio in the lab
was to drill a hole through a monkey's skull and dura and inoculate the
brain itself, an unlikely route of infection in polite society.
The sporadic late 19th and early 20th century polio outbreaks (defined
as damage to the anterior horn of the spinal cord, "poliomyelitis")
then waned until a new big spike in cases in the 1940's and 1950's.
As with the later vaccines discussed above, this new 'polio' was already
almost gone by 1960, before the polio vaccines were introduced. The new
spike in 'polio', however, correlated well with the massive increase
in the US production of DDT, which was sprayed not only on fields,
but over occupied swimming pools and neighborhoods, under clothes,
and even put into wall paper.
As the toxicity of DDT became apparent, its use was reduced in the 1960's
and eventually banned completely in 1972 (peak usage in US was 1959).
But US production increased until a peak in 1963 as DDT began to be
mainly exported to third world countries. I remember reading Silent
Spring (1962) in the late 60's (as an early 'environmentalist' :-} ).
It was all about the terrible dangers of DDT to wildlife. Amazingly, it
never occurred to me to consider the possibility that equally widespread
damage might have occurred in humans. There were some authors at the
time who made the connection between DDT use spike and the nerve damage
of poliomyelitis; but the DDT human damage narrative was suppressed.
So eventually, I finally went back to look at the Spanish
flu, the original 'go-to' bugga-bugga pandemic-to-end-all
pandemics. My wife's English grandmother apparently
got it in Canada (working as a house cleaner) and survived
without treatment. The treatments turned out to involve
huge
doses of aspirin, which probably contributed to the death toll
by causing pulmonary (lung) swelling, leading to subsequent bacterial
infections, which as Fauci himself has published, turned out to be the
actual cause of 'Spanish flu' deaths in exhumed cases. There had been a
massive increase in aspirin production because it had just came off of
patent protection. The parallels with AZT and remdesivir as 'the only
thing that works' and 'same ill effects as the disease' are unmistakable.
If we go back any further, then we get back to itinerant 19th century
'vaccinators' in England blowing into town and scratching concoctions
into any willing arm made from such innovative material as pus collected
from infected horse hooves (I didn't make that up).
As I slowly peeled back the layers, it has become obvious to me that
even though the propaganda delivery methods have become increasingly
sophisticated, 'the song has remained the same'. The 'song' was already
there, long before anybody even knew anything about viruses. Given that I
have been a lifelong academic, wasting untold hours reading obscure papers
in many different obscure fields, I probably *should* have been able to
figure this out sooner. But the problem is simply that the total amount
of science and history that has been recently generated is so large, that
one can easily miss out seeing the big picture. The length of time it
takes to experience and then figure out big picture things is one reason
that inquisitive older people without conflicts of interest (and who
have too much time on their hands) can sometimes be worth listening to
(well for as long as they maintain a healthy diet [mostly plants, not
too much oil], exercise, and avoid getting dementia :-} ).
Recent World: (latest blog entries scroll up)
Iran missiles defeated "most advanced, integrated, ABM defensive systems" by Hal Turner
Loose lips don't sink ships, or Israel [a second electric war] by John Helmer
The Palestine Congress by CJ Hopkins
97.5% of Judaics living in Israel have no Hebrew DNA by Russ Winter
[maneuverable warhead avoids interceptor!] by Larry Johnson
[pseudouridine-induced translational frameshifts are carcinogenic] by A. Rubio-Casillas et al. (2024)
Russia hits French foreign legion troops/mercenaries in Ukraine [2 days after arrival]
Iran breaches Anglo-Zionist defenses in historic attack: a breakdown by simplicius76
[the first probe of the defenses] by Simplicius Psi
Iran managed to destroy several military locations, many in the south and in particular Negev airport [both Ramon and Nevatim in Negev] and the army facilities [source of the consulate attack] by Elijah J. Magnier
Australia bins 35% of multi-billion dollar covid vaccine supply with another 15% set to expire soon - only 26% of purchased doses so far used by Rebekah Barnett
Is Putin responsible for Israel's April 1 attack on Samazcus, Syria? by Paul Craig Roberts
Exposing Canada's healthcare leaders [pedophilia OK, but covid vaccine truth is a crime] interview with William Makis
Haaretz: "Israel has been defeated - a total defeat" by Chris Menahan
Turkey denies US use of its airspace to attack Iran Hal Turner
Samsung pull out of Tel Aviv by Al Mayadeen English
'Come out, you animals': how the masssacre at al-Shifa hospital happened [1500 people killed] by Tareq S. Hajjaj
Remember when Israel bombed the first hospital in Gaza? Now they have destroyed all 36 by Khalissee
Why Palestinians don't trust World Central Kitchen, with Ali Bunimah and Asa Winstanley [30 min vid] Electronic Intifada
Israeli doctor blows whistle on war crimes by Brett Wilkins
It's time to put these bastards in jail by Dr. Hodkinson
Canadian gov't plans Stalinist show trial of heroic doctor by Walter Gelles
The catastrophe evidence by SuspiciousObserver
Why government goons won't be saved by TheUnderdog
Former Italian health minister Roberto Speranza who enforced vaccinations can no longer move without police protection [short vid] Truthseeker
Video: Israeli soldiers shoot starving Palestinians collecting aid in Gaza by Chris Menahan
Gigantic strategic mistake [comment on his own article] by Ron Unz
US congressman Tim Walberg suggests dropping nuclear bomb on Gaza by Tim Walberg (R-MI)
Ex Quantas captain, Graham Hood's witness statement [20min vid] by Malcolm Roberts
Farmer in Brussels backs up the EU police with sh*t [Feb2024) Concerned Citizen
The evidence on the Crosus gang attack in Moscow by John Helmer
Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud [in Israelby The Grayzone
The Moscow concert hall attack may have been a staged event by Swiss Policy Research
The Nuland-Budanov-Tajik-Crocus connection by Pepe Escobar
The Crocus disaster [i] by Aleks Black Mountain
Looks like that "big club" is really not so big by Mark Crispin Miller
Israel bombed over 400 healthcare facilityes, killing nearly 700 by Kyle Anzalone
Russia is at war by bernhard (MoA)
Untangling the "socialism" vs. "capitalism" dichotomy by Alex Krainer
Israel's chickens come home to roost by Chris Menahan
Gaza's catastrophic food shortage means mass death is imminent, monitor says Reuters (!)
"Have you all lost your minds? speech by Sahra Wagenknecht (subtitles)
Torture, executions, babies left to die, sexual abuse... these are Israel's crimes by Jonathan Cook
Israel will lose it war Danny Haiphong interview of Scott Ritter
The Israeli lobby's motive promoting the TikTok ban by BlueApples
God is underwriting Israel's genocide bond by John Helmer
Zionist jews in Biden administration calling the shots on Israeli war on Gaza [vs. 2/3 of Americans in favor of permanent cease-fire] by Ivan Kesic
[summary of Jamal Wakim, then Alistair Crooke] by Karl Sanchez
Russia's victory in struggle with collective West will be achieved in Middle East, not Eastern Europ by Jamal Wakim
Portrait of Karl Marx by Russ Winter
Rabbi: "We must kill them all. Not only those who take up arms against us, it is clear that we must also kill their women and children"
Criminalizing free speech: the "Pfizer article" [now passed!] by Gerald Posner
Mass vaccination and the demise of musicians NancyDrewberry
Galloway's Rochdale victory is an establishment trap by Kit Knightly
Ukraine - cookie monster retires by bernhard (MoA)
New brand ambasssador for Doritos in Spain fantasized assaulting 12 year old girls Pravda (to make us pine for 'wholesome' Dylan?!)
War on Gaza: Palestinian child dies from hunger and malnutrition by Nadda Osman
[OK to run over people with tank if you're Israeli - just not Chinese]Euro-Med
The COVID divide: analyzing England's shocking 1 million vaccinated deaths compared to just 61K unvaccinated deaths the Expose
Israel's psych-war is relentless, vicious and deliberate by Mike Whitney
"I despise the Prime Minister" "You just have to suck it up. I won the election" thumping interview by George Galloway
[monsters are doing this satanic evil in front of our faces to make us party to it] by CensoredMan
Alleged audio of German officers discussing Crimean Bridge attack leaked by Margarita Simonyan (English translation of full audio
here)
Aaron Bushnell was privy to confidential 'intelligence data' on US operations in Gaza, friend makes claim by Hindustan Times News Desk
Hamas has destroyed Israel (but now how you think) [15 min vid] by Cyrus Janssen
Zionists use food-baits to attract and kill starving civilians by bernhard (MoA)
"Peak almost everything", part one by Tim Morgan
What the media won't tell you about Lord Jacob Rothschild [vid] by reallygraceful
Egypt sells out Palestinians for $10 billion loan package [the only thing that counts is control of money creation - the people must reclaim that from private bankers] by Mike Whitney
Knights Templar: a clissic crime syndicate and in-group model by Russ Winter
Houthis deny Israeli media reports they sabotaged internet cables under Red Sea [N.B.: which mainly hurt Saudi not Israel] ziohedge
The fairy tale of pandemic risk by David Bell
[you took the untested covid jab so here's another new one] by Andreas Oehler
My medical colleagues in Gaza are exhausted, and terrified of what is to come by Yousef Khelfa
Losing on the battlefield, Ukraine drops grenades on civilian bus stops in Donetsk by Hal Turner
Rafah is the size of Heathrow Airport by H'ur
bicycle was there for a reason by badger.eth
Gaza, Jewish power, and the holocaust by Ron Unz
What I saw wasn't war -- it was annihilation by Irfan Galari (American doctor in Gaza) (it's bad when the LA Times as to report!)
After TRT World failed to post my interview on the death of Navalny by Gilbert Doctorow
[France assembly passess law for up to 3 years prison in France for requesting to stop or refrain from using therapeutic mRNA - still must pass French senate] by Thomas Oysmuller
Listening to what he [Putin] is saying by bernhard (MoA)
Israel will be defeated as IDF loses control of its war in Middle East by Scott Ritter
War with Hezbollah - the most deadly war of all according to zionist experts by Vanessa Beeley
"Stop kiling children in Gaza! You're all insane! I'm ashamed to be Swedish" by xeeebra
Israel's Rafah ground invasion - Zionist war against Islam is about to explode by Joachim Hagopian
Israel bombing buildings with 1.5 million people they jammed into them in Rafah - Americans paid to do this by Hal Turner
Rafah massacre dead ahead by Russ Winter
The Holocaust, at the heart of the Gaza genocide by Pierre Simon
A total collapse is coming in 2024 by Whitney Webb
The West's not-so-subtle message to Russia: photo emerges of F-16 with US nuke (trainer) on wing by Hal Turner
Let them eat dirt by Chris Hedges
Putin asks Tucker if he blew up Nord Stream short interview excerpt
Countdown to oblivion and show down at Rafah by Russ Winter
[4% of Gaza population killed, injured, or missing presumed dead - this is genocide pure and simple] by Maureen Clare Murphy
Horrific injuries - doctors, speak up! by Dr. Cartland
How western spin doctors debumanize select peoples to justify war by Chay Bowes
Foreign Intel agents launch covert propaganda war against Americans on US soil by Torchy Blane
[Unusual Saudi statement oorrects Kirby on Israel-Saudi normalization talks] SA Foreign Ministry
Attrition war - how Israel is losing on the economic front by John Helmer
Pictures shows one man and one Zionist by bernhard
Poland issues NOTAM invoking 'unplanned military activity' along eastern border [expecting Russian response to Poland-based Patriot shootdown of IL-76 in Russia] by Miquel Ros
However bad you think 'it' is, it's worse by Caitlin Johnstone
WW3 or state terror - you decide by Moneycircus
Gnezdo Orlovo by Breskvica (EuroVision24 Serbia)
Off-road vehicles & equipment need diesel fuel by Alice Friedemann
WHO director general Tedros Ghebreyesus accosted: "When will you release Disease X?" by Simplicius The Thinker
Chickens in the Middle East [i] by Aleks Black Mountain
Belgium refused to cut UNRWA funding so Israel bombed their Gaza office by sarah
Israel's starvation stratedy by Mike Whitney
"UNRWA is Hamas. Hospitals are Hamas. Ambulances are Hamas. Journalists are Hamas. Schools are Hamas. South Africa is Hamas. People tweeting unfavorable things about Israel are Hamas." by Caitlin Johnstone
US Navy retreats from Houthis [last 3 min of vid] by Scott Ritter
War on the middle east - the time of monsters by bernhard
Major war before election by Canadian Prepper (over-wrought - major US attack unlikely)
[US Jordan military base attack Israeli false flag?] by Ray McGovern
The tower-22 strike in Jordan triggers US, Israel into all-front war - the Arabs and Iran are ready, the Russians too by John Helmer
Clues hidden in plain sight about Jimmy Savile's true nature by Thomas Muller
Russian foreign ministry ties Red Sea blockade to Gaza blockade, backs Houthis in Moscow meeting by John Helmer
September world oil [C+C] production rebounds [but below peak [C+C] oil, which occurred on Nov 2018] by Ovi
Are John Campbell's mistakes, mistakes? "This vaccine is a complete game changer!" by Alistair Williams
"When are you going to stop this?" [1 min vid] by Dr. Mads Gilbert (2 months ago)
Did Pfizer-BioNTech "placebos" contain empty lipids? by Robert Kogon
[Israeli atrocities are so ubiquitous that even ITV televises them - US State Dept refuses to condemn] by John Irvine
Iranian axis grinds down US' will as Israel suffers stunning setbacks by Simplicius the Thinker
"Growing your own vegetables is bad for the planet" by Kit Knightly
Conversation with Wolfgang Wodarg by JJ Couey
Israel continues its unabated genocide [can't beat Hamas so kills 'Amalek' babies instead] by Russ Winter
Iran launches massive military move to protect Houthis, regional war is breaking out [first 7 min of longer video] by Douglas Macgregor
The US, Israel have lost battlefield control - Houthis have attacked US destroyer, hit Greek-US owned bulker; Iran has hit US base in Kurdish caapital, Erbil by John Helmer
[now they can strike back: this against Mossad HQ in Irbil, Iraq] by Koba
Hamas' control strikes fear by Scott Ritter
Ghilaine Maxwell’s Mossad agent father Robert wanted to marry her off to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
Israel getting hit on north front by Russ Winter
American Pravda: Israel and the holocaust hoax by Ron Unz
The EU wants to spy on Europeans' internet use by Robert Blumen
The International Court of Justice is now seated at the Hague by Hal Turner
Google shows what appear to be mass graves on Epsein island by Greg Reese
Trauma based mind control by Greg Reese
Israel in 'Gaza shock' by Mahmood OD
Genocide in Gaza by John J. Mearsheimer
[massive German demos blacked out of official 'nooz'] WarNews24
Is Uncle Sam being duped [not duped: US gov't is zionist controlled] into fighting Israel's war? by Mike Whitney
Are we losing free speech in America? by Philip Giraldi
Behold: the true nature - racial supremacists shooting at children by Hal Turner
Did dehumanization of the unvaccinated occur during the COVID ear? [yes] by Margaret Anna Alice
Harvard's Claudine Gay replaced with zionist by Sulaiman Ahmed (but same plagiarism
OK last
year!
Never to be erased from the historical memory of nations by bacheye_sevom
[2024 uptick in Gaza battle] [vid] by Mahmood OD
Zelensky buys Goebbels Bogensee villa for 8 million euros by admin
Israeli rogue intentions towards Gaza's gas fields behind the official and declared causes of invading Gaza's strip by Claudio Resta
Because of Israel's war against Palestine, there are no innocent ships at sea by John Helmer
Sanctions on Israel are the only hope [vid] by Gideon Levy
They FOUND IT in Sinwar’s SHOE!, Hamas use SAM-18, AQB: We took down 825 IOF Tanks & Vehicles by Mahmood OD
War on Gaza: over 1000 children have limbs amputated, Unicef says, many without anesthetic by Katherine Hearst
'Are we the baddies?' Western support for genocide in Gaza means the answer is yes by Jonathan Cook
Will 'Biden' be forced to send ground troops to Yemen? by Mike Whitney
India's turnaround on Palestine has more than meets the eye by M.K. Bhadrakumar
Hand-placed anti-tank weapons Hindustan Times
Biden/Harris 2024 [pic] by Ilargi
2023 - the year the world saw the US emperor as naked... and grotesque by Strategic Culture Foundation
The anatomy of Zionist genocide by Yoav Litvin
Are the Jews again driving the Western World into a fatal war? by Paul Craig Roberts
Chinese, Iranian, and Indian warships are now in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden by John Helmer
Russia lays out terms of Ukraine surrender in Washington by Hal Turner
Israeli citizens against genocide remain anonymous to avoid reprisals MondoWeiss
US escalation in the Red Sea - a lose/loase proposition by Russell Bentley
US sending 3rd aircraft carrier to mideast by Hal Turner
Visualizing Israel's goal of making Gaza uninhabitable by Jeremy R. Hammond
The war in Gaza: it's not about Hamas. It's about demographics by Mike Whitney
Israeli bulldozers demolish tents, bury [sick and wounded] Palestinians alive The Cradle
Hostages were shirtless, waving white flag when IDF soldiers opened fire [hostages Hannibaled b/c they saw Oct 7 Hannibaling?] Times of Israel
Reports of Israeli soldier shooting women and children execution style in Gaza; 90% of 2 million population displaced by Leila Warah (Monodoweiss)
Death and destruction in Gaza by John J. Mearsheimer
US house of representatives passes depleted brain and blackout bill for banning imports of Russian uranium by John Helmer
Evidence for the use by Israel of a neutron uranium warhead in Palestine and Lebanon by Christopher Busby
Palestine: "Peace to prosperity" through technocracy [testing a global SkyNet in Palestine] by Sebs Solomon
[courageous Israeli troops storm another hospital after first shelling it] Southfront
Israel supporters would defend literally any Israeli atrocity by Caitlin Johnstone
US creates its own day of infamy by Walt Zlotow
Stop the slaughter in Palestine by Eric Margolis
I used to think the term 'Judeo-Nazis' was excessive. I don't any longer by Jonathan Ofir
RIP Refaat in Gaza by b
Israel and the Kennedy assassinations by Sam Husseini
IDF strips civilians and displays them on the street and next to a pit by Russ Winter
[some people finally waking up] by Censored Men
People just collapse on mic all the time, it's toootally normal End Wokeness
Dr. Mike Yeadon's address to the Members of UK Parliament (4 December 2023) by Michael Yeadon
With resistance stiff in Gaza the Israelis resort to full spectrum diabolical by Russ Winter
Israel orders more Gazans to flee, bombs areas where it sends them Reuters (so grotesque, even Reuters reports the truth!)
Salting the earth - the jewish curse on Shechem is being repeated by the IDF to make Gaza uninhabitable for the future by John Helmer
From New Zealand to Gaza; the coof shot and genocide by Moneycircus
Israel BURYING burned cars they attacked on October 7! by Jimmy Dore
New Zealand arrests database admin for revealing that some vaccine batches had a 24% kill rate by Hal Turner
Israel kills 700 in Gaza over 25 hours as Palestinians get forced further south toward Egypt by Mustafa Abu Sneineh (MondoWeiss)
How is it possible that there was no significant excess mortality during the outbreak of the 'pandemic of the century', yet it skyrocketed after the global administration of the experimental gene therapy? by Dr. Simon Goddek
Biochemical weapon for race war - uranium warhead poisoning is the specialty of US again Russians, Israel against Palestinians by John Helmer
Death march on Salah al-Din street by Tareq S. Hajjaj (Mondoweiss)
Israeli settler stabs pregnant Palestinian woman walking her kid to school to death in the West Bank [vid] by Al Mayadeen
Israel planning for Gaza war [bpmbing undefended hospitals is a 'war'?!] to last over a year by Kyle Anzalone
Syria is playing the long game - developing strategy for the potential of an all-out war by Vanessa Beeley
Cheiropracter Eric Nepute, sued by DOJ for half a *trillion* dollars for prescribing vitamin D and zinc, says f-you, take your blood money, when the DOJ tries to mute him after judge says suit will fail - true mensch The HighWire
Armoured Israeli Caterpillar D9 bulldozer hit by an IED in the *West Bank* [Tulkarm] intelslava
The thousand boat blockade-busting operation changes everything on the Gaza front - if it materialises by John Helmer
Israel's Gaza offensive ends in political and military defeat by Scott Ritter
Will the Ukraine war end in a peace treaty? by Gilbert Doctorow
From Israeli Defense Force to... by Larry Johnson
Turkey sends an ultimatum to Netanyahu by Douglas Macgregor (sane military voice, knows of humanitarian flotilla to arrive this Sat)
[I fixed their title: Using HEPA filters in ventilation systems doubles the chance of kindergartners getting covid] by T. Falkenberg et al., 2023
British-Palestinian surgeon Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta says that by day five of the war, 'half of those on my operation list were children' Sky News
Israel's objective in the Gaza wwar: kill the buildings by Ted Rall [monstrous 'collateral damage' title - real title: Palestinians are goyim untermenschen, plus wrong: if so, why is IDF still in Gaza?]
[humanitarian flotilla to Gaza, regional mideast war coming, collapse of NATO] by Douglas Macgregor
[Israel bombs hospitals, universities, and libraries - equiv to 2 Hiroshimas - 'because Hamas'] by Russ Winter
Israeli Oct 7 posterchild was killed by Israeli tank, eye witnesses reveal by Max Blumenthal [“Oh no, that’s so terrible! But we can’t turn back time...”]
No, don't do it! [default on US gov debt by stealing 300 billion dollars from Russia] by Jame Rickards
Israel's ground war conundrum by Hasan Illaik
Only Israeli military failure will stop the genocide in Gaza [yet to be decided!] by Mouin Rabbani
Winning by not losing by Julian Macfarlane
Second and third Israeli-owned cargo ships grabbed by Yemen in Red Sea by Hal Turner
End game: nuclear war with Iran or financial crash by Canadian Prepper
Hamas has won the war by Gilbert Doctorow
UBS bank branch in Basel Switzerland denying withdrawals - "liquidity challenges" by Hal Turner
Gaza: a pause before the storm by Pepe Escobar
Turkey contra NATO [read the comments] by Rixon Stewart
As winter approaches next phase of Gaza genocide looms by Russ Winter
Dr. Hudson email chat Palestine solution by Karl Sanchez
Pending global threats from the Israel-Hamas war that are not being aired in Western media just yet by Gilbert Doctorow
Gaza genocide playing out - no outside intervention by Russ Winter
Israeli children sing 'we will annihilate everyone' in Gaza by Chris Menahan
Rescue agency reveals that Israel's aerial attack killed over 260 Israeli civilians during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; drone footage corroborates report by Belle Carter
Will the scorpion sting the US frog? by Alastair Crooke
Kennedy assassination: "CIA-dit-it" theorists are covering by Laurent Guyenot
Don't be fooled: Biden is fully signed up to genocide in Gaza by Jonathan Cook
The 2-state solution's nuclear option by Scott Ritter
All lost, total failure achieved [vid] (excellent) interview with Scott Ritter
Israel and America's growing zugzwang by Simplicius the Thinker
When
CNN and
BBC call you out, you're really in the gutter
[the hospital Israel is evacuating at gunpoint] by Hal Turner
No cease fire as UK prime minister's family signs deal with Israel for Gaza's natural gas by RT and Jimmy Dore
Are we in a countdown? by Gilbert Doctorow
Scott Ritter on the Al-Shifa hospital disaster by Scott Ritter
Catastrophe unfolding now at al-Shifa hospital by Ali Abunimah
Why the US needs this war in Gaza by Pepe Escobar
US defense's stealth attack on America by Julian Macfarlane
[Israel conquers hospital] by seemorerocks
Black Magik and lies rule by Russ Winter
Israel executes elderly Palestinian after using him in propaganda about 'safe corridor' by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Gaza genocide sparks anti-semitism by Kevin Barrett
Politicians in a zionist death march by Moneycircus
The shift in focus from Ukraine to the Middle East raises the chances of world war by Paul Craig Roberts
Palestinians dig mass grave inside Israeli-encircled Gaza hospital Reuters (!)
Among the unspoken elephants in the room: Israel controls the US president and congress by Alastair Crooke
Israeli war cabinet minister has his own militia, wants to oust Netanyahu for not escalating war by Hal Turner
80% of civilians were killed by IDF on Oct 7 by Scott Ritter
[stray dogs eating the bodies of the untermenschen dead] Middle East Eye Live
Israel-Hamas: "Bread & circuses v2.0" - Gaza = New Roman Colosseum by Hal Turner (conservative, read anyway)
Gaza is not the US/Israeli target by Paul Craig Roberts
[Israel agrees to interrupt bombing Gaza for 4 hours a day to allow ethnic cleansing] [I fixed the lede' by Zeke Miller et al.
[the 'most moral army in the world' advises civilians in Gaza to go to a ‘safe zone’. then bombs it] by Max Igan
Israeli tanks have Gaza hospitals surrounded as UN decries "hell on Earth" ziohedge [I think the hasbara bots in the comments are losing effectiveness as
racial supremacist ambassadors...]
[the majority of Oct 7th Israeli deaths were soldiers] by Sam Parker
[rave car park destruction] by Robin Monotti
Israel-Palestine live: Mossad and CIA discuss hostage deal in Doha Middle East Eye
US bombing of Hiroshima: 15 thousand tons. Israel bombing of Gaza: 25 thousand tons Pepe Escobar
Is the IDF finally pushing off the beaches in Gaza by Russ Winter
Can Israel's doomsday weapon destroy human civilization? [no, but it could severly damage Europe's] by Ian Kummer
American nurse who was in Gaza [9min vid] CNN
The backlash is the point Off-Guardian
On "The great schism: will it be quietly ignored?" by Alastair Crooke by Karl Sanchez
The politics of the slaughter of everybody by John Helmer
Something has gone horribly wrong with the RFK Jr. campaign by Haruhuani Sprice
Satan laughing, spreads his wings over Gaza by Patrick J. McShay
Will the Hama-Israel conflict spin out of control? [probably yes via false flag because of Arab/Russian restraint] by Paul Craig Roberts
Can the parties come back from the brink? by Russ Winter
The Gaza genocide continues by Philip Giraldi
The world's largest biometric digital ID system, India's Aadhaar, just suffered it biggest ever data breach by Nick Corbishley
Bearing eternal witness to a scam by Mark Oshinskie
The moral complexities of bombing a concentration camp full of children by Caitlin Johnstone
Israel cementing its reputation by Larry Johnson
US flying MQ-9 "Reapers" over Gaza by Hal Turner
Thousands of Israelis take to the streets calling for Palestinian genocide [*before* Oct 7!] by Whitney Webb
The true face of Israel [vid] - a satanic human sacrifice by Max Igan
Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinian by Robin McKie
Beware of a false flag to kick start WW3 by Nick Giambruno
US, Israel, Europe unleash the four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Paul Craig Robert
[just a day's work torturing untermenschen off of their land to make way for the chosen people] by Oren Ziv
Israel is committing suicide [vid] by Scott Ritter
Potential measures for conflict resolution [excellent vid] by Douglas Macgregor (N.B.: Israel supporter)
More children killed in Gaza in three weeks than in wars worldwide since 2019: Charity by Ilya Tsukanov
Biden forced to call off his plans for ethnic cleansing of Gaza by bernhard (MoA)
World plummets into eschatological frenzy: unraveling the implications by Simplicius the Thinker
October 7 testimonies reveal Israel's military 'shelling' Israeii citizens with tanks, missiles by Max Blumenthal
Bombing 'everything but Hamas in Gaza' from Jackson Hinkle
What really happened on 7th October? by Robert Inlakesh and Sharine Narwani
Wider war will bring inevitable attempts at martial law in America (alt-right, read anyway)
Battlelines are drawn by Russ Winter
[US mideast deployment larger than US wars on Iraq] by Hal Turner
One giant Satanic sacrifice with body parts everywhere by Hal Turner
Ground and air invasion of Gaza begins - all internet/satellite/cellphones disconnected by Hal Turner
The gods are going against the chosen people - mammon against Israel, Mars against the Pentagon by John Helmer
Aces and eights by Wiliam Schryver
Israel bombing 'everything but Hamas in Gaza - Jackson Hinkle RT
Escalations cannot be stopped by Alastair Crooke
Israeli speaks his truth by Vincent Kennedy
Why Israel created Hamas by Swiss Policy Research
Gaza is a micro-war testing ground by Moneycircus
Israel made Hamas [14 min vid] by Scott Ritter
Memo on the final solution for one state - Israel or Palestine by John Helmer
Wiping Palestinians off the map is prepping for armageddon by Joachim Hagopian
At least 30% of all housing units in Gaza Strip destroyed or damaged - UN Tass
Egyptian woman blasts CNN reporter over shameful coverage of Gaza and for falsifying the truth [2 min vid] World Politics
Israel threatens to bomb Gaza hospital housing 12,000 Palestinians by Press TV
US not ready for war with Iran by Scott Ritter
Netanyahoo's strategic dilemma by bernhard (MoA)
There was one honest and moral official in the US State Department. He just quit over US provision of more arms to Israel by Meryl Nass
Staggering collapse in support for Israel among young Americans by Keith Woods
War in Israel is another 'flip', this time trapping 'conservatives' by A. Bridges
Compelling video evidence points to Israeli AIR BURST bomb striking al-Ahli hospital grounds, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians as they slept on courtyard grounds adjacent to the parking lot by Mike Adams
Greek orthodox church of St. Porphyrios in Gaza [which survived the crusades] bombed [by Israel, hundreds of people sheltering inside] by Maria Rybachuk
Rushing into catastrophe by Paul Craig Roberts
Israel has warned 24 hospitals to evacuate in Gaza by Jackson Hinkle
SITREP 10/18/23: Israel + Ukraine War mega-update by Simplicius the Thinker
The Ukraine precedent - genocide coming to Gaza by Phil Butler
UK - death and disability trends for malignant neoplasms, ages 15-44 [extreme event began 2021] [PDF] by Carlos Alegria
Israel's airstrike near Al-Quds hospital today bears striking resemblance to yesterday's strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital by Chris Menahan
[overall view of hospital blast site] by ivan_8848
Middle east path to total war: you can't make this up by Russ Winter
The agony of the script writers by TheZMan (right-wing, read anyway)
The Gaza Marine field holds an estimated 1.6 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas by Scientific Progress
Slouching towards the final solution by Pepe Escobar
West's pro-Israel position accelerates its loss of power by bernhard (MoA)
From Auschwitz to Gaza by Anthony James Hall
Settlers take advantage of Gaza war to launch West Bank pogroms by Uval Abraham
Worldwide protest updates (black flag story from Jackson Hinkle probably disinfo) by Hal Turner
[probable US/Israeli JDAM bomb or Hellfire missile] by Jackson Hinkle
[moment aerial explosion hit courtyard of Gaza hospital] by Ali Hashem
500 killed in Al-Ahli Gaza Baptist hospital air strike [after Israeli warning to leave was ignored by hospital staff] warnews247 (auto-translate)
US deploys large force - eyes on Syria by bernhard (MoA)
Former UK diplomat Craig Murray arrested for supporting 'wrong' side Press TV
Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says by David Sheen
Update on Reiner Fuellmich's arrest [deportation from Mexico to Frankfurt arrest] by Elsa Schieder
Holy war [vid] by Jeff Berwick
Lawless in Gaza: why Britain and the West back Israel's crimes by Jonathan Cook
It's all about provoking your reaction by Scott Horton
Why I no longer stand with Israel, and never will again by Scott Ritter
The global south is pro-Palestinian - alienating the entire planet by Shahid Bolsen
I stand with Ukr... via Henry Makow
Nobody can support this once they see it by Celia Farber
"En route to this goal he [Netanyahu] found a partner in Hamas" [as a counterweight to the PLO] by Gidi Weitz (Ha'aretz)
Israel - Genesis [i] by Aleks
'Beheaded babies' is a century-old trope by Moneycircus
The silence of the bears - Russia is reorienting towards the Arabs by John Helmer
Scott Ritter interview: reaping the whirlwind by George Galloway
Interview with Shai Danon by David Icke
[Israel gives itself permission to exterminate 2 million Palestinians]" by Hal Turner
Video of parachute jumpers in Egypt mischaracterized as Hamas paratrooopers during Israel attack AP (!)
US plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza by bernhard (MoA)
Israel & Palestine, WW3 update: Iran, Armenia, Azerbabijan, Russian, Caucasus, Syria, China by chycho
Buildings in Gaza are folding like houses of card under Israeli fire [2 million people trapped, Egypt border closed, food/water/sewer/electricity shut off] by Military Summary
Israeli roots of Hamas are being exposed by Dean Andromidas (2002)
[fake news] by Freakzilla7861
Israel ratchets up its destruction of Gaza by Russ Winter
The Gaza prison break and the prospect of a "final solution" in the Israel-Palestine conflict by Anthony James Hall
'Al-Aqsa Flood': the surprise is that some are surprised by Alastair Crooke
Race war against the Palestinians turns into war of the worlds - will the US and Russian navies engage off Gaza and other questions by John Helmer
Victor Davis Hanson, Jordan Peterson and Bobby Kennedy Jr - profiles in cowardice by Michael Hoffman
War breaks out in the Middle East - beware of the US media one-sided coverage by Brian Shilhavy
Psyop-Israel-War? [oopsie we let some folks attack us] by 2nd smartest
Israeli radar knocked-out in the North. Americans confirmed killed, wounded, kidnapped/captured in Israel. Nuclear intentions by Hal Turner (former FBI dials it down for street cred)
This "surprise attack" ["9/11"] on Israel seems just as sketchy as the "wildfires" in Lahaina by Mark Crispin Miller
The Ministry of Health [New Zealand] granted vaccine exemptions to hundreds among its key staff by Guy Hatchard
Our top ten posts that you likely never saw by Norman Fenton and Martin Neil
UK cardiovascular excess deaths in age 15-44 up 13% in 2020, 30% in 2021, and 44% in 2022 [PDF] Phinance Technologies
[large study: no increase in myocarditis/pericarditis after COVID infection in unvaccinated] by Tuvali et al. (2023)
Zelensky asks spirit cooker Marina Abramovich to be ambassasdor for Ukraine, help 'rebuild schools' [not the Babylon Bee] by Chris Menahan
Meet Ukrainian military's American spokema [not the Babylon Bee] by John Leake
Russians capture Germans soldiers in tank in Ukraine by Hal Turner
COVID-19 vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere [PDF] [roughly 1 in 1000] by D. Rancourt, M. Baudin et al. (2023)
Millan Millan and the mystery of the missing Mediterranean storms by Rob Lewis
The criminalization of dissent (continued) by CJ Hopkins
[US seizes/confiscates $100 million worth of Iranian oil headed to China] ziohedge
Ukraine's 'biggest arms supplier' orchestrated 2014 Maidean massacre, witnesses say by Kit Klarenberg
Ruinous Green energy ordinances pass the Bundestag, promising to reduce German emissions over the next six years by as much CO2 as China releases in a single day by Eugyppius
Proof of a mRNA Disaster. A buried England mRNA data avalanche has been exposed. We can now compare the % of all cause death (by vaccination status) with the % of vaccine uptake Nobody Who Knows Everybody (go
here for same thing one year ago in one age-separated graph)
Polio joins HIV and in my view, SARS-CoV-2, in the category marked "fraudulent disease attribution" via Michael Yeadon
Unnatural evolution: indisputable evidence for deliberate and systematic creation of circulating covid variants [review of A. Tanaka and T. Miyazawa (2023)] by psmi
UK excess death rate for age 15-44 re-accelerates to 20% in 2023 Phinance technlogies
[Why killer whales don't like yachts: celebrity "yachting"] [vid] Internet Oddities
The Sword of Damocles by Armchair Warlord
BBC accidentally admits COVID vac is to blame for 2022 being worst year for excess detaths in 50 years after their "journalists" chose to LIE believing nobody would "mark their homework" the Expose
British court rules that competent and conscious patient can be denied life-sustaining treatment against her will by Jonathan Turley
Geopolitics Update [i] Prigozhin, offensives and geopolitics by Aleks
Escaping attrition: Ukraine rolls the dice by Big Serge
Col. Douglas McGregor assessment of US miliary decline and Ukraine war dangers interview by Tucker Carlson
The Jonestown massacre: a horrific Tavistock-style brainwashing experiment by Russ Winter
Why Russia is decimating the Ukraine counter-offensive by Larry Johnson
Political satirist (me) under criminal investigation in Berlin by CJ Hopkins
Second proxy war brewing between US-Russia: Niger, Africa by Hal Turner
Nuland went to Niger [to set up another panorama of death and destruction] ziohedge
Building the global police state by Iain Davis and Whitney Webb
[strong correlation in developed nations between number of vaccine doses and mortality] by Neil Z. Miller and Gary S. Goldman
Niger, China discuss uranium mine and other deals by Hamid Mahmud
Our predicament re-stated: the age of solutions has passed by Tim Watkins
Across the West, people are dying in greater numbers. Nobody wants to learn why by Jonathan Cook
Staggering increase in cardiac arrest diagnoses in Israel in 2021 and esp. 2022 by
Russia blockades Ukrainian ports [after second Kerch bridge attack] by Hal Turner
"We *will* bring you down" German MP Christine Anderson
The NATO ultimatum to Ukraine - invitation to win by winter or die by John Helmer
Why can't Ukraine join NATO / prank with Henry Kissinger. Part 2 by Vovan and Lexus
US/NATO forces will collide directly interview with Douglas Macgregor
SITREP 7/6/23: Zelensky builds one last suicidal thrust to appease masters [be sure not to miss Prigozhin dressing up like a Chechen warlord] by Simplicius the Thinker
The world economy is becoming unglued; models miss real-world behavior by Gail Tverberg
I'm afraid we have to talk about "her penis" by Brendan O'Neill
Russia's time of troubles [Prigozhin the oligarch] by John Helmer
French unrest is a Gladio-style destabilization campaign using former terrorists by Scott Creighton
Righting this cacophony of wrongs by Mike Hobart
Political power out of the gun barrel, billions of dollars too - Gorilla Radio investigates the end of all three for Yevgeny Prigozhin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky too by John Helmer
Current military situation in Paris (capital of France) and its surroundings [after police kill 2 African French men in poor suburbs] by UkraineMaps
The bias that creates the illusion of an effective covid vaccine by Eyal Shahar
Putin order reality check by John Helmer
Nuclear falsflag on Zaporoshye NPP heats up + major Wagner updates by Simplicius the Thinker (AKA NightVision)
[analysis of 'operation Wagner'] SOTN
Prigozhin - will the real slim shady please stand up? by Larry Johnson
Military coup? [e.g., b/c Wagner mercenary contract ended] or planned action? [to increase mobilization] by Military Summary
Special report: emergency situation as Prigozhin goes nuclear pption by Simplicius The Thinker (AKA NightVision)
Alex Krainer on the emerging world disruption of the old world order [video] interview by Vanessa Beeley
Ukrainian counteroffensive's second week ends in failure by Scott Ritter
Hunter Biden's Maltese bank account opened by Burisma [laptop emails] amid FBI allegations of $10 million bribe by Kanekoa the great
Round two? There is no round two by Aurelien
Who owns BioNTech? (no, it's not Bill Gates or the CCP) by Robert Kogon
New Normal Germany blues by CJ Hopkins
Estimation of excess mortality in Germany during 2020-2022 by C. Kuhbandner and M. Reitzner
Worldwide increase in excess mortality caused by the lockdowns, treatment mandates (e.g., remdesivier), and vacs - not COVID by Nick Hudson
Clarification of m y message on the global mass murder campaign by Sasha Latypova
63,060% increase in child excess deaths across Europe related to EMA approval of covid vaccines [for children] by Europe Reloaded
Ukraine SitRep: destruction of its third army by bernhard
Political satirist (me) under criminal investigation in Berlin by CJ Hopkins
Marburg - genocide or nothingburger? by Mike Whitney
First leg of the AFUS offensive have begun by Simplicius The Thinker (NightVision)
Hell breaks loose as Kakhovka dam completely destroyed [probably mines put into river] by Simplicius The Thinker (NightVision)
[Killer whales sink a yacht] by Edward Teach
Anatomy of MIM-104 Patriot destruction + primer on Kinzhal hypersonic missile by Simplicius76
Russian missiles hit Ukranian ammunition depot maybe containing British depleted uranium tank shells, spike in gamma radiation a day or two below strike may have come from delivery [DU is low gamma, so there must have have been a lot] by Paul Serran
Taiwan excess death way up after vaxxx by Lloyd Miller
A tale of two countries - one with C19 deaths of 3,272 per million people, the other just 15 [per million]i by Peter Halligan (Nov2022)
20 million saved or 20 million killed by Peter Halligan (Aug2022)
New covid-19 vaccinations slow to a trickle by Katharina Buchholz
The banking collapse has begun ... shush, don't tell the kids by Rusere Shoniwa
Nordstream sabotage - Part 2: operational details [indeed!] by Freddie Ponton
Gonzalo Lira arrested [second time] by Ukronazis by Hal Turner
[statistics for fun and profit - never deliver more than 2000 vials to one geographic region] by Jessica Rojas
World on cusp of woke totalitarianism as governments act to end freedom of speech by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag
Noam Chomsky exposed for palling around with Jeffrey Epstein by Ian Mile Cheong
The late Gordon Lightfoot getting the COVID vac [Mar2021] by David Eisen
Proof that the vaccines were a military-backed countermeasure by Sasha Latypova
Stagflation has begun by Tim Watkins
Zombie war: plan B for Ukraine by Jim Kavanagh
The Pentagon papers are the death rattle of the emperor, not yet of the empire by John Helmer
Danish lot-to-lot variability data published in letter in European Journal of Clinical Investigations by Sasha Latypova
Rona patient zero were likely Ukraine soldiers sent to Wuhan Games in 2019 by Scott Creighton
On enforcement mechanisms wielded against non-compliant nation-states by Katherine Watt
News from the front lines [Swiss bans COVID vac's, prescribing doctors liable!] by Robert W. Malone
Central bank digital currency is the endgame - part 2 by Iain Davis
Considering the collapse of antiquity and the bank panic interview with Michael Hudson
An oral vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 RBD mRNA-bovine milk-derived exosomes induces a neutralizing antibody response in vivo [another reason to avoid milk - but these f$ckers will be coming for plants, too] by Wang et al. (2023)
Counterfeit world - part two - economics by Tim Watkins
The new normal left by CJ Hopkins
Why you should destroy your smart phone now by Simon Elmer
15 minute cities - 'to save the plaent'
The age of average by Alex Murrell
Hardest months, strangest years by Tim Morgan
The Fed and the ECB [1.5h vid] Luongo on Christoforou/Mercouris
The inadequacy of wind power by Wade Allison
What's with all these "trans women" acting like sadistic men? by Mark Crispin Miller
Deaths by COVID vaccination status - NIMS version [no mortality benefit at all] by Joel Smalley
[we're winning: vaxxing rate almost zero! - now we sue the criminals for the next decade!] CDC
Russo-Ukrainian war: Schrodinger's offensive by Big Serge
[bankruptcy declarations spiking in the EU] Disclose.tv
A conversation with Alex Krainer by Computing Forever
Brazil: get a COVID vac [for your kids] else we'll take your gov't assistance [the 'left' has changed sides] by Redacted
Pushback: the folly of Ukraine by Karl Denninger
Weaponizing global depression by Charles Hugh Smith
Insects, real and human by Linh Dinh
Did Liz Truss really cause the bond market rout? [no] by Jon Moynihan
Lula - one of the most audacious traitors in Brazil's recent history? by Peter Koenig
UKHSA: boosters greatly INCREASE covid severity 6-9 months after vaccination by Igor Chudov
The coming existential threat: do we act in common or is it going to be every man for himself? by Gilbert Doctorow
Listen very carefully [on CBDC's] from Edward Dowd
Age-stratified COVID-19 vaccine-dose fatality rate for Israel and Australia [vax is by far most deadly for *older* people] by Rancourt et al., 2023
The science is settled by
“It was the only way that our under-uninsured children would be able to have access to the vaccines” [why CDC put child-toxic vaccines on schedule, delivering final liability protection for big pharma] by Brenda Baletti
How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline by Seymour Hersh (controlled release, ignores UK/Germany involvement, why now?)
Part 2: Why Shinzo Abe was assassinated: towards a 'United States of Europe' and a League of Nations by Cynthia Chung
Part 1: Is Japan willing to cut its own throat in sacrifice to the US pivot to Asia? by Cynthia Chung
The Federal Reserve Cartel – Eight Families own the USA #BIS, IMF, World Bank by Hanne Nabintu Herland
Do governments track the injury and ill rates of biowarfare agents deplotyed as mRNA/DNA "vaccines"? by Sasha Latypova
Japan jabbination progress by Andreas Oehler
[US/Izzy attack Iran] by Hal Turner
"If you decline Moderna and are "waiting" for Pfizer you are a piece of garbage. Take the f**king vaccine" by DiedSuddenly
Making sense of the NATO strikes agaainst Russia by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
The most important question by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
The trainwreck of all trainwrecks: billions of people stuck with a broken immune response by rintrah
Independent confirmation of the Italian findings of SARS-CoV-2 RNA within scamples dating as early as September 2019 by Daoyu15
Why Putin's winter offensive will prompt US entry into the war by Mike Whitney
A total of $100 billion sent by the US in 10 months is more than the entire Russian military budget by Glenn Greenwald
Independent confirmation of the Italian findings of SARS-CoV-2 RUN within samples dating as early as Sept 2019 by Daoyu15
CDN nurse fired over vax and now on welfare called out BC provincial Health Services Authority [this is true bravery, go-along doctors and academics!] by The Canadian Independent
The manager of Canada's response to COVID dead at 35 by Mark Crispin Miller
Carthage must be destroyed! by David Sant
Insane things happening at the Furuvik Zoo by Anton Larson
Finis Sinarum: why I think China cannot win this by Thorsten J. Pattberg
The 10 stages of US internet censorship (and torture) by Thorsten J. Pattberg
Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, will become WHO Chief 'Scientist' WHO
Chinese COVID operation through the great firewall by Ben Bartee
The missing babies of Europe by Peter McCullough and John Leake
'SMART Cities' worldwide are being converted into 'open concentration camps', says ex-Silicaon Valley engineer turned whistleblower by Leo Hohmann
[it's not just the money] by Michael Yeadon
The foreign data set was gutted this week in VAERS [to conceal myocarditis and cancer] by Jessica Rose
[even Poland upset with Ukraine - attempted false flag which sent S300 100 km into Poland] ziohedge
The road to totalitarianism revisited by CJ Hopkins
People in China's Guangzhou city tear down COVID barricades Disclose.tv
Suroviki's difficult choice by Big Serge (more plausible than Phil Butler scenario below)
Everything changes in 4 weeks interview w/Colonel Douglas MacGregor
Russia-Poland-Cargill split Ukraine: Americans wait on reach around by Phil Butler
Trudeau's Commission counsel keels over 'suddenly' 'for no reason' while supporting the mandate by Keean Bexte
The Brits blew up Nord Stream! by Hal Turner
Oxford study finds negative vaccine effectiveness against covid hospitalisation and *death* [2.5 months after vac] by Amaneuensis
South Sudan Cryptogon
NATO set to attack Tiraspol? by David Sant
Vac damaged in Australia [unbelievable what 'medical care' has descended into!] by DJ Tyson Illingworth on rwmalonemd
'Ukraine plans to use a nuclear weapon' says Russian Minisiter of Defense by Mike Whitney
Russia will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine by cirno
The gaslighting of the masses by CJ Hopkins
Is UK's depopulation caused by covid vaccines? by Igor Chudov
Global tensions rise over Russia and Ukraine - what happens next? by Brandon Smith
Germany's failing 'stored' nat-gas and LNG experiment [scheisse!!] by Jorge Vilches
Banking crisis - the Great Unwind by Alasdair Macleod (read "Conclusions")
A nice bridge you got there . . . by Dmitri Orlov
UK gov data shows covid vaccinated children 44x as likely to die as unvaccinated children The Expose
French General Christian Blanchon's tribute to the unvaccinated [in French] by Christian Blanchon
Is Belgium's Dutroux pedophile child-rape affair a road map for pedogate and the Smiley Face killings? by Russ Winter
Chief analyst with German media outlets reports some very distrubing nuke false-flag evidence by Simplicius76
Australia has solved vaccine hesitancy: get a free funeral gift card with your vaccine [not a joke!] by Steve Kirsch
Pipeline terror is the 911 of the Raging Twenties by Pepe Escobar
GPs to receive incentive payments to deliver 'accelerated' care home covid boosters [perverse incentives forever until these criminals are stopped] by Costanza Potter
Jeffrey Sachs on the Nord Stream sabotage - the US probably did it Bloomberg
The Euro without Germany by Michael Hudson
US continues to build military presence in Europe - because Europe must be killed by Hal Turner
The October surprise - ask not with the Kremlin will do, but what the US will do next by John Helmer
The Nord Stream pipeline repair dilemma by Gibraltar Messenger (religious, read anyway)
Europe's energy argageddon from Berlin and Brussels, not Moscow by F. William Engdahl
Giorgia (Meloni) on our mind by Pepe Escobar
Intact Russian passport found floating in bubbles :-} by t.me/asbmil
Anti-EU protests sweep Europe AND Africa demanding end to Russian sanctions by Celia Farber
Another gas pipeline blown up in Ukraine (gas supply to Crimea) by Hal Turner
[original human genome sequencing guy clearly explains sequencing tricks/fraud/'debunker' smokescreens - long, extremely worthwhile] Kevin McKernan interview
The Bornholm blow-up repeats the Bornholm bash - Poland attacks Germany and blames Russia trans. by John Helmer
CIA warned Berlin about possible attacks on gas pipelines in summer - Spiegel Reuters
The Ukraine endgame by Johan Eddebo
Three Russia-to-Germany 1-2" steel-wall-thickness gas pipelines (both NordStreamI and one of NordStream2 pair) blown up, probably sea-water-flooded, unrepairable by Hall Turner
The war on Germany just entered its hot phase [an American declaration of war on Europe] by bernhard
The EU is sleepwalking into anarchy by Thomas Fazi
Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine, Part 1 and
Part 2 by Aseem Malhotra (UK cardiologist who took/promoted the vac, changes mind)
The European Medicines Agency warns of shortages of two Boerhringer heart drugs to to a spike [ya think?] in demand [because aging - anything but the 'vaccines'] by Tyler Patchen
Canadian woman died 7 minutes after bivalent booster, death ruled "natural cause" by Igor Chudov
Text of Putin speech announcing partial mobilization by Yves Smith
On building back better, first by destroying interview with Michael Yeadon
Israel death data shows COVID vaccine effect by Joel S. Hirschhorn
The EUthanized EUropean nat-gas "reserves" [yikes!] by Jorge Vilches
Shocking document: how the US planned the war and energy crisis in Europe by Markus Andersson
What does Denmark know that they are not telling the public? [all-cause mortality 2022 was bigger than 2021, which was bigger than 2020/covid] via Edward Dowd
To figure out what's really happening in Ukraine, DON'T watch TV or read the NYT by Mark Crispin Miller
A probabilistic approach to evaluate the likelihood of artificial genetic modificuation and its application to SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant [Omicron likely a lab leak/release, too] by H. Kakeya and Y. Matsumoto (2022) (updated)
1323 athlete cardiac arrests, serious issues, 900 dead after COVID injection [updated] Real Science
Life after liberalism? by Tim Morgan
On the role and importance of PSYOPs for the SMO by vineyard saker
Mass formation hypnosis disorder by CJ Hopkins
Truly autonomous cars may be impossible without helpful human touch by Nick Carey and Paul Lienert
Masks, vaccines, and deaths in Japan [two record spikes in deaths after everyonemasked and vac'd] by Ian Miller
The new normal: news reporters just naturally drop to the floor on camera
Europe is facing energy disaster and it's going to bleed over into the US by Brandon Smith
Assessment of the extra capacity required of alternative energy electrical power systems to completely replace fossil fuels [vid] by Simon Michaux
Excess mortality in Germany 2020-2022 by C. Kuhbandner and m. Reitzner (2022)
[inserting HIV sequences into bat coronaviruses to increase human infectivity from 2008] by Ren, Shi et al., (2008)
The macro picture by Gonzalo Lira
The clowns of winter harry the UK down by Tom Luongo
Israeli Ministry of Health zoom meeting on suppressed report by Neil Oliver
From the Russian Ministry of Defense on US bioweapons laboratories [Google translate] by Hal Turner
THe Ukrainian 'counteroffensive' was destined to fail - today it did so [completely suppressed in MSM: major battlefield loss and failed Ukie attack on nuke plant] by bernhard
Giant demo against Czech gov't, NATO, EU Russia/Ukraine policy in Prague OneindiaNews
Vaccines and death, part 1 [6 month delay, but what about seasonality?] by John Dee
The moment of greatest danger by William Schryver
The vaccine deaths are now simply too massive to keep hiding and explaining them away by The White Rose UK
Money and the end of abundance by Tim Morgan
The entire German economy is about to get its plug pulled ziohedge
Net zero is dead - so now what? by Tim Watkins
Blackouts threaten Germany as the proliferation of heat pumps and e-vehicles drives [electrical' power demand to new heights by Eugyppius
Will Europe go down to defeat before Ukraine? by Yves Smith
Winter is coming by Russ Winter
DEATHVAX Israel edition by 2nd smartest
Australia's excess death toll just keeps getting worse by Dr. Ah Kahn Syed (pseudonym)
Russia-steria by Covid-steria
"Mystery . . . 5 year old girl . . . died suddenly . . . myocarditis . . . we are no longer accepting comments on this article" The Daily Fail
[less intact mRNA, less toxic] by Craig Paardekooper
EU controlled demolition by Raul Ilargi Meijer
[Daughter of Alexander Dugin killed in Moacow car bombing] ziohedge
On the transfiguration of Europe: from Nuland's dream to Nuland's nightmare by Batiushka
News about elevated death rates is leaking out by el gato malo
Senior US Marine Corps officer expresses admiration for the 'revolutionary' way in which Russia has fought its war in Ukraine by Dr. Leon Tressell
Ambulance calls for most serious conditions hit recod BBC news
The miracle not heard around the world: the Success of Uttar Pradesh - Part 2 by Pierre Kory
PfizerGate UK The Expose
Why have I stopped posting maps of the situation in the UKraine and a few other questions by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
Asking for the moon - managing what we can't fix by Tim Morgan
Stunning prospecive study from Thailand (3.5% males got myo/pericarditis) by Tracy Beth Hoeg
Russian MIL declares Ukraine origin of C19 by Clandestine
The unvaccinated question revisited by CJ Hopkins
The earliest days of the Italian Pandemic, or why nobody wants to talk about February 2020 anymore by Eugyppius
Data doesn't lie: mRNA-vaccines and correlation to all-cause mortality [the one thing that is hard to fake: death] by Robert W. Malone
On the ground report from Ukraine by b
Twitter censors Pfizer-injured Israeli COVID vaccine director by KanekoaTheGreat
Almost every single COVID death in Australian state was vaccinated [second highest death *rate* in *world* - only NZ is higher] by Daniel Horowitz
Grain inflation: starve the poor, feed the rich by Ann Pettifor
"Give up your yacht before lecturing" ziohedge
[Ukraine uses US-supplied HIMARS to kill their own prisoners of war] RT (vid of shelled prison
here)
Ameerican diplomacy as a tragic drama by Michael Hudson
CRISPR gene editing may cause permanent damage JPost
Kate McCann collapses during Talk TV debate [offscreen] Daily Mirror
Boosters now PROMOTE covid deaths in Europe by Igor Chudov
The normalization of the New Normal by CJ Hopkins
No, mRNA covid vaccine do not offer long term protection from serious illness by Alex Berenson
Empire of inflation transcript of Danny Haiphong interview of Michael Hudson(overall excellent, but weak on net energy and covid)
Did you know that Russia is still losing the war in Ukraine? by Larry Johnson
Sudden cyclist lung disorder by Sage Hana
Acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children [adenovirus recombination may undo inactivation] by Ann-Cathrin Engwall (2022) BMJ
What we learned from hating the unvaccinated by Susan Kay Dunham (Peter Chris rewrite
here)
World peak uranium production by Alice Friedemann
When the globalists crossed the rubicon: the assassination of Shinzo Abe by Emanuel Pastreich
Letter from Parrhesia via Paul Spardbery
[white stuff, not clots in arteries 'SADS' - amyloid?] by The White Rose UK
Emergency doctor speaking out on death jabs anonymous doctor, Dec 2021
Beijing scraps China's first COVID vaccine mandate in just 48 hours after a furious social response ziohedge
Molecular mimicry may explain multi-organ damage in COVID-19 by Angileri et al. (2020)
Old way, new way by Dmitry Orlov
Is a fossil fuel-free future logical? [not of our current style, but depletion never sleeps] by Viable Opposition
"Obviously, that's what's killed him" [short vid] by John O'Looney
Adverse drug reactions account for 16.5% of all hospital admissions [1 month case study] by R. Osanlou et al. (2022)
The incidence of mycarditis and pericarditis in post COVID-19 unvaccinated patients - a large population-based study [no increased reisk] by Ortal Tuvali et al. 2022)
Police in the Netherlands get busted for being violent protesters in a crowd, and flee to their police vehicle via Jim Stone
Observations on the Ukraine war by William Schryver
[Nethelands: highest vac'd communities have highest covid in sewage] by Rintrah Radagast
[Chomsky back on message] by Kim Petersen
Depopulation of Taiwan by Igor Chudov
Massive safety signal for infertility from Germany [9 standard deviation drop in fertility!] by Jikkyleaks
The global power shift isn't West to East - it's not that simple by Charles Hugh Smith
War with the Russian Federation by Paul Craig Roberts
On the EU restarting thermal coal power plants by Mr. P
The Federal Republic of New Normal Germany: "If you hear a train coming, just look the other way" by CJ Hopkins
Word war 3 for dummies by Gaius Baltar
Excellent 2 min interview with Mike Yeadon el gato malo
Lithuania may have lit the fuse on world war III by Larry Johnson
Important - message for Americans by Gonzalo Lira
Brazilian girl: "I trust mom more than Bolsonaro" [very unfortunate choice in this incase] via Jim Stone
Henan bank depositors hit with red health codes by Wu Peiyue
UK health agency: 99 percent of monkeypox cases are gay men (80% from London) by Paul Joseph Watson
[mysterious 'sudden and unexplained' chidhood hepatitis continues increase] WHO
[Pentagon was running 46 biolabs in Ukraine, but they were 'mostly peaceful Ukrainian laboratories' www.defense.gov
CV19 vax deadliest fraud in history: "I refuse: either I go to the Gulag or else I win" by Edward Dowd
UK banks no longer too big to fail, says Bank of England [from the horses mouth] Reuters
Healthy young people are dying suddenly and unexpectedly from a mysterious syndromw [I am baffled as to what could have caused this - not!] by Tom Heaton
What Russia has to do after Russia wins by Gonzalo Lira
Substack is like a heatsink by John Helmer
What are the prospects for peace? by Paul Craig Roberts
26 cases of CJD declared a few days [~11] after a COVID-19 vaccine jab [yikes] by Moret-Chalmin, Montangnier et al. (2022)
Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a global south famine? by Michael Hudson
Overall deaths in Australia - where nearly everyone is vaccinated - are spiking by Alex Berenson
Ba.5 is a variant for boested people [Portugal vs. South Africa] by Igor Chudov
Comment: "Machines eating machines: what a planet we monkeys have put together here" Simplicius76
The secret Ukrainian military programs by Thierry Meyssan
DPR soldier meets Ukrop [Ukrainian association of patriots soldier] who tortured him in captivity [short vid] Simplicius76
Grief days with changes in Narrative . . . or why trolls are doomed F Man
Why public health experts never want to fight "the amateurs" by el gato malo
Think much smaller by John Day
Israeli forces murdered star Al-Jazeera journalist: CNN ziohedge
China locks down Tianjin allegedly in search of zero covid by Meryl Nass
So how serious is Ukraine's neo-Nazi romance? by Cynthia Chung
[no-fly zone over the Davos rentier scum perhaps afraid of a thermobaric bomb] Life Site News
NATO expansion and human wave attacks by Ian Kummer
NATO surrenders in Azovstal by vineyard saker
Russia and Ukraine interivew with Norman Finkelstein
Briefing: analysis of documents related to the military biological activities of the United States on the territory of Ukraine by vineyard saker
Decline of dollar, sanctions war, imperialism, financial parasitism [long vid] by Michael Hudson
Sri Lanka explodes hindustantimes
[meet Dr. Narendra 'Mengele' Kaushik] ziohedge
CIA ineptitude, Russian cauldrons and the Ukrainian mafia by Larry Johnson
Zelensky is trapped [short vid] by Gonzalo Lira
[the on-the-ground horror of the US fighting Russia 'to the last Ukrainian' by b
How to read the war in reverse without outsmarting yourself by John Helmer
Ukraine, Romania, Moldova . . . vs. Transnistria: a WWIII scenario by Brett Redmayne-Titley
Massive fraud in French Presidential elections by Algora Blog
American dissent on Ukraine is dying in darkness Robert Scheer interview with Michael Brenner
Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave [PDF] by Sun et al. (2022)
Sitrep Z #16 by NightVision
Asia peak oil update Nov 2021 by Matt Mushalik
Peak oil is here! World oil production peaked in 2018 by Alice Friedemann
[world conventional oil peaked in 2016; light/tight/oilsands in 2018] by Dennis Coyne
Majority of India's 900 million workforce stop looking for jobs: Report by Vrishti Beniwal
The US is prolonging a massacre Scott Ritter
Ukraine recap by Gonzalo Lira
Chechen in Mariupol [2 min vid] by Simplicius76
[comedian and dancer Zelensky is a billionaire] by Stephen Lendman
Danish study shows no benefit to overall mortality from mRNA 'vaccines' by el gato malo (new Lancet preprint)
COVID vaccination and age-stratified all-cause mortality risk by S. Pantazatos and H. Seligmann
Report from Tanzania - more good new from Africa! by Bushiri
Does Paul Craig Roberts like genocide? by Dmitri Orlov (a little unkind to PCR who tends toward overstatement)
Russia continues moving west and the west blinks on sanctioning Russian oil by Larry Johnson
Have people been given the wrong vaccine? by Martin Kuldorff
Why did the SBU cut Lira loose? by Scott Creighton
Is the Shanghai lockdown China's Ukraine? by Emanuel Pastreich
Unreal images emerge from Orwellian nightmare Shanghai [who is marketing this?] by Ben Bartee
Some of the weapons delivered to Ukraine will be used against US [i.e., the EU] by b
People of Mariupol Ukraine at border tell what really happened [short vid] via Dean Morton
Chechens dancing Simplicius76
Ukraine claims Russian Phase 2 has begun by Larry Johnson
The war in Ukraine and the collapsing world order [2 hr vid] Alastair Crooke, Scott Ritter, Max Blumenthal, Seyed Mohammad Marandi (don't miss last Scott Ritter segment)
Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova's interview with RT TV, Moscow, Apr 16, 2022 English transcript
Ukraine is smashed - this is how it will be repaired by John Helmer
On a bus in Shanghai: "We are going to have a war with the US!" via Jim Stone at http://www.jimstoneindia.com
The Queensland health minister says none of her "experts" can explain a sudden 40% increase in code-1 heart attacks. In other news: I have a theory by Avi Yemini
[Canadian] banker 'deny' protestor his identity [and hence his money] by Money Circus
Urgent - my video call with the WHO this morning by Dr. Tess Lawrie
NATO sanctions and the coming global diesel fuel disaster by F. William Engdahl
Scott Ritter and the battle of the Donbas [1hr vid] interview by Gonzalo Lira
Sitrep: Operation Z (#8) by Nightvision
French reporter returning from Ukraine says Americans are 'in charge' of the war by Chris Menahan
[excellent historical backgrounder to Ukraine war with links] by Michael W. Stowell
Mariupol, Azovstal, Akhmetov, and US-SOCOM by Paveway IV
The downfall of Europe by Ian Kummer
A distrubing trend in the Ukraine by vineyard saker
[Key color revolution succeeds after all: Pakistan prime minister removed from office] Al J
Locked down Shanghai screaming from their apartments Patrick Madrid
The story of Elizabeth Bathory: the sick occult elite through the centuries by Vigilant Citizen
[this censorship is just more boldly 'in your face': but it has already been there for years] by William Bowles
Horror show in Shanghai by Brian Shilhavy
The dollar devours the euro by Michael Hudson
The real Mariupol story [possibly] by Pepe Escobar
NHS asks men whether they are pregnant before having [x-ray and MRI] scans by hayley Dixon
"Control your soul's desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing" by Alice Yu
Western intelligence delusions and the failure of the Bucha op by Larry Johnson
How to read the war in reverse without outsmarting yourself by John Helmer
Gonzalo Lira on Ukrainian false flag in Bucha [censored from YT] by Gonzalo Lira
If the Pentagon can not confirm the Bucha tales, who can? by b
US Army general Roger Cloutier [may have been - b/c Hal Turner] captured in Mariupol with Azov nazis by Hal Turner
Gold rouble vs. central bank digital currency by Moneycircus
Victoria police wants Audtralians 'to forget what they've been up to' Sky News Australia
Bucha massascre? A Ukrainian false flag? by Larry Johnson
The Bucha provocation by b
Meet the new resource-based global reserve currency by Pepe Escobar
815 athlete cardiac arrests, serious issues, 531 dead after COVID shot by Real Science
Day 35 of the Russian SMO in the Ukraine by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
Saudi coalition announces cessation of military operations in Yemen [after oil field attacks] by 21st century wire
Is Russia on the ropes in Ukraine? [no] by Larry Johnson
Open Science Sessions: how flawed data has driven the narrative by Norman Fenton
How one Ukrainian billionaire funded Hunter Biden, President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion by KanekoaTheGreat
Nazi leader of Azov battalion gets arrested [what people from Mariupol think of him]
Latest video from the front lines! via Gonzalo Lira
[Jim Stone pointed to this fake video: watch the attractive lady's boots as they through stationary metal shards that nevertheless make a sound like they were kicked across the concrete]
Update on the military situation in Ukraine ["meet the Chechens"] by Larry Johnson
Simpleton's rimer on the long war the US aims to wage against Russia by John Helmer
Make Nazism great again by Pepe Escobar
Who wants to tell them>? [short vid] by Paul Joseph Watson
James Corbett's globalist McCarthyite propaganda serves the WEF by Scott Creighton (et tu? Catte Black? :-{
following the same script as Corbett)
Following up on reality: the geopolitical chess game by Russ Winter
Are we following the path of Pearl Harbor? by Martin Armstrong
In case you care to know what is really going on by Paul Craig Roberts
Mariupol by Gonzalo Lira (the real thing)
Record infections in super-vaxxed UK seniors as double-vaxxed show negative efficacy against COVID death by Daniel Horowitz
Are the Ukraine biolabs connected to the coronavirus gain-of-function research? by Daniel Horowitz (Mar 15)
Interview with Larry C. Johnson on Ukraine by Mike Whitney
It is NATO's nazis in Ukraine: it's not rocket science by Ronald Thomas West (Mar 3, lots of background in one place)
The West is at war with itself by Dr. D
Putin: destined to hang or drown? by Tom Luongo
UK elderly: double vaccination kills immunity by Igor Chudov
Where do we go from here? - two decisions by Andrei Raevsky
Dumbshit Russians? by Paul Craig Roberts
While you were focused on Russia's invasion, the UK Government published a new report confirming the fully vaccinated now account for 92% of Covid-19 deaths in England Daily Expose
Yavorov military based obliterated Voltaire Network
[AMA dosing table: different lots have different mRNA doses] [PDF]
A false flag is coming by Gonzala Lira (in Kharkiv)
UK: 90% of dead vaccinated, 99% of adults have covid antibodies - have the vacs destroyed herd immunity? by Alex Berenson
Scott Ritter on Ukraine [vid] interview by Lee Camp
Illusion warfare report: the road to Ukraine by Lez LuTHOR
How one [jewish!] Ukranian billionaire funded Hunter Biden, President Vologymyr Zelensky, and the neo-nazi Azov battalion by KanekoaTheGreat
[Hunter Biden involved with Ukraine biolabs?!] by Kelen McBreen
Looks like the next "pandemic" will be coming from Ukraine (and it'll all be Putins fault!) by Mark Crispin Miller
WHO says it advised Ukraine to destroy pathogens in health labs to prevent disease spread Reuters (!)
Kiev: pharmaceutical poison-capital of the world TikTok :-}
The American Empire self-destructs. But nobody thought that it would happen this fast by Michael Hudson
The vaccinated despise unvaccinated, but not vice versa by Darren Boyle
The humamn superorganism by The Great Simplification
Who is Zelensky? A puppet - and here's why [vid] by Gonzalo Lira (Chilean Roman Catholic living in Ukraine)
The Russian military intervention in the Ukraine - a macro view by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
Victoria 'f--k the EU' Nuland: Ukrain has "biological research facilities", worried Russia may seize them by Glenn Greenwald
Israel stunned by Ukrainian neo-Nazis by Thierry Meyssan
Revenge of the Putin-Nazis! by CJ Hopkins
On the cusp of an economic singularity by Doomberg
Zelensky and the fascists: "He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk" by b
Russia Ukraine 2: the world order has changed by Patrick Armstrong
[horrible shooting video of Ukrainian man's wife killed trying to flee Mariupol after husband and wife come across previous Ukrainian military murder scene]
War in Ukraine: headed for economic collapse by seemorerocks
Whay is the Pentagon funding bio-labs in Ukraine and around Eurasia? [vid] interview with Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
Ukrainian president Zelenski . . . in stilletos [vid] by Plazma
Opening salvos thrown - what are Putin's next steps in Ukraine? by Tom Luongo
Czechs could face 3 years in prison for supporting Russia on social media by Paul Joseph Watson
One week into the Russian special operation in the Ukraine - update by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
The story of Russia and Ukraine and the cause of the military operation [good short vid from Feb27] by Emperor Shetty
[people in fancy condos yelling after covid lock-in in Shenzhen city, China] Songpinganq
The great decoupling by Mark Sleboda
Ukraine update #3 by Paul Craig Roberts
Russia declares war on the Straussians by Thierry Meyssan
My trip from Kiev to Kharkov last night by Gonzalo Lira
What Russia wants from its invasion of Ukraine [Feb26 vid] by Gonzalo Lira
The 'Ghost of Kiev' shoots down a Tai Fighter :-} via Jim Stone
Cocuments expose US biological experiments on allied soldiers in Ukraine and George by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
Black box defence for the Russian economy by Sergei Glazyev (trans. John Helmer)
America defeats Germany for the third time in a century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE sectors conquer NATO by Michael Hudson
Budo - explorers' guide to scifi world [start at 19-20 min for soundbite] by Clif High :-}
COVID-19: a web of corruption by Spartacus
The Pentagon bio-weapons [some in Ukraine] by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva (Apr 2018)
The Ukraine war as mass entertainment by Johan Eddebo
Busted! Media in Ukraine caught using the same crisis actor from 2018 who survived a gas explosion. Now she survives 'missile attack' by Craig Evans
The US Embassy in Ukraine has just deleted from its website all documents about 11 Pentagon-funded biolaboratories in Ukraine by Dilyana Gytandshieva
[scroll down to graph, expand graph to 90 days - the vac *increased* chance of infection!] Government of Ontario
Russian operation in the Ukraine: end of day 2 by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
Order out of chaos: how the Ukraine conflict is designed to benefit globalists by Brandon Smith
On the economic roots of the covid event and probable near-term developments by Johan Eddebo
What's really going on in Ukraine by Johan Eddebo
[Sean 'CIA' Penn meets with President lots-of-time-on-his-hands Zelensky to 'create a film' about the war] Sky News
The collapse of Banderastan: tomorrow will be a crucial day by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
Scholz caves [to US] on Nord Stream while Putin throws Donbass a lifeline by Mike Whitney
A major backfire - is the Canadian financial and backing system in serious trouble as a result of their attack on private bank accounts? by Sundance
Turdeau revokes emergency powers [after rumored bank runs following freezing of accounts] ziohedge
The Crusaders are very, very angry. Who cares? by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
What Canada means for crypto by Doomberg
Central banks are now insolvent [but that's by definition!] by Alasdair Macleod
Limits to green energy are becoming much clearer by Gail Tverberg
Canada moves to make asset freezing under Emergencies Act permanent by Paul Joseph Watson
Sillbirths, miscarriages and abortions in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated women [from Ramban hospital Haifa] by Josh Guetzkow
The naked face of New Normal fascism by CJ Hopkins
Scotland will HIDE vaccinated and boosted deaths by Igor Chudov
Covid data will not be published over concerns it's misrepresented by anti-vaxxers [Scotland] by Laren Brownlie
"There is speculation Justin Trudeau and his families foundation holds 40% of Acuitas Therapeutics which is a lipid nanoparticle delivery system for Pfizer. There appears to be a major conflict of interest with Trudeau" by Robert W. Malone
Canada's major banks go offline in mysterious hours-long outage [it begins] by Ax Sharma
Canada: 'If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who's donating, you ought to be worried about your bank around being frozen' [trying to create bank runs?] Rebel News
Deaths among triple vaccinated increased by 495% in January with the vaccinated accounting for 4 in every 5 covid-10 cases, hospitalisations and deaths since December [Scotland] The Daily Expose
[failed sideswipe by vac lunatic in SUV - this shows the vac is working] Riselmelbourne (AUS)
Attack of the transphobic Putin-Nazi truckers! by CJ Hopkins
[containment is not an option] by Paul Sacca
Canada: the talking points vs the reality by el gato malo
Infectious diseases, vaccines and war by Marc Herbermann
Nanowars can cause epidemic resurgance and fail to promote cooperation [PDF] by Dirk Helbing and Matjaz Perc (2021)
Insane in the Ukraine [ziohedge link b/c Matt Stoller protected tweets] by Matt Stoller
How Russia went wrong by Dimitri Simes (conservative, read anyway, excellent)
"Headsets are simply annoying" by Ken Kutaragi (Playstation inventor)
The Italian government's attack on Italy by Jonah Lynch
NZ has run out of money [$64 billion on covid, on top of $20 billion/year for 'health' - 52 covid deaths, 10,000 yearly cancer deaths] by Guy Hatchard
[Top/earliest-vaccinated/boosted] Israel is world #1 in daily COVID cases per capita Times of Israel
Alberta just inadvertently confessed to fiddling the COVID vaccination stats by Joel Smalley
Unboostered Brits infected and dying at higher rates than unvaccinated by Eugyppius
It's over by Paul Joseph Watson
Is there a deal being prepared behind the scenes? by vineyard saker (Andrei Raevsky)
Simulating a global financial collapse by Viable Opposition
French life insurer refuses to cover vaccine death [ruled a suicide] FreeWest Media
COVID lab-leak whitewash has been 'the death of science' says professor who found 'unique fingerprints' ziohedge
China coal production hits record - it's where our stuff is made [burn back better!] ziohedge
Israeli study shows 4th shot boosts antibodies [to extinct virus] but doesn't stop Omicron infection [duh] Reuters
Reiner Fuellmich and 50 lawyers begin criminal trial two weeks from Jan 10, 2022 nonvaxer420
Spanish police declare resistance to covid tyranny and corruption trans. obtained by Celia Farber
The diary of a scientist in New Zealand by Guy Hatchard
UK COVID-19 vac surveillance report 13 Jan 2022 [PDF: just scroll to Table 11 on deaths] UK
The missing graph from latest UK vac surveillance report: it *doubles* chance of Omicron infection by Eugyppius
Victoria 'F-the-EU' Nuland says Russia planning false flag [uh-huh] Senator Chris Murphy
The war party wins - Russian is now free to act unilaterally by vineyard saker
BBC's Stephen Nolan calls Novak Djokovic a "threat to health services" [pic]
Frequent boosters spur warning on immune Response [VAIDS!] by Irina Anghel (Bloomberg!)
David Sassoli, president of the European Parliament, dies of "dysfunction of the immune system" after booster Bloomberg
Worldwide Bayesian causal impact analysis of vaccine administration on deaths and cases associated with COVID-19 [more vac leads to more cases/deaths] by Ritchie et al., (2021)
We have never been more vaccinated and we have never had more covid-19 anti-empire
Kazakhtsan [vac mandate plus color revolution plus move against China - never let a good crisis go to waste!] by Edward Slavsquat
Wendepunkt [Turning point] by Eugyppius
Videos shed light on death of Roasnne Boyland at US capitaol on Jan 6 by Joseph M. Hanneman
The fog is lifting by Michael Yeadon
Kazakhstans's color revolution by Pepe Escobar
[Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) responds to color revolution in progress in Kazakhastan] by vineyard saker
Five [more] professional soccer players die from heart attacks in a few days over Christmas by Anthony Murdock
WHO says 'mild or no side effects' - gets 43K negative angry comments
New findings are enough to dismantle entire industry by Reiner Fuellmich
[Polizei go full Nazi at covid demo in Amsterdam - imagine the braying presstitutes if this had happened in Russia] by Manaf Hassan
Covid whistleblower abused in UK hospital resuced by friends by Faye Higbee
Hospitalisations by COVID-19 vaccination status: vac up -> hospitalisations up by Joel Smalley
"No vaccine passports you Hitler Nazi f*ck" [in Portuguese, to Mayor of Toritama] by Rasta Redpill
On the hunt: big gaime, prize stages and the coming energy Stalingrad by Byron King (scroll past deer to King article)
Here's how the energy crisis turns into hunger and then . . . war? by Chris Macintosh
A list of people who had their leg amputated shortly after receiving a COVID-19 shot by The COVID World
[after just *3 months*, Pfizer/Moderna effectiveness against Omicron is *nagative* compared to unvaxxed - i.e., *increases* chance of infection: next last line Table] by C.H. Hanson et al. (2021)
[it's totally new normal that 4 young soccer players - the healthiest humans on the planet - died from cardiac arrest this week] by The COVID World
The prevailing corona nonsense narrative by Dr. Thomas Binder
Athlete collapses/deaths following vaccination by Steve Kirsch (comprehensive list w/links via correspondent)
The death of Europe by Brendan O'Neill
The epidemiological relevance of the COVID-19-vaccinated population is increasing by Gunter Kampf, The Lancent
A power-grab at levels never before seen in the history of the world by Prof. Anthony J. Hall
Omicron is not normal by Eugyppius
Covid-19 and vitamin D: vaccinations need vitamin D by David Grimes
Ohio cluster of unexpected deaths of students/teachers continues global pattern during vaccination campaign by Unite4Truth
Vaccine causes negative efficacy for omicron
Mortality risk of vaccination is 5-40 times higher than that of COVID-19 in 20's [PDF, goto bottom of p. 41] Med Check (trans. from Japanese)
[Sorry man, I'm a refugee!!]
The year of the New Normal Fascist by C.J. Hopkins
Deja vu: the UK is about to about to experience a huge wave of deaths among the elderly by DailyExposeUK
Why didn't Russia shoot down anything yet? by Tarik
All-cause mortality in Germany is rapidly rising by Alex Berenson
All freedom will be lost when the war is won by Riley Waggaman
Patterns of deployment of toxic covid "vaccine" batches [vid] by Craig Paardekooper
The policital economy of autism by Toby Rogers
Austria: The abyss of chaotic tyranny by Peter Koenig
Pilot deaths increased 1700% - no doubt, nothing to do with vac they were coerced to take by ToTheLifeBoats
COVID-19 in India: a state declined to use early treatment and the results are appalling by Juan Quintero
Canadian province allows grocery stores to ban unvaccinated by Marie Oakes
"It's Unitaid [that's got me by the balls]" - Dr. Andrew Hill to Tess Lawrie on ivermectin by Neville Hodgkinson
Inside Australia's covid internment camp seemorerocks
In the wake of Austria's drastic lockdown of unvaccinated people, EU chief calls for throwing out Nurembuerg Code thepostmillenial
[high death rate (Table 1, page 7) in ROIA'd Pfizer report adverse events to 28 Feb 2021] [PDF] Pfizer
French citizens invade shopping mall that requires vaccine passports [short vid]Art TalkingBack
Out of Africa on Black Friday: a boost for Omicron booster shots by Prof. Anthony J. Hall (excellent, wide-ranging)
[new heart illnesses from "post-pandemic stress disorder"? seriously?!] by Elly Blake
Unvaccinated Austrians face prison time, huge fines for non-compliance by Paul Joseph Watson
Research game-changer: spike protein increase heart attacks and destroys immune system by Mike Whitney (
good comment)
COP26 will be a colossal mining cop-out by Frik Els
Inside Australia's covid internment camp by UnHerd
The great depopulation project, perhaps the biggest inflexion point in all human history - an overview by Clive Maund (good big pic, some weakness on biological details :-} )
Boosters every 3 months in UK [not a joke] by Justin Hart
Dr. Aseem Malhotra cardiologist gives heart attack warning after jab [Gundry paper] GBNEWS
The WEF and the pandemic by Swiss Policy Research
[increased infection from later variants in vaccinated but not naturally immune] by S.P. Andeweg et al. (2021)
Covid rules blamed for 23% drop in composite measure of young children's development by Alex Hammer
World Bank prez helps Pfizer get liability protection so they can lend to countries to buy vac they don't want by instant_covfefe
[partial transcript of lecture on "Mass formation" [hypnosis] by Mattias Desmet
"I believe we are facing an evil that has no equal in human history" interview with Moscow-based Riley Waggaman, by Mike Whitney
Cull, track, and control by Linh Dinh
Pathologized totalitarianism 101 CJ Hopkins
Protests and rage against lockdowns and mandates all over the world [largest in decades] by Brownstone Institute
Biggest news story of the weekend ignored by ALL MSM by Scott Creighton
UK data shows *no* all-cause mortality benefit for COVID-19 vaccines by Mathew Crawford
[Australian army begins forcibly removing COVID-positive cases and contacts to 'vaxxentration' camps] ziohedge
Protests erupts across the world [Austria shuts down subways to block protests] ziohedge
Keep complying, idiots by Paul Joseph Watson
Is vaccine efficacy a statistical illusion? by Norman Fenton and Martin Nell (interesting!)
Booster doses are extremely dangerous and they will make everything worse by Eugyppius
Port of Vancouver [1/3 of Canadian import/export] closes as BC flooding damages rail and road [vid] by Ice Age Farmer
Most vac'd and boosted country in the world, Gibraltar, has exponential rise in covid cases, cancelling Christmas by Millie Cooke
The price of equilibrium by Tim Morgan
Needed - a new model can-opener by Tim Morgan
Why have we doctors been silent? by Lucie Wilk
China's coal output hit multi-year high, will help ensure warm winter Global Times
Dutch teevee news explains vaccine passports necessary to protect the unvaccinated from the vaccinated by Koen
Austria plans to confine unvaccinated to homes [why not go straight to camps!] ziohedge
Melbourne rises up [vid from Sat, Nov 13] Melbourne Ground
Dr. Chetty gives a good explanation of how the covid vaccine is a slow kill so nobody realizes it [short vid] Drwelch (must watch)
Beta boy Jordan Peterson got injected so virus Taliban would leave him alone. Then they didn't Anti-Empire
The war we lived and the birth of the new by Jeffrey A. Tucker
The mask distraction by Beny Spira
EU has masks, passports, Sweden has none: the result by Dr. Eli David
What the actual f$ck by Max Igan
Athletes having issues by Joe Sheehan
UN-backed banker alliance announces "green" plan to transfor the global financial system by Whitney Webb
A review and autopsy of two COVID immunity studies by Martin Kulldorff
Worldwide surge of sports people suffering sudden health issues and death by Mark Playne
Australia is gone! GreenCrow
Farmers panic, can't get supplies to grow food [vid] by Ice Age Farmer
Monopoly: follow the money by Tim Gielen (English version by Vrouwen voor Vrijheid) (June 2021)
Fertilizer shortages could become death knell for global food production by Christer Ericsson
Australian hospitals are swamped; it's not covid by el gato malo (see also
ABC news
Do not give up yours rights by Julie Ponesse
An Australian horror story by Jeremy Salt
Blowing the whistle on Covid-19 and D-Dimer levels by Dr. Rochagne Kilian (license suspended, Oct 27)
100% of covid-19 vaccine deaths were caused by just 5% of the batches by The Expose
A coming false flag in Australia by Max Igan
What explains rising cases among the vaccinated? by Mike Williams
UK gov response suggest fully vaccinated are rapidly developing Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome by The Expose UK
SARS-CoV-2 spike gets into nucleus and impairs DNA damage repair by H. Jiang, and Y.-F. Mei
Every week it gets worse: the latest Public Health England Vaccine Surveillance Report by Eugyppius
Humanity is sleepwalking toward medical apartheid by Robert Bridge
The same Nipah virus was found in the first patient samples of SARS-CoV-2, with the clone plasmid still attached to the 3' end by Daoyu15
Greg Luyssen: 22-year-old cyclist forced to end his career after heart problems due to the covid-19 vaccine the covidworld
[something central-bank-related snapped in Australia?] ziohedge
The age of exterminations (IV). How to kill the rich by Ugo Bardi
The age of exterminations (III). Why you should be worried by Ugo Bardi
[engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus in vitro to escape highly neutralizing convalescent plasma] [i.e., gain-of-function to make covid-21] Andreano et al. (2021)
Full vaccinated are suffering far higher rates of infection than the unvaccinated, and it is getting worse by the day: there is no justification for vaccine passports by Martin Zandstra
Letter to a colluder: stop enabling tyranny by Margaret Anna Alice
The CDC is lying to the world about Covid-10 vaccine safety; they are killing 15 people for every 1 life they save by Steve Kirsch
Digital vaccine passports by Jeremy Loffredo and Max Blumenthal
Mass vaccination may permanently attenuate population-wide immunity to SARS-2 by Eugyppius
The impossibility of windmills [for supplying all or even half of energy] by Jan Smelik
Max Igan has left Australia by Seemorerocks
Native Americans fleeing into the bush to avoid Canadian military injectors by Marianne Rallon
Protest in Trieste: we the people are winning by el gato malo
Ghost workers in the machine by Miriam Shestack
Negative efficacy, or: something is wrong with the vaccines by Eugyppius
The animals know the difference between right and wrong by Raul
Senior journalist identifies one of Beirut snipers as employee of US embassy Press TV, Iran
Maximum vaccination: the vaccines can't control Corona, which is why they won't stop vaccinating by Eugyppius
Infection rate in vaccinated people in their 40s now more than DOUBLE rate in unvaccinated, Public Health England data shows, as vaccine effectiveness hits minus-109% by Will Jones
Canadian government bans employees from saying "Let's go Brandon" by Hal Turner
Increases in COVID-19 are *unrelated* to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States by S.V. Subramanian and Akhil Kumar (2021)
Vaccinated people account for 82% of Covid-19 deaths, 69% of hospitalisations and 54% of cases in September [Scotland] by The Expose
"Vaccine skepticism is unfounded" [recently vaccinated Austrian MP collapses during her speech] Filippo Maria O di B
Dorothy versus Hassan by Taxi (see bottom of comments for Beirutshima trial updates)
Can covid vaccines cause cancer? In some cases, the answer appears to be yes by Swiss Policy Research
The great new normal purge by CJ Hopkins
The Sunday essay: last call for united resistance to living hell by John Ward
General boycott of the Covid-19 Global Summit by Thierry Meyssan
Most covid-19 deaths were a direct result of the administration of Midazolam or Remdesiver by Dr. Michael Yeadon
Marburg is next covid by Kieran Morrissey
Marburgvirus genesig Advanced Kit [PDF] by Primerdesign
High vaccinated Singapore flattens the curve (oops, wrong axis) by Dr. Eli David
Denver police officer who lost ability to walk after first covid vaccine fired for refusing second jab by EthanH
[Medical martial law on the ground in Lithuania] by Gluboco Leituva
High recorded mortality in countries categorized as 'Covid-19 Vaccine Champions': the vaccinated suffer from increased risk of mortality compared to the non-vaccinated by Gerard Delepine
Tragedy in rural Alberta, a courageous doctor speaks out by Brian Peckford
Your editor gets himself nabbed for COVID detention by Marko Marjanovic
Chicoms hit peak coal by David Archibald
Mystery rise in heart attacks from blocked arteries [in Scotland, mysterious? really?] by Helen Puttick
Nosocomial [hospital-caused] outbreak caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in a highly vaccinated population, Israel, July 2021 [vac'd died, unvac'd did not] by by P. Shitrit et al (2021)
[Urgent message: PCR test, ricin-containing vaccine already prepared for Marburgvirus, which will 'find' that hemorrhagic fever in clot shot victims, cause more damage] by Kieran Morrissey, univ hospital manager, Dublin
[Algeria: this is how it's done!] from Sarah Swift
Follow the money by Randy Hillier
Stabilizing the code [and detabilizing the immune system] by Mike Williams
[just one of tens of thousands of stories out there like this] the covidblog
26,041 deaths 2,448,362 injuries following COVID shots in European Union's database by Brian Shilhavy
EcoHealth Alliance and the extended viral phenotype by Eugyppius
COVID_19 deaths before and after mass vac by realjoelsmalley
Overwhelming evidence of midazolam murders by government policy by The Bernician
A war for the world by Greg Reese
A dire warning from John O'Looney [I sincerely hope he's wrong about massive ADE this winter!] interviewed by Max Igan
We are all cattle now by Eugyppius
Thousands more people [in the UK] are dying - but it's not from Covid [e.g., heart damage/disease - N.B.: vac spike protein is known to damage heart muscle in some people] by Sarah Knapton
[Australian police state] by anti-empire
[Israeli public teevee, Kan News, tells it like it is - read the subtitles] Kan News
The ivermectin story - the story of a crime [understandable, must-see 25 min vid from early 2021]
A comparison of age adjusted all-cause mortality rates in England between vaccinated and unvaccinated by Norman Fenton and Martin Nell
A smoking gun connecting covid to EcoHealth/WIV has now emerged by Bret Weinstein
We report that SARS-CoV-2 has evolved [eh?] a unique S1/S2 cleavage site, absent in any previous coronavirus sequenced [you don't say?], resulting in the striking mimicry of an identical FURIN-cleavable peptide on the human epithelial sodium channel alpha-subunit (ENaC-alpha) by P. Anand et al. (2021)
Police open fire on peaceful and unarmed civilian protestors with rubber bullets [3% fatality] by real Rukshan
The rule of law is gone in Australia by Max Igan
[Australia erupts!] by Charlie Coe, Wayne Flower, and Charlotte Mitchell
Nuclear power: why molten salt reactors are problematic and Canada investing in them is a waste by M.V. Ramana
There are so many shortcuts to fantasy but there are no shortcuts to the scientific truth by Geert Vanden Bossche
Plot twist: after lying down for 18 months Australia erupts in some of the world's most spirited anti-COVID cult protest by Marko Marjanivic
F**k the jab - 20,000 shut down Melbourne highway ziohedge
Heavily vaccinated state [Kerala, 3% of India's population] accounts for 65% of India's COVID cases after rejecting ivermectin by Daniel Horowitz
Media blackout on effects of Australian truckers strike by Dr. Benjamin Braddock
The 'Delta strain' is the vaccine interview with straight-talking undertaker John O'Looney
Why does no one talk about Sweden anymore? by IM: Charts, Graphs, Sarcasm
Enrage Evergrande investors go full pitchfork ziohedge
The last post by Geert Venden Bossche
Wake up [music vid] Ole Dammegard & Mo Anton
Sharp rise in acute medical beds occupied by children with nowhere else to go [violent, self-harming] by Helen Pidd
The International COVID summit, 2021 ICS 2021 (100 million live views)
Attempted
murder by ventilator at Castlebar hospital and
Common law exercised in
hospital to save a patient's life Philosophers-stone.info
New South Wales premier's Armenian lesson by Moneycircus
UK data shows for people 40-79, being vaccinated makes it *more* likely for you to get Covid-19 and spread it by Karl Denninger (it's Joe Dementia who's trying to kill granny)
Doctors for Covid Ethics Symposium - Session 1: the false pandemic [2 hours] UK Column (1st talk has good mol bio)
80% of covid-19 deaths in August were people who have been vaccinated according to Public Health data
Covidian fanatics calling for the unvaxxed to be denied hospital beds means they have lost the argument by Marko Marjanovic
Biden's drone strike in Kabul killed 10 people, including an aid worker, Zemari Ahmadi, returning to his family by Evan Hill
Australia is now confiscating booze delivered to people forced into lockdown ziohedge
Israel: vaccine mandates and passports + high vac rate = highest infection rate in world Swiss Policy Research
Full-vaxxed Gibraltar [99%!] sees 2500 percent spike in COVID-19 cases per day 9in the middle of summer!], initiates new lockdowns by Fynn-derella
Justin Turdeau pelted by gravel at campaign stop ziohedge
The SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein disrupts human cardiac pericytes function through CD147-receptor-mediated signalling: a potential non-infective mechanism of COVID-19 microvascular disease by Avolio et al. (2021)
Alex Mitchell had AZ, got blood clots, lost leg, now being used to promote vaccine by Darren of Plymouth (England)
Eight straight saturday protesting in France and the biggest yet Earth Newspaper
Doctors advise against intensive sport after Covid vaccination by Orlando Whitehead
Quantitative brainwashing by Jeff Thomas
[sowing dissension within families across the world] by Greencrow
[forced vaccination policy is decimating care home workers] by Robert Booth
COVID19/11 - Katharine Gun [short vid]
How scientific fraud took the world hostage by Simon
I have not been silenced [in which he explains how he *has* been silenced!] by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Truckie victory: South Australia drops mandatory jab for interstate drivers by David Hiscox
Virus czar [Israel] calls to begin readying for eventual 4th vaccine dose by Times of Israel Staff
Red alert: false flag incoming! by James Corbett
[excellent show on hospital/drug-caused illness] by Dr. Bryan Ardis
The safety of COVID-19 vaccinations - lack of a clear benefit [PDF] [number needed to vac calc] by H. Walach, R.J. Klement, and W. Aukema (2021)
[Australia 'VAERS' gets 425-490 reports of death after vac, concludes 7 due to vac - N.B.: 2021 deaths from 'COVID' were 98] Therapeutic Goods Administration Australia
Most vaccinated countries have most COVID cases by Rodney Atkinson
The Afghanistan rout and American glasnost by Dmitri Orlov
Israel and Sweden: excess deaths by Michael Levitt
Insanity in Vietnam by Alex Berenson
Mass market model: ADE's, leaky vaccines and breakthrough infections Penny for your thoughts (new website after google killed her blogspot this week)
Tel Aviv vaccination-line maybe longest in world. How did the government sheepify them? (answer: travel restriction) by Ran Israeli
The consent of the governed: "The internet routes around damage. Censorship is damage" by el gato malo
Taliban opens chain of US Army Surplus stores by Babylon Bee
[Vax-entration camp being built near Queensland Wellcamp airport] also see
second
propaganda vid here by Annastacia Palaszczuk MP
"Metallic particles" sounds to me like 1 um super paramagnetic beads often used to single strand double-stranded RNA (to avoid triggering [more!] immune mayhem) by Kevin McKernan
by Dr. Peter McCullough
Shame on the hate speech in the Toronto Star by Elena Sokolova
Excess mortality is on the rise again in the UK by Alex Berenson
Canada orders enough covid vaccine doses for a shot every month and a half for every citizen by Celeste McGovern
French citizen boycott vaccine passport by eating right in front of nearly empty vaxx-only bars and restaurants Red Pill News UK
Monkey finds a mask Truth on Toast
Australia builds the first "quarantine facility" to "keep the community safe" Truth on Toast
11 Marines, Navy medic among dozens killed as third explosion rocks Kabul [b/c Trump] ziohedge (US has employed ISIS since 2012, false flag/intentional?)
BBC presenter Lisa Shaw died due to 'vaccine-induced' blood clots in brain by Chris Menahan
[French clot shot brain autopsy: starts at 2:08 - what a 'headache' looks like inside] from Ethicitizen
Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections [vaccinated have *27x* the rate of symptomatic infections compared to naturally infected] [PDF] by Sivan Cazit et al.
Israel has one of the world's highest daily COVID-19 infection rates, despite high [near highest!] vaccine uptake by Andrea Michelson
Forensic examination of Institute of Virology COVID-19 patient specimens from December 2019 reveals extensive laboratory contamination, including evidence of genetic manipulation of the Nipah Virus, a BSL-4 pathogen more lethal than Ebola by Steven Quay
Latest Public Health England data shows vaccine effectiveness down to just 15% in the over-50s, 37% in the under 50s, deaths cut by 76% in the over-50s, but just 12% in the under-50s by Will Jones
Vietnam deploys armed forces to enforce total shutdown of Ho Chi Minh City and deliver food to many of its 13M locked-down citizens RT
Are we doomed? Israel's Prime Minister is crazy (or an idiot) - two doses is now 'unvaccinated' by Ran Israeli
Canadian involvement in the origin of the covid operation Vaccine Choice Canada
Countries that bought Pfizer's vaccine undertook to break their own laws byFree West Media Staff (from Feb 10: military bases as collateral for vaccine deal)
Important message from Dr. Anne McCloskey by Anne McCloskey
Australian truckers warn citizens to stock up on food as they prepare to take over the country by Health Impact News
Our grave concerns about the handling of the COVID pandemic by governments of the nation of the UK by [many UK doctors]
[starting Aug 1, 1.1 million Israelis got 3rd booster dose, 2,790 of them subsequently got infected over just a week or so, 88 hospitalized for serious symptoms, 15 die] by Amy Spiro
"G'morning Australia" by Gillian McKeith
Chaotic scenes as protesters break through police barricades in Melbourne Insider Paper
COVID-19 and the shadowy "Trusted News Initiative" by Elizabeth Woodruff
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigaion in England - Technal briefing 21 [pdf] Public Health England
Australia's descent into fascist tyranny by Seemorerocks
"This means it's working" by Chris Menahan
One of the most vaccinated societies, Israel now has one of the highest infection rates in the world NYT (!)
6 questions we NEED to ask about Afghanistan by Kit Knightly
The narrative is crumbling. Something bad and big is going on [short vid] Back to the Light
Won't someone think of the collaborators!? - and the staged airport scene by Scott Creighton (excellent)
"My name is . . . and I refuse" Off Guardian
Full vaccinated account for 73% of recent Covid-19 deaths and data shows fully vaccinated are over 5 times more likely to die if infected with Covid-19 [clear ADE signal] by Daily Expose (Scotland data)
Businesses are refusing to enforce France's vaccine passport by Paul Joseph Watson
A long, hot, angry summer by Alastair Crooke
So does this mean there's not going to be a Kabul Pride? by Anti-Empire
Military transport plane Kabul airport [short vid] by Ragip Soylu
Message from France by Hardscrabble Farmer
The propaganda multipler by Swiss Policy Research (2019)
[good summary of public health authority lies] by Penny for your thoughts
C-19 Pandemia: Quo vadis, homo sapiens? by Geert Vanden Bossche
Welcome to NewNormal Germany. The graffiti reads "GAS THE UNVACCINATED" by CJ Hopkins
Data from Israel you shouldn't miss Seemorerocks
They are lying to you all the time by Dr. Michael Yeadon (excellent)
Ivermectin wins in India by Justus R. Hope
COVID vaccine mandates strongly opposed in Europe, US as vaccine failures increase by Barbara Loe Fisher
Forced vaccination of a teenage girl in Spain RedPillWorld
Adjusted (excees) deaths per million vaccine *doses* is 411/million [more than 1 in 2000, or about a quarter million deaths worldwide] by Mathew Crawford
[Delta viral load in vaccinated is 251x as high as in unvaccinated infected with original variants - N.B.: missing key control of Delta-infected unvaccinated] by Nguyen Van Vinh Chau and Nghiem My Ngoc, Lancet
The price of FOMO by Wolf Richter
Are the unvaxxed the new "Jews"? by Susan Bachrach
Might post-injection distribution of COVID vaccines to the brain explain the rare fatal events of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis? by Hamid Merchant
The "Noble Lie" is being revealed step by step: "Herd immunity is not a possibility" Sir Andrew Pollard, Director of Oxford Vaccine Group
Stunning news from Iceland, among the world's most vac'd countries by Alex Bereneson
Let's talk delta by Karl Denninger
When the V-d and the Unv-d come together to insist on liberty by Tessa Lena
Update from France . . . NuNativs
Speaking at the Dallas City Council meeting 8/4/2021 [hilarious!] by Alex Stein
Fully vaxxed [>99%] Gibraltar sees 2500 percent spike in covid-19 cases by
"It's just . . ." - why I won't submit by Addison Reeves (excellent)
How an entire population falls into mass psychosis [3 min vid] After Skool
"You won't be able to leave the country" by Paul Joseph Watson
UK dials down COVID-19 app to ease self-isolation chaos by Alexander Zhang
"95% of the severe patients are vaccinated" [in Israel - due in US with 2 month delay] by Ran Israeli
Covid vaccines: the good, the bad, the ugly by Swiss Policy Research
The tests don't work! by Catte Black
My own country of Canada just kicked me out because my Covid immunity was acquired naturally and not from a vaccine by Rachel Marsden
Billionaires segregate themselves on luxury private islands as ordinary people told they can't travel by Paul Joseph Watson
"The EU would be condemning this as regime brutality if it was Russia but since it's Germany. . ." by Paul Joseph Watson
We have entered the eye of the Davos storm by Tom Luongo (right-wing, read anyway)
Paris yesterday @stillgray
The road to totalitarianism by CJ Hopkins
The CDC is a threat to science by Jeffrey A. Tucker
No food for unvaccinated Filipinos by Dreams of Eden
1.6 billion masks from 2020 will be in the ocean for 400 years, 7% the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by Visual Capitalist
"Saudi Arabia is being more progressive than America" [because vaccine passport] by Max Boot, now deleted [it's kewl to be 'progressive']
Sydney readies for the army [essentially declares martial law!] as lockdown fails to squash Delta outbreak [13 total deaths in 5 million people!] by Renju Jose and Byron Kaye
The Stasi had a giant smell register of dissidents (for police dogs) by Tobias Hollitzer, head of the Stasi Museum in Leipzig
French farmers spray shit on government building in Paris [2014 - we need a reprise!] LiveLeak
Fully vaccinated people are 65% more likely to be hospitalised and 1540% (15x) more likely to die due to Covid-19 than people who are unvaccinated latest Public Health England data (
PDF available here see Table 5)
Open opportunity: NHS framework agreement for the supply of direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) for the NHS in England [3.3 billion pounds - to fix too much spike?] ContractsFinder
['left' USians who worried about what 'Europe' thought of Trump: here is what they think of Bidenl by Ariel Zilber and Katelyn Caralle
[this is divide and conquer - vac/non-vac need to join and fight] by Sonali Paul
Seeing the harness but not the horse by Tim Watkins
Collaboration or resistance:
Part1,
Part2, and
Part3 by Connor Kelly
Streets of Paris, London, Milan, Sydney, Athens [the Americans are the 'surrender monkeys'!] by Camus
America has lost the trade war with China, and the real pain has yet to begin by Charles Hugh Smith
Gibraltar vac'd every eligible citizen by April - now they have the 3rd highest per capita rate of infection on Earth by Ian Clayton
World's recoverable oil now seen 9% slimmer; commercial volumes can keep global warming below 1.8 deg C Rystad Energy
COVID vaccine kill at 79% HIGHER rate than COVID in the UK, with younger victims by Maggie Zhou
'Zero COVID' catastrophe: participating nations see new records across the board by Jordan Schachtel
[Scotland Public Health data confirms vaac death rate at least 1 in 1000] Public Health Scotland
COVID-19 vaccine associated Parkinson's disease, a prion disease signal in the UK yellow card adverse event database [PDF] by J. Bart Classen, MD
Yeadon sums it up by Mike Yeadon
"Participation in medical trials is not considered compatible with aviation medical certification" [hah! - killed off too many pilots, eh?] Transport Canada
France rises up against the new fascism by Paul Cudenc
60% of people being admitted to UK hospitals for covid are vaccinated [same as vaccination rate so no effect of vaccination] Reuters
Massive anti-mandate demo in Paris [completely censored from 'news'] by Election Wizard (see also huge demo in
Toulouse)
Macron the great vaccinator is heading for another slap in the face by Daniel Miller
Something odd is going on in the EU: surges in vaccinated countries but not in unvaccinated countries by Corona Realism
South Africa Unrest Tracker
The credibility trap by Kevin McKernan (somebody may have gotten to him)
Horrible man won't take second dose of vaccine after wife died of blood clot by Marko Marjanovic
A catastrophe unveils itself by Gilad Atzmon
[Economist poll: over 40% of Brits want permanent rule preventing unvaccinated from travelling abroad?! - 'Stockholm' country!] Lockdown Skeptics
"Proof that puts an end to the Sars-CoV-2 Narrative" [17m vid] by Sucharit Bhakdi
NIAID, Moderna had COVID vaccine candidate in December 2019 by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Surgeon who operated on young Italian vaccine victim: 'You have never seen anything like this' [trans. from
Italian] Il Piccolo
Makers say vaccines cut chance of dying by 10x, but age cuts it by up to 15,000x by Marko Majanovic
Spike proteins mounted in cell membranes of capillaries cause shower of microclots in brain and elsewhere Dr. Charles Hoffe [N.B.: his town Lytton BC burned to ground on Jun 29]
Gain of function gaslighting by Dr. Sam Bailey
see Table 4 - death rate from delta for vaccinated ~10x higher than for unvaccinated [pdf] SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England, Technical briefing 16
Vaccinated Israeli teen infects 83 peers with COVID after catching the virus from vaccinated relative by Frankie Stockes
Boris, don't give in to the neurotic middle classes by Brendan O'Neill
What I am seeing happening in the world of Covid now by Meryl Nass
Are the zombies here already? from Rixon Stewart
Whitney Webb interview [video] by Reiner Fuellmich
Did Hancock jump or was he pushed? by Rhoda Wilson
London's Freedom Weekend by Joanna Sharp
Pfizer's COVID vaccine could become most lucrative drug in world (already 2nd most!) by Megan Redshaw
The war on reality by CJ Hopkins
Whilst you've been distracted by Hancock's affair, PHE released a report revealing 62% of alleged covid deaths are people who've been vaccinated by Humans Are Free
[your daily MSM propaganda - purposeful mistranslation of Putin remarks] by ziohedage
Pseudopandemic - we can win by Iain Davis
A "leap" toward humanity's destruction by Whitney Webb
Nice demo! by Kate Dennett
Now *that's* a real demo! :-} Hugo Talks
[well deserved trial for WHO chief scientist in India] by Brian Wang
Losing the plot on COVID by Dan Rabil
[this filth should have been fired for the vicious lockdown, not a silly kiss] ziohedge
Soon they will come after you by EarthNewspaper.com
Geneva rendevous by Israel Shamir
The safety of COVID-19 vaccinations - we should rethink the policy by H. Walach et al., 2021 (to prevent 3 deaths by vaccination requires 2 vaccine-caused deaths of on-average younger people)
Evidence for increased breakthrough rate of SARS-CoV-2 variants of convern in BNT162b2 mRNA vaccinated individuals by Kustin et al., 2021
Four future scenarios by Rutilius Namatianus
You are being groomed by Amazing Polly
Dr. Peter A. MoCullough (session 56) Fearless Nation
WHO issues critical guidance urging children and adolescents stop getting Covid-19 vaccines by Teodrose Fikremariam
[see Table 4: no effect of vac on preventing death from the Delta scariant] [PDF] Technical briefing 16 from gov.uk
The technosphere chokes on a chip by Dmitri Orlov
BBC reporter chased to behind police lines neilsmith2006
The peril of politicizing science by Anna I. Krylov
Is a "climate lockdown" on the horizon? by Kit Knightly
NHS told to identify patients actually sick from Covid-19 rather than those testing positive SOTT comments on UK Independent article
Medical professionals commenting on their vaccine experiences Medscape (!)
Historians will look back on lockdowns as 'most catastrophic event of all human history' by Steve Watson
[simple vitamin D amazingly effective for preventing ICU admission and death for severe covid - full Spanish study] by Nogues et al., 2021
The kitsch covid aesthetic by Sinead Murphy
Pakistan's Punjab province will block SIM cards of unvaccinated RT
The can of worms [small flub: the spike protein is not a prion but contains some short prion-like sequences] by Israel Shamir
Not a shred of doubt: Sweden was right by Eyal Shahar
"Our oppressors are very frightened people" Brian Gerrish interviewed by Rainer
WHO's cheif scientist served with legal notice for disinformation and suppression of evidence by Colin Todhunter
Excellent short speech from Dutch Politician Thierry Baudet [1.5min vid] Rise or Die
WHO celebrates as Indian health regulator removes ivermectin from its Covid-19 protocol [pure evil!] by Nick Corbishley
Uttar Pradesh: Village refuses Covid vaccine, power supply goes off by Piyush Srivastava
The "amazing" Chinese bioweapon that kills only the most frail, leaving the target ntaion MORE ready for war by Marko Marjanovic
[a Canadian little Eichmann responds to a question about ivermectin] by AL_Maplewood
Published letter to the editor censored from BMJ for 'spreading disinformation' by K Polyakova
Bioethics of experimental COVID vaccine deployment under EUA by TrialSite Staff
COVID is over, if you want it by Margaret Anna Alice
Do you really think China did it? Really, they started this pandemic at the Wuhan Lab? Armchair Covid Sleuth
UK Column News 31st May 2021 by Brian Gerrish, Mike Robinson, and David Scott
Giant, completely unreported, London protest on May 29 Prof Norman Fenton
[London protests growing] RT
COVID-19 'has NO credible natural ancestor' and was created by [US/CIA funded!] Chinese scientists who then tried to cover their tracks with 'retro-engineering' to make it seem like it naturally arose from bats by Josh Boswell
After Mexico City introduced ivermectin plan, COVID hospitalizations and deaths disappeared by David McLoone
Bill Needlehands [pic] (censored from reddit, saved by Henry Makow)
"I don't know of a bigger story in the world" right now than Ivermectin: so why are journalists not covering it? by Nick Corbishley
Greetings from new normal Germany by CJ Hopkins
Ivermectin crushes Delhi cases by Justus R. Hope, M.G.
The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 doe not rule out a laboratory origin by R. Segreto and Y. Deigin (2020)
Breaking the silence on the origins of Covid-19 [ignore his looney comments on covid death estimates] by Ron Unz
Everything is on fire by Egon von Greyerz
"China has won unprecedented people's war against biological warfare amid the attack of the COVID pandemic" by Chen Ping (trans. by Jennifer Zeng)
Covid-10 vaccines: in the rush for regulatory approval, do we need more data? by Peter Doshi
A final warning to humanity from former Pfizer chief scientist Michael Yeadon [video] planetlockdown (Apr 26) (original
original here)
Israel hits Red Crescent building RT
Don't mention ivermectin; it'll upset the vaccine rollout by Andrew Bannister
Israel punishes media for reporting its escalation in Palestine by b
The same pattern everywhere? by Mike Whitney
1,000 lawyers and 10,000 doctors have filed a lawsuit for violoations of the Nuremberg Code by Soren Dreier
Impact of COVID vaccinations on mortality by Joel Smalley
(screen grabs
here)
The criminalization of dissent by CJ Hopkins
The Monotti Protocol for keeping society open by Robin Monotti Graziadei
[but why did Eric Clapton take the shots?] by Mordechai Sones
SARS-CoV-2 mass vaccination: Urgent questions on vaccine safety that demand answers from international health agencies, regulatory authorities, governments and vaccine developers [PDF] by R. Bruno, P. McCullough et al. 2021 (57 authors)
Insider view: tragedy of the US deep state by Pepe Escobar
[Nuremberg II is coming!] Corona Ausschuss
The Israeli People Committee's April report on the lethal impact of vaccinations [1 in 5000] by Gilad Atzmon
[Somebody accidentally let actual journalists in!] US State Department presser
Fauci: pay attention to what India did by Joel S. Hirschhorn
Silicon valley algorithm manipulation is the only thing keeping mainstream media alive by Caitlin Johnstone
Halt vaccine passports! It's illegal, medical apartheid by Dr. Mike Yeadon
COVID vaccines: necessity, efficacy, and safety by Doctors for Covid Ethics
12 million possible adverse events after vaccination in UK, Europe and the US - over 12,000 deaths reported soon after vaccination by Gerry Brady
Change away from successful treatments due to Big Pharma pressure likely cause of COVID death catastrophe in India by Joel S. Hirschhorn
NHS nurse speaks to UK column news [written statement read out] UK Column News
India: what does the current data say? [short vid] by Ivor Cummins
India's health ambasssador & Tamil actor Vivek dies one day after taking COVID vaccine Great Game India
Merkel's total corona dictatorship Michael Mannheimer interview with Andrea Haberl (brave AfD policition)
[Special issue editors resign after Frontiers chief executive censors already positively reviewed ivermectin paper] by Catherine Offord
Companies profit by quanantining new hires by Kinsey Nordlund
16-year-old boy undergoes emergency clot removal surgery after Pfizer vaccination: "unequivocally a side effect of the vaccine" by Mordechai Sones
Most of my peers agree with me; but they are threatened and keep silent [short vid] by Michael Yeadon, from vid censored from youtube
[BMJ: let's destroy the control group before the trial is even close to ending] by J.A. Singh et al.
Huge turn out for anti-lockdown freedom rally in London [vid] by Coronavirus Plushie
Police chased out of Hyde Park after attacking peaceful protest [vid] Resistance GB
Corona unmasked [PDF draft exerpt] by Karina Reiss and Sicharit Bhakdi
Woman with giant blister after Covid vaccine insists people should still get it by Faye Brown
The Covidian Cult (Part II) by CJ Hopkins
An interview with Richard Elbright by Jorge Casesmeiro Roger
No future for you . . . th? by John Waters
Hannibal Lecter fakes his 'shot' (hah! now give back your vac propaganda money Anthony!!) Coronavirus Plushie
The Gibraltar massacre by Gilad Atzmon
On the verge of war in eastern Ukraine w/Mark Sleboda [video] The Barricade (and/or
GrayZone interview.
Norwegian Institute of Public Health - bleeding occurs in 3% of recipients of adenovirus vector vaccines by Meryl Nass
Monopoly: an overview of the Great Reset [excellent video] by Vrouwen
Voor Vrijheid (Women for Freedom, The Netherlands) go
here for direct rumble link
Pure, unalloyed evil by Mike Whitney
Appaling greed, vaccine failure, model-muddle, fakery, and falsehood at the heart of UK COVID 19 plans by John Ward
Latest vaccine flip-flop gives the vaccine game away by Meryl Nass
[spike protein ACE2 binding activates platelets causing clots] by Si Zhang et al.
[the third Li-Meng Yan paper] by Li-Meng Yan, Shu Kang, Jie Guan, and Shanchang Hu
The WHO confirms that the covid-19 test is flawed: estimates of 'positive cases' are meaningless. The lockdown has no scientific basis by Michel Chossudovsky
Wealth of world's billionaires surges $4 trillion during pandemic year by Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo (report
here).
Your gov't is lying to you in a way that could lead to your death Patrick Delaney interview with Michael Yeadon
Brits at pubs will have to register on government tracking app, hand over phones by Steve Watson
Open thread #7 by vineyard saker
Bombshell book in Germany revives 9/11 as a business model by Pepe Escobar
"The resurgence in both hospitalisations and deaths [this coming Fall] is [i.e., will be] dominated by those that have received two doses of the vaccine" [PDF] point 32 in latest SAGE (!) report on expected third UK wave
SARS-CoV-2 prion-like domains in spike proteins enable higher affinity to ACE2 by George Tetz and Victor Tetz
[The 'Independent' - if you won't carry a vaccine passport, you should be under house arrest] by Sean O'Grady
Israel: why is all-cause mortality increasing? by Swiss Policy Research
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich interview with Michael Mross [16 min subtitled video]
Biden regime playing with fire on Ukraine by Stephen Lendman
Fred Reed, Joe Biden, and John Cassavetes by Linh Dinh (back among the living!)
Tanzania's late president Magufuli: 'science denier' or threat to empire? by Jeremy Lofredo and Whitney Webb
Death of an Afrian freedom fighter by Celia Farber
The harsh reality of vaccine adverse effects [and 'treatments'] [video] by Nicola
The neocons may have anger issues by Andrei Martyanov
Understanding the anti-Putin PSYOPs: preparing for war by vineyard saker
As Russian tanks move toward Ukraine [N.B.: in response to Zelensky's declaration of war on Crimea] the globe braces for possibility of war by Michael Snyder
Second Nuremberg tribunal has been prepared The Great Reject
The "unvaccinated" question by C.J. Hopkins
Israel - Pfizer's chosen people [video] by Freedom Israel
The ugly truth about the Covid-19 lockdowns [video] by Nick Hudson, co-founder PANDA
"Why is this crucial data not collected?" MP to Matt Hancock
[article on 'end of industrial society' that somehow manages to avoid ever mentioning energy!] by Samo Burja
[overall COVID IFR is 0.15% -> 99.85% survival] by John Ioannidis
In quest of a multipolar economic world order by Pepe Escobar and Michael Hudson
[UK] Supreme court judge expects people will be forced to wear masks, stay home for ten years by Steven Watson
University shuts down world-renowned aluminum expert's research after big pharma sets up shop on campus by Chidren's Health Defense
One year to flatten life as we knew it by Rob Slane
Parents told to leave airplane because their child does not wear a mask. All the passengers decided to walk out with them LightTruthpaper
[Australian feral cat hunting project raging success] ziohedge
PCP papers laid alleging pandemic fraud against Hancock, Whitty, Vallance & Ferguson The Bernician
5000 pound fine for *leaving* the UK without a 'reasonable excuse' by Henry Martin, Daniel Martin, and David Churchill
[make a forbidden post, the Facebook accounts of your *readers* are suspended] by CJ Hopkins
[too many people (servile press says 'hundreds') for the police to comtrol (yay!)] by Anna Brees
The overthrow of Evo Morales and the first lithium war by Thierry Meyssan
Worldwide rally for freedom Off-Guardian
[*70%* of German health care workers *don't* want the vaccine - maybe they know something?!] Reuters
Our digital gulag by James Corbett
[most important graph of world energy use: all wind and solar didn't even cover yearly increases] Our World In Data
"I would probably prefer to have natural immunity" - viral immunologist talk by Byram Bridle
NID1, CNTN1, and APOA4 specific to SARS-CoV-2, not SARS-COV by Roland Baker
Mutations in the G-H loop region of ephrin-B2 can enhance Nipah virus binding and infection by et al. and Zhengli Shi (gain of function expts in a virus with 75% mortality by the bat woman in 2011)
Health minister in critical condition just one day after receiving covid vaccine ["His condition is not considered to be related to the vaccine"] by The Daily Expose
Tanzania - the second covid coup? [Burundi was first] by Kit Knightly
Have you had your jab yet? [80% of soldiers on HMAS Sydney fell ill with eight in ICU] by Savant (Daily Mail article on topic scrubbed, then backup on WayBack machine scrubbed 12 hours later)
Urgent open letter from doctors and scientists to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 vaccine safety concerns by Sucharit Bhakdi et al.
GcMAF - the persecution of David Noakes and Lyn Thyer by Iain Davis (May 2019)
Is Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche right? [probably not] by Will Jones
Evidence, Risks, and Misunderstandings [video] by John P.A. Ioannidis
A zero sum game by Tim Watkins
Beware of a central bank digital currency by Daniel Lacalle
[Ras Tanura hit with drone attack] ziohedge
[Pfizer asks for Argentina's bank reserves and military bases as collateral against vaccine adverse affects lawsuits] [video] by Gravitas
25% of residents in German nursing home died after Pfizer vaccine (forcibly administered with soldiers present) by Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer (full video
here)
MP's and SAGE heavily invested in vaccine industry by Robert Redfern
Israeli health ministry: Pfizer vaccine killed 'about 40 times more elderly than the disease itself would have killed' by Patrick Delaney
[Ebola: the new fake outbreak] by Jon Rappoport
[Alas London! -
now home of the silly 'black bus of doom' and volunteer covidiots walking
around with
20 pound teevees strapped to their backs by Hugo Talks
The great 2021 bimodal cusp catastrophe - what will prevail? freedom or tyranny? by Clive Maund
The US airstrike on Syria: meet the new boss, same as the old boss, and the boss before that by Scott Ritter
The fake covid "pandemic" is the excuse for 'voluntary' concentration camps by Soren Roest Korsgaard
WHO insiders blow the whistle on total immunity of Bill Gates through GAVI interview with Dr. Astrid Stcukelberger and Dr.Silvia Behrendt
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla admits Israel is the 'world's lab' by Gilad Atzmon
[black member of London's 'statue diversity' commission dumped after crossing the linw] Josh Salisbury
[the UK's N.B.: voluntary side effects reporting scheme (cf. US VAERS) on the experimental mRNA vaccine side effects and death] www.gov.uk
['Biden' back to bombing Syria as ISIS's air force while stealing its oil - war now on for a decade] ziohedge
China say it will stop using anal swabs on US diplomats by Viola Zhou
Synthetic mRNA covid vaccines - a risk-benefit analysis by Sadaf Gilani (excellent overview)
Scientific evidence COVID-19 virus originated in a laboratory by Dr. Lawrence Sellin (Ret.)
The Chinese military, its links to US funding and the laboratory origin of COVID-19 by Dr. Lawrence Sellin
[It's takes the Daily Mail to finally publicly out the vile 'unplugged incubator babies' lies of our NYT] by Laura Collins
Bibi, Pfizer and the election by Gilad Atzmon
Spain: second Pfizer shots halted after 46 nursing home residents die after the first shot by
The largest experiment on humans ever seen by Rob Slane
46 residents in Spanish nursing home die after receiving COVID-19 vaccine [coinky-dink, of course - incl's refs to many other coniky-dinks]
Whistleblower from Berlin nursing home: the terrible dying after vaccination by 2020News
Controlling the left: the impage edge-enda by Paul Cudenc
January 2021: massive excess mortality [UK] by Nick Kollerstrom
"This is the ninth Coalition convoy to enter Syria since the beginning of 2021" ['Biden' re-starts Syria war] BasNews
Urgent warning on COvid-19 vaccine-related deaths in the elderly and care homes by UK Medical Freedom
Good morning, Albania! by Linh Dinh
Mass manipulation - how it works by Robert Cialdini and Peter Koenig
How can this be? All residents and staff vaccinated for Covid, then all test positive and 7 die, after zero prior cases by Dr. Meryl Nass
Wokeyleaks by they/them
Dr. Vernon Coleman: doctors and nursese giving the Covid-19 vaccine will be tried as war criminals [video] by Dr. Vernon Coleman
"I don't want to live any more" the child said to her mother by Rd. Rudolf Hansel
Oligarchy in Russia - Navalny's telling mistake by John Helmer
Tbe billionaire takeover of civil society by Roslyn Fuller (excellent)
A brief examination of some facts related to mass vaccination by Gilad Atzmon
[Anti-lockdown protests spreading in the EU] by Publius
Are EV's good for environment? - mostly not by Bruce Wilds
Eurostar near collapse by Nick Corbishley
Covid Odyessy by John Lord Griffin
[Lockdown 2021 starts with Chinese building massive quarantine camps] main sewer media
Biden-linked WHO advisor: 'wet market covid origin a lie, probably leak from NIH-funded WIV lab' ziohedge
[mandatory mask enforcement: we must stop this from happening here!!] by Zol Neveri
Gibraltar [now up to 53 dead] by Keith Rushworth
Freedom Airway Corbett interview of Dolores Cahill
Summary of events: Part III (other parts above/below) by Maribel Tuff
Interview with Peter Daszak early Dec 2019: "You can get the sequence, you can build the protein, insert into backbone of another virus . . ." by Vincent Racaniello
WHO inspector on camera revealing coronavirus manipulation in Wuhan before pandemic by Keoni Everington
German quarantine breakers to be held in refugee camps, detention centers by Lee Brown
Anteroom of our own extinction by John Steppling
Norway vaccine fatalities among people 75 and older rise to 29, but 'not alarming' [1 in 1000 deaths not alarming?] by Lars Erik Taraldsen
[Don't break that seal!] TruthAbtChina
Latest COVID absurdity: walking with hot beverages by Simon Black
[23 vaccine deaths in Norway, 1 in 1000: "For those who have a very short remaining life span, the benefits are ... irrelevant" - i.e., the very people the vaccine was designed to save!] ziohedge
Published papers and data on locdown weak efficacy - and lockdown huge harms by Ivor Cummins (ignore the keto nonsense)
Biden and power by force by Thierry Meyssan
Hyperbolic COVID modelling oracle predicts nothing more than typical winter flu season by John C.A. Manley
First care home to receive vaccine in Scotland hit with new Covid outbreak by Gordon Blackstock
UK gov't may only let people out once a week by Steve Watson
The emergence of the pandemic industrial complex by Brian Berletic (=Tony Cartalucci)
South Africa bans ivermectin, a lifesaver for covid - will the US be next? by Dr. Meryl Nass
We are at war by Peter Koenig
[lab leak, Pottinger, whistleblower] by Abul Taher
[clean energy 'upgrade', CCP style] by Jennifer Zeng
The involvement of CCP in the genesis of the worldwide covid lockdown by Michael P. Senger
Brutal countries where you can be killed for breaking covid rules by Jamie Micklethwaite
Welcome home by Jennifer Zeng
How Data-Driven Government and the Internet of Bodies Are Poised To Transform Smart Sustainable Cities Into Social Impact Prisons by Alison McDowell
The cradle of democracy under lockdown by Mark Crispin Miller
Pharmaceutical factory on fire after explosion [it produced raw materials for hydroxychloroquine] Taiwan English News
The WHO deletes naturally acquired immunity from its website by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Lockdowns do not control the coronavirus: the evidence by AIER staff
London: wake the f*** up by Spencer Morgan
Year zero by CJ Hopkins
2020 - the year we lost the plot by Rob Slane
LGBT activist calls for ALL children to be put on puberty blockers by Zinnia
Part 1: It's not a social dilemma: it's the calculated destruction of the social by Cory Morningstar
Part 2: The Facebook enclosure of Africa by Cory Morningstar
Part 3: The great reset: the final assault on the living planet by Cory Morningstar
Jack Dorsey, the CIA, and Twitter censorship in the age of Covid-19 by Vanessa Beeley
Accomplished pharma prof thown in psych hospital after queestioning official COVID narrative by Jeanne Smits
We need to talk about PCR (vs. lateral flow test) by Michael Yeadon
The dehumanising danger of social media by Josephine Bartosch
[anaphylactic shock vaccine responses, possibly from anti-PEG antibodies from previous PEG-containing vaccines] ziohedge
UK requres 'resuscitation facilities' at corona vaccine centres after allergic reactions by Kurt Zindulka
[China is stockpiling oil] ziohedge
[Chinese twitter bots and the lockdown campaign] by Michael P. Senger
Great news for the 'theatre'! by CJ Hopkins
[the Drosten test - the basis of this entire charade - is a disaster!] by Kevin McKernan (excellent, informative as usual!)
We know the COVID-19 vaccine is safe because . . . because it's called a vaccine by Marko Marjanovic
[Covid doesn't do first class] by Paul Joseph Watson
'Like horse-mounted cavalry against tanks': Turkey has perfected new, deadly way to wage war, using militarized 'drone swarms' by Scott Ritter
Vitamin D Insufficiency May Account for Almost Nine of Ten COVID-19 Deaths: Time to Act by Hermann Brenner and Ben Schottker
British elite army unit to spy on and combat 'anti-vax militants' by Gabriel Pogrund and Tim Ripley
"New Order" (Nuevo orden) trailer by Michel Franco
External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results by P. Borger et al.
French protesters set fire to central bank [strike the root, eh?] by ziohedge
Japan: more people died of suicide in October than due to COVID-19 in 2020 by Riya Baibhawi
Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling by Patrick Basham
Stop the press: the 20 percent solution by T.P. Wilkinson
Another prominent emergency physician unjustly fired in the middle of COVID crisis the Liberty Beacon
[if not for the video, he would have still been in jail!] by ziohedge
The Covid-19 celebrity humanitarianism - Sean Penn and the Great Reset, funded by Bill Gates and the Clinton Foundation by Vanessa Beeley
Covid-19 mortality: a matter of vulnerability among nations facing limited margins of adaptation by Q. De Larochelambert et al.
[for kids: non-removable bracelets - no prob] by Ivor Cummins
Given the new data we must downgrade the severity of this pandemic by Sanjeev Sabholk
US-UK intel agencies declare cyber war on independent media by Whitney Webb
Which side are you on? [video] by James Corbett
Former chief scientific advisor, Pfizer: It's over [yanked from youtube in 2 hrs] by Michael Yeadon
[smearing Carl Heneghan] Pravda (oh sorry, I meant the Guardian)
'The Germans' are back! by C.H. Hopkins
They think you're stupid by Paul Joseph Watson
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: COVID19 vaccine should be avoided at all cost by Robert F. Kennedy Jr
German doctor raided by armed police during live youtube stream ['1984' redux!] by Paul Joseph Watson
Effectiveness of adding a mask recommendation to other public health measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in Danish mask wearers by B. Bundgaard et al.
Klaus Schwab: Great reset will "lead to a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity" by Paul Joseph Watson
COVID-19 lockdowns over 10 times more deadly than pandemic itself by Revolver News (31 Aug 2020)
The new 9/11: a global virus pandemic by Soren Roest Korsgaard
The psychology of control: social media and the frontlines of the reality war @perceptualflaws (2018)
[$66,600 fine for refusing comppulsory vaccination in Australia] investmentwatchblog
Day 18 of huge anti-lockdown protests in Genova by Robin Monotti Graziadei
Beyond crucial update on viral issue [video] by Ivor Cummins
The raw material challenges facing the energy transition from oil to minerals [talk] by Simon P. Michaux
The narrative problem after peak oil by Tim Watkins (good article, but disappointingly hoodwinked by covid in his other articles)
The war is over... Globocap triumphs! by C.J. Hopkins
Go, Leipzig! disclose.tv
UK clarifies lockdown can be broken for the purpose of seeking euthanasia by BBC
Klaus Schwab and his great fascist reset by winter oak
The controlled demolition of the American Empire by Charlie Robinson and Jeff Berwick
Crucial viral update [video] by Ivor Cummins
Brave Cornish NHS nurse publicly resigns, blasts COVID lockdown policy by Paul Joseph Watson
The Covid-19 RT-PCR test: how to mislead all humanity using a "test" to lock down society by Dr. Pascal Sacre
NSW police blow whistle on coronavirus deception [hopeful!] by Tony Mobilifonitis
Darktrace and Cybereason: the intelligence front companies seeking to subjugate the world with AI by Johnny Vedmore
Critique of data sending UK into lockdown meltdown [video] by Ivor Cummins
The covid physician's true coronavirus timeline by The Covid Physician
Lockdown recreated a pre-modern caste system by Marko Marjanovic
The dictators have taken over - and we didn't even notice by Peter Hitchens
The covid-19 genocide of 2020 ['A+' for spirit! we must fight back!] by Claire Edwards
The 'Great Reset' for dummies by Tessa Lena (superb)
Let's do the maths ... by Nick Kollerstrom
Security guard alerted to Manchester bomber says he didn't report terrorist for fear of being branded "racist" by Paul Joseph Watson
Welcome to covidworld by Ian James Kidd and Matthew Ratcliffe
New data leak from the Pentagon biolaboratory in Georgia by Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
Dirty diplomats and CNN hacks cast a shadow over London foreign office by Martin Jay (Michelle Kosinski canoe vid
here)
[the first RCT on masks and covid: but no journal brave enough to publish it] by Alex Berenson
Who voted in Davos? Blockchain government, 'smart' cities and 'social impact' prisons [incl. disgraceful cameo from now-gatekeeper Naomi Klein!] [video] by Alison Hawver McDowell
Klaus Schwab and his great fascist reset - an overview by Cory Morningstar
Wave of anti-lockdown protests sweeps across Europe by Jemma Carr
There's no justification for another lockdown [video] interview with Ivor Cummins
Where is the evidence for the existence for the so-called virus 'SARS-COV-2' and the accuracy of the tests? by Kevin P. Corbett
Lockdowns are in lockstep with the great reset by Mathew Maavak (excellent)
The three groups of mask wearers by Kate Shemirani
People prevented from buying "non essential" items due to lockdown by Paul Joseph Watson
Infodemiology: resistance grows but the public remains dumbed down by Ian Fantom
Whose great reset? the fight for our future by Joaquin Flores
Red redux? by Linh Dinh
SARS-CoV-2: lab origin hypothesis gains traction [rambling, many excerpts, debates] by Annette Gartland
SARS CoV 2 lab origin hypothesis gains traction by Annette Gartland
Where to find channels after massive youtube purge by Sarah Westall
Oct 20th shocking data - societies (Ireland) ruined for near nothing [video] by Ivor Cummins
Deaths at home from dementia and Alzheimers's [sic -> mostly heart attacks!] soar [double!] during coronavirus [sic -> lockdowns!] by Rory Sullivan (I fixedthe article title!)
Peru has the toughest lockdown in the world and still ended up with the worst fatality rate by Daniel Hannan
Positive association between COVID-19 deaths and influenza vaccination rates in elderly people worldwide by Christian Wehenkel
A no-feel Sexxit? RT
IMF seizes on pandemic to pave way for privatization in 81 countries by Alan Macleod
What's behind the WHO's lockdown mixed-messaging by Stacey Rudin
[Ioannidis meta analysis: IFR=0.23% only slightly worse than flu] [accepted WHO PDF] by John P.A. Ioannidis
The Covidian cult by C.J. Hopkins
Former chief science officer for Pfizer says "second wave" fakes on false-posiive COVID tests, "pandemic is over" by Ralph Lopez
Politician raises alarm over Trudeau Govt's plan to buikld COVID 'Quarantine/Isolation camps [before mic cut] by Anthony Murdoch
Google memory-holes the Great Barrington Declaration [I signed it] ziohedge
"We really to appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as our primary control method" by Dr. David Nobarro, WHO, Oct 8
Morning in hell by John Steppling
WHO (accidentally) confirms Covid is no more dangerous than flu by Kit Knightly
Nicolae Ceausescu last speech, 1989 - the dam breaks [video] youtube
Why are they doing this? by Ivor Cummins
[COVID-19 test kit patented in 2015?]
Correcting Britain's vitamin D deficiency could save thousands of lives [*25x* reduction in intensive care admits!!] by Matt Ridley
Is a mask necessary in the operating theatre? [PDF] by Neil W.M. Orr (1981)
At least 15,000 people cram Trafalgar Square in rally against lockdown by Raven Saunt and Faith Ridler
AIDS hysteria prefigured covid hysteria by Neville Hodgkinson
Democracy muzzled by Peter Hitchens
Unexplained excess deaths at home almost nine times higher than those from Covid by Sarah Knapton
Will a second covid-19 lockdown coincide with a no-deal Brexit? by Steven Guinness
"Your'e all gonna be under a bloody dictatorship" by Paul Joseph Watson
[jobs for crisis actors in Australia] by Jordan Williams
Letter from Robert in the UK - "Let me explain" by Austrian Peter
[indefinite detention/child separation bill passed in Austrialia for 15 active Melbourne covid cases] COVID-19 Emergency Measures and other acts amendment bill 2020
Open letter from medical doctors and health professionals to all Belgian authorities and all Belgian media Docs for Open Debate
Twice as many deaths in lockdown England compared to free Sweden by John C.A. Manley
Corona coup: Tobias Ellwood of 77th brigade demands Bojo hand over control to MoD [video] by Scott Creighton
When is covid, covid? by Elizabeth Spencer et al., Center For Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford
12 steps to create your own pandemic by Nils Nilsen
The Great Scampede or the Iron Heel revisited by Wiliam Bowles (excellent)
Spontaneous initiative that unites scientists, doctors, lawyers and free citizens from all over the world by International Free Choice
Excess mortality during the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) by Charlie Giattino et al.
From blue shirts to brown by Alan Hamilton
[*no* reduction in hospitalization or mortality from flu shot in old people - sample size: 7.6M UK deaths] by Michael L. Anderson, Carlos Dobkin, and Devon Gorry
[new UK law: DNA samples from covid tests retained for 'national security'] legislation.gov.uk
Staggering number of extra deaths in community is not explained by covid-19 by Shaun Griffin, BMJ
Contrived spectacles of 'protecting and caring for the people' by Thomas Harrington
COVID-911: from homeland security to biosecurity [video] James Corbett Report
The global police state is swiftly rising by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
Are you ready for the "No one could have known" routine? by Thomas Harrington
Evidence keeps piling up: lockdowns down't work by Ryan McMaken
[The Lancet study: earlier and longer lockdowns resulted in *worse* outcomes] by Joost Hopman and Shaheen Mehtar
Viral issue crucial update Sept 8th: the science, logic and data explained by Ivor Cummins (superb overview)
COVID - Why terminology really, really matters by Malcolm Kendrick
COVID 19 - the UK Scamdemic - Part 2 by Iain Davis
The Melbourne syndrome by Steve Kates
Just how deep is your coronavirus religion? by John Tamny
Covid death rates dropped as doctors rejected ventilators Henry Bodkin
Meet the "Violet" successors to the White Helments' Syria propaganda throne by Vanessa Beeley
New Normal Gleichschaltung by C.J. Hopkins
They missed their timeline [12 min video] by Dale H (from
Ole Dammegard)
Summer flu is now more deadly than Covid [UK] by Ross Clark
The jab: featuring GlaxoSmithKline [7 min video] by Children's Health Defense
COVID-19: trigger for a new world. Economic stagnation and social destruction by Patrick Hennigsen
Confess to COVID by Dr. T.P. Wilkinson (excellent!)
Are face masks effective? The evidence. by Swiss Propaganda Research
The Covid 19 scamdemic by Iain Davis
The fatal attraction of techno-fascism by Mark Petrakis
Is the UN preparing for the "second covid lockdown"? by Peter Koenig
Devon nurse, empty beds, no covid in Devon hospitals by Jason Liosatos
London demo, 29 Aug: Stop New Normal Unite for freedom
At least 13 killed in Peru nightclub stampede triggered by police 'social distancing' raid zerohedge
Are you ready for the "No one could have known" routine? by Thomas Harrington
Dispatches from the war: the trial of John Q Citizen by Jon Rapapport
What now? by Tuomas Malinen
[actual covid doctor vs. the main sewer media (male interviewer before feed is cut: "we've lost control, haven't we?")- video: Spanish, subtitles]
Why the collapse of the US is inevitable while Russia will be spared by Dmitry Orlov
Peak oil in asia - part 2 by Matt Mushalik
The covid vaccine by Pascal Sacre
Covert moral enhancement by Kit Knightly
Wuhan pool party shows China is over the Covid-19 lockdowns; the rest of the world, not so much by Nebojsa Malic
The world's toughest lockdown has resulted in the world's highest COVID-19 death toll by Jordan Schachtel
Operation virus identification 2019: the elitist plan to remake society by Mike Whitney
Countering the second wave with facts, not misconceptions by Udi Qimron, Uri Gavish, Eyal Shahar, and Michael Levitt
A Proposed Origin for SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 Pandemic by Jonathan Latham (Jul16)
The coronavirus coup d'etat [video] good interview with Patrick Wood
[the new normal: children in cages] by Donya Bazaraa
The reaction of the left to lockdown by Darren Allen
COVID incoherence by Omar S. Khan
Global lockdown set to plunge 100 million into extreme [life threatening!] poverty
Sweden, which never had lockdown, sees COVID-19 cases plummet as rest of Europe suffers spike Newsweek
US and Russian intel at war: propaganda and coronavirus by Ronald Thomas West
Coronavirus lockdown could cause more than 70,000 excess [UK] deaths [more than covid] by Joame Morris
Australian doomsday cult gestapo by Kelsey Wilkie
Lebanon SITREP 2nd letter from a Lebanese friend to vineyard saker
Media grossly underestimates massive turnout at Berlin's "End of the Pandemic" protest by John C.A. Manley
The panopticon is already here [not just China, Ross!] by Ross Andersen
Fourth session of German Coronavirus inquiry reported by Toby
The UK's "excess deaths" are by far the youngest in Europe. Why? by Kit Knightly
[German 'thousands' anti-lockdown protest probably had 500,000 people] by Jurgen Elsasser
Democratic organ traders Southfront
AstraZeneca to be exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries by Ludwig Burger and Pushkala Aripaka
[UK] lockdown has killed 21,000 people, say experts by Laura Donnelly and Sarah Knapton
The biggest fraud: (part1) The hocus "science" behind the lockdown and
(part2) The vaccine swindle by Barry Norris
Sweden: the one chart that matters by Mike Whitney
Global destruction, the COVID-19 lockdown: economic and social impacts by Peter Koenig
We must inoculate ourselves against the crazy Anti-Retionalists by Iain Davis
Across Latin America gangs and jungle bolshies are enforcing their own COVID lockdowns by Ciara Nugent
The home-working revolution will derail the white collar gracy train by Allister Heath
Woopsie! lockdown may cost 200,000 lives, UK gov't report shows by Sarah Knapton
Coronavirus has unmasked a hostile ruling class that does not deserve our obedience by Christopher Roach
Your body, their choice by James Corbett
GloboCap uber alles by C.J. Hopkins
How a false hydroxychloroquine narrative was created by Meryl Nass
Bloodshed, tyranny and privation by Linh Dinh
Face masks turn us into voiceless submissives by Peter Hitchens
Greenwald, even tho no hero to me, ironically "cancelled" on "anti-cancel-culture" letter :-/ by zei_squirrel
The Battle of Seattle was fought by the pro-war "left" in northern Syria by Max Parry
Poor air quality correlated with substantially increase COVID-19 deaths by Lisa Winter
Coronavirus and regime change: Burundi's covid coup by Stinky, Edwige, and Mucho
Psychologically locked down by Rob Slane
[Deadly Bill Gates vaccine test: mortality hazard ratio: 5-10!!] by Soren Wengel Morgenesen et al., 2017
Why the Bill Gates golbal health empire promises more empire and less public health by Jeremy Loffredo and Michele Greenstein
Unwrapping the riddle of Srebrenica by Stephan Karganovic
[consultant at a major hospital in Surrey UK: no covid pandemic] by anonymous
The Queen of England owes me reparations by Kurt Nimmo
Remember the Red Guards by Peter van Buren
Bountygate: scapegoating systemic military failure in Afghanistan by Scott Ritter
A new brown deal by Tim Watkins
The new pathologized totalitarianism by C.J. Hopkins
The chain reaction is now in process by Max Rangeley
Evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was man-made [speculative: I still think 'man-made' is part of psyop] by Pierre Lescaudron
COVID19 PCR tests are scientifically meaningless by Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter
Re: WHO advising the use of masks in the genral population to prevent COVID-19 transmission [PDF] by OCLA (Ontario Civil Liberties Association)
Questions for lockdown apologists by John Pospichal
Empty coffins, empty hospital - Brazilian MPs expose biggest covid-19 hoax known to date Fort Russ news
[Biosecurity uber alles] [excellent video] by James Corbett
After the lockdowns, a global hunger crisis (and the mother of all migrant crises) by Arif Husain
Post-lockdown economic catastrophe by Malcolm Kendrick
All-cause mortality during COVID-19: no plague and a likely signature of mass homicide by government response [PDF] by D.G. Rancourt
The true cost of LOKIN-20 by Iain Davis
[why wasn't Neil Ferguson's stunning admission that Sweden was right front page news everywhere?] Daily Mail
Government eyes are watching you: we are all prisoners of the surveillance state by John W. Whitehead
My reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues by J.K. Rowling
Please just stop by Jeremy Harris
Vaccination: how the West invades the world by Job Rappoport
Global vaccine summit London June 2020 by Patrick Henningsen and Mike Robinson
Weimar 2020 by Gilad Atzmon
This has been the first global infodemic of the information age - but are we nowimmune? by Marko Marjanovic
[Friston undrinks the kool-aid!] by Freddie Sayers
[Lancent, NEJM retract big-pharma-supportive studies attacking hydroxychloroquine] by Catherine Offore
"It's all bullsh*t" - 3 leaks that sink the covid narrative by Kit Knightley
German official leaks report denouncing corona as 'Global False Alarm' by Daniele Pozzati
Coronavirus vaccine uncensored [video from Mar 27] by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
I've signed death certificates during Covid-19. Here's why you can't trust any of the statistics on the number of victims by Malcolm Kendrick
The REAL meaning behind Dominic Cumming breaking lockdown by Kit Knightly
Vaccine is now in a "race against virus disappearing" by Nicky Harley
Confirmed: Trump ordered Syria's wheat crop burned during pandemic by Steven Sahiounie
How the British Empire created and killed George Orwell by Martin Sieff
Brave new normal, part 2 by CJ Hopkins
Coronavirus Pandemic 2019: environment omitted by Jim West
Hunger, misery, chaos, brutality: the nightmare that is India's lockdown by Marko Marjanovic
Listening to the coronavirus 'experts' has led to death and despair by Ron Paul (libertarian, read anyway)
[Nature magazine is helping to root out thoughtcrime] by Neil F. Johnson et al.
Fear kills by Brendan O'Neill
The transformation of societies on the occasion of covid-19 hearalds the militarisation of Europe by Thierry Meyssan
Global capitalism, "world government" and the corona crisis by Michel Chossudovsky
Covid-1984 lockdown is a planetary psychological experiment - the end will not jistify the means by Penny for your thoughts
Debunking the narrative with Prof Dolores Cahill interview by David Cullen
Bill Gates plan to vaccinate the world the Corbett report
May 17: the date the Great Lockdown must en for everything bubble 2 pops by Ramin Mazaheri
The COVID Shockdown Doctrine - and how to beat it by Julian Rose
Are ventilators killing people? by Kit Knightly
COVID 19 is a statistical nonsense by Iain Davis
Government scientist Neil Ferguson [Dr. "Lockdown or Millions will Die!"] resigns after breaking lockdown rules to meet his married lover by Anna Mikhailova et al.
Virus of mass destruction by C.J. Hopkins (excellent!)
The farce and diabolical agenda of a "universal lockdown" by Peter Koenig
The COVID Rouge covers a Spanish beach in bleach 'to protect the children' by anti-empire
How covid alarmists waged biological warfare on nursing homes [UK] by Fraser Myers
Techno-tyranny: how the US national security state is using coronavirus to fulfull an Orwellian vision by Whitney Webb
Earth day, the state of the species by Nate Hagens
LOKIN-20: the lockdown regime causes increasing health concerns by Iain Davis
Yuri Bezmenov 1984 interview with G. Edward Griffin
Effective evil comment by Charlotte Russe
The question is what actually kills those people comment by Kalen
Security forces kill more Nigerians [enforcing the lockdown] than Covid-19 by BBC
COVID pandemic 2020: environment omitted by Jim West
Coronavirus lockdown and what you are not being told, part 1 by Iain Davis
8 more experts questioning the coronavirus panic off-guardian
Never has so little done so much harm to so many by Scott C. Tips (Apr04)
The house cat flu is coming: apocalypse meow by Michel Chossudovsky
Facebook 'fact checker' worked at Wuhan biolab; ruled out virus-leak while 'debunking' articles by zerohedge
No effect of lockdown on positive tests in Switzerland by Felix Scholkmann
Coronavirus: record weekly [half non-corona!] death toll as fearful patients avoid hospitals by Kat Lay
Using ILI surveillance to estimate state-specific case detection rates and forecast SARS-CoV-2 spread in the United States [it *is* same deadliness as flu] by Justin D. Silverman, Nathaniel Hupert, and Alex D. Washburne
Jeremy Corbyn was defeated because he refused to defend himself against the Israel lobby by Asa Winstanley
[Euro style: I'm over it] by Ferrari
Brave new normal by C.J. Hopkins
Are ventilators killing more people than they are saving? by Mike Whitney
Total system failure will give rise to new economy [Pepe smokes good dope!] by Pepe Escobar
The pandemic is a portal by Arundhati Roy
Stability issue of RT-PCR testing of SARS-CoV-2 for hospitalized patients clinically diagnosed with COVID-19 [the PCR test *doesn't* work!] by Li et al.
Think deep, do good science and do not panic! by Daniel Jeannonod, Roxannne Jeanmonod and Francis Neirynck
The eurodollar market by Michael Every
Coronavirus: seven questions for public health post-mortem analysis by Niall McCrae and Roger Watson
Getting the economy wrong by Tim Watkins
Covid-19 in proportion by UK architect & IT guy
[common sense from an old lung doctor] www.wodarg.com thru google translate
The worst economic collapse ever? by Tuomas Malinen
A Swiss doctor on Covid-19 [bump to top] Swiss Propaganda Research
European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action euroMOMO
The war on death by C.H. Hopkins
The coronavirus and Galileo by Dr. Stefano Montanari
The things you CANNOT say about coronavirus by James Corbett
Could the Covid19 response be more deadly than the virus? by Kevin Ryan
Coronavirus: how to understand the death toll [unexpected common sense from the BBC] Nick Triggle
"We are suffering from a media epidemic" by Prof. John Oxford
[why NY? - the most old people of any US city by far!] by Jen Hood
[alas, Caitlin drank the kool-aid] by Caitlin Johnstone
Covid190 yet to impact Europe's overall mortality Off-Guardian
The great madness by TheZMan (right-wing, I don't agree on all points, read nevertheless)
Open letter to Chancellor Merkel by Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi
COVID-19 lockdown: a global human experiment by Vigilant Citizen
Coronavirus crackdown - beware "the new normal" by Kit Knightly
How to practice social distancing The Corbett Report
"As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK" uk.gov
Influenza: marketing vaccine by marketing disease by Peter Doshi (2013)
Experts questioning the corona virus panic The Off Guardian
The coronavirus mass panic is not justified [PDF] by Peter C. Goetzsche
Potential false-positive rate among the 'asymptomatic infected individuals' in close contacts of COVID-19 patients by G.H. Zhuang et al. (English abstract)
Corona: an epidemic of mass panic by Peter C. Goetzsche
[comment on Last Man Standing] by Kratoklastes
Coronavirus Bill [322-page PDF] British Parliament
Coronavirus scare - the hoax of the century? by Dr. Vernon Coleman
COVID-19 could spark the next 'Arab Spring' by Richard Mills
Impact of corona virus similar to some earlier peak oil scenarios by Matt Mushalik
Beat your genes: coronavirus 2020 interview with Doug Lisle and Jen Hawk
A fiasco in the making? by John P.A. Ioannidis
Covid-19 global lockdown by C.J. Hopkins
A swiss doctor on Covid-19 a Swiss Doctor
Insights into the Corona-panic by Wolfgang Wodarg
Does the 2019 cornovirus exist? [PDF] by David Crowe (detailed, excellent)
Selling fear by Jon Rappoport
More thoughts on sustainability by Paul Chefurka
Why the coming economic collapse will NOT be caused by the corona virus by Matthew Ehret [skip last para]
The destruction of Libya by Robert Snefjella
Skripal in prison by John Helmer
Jihadists stationed in Idlib put on Turkish military uniforms by Ersin Caksu
The choice before us by William E. Rees
I am a realist by William E. Rees
[PDF - 510pp!!] Oil from a critical raw materials perspective by Simon P. Michaux
Craig Murray searches for his misplaced gonads by Ronald Thomas West
Plain of Jars university by Linh Dinh
M. Assassinations by Ron Unz
Nobody sets out to become a war propagandist. It just sort of happens by Caitlin Johnstone
[PDF] Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag [Update: withdrawn] by Pradhan et al.
Officially apartheid by Joe Lauria
Peak oil in Asia: where will the oil come from for the Asian Century? by Matt Mushalik
Aftermath: the Iran war after the Soleimani assassination by Jim Kavanagh
AP tweets 'hundreds protest' against the US occupation of Iraq vs.
this pic via MoA, Colonel Cassad, actual 1-3M
Be careful of what you wish for by Tim Watkins
Event 201 envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact by Katie Pearce (N.B.: event was in October 2019!)
Identity politics: nihilism ego and distraction by Andre Vltchek
How Britain voted in 2019 by age YouGov
Mixok in Laos by Linh Dinh
Putin's now purged the west from the Kremlin by Tom Luongo
Iran airliner hit by 2 missiles, first probably intelligence/terrror op, then Iranian air defense by Kommissar Einfall
Very deep deception by Ronald Thomas West
Pompeo 'lying through his teeth' interview with Aaron Mate
Iraq warns of economic collapse over Trump's threatened sanctions [b/c Iraq asked the US to leave] by Jason Ditz
Analysis on Vietnam relationship with the super power countries, with my own theory by Unorthodox Black Sheep
Word War III by C.J. Hopkins
How an Israeli spy-linked tech firm gained access to the US government's most classified networks by Whitney Webb
Big tech firms are joining Trump's all out war against Iran by Alan Macleod
[how the US-funded social media campaign operates in real time] by Scott Ritter
Code-panic: a controlled opposition spectacle by Gilad Atzmon
[French police goons fire on appartment] by Marie
[Trump threatened Iraqi PM with marine 'Maidan' snipers - i.e., shooting at both crowd and security forces] by John Chuckman
Iran didn't want to kill US tropps with its strike, it wanted to make to make the point to Trump about its missile tech and resolve by Scott Ritter
[comment on vineyard saker's summary of missile strike] by ross a
The deeper story behind the assassination of Soleimani by Federico Pierraccini
[surprise Putin visit to Syria today, 7 Jan] RT
My (rare) dissent from The Saker's latest assessment of the Iranian situation by Paul Craig Roberts (a little over the top, but worth reading)
America escalates its "democratic" oil war in the near east by Michael Hudson
Short "intermission" by vineyard saker
Doubling down into yet another 'march of folly' by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
British teenarger's 'confession' over a gang rape case WAS dictated by Cyprus police and uses phrases an English person wouldn't use by Inderdeep Bains
The US will come to regret its assassination of Qassim Soleimani by b
Extremely dangerous developments in the Middle East by vineyard saker
[chimpanzee with a machine gun -- N.B.: hoax video made to market Rise of the Planet of the Apes] by R. Wyatt
Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix by Cailtin Johnstone
An American oligarch's dirty tale of corruption by F. William Engdahl
Which
seems more plausible? by J Swift (see also 'Iranian' rockets
here and
here)
[US bombs the people that are fighting ISIS, again] by b
I, who vowed to never-ever short stocks again, just shorted the entire market by Wolf Richter
[long arm of the 'law': Patricia Goodson's sensible AIDS/HIV review expunged 5 years after the fact!] Frontiers in Public Health (but not yet censored from
pubmed)
How the pro-war "left" fell for the Kurds in Syria by Max Parry
[I'm against the death penalty, but if you're going to have it, do it right] zerohedge
Raqqa a repeat of Dresden: US bombing absolutely leveled the city Vesti News
I never saw a world so fragmented! by Andre Vltchek
On rogues and rogue states by Fred Reed
New oral polio vaccine to bypass key clinical trials [to counter vaccine-derived polio, yup] by Robert Fortner (I know, 'war is peace'...)
Greeks set to face heavy fines if they don't spend 30 per cent of their income electronically by Tom Rees (cf. Fallujah retina scanning: initial rollout in most distressed)
Hot mic moment exposes insance sleaziness of British political/media class by Caitlin Johnstone
The Shakespearean tragedy of Jeremy Corbyn by Neil Clark
[UK anti-semitism industry] by Tom Suarez
Corbyn's defeat has slain the left's last illusion by Jonathan Cook
Someone interfered in the Uk election and it wasn't Russia by Caitlin Johnstone
Putin and the 'Biden memorial pipeline" to China by F. William Engdahl
Tossing old solar panels into landfill is greener than recycling them by Ronald Brakels
Congress held a hearing on the Fed's bailout of the Repo market: here's why you haven't heard of it by Pam and Russ Martens
Reddit bans users for telling the truth Kit Knightly
When will we have a quantum computer? [answer: never] by Michel I. Dyakonov
The Skripals [were] under US control, at USAF nuclear bomber base in Fairford, Gloucestershire by John Helmer
British defence ministry document reveals Skripal blood evidence is missingby John Helmer
With people in the streets worldwide, media focus uniquely on Hong Kong by Alan Macleod
The madness of crowds by Mac10
The Fed: bailing out its crybaby-cronies on Wall Street, even when there isn't a crisis by Wolf Richter
Inside the CIA: [excellent] interview with Douglas Valentine Covert Action Magazine
London attack discussion off-guardian
London stabbing attack - a theatrical review by Scott Creighton
What really happened in Dresden: "They've never paid their due for it" interview with Victor Gregg
OPCW management accused of doctoring Syrian chemical weapons report wikileaks
Renewables alone won't end the climate crisis by Andrew Nikiforuk
The Superorganism: blind, hungry and in charge by Nate Hagens
Mapping the global divide by Naresh Jotwani
Finally the USA supports the one state solution by Gilad Atzmon
Is the middle east beginning a self-correction? by Alastair Crooke
Bolivia proves that Latin America cannot exit the American Empire by Paul Craig Roberts
Trump's Syrian see-saw: From pullout to pillage by Jim Kavanagh
Bolivian coup comes less than a week after Morales stopped multinational firm's lithium deal by Eoin Higgins
Reaching that Wile E Coyote moment by Tim Watkins
Ho the Fed boost the 1%, as told by the Fed by Wolf Richter
[Trump explains how the US military will 'protect' Syrian oil from attacks by... the Syrians?] by Lolita C. Baldor
Revisiting the win-win-win-win outcome in Syria by vineyard saker
Israel's last war by Gilad Atzmon
The US needs to occupy Syria because ... [list OK but missing the big "I"] by Caitlin Johnstone
Rebuilding Syria - without Syria's oil by Pepe Escobar
"Not a big deal! You just killed your creature [for the 4th time? buried at sea, really?]" by MJ Azarai Jahromi
US troops staying in Syria 'to keep the oil' by Ben Norton
Washington loots Syrian oil by Mazen/Gh.A.Hassoun
WeWork: One moron ruining it for everyone else [takes one to know one!] by Simon Black
Belonging, not belonging, who cares? by Linh Dinh
Why de-growth is essential by Ted Trainer
[map of oilfields in Syria] by Energy Consulting Group
[transcript of Eva Bartlett interview with Laith Marouf] by S
[article in Vzglyad by Aleksey Anpilogov on the Kurdish question] translation by S
[summary of speech about demos in Lebanon] via Canthama
Electric vehicle adoption overshadowed by SUV boom by Nick Cunningham
New developments in the Skripal case reveal it for the sham it always was by James O'Neill
The world turned upside down by Martin Sieff
The Syrian debacle is actually well planned chaos by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
We must decomputerize by Ben Tarnoff
What it's really like to live under martial law by Selco
Real life and resistance in Venezuela by Ben Norton
Getting real about green energy by Chris Martenson
The net energy pincer by Tim Watkins
The attacks on Abqaiq and peak oil in Ghawar by Matt Mushalik
[installing offshore wind turbines in the North Sea, using fossil fuel] by zahra saudi
How a Taycan is made Porcshe
Look who's not laughing by Dmitri Orlov
Why France's 20- and 30-somethings hate the yellow vests by Ramin Mazaheri
The real revolution in military affairs review of new Andrei Martyanov book
A great day for Zion by Gilad Atzmon
Can Trump still avoid war? by Patrick Buchanan (I am far left, but agree with every main point in this 'right'/conservative article)
How likely is the possibility of a military conflict between Iran and the US? interview with General Amir Ali Hajizadeh (subtitles)
[comment on vineyard saker sitrep] by R.H. Auslander
US order large-scale turbo activation exercise of ready reserve force shipsby Mike Schuler
Why are bonds going for broke? by Dave Haggith
It's a new world order, alright by Raul Ilargi Meijer
[news summary of Houthi attacks on Saudi oil installations] by b
How the BBC's Quentin Sommerville created fairytales of underground hospitals in Syria y b
Erdogan: US sent 30,000 trucks of arms to Kurds [AKA al-Qaeda, AKA the people we're supposedly 'fighting'] in northern Syria RT
How the west learned to stop worring and love the reality police by C.J. Hopkins
The media's Russian radiation story implodes upon scrutiny by Scott Ritter
2005-2018 conventional crude production on a bumpy plateau by Matt Mushalik :w
[Nasrallah more angry than usual] HispanTV
Epstein - the Maxwell connection by George Galloway
Syria - army cuts off Khan Shaykhum - Russian bombs Turkish [jihadi] reinforcement by b
The latest sign that absolutely nothing makes sense by Simon Black
America's benevolent bombing of Serbia by James Bovard
The vindication of Tulsi Gabbard by Scott Ritter
Syria fontline breach by b
Blood... or soil? fascism, leftism, and the coming food crisis by Rhyd Wildermuth
The future is fascist by Rhyd Wildermuth (Mar 2019)
More British complicity exposed in latest 'CIA torture unredacted' report by TrubPublica
Toxic medicine Tim Watkins
Who holds the $3.2 trillion in "leveraged loans" and CLOs? [these are essentially reserves-less loans...] by Wolf Richter
From mad cow disease to agrochemicals: time to put public need ahead of private greed by Colin Todhunter
A conundrum of evil by Ronald Thomas West
Mainstream media hide Skripal's connections to Russiagate-Trump case by Eric Zuesse
[Jeffrey Epstein's employers?] by Philip Giraldi
[comment1 on MoA "Trump seeks 'coalition of the willing against Iran']
and
[comment2] by Paveway IV
"Why would Iran do something stupid as bombing a Japanese tanker?" Yakov Kedmi
Iran goes for maximum counter pressure by Pepe Escobar
The green new deal - part III: How? by Tad Patzek
Before cheering on the next war, read this [superb, encyclopedic history] by washington's blog
[agent provocateur] by Marco Marilungo
Waiting for the black swan by Chris Martenson
The green new deal - part II by Tad Patzek
[understandable eurodollar discussion starting at 16:00] interview with Jeff Snider
Freeing Julian Assange: part 1 by Suzy Dawson
Establishment narrative managers struggle with new Syria plot holes by Caitlin Johnstone
Not so good news by Tim Watkins
Kissing empty air by Pete Markiewicz
Israel attacks Syria two consecutive nights while hosting Eurovision finals zerohedge
Microbrains and no cred by vineyard saker
America will lose the trade war because that is what globalists want to happen by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read anyway)
China's economy and its effect on the US economy [just 18% of China's exports go to US] by Kimberly Amadeo
[British lapdogs: "If [visitors] speak with the media about the conditions of Assange’s imprisonment, those conditions will only worsen"] by Konstantinos Poulis
Australian fuel security review ignores peak oil in China 2015 by Matt Mushalik
[Steve Keen and ... Chertoff?!] Institute for Strategy Resilience and Security
A realistic treatment of energy in production by Steve Keen
[why they called it "the Intercept"...] by Whitney Webb
Silicon valley giants collaborate with the US gov on Venezuela by Caitlin Johnstone
[useful comments here] and
[here]
by Islandboy (Jamaica) - not to mention his useful main article on commercial electric vehicles
People who publicly fret about Assange rape allegations are lying by Caitlin Johnstone
Earth vs. The Amoeba by Nate Hagens
Venezuela - random Guyaido's new coup attempt turns out to be a dangerous joke by b
Biodiversity offseting, making dreams come true by Global Motion
Intro to Cory Morningstar's 6-part: "The manufacturing of Greta Thunberg" by Tim Hayward
Honest Government Ad: Julian Assange thejuicemedia
[Tesla charger powered by diesel generator...] [from Austria]
[between 1999 and 2009, average high rise condos in Vancouver increased electricity usage by 65% - green me harder] by Eva Uguen-Csenge
It's all a giant psyop by Seething Frog
Assange arrest (2) by Ronald Thomas West
Welcome to Hell: Peruvian mining city of La Rinconada [what Washington wants Venezuela to be like] by Andre Vltchek
Here's what happened when Juan Guaido left his bubble and entered a working class barrio tweet by Max Blumenthal
Third Trump regime sabotage of Venezuela's electrical grid foiled by Stephen Lendman
Golan and Netanyahu's election by b
Syria's Golan heights by Syrian Girl partisan
On the ground in Venezuela by Paul Cochrane
NZSAS soldiers in Christchurch for snipers event responded to mosque terror attack by Kurt Bayer
"Parallel State" in Argentina's Patagonia by Whitney Webb
Boeing, the FAA, and why two 737 MAX planes crashed [uhh... robots]] by b
Trump regime electricity war in Venezuela more serious than first believed by Stephen Lendman
The green deal is hopium by Tim Watkins
Turning low-EROI oil into no-EROI oil by Tim Watkins
Pedro Prieto: many solar panels won't last 25-30 years, [net] EROI may be negative Pedro Prieto letter to Alice Friedemann
Tilting at windmills, Spain's disatrous attempt to replace fossil fuels with solar PV, Part 2 by Alice Friedemann, Pedro Prieto (2017)
Life expectancy falls by six months in biggest drop in UK forecasts by Patrick Collinson
The secret life of Mullah Omar [pdf] by Bette Dam
10 points I just can't believe by Craig Murray
Myanmar hooked on meth as drug networks take over AFP, KUTKAI
2018 was the deadliest year for Afghan civilians [since 2009] by Kathy Gannon
A new improved 1984 by Tad Patzek
Russiagate was successful comment by Pft
Russia Rachel Maddow's one minute of hate, Mar 9, 2018
Nazi racialist ideology in service fo Trump Derangement Syndrome by Norman Ball
Dump the Guardian by Media Lens
Comment: C'est tout la meme chose comment by Kiza
What's the deal with sanctions in Venezuela, and why's it so hard for media to understand? by Alexander Campbell
Photographer's hand blown off by French police grenade zerohedge
Interview with Michael Hudson about Venezuela by vineyard saker
Biodiesel: cure worse than the disease by Nico Muzi
Trump is expanding the US empire by Abby Martin
Trump's brilliant strategy to dismember US dollar hegemony [Trump as Gorbachev?] by Michael Hudson
Why must Venezuela be destroyed? by Dmitri Orlov
Southeast Asia terribly damaged but lauded by West by Andre Vltchek
Sanctions are wars against peoples by b
Mister Charlie told me so by C.J. Hopkins
Crazy by Tad Patzek
The vultures of Caracas by Craig Murray
You money AND your life by Rostislav Ishchenko
Media lies about Venezuela by b
Bank of England refuses to release Venezuela's gold after US lobbying [what actual outside election interference looks like] zerohedge
Violence against civilians in France by Vanessa Beeley
Attempted coup in Venezuela [Elliot "death squad" Abrams crawls out from his lair] with Abby Martin, Greg Wilpert, Paul Jay
Venezuela: Phase 1: collect underpants by b
British government demolishes Skripal house roof because door handle (WTF?) by John Helmer
[Skripal hoax summary] by Rob Slane
[Fusion is the power source of the future - and it always will be] by Alice Friedemann
NGO fraud - the White Helmets are organ traders by 21Wire
[Amazon revenue vs. profit] by Dave Collum
What happens if the French Yellow Vests win? by Andre Vltchek
Fiasco in Islington by Richard Hugus
Sec Defense "Mad Dog" of Fallujah resigns and the fake left hyperventilates by Scott Creighton
The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere by C.E. Bennet et al.
Reactions to Trump's Syria withdrawal plan say more than the plan itself by Caitlin Johnstone
Trumps "withdrawal" by Andrew Korybko
[go Sabine!] by Sabine
Don't hold your breath on troop withdrawal by Patrick Lawrence
Peak diesel or no peak diesel? Antonio Turiel vs. Gail Tverbeg
Operation Timber Sycamore continues by Thierry Meyssan
The US is preparing a war between Latin-American states by Thierry Meyssan
Can you make a wind turbine without fossil fuels? by Robert Wilson
The indiscreet charm of the Gilets Jaunes by C.J. Hopkins
Peak diesel, 2018 edition [in Spanish] by Antonio Turiel and Rafael Fernandez Diez
Support the grand jury investigation project by Architects and Engineers
Experts speak out: melted steel beams and molten iron by Architects and Engineers (2014)
The Brexit deal by Andy Serkis :-} :-}
It's just one protest... which has lasted 8 years by Ramin Mazaheri
What collapse? Vu du balcon de Gilles by YvesT
Mainstream fake-news: the devious limited hangout by Jon Rappoport
[whoa, not expecting Jack Gallant at Davos!] by Melissa Dykes
Snipers on roof during 'yellow vest' protest in Paris by start
Poroshenko goes 'full Saakashvili' by vineyard saker
How queer theory became university policy by Michael Biggs
Assange never met Manafort. Luke Harding and the Guardian publish still more blatant MI6 lies by Craig Murray
For whom is peak oil coming? If you own a diesel car, it is coming for you!by Ugo Bardi [see comments :-} ]
Aleppo LIHOP by Penny for your thoughts
Khashoggi case by Sibel Edmonds
All US gov't accuations against Russia's gov't are lies by Eric Zeusse
[farmed salmon not a health food, but Mercola fails to note that if everybody ate wild caught, they'd be instantly wiped out] by Mercola
Why tar sands, a toxic ecosystem-destroying asphalt, can’t fill in for declining conventional oil by Alice Friedemann
OPEC october production data by Ron Patterson
S-300 in Syria vineyard saker
Most depressing city on earth by Andre Vltchek
Cesspools, sewage, and social murder [why we should avoid collapse] by Ian Angus
The NATO/EU rape of 'complex' Macedonia by Aleksandar Pavic
[biggest housing bubble ever] zerohedge
[how Trump watches teevee] Times of Israel
Break-in attempt at Assange's residence by Joe Lauria
The end of 'magic imperialism'? by Andre Vltchek
Venezualan opposition celebrates far-right Bolsonaro victory in Brazil, calls for intervention by Paul Dobson
['f--- the EU' part 2 begins: beware the materiel!] by zerohedge
The real reason the knives are out for MBS by Whitney Webb
Beyond stupid: the official version of Khashoggi killing is even dumber than Skripal psyop by Scott Creighton
Why the sudden universal turn against MbS? Here's your answer by Scott Creighton
Be skeptical whenever the political/media class converges on a single narrative by Caitlin Johnstone
Self-censorship: where the real damage is being done by Caitlin Johnstone
Coverup deal by b [excellent analysis of disinfo mechanics]
Some thoughts on climate change by Caitlin Johnstone (rocks!)
The end of kings by Caitlin Johnstone
How an American snthropologist tied to US regime-change proxies became the MSM's main in Nicaragua by Max Blumenthal
What happened to crude oil production after the first peak in 2005? by Matt Mushalik
Why growth can't be green by Jason Hickel
[Russian reconnaissance plane accidentally downed, 14 Russians killed, by old Syrian antiaircraft missile aimed at attacking Israeli jets] by b
[Feds impound computers, crush dissent from informed m of a commentator] m of a
Britain arrests Dr. Chris Busby for a dirty kitchen using a chemical weapons team by Scott Creighton
Skripal Russia poisoning affair by Chris Busby [6 April video, Busby arrested 13 Sept in UK, released on 14 Sept]
[when you control the narrative] [you
control people's minds] preposterous propaganda pics from al-Jazeera
-- unfortunately they work fine on weak minds
Capitalism is failing all over the Americas! by Caleb Maupin
Wikileaks consultant Arjen Kamphuis disappears in northern Norway
Brexit is the wrong diagnosis of a real crisis by Abby Innes [excellent]
Everything is going according to plan by John Halstead
Getting Corbyn by Philip Giraldi
The suicidal empire by Dmitri Orlov
The great filter - are we almost past it? by Robin Hanson (1998)
Seize the transnational corporations to rebuild Syria? by Thierry Meyssan
Does humanity deserve? by Gilbert Mercier
Anglozionist attack options against Iran by vineyard saker
This year at MSNBC - *no* stories on Yemen war, 455 segments on Stormy Daniels by Adam Johnson
China has been prepping for a trade war for over a decade by Brandon Smith
World energy 2018-2050 [but giant projected green wedge top of Fig 7 seems unlikely] by Minqi Li
Senate moves to codify Obama-era aid package to Israel Jerusalem Post
"Russia did Novichok again" --
says jailed double decker bus joyrider by Steven Morris, Caroline Bannock, Vikram Dodd, and Sarah Marsh (comical UK reprise!)
Trade war provides perfect cover for the elitist engineered global reset by Brandon Smith (alt-right, but some good points)
Remembering Grenfell: who are our cities for? by Richard Heinberg
Boomeranging by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Intolerable opinions in an intolerant time by Jeffrey St. Clair
Sexy metal by Pepe Escobar
Anyone promoting regime change in Iran is an evil piece of shit by Caitlin Johnstone
Immigration divides Europe and the German left by Diana Johnstone
Trouble clef by Gilad Atzmon
Sacrificing Gaza by Jim Kavanagh
Libya according to the UN and the harsh reality [2/3 of population have fled] by Theirry Meyssan
Razan al-Najjar by Col. Pat Lang
[the media megaphones the Babchenko Hoax but won't touch the real killing of Al-Najjar because of who she was] by Ali Abunimah
The hidden stakes behind Venezuela's presidential election by Thierry Meyssan
To Trump: how to win the war in Afghanistan by Jon Rapoport
[no, "Tommy Robinson" is not a political prisoner] by Scott Creighton
[US relocating ISIS from Syria and Iraq into Russia via Afghanistan] by Eric Zuesse
[Russia releases photos showing US special ops at ISIS positions] by Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation
US [al-Quaeda's Air Force] warns of "firm" response if Syria attacks ISIS ... No, really by Brandon Turbeville
Ecomodernism and the sacred cow by Jason Hickel
Harrowing, heroic war story the Onion
A little perspective on Gaza and apologist Trump by Scott Creighton
Jewish past vs. Jewish state by Gilad Atzmon
Israel celebrates: slaughters 55 Palestinians in Gaza Information Clearing House
The Donald's done by David Stockman
Countdown to war on Iran by b [I highly doubt US military this suicidal]
The Skripals will most likely never be allowed to talk [already dead?] by vineyard saker
The truth about oil and the Iraq war, 15 years later [Iraqi blood to get Iraqi oil for Israel] by Gary Vogler
The implications of voiding the Iran nuclear deal by William R. Polk
Iran breaks the rules of engagement by Elijah J. Magnier [ignores initial artillery barrage from Golan]
Netanyahu and Putin in Moscow by Adam Garrie [some good points, some overdone]
Syria sets new rules for Israeli strikes by b
Global energy consumption appears to have begun the inescapable process of rolling over by Chris Hamilton
[Trump uses Weinstein's Izzy BlackCube to dig Obama dirt to sabotage Iran deal] by b
Military and non-military escalation into nuclear war by R. Lesnoix
Too ridiculous for words by Stephen McMurray
[the Guardian's "community standards" are violated by truth] off-guardian
"Cruise missile left" complicit in American escalation toward WWIII by Danny Haiphong
Syrian MP shreds BBC propaganda on Hard Talk BBC News
[insightful comment on Hama/Aleppo attacks] by Paveway IV
The Samson haircut option by John Helmer (required reading)
1965 Navy training video - 1M pounds (0.5 kilotons) of TNT vs. Navy ships US Navy
D-notice on Pablo Miller by Craig Murray
Plan D comment by dh-mtl at Moon of Alabama
The West's trauma of its dissolution by Alastair Crooke
Lies and deception in the failed US strike on Syria by Federico Pieraccini
"Sometimes ... it goes even higher" radio transcript via Craig Murray
The moral mask by Gregory Barrett
[I was half expecting something like this back in 2004, but it never came - hope it won't come now, either!] by Nick
Media war on truthful reporting moon of alabama (Bernhard, excellent!)
Out of 26 major editorials on Trump's Syria strikes, zero opposed by Adam Johnson
Poll shows Americans support the invasion of Syria by Eric Zuesse
Each "click" brings us one step closer by vineyard saker
[military man scolded by BBC interviewer for trying to do *her* job] by Caitlin Johnstone
Democrats, too, love Trump's wars by Adam H. Johnson
How the US occupied the 30% of Syria containing most of its oil, water, and gas by Whitney Webb
Pearson Sharp reports from Douma One America News Network
[Fisk at the scene: there was no chlorine gas attack] Definitely Donald
The road to WWIII by Anatoly Karlin
What price will mankind have to pay for the collapse of the Empire? by vineyard saker
We all need to unite against war in Syria, regardless of ideology by Caitlyn Johnstone
The Russians are flabbergasted by Israel Shamir
['lefties' please watch Tucker Carlson on Fox making perfect sense on Syria] Information Clearing House
Idiocy is bringing the end of the world by Paul Craig Roberts
What the rule of law was destroyed in Salisbury, London, and The Hague... by John Helmer
AngloZionist options (intermediate report) by vineyard saker
[Linh definitely up on wrong side of the bed today!] by Linh Dinh
If this happened in Alabama there would be uproar by Jonathan Cook
Porton Down scientists refute May/Johnson lies by Craig Murray
Murder in Gaza by Information Clearing House
[snipers shoot 773 people, dominating in their 'clash' with unarmed demonstrators] by Juan Cole
[3-weeko-long British chemical weapons exercise during Skripal] Royal Navy
We are one false flag event away from world war 3 by Caitlin Johnstone
Sic transit imperium by xraymike (May 2017)
The troubling realities of our energy transition by Kurt Cobb
SCL - a very British coup
and
Part 2 by Liam O'Hare
Snow White and the seven dwarfs by Israel Shamir
Cancer, George Monbiot and nuclear weapons test fallout by Chris Busby
Alley culture by Linh Dinh
"No patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury" by b
The regional-international demarcation line in Daraa is approaching flashpoint by Elijah K. Magnier
Boris Johnson issues completely new story on "Russian Novichoks" by Craig Murray
Guardian rips off Goebbels by b
War is on the horizon by Paul Craig Roberts
Of a type developed by liars by Craig Murray
The New Yorker attempts but fails to boost the Steele dossier by b
The world oil supply is infinite: I know that because I believe it by Roger Blanchard
Hold my beer and watch this by vineyard saker
The US threatens to bomb Syria by Mike Whitney
Elon Musk's rocket engines by FB
Russian rocket engines by FB
[Audi goes full Elon Musk] by zerohedge
The tweet that brought corporate journalism to the brink of a nervous breaththrough by Media Lens
The $1.5 billion campaign to whitewash [US/UK-supported real] genocide in Yemen [150,000 people starved to death last year] by Dan Glazebrook
Shadow of an Israeli/US attack grows larger by the day by Edward Curtin
Rent for sex [slavery, never gone, expands] by Ellie Flynn
Escalation in Syria by
Drone footage reveals scale of destruction in Syrian cities RT
Limited minerals and metals essential for wind, solar, microchips, cars, and other high-tech gadgets by Alice Friedemann (Feb 2014)
Energy, money, technology Nate Hagens (excellent, comprehensive, 1hr lecture)
On the Syria occupation and the new face of imperialism [it's about oil] by Caitlin Johnstone
Is war with Israel imminent? [no] by b
21st century plague by MarkGB
The increasing likelihood of nuclear war should straighten out all our priorities by Caitlin Johnstone
The implications of President Trump's Jerusalem ploy by Henry Siegmen
Leftists and crimestop by Edward Curtin
I apologize unreservedly... by Jonathan Ofir, shades of the
classic
Why is the Israeli army suddenly concerned about Gaza? by Jonathan Cook
[internet of thingz bites back] zerohedge
This explains a lot [euro/japan/hongkong/china-dollars] by Jeffrey Snider
The global C02 rise: the facts, Exxon and the favorite denial tricks by Stefan Rahmstorf
Trump and Berlusconi: harbingers of the coming Seneca cliff by Ugo Bardi
You are now entering the American sector by Israel Shamir
Breaking - Tillerson unveils 'new' US Syria plan: 'Assad must go!' by Danieal McAdams
[coral reefs will recover - maybe 100 million years after we're gone] by Ron Patterson [oil guy who knows geology]
[Carlsbad Caverns bat firebombs gone wild] by Patrick Coffey
Big brother is you by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Fed ready to pop the bubble by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read it anyway)
[the most important thing to cut in 'big government' is 'big Pentagon'] by John Perkins
US prepares for the next phase by b
[astroturf special: Bahrain 2011 video pretending to be Iran today]
US-China confrontation looming by Dean Henderson
Trump the neo-con by Dean Henderson
Regime change agents hijack economic protests by b
Trump and the sunsetting of the age of multilateralism by Scott Creighton
[iconic pic of arrest of 16-year-old Fawzi al Junaidi] trtworld
Jared Kushner humiliated on live teevee Saban conference
Oil discoveries at lowest point since the 1940's by Nick Cunningham
He died for our debts, not our sins by Claire Connelly
Sex, drugs, and rollickin' roles by Caoimhghin O Croidheain
Jared Kushner reorganizes the Middle East
"It is part of a never-ending mass experiment on human beings" by Gideon Levy
Hired killers, C-eye-eh and the New York Times by Ronald Thomas West
[Chukchi sea arctic ice melted so rapidly, algorithm eliminated accurate extra-high temperature measurement as an 'artifact'] by Deke Arndt
MiG chief designer found with throat cut MINA
Destroyers of the neoliberal world order by Federico Pieraccini
Desperate Britain forced to import Russian gas from sanction-targeted project zerohedge
Behind the US embassy move by Wayne Madsen
Grinch nukes christmas by John Day
It was Kushner who told Flynn to make calls to Izzy about the UN vote [it's pronounced 'Lobbygate' not 'Russiagate'!] by Aram Roston and John Hudson
The crypto-keepers by Yasha Levine
Why does 'christian' Mike Pence back the Honduran president that cocaine built? by Scott Creighton
[Izzy/Egypt/Saudi on bombing Iran 2008-2013 and the nuclear deal] by John Kerry
Why to we need jobs if we can have slaves working for us? by NJ Hagens and DJ White
Second hand weapons flying the 'friendly skies' of Germany and Ukraine by Henry Kamens
Syria: this US occupation is unsustainable by b
Saudi-Israeli friendship is driving the rest of the Middle East together by Federico Pieraccini
Revelations of a high-profile Qatari official reveal a wider anti-Syria conspiracy by Alexander Orlov
[Libya was a rich country before its destruction, which was managed in part by Hillary; now it has actual black slave auctions] by Nima Elbagir, Raja Razek, Alex Platt and Bryony Jones
Trump's pivot to Asia: an arms sales bonanza, and anti-peace trip by Peter Koenig
Priti Patel by Gilad Atzmon
Priti Patel resigns [for now] by b
[the Saudi situation - Nov 5 comment] by PavewayIV
The Charter of the Forest by Guy Standing
The war on Syria can show you what's happening in our world by Caitlin Johnstone
The myth of the Spanish Inquisition BBC 1994 documentary
Catalan 'independence' - a tool of capital against labour by Gearoid O Colmain
Book list [I feel the same way!] by Alice Friedemann
Svalbard seed vault: part 3 by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen
Beijing is the covert buyer of a quarter of all Chinese real estate [cf. Fed buying MBS's] zerohedge
The North Korea neither Trump nor the media wants the world to see by Eva Bartlett
[all-in-one graph: the problem is obvious] by Diego Mantilla
The military instinct: The human race as feral dogs by Fred Reed
Socialism, land and banking: 2017 compared to 1917 by Michael Hudson
SITREP Kurdistan by Pepe Escobar and Alexander Mercouris
Thus ends the Kurdish independence project by b
The killing of history by John Pilger
What if Putin is telling the truth? by William Engdahl
[why the US just declared war on Russia: map] in southfront comment by Pave Way IV
CentCom declares war on Russia by b
How austerity works by Steve Keen
100 percent wishful thinking [finally, common sense on energy at counterpunch!] by Stan Cox and Paul Cox
Links on and of propaganda by b
[US air power picking off a few ISIS trying to rescue their wives to sabotage Hezbollah deal] zerohedge
What the media isn't telling you about NK missile tests by Mike Whitney
Deterrence believers should cheer the North Korean bomb by Craig Murray
The anti-imperialist camp: splintered in thought by Theirry Meyssan
Phony Australian boogeyman by Scott Creighton
Bulgarian journalist interrogated, fired for story linking CIA and Syria weapons flights zerohedge
Manipulated minorities represent a major danger for democratic states by vineyard saker
The shale 'miracle' by Chris Martenson
[CO2 across the previous 3 interglacial warm periods] by Joe Romm
The Obamafication of Trump in Pipelineistan by Scott Creighton
[Trump continues 16-year Bush/Obama Afghanistan war - Trumpillory is *irrelevant* to real policy] Reuters
Korean war part II: why its probably going to happen by Brandon Smith (alt-right, read it anyway)
[blue dog]
[the Minoans came from southwest Anatolia] by Iosif Lazaridis et al.
Unverified 'Russiagate' allegations, irresponsibly promoted by Congress and the media, have become a grave threat to American national security by Stephen F. Cohen
[Oxford not a good town for jazz] by Gilad Atzmon
A blacklisted film and the new cold war by Robert Parry
Geopolitical tensions are designed to distract the public from economic decline by Brandon Smith (alt-right)
['Bill and Melinda vaccinate Italy' not going well] by Jay Greenberg
Trump caves by Scott Creighton
The tweet that is shaking the war party by David Stockman
Russia expels American diplomats and intelligence operatives by Scott Humor
An Iraqi holocaust by Gideon Polya
Let's have a conversation by Richard Heinberg
Time for the 'international left' to take a stand on Venezuela by Gregory Wilpert
How the banking system and financial sector really work interview with Richard Warner
[Alfred McCoy is clueless! - but see the many spot on comments] Alfred McCoy interviewed by Jeremy Scahill
Still the issue by John Pilger
Qatar blockade evinces vulnerability of helium supply by Diana Kwon
Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? [yes!] by Stephen Buranyi
Iraq's dancing death-squads by Scott Creighton [excellent article]
Alternet grayzone of smug turncoats by b
The stink without a secret by Craig Murray
The looming energy shock by Chris Martenson
Seymour Hersh’s CIA Whitewash Story “Trump’s Red Line” is Pure Mockingbird Propaganda by Scott Creighton
18 Israeli fighter jets landed in Saudi Arabia to prevent coup AhlulBayt News Agency
[embarrassingly flaccid US/UK presstitutes too afraid to publish hardly-shocking new Hersh article] by Ray McGovern
The dynamics of depletion by Brian Davey
All the plenary's men by John Titus (Apr 2017)
Locked into Al-Tanf US military concedes it lost the race to occupy south-east Syria by b
Why the next recession will morph into a decades long depressionary event By Chris Hamilton
Russia fixation takes a dark turn interview with Stephen F. Cohen
London fire: expert says he tried to warn officials CBC News
Hillary email reveal true motive for Libya intervention by Brad Hoff (Jan 2016)
79 people missing and presumed dead by Angus Howarth
In effort to protect "ISIS" convoy, US-led coalition shoots down Syrian warplane by Scott Creighton
Christiane Amanpour challenged by Russia to interview boy she exploited for [Syrian] war propaganda by Brandon Turbeville
Hong Kong is Disneyland for bedbugs South China Morning Post
What should the future form of our money be? by Jon Nicolaisen (Norway)
The crisis in Qatar by vineyard saker
Life and death of one of Syria's most beloved minesweepers by Wisam Franjiyeh
What did she know? by John Pilger
"Are we dangerous?" Tianjin explosion, Aug 2015
"Are we dangerous?" Tianjin explosion, Aug 2015
"Extracted" excepts by Ugo Bardi 2014
[an advanced breeder reactor, which never came fully online, will take 30 years to decommission]
Who wears the pants? [London Bridge, US meaning of "pants"] by fuggerfees
Jihad 2.0 by Pepe Escobar
Manchester's known wolf [encyclopedic report] by Shawn Helton
[crashed pizza advertisement sign in Oslo shows facial recognition software log file] by Lee Gamble
Salman Abedi wasn't a "radicalized" muslim: he was part of Britain's version of Brigade 2506 by Scott Creighton
Excerpts from William Ophuls, Why Civilizations Fail energyskeptic
[the 'genious' of the 1-min-lookahead algorithmic 'market'] zerohedge
Lawrence Wilkerson on Iran war possibility May 12 interview by Paul Jay
One day, 3 MSM fake new's by b
What was the liberal internation order? by Nick Alexandrov
Blitzer: Is there evidence of collusion between Trump associates and Russia? Feinstein: Not at this time" Diane Feinstein on CNN, May 4
The future of Islam in Western Europe by vineyard saker
French authorities shut down press to save neoliberal globalist candidate from Rothschild's bank by Scott Creighton
Crazy warmongering corporate press accuses Trump of being crazy for not being a warmonger by Scott Creighton
The only real constant to be found in both European and US politics is war by Chris Martenson
Lake of death by Yoichi Shimatsu
[crisis actors] highimpactflix
Towards a worldwide financial disaster by Richard C. Cook
Lessons from the Challenger disaster by Richard C. Cook
Trump on way to Saudi to discuss massive weapons deal by Mike Cernovich
Tracing half the corporate giant's shares to 30 owners by David Peetz and Georgina Murray
The looting machine called capitalism by Paul Craig Roberts (go Paul! formerly in Reagan admin!)
9/11 destroyed America by Paul Craig Roberts
Real big money vimeo interview (subtitled) w/former currency trader
[parasitic capitalism: buyout firm buys $1 billion of itself] by Chris at Capitalist Exploits
Mother of all fake news II [excellent - point was to fool US-ians, not NK-ians] by Scott Creighton
[high quality disinfo example: point of cruise missile attack] by Richard Steven Hack
[finally! an economist seriously considers energy!] by Steve Keen
12-step plan by reverse engineer
Mother of all fake news by Scott Creighton
How to bring down the elephant in the room by vineyard saker
A government of morons by Paul Craig Roberts
Why North Korea needs nukes - and how to end that by b
Trillary's victory by Jimmie Moglia
Fake White Helmets video: Swedish Medical Association: child murdered secret wars
Fake White Helmets video: no adrenaline injected the indicter (Mar 13)
Fake White Helmets video: stage directions the indicter (Mar 8)
Facing the US military junta by John Helmer
The real dangers are economic by Brandon Smith (alt-right)
Stephen Cohen: "I think this is the most dangerous moment in American, Russian relations since the Cuban Crisis" CNN
Analsis of the US cruise missile attack on Syria by vineyard saker
Gulf stream is heating up by Sam Carina
Make America neocon again by Gilad Atzmon
The endless war collection by Brandy Jensen
Deconstructing Obama's fals Syrian sarin syllogism by Denis O'Brien
US 'air support on request' scheme for Al-Qaeda [but b is dead wrong on it being sarin of any kind] by b
[yet another attack based on a lie] by Colonel Pat Lang
[2014 essay on the 'war on ISIS'] by Malooga
Differential growth responses of marine phytoplankton to herbicide glyphosate [N.B.: glyphosate breaks down to AMPA, eeeew] by Cong Wang, Xin Lin, Ling Li, and Senjie Lin
Glyphosate persistence in seawater by Philip Mercurioa, Florita Floresb, Jochen F. Muellera, Steve Carterc, and Andrew P. Negrib
Dietary exposure to an environmental toxin triggers neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid deposits in the brain by P.A. Cox et al.
US slaughter in Somalia, Yemen, and Syria by b
[good short summary] by Paul Chefurka
When nothing "left" is left, the people will vote far right by b
Their will be done by Martin A. Lee (Mother Jones, 1983)
Dangerous fracture in US, Turkey, and Russian interests in Syria by Patrick Henningsen
Fast changes in the Middle East by Peter Korzun
1983 C-eye-eh document reveals plan to destroy Syria by Brandon Turbeville
State of the union by Khaled Beydoun
Last monologue by Assaf Harel
[detailed info on actual 1-year experience w/small, island, not-super-well-designed pumped-hydro + diesel + wind] by Benjamin Jargstorf
[the catastrophic Bush/PrezPeacePrize/Trump Iraqi Salvador Option continues] by Scott Creighton
Confused Trump strategy leads to another Turkish U-turn by b
IMF made loans to Greece expecting they couldn't be paid back in order that big banks could seize Greek assets by Michael Hudson
[EROI Q & A] by Charles Hall, Pedro Prieto et al.
[drug supply] by Claire Bernish
End of the "Oilocene" [too much emphasis on Hills group] by Tim Clarke
Bill Gates warns tens of millions could be killed by bio-terrorism by Kevin Flaherty
What Nutella is actually made of reddit
Four kinds of dystopia by Darren Allen
Eurodollar decay: what's missing and
specifically what's missing [too wordy, wordy!] by Jeffrey P. Snider
Outrageous malevolence by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Ignorance as established doctrine [wordy, obscure] by Jeffrey P. Snider
The 'human slaughterhouse' propaganda campaign: 'articulating notions of public truth' by Scott Creighton
The US against Iran by vineyard saker
The futile efforts of Donald Trump by Israel Shamir
[Engdahl jumps the shark! back to geology school for you, man!] by F William Engdahl
Way past Humpty Dumpty [hard for me to understand, or determine whether worthwhile] by Jeffrey P. Snider
Trump admin figures freak out over Iranian missile test by Scott Creighton
A journey through the Guardian's coverage of the Libyan disaster by Ricardo Vaz
What is the 'crisis of modernity'? by Alastair Crooke
China slowdown [read graphs, skip Bloomberg/business-propaganda videos] by Guy Manno
World's worst tax haven threatens to expand its operations by Don Quijones
He's just not that into you by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Do we need central banks? by Richard Werner [excellent article!]
High speed train to Busan by Scott Creighton
[it's the same in the US] by Sasha Petricic
Maintaining a kakistocracy by Tjeerd
Take down 'Sir Alan, not the idiot, Boris' video by Simon Walters
US/UK paid "white helmets" help blocking water to 5 million Syrians by b
How the Israeli state was won by Tom Suarez
[welfare for bankers] Who exactly benefits from Italy's ballooning bank bailout? by Don Quijones
[fake news from the experts] by Brandon Turbeville
[anatomy of a disinfo blizzard] by Shawn Helton
Fear in Berlin by Gregory Barrett
[German intelligence agent drove Amri to Berlin in Feb/Mar 2016, monitored him until Sep 2016 - yet another patsy?] by Peter Schwarz
As we enter 2017, keep the big picture in mind by Chris Martenson
[when California produced 1/4 of total world oil output] pic archive
The oil mystery behind Saudi Arabia's production cut by Nick Cunningham
The Security Council meets in secret after the arrest of NATO officers in Alleppo by Thierry Meyssan
Heal the planet for profit by Raul Ilargi Meijer
"It's, you know, for the kids" by Dmitri Orlov and Jason Heppenstall
The reality of child trafficking rings [video] Sargon of Akkad
Hitler learns Aleppo is liberated by John Peters
MSM create #fakenews storm by b
Chubais - the next neoliberal head to roll in Russia? by F. William Engdahl
[Norway 'Operation Darkroom' seizes 150T of data from worldwide pedophile network - doesn't make news] Tadens Krav
[the pizzagate psyop] by Scott Creighton
The eurodollar market by Chris as capitalist exploits
The coming war on China by John Pilger
Chemicals and gas cylinders in schools by Lizzie Phelan
East-Aleppo siege nears its end by b
Keen and Hudson [long, worth reading] Real Vision
[how
rentiers think: 'oh look, some old people just experienced a horrible
monetary disaster where they lost most of their life savings in a bail-in
-- let's fly there and make a killing] by Nick Giambruno
On the same day, one year apart Russia stops Turkey at the gates of al-Bab by Elijah J. Magnier
Reflections on the dispossessed by Nicolas JS Davies
Surviving in the intellectually bankrupt monetary policy environment talk by Richard Koo (Jun 2016)
Will Trump's new financial=engineering loophole make stocks rally and bonds crash? by Wolf Richter
Nusra on the run by b
China scales back solar, wind ambitions Bloomberg
Oil production vital statistics october 2016 by Euan Mearns
The Kurd's proxy trap by Penny for your thoughts
After cutting massive new Gasprom deal with EU, Putin refuses to renew airstrikes in eastern Syria by Scott Creighton
Washington's "pivot to Asia": a debacle unfolding by James Petras
[R2P: Responsibility to Photoshop] by b
Usefully dumb and usefully dumber by rancid honeytrap
What is going on with wikileaks? by Scott Creighton
[why breeder reactors won't help to solve the nuclear fuel problem] nippon.com
East vs. west division is about the dollar by Brandon Smith
Nauru: island of despair [the most complex string figures collected by Caroline Furness Jayne on the cover came from here :-} ] Amnesty International
World oil production in balance, US natural gas production way down by Art Berman
Attempts to frame Assange as a pedophile wikileaks
Royal Dutch Shell's upstream earnings peaked in 2008, now in the red by Matt Mushalik
[president peace prize is bombing Libya again] presstv
The oil market is bigger than all metal markets combined by Visual Capitalist
ISIS [will be] paid off to leave Mosul for Deir Ezzor by b
Confirmed: US backs down over Syria after Russian threat to shoot down American aircraft by Alexander Mercouris
The French delegation at the UN posted a picture of Israeli destruction of Gaza and said it was from Aleppo by As'ad AbuKhalil
Russian options by vineyard saker
Under US proxy attack Russia readies for full war in Syria by b
An Iraqi death squad commander presented as a "housewife hero" to vapid American audiences by Scott Creighton
US propaganda shams now openly fail by b
[still 5 years of QE left for ECB and BOJ] zerohedge
Arevordi HRR exerpt: Turkey/Russia/US: coups and conflicting interests by Penny for your thoughts
US warmongers absolutely desperate about Syria by Scott Creighton
Hong Kong low-income housing by Naomi Ng
Want to slow climate change? Stop having babies or give up your toys by Eric Roston
Russia's counter-blow by Joaquin Flores
American soldiers posing as "rebels", "fleeing" jihadists in Syria by Brandon Turbeville
Russia elections results, the US military revolt, and a Syrian kerfuffle by Scott Humor
Making sense of the kinder/gentler terror distraction by Scott Creighton
Brexit situation report, mid-september by Colman
Toxic air pollution particles found in human brains by Damian Carrington
[HOWTO impose negative interest rates on paper cash] by Paul Mason
Kurds "vacate" strategic area? by Penny for your thoughts
2016 UN report on material flows exerpts by Alice Friedemann
[just how ridiculous the inflation is in college costs] BLS
Russian military options in Syria and the Ukraine by vineyard saker
Sibel Edmonds dissects Turkey coup attempt newsbud
Military coup in Turkey: post mortem by Scott Creighton
A travesty of financial history by Michael Hudson
Why they left by Costas Lapavitsas
July 1, 1916 by Jacques R. Pauwels
[June Putin press conf] Russia insider
Quo vadis, Britannia? by Tad Patzek
Hacked email reveal NATO general plotting against Obama on Russia policy by Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani
The other side to the UK's housing crisis by Eva Wiseman
Brexit and the energy equiation by Kurt Cobb
Three charts by Louis Dore
"Eventually people will come for you" by Mark Blyth
Brexiting yourself in the foot (Jun13) by John Springford, Philip McCann, Bart Los, and Mark Thissen
More on post Brexit by Ian Welsh
An eyewitness tells how the US ambassador instigated "revolution" in Syria by b
Peak oil in Asia (part 1) by Matt Mushalik
World energy 2016-2050 by political economist
German foreign minister accuses Nato of 'warmongering' Lizzie Dearden
Political repression and militarization of Poland by Janusz Niedzwiecki
Clashes in Marseille foreshadow wider secarian war b [satire!]
The strange idea of negative interest by Graham Barnes
When Phoenix came to Thanh Phong by Douglas Valentine (2001)
Cyprus officials in stealth talks with Victoria Nuland by John Helmer
US demands Russia stop bombing Al-Qaeda ... Is the war on terror over? Can we have our rights back? by Brandon Turbeville
This is peak oil by Luis de Sousa
The US is unwilling to settle by b
Romania and Poland by Phil Butler
Red line crossed - waiting for an October surprise by John Helmer
[under-reported French protests] Vandita
[tunnels wide shut - but Swiss friend says it's just Fasnacht] Ruptly
100 years on by Finian Cunningham
A hellfire from heaven won't smash the Taliban by Pepe Escobar
The Chinese boom ended in 2015 [excellent compendium of zero-based, 25-year graphs] by Richard Duncan
[behavioral sewage-ology: London cocaine, Oslo methamphetamine, Amsterdam cannabis] RT
The U.S./UK Financed "White Helmets" Shtick - Fake "Child Rescued" Videos by b
There has been a coup in Brazil by Paul Craig Roberts
What's the REAL energy return of photovoltaic energy? [see comments] by Ugo Bardi
We have entered the looting stage of capitalism by Paul Craig Roberts
ISIS TM - made (and given a passport against despite his mother's warnings) in the UK by Scott Creighton
Moldova fail by Scott
[UCL professor turns down cool $330K on principle] by Jack Grove
Debunking popular cliches about modern warfare by vineyard saker
Tactical combat robot General Robotics
Somnolent Europe, Russia, and China by Paul Craig Roberts
Counter-propaganda, Russian style by vineyard saker
Iraq's Maidan Spring? Part 1 by Penny for your
[our pensions have gone to the third yacht] by Mike Sivier
Peak oil is back by Ron Patterson
Reasonable doubt by Michael Rivero
The problem with EV's [N.B.: many solvable]) by Jacques Mattheij
What the USS Donald Cook and the Polish navy were doing off Kaliningrad when they were buzzed by John Helmer
The biggest terrorist attack in modern history by Felicity Arbuthnot
US war crimes in Iraq: Fallujah by Felicity Arbuthnot
The soft coup in Libya causes meltdown, breakup by Richard Galustian
[London 'independent' film festival not so independent] by Celia Farber
ZIPR, NIRP, QE, [and EU] by Reggie Middleton
The Neolithic roots of kleptocracy by Dave Cohen
[the fog of terrorism] by Brandon Martinez (youtube)
Illegitimate biometric identification projects compromise sovereingty of nations in South Asia by Gopal Krishna
[State dept worm squirms on question Syrian army cleaning ISIS out of Palmyra] Russia insider
CNN airs CCTV footage from 2011 claiming it was from Tuesday's Brussels attacks by Matt Agorist
"But why would the Kurds agree to do this?..." by PavewayIV
[Jesse Hughes: "It seems rather obvious they had a reason not to show up"] by Barry Donegan
Arab days of shame by vineyard saker
Lula and the BRICS in a fight to the death by Pepe Escobar
USA, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Iran all have a plan B for Syria by Christof Lehmann
Whitney obfuscates for NATO by Penny for your Thoughts
Russia sells out Syria by Scott Creighton
[UK air pollution causes more early deaths than obesity] by Damian Carrington
Greater Kurdistan and the "Revolution"TM by Scott Creighton
Deja vu by Kakaouskia
[right question: are Green Berets leading the SDF and Jaish al-Thuwar?] by b
Ankara bombing fails to achieve strategic changes by b
World bicycle ownership going downhill by SciSevNet
Are Green Berets leading the YPG in taking the Azaz pocket? by b
A dramatic escalation appears imminent [seems unlikely, I'm hoping] by vineyard saker
Autocracy vs. democracy zerohedge
The "race to Raqqa" is quickly intensifying by b
The German question by Gearoid O Colmain
Europe is built on corpses and plunder by Andre Vltchek
Get ready by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Drone footage of devastated Homs, Syria's third largest city RT
London breaches air pollution limit for whole of 2016 in just over 7 days by Jon Stone (little weak on basic chemistry terms, Jon...)
Sexual terrorism by Andrew Korybko
Tech companies face criminal charges if they notify users of UK government spying by Rob Thubron
"These reasons [not to use nukes] are mostly gone now" by Tatzhit Mihailovich
Universal demonization of Erdogan in preparation for regime change by Scott Creighton (link to Edmonds interview)
Can we have our climate and eat it too? by Richard Heinberg
On the 19th day of Christmas by Dmitri Orlov
[I'm turning over a new leaf: a positive link!] by Megan Geuss
[becoming more realistic] by Jeremey Grantham
"The bravest things I've done as a military veteran" by Daniel Lenham
[pathetic excuse for man defines poodle bombing already-bombed sites as 'mojo'] Herald Scotland
Why did Turkey shoot down a Russian Air Force jet? [source? too specific? disinfo?] by George Abert (Nov 26)
War is on the horizon [good arguments, but I hope he's wrong] by Paul Craig Roberts
Project for a pseudo Kurdistan by Theirry Meyssan
The empire strikes back by vineyard saker
Witness report [3 tall white athletic build men] CBS Evening News
"Deer, off" by tdos
Do mass killings bother you? by David Swanson [nominally 'left', on target]
Radical Americanism has killed millions by Ryan Dawson [nominally 'right', on target]
[basis for military action questioned by Tory while mouldy Blairite Labour neocons trip over themselves trying to wear holes in their tongues licking Cameron's boots] by Nicholas Watt, Ewen MacAskill and Rowena Mason
Murder and mayhem in the middle east by Chris Martenson
Capitalism at work by Paul Craig Roberts
A hybrid war to break the Balkans? by Andrew Korybko
Why is the US hanging Turkey out to dry? by Andrew Korybko
A new war in Iraq and Syria by Theirry Meyssan
"fun-size terrorists" by Murtaza Hussain
Provoking Russia by Dana E. Abizaid
The two version of the Latakia Plane incident by b
Smartest move in 8 years by Mike Whitney
The Matrix extends its reach by Paul Craig Roberts
False flags are historical reality by washington's blog (Feb 2015)
Convenient violence by Scott Creighton
Russia's intervention in Syria - a reality-based evaluation by vineyard saker
Strategic engineered migration as a weapon of war by Leonid Savin
[US gunships shoot hospital staff fleeing hospital they bombed] NBC
Someone to blame by Dave Cohen
The problem with oil prices is that they are not low enough by Art Berman
The children's feet are rotting by Lliana Bird
Two prominent promoters of the "Syrian Revolution" give up by b
Portugal's [elected!] anti-euro left banned from power Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Why is the US silently bobing Syria's electricity network? by b
[HOWTO describe the strategy of chaos without mentioning neocons] by Robert Naiman
Putin bombs Islamic State, Obama bombs a hospital by Margaret Kimberley
Putin's endgame in Syria by Michael Whitney
Obama's zugzwang by vineyard saker
[police snipers at Manchester anti-austerity march] by Katie Butler
Syria turns the corner by b
Understanding the refugee "crisis" of 2015 by Scott Creighton
NYT said to appease murderous Egyptian dictator by b
Syria: the cavalry is coming by b
"bomb Assad and save the refugees" BlackCatte in OffGuardian
Neoliberal shill by Scott Creighton
Refugee "crisis" being used for every possible psyop you can think of by Scott Creighton
Why we need to lie to ourselves about the state of the economy Satyajit Das
[silent hostility in the European non-melting-pot] by vineyard saker
Insouciance rules the west by Paul Craig Roberts
[end of increasing Chinese debt growth] by Steve Keen
Yemen: US double down, Saudi-UAE invasion stuck by b
[China population trends - critical missing point mentioned by first commenter] by Chris Hamilton
Part 3: why response to the last crisis won't work next time by Tim Morgan
Part 1: why the next crisis will start in China [esp see comments] by Tim Morgan
Billionaire Bunkers Forbes
Ground zero - before and after imgur
[parking lot crater center: N.B.: satellite photo is May, rods to poison the well?] quartz
[Tianjin explosion stabilized] Rigel2112
Approaching a global deflationary crisis? by Brian Davey
Austerity and degrowth by Brian Davey
The messy US 'strategy' in Syria by Pepe Escobar
Turkey invades Syria, goes for Aleppo by b
[G C H Q history] by Duncan Campbell
Greek 'rescue' is Berlin's tar baby by F. William Engdahl
Turkey in danger by Thierry Meyssan
China forced seller of treasuries by Russell Napier
Three-year-old child from London placed in government anti-extremism programme by Doug Bolton
Has the US finished the trap Assad had begun to set for Turkey? by Gefira
So you say you *don't* want a revolution? by Dmitri Orlov
The death of democracy in a Byzanine Labyrinth by Nicole Foss
If Poroshenko attacks his days are numbered by vineyard saker
Wicked problems and wicked solutions by Ugo Bardi
Expensive senator McCain! CyberBerkut [shadows wrong, this is disinfo disinfo]
Little known history of the euro by washington's blog
All hail by Chris Martenson
London air pollution kills almost 9,500 a year King's College Report
It all falls apart by Steve Ludlum
The 21st century Enclosures have begun by Paul Craig Roberts
Europe - Driver or Driven? by Bernard Connolly (30 May 2008)
Destroying Syria by Eric Margolis
The truth about Srebrenica 20 years later by vineyard saker
The sack of Athens by Philippe Legrain
The Troika and the five families: "we're going to kill your people" by Raul Ilargi Meijer
The case of Greece by Eric Zuesse
What Greece, Cyprus, and Puerto Rico have in common by Gail Tverberg
Greece's systemic collapse by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen
The financial attack on Greece: where to from here? by Michael Hudson
Greece and the EU situation by Paul Craig Roberts
It couldn't happen here by Tim Morgan [N.B.: right wing, militarist]
Syriza didn't get the message by Michael Nevradakis
How the empire will strike back by vineyard saker
Italy and Spain have funded a massive backdoor bailout of French Banks by Benn Steil and Dinah Walker
Acropolis now zerohedge jpg
Goldman Sachs in Greece by Pam Martens and Russ Martens
View on the Greek referendum [it's the oligarchs] by George Kintis
Greek demo with 'thousands' youtube
Europeans tried to block IMF debt report on Greece by Paul Taylor
Tsipras and the vampires by Boris Kagarlitsky
A new mode of warfare by Michael Hudson
The Greek tragedy by b
Journalists and war by Thierry Meyssan
China's thermal coal import collapse 41% on the year Hellenic Shipping News
If everyone lived in an 'ecovillage', the earth would still be in trouble by Samuel Alexander
Greek democracy is failing by Paul Craig Roberts
BDS by Gilad Atzmon
Europe and the US [prescient 6-year-old speech by Paul Craig Roberts]
Failure of the US coup d'etat in Macedonia by Thierry Meysann
What if Putin is telling the truth? by F. William Engdahl
Lies about Ramadi by Scott Creighton
Greek deception, Greek tragedy, German farce, German myth by Steven Keen
Drunken NATO foreign ministers singing "We are the world"... (first cover keyboard) youtube Reuters
Kerry in Sochi vineyard saker
Saudi to bomb indiscriminately, US reportedly amused by b
Britain, Libya and the Mediterranean by Dan Glazebrook
Why Syriza failed by Washingon DC insider (written end of March)
How US journalists inflame middle east sectarianism by b
NYT propgandizes false Ukrainian history by b
MoA scooped MSM by 28 months on Richard Engel by b
Richard Engel 2012 kidnapping was a staged fabrication - according to Richard Engel [2003 Iraq war embedded 'reporter'] by Scott Creighton
No Snowden asylum on cryptome
US-Iran agreements by Thierry Meyssan
The Arab civil war by Thierry Meyssan
Japan's disposable workers [but just stop smoking! - the net cafe must reek!] by Shiho Fukada and Eric Maierson
Yemen as Vietnam or Afghanistan by William R. Polk
Account of a British POW in Dresden by Vicent Gregg
30 sec spiel Paveway IV
Rage of the cultural elites [don't agree completely, but a fine rant!] by Yu Shan
Russia's remarkable renaissance by F. William Engdahl
The 64 trillion dollar question by Dave Cohen
The future of the mideast by Thierry Meyssan
American sniper vs. Baghdad sniper by Pepe Escobar
Fascism is coming alive again by Eric Margolis
The rise of Fascism is again the issue by John Pilger
[US defeat in Debaltsevo] by Mike Whitney
Russia and the world-system today by Immanuel Wallerstein
Obama's Salvador option in Iraq by Scott Creighton
Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73 by Michael Pettis
A man you've never heard of saved your life by washington's blog
Extremely dangerous situation in Debaltsevo [N.B.: Kerry, Hollande and Merkel in Kiev today] vineyard saker
[Werner Koch back in business by Julia Angwin
[Egypt 'democracy success story' - 183 death sentences at one blow] by Sarah Lazare
Peak 'oil' [that is, crude+condensate+tight+tar] right now by Ron Patterson
Venezuela: the coup in real time by Eva Golinger
[Greece, Russia, Turkey, and Primakov] by John Helmer
['leftist' Greece votes for Russian sanctions? - probably stopped new ones, tho] Reuters
Greece at the crossroads: the oligarchs blew it [but they will be back before long!] by Charles Hugh Smith
As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes by Alec Hogg
['Ukrainian' soldier/merc interview in Mariupol after Donetsk Republic attack: "Out of my face, please" with an American/Canadian accent] National Separatist
"It's all the Greek's fault" by Steve Keen
Civilization of the neo-cons by Peter Koenig
Charlie, a free press, and social security by Paul Craig Roberts
Lost dreams by Marcus Kracht
War and the dollarby Valentin Katasonov
Ukraine attacks bus and trolley in center of Donetsk by George Eliason
1700 private jets expected to Davos... to disucss climate change by IWB
[Cameron: all your operating systems are belong to us] by Cory Doctorow
Five facts by Feroze Mithiborwala
[there is still no real information about the state of unit 3] by Dave Lochbaum
Manipulation in Paris by Horace G. Campbell
Making Swiss cheese of the Euro? by Steve Keen
Charlie Hebdo: report from Europe by Paul Craig Roberts
[who to bomb next?] by Scott Creighton
Peak oil pulled a fast one on me by Allan Stromfeldt Christensen
On Charlie by Dmitri Orlov
Two minutes of hate rally by Scott Creighton
[good ideas incl wind/solar energy storage in electric vehicles] by Laurie Guevara-Stone
Who ordered the attack against Charlie Hebdo? by Thierry Meyssan
We must turn back before it is too late by George Galloway
Russia wants war: look how close they put their country to our military bases zerohedge pic
[dual use] by Omar R Quraishi (Dec 17)
Confronting the status quo [go Susan!] Susan Krumdieck (video, 2012)
The coming radical change in mining practice Simon P. Michaux (Oct 2013)
Rigging triangle exposed: the JPMorgan-BP-BankOfEngland cartel zerohedge
Thermodynamic view of money reverse engineer
Hiding a key autopsy by Eric Zuesse
Analysis of the 'shooting down' of MH17> by Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko [online since 30 Jul 2014]
[30 mm bullet, not shrapnel, holes in MH17 cockpit panel - pdf]
[cockpit panel position]
How Putin upset NATO's strategy by Theirry Meyssan
Russia, Turkey Pepe Escobar
Secret plan for reverse migration by Jim Wald (Mar 2014)
36th banker dead this year pocket sand
Nation-state [gee I wonder which?] ownage of GSM networks Kapersky
Is Bezler really naive? vineyard saker
The only way to stop the empire by Gary Flomenhoft
"We are just Ukrainian nationalists" NBC
Washington plays Russian roulette by Pepe Escobar
RT goes all in crafting "blowback" theory for ISIS TM by Scott Creighton
Let them eat ammunition ponzi world
[the pathetic scum-conomist 'withdraws' its review by keeping it online]the Economist
Obama's brave new world by Pepe Escobar
The secret stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria by William Engdahl
Global oil and other liquid fuels production update by Euan Mearns
Something very interesting has happened in Novorussia vineyard saker
Soros and the CIA now banking on Neves to defeat Rousseff by Wayne Madsen
Time to admit Jerusalem Post
[US terorists consider bombing Syrian oil pipelines] by Jon Queally
17 new coal power stations planned in Japan Mainichi
Boo! by Dmitri Orlov
[new scary ISIS TM training video features new US army tents...] by Scott Creighton
['terror' sword made out of plastic] by Rachel Olding
Russia, like the US, exploits the manufactured ISIS Crisis by Scott Creighton
[The most excellent stoning of Jeremy Clarkson's porsche] by Camilla Turner
US targets Syria infrastructure presstv
Well that didn't take long by Scott Creighton
Decimating Geenwald's "antiwar" spin on Obama and ISIS by Scott Creighton
A "responsibility to protect" mercenaries? by b
The latest crusade by Andre Vltchek
When men-only streets are okay in London by Jonathan Cook
Australaia threatens president Putin's security at G20 summit by John Helmer
Chris Hedges called "antisemitic idiot" (video) by Scott Creighton
The US-EU-Russia sanctions puzzle by Pepe Escobar
Nation of cowards by John Chuckman
The IMF's new cold war loan to Ukraine by Michael Hudson
[twitter-flogging the 'war in east Asia'] by Julian 'Newspeak' Borger
[EU's bark so far worse than bite] Dow Jones Business News
The evidence: MH 17 by Peter Haisenko
[sign of NATO/EU insanity? - sanctioning their own gas imports?!] Peter Spiegel tweet
Maybe, just maybe? by vineyard saker
Confirmed - ISIS TM commits the ultimate evil: baby juggling!!! by Scott Creighton
Ukraine takes another $1.39 billion from the IMF - $3 billion in IMF cash already sent offshore by John Helmer
NATO attacks! by Pepe Escobar
Washington and its NATO and EU vassals are insane by Paul Craig Roberts
What if a UK politician had been attacked by a pro-Palestinian fanatic? redress
Warning Merkel on Russian 'invasion' intel by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
How can you tell whether Russia has invaded Ukraine? A checklist by Dmitri Orlov
The Salvador option forever by Scott Creighton
Compare to WTC by cryptome
A little translation by Wallace Shawn
About that alleged beheading by Eric Margolis
More than 350 survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide condemn Israel's assault on Gaza IJAN
ISIS just crossed the line [comic] the columbus dispatch (ohio)
[nuking Gaza] by Ali Abunimah
Ukraine and peak cheap gas by Matt Mushalik
The ISIS crisis reaches stupid overload by Scott Creighton (excellent)
Why the Ukraine crisis is the West's fault by John Mearsheimer [vineyard saker calls him the "old Anglo guard" :-} ]
The reason I quit my BBC show [in 2009, when he switched to RT] by Max Keiser
Whole villages have [actually] been wiped off the map by Dr. Mona El-Farra
[situation in the eastern Ukraine] by vineyard saker
One year after Egypt's Rab'a massacre, US still funding repression by Medea Benjamin
German stunner: "West is on the Wrong Path" by Dmitri Orlov
Israeli shelling of Gaza destroyed 134 factories by NSNBC
The Atlantic axis and the making of a war in Ukraine by Christof Lehmann
Before/after digg
The metamorphosis of Bashar al-Assad by Theirry Meyssan
The clash of civilizations by Nebojsa Malic
"Well, we have public relations people in the United States ... and they handle these matters for us" by washingtons blog
[two can youtube]
Palestinians given ample time to evacuate to nearby bombing sites the Onion
AIPAC is the only explanation for America's morally bankrupt Israel policy by Stephen Walt
Black boxes to be analyzed in "impartial" London zerohedge
Sex assault on relatives will stop attacks by Ori Kashti
Extension of the gas war to the Levant by Thierry Meyssan
Kiev flash mob's final false flag? by Andrew McKillop
Tens of thousands march through London: the BBC is silent... Respect Party
Memories, recollections, guesses and speculations about MH17 by vineyard saker
Ukraine's security service has confiscated air traffic control recordings with Malaysian jet [which could have explained why it was so far off course] zerohedge
US Senate unanimously passes resolution supporting Israeli assult on Gaza by Chris Carlson
Malaysia strongly condemns Israeli aggression in Gaza the Sun Daily
Witness to a shelling by Peter Beaumont
[spectator sport, "good fun"] RT
Interview with Gilad Atzmon by Alimuddn Usmani
What if it all becomes obvious enough? a ClubOrlov reader
[different take on Germany and Ukraine - I'm skeptical] by Dagmar Henn
How long can Putin wait? by Paul Craig Roberts
For the record by vineyardsaker
Jihadism and the petroleum industry by Thierry Meyssan
[on the receiving end of Poroshenko's bombs in eastern Ukraine - WWII, part 2] by Oleg Matveychev
Cameraman for Russia's top broadcaster killed in E. Ukraine RT
Israel [Avigdor Lieberman] tell US Kurdish independence is 'foregone conclusion' Reuters
Ukraine and the rise of euro-fascism by Sergei Glazyev
More than just a chill in the air :-} by Klaus/cyclinginquisition
The chaos in Iraq is by design by washingtons blog
From the pages of Orwell by Wayne Madsen
Austria signs south stream pipeline deal with Russia zerohedge
Ten years on... [riverbend's most recent post, from a year ago] by Riverbend
[news from the 'cease fire' in Donetsk] by Igor Strelkov
Putin asks Upper House to repeal decision allowing use of military force in Ukraine RT
Rosneft introduces force majeure by John Helmer
BBC and press ignore massive demo against austerity in London by Tom Pride
Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) wikileaks
THe ISIS TM crisis by Scott Creighton
Iran will enver cooperate with US in war against ISIL: top commander Tehran Times
It's all for Israel by Mike Whitney
Back in the U[SS]K [Euromaidan not so much fun any more] by Paul Vickers
The ISIS crisis by Scott Creighton
A scorecard for the US "lukewarm war" on Russia by vineyard saker
Banks have secretly invested $29 trillion in the market zerohedge/FT
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement by Kremlin Stooge
[videos taken by the people the MSM defines as untermenschen]
Nato 'falling forward' by james
Tiananmen Square massacre is a myth by Gregory Clark
The ascent of a new power bloc: capitalists, technocrats and fanatics by James Petras
The durability of Ukrainian fascism by Peter Lee
The 5 most important oil fields [fracking? whatever] by Nick Cunningham
[homeless==pigeon] by Anna Roberts
Washington's iron curtain in Ukraine by Diana Johnstone
The Ukraine Junta’s Air Force massacre of unarmed civilians in Luhansk, 2 June 2014 by Marcello Ferrada de Noli (formerly imprisoned by Pinochet)
Femen participated in the Odessa massacre by Steven Argue
Mayhem in Ukraine countercurrents
Inna Kukurudza - RIP Seemorerocks
Lessons and consequences of WWI: back to the future? by Andrew Korybko
[BBC Jimmy-Saville-protecting newspeak presstitutes describing the too-late-already-videoed rocket attack] by vineyard saker
[on the ground - dying 'terrorist' office workers that the BBC disinfo service treats like untermenschen] by Gugijuma
[video of US-supported Ukraine oligarch junta Sukhoi-25 fighter jet rocketing Lugansk building taken over by locals - 'because it's all Russia's fault'] zerohedge
Why there is no Russian intervention in the Ukraine by Simon Uralov (very informative article)
The future is visible in St. Petersburg by Pepe Escobar
London's nitrogen dioxide pollution worse than Beijing by Alex Morales
Polish death squads fighting in Ukraine by Nikolai Malishevski
British interests in Ukraine by David Malone
"You are blaming us?" CNBC Putin interview
Major "Western" think tank admits defeat MoonOfAlabama
[huge sub: way to go, UK, with North Sea oil reserves running on empty in a few years...] by Elizabeth Palermo
Just imagine RT
[German foreign minister has a fit when confronted by anti-fascist protestors complaining about what is being done in their name] Die Welt video (1M views -- excellent!)
The CIA coordinates Nazis and jihadists by Thierry Meyssan
China bans Windows 8 from gov't computers by Wolf Richter
The Ukraine in turmoil by Israel Shamir
Two phone call leaks which say it all by vineyard saker
The waiting game by Pepe Escobar
Step by step to WWIII by Arshad Kahn
Welcome to Nulandistan by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Economic growth is non-negotiable by Dave Cohen
Peak coal by Ronald R. Cooke
The liberation of Homs by Thierry Meyssan
The Donbass referendum by vineyard saker
Unarmed people in Mariupol shot by invading junta troops saponkov
Unarmed people trying to stop armor in Mariupol
Remembering the important lessions of the Cold War by vineyard saker
New York Times covers up fascist atrocity in Odessa by Barry Grey
Why is our media lying? by Joseph Cannon
[on the pseudo-OSCE guys caught and recently released] by John Helmer
Are Western policies evil or desperate? by Anthony F. Shaker
NATO's incremental but inexorable absoption of Ukraine by Rick Rozoff
Multi-polar world in offing by F. William Enghdahl
Ukrainian special forces team caught near Donetsk by vineyard saker
If not now, when? by Andre Vltchek
The US plan for the Ukraine by vineyard saker
Prince Bandar steps down by Thierry Meyssan
Abu Ghraib falls to Al Qaeda, torture prison finally closed by Jason Ditz
[mission accomplished] Afghanistan opium harvest at record high by David Loyn
A controlled rant by Don Quijones
Eastern Ukraine by vineyard saker
Generic brand video by Kendra Eash
Narratives of explanatory value by escapefromwisconsin
Pushing toward the final war by Paul Craig Roberts
Putin laughs TheDailySheeple
London tuberculosis rates worst in Western Europe (Aug 2013) BBC
Erdogan blocks youtube in Turkey to block this "villainous" (hah!) leak of his military planning a false flag attack @castizbey
World crude production 2013 without shale oil is back to 2005 levels by Matt Mushalik
Could the next 'super el nino' be forming? by Andrew
Putin jokes cluborlov
[the coming civil war in the soon-to-be-Libya-ified rump Ukraine] by vineyard saker
Endgame of 15 year of NATO expansion by Rick Rozoff
The empire's war against the Serbian nation: lession for the resistance by vineyard saker
Which country is Europe's biggest narco state? by Don Quijones
Defeating fascism before it's too late by James Petras
New cold war shield by Manilio Dinucci
[insightful comment on Ukraine] by scalawag
Dmitri Orlov video interview on USAWatchdog interview
Putin's 18 Mar address trans. wikispooks
[neo-nazi Svoboda party members attacking and kidnapping director of Ukraine state television] video (posted by Svoboda press-secretary -- ponytail guy is a 'sportscaster', now an appointed MP)
Khaganate of Nulands by Pepe Escobar
Ukraine, Russia, and the world: 5 questions to 3 authors Tlaxcala
Where money comes from and why it matters by Tom Corbett
Positive money #75 interview with Ben Dyson
[Crimean referendum poster: "On Mar 16th we will choose:"] Reuters
[X-factor auditions in Ivano-Frankivsk] by Paul Vickers
Russia wants war [humor] Al Burke
Right sector march through western Ukraine city by Paul Vickers
Oligarchs to the fore once again in Ukraine by Julie Hyland
The great game in Eurasia by Pepe Escobar
The Crimean "crisis" by Dmitri Orlov
Ukraine SITREP Mar 11 by vineyard saker
The doctor and the saint by Arundhati Roy
Neo-fascists Ukrainian insurgents attack bus with Russian civilians near Cherkassy [N.B.: this is in the *east* on 20th Feb -- the date snipers fired on both sides in Kiev] by vineyard saker
Propaganda rules the news by Paul Craig Roberts
Spring fails in Ukrainian plunderland by Pepe Escobar
Estonian foreing minister Urmas Paet and Catherine Ashton discuss Ukraine [snipers killing both sides employed by leaders of Maidan] intercepted phone call
[Tory in charge of internet porn filter arrested for ...child porn] the Independent
Crimea River by Mike Whitney
Oligarchs step in to save Ukraine's sovereignty [where's the human barbie in this?] by Ivan Verstyuk and Katya Gorchinskaya
Reichstag fire in Kiev by Dmitri Orlov
One 'regime change' too many? by Ray McGovern
The Crimean anti-coup move by b
Look who the US is siding with in Ukraine, Egypt, and Syria by Chris Ernesto
Nationalists captured by pro-Russian crowd [then protected by police] by vineyard saker
Pierre Omidyar co-funded Ukraine revolution groups with US government by Mark Ames
Overnight in Crimea by vinyardsaker (A. Raevsky)
Carnival in Crimea by Pepe Escobar
[GCHQ wankers collect selfies] by Spencer Ackerman and James Ball
Ukraine falls to the Right Sector by Paul Craig Roberts
[Forget the EU: we spent $5 billion] Victoria Nuland Ukraine talk w/Chevron,Exxon
The geopolitics of the Ukrainian conflict: back to basics by vineyard saker
Shock over Ukraine Dmitri Orlov, Andrey Tymofeiuk
Musing about the legitimate use of violence by the state [interesting -- I don't agree with it all] vineyard saker
$23 Trillion Credit Bubble in China [up from $9 trillion in 2008!] by Michael Snyder
War week by Scott Creighton
[mr. death squad gets angry -- at his death squads] Al-Alam News
We better move on by Gilad Atzmon
The internet dark age [PDF!] by full disclosure
New great game by Pepe Escobar
Silent night in the trenches by Gary G. Kohls
Climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations [because civilizations don't adapt] by Emily Sohn
Benghazi has become training hub for Islamist fighters by Nancy A. Youssef
Syria redux? by Scott Creighton
Global temperature by Stephan Rahmstorf
Tony Cartalucci parroting IMP talking points by Scott Creighton
Default, deflation and financial repression by Chris Whalen
No, Pierre Omidyar does not want to topple the government by rancid honeytrap
The extraordinary Pierre Omidyar by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine
Near misses various
Syria has changed by Thierry Meyssan
[the latest in crowd control -- from Taiwan]
The changing face of UK electricity supply by Euan Mearns
The sixth stage of collapse by Dmitri Orlov
[London's view of cyclists: woman cyclist crushed to death by truck driver who failed to signal then turned left while on a cell phone: "judge: nobody is to blame"] by Tony Farrelly
Marom detained at Heathrow by Aviel Magnezi
Post-intervention Libya: a militia state by Richard Falk
Russia: 1993-2013 vineyard saker
Egypt: end of hope by Andre Vltchek
The Malala for-profit charter school psyop by Scott Creighton
Not a race by Gilad Atzmon
Fake BBC video by Craig Murray
China: we don't do shutdowns by Pepe Escobar
Lost cruise fears by Gregory Sinaisky
[good, but a little late, guys -- when it counted, in Aug, Guardian ran military propaganda from Peter Beaumont and Harriet Sherwood] by Janathan Steele
Mail fakes Nairobi pictures moon of alabama
There are no hot chicks in Mostar by Milan Djurasovic
Kenyan bloodbath by Tony Cartalucci
In Syria, there are no moderates by Tony Cartalucci
The CIA, the press and black propaganda by Douglas Valentine
Submerging markets by reverse engineer
The people against the 800 pound gorilla by Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone
A short history of the war on Syria 2006 to 2014 by b
The CIA is pouring into Syria by Jack D. Douglas
Russia increase naval presence th vineyard of the saker
China stitches up new silk road by Pepe Escobar
Libya: How not to intervene by Alan Kuperman
[Libya has been destroyed, and Cockurn is still catapulting] by Patrick Cockburn
A few thoughts on the current events the vineyard of the saker
Russian chess move stalls US actions as Al-Qaueda air force by Pepe Escobar
Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern predicts false flag attack on US destroyers off Syria coast interview on presstv
AIPAC to deploy hundreds of lobbyists to push for Syria action Ha'aretz
Turkish security, military delegation in Tel Aviv to discuss war on Syria Farsnews
Survey of possible attack options The Vineyard of the Saker
Putin: "But there is also another question:" Putin AP interview
US planned Syrian civilian catastrophe since 2007 by Tony Cartalucci
Corbett interview with Pepe Escobar GRTV
Syria "wag the dog" by Mark Gaffney
US: the indispensable (bombing) nation by Pepe Escobar
"Where's my Nobel Prize? I bombed people too" buzzfed
What is the next step in Syria? [excellent summary of previous false flags that were used to start wars] by Michael Rivero
The Troodos conundrum by Craig Murray
Wartime propaganda from yore [faked 'unplugged incubator babies'] C-span
Polls: Israelis want US, Europe to attack Syria, but against IDF intervention Jerusalem Post
Operation Tomahawk with cheese by Pepe Escobar
Forcing Obama into a prolonged Syrian war by Franklin Lamb
Libyan oil industry flounders amid chaos by Stuart Elliott and Sherif Elhelw
Russia has proof the "rebels" did it [me: but won't press with it] by Pepe Escobar
Obama set for holy Tomahawk war by Pepe Escobar
What to recent US/NATO/Israeli military aggressions tell us about what might happen next in Syria? vineyard saker
Defeated NATO dangerously desperate in Syria by Tony Cartalucci
UK government now leaking documents about itself by Glenn Greenwald
The wishful thinking left by Jean Bricmont
[syrian false flag -- round two] zerohedge
Snowden psyop continues by Scott Creighton
UK government promoted fake bomb detectors by Robert Booth
Bullshit jobs by David Graeber
Hi I'm your new axis of evil by Pepe Escobar
Murdering the wretched of the earth by Chris Hedges
[almost exactly the way I think about this!] by Paul Chefurka
[Teilhard de Chardin was partly right] by Paul Chefurka
Saudi prince defects RT
Peak mining lecture by Simon P. Michaux, former miner
Pump and pray by Christopher Busby
[Fukushima ground water radioactivity higher than inside what is left of core] by washingtons blog
Einstein letter from 1948 on the formation of the state of Israel letter from Einstein to Shepard Rifkin
"Ye are many; they are few" by John Pilger
Hezbollah vilified for fighting al-Qaeda Anon (satire)
The BBC's lost videos by Michael Rivero
[the great firewall of China comes to the UK homeland -- not just porn] BBC
Liverpool care pathway for dying patients to be abolished after review [problem is "computer says no" automatons and finance bean counters implementing it] by Sarah Boseley
[how about fixing the lousy windows in this country instead?] by Con Coughlin and Robert Winnett
War on [British] motorists is a myth by rudi.net
[critical to avoid Dmitri's stage 4] by Dave Pollard
Egypt: a peak oil revolution by Binu Mathew
Scurvy returns among children with diest 'worse than in the war' by Steve Hawkes andJohn Bingham
"The shouting of the bankers resembled constant gunfire" Joris Luyendijk blog
[Go! Laurent Louis!] trans. by Feuillien Geraldine
High oil proces are starting to affect China and India by Gail Tverberg
Staying at Hong Kong's Mira Hotel by Scott Creighton
Cinema of self-indulgence by Douglas Valentine
Turkey's bloody Friday intellihub
[mission accomplished: Iraq is a catastrophe -- 1000 killed last month -- many times worse than it was under Saddam] by Jason Ditz
[remarkable insight deficit] by Edward Dark
Destabilization Campaign in Turkey Over Iranian Oil Sanction or Part of Larger Caspian Sea Basin Game? by Scott Creighton
[middle east oil and gas map including Caspian] from Scott Creighton bog
UN has testimony [via Carla Del Ponte] that Syrian rebels used sarin gas Reuters
[large Israeli Damascus bomb -- probably conventional -- causes mushroom cloud] youtube
Autoimmune/autoinflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants in commercial sheep by Lujan et al.
The angry arabs and syria by b
Israeli airstrikes signal western desperation in Syria by Tony Cartalucci
Gwenyth Todd on Iran presstv, feb 4
NYT: "Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of" by Tony Cartalucci
Final thoughts by Alan Hart
The arrest of General Musharraf by JP Sottile
Sex work and branded clothing by Ko Tha Dja
Syrian human rights front is EU-funded fraud by Tony Cartalucci
Ten years on... by Riverbend
Peak oil demand is already a huge problem by Gail Tverberg
The list of deceased solar companies by Eric Wesoff
The real Cyprus template (the one you're not supposed to notice] by Charles Hugh Smith
'Underwear bomber' was working for CIA-duh by Paul Harris and Ed Pilkington
Cyprus and the US Navy by Bruce Krasting
"Beam me up Scotty, there are no deposits here" WilliamBanzai7
[real war stories] by Nick Turse
'Dirty war' questions for Pope Francis by Robert Parry
Droning into irrelevance? by Nu'man Abd al-Wahid
Hizbullah training FSA World Tribune (!)
El Comandante has left the building by Pepe Escobar
Grid parity for solar in India and Italy by energy bulletin
[Rachel Corrie standing up to the man] by Eileen Fleming
From developing to emerging by John Ward
Pray for an asteroid by Dmitri Orlov
Britamgate Voltaire net
The twilight of petroleum by Antonio Turiel (trans. Max Iacono)
An intense Greenland melt season: 2012 in review NSIDC
You think the air in Beijing is bad? try New Delhi by Heather Timmons
Syria: first to blink by b
Is UK defense contractor planning Syrian WMD false flag? by Tony Cartalucci
Britam defence allegedly hacked: "We've got a new offer... [Syria chemical weapons false flag] ... I don't think it's a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous" by Lee J
"I took it all and put it in an envelope... I"m not touching it" Ha'aretz interview with Shlomi Eldar
Syria: Reuters spreads another 'massacre' lie -- debunked by b
Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian hypotheses by Eran Elhaik
My father's work eviscerated by Raphaelle Rerolle
How the internet became a closed shop by Asher Moses
The woes of an American drone operator by Nicola Abe
[Ben-Menashe's house bombed just before he was travelling to be interviewed by Robert Parry] by Robert Parry
In the twilight of empires by John Michael Greer
Exclusive interview with chief of the British task force in Turkey (humor!) Syrian perspective
[Free Syrian Army blowing up a mosque in Aleppo later blamed on gov't bombing by Al-Jazeera]
Russian experts on Syria by vindeyardsaker
Deadly theatre by Tony Cartalucci
Photos from day 3 by Anne Paq
The view from the ground by Catherine Charrett
Schofield, the decoy witchhunt and the black arts of spin firm magazine
80 times more efficient by Kris De Decker
Economists played a special role in contributing to the problem by Mark Thoma
The burning of the great library of Alexandria by Reverse Engineer
Heroism and apocalypse in the Libyan desert by Thomas Mountain
How wheat became toxic by Katherine Czapp
Benghazi attack and ambassador Stevens by Felicity Arbuthnot
[but I think they really did know what it would be like] by John Avery
Slums by Steve Ludlum
NATO terrorists target Syria and Algeria by Tony Cartalucci
Botched 1980 Gaddafi assassination kills all aboard Veterans Today
US desperation surfaces in Syria by Tony Cartalucci
Big airlines in big trouble by Andrew McKay
"It's the story of humanity not rising to the occasion" -- get used to VR interview with Jorgen Randers
Terror as a weapon by John Cherian
[Jeroen Oerlemans -- none of the fighters was Syrian] Russia Today
Could the war on Syria create regime change in Ankara? by b at MoonOfAlabama
Revolutionary conditions by Dmitri Orlov
Xi'an signals cap on car purchases China daily
Who or what is Russia's "Pussy Riot"? by Tony Cartalucci
Food production and nature by Chris Williams
Sociopaths rule by Morris Berman
Peak minerals by Chris Rhodes
Dispatch from Damascus by Manuel Ochsenreiter
The unfinished story of Iraq's oil law by Greg Muttitt
Will Downing St. memo recur on Iran? by Annie Machon and Ray McGovern
Policy change: "terrorists" are now "insurgents" b at moonofalabama
The battle of Damascus has begun by Theirry Meyssan
NATO preparing vast disinfo campaign by Theirry Meyssan
New FAZ piece on the Houla massacre by Rainer Hermann, trans. b
Flame is [not] lame by Mikko
Hope burning by Robert Scheer
[reactor 2 -> land, reactor 3 -> sea] Asahi Shimbun
Rebutting FOFOA by Reverse Engineer
Goodbye faculty by Tom Abel
Amnesty is cheerleading for war by Moon of Alabama
Interview of 'Treasure Islands' Nick Shaxson Rob Hopkins
[deepwater oil: just the facts] by Jean Laherrere
[great US/UK success in Iraq: half the population is now hungry]
Full spectrum confrontation world? by Pepe Escobar
[French elections, half a million early deaths from Vioxx] by Alexander Cockburn
Evaluating a 1981 temperature projection by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein Haarsma
[dang Aldous Huxley -- designer babies for 50 year old women in a world with way too many people] by Steve Connor
Christ was never a christian but he was tortured by occupying forces by Eileen Fleming
Nuclear fusion [the power source of the future] by Ugo Bardi
UK oil: plummeting production vs. media inattention by Rick Monroe
Capitalism: a ghost story by Arundhati Roy
[750 sq ft 3 room cave going for just $46K] by Barbara Demick
World energy consumption since 1820 in charts by Gail the Actuary
MMT as the austerity alternative by Michael Hudson
['1984' officially arrives in Old Blighty] Casuals United Blog
China coal update by Richard Heinberg
Trident is a colossal wate of money that will encourage further nuclear proliferation by James Bloodworth
US state department hands terror-cult US base in Iraq by Tony Cartalucci
Tactics and strategy at the Strait of Hormuz by Luis de Sousa
Who was behind the Dehli bombing? by Gareth Porter
The 'Syrian revolution' is possibly over by b
The real story versus the cover story by Mark Gaffney
[false flag, classic] by John Crewsdon
China steps up to Syria China Matters
Debt-o-nomics Part Three by Steve Ludlum
Who is threatening whom? from Juan Cole
A German satire on a Greek stage by Farooque Chowdhury
Britain had to plead with US to take part in Iran flotilla by Jame Kirkup
The Arab agenda in Syria by Pepe Escobar
In Libya now the truth is coming out by Lizzie Phelan
Iran turns embargo tables by Tyler Durden
[leaked Australian gov't oil report] by Matt Mushalik
Global energy and resources by Peter Goodchild
Israel tamps down Iran war threats by Ray McGovern
Sinking the petrodollar in the Persian gulf by Pepe Escobar
Albert Einstein opposed Israel terrorism and zionism Letters to the Editor,, New York Times, 4 Dec 1948
American-backed terrorists in Iran by Tony Cartalucci
[keeping the master race gene pool clean...] by Dan Williams
[better title: fifth scientist assassinated by terrorist bomb] BBC
Horror and puppetry by Linh Dinh
Iran in the crosshair again? by vineyard saker
Much ado about methane [it's the CO2, friend] by David Archer
Why is Britain ramping up sanctions against Iran? by Simon Jenkins
Through a keyhole darkly by Ed Kinane
"I didn't vote for these bastards. I voted for the other bastards" by Dmitri Orlov
Those *peaceful* suicide bombers in Syria by b
No secret in Finnish Patriot missile discovery by b
Anatomy of a NATO war crime by Franklin Lamb
[implications of UK trail of MF collapse for Eurozone, Canada] by Tyler Durden
Years of drone flights find no Iranian nuclear weapons program by b
The coming war with Pakistan: BBC rewrites 10 years of history and declares Pakistan the new enemy by Tony Cartalucci
[the US/UK war on Iraq has permanently destroyed higher education in Iraq]
The real 1% doctrine by Mark Ames
The "Left" and Libya by Alexander Cockburn
Washington's countdown by Tom Burghardt
Gould-Werritty by Craig Murray
How the devil paid by Tony Cartalucci
The Egyptian revolution -- act II by b
Organ gangs force poor to sell kidneys by Michael Smith, Daryna Krasnolutska and David Glovin
Britain's dirty secret [threat to world peace, etc] by Meirion Jones
A false flag compaign against the concept of man made global warming by Ugo Bardi
New Libyan "PM" is a big-oil goon by Tony Cartalucci
[UK planning to attack Iran -- wouldn't this money be better spent on fixing the crap windows???] by Nick Hopkins
Germany and the Euro crisis b at moon of alabama
The Greek decision by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
[US/EU-supported Libya 'rebels' get into 6 hour gun battle using antiaircraft guns at a *hospital* trying to kill a patient] by Nick Meo
[PDF!] [25,000-women study: higher cholesterol -> *less* heart attacks] H. Petursson et al. (2011)
The actual war begins now by Franklin Lamb
Centrist Islam and Mustafa Abdul-NATO by As'ad AbuKhalil
The Gaddafi I knew by Eric Margolis
Foreign companies fight for Libyan oil [after bombing oil infrastructure to necessitate foreign intervention] by A. Tagiyeva
Lizzie Phelan speech on Libya, Oct 10 by Lizzie Phelan
UN silent despite no grounds for NATO war on Libya by Frances Thomas
Chaos computer club analyzes [German] government malware CCC
Libya's TNC, bullet proof democracy and perpetual war by Christof Lehmann
Isrl's window to bomb Iran by Ray McGovern
Mass killing and humanitarian disaster in NATO siege of Sirte by Bill Van Auken
NATO's war on libya is directed against China by F. William Engdahl
Again and again -- securing Barge-e Matal b
[bring earplugs! -- they work] by Kevin Koeninger
Turkey lectures Syria on killing militants -- then kills militants by Tony Cartalucci
Europe bank debt in lurid detail by David Malone
[stop bombing Libya, UK-ers! -- fix your freaking Tube!] by Miranda Bryant and Dick Murray
A brief economic explanation of Peak Oil [excellent article] by Chris Skrebowski
Does the Euro have a future? by George Soros
How al Qaeda men came to power in Libya by Thierry Meyssan
How the NATO military and corporate takeover of Libya was achieved by Dan Glazebrook
NATO's 'victory' in Libya by Tony Cartalucci
30,000 bombs over Libya by Thomas C. Mountain
Wordpress suspends Rick Rozoff's 'Stop NATO' new site by Rick Rozoff
Gaddafi's Libya as demon by Diana Johnstone
Lies, war, and empire: NATO's 'humanitarian imperialism' in Libya by Andrew Gavin Marshall
[previous Great Leader installed by NATO now accused of trafficking Serbian organs] BBC
Right to plunder by Pepe Escobar
NATO's ugly face by Stephen Lendeman
Never forgive, never forget by Stephen Lendeman
Libya: the greatest betrayal by Tony Cartalucci
Winter is coming by Nebojsa Malic
The true heroes of NATO's war by Glen Ford
WikiLeaks cables expose Washington's close ties to Gaddafi by Bill Van Auken
Libya's forced collapse: what does it portend for Africa? by Amengeo Amengeo
Libya war is CIA op 30 years in the making by Tony Cartalucci
Tripoli in defiance of NATO by Tony Cartalucci
Al-Qaeda asset is military commander of Tripoli by Pepe Escobar
Rebels cleanse Tripoli's Abu Salim [after NATO bombardment] from Matthieu Mabin
Updates on Libyan war collected by Rick Rozoff
BBC shows "Green Square, Libya" from India! crashareyouready
US, NATO plan Libyan "stabilization" by Bill Van Auken
You don't bomb a "captured" city by Tony Cartalucci
"The rebels now are just NATO's ground troops" interview w/young Libyan from London
Tripoli Port notes by Franklin Lamb
Calls for NATO occupation of Libya deafening by Tony Cartalucci
Demolitions by Israel increase fivefold, says new UN report UN IRIN
Fierce fighting continues in Tripoli by Bill Van Auken
Killing the truth [death threats conveyed by MSM reporters!] RT interview with Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Libya: mission accomplished? moon of alabama
Waiting for the endgame in Libya by Franklin Lamb
The Pentagon's "Salavador option": the deployment of death squads in Iraq and Syria by Michel Chossudovsky
The benz burners arrive [138 luxury cars torched in Berlin so far in 2011] zerohedge
[quantitative easing transfers money from poor to rich -- looting without broken glass] by Heather Stewart
Riots and the underclass by Alexander Cockburn
NATO's massacre at Majer by Franklin Lamb
Britain baffled by bersek by Farooque Chowdhury
What is really happening in Europe? the vineyard saker
London's burning by Hal Austin
Panic on the streets of London by Laurie Penny
The suveillance state has failed by Daniel Hamilton
When did the American empire start to decline? by Stephen Walt
Truth emerges about IED carnage by Kelley B. Vlahos
Israel backers worry about muting of pro-Israel media voice by Ron Kampeas
I love the smell of Murdoch in the morning by William Rivers Pitt
One third of Libya turns out to support Qaddafi in world's largest march ever Mathaba
Israel passes draft law requiring Palestinians to pay for their own home demolitions by Saed Bannoura
Dead money by Steve Ludlum
Freedom riding to Gaza by David Swanson
What if the Sun went into a new Grand Minimum by Georg Feulner
Learning from the aquacalypse by Dave Cohen
"It's too late for that" by Paul Mason
Betting on the PIGS by Kash Mansori
NATO's "Alternate Universe" in Libya by Wayne Madsen
NATO's war crimes in Libya by Susan Lindauer
[good Michael Hudson article on Greece] by Michael Hudson
Accusations of treason in the Greek Parliament [Greece to be sold off to German and French banks] Covering Delta
Sarkozy and Cameron prepare to land in Libya by Manlio Dinucci
Welcome to the violent world of Mr. Hopey Changey by John Pilger
Why 'b' was wrong on Fukushima by Malooga (informed anti-nuke engineer)
Wikileaks reveals US wantedd to keep Russia out of Libyan oil by Paul Jay
Dear Coen Brothers, it's nothing personal (it's all political) by Tali Shapiro
Pirates of the Mediterranean by William Bowles
2020 crude oil production down around 8 mb/d [~11%] by Matt Mushalik
Conserving the commons by Vera Brodova
NATO warships shell Red Crescent building in Misrata Jason Ditz
There goes the data: major cuts at EIA by Gregor MacDonald
Financial heist of the century: confiscating Libya's Sovereign Welth Funds by Manlio Dinucci
1992-2011 bis repetita by vineyard saker
How many cancers did Chernobyl really cause? [estimate: 53K cancers and 27K deaths] by Lisbeth Gronlund
3-week update on Japan's nuclear crisis by David Wright
Surreal rhetoric on Libya by Lawrence Davidson
Wow that was fast! Libyan rebels have already established a new central bank of Libya by Michael Snyder
Libya's blood for oil: the vampire war by Susan Lindauer
UK 'anarchists' are part of MI5 by Kevin Boyle
War on Libya and the control of the Mediterranean by Rick Rozoff
Possible source of leaks at spent fuel pools at Fukushima by Dave Lochbaum
[what idiocy! -- he's *long* dead, Jim] by Syed Saleem Shahzad
Possible cause of reactor building explosions by Dave Lochbaum
Attempts to refill fuel ponds by World Nuclear News
[comment on three Fukushima explosions and spent fuel fire] by shelburn
[comment on [smaller] Fukushima No. 1 explosion from nuclear plant engineer] by donshan
What about a no fly zone for the Palestinians? by Gilad Atzmon
Not guilty by Chris McGreal
Egypt, a classic case of rapid net-export decline by Jeffrey J. Brown and Samuel Foucher
Egypt to open Gaza border in both directions Tuesday Xinhua
Was Davis running drone programme in Pakistan? by Chidanand Rajghatta
Protesting Iraq by Layla Anwar
Bahraini police surrender to protestors Press TV
Beyond the false dawn: global crisi 2020-2022 by Charles Hugh Smith
Bread, not twitter by Mike Small
[protestors strike back] Staff, alMasryalYoum
The revolution is dead. Mubarak Obama won 'Black Swan' comment on BusinessInsider [guess he didn't win :-} ]
The Tunisian example and Britain by Christopher King
Reagan epoch shatters in Egypt by Robert Parry
Government document captured from Egyptian thugs by Kawther Salam
UK/US companies help shutdown Egypt internet Democracy Now
Prince warns S. Arabia of apocalypse Press TV
19 private planes arrive in Dubai from Egypt Free Egypt
Population redux by Paul Chefurka
The Guardian's political censorship of Wikileaks by Israel Shamir
Lauren Booth: go go go by Gilad Atzmon
Pakistan will implode if the US does not leave Afghanistan by Imran Khan
The Japan myth by Daniel Gros
All British forests for sale by Johann Hari
US plans for military escalation in Afghanistan by Barry Grey
For C I A drone warriors, the future is death by Pepe Escobar
Wikileaks conjures Litvinenko's ghost by Justin Raimondo
The doctor at the heart of Kosovo's organ scandal and
follow-up by Paul Lewis
The British Army's FRR go through the looking-glass? by Nick Kollerstrom
Vichy Britain by Neil Clark
[why undersea cables in the news now?] by Kevin Flaherty
German faces choice as Spain wobbles by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
[Irish pensions bail out EU -- i.e., German, French, UK bankers] by Emmet Oliver
The party game is over: stand and fight by John Pilger
The largest heist in history by Greg Pytel (April 2009)
Chalmers Johnson dies by Stephen Lendman
Robotz, Obama and satanic mills by Steve Ludlum
The white knight of zombieland by Steve Ludlum
Protest works by Johann Hari
[Who rules America?] by zerohedge
[Google pays 2.4% tax -- a lot less than you do...] by Jesse Drucker, Bloomberg
European maps alphadesigner
The global banking cartel has one card left to play by David DeGraw
A financial coup d'etat
by Michael Hudson
US/UK war crimes: more leukemia in Fallujah survivors than Hiroshima survivors by Bill Wilson
Peak oil is history by Dmitri Orlov
Will we ever learn the truth about 9/11? by Eric Margolis -- Huffington Post (deleted)
No good men left here by Christopher Ketcham
Warface defining human life by 2020 by Paul B. Farrell
Israel places order for 20 F-35s -- U.S. picks up the [$3 billion dollar!] tab by Greg Grant
Bank profits a sign of economic sickness, not health by Steve Keen
Conflict of interest in 'superbug' report Times of India
And now for some good news by Johann Hari
Entrepreneurs: from the Near Eastern takeoff to the Roman collapse by Michael Hudson
Obama warned Israel my bomb Iran Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Systemic fear by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan
Ethnic identity politics are deadly by Elaine Meinel Supkis [but I don't believe that better border controls will solve the problem...]
The Democrats are just one-half of the war party by Cindy Sheehan
Oil spill pics by washingtons blog
'The front fell off' for BP [youtube] John Clark
The death of nations vs. the wealth of nations by Damon Vrabel
Why the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan by William Dalrymple
Torture and truth by emptywhere on Craig Murray release
How Goldman gambled on starvation by Johann Hari
Sinking ship by John J. Mearsheimer (clear-headed conservative)
Is Petraeus McChrystal's replacements or Obama's? by Paul Craig Roberts
A pathless land by John Michael Greer
The coming era of energy disasters by Michael Klare
[Kevin Neish eye witness] by David Lindorff
Why the French hate Noam Chomsky by Diana Johnstone
Flotilla fallout by Douglas MacGregor (US Army Col. Retired)
[more eye witnesses] by Lauren Booth
[eyewitness report from a news producer] by Jamal Elshayyal
Defenders of the Mavri Mamarra by Ken O'Keefe
[bambi commandos slipping on pools of blood] by Layelle Saad and Ramadan Al Sherbini
Of course, they were asking for it by Mark Steel
Reflections on the future of Palestine and the Middle-East [I'm hoping this analysis is incorrect] by vineyard saker
Seeing through the modus operandi -- poor Bambi commandos being lynched by Al Qaeda terrorists by Mac McKinney
Israeli butchery at sea -- an institutional failure of a morbid society by Gilad Atzmon
Only a one-state Palestine is possible by Christopher King
Greeks work harder than Germans do by Mark Thoma
EU bullied into $1T banking bonanza by Gordon Long
Clegg throws people under the bus by Michael Collins
[TARP for Germany] by Michael Hudson
McAfee surpasses North Korea as cyberattack power by Dick Destiny
Dissection those 'overpopulation' numbers: part one -- population where? by Ian Angus
The coming famine by Julian Cribb
The great unreasoning by Dmitri Orlov
Global nonrenewable natural resource scarcity -- an analysis by Chris Clugston
Will there be a false flag operation to implicate Iran? by Paul Craig Roberts
Final destination Iran? by Rob Edwards
Time to outlaw naked credit default swaps by Wolfgang Munchau
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment by Henry Samuel
Toward a new world social order by Richard K. Moore
Sting's defence [of his million quid gig in Tashkent] by Craig Murray
Mythological thinking, the de-industrialisation of the West and the New World Order by Big Gav
Goldman goes rogue -- special European audit to follow by Simon Johnson
Chinese steel production (!) by Stuart Staniford
Living conditions determine health [health care spending accounts for 3% of variance in life expectancy] by Rock Climber (internal medicine M.D.)
Which will be the last nation standing? by Richard Heinberg
Naked scanners, naked CCTV and barefaced lies by Charles Farrier
Pakistan collapse could trigger global great depression and world war III Nadeem Walayat
If it's that warm, how come it's so damn cold? by James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato, and Ken Lo
The future of phosphorus by Steve Coll
Trolley canal boats Low-tech magazine
CIA killings speel defeat in Afghanistan by Douglas Valentine
Pants bombs vs. America by George Smith
Coal world Gregor Macdonald
Afghan dirty war [cf. Vietnam Phoenix] escalates by Douglas Valentine
Oil and environment: a contradiction by Peter Goodchild
Avatar metaphor for the long war by David Swanson
[CDS inventor/looter/banker/fraudster is behind carbon derivatives "cap and trade" scam] by washingtons blog
Af-Pak war racket by David DeGraw
Richest 1% of Britons hold 70% of wealth (vs. 48% in US) by Edmund Conway
The oil-economy connection by Michael Lardelli
Why we fight by Alan McKinnon
The CRU hack by RealClimate
Torture flight spotted in Birmingham (UK) by Robert Booth
How a torture protest killed a career by Craig Murray
Spotter cards and how they work Guardian
Deformed babies in Fallujah by H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki
The challenging incongruity of cheap oil by Andrew McKillop
Resources, land use, and the collapse of civilizations by Guy McPherson
Why was the Berlin wall built? by William Blum
Excreted tamiflu found in rivers [where it can exert selection pressure on water bird viruses] by Janet Raloff
The worth of the earth by Raul Ilargi Meijer
U.S. [poodle] NATO poised for most massive war in Afghanistan's history by Rick Rozoff
[think Alabama, 1910] by Sheera Frenkel
Brezinski -- "It could be a Liberty in reverse" interview with Gerald Posner (cf. C I A)
The national interests of Iran in the Caspian Sea by Bahman Aghai Diba
The story of my shoe by Mutadhar al-Zaidi
The revolution of the elites by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Megrahi was framed by John Pilger
Backbone of complex networks of corporations: the flow of control by J.B. Glattfelder and S. Battiston
Organ harvesting by Alison Weir
Can the wealthy have a separate peace? by Altaira
Zionist pioneer renounces Zionism by Helena Cobban
Peter Ackerman by Stephen Gowans
[go Marina! -- she's a hero on Crete] by Paul Anast
Worst single terror attacks in history and
reenactment by Norm Dixon
Kidney theft ring by Joseph Cannon
Wars, plagues, and Europe's rise to riches by Nico Voigtander and Hans-Joachim Voth
The monster footprint of digital technology by Kris De Decker
Oil: the market is the manupulation by Chris Cook
Evolution and Revolution of the Central Banking System Global Power and Global Government: Part 1 by Andrew Gavin Marshall
[why British bread sucks] Wikipedia
Pay us off or we blow up the plant by John Lichfield
Trolleybuses and trolleytrucks LowTech magazine
[from 2004] CDC to mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study by Robert Roos
[Brown finds his inner poodle] by Mark Townsend, Toby Helm, Peter Beaumont and Gaby Hinsliff
Artwork of the children of Gaza desertpeace
Did nano-thermite take down the WTC? interview with Niels Harrit
Metal minerals scarcity and the elements of hope by A.M. Diederen
Moon of Alabama closes [financial, employment, social] by Bernhard
"Almost easy" Brookings Institution report
What is the miminum EROI that a sustainable society must have? by Charles A. Hall, Stephen Balogh, and David J. Murphy
'There is very little logic at work' by c
Iran surrounded Charting Stocks
To fight deflation, abolish cash by Leo Lewis
Ar the Iranian protests another US orchesrated "color revolution"? by Paul Craig Roberts
A plague of snakes by Patrick Cockburn
What if Ahmadinejad really won? by Robert Parry
In memory of Ed Teague, Postman Patel by Craig Murray
Holocaust and holodomor by Nicholas Lysson
Coming home by George Monbiot
London's Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding by Sean O'Neill
[Israel attacks hothouses and farmland] by Saed Bannoura
On overfitting by Eric Steig
Low product by Ann Thorpe
Red cliffs and collapse by Damien Perrotin
[US torture ship vacationing in Mallorca] by Adrian Roberts
[drug money only liquid investment capital -- Jan 09] by Boris Groendahl
[Indo-Europeans behaving badly as is their wont] by Catherine Philp and Michael Evans
[7/7 confession via torture -- cf. 9/11 commission report based on torture] by Ian Cobain
ITER iterations by John Busby
Living with 75 tons of depleted uranium in Gaza Palestine New Network
[2002 'creative' survey of religion, torture, but good illustrations why it would be a really bad idea to go back there] by Michael Rivero
Prosperity without growth by Luis Queiros
The summer of 1381 by Dan Jones
The wreck of modern finance by Martin Hutchinson (conservative)
Let's salt the slug in 2010 by Charlie Skelton
Thatcher's children by Left Luggage
Maps of who caused climate change and who will pay for it from Ezra Klein
[remote control drones killing civilians] Ramzy Baroud
[shelling hospitals] by Sarath Kumara
David Miliband presses for gag on CIA memo [new poodle] by Richard Norton-Taylor
Odd looking photographer? by Nick Fine
'Gaza II' unfolding in the East by Wayne Madsen
Transport and adaptive capacity by Robin Lovelace
The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind by Jerome a Paris
State of permanent siege by Richard Cook
Why we forgot how to grow food by John-Paul Flintoff
How credit default swaps create bankruptcies by b
How bad will it get? by Steve Keen
Scholar disputes founding myth by Morgan Strong
Useless finance, harmful finance, and useful finance by Willem Buiter
Geithner's dirty little secret by F William Engdahl
Arctic meltdown by Fred Pearce, NewScientist
Almost half of French approve of locking up bosses by Estelle Shirbon
Corporations and media by Joe Bageant
AIG: before credit default swaps [fraud], there was reinsurance [fraud] by Chris Whalen
The field of "permitted" opinion narrows further by Craig Murray
The crisis of maldistribution by Branko Milanovic
Towards a new sustainable economy by Robert Costanza
Renewable energy cannot sustain a consumer society by Ted Trainer
Is a major war a possibility in 2009? The historical antecedents by Frederic F. Clairmont
The unfortunate uselessness of academic economics by Willem Buiter
Only in Kazakhstan, alas: the maximumm wage fight by Rick Salutin
A taxpayer rip-off of surprising boldness by Willem Buiter
Make Bono pay tax by Eamonn McCann
Please state the nature of your emergency by Kurt Cobb
You have moved on but the injured and burned children of Gaza have not by Juan Cole
Asia's export economies in free fall by John Chan
The wounds of Gaza The Lancet
Still in ruins by Dahr Jamail
Merchants of death: exposing corporate finaced holocaust in Africa by Keith Harmon Snow
Bankers' excesses require retribution, not reviews of pay by Jeremy Warner
Two-way street by Rannie Amiri
2009 world food production by Eric de Carbonnel
Full circle by Dahr Jamail
The starving of Gaza [about half of agriculture industry wrecked by Israeli attack] by Eric Ruder
Edge of the abyss [hysterical Veneroso on Japan] by Yves Smith
Italy bans kebabs [uhhh, what about those oil workers?...] by Richard Owen
Peter Mandelson backs new 'psople's bank' at Post Office by Toby Helm
Davos hosts Blackstone creeps by Elaine Meinel Supkis
[the Soros-parasite cashes in again -- time to eject these parasites from the host] by Sean Grady
Controversial bestseller by Joshua Holland
Sophie's choice by Barbara Lubin and Anna Baltzer
Costly new supply route to Afghanistan by b
Endless pain by Marc Lourdes
Israeli troops shot and killed zoo animals [why the freaky obsession about killing things in cages? eeeew!] by Ashraf Helmi and Megan Hirons
Villages wiped off the map by Jonathan Miller
Saudi patience is running out Turki al-Faisal op-ed in FT
Churchill's crimes from Indian holocaust to Palestinian genocide by Gideon Polya
From policy intention to legal justification by b
Lloyds TSB blocks aid to Gaza indymedia UK
PM Gordon Brown, here is my shopping list by Gilad Atzmon
Sacrificing Gaza to revive Israel's Labor party by Smadar Lavie
The middle ground is eroding fast by Alastair Crooke
Photo comparison by Norman Finkelstein
On balance by As'ad AbuKhalil (Angry Arab)
Ceasefire and score by b
Zionist central heating by Postman Patel
Busted! Maasanova
The great hunger by Marryam Haleem
Enough. It's time for a boycott by Naomi Klein
Terribly bloodied, still breathing by Caoimhe Butterly
Schrecklichkeit Joseph Cannon
Gazans flee burning hospital [Vietnam redux] HSH/HAR
Mask is off cannonfire
New York Rabbi tells it like it is youtube
[the 'non-existent' lobby continues to wag the dog] AP
Israel threatens to shoot unarmed civilians on Mercy ship [update: it worked] freegaza
When Israel expelled the Palestinians by Randall Kuhn
In the name of humanity Alex Thomson interviews
Cross-party fury of MPs at Israel by Gerri Peev
Pure propaganda from the papers of record by Philip Giraldi
Ehud Olmert claims to be able to order Bush around by Juan Cole
Jon Stewart on Gaza Lenin's Tomb
Israel is targetting medics by Eva Bartlett
Israel losing PR war by Manjit Singh
Gaza's burn victims by Sheera Frenkel and Michael Evans
[Israeli ubermenschen soldiers order 110 civilians/untermenschen into house, then shell it, then try to bulldoze it with half dead people still in there] UN OCHA
Red Cross: Israeli behavior in Gaza shocking by Jason Ditz
Eyewitness reports from Gaza Lenin's Tomb
Red cross reports grisly find in Gaza by Craig Whitlock
A primer on Palestine by Mark Gaffney
Interview with Yonotan Shapira: "Obama -- don't act like a slave!" BBC
Israel hits [3 UN!] Gaza schools Kuwait times
Israel attacks international media building scoop
I am ashamed by Bob Moriarty
40 civilians hiding in UN school in Gaza killed when Israeli tank fires shells at it by Nidal al-Mughrabi
Why aren't more Americans dancing to Israel's tune? by Max Blumenthal
Why not kill all Gazans? by James Bovard
[another white person -- Canadian -- eye witness report from Gaza] by Eva Bartlett
[eyewitness report from Rafah from a high-market-value white person] ABC
Fallujah by the sea by Chris Floyd
Warsaw redux by Postman Patel
Beyond hell by Ben Lynfield
The Orwellosphere by Chris Floyd
Financial eugenics by the London Banker
Three interesting emails sent to Elaine Meinel Supkis
The crisis explained -- really by Robert Feinman
European banking on borrowed time by Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi
The disinformation age II by Carlton Meyer
"We were forced to bomb your city" by Kurt Vonnegut
CEO murdered by mob of sacked workers by Rhys Blakely
Messing with Zohan by Gilad Atzmon
The real reason for the global financial crisis by Shah Gilani
Pakistan leaders escape Marriot bomb by Isambard Wilkinson
[horse head] by setfree68
Palestinians [genetically, Jews!] paying price for West's holocaust guilt: Tutu AFP
Is a US attack on Pakistan imminent? by Usman Khalid
Propaganda by Craig Murray
['liquid bombers' cleared of targetting aircraft] BBC
[one of hundreds of US/Nato lies about not slaughtering civilians outed by doctor's video] Times
Urban surprise: more bicylists means fewer accidents LiveScience
Full Putin interview translation [compare to McBush] CNN
[London] ambulances in crashes 4 times per day Elizabeth Hopkirk and Fay Schlesinger
Hypocrite Miliband and the myth of western moral superiority by Craig Murray
The Financial Times and the "self-confessed mastermind of 9/11" by James Petras
[the US uses Russian airspace to resupply Afghanistan] by Jeremy Page
Another famous victory by Gordon Prather
[KKK] the people's voice
[a positive sign] Ha'aretz
Don't forget Yugoslavia by John Pilger
London house prices fall 5.3% in a month [2008 may have lowest number of sales since 1959] by Kathryn Hopkins
Free Gaza by David Halpin
Relevance of mainstream sustainability to energy descent by David Holmgren
The trouble with Georgia by Dmitri Orlov
[Georgian riot police use new crowd control weapons against crowd protesting martial law] youtube
[Google maps erases interiors of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan Google
South Ossetia by Gary Brecher
Major armada prepares for Iran blockade by Sam Smith
[if you lost on your house, you're not rich enough to get bailed out] by Mark Bridge
Russia and China strike back by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Militarizing the social sciences antifascist calling
Kirkuk crisis and the coming of war by Roads To Iraq
A record July for planes over Afghanistan by Bruce Roflsen
UK housing bubble by Adrian Ash
[the freaky sex/humiliation/beating thing sounds familiar] by Alison Weir
[cf. October 1957, Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas] Palestine News Network
[US warns Israel (Jul5'08) against second Liberty attack] Brunei news
Attack of the global pirate bankers by James S. Henry
[here is the video of the blindfolded demonstrator taken by the girl whose father was arrested below] AlJazeera
IDF arrests father of [14 year old] girl who filmed International Solidarity Movement
How reliable is DNA [i.e., few loci used in current DNA databases] in identifying suspects?by Jason Felch and Maura Dolan
Met with silence by Khalid Amayreh
Bike, meet the city by Mary Catherine O'Connor
The Anglo-American imperial project by Andrew G. Marshall
Get ready for the last oil war by Andrew McKillop
Golden shield by Naomi Klein (sponsored trip?)
How Britain wages war by John Pilger
[rooting out terr'ism in the classroom] by Khalid Amayreh
[good peak oil summary to show people] by Anawhata
[KKK 'democracy'] Ma'an
Cognitive dissonance in action by John Busby
Big oil's 'secret' out of Iraq's closet by Pepe Escobar
"He lost his balance and fell" report from Mohammed Omer
Energy transitions past and future by Cutler Cleveland
Dead end by Jonathan Cook
More PR-related confusion by Gavin Schmidt
"we have met the enemy" by SamuM
A state of emergency by Euan Mearns
Torture poll [what's with India?!] by
[the recession will take money from our pockets to repair somebody else's bank reserves] by Mick Phoenix
Why UK natural gas prices will move north of 100p/therm this winter by Rune Likvern
The real state of Iraq by Juan Cole
"We are all North Koreans" by John Feffer
[KKK] by News Agencies
Countdown to $200 oil meets Anglo Disease by Jerome a Paris
Oil hits new high as Israel calls strike on Iran 'unavoidable' by Ashley Seager
Bill Kristol at AIPAC: Obama and McCain "don't actually differ" on Iran by Seth Colter Walls
All that's wrong with 'common wisdom' in one article by Jerome a Paris
The war camp in its death throes is intent on striking Iran by Mehrnaz Shahabi
Blair due on trial in the Hague by David Halpin
Nasrallah opens with a knight move, next move, Bush by Franklin Lamb
[dirt on Ineos] by ace
Forties pipeline shutdown begins by Euan Mearns
China down to 12 days worth of coal news.com.au
Don't mention it lenin's tomb
Beyond the valley of the sick bag by Henry See
Food -- the ultimate weapon of the ruling elite by William Bowles
[nuclear plant fish kills comparable to commercial fishing] by Robin Pagnamenta, Peter Stiff and Lewis Smith
[Brown demands more oil from 50 year old Saudi wells -- "listen up, you rocks"] Reuters
The KLA's death camp lenin's tomb
No ambulance, call the radio by Mohammed Omer
GMP counter terrorism unit hot on the trail of ...er.. terrorists Postman Patel
['microchipping' (=betterGPS'ing) coppers for their own safety, posh and katie, credit crunch cancels charity ball] The Daily Flail
Over-valuated housing not limited to US by Floyd Norris
Iran torpedoes US plans for Iraqi oil by M. K. Bhadrakumar
No checkpoints in heaven by Ramzy Baroud
Genocidal UK, EU, US biofuel perversion threatens billions by Gideon Polya
Bear market rallies by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Peak oil is here, enjoy by Edward Tapamor
Dead men tell no tales Postman Patel
March 20 US declaration of economic war on Iran by John McGlynn
Update from Iraq Roads to Iraq
Sadr militia battle troops in four Iraqi cities [new developement] by Ammar Karim
Worried yet? Saudis prepare for "sudden nuclear hazards" after Cheny visit by Chris Floyd
"We live in a nightmare" by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Shattering a ntaional mythology by Ofri Ilani
US-UK-Australian Iraqi holocaust and Iraqi genocide by Gideon Polya
Biogas [better than biodiesel, bioethanol] by Big Gav
[physicist Andris
Piebalgs drives a car that burns bioethanol distilled in the third world
[Brazil and US?!]] by Euan Mearns
[breaking the 'rules' of war] by Dahr Jamail
Teachers told to rewrite history by Richard Garner
[see first comment by atheo] by Robert Fisk [who benefits? who pays?]
Police provacateurs caught red handed in Quebec Brasscheck TV
[you've got to haggle] by Larry McShane
UK top cop who led CIA probe found dead by Rob Harris
[as I predicted, the Brown "withdrawal" talk was a farce] by Thomas Harding
"Arctic oil and gas will not change much the coming world peak oil and gas!" by Jean LeHerrere
Kosovo independence: a matter of Western oil interests, not democracy by Aditya Ganapathiraju
US Navy strike group responds to increasing Lebanon, Syria tension Janes Defence (sic) Weekly
[Britons penalized for using less energy] by Ali Hussain and Steven Swinford
[long before Hamas] by lenin
China jumps off the Iran sanctions merry-go-round China Matters
UK house prices fall in February by Nadeem Walayat
Admiral Fallon and his empire -- crushing the ants by Chris Floyd
Egypt leaks information Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab Al-Youm via Roads to Iraq
Whistleblower sell Liechtenstein details by Postman Patel
'Restraint' is deceitful by Gideon Levy
A letter from Gaza by Mohammed Omer
Gimmicks and education Gilad Atzmon
Former SAS soldier [Ben Griffin] blows apart Miliband denial by Ben Griffin
Reading the numbers by Simon Davies
Tax evaders scurry for cover by Elaine Meinel Supkis
Liechtenstein's shadowy informant der Spiegel staff
[new 'bonus' route for 40% of the fruits of the Iraq war] by Amiram Cohen
[CIA renditions plane lands in London] by Duncan Gardham
In tatters beneath a surge of claims by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
Slouching toward Petroeurostan by Pepe Escobar
[Banker talk: your standard of living -- not mine -- will fall]by Edmund Conway
Antarctica is cold? yeah, we knew that by Spencer Weart
[Brits with small weewees are jealous of Amurrican fascists] by Jason Lewis
A 9/11 every day for ten and a half years by Arthur Silber
Gertler's bling bang by Keith Harmon Snow
[damaged cable map] by Kevin Flaherty
Top US lawyer and UNICEF data reveal Afghan genocide by Gideon Polya
[street battles in Athens -- 6 Feb] Indybay
Peter Power CV fakery julyseventh
Nine billion little feet on the highway of the damned by Joe Bageant
Global recoupling continues by Mike Shedlock
Gladio -- death plan for democracy by Peter Chamberlin
Ships did not cause internet cable damage AFP
Towards a new 'Suez crisis' by Alan G. Jamieson
The strangulation of Gaza by Saree Makdisi
The naked economics professor's office by Elain Meinel Supkis
[this is where your bank account went/will-go] by Paula Hawkins
The war that did not make the headlinesby Keith Harmon Snow
[all liguids (includes ethanol) slightly above previous mid-2006 peak] by Rembrandt
Derivatives boom raises risk of bankruptcy [more profit from failure] by Francesco Guerrera, Ben White and Aline van Duyn
Return to Fallujah by Patrick Cockburn
Gaza scenarios by Helena Cobban
Growing up in Russia in the 1990's by Legal Alien
Escape from Gaza or voluntary transfer? by Mike Whitney
Stealing Gaza assembled by Marc Parent
The day Gaza's Berlin Wall came down by Tim Butcher
NATO uber alles by Chris Floyd
[wet dreams of a**-licking European military sluts] by Ian Traynor
A week of funerals Palestine Chronicle
Our punching bag by Yigal Sarna
Unraveling the myth of Al Qaida by Peter Chamberlin
Uncertainty, noise and the art of model-data comparison by Gavin Schmidt and Stefan Rahmstorf
Pyramids crumbling by William H. Gross
Twilight of the psychopaths by Kevin Barrett
The myth of sectarianism by Dahr Jamail
The Tzabar and the Sabbar by Gilad Atzmon
New nuclear reactors for the UK: is this really a good idea? [see comments, too] by David Fleming
Waiting for Mr. Goodbar by Layla Anwar
[draft summary of Westexas paper on net oil export] by Jeffrey Brown
The destabilization of Pakistan by Michel Chossudovsky
The hijacking of America's economy [pdf!] Acres magazine interview with Michael Hudson
The plan to topple Pakistan's military? by Ahmed Quraishi (published a few weeks before the Bhutto assassination))
The post-Bush regime: a prognosis by Richard K. Moore
Bhutto, Bush, and Musharraf by John Chuckman
Daddy will the lights be on at Christmas? by Euan Mearns
Iraai oil unmetered 4 years after illegal invasion by Postman Patel
The unholy trinity by Greg Grandin
Welcome to Fantasy Air by Kurt Cobb
No way back by Clive Maund
Iraq does exist by Ghali Hassan
Tel Aviv rocked by Saleh Al-Naami
Growing food when the oil runs out by Peter Goodchild
Beyond the point of no return by Ross Gelbspan
Torture and torment in 2007 AD -- stop it by David Halpin
The hidden holocaust 2: exporting democracy by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
[UK lorry drivers call for action -- against, uhh, geology?] by Allegra Stratton
Ciclovia! by Glenn
Iran has stopped selling oil in US dollars Iranian students new agency
"Go ahead, make my day" [update: the Chavez referendum narrowly lost] by Joaquin Bustelo
Living the diesel shortages in China by Dave DuByne
Iraq doesn't exist anymore interview with Nir Rosen [see Ghali Hassan above]
Scare early for Christmas by Craig Murray
The hidden holocaust: our civilizational crisis by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
A plague on houses by Merryn Somerset Webb
Recoupling rather than decoupling by Noriel Roubini
Inside a private mercenary compound in Iraq by jpolis
Finance roundup by ilargi
"A generalized meltdown of financial institutions" by Mike Whitney
A low point by Craig Murray
Datastropher by Harry Stottle
Iraq's laboratory of repression by Robert Parry
Salvador option comes to Pakistan Fanonite
Climate change -- an alternative approach by Chris Vernon
Occupation breeds terror by Seth Freedman
[kewl: drive from your eco-friendly condo to your eco-friendly golf course near the airport in Costa Rica on an ATV] Escapeartist
[newer oil fields declining more quickly] oildrum comment by rkshepherd
Can hybrids make a difference in the near future? by Chris Vernon
US democracy applied in Georgia www.iraq-war.ru
Shambles on the left by Craig Murray
[Guantanamo-shire] BBC
Big melt meet big empty by Richard Heinberg
"The world's oil and gas resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future" 10 Downing's response to petition about peak oil
Don't be afraid, open the door by Linh Dinh
A conflict waiting to happen by Eric Margolis
[UK withdraws Iraq troops by, uhhh, sending more troops] by Michael Smith
Furl the flag by Gamal Nkrumah
[inside Kitziot prison] by Khaled Amayreh
"Should I wrap it in brown paper on the tube?" by Dominic Sandman
Bloggers without borders by Riverbend
[Guardian report on German EWG report below lacking a link to it!] by Ashley Seager
Crude oil: the supply outlook [pdf!] Energy Watch Group, Oct 2007
[Robocop mark 1 coming to base near you] by Noah Shacktman
[David loses again trying to protect the farm] Middle East Online
The Dair El Zor hoax by Justin Raimondo
Is't the resistance, stupid by Pepe Escobar
Peak minerals by Ugo Bardi and Marco Pagani
[powerdown from an oil and 'other liguids' guy!] by Robert Rapier
Deregulation: global war on labor by Henry C.K. Liu
Powerdown revisited by Richard Heinberg
World energy and population by Paul Chefurka
[human resources: 1=water, 2=cement] by David Adams
The indignity of commuting by bicycle by Bike Snob
It's the oil by Jim Holt
[this is what surveillance cameras get used for] by Rosalind Russell
Rattling the cage: Shalom, Myanmar by Larry Derfner
[craig murray's site back up here] Craig Murray
de Menezes behaved normally before being murdered AftermathNews
Oil from Iraq by Carlton Meyer
The City in the crosshairs conversation with Stephen Graham
[US/NATO fighters to Bulgaria -- better than refueling tankers there, I suppose] Novinite (Sofia)
The UK energy white paper: an academic critique by Mike Pepler
[now I'm really mad: UK homeland security goes after Thai cuisine] Reuters
Can we outlive our way of life? -- review of Patzak Nov 07 by Robert Rapier
"Lost" B-52 nuke cruise missiles were on way to Midle East for attack on Iran by Wayne Madsen
UK set for oil land grab off Falklands by Marc Horne
Peak oil and the Fermi paradox by Mike Byron
How wealth creates poverty in the world by Michael Parenti
The real story of Iraq's Bloody Sunday by Kim Sengupta
Welcome to planet Gaza by Pepe Escobar
[Russian oligarch removes (attempts to remove) this article by shutting down Craig Murray's UK ISP, taking Boris Johnson's website with it] by Craig Murray
None dare call it genocide by Llewellyn H. Rockwell
Microdrones [coming to a homeland near you] YouTube video of German UAV
Peak oil update -- Sept 2007 by Khebab
Extreme rich/poor divides [soon coming to a country near you...] by deputy dog
[david, goliath] by Ali Waked
[what's up guy?] by William Engdahl
Bank of England doubles emergency loans available to banks by Julia Verdigier
Personal clarification by A.M. Samsam Bakhtiari
[northern pebble] AP London
French-kissing the war on Iran by Pepe Escobar
[swimming in Japan] youtube
[five-fold increase in intensity of Iraq/Afghanistan air war this year] by Conn Hallinan
US heads to recession by Mike Whitney
The end of the world by William M. H. Kotke
UK troops are sent to Iranian border by Kim Sengupta
Britain's coming credit crisis by Kerry Capell
Tar sands: the oil junkie's last fix, part 2 by Chris Nelder
[a run on the shadow banking system] by Krishna Guha
The sorrows of occupation by George and Karen Longstreth (friends and former neighbors)
[death from above can see you playing tag?] by Amos Harel
Bush's brain-new poodle by Pepe Escobar
Energy grades and historic economic growth by Douglas Reynolds
[MIFisk leads with 'no plane at the Pentagon'] by Robert Fisk
Brace yourself for the insolvency crunch by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Prognosis in a credit crunch by Stuart Staniford
So they all knew it was a bubble, now? by Jerome a Paris
Highlight of the (not so) silly season by Pepe Escobar
Subprime in the UK by Michael Hudson
Global markets left reeling by David Teather, Ashley Seager and Justin McCurry
The Auschwitz of our time by Khalid Amayreh
Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time by Craig Murray
Updated world oil forecasts, including Saudi Arabia by Ace
Democratic power sharing by Kyle Schuant
What about the 3rd world? by Kyle Schuant
Boris in Baghdad by Felicity Arbuthnot
Wikipedia and intelligence services by Ludwig De Braeckeleer
Global money supply by Mike Hewitt
UK energy security by Euan Mearns
The failed state and you [this guy needs a job :-} ] by Kevin Flaherty
A change of US plan for Pakistanby M. K. Bhadrakumar
Litvinenko revisionism by Justin Raimondo
Can ecological economists stop the mainstreamers before it's too late? by John Feeney
Surviving the century interview with Herbert Girardet
Who is wiping who off the map? WRH
Russia's new oil pipe to cut supply to Central Europe by Eduard Gismatullin
Detente in the middle east or calm before the storm? by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Groups denounce shooting of cameraman AP
Nothing is as it appears in the news letter to Joe Bageant and response
Another al Qaeda leader in Iraq killed twice by US by Steve Watson
List of countries with reported energy shortages in the past few months by Solaris
The twisted logic of eco-sprawl by Don Fitz
CO2 capture and storage -- the energy costs by Rembrandt
North sea output continues to drop despite record investment by Mark Williamson
Electricity in Uganda by Chris Vernon
IEA: Without Iraqi oil, we'll be in deep trouble by 2015 by Jerome a Paris
London bomb 'not scary enough', Brown tells MI5 Daily Mash
Glasgow's burning -- run for your lives by Larry Johnson
Beavis and Butthead in London jihad by Thomas C. Greene
A dream called electricity by Ali al-Fadhily
Gaza: not just a prison, a laboratory by Naomi Klein
Named: boycott leaders by Bernard Josephs and Nicole Hazan
The siege of Baghdad by Glenn David Cox
An attack on Iran via the back door? by Damien Lataan
The thing about technology by David Pollard
Welcome to the summer of hate by Pepe Escobar
[UK] Public opinion on Iraq by Craig Murray
The shape of a shadowy air war by Nick Turse
[the Manilow Method] by Josie Appleton
Tony Blair's shameful record on civil liberties [but the coming smoking ban rocks!] by Brendan O'Neill
Sarkozy and the 'decline' of France: the great illusion by Jean Bricmont
Is imperial liquidation possible for America? interview with Chalmers Johnson
Coal's future in doubt by Richard Heinberg
[saving the only democracy in the mideast -- from disabled childeren] by Deseart Peace
Peak oil, carrying
capacity and overshoot: Population, the elephant in the room by Paul (GliderGuider)
Vote, vote, vote for central banking! by Adrian Ash
July 7th as Machiavellian state terror? by David MacGregor
The empire of the hedge funds by Richard Freeman
A nosedive into the desert by Stuart Staniford
[Fisk catapulting the disinfo] by Robert Fisk
Iraq poised to hand over control of oil fields go foreign firms [trans: US/UK armies steal Iraq's oil] by Heather Stewart
Saudi Arabian oil declines 8% in 2006 by Stuart Staniford
"We're not leaving" interview with Karen Kwiatkowski
Oil and Israel by Andrea Crandall (free reg. required)
US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal by Pepe Escobar
[due to 'cock-up', BBC loses footage of Jane Standley reporting that WTC7 has collapsed in front of live video of an uncollapsed WTC7] by Richard Porter
UK doubles naval presence in Persian Gulf by Damien McElroy
What is behind Russia's delay of Iran's nuclear reactor? by Peter Symonds
Iraqi woman stabs American soldier in her home by Imad Khadduri
TIRANNT by Michel Chossudovsky
Not good news by Sam Gardiner
The new Iraq oil: leaked by Raed Jarrar
Next stop by Philip Giraldi
['purification'] Neil McDonald CBC News
How Gaza offends us all by Jennifer Lowenstein
The Lockerbie cover up -- part 1 by Carlton Meyer
How the world can stop Bush by Paul Craig Roberts
The strategy of tension Daniele Ganser interview by Silvia Cattori
[Iranian serial numbers, ooooohhh, scary boys and girls!] AP
[Feb5 airspace violation report from the Greek press] trans. by cm
The criminalization of US foreign policy by Michel Chossudovsky
Frenzy in France over "Iranian threat" by Diana Johnstone
Dr. Makdisi urges a one-state solution for Palestinians by William Hughes
Global warming is being seriously underestimated [but methane has lattened for now, at least] by John James
Liberal markets create an addiction to gas by Jerome Guillet
Is there a painless way to fill the oil supply gap? by Michael R. Smith
US victory against cult leader was massacre by Patrick Cockburn
Palm oil [the dark side of biodiesel] by Dave Cohen
Toughness is so manly by Jerome a Paris
Last warming by Jonathan Leake
Mengele in Mesapotamia by Felicity Arbuthnot
US presidential hopefuls campaigning in Israel Arutz Sheva
Iran must get ready to repel a nuclear attack by Leonid Ivashov
The build-up to Iran timeline by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane
State of the (dis)union [actually, pithy summary of Iraq factions] by Pepe Escobar
Babylon 2 by Dmitriy Baklin
The war on shampoo by Craig Murray
US staying the course for big oil in Iraq by Pepe Escobar
The absent malice by Chris Sanders
[Bliar bleats about 'outside interference' while British troops squat in southern Iraq] BBC
Iraq as a living hell by Dahr Jamail
The vultures are circling by Syed Saleem Shahzad
[Lebanon war fought with US 'emergency equipment'] by Yitzhak Benhorin
[up to half the population of Lebanon (!) demonstrates against US-backed government] by Crispian Balmer
[be very afraid, you stupid gits] by Matthew Moore
[100,000 people are fleeing Iraq every month] by Matt Weaver
Toxic avenger? by Kirill Pankratov
Mubarak: foreign powers will be "obliged" to send forces to support Lebanon's pro-US government Al-Manar TV (Egypt)
Polonium-210 -- fact and fiction by Gordon Prather
Pale fire and London fog by Chris Floyd
Eerie silence on northern Iraq by Nimri Aziz
Polonium detected at Berezovsky's office by Sandra Laville and Tania Branigan
[non-violently *stopping* home demolitions a 'war crime'?! -- sheesh] HRW
The British public is being taken for a ride by Julian Evans
Iraq nears the "Saigon moment" by Patrick Cockburn
Saint Sasha, the toenail puller by Copy Dude
The rise and rise of gold and oil by Jephraim P. Gundzik
America's moment in the mideast is about to end by Mike Whitney
Russia tips the balance by W. Joseph Stroupe
[doing it by remote control makes it OK] by David Halpin
Plans for redrawing the middle east by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Human shields deter Israel attack BBC
Police chief -- Lockerbie evidence was faked by Marcello Mega
[UK gov't clueless on peak oil, even after unpredicted 1999 North Sea peak] by Jonathan Leake
Welcome to Hell by Layla Anwar
What's next in Iraq? by Norman Livergood
Secrets of abrupt climate shifts [model of the twenty 1470-year-cycle events *within* last ice age] by Stefan
Asymmetric challenge to the US colossus by W. Joseph Stroupe
MI5: Save the poodle! by Mathaba
Why we (really) may have entered an oil production plateau by Khebab
'We are dead people' by Rory McCarthy
War of aggression thwarted? by Gordon Prather
An assessment of world oil exports by Luis de Sousa
A brutal taste of the future by Sami Abdel-Shafi
Lynching Saddam by Carlton Meyer
When all else fails... by Riverbend
Of rats and sinking ships interview with pusillanimous former war cheerleaders, Sullivan and Hitchens
Evil is as evil does by Paul Craig Roberts
The last drop by Michael Specter
[UK Labor party prevent Iraq debate] BBC
Grain drain by Wayne Roberts
Heavy lies the head of the poodle dog by Zbignew Zingh
Is attacking Iran a viable option? by Liam Bailey
[Iraqi death squads trained by US -- cf. El Salvador] by Kim Sengupta
[democrats promise to continue the war if elected?!] Reuters
'Stability first': newspeak for the rape of Iraq by Pepe Escobar
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon [disinfo to cover 'standard' DU use?] by Robert Fisk
War in the dark? by Wayne Madsen
We have turned iraq into the most hellish place on Earth by Simon Jenkins
The jackals feast goes on by Chris Floyd
[this *is* starting to look a little Gulf-of-Tonkin-y...] by Michel Chossudovsky
Further to your comments on Gazprom by Heading Out
The next war by Daniel Ellsberg
Iraqi opposition leader speaks interview by Robert Dreyfuss
More thoughts about Gazprom by Heading Out
Rethinking the fall of Easter Island by Terry L. Hunt
More coal equals more CO2 by Chris Vernon
Asian workers trafficked to build world's largest embassy by David Phinney
The Lancet study by Riverbend
[secret prisons are a bad idea] by Moazzam Begg
Peak oil update -- October 2006 by Khebab
The political war by Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry
Grain stockpiles at lower for 25 years [but we have plenty of oil] by Kevin Morrisson
[2.5% of the Iraqi population has died as a result of the invasion and occupation] by Debora Mackenzie
Small is useless by George Monbiot
Hizb Allah, Party of God by Nir Rosen
War preparations by Michel Chossudovsky
The master plan for the world by Clive Maund (excellent main points summary)
The economy of Gaza by Sara Roy
Ethanol from Brazil and the USA by Milton Maciel
Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Anatomy of a massacre [shooting kids in the bed of a pickup from a helicopter] by Robert Fisk
Revisionism at its worst by Malcom Lagauche
Peak oil and the problem of infrastructure by Peter Goodchild
Russia and China 'cooking something up' by W. Joseph Stroupe
Damage control and
Contrary to Chomsky's theories by Jeffery Blankfort
[blowback, literally] by Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan
Hedge, I win... fails, you lose by Bill Bonner
A doctor's life in Baghdad by Dr. Anon
The march to war by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
The threat is from those who accept climate change, not those who deny it by George Monbiot
Oil import-export model for the UK (also scroll down to Valuethinker's valuable comments) by Cry Wolf
West bank rabbi calls for the extermination of all Palestinian males IMEMC
Why war with Syria is inevitable by Damian Lataan
A Hezbollah upon all of thee! by Gary Brecher
[attn: orange revolution in need of a new color] Reuters
Qana by Juan Cole
[two more 'care' packages] by AAP
Return of the Arab street by Andy Martin (conservative Republican!)
Bush and Blair: "Keep it up!" by Robert Fisk
Welcome to my parlor by William Lind
Bombs cause wounds not seen before Reuters
The fire next time by Osamah Khalil
Death toll could be twice the official figure by Dahr Jamail
Operation save the high command by Charles Glass
Lebanon bombardment map: Jul 26 lebanonupdates.blogspot.com
The US empire makes its move to take over the middle east by John Pilger
The meaning of the second Lebanese war by activist in Haifa
Juhad and the Wolfowitzes of the world by Gilad Atzmon
The war on Lebanon and the battle for oil by Michel Chossudovsky
The spirit of resistance by Pepe Escobar
Crossing red lines by Jonathan Cook
Red Cross ambulances destroyed in Israeli sir strike on rescue mission by Suzanne Goldenberg
Kidnapped in Israel or captured in Lebanon? by Joshua Frank
Rift opens between UK and US over Israeli offensive by Marc Burleigh
Hezbollah, Hamas, Israel by Alexander Cockburn
Americans are being whipped innto a new war frenzy by Robert Parry
[ethnic cleansing continues] by Juan Cole
[dead civilians eaten by dogs -- again] Rawstory
About those photos by Matt Barganier
Leviathan run amok by Pepe Escobar
Dispatch from Gaza interview by Silvia Cattori
'Blow up my city and I'll blow up yours' by Robert Fisk
Atrocities in the promised land by Kathleen Christison
Where's Bush? by Geov Parrish
German media: US prepares Iran strike by Martin Walker (UPI)
Nuking Iran with the UN's blessing by Jorge Hirsch
Telling it like it isn't by Robert Fisk
Israel's war deadline by James Petras
Game over by Robert Dreyfuss
The ultimate quaqmire by Pepe Escobar
The slave next door by Elisabeth Schreinemacher
Peak copper by Roland Watson
Elections by Riverbend
Iraq Seymour Hersh interview
Sell off your oil wealth and ye shall be free by James Houle
New torture jail found in Iraq [ripping out fingernails for democracy] BBC
Two countries, one booming, one struggling: which one followed the free-trade route? by Larry Elliott
House of horrors by Riverbend
A 'legal' US nuclear attack on Iran by Jorge Hirsch
Melting the skin off children by Hunter
War crimes, lies, and omerta by The Cat's Dream
Movies and dreams by Riverbend
The real reason for nuking Iran by Jorge Hirsch
[Madonna's guru accused of extorting terminally ill cancer patient] by Eric Silver
Syria: old whine, new bottle by William Bowles
Peak wood by Jason Godesky
Syria: the next Iraq by Robert Dreyfuss
Total disconnect on Iraq realities by Allen Pizzey
[scaring the proles] AFP Sydney
Mouse journalism by Matthew Lewin
The occupier's [$75 million dollar] trial by Pepe Escobar
Record low for June Arctic sea ice NASA
Matt Simmons interview Financial Sense
If there's a hell, Harry lives there by SW
Updating Saudi oil production planUpdating Saudi oil production plans by Heading Out
Petrodollar warfare by William R. Clark
[this, right after posting disinfo suggesting London surveillance videos were fake] WagNews (recategorized!)
Iraq and Washington's 'seeds of democracy'by F. William Engdahl
The initiation rituals of future freedom fighters Iraq Tunnel
Do you know this man? by Baghdad Dweller
Bombing mastermind Aswat works for M I 6 by Kurt Nimmo
Hussain Osman and the room temperature IQ terrorists by Kurt Nimmo
People flee al-Qaim as fighting continues IRIN news
Is intervention in the Gulf still a profitable venture? by Ahmed Amr
B-2 bombers, F-15E fighters in Guam, Aegis ships in Japan Korea Herald
Global energy -- how much remains? by Peter North
Saved by the carrots by Riverbend
Planned US-Israeli attack on Iran by Michel Chossudovsky
Voyage of the Beagle by Big Gav
A moment that changed my life by Saed Bannoura
Chalabi appointed oil minister Reuters
Jafari's government: the house of cards by Raed Jarrar
Dear soldier by Gideon Levy
Fallujah -- the end of warfare by Abhay Mehta
[winning hearts and minds] by Jay Price
Failures of the Iraqi resistance by Rahul Mahajan
Gas chamber for Chemical Ali? by Jude Wanniski
Christman wish list by Riverbend
The West has bloodied hands by Eric Margolis
The failed US face of Fallujah by Michael Schwartz
Southeast-asia diary by Bernard Weiner
Evil doers, here we come by Pepe Escobar
12 days of Christmas by James Ridgeway
Iranian Manchurian by Bob Dreyfuss
[why they hate us] by Robert Fisk
Have Arabs or Muslims always hated Jews? by Juan Cole
Increased use of air lifts by Bradley Graham
Trouble in the world's largest oil field (see update at bottom)
by Glenn Morton, straight-talking petroleum geologist, creationist, whatever
Fuel shortage by Riverbend
Nearly visiting Iraq by Felicity Arbuthnot
US renews air strikes on Fallujah UPI
Strange bedfellows by Rahul Mahajan
Virtual nukes by Gordon Prather
Fallujah pictures by Dahr Jamail
The grand elector Sistani by Pepe Escobar
Calling the Kosovo humanitarians to account by John Pilger
"Control Room" in Dubai by Andrew Hammond
[in-place thermal cracking will delay oil peak] by Oliver L. Campbell
Ghetto on the Euphrates by George Paine
Strategic hamlets, once again by Kurt Nimmo
Interview with Patrick Cockburn by Alan Maass
Eliminate the witnesses by Naomi Klein
The civilians we killed by Michael Hoffman, Iraq vet
From Guernica to Fallujah by Pepe Escobar
Unembedded Charles Shaw interview with Dahr Jamail
Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock by Chris McGreal
Farwell to Fallujah by Fadhil Badrani, a former inhabitant
Fallujah leaders were local by Hamza Hendawi, AP
[why we shouldn't be there] by Kim Sengupta
No one is taken in by Rana Kabbani
Iris Chang and Juan Cole by Xymphora
Iraq = Vietnam: misinterpreting the metaphor by William Bowles
[our mass graves] aljazeera
["He's dead, Jim"] welfarestate.com
Acute child malnutrion in Iraq double that before invasion -- worse than Haiti, Uganda by Karl Vick
Successful raid [you can pray, but you can't hide] by Dahr Jamail
Why Iraq will end as Vietnam did by Martin van Creveld
The Iraq solution: coming sooner than you think by Karen Kwiatkowski
[what you get for 200 billion dollars] by fallujah in pictures
[even Fisk suspicious...] by Robert Fisk
Coincidence? by William Bowles
Red cross estimates 800 civilian casualties (1/3 of a 9-11) from Dahr Jamail
The American people owe the German people an apology by Xymphora
Submit or die by Jacob Hornberger
I decided to swim ... but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river by Katarina Kratovac
Just ask Saddam by Brandon Snider
Pictures from inside Iraq by Raed Jarrar
[our beheadings are better because they are done by machines] by Dahr Jamail
Outbreak by healingiraq
Fallujah: unpacking the press by William Bowles
Beyond embattled city, rebels operate freely by Alissa J. Rubin and Tyler Marshall
The sandinistas win by Xymphora
[end the liberation] BBC
Four solutions for Fallujah by Mark LeVine
Legitimizing mass slaughter in Fallujah by Williamm Bowles
A distant mirror of holy war by Norman Solomon
A thousand Fallujahs by Pepe Escobar
Fallujah: America's Guernica by Hector Carreon
US massacres civilians in Fallujah by Joseph Kay
House-to-house warfare by Ibrahim Mohamad
Rule of Iraq assassins must end: get out Americans by Riverbend
US air raid on Fallujah clinic kills dozens [second hospital bombing in 2 days] Xinhuanet
Target Fallujah photos1.blogger.com
Carnage and martial law by Dahr Jamail
The final solution for Fallujah and Ramadi by Yamin Zakaria
Spiralling into Iraq by Dahr Jamail
Some terrorists by Riverbend
Message from the people of Fallujah to Kofi Annan
Thoughts on the eve of the razing of Fallujah by tex
Ossama Bin Moore by R
Mideast cauldron by Immanuel Wallerstein
Denouncing Americanism by John Pilger
30 children in 15 days [imagine the outrage if the the gunman had been Palestinian] B. Michael
US prepares for major operation by Edward Harris
Household survey sees 100,000 Iraqi deaths by Emma Ross
[yet more: ominous mainstream strike cheerleading] by Laura King
[more pre-election strike rumors/leaks/info/disinfo] by Wayne Madsen
Precision strike democracy by Pepe Escobar
Saddam Hussein may get the last laugh by Thomas Guzman
Gaza sinks in a sea of blood by Mohammed Omer
[rumors, analysis on possible Iran attack] tbrnews
Fallujah and Nov 2 by Bob Dreyfuss
No-ligarchy by Mark Ames
Biafra remembered by Gary Brecher
Killing children no longer a big deal by Gideon Levy
Inside besieged Fallujah [phone call to BBC]
[our terrorists -- I mean, our friendly imperial storm troopers] James Glanz
[Newspeak: Gaza withdrawal continues, killing 100 people, because Palestinians won't accept generous peace offer] Reuters
Amnesty International's double standards by Paul de Rooij
[kewl toppling!] Reuters
[possibly disinfo] by tbrnews
[anti-apartheid heros without guns] by Alison Weir
The war widens by Chris Sanders
Energy transition and final energy crisis by Andrew McKillop
The massacre of Mesopotamian archaeology by Joanne Farchackh
Dying for a job in the ING by Gary Brecher
[what is it about our freakin sicko military and weddings?! -- this is the 4th wedding slaughter!] Reuters
The Israeli invasion of North Gaza by Jennifer Lowenstein
[oh, dude! cool war crime] by Andrew Buncombe
Elections will not end the fighting [Pat left out 'by the US'!] by Patrick Cockburn
The eyes that connot see beyond Jabaliya and Samarra by Simon Tisdall
[because victim Palestinian, US headline can never read: Israeli militants/gunmen shoot fleeing 13-year-old schoolgirl 20 times in back and head] Reuters
Why not two peoples, one state? by Michael Tarazi
Samarra burning by Riverbend
The man who forsaw rising oil prices by Adam Porter
The grand illusion by William Lind (conservative)
Emergency declared in Gaza [200 tanks in a refugee camp of people who can't vote] aljazeera
[what's actually happening in Samarra? -- reporters are all in Baghdad] by Juan Cole
On the nature of disinformation by Rixon Stewart
US bombs Fallujah aljazeera
Najaf old city demolition after US bombing by Juan Cole
[planning WWIII] globalsecurity
The new US strategy by Michael Schwartz
You've lost your alibi! by Omar Barghouti
Why they hate us by David Lindorff
The UN muppet has spoken by Yamin Zakaria
A milestone in the global struggle by Walden Bello
Crazy Mike and Indian country by Jim Lobe
Baghdad year zero by Naomi Klein
More Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces than by insurgents, data shows by Nancy A. Youssef
How time files by Michael Neumann
Why Sudan? by Karen Kwiatkowski (July 2004)
Whose atrocies are worse? by Doris Cadigan
[results of our previous glorious project] by Payal Singhal
If America were Iraq by Juan Cole
Demographic oil demand and peak oil by Andrew McKillop
Why we cannot win by Al Lorentz (soldier in Iraq)
Incident on Haifa street by Tom Engelhardt
[use this secure online form] C_I_A website
Putin and US-UK terror strategy by Webster Griffin Tarpley
Who seized Simona Torretta? by Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill
The Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline by Xymphora
[act now: they are!] by Guy Dinmore
Fahrenheit 9/11 by Riverbend
In Iraq's wasteland, total chaos looms by Nicolas Rothwell
When the rabbits get a gun by William Rivers Pitt
Military-industrial man by Chalmers Johnson
N Korea blast by David Scofield
Precision strikes ... on ambulances by Patrick Cockburn
He's just sleeping, I keep telling myself (not a war crime because people killed have low market value) by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The littlest terrorist dies -- we're safe! by Judith Moriarty
UN Darfur vote turns scramble for Sudan's oil by Rainer Chr. Hennig
[throw stones, get run over, twice -- life as a low market-value human] Aljazeera
Despair in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn
An American in Palestine by Chris Allert
[democracy, amurrican style: you don't get to vote if we're not finished bombing you] by Patrick McDonnell
Selling war as peace by Marc Herrold
Iraq and the crisis of empire by Roger Burbach and Jim Tarbell
Enough for Qalqilya Lawrence of Cyberia
Bush wins, we invade Iran [assumes no Iranian nukes] by Gordon Prather
Four day war [assumes Iranian nukes] by Claude Salhani (American Conservative Magazine)
AIPAC of spies by Bob Dreyfuss
Did the grand ayatollah collude with the US assault on Najaf? by Milan Rai
Speech to Commonwealth Club by Michael Ruppert
Operation Slaughter Iraqis a continuing success by Bill Kaufmann
Plus ca change by William Bowles
Outline by Xymphora
Days of plunder by Zainab Bahrani
Johnson: FBI furious at leak by Juan Cole
AIPAC's overt and covert ops by Juan Cole
Point of maximum danger by Webster Griffin Tarpley
A neo-Ba'athist dressing down in Najaf by Luke Harding
Zombies for Kerry by Alexander Cockburn
Stanlingrad, Sarajevo, Beirut, Dresden or Najaf by Terapeut
Empire notes by Rahul Mahajan
Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed
Chomsky response to Noah Cohen (long!) by Noam Chomsky
Apologetics for injustice in Palestine by Noah Cohen
Thousands of weeping and chanting Shiites end Najaf seige by Jean-Marc Mojon
Sistani in Najaf by Juan Cole
Sistani returns by Juan Cole
Smell of burnt flesh, blood smeared on streets AFP
A demographic problem by Linda Heard
The fat whiner is me by Salam Pax
Scenario by Bob Dreyfuss
Denying atrocities by Fran Schor
Oil's slippery slope by Pepe Escobar
[rogue Marines doubted] by Xymphora
Does my flak jacket make me look sexy? by Salam Pax
A democracy of killings and bombings by Yanar Mohammed
The torture doctors of Abu Ghraib by Mike Whitney
Death after death, blood after blood by Luke Harding (inside Imam Ali)
The warlords of America by John Pilger
What do we call the enemy? by Tom Engelhardt
Pakistan turns on itself by Syed Saleem Shahzad
[death penalty without trial for 9 year old for throwing stones] by Ali Daraghmeh
Iraq occupation [won't work: not enough death squads] by Robert Parry
[117 slaughtered Palestinians = "Relative calm"] by Ali Abunimah
Through the American looking glass by Robert Fisk
Explosions by silentbutdeadly
Questions and fears Riverbend
Sharon's speech: decoded version by Uri Avnery
Economics of the noble path by Adam Porter
The Agricultural Crises in North Korea and Cuba, Part 2 by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Best-laid plans by Chris Floyd
Shooting Samarra's schoolboys in the back by Robert Fisk
Rumsfeld's '84 visit was to reassure Iraqis [that chemical arms use was OK]by Dana Priest
Saddam Hussein's capture by Larry Chin
Good news (humor) by Ahmed Nassef
Saddam. *So* not worth it by Mark Morford
Why changing the way money works is the key to resolving peak oil challenges by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Saddams capture means trouble for U.S. officials by Jacob Hornberger
The tyrant is now a prisoner by Robert Fisk
Jessica Lynch captures Saddam by Greg Palast
Bullet points by Chris Floyd
Close to civil war by Firas Al-Atraqchi
The CIA's new assassination program by Douglas Valentine
"That was awesome" -- your tax dollars at work Information Clearing House
[Sometimes, we really are baby-killers, again] BBC
The empire strikes out by Scott Taylor
Israel trains US assassination squads [Operation Assassinate] by Julian Borger
He-manitarianism by Michael Neumann
Iraq is no Vietnam, but it may be Poland by Aleksandar Jokic
[They're easier because they don't shoot back] BBC
[Helping the rose revolution along] Ros Business Consulting
Oil, power and empire by Larry Everest
How to fix the World Bank by Mark Scaramella
Oil intrigue by Barry Grey and Vladimir Volkov
Bremer of the Tigris by Jeremy Scahill
Bottom of the barrel by George Monbiot
The inside skinny by a combat leader
The not-so-great game by Mark Ames
Bush operation, clean sweep by John Stanton
The Doomsday machine by John Chuckman
Physical evidence versus public lies by Michael Ruppert
Occupation corrupts absolutely by Mustapha Karkouti
'We didn't know' will be no excuse by James Brooks
Spengler really understands by Joe Nichols
The motive for the invasion by Michael Doliner
Georgia in the crunch by Mark Ames
[Nightmare scenario: one person, one vote] by Justin Huggler
Humping Bush's leg by Xymphora
GW loves Michael by William Rivers Pitt
Tommy Franks in Cigar Aficionado Newsmax
Exit or escalate? by Pat Buchanan (former presidential speech writer
and anti-immigration conservative)
Difficult days by Riverbend
The matrix reloaded once again by Jonathan Cook
Something wicked this way comes by John Cory
Why the US can't stop the ongoing conflict by Rosemary Hollis
[solution to the demographic 'problem'] by David Landau
Keystone Kolonialists the Nation
Intelligence for what? by Gabriel Kolko
Iraqi governing council by Riverbend
Jessica Lynch criticizes US accounts of her ordeal David D Kirkpatrick
Strike imminent? Indymedia
[robo-soldiers for the empire] by David Wood
Silenced witnesses by John Sweeney
The doctrine of zero risk by Thierry Meyssan
Copy the Americans by Robert Fisk
[Go, Cher (!)] Atrios
Spoilers gatecrash the Iraq spoils party by Herbert Docena
A marine veteran's perspective by Chris White
Who are the bombers? by Jim Lobe
[Unarmed non-Palestinian peace activists -- the ones who count -- shot in the legs then held at gunpoint in hospital beds] Arjan El Fassed
Get out of Gaza [but stay in the West Bank] Ha'aretz
Happy Halloween by Ran HaCohen
One, two, three, what are they fighting for by Robert Fisk
Imperial indifference by William Blum
Cry peace for the children by Judith Moriarty
Neocons flying like a hawk by Jim Lobe
Madrid conference by Riverbend
[Having a good eye for things that will turn out big] by John Stanton
Thieves like us by Chris Floyd
The war that could destroy both armies by Henry C.K. Liu
Chile's failed economic laboratory Michael Hudson interview by Standard Schaeffer
[Terrorist strikes from the safety of the air] by Arnon Regular
Beyond Bush II by Michael Ruppert
Bush plunges US into rapid decline The Black Commentator
Shias fight back by Patrick Cockburn
Piss on my leg by Stan Goff
Eating fossil fuels by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
"I hoped that the pilot who hit our house would be burned as I am burned and my family were burned" Ali
Hearts and minds [once again] by Gert Van Langendonck
[Life in a concentration camp] by Kevin Toolis
Depopulation and perception management by Keith Harmon Snow
Iraqi resistance targets CIA by Patrick Cockburn
Specter of Somalia by William Maclean
UN: up to 2,000 made homeless by Rafah raid by Amos Harel
Occupation as rape-marriage by Gary Leupp
What the US wants from China by Manuel Garcia, Jr.
[Afghanistan, man] by Xymphora
If Americans knew by Alison Weir
Another bad day at the office by Jim Lobe
[Drugs without a name] BBC
Dude, you got, like, totally Plamed by Matthew Barganier
Has Bush become a threat to the ruling elite? by Saul Landau
Oil, war, and panic by Robert Fisk (go Robert)
Cheney's chief of staff named by Justin Raimondo
[Karl and Bob] by William Rivers Pitt
Don't mention the oil by Robert Fisk
To die in Iraq by Douglas O'Rourke
Sheiks and tribes Riverbend
Sifting through the rubble by John Judis
Freedom of the press Riverbend
Retired general calls Bush's war a brain fart by David Corn
AfghaniScam by Marc Herold
Nightmare in Iraq by Sheldon Richman
The plutocrats run wild by Nicholas von Hoffman
Fear as human shield faces jail (retired schoolteacher to lose home, pension) by Fergal Parkinson
The Cheney tapes by Stan Cox
At least 10,000 civilians gunned down since the end of the war by Robert Fisk
Losing touch with reality by Robert Fisk
Shock the monkey by Matt Taibbi
[Modular, re-usable code] by Xymphora
What good friends left behind John Pilger
[Party down, dude] Reuters
Bring the troops out of Iraq now by Lee Sustar
Elvis lives by Pepe Escobar
[Letter from a 36-year-old soldier] by Tim Predmore
Girl power and post-war Iraq by Riverbend
The Iraq wreck by Patrick Cockburn
Powell in Baghdad by Robert Fisk
It was the oil, it is like Vietnam by Stan Goff
[Genes and culture] by Robin McKie
A disaster foretold by Uri Avnery
Anti-americanism: too much of a good thing? by Michael Neumann
No hurry by Robert Fisk
International Community Supports a Deluxe Occupation by Meron Benevisti
Folly taken to a scale not seen since WWII by Robert Fisk
Anna Lindh on the fact-finding mission to Jenin Reliefweb
Hitchens as model apostate by Norman Finkelstein
Friends, Americans, countrymen by Riverbend
[Why we should get out (stuff that doesn't make CNN] by Peter Beaumont
The Bush folly by Stan Goff
The tech bubble: who benefited? Schaefer interview with Michael Hudson
Society collapses while its leaders remain silent by Avraham Burg
Road trip by Riverbend
Human shields face heavy penalties by Kathleen Kenna
Soldiering is for others by Taki
Nocturnal visit to the parents by Salam Pax
[out of sight, out of mind] by Bill Berkowitz
The lonliness of Noam Chomsky by Arundhati Roy
One-legged Vietnam vet's dream by Stuart Nusbaumer
Vietnam II preflight check Jack McMillan
A drug for the addict by Uri Avnery
How does the war party get away with it? by Robert Higgs
Will work for food by Riverbend
Walter Reed treats 1300 by Joseph Galloway
Death by 1000 cuts by Martin Sieff
Iran's case by Erich Marquardt
One of three missile suspects get bail [guess which] AP
The US cannot leave, ever by Xymphora (go, Xymphora!)
America's selective strong dollar policy by Henry C.K. Liu
Experimental casinos by Standard Schaeffer
The temperature is rising by Salam Pax
A case for Hizbollah? by Ran HaCohen
[it's just a flesh wound, get over it] D.S. Wayman
US tried to plant WMDs, failed Daily Times Monitor
[hearts and minds] by xymphora
Former prof gets inside view of West Bank nightmare by Jim Phillips
ER, Baghdad by Jamie Wilson
To the victors go the spoils of war by Pratap Chatterjee and Oula Al Farawati
Think of foreigners as human beings by Matthew Barganier
[more news from our occupied territories -- panicked soldiers slaughter family] by Justin Huggler
[news from our occupied territories] by Anthony Shadid
[Better hope someone doesn't try to return the favor] by James W. Crawley
Bitterness grows [in our occupied territories] Vivienne Walt
August 3, 2003 Riverbend
Meet the real WMD fabricator by Alexander Cockburn
US fostering sinister sort of democracy by Robert Fisk
Our foppish self-righteousness by Shulamit Aloni
Guerillas in the midst by James Ridgeway
US colonel kidnaps Iraqi general's family by Eric Garris
Another botched raid; another massacre by Robert Fisk
Iraq and the hidden euro-dollar wars by F. William Engdahl
Congressional report: no Iraq link to al-Qaeda by Shaun Waterman
The confiscation of Iraqi oil Information Clearing House
Call it really what it is: sick by Douglas Valentine
July 24 Where is Raed?
Poll says most Jewish settlers will leave if paid by Sharmila Devi
[The best 'justice' money can buy (for $15 million, but hard to spend)] Reuters
Behind the hudna scenes by Ran HaCohen
Baroque brutality of little help by Patrick Cockburn
The sons are dead by Robert Fisk
Watergate and yellow cake by Xymphora
Timeline the UK Guardian
Cake walk by Chris Floyd
Little Caesar's quicksand by Kathleen Greider
Blood in the water by Michael Ruppert
White man's burden by Greg Palast
Elite vs elitny by Mark Ames
Asia fills her boots by John Berthelsen
[Bush in Senegal] by Joan Herron's Senegalese friend
[News from the occupation] by Lee Gordon
Interview with Wes Jackson by Robert Jensen
The double wall before the future by Arthur Mitzman
Apocalypse now in Baghdad by Thomas Chittum
The coin of empire by Conn Hallinan
The fuss about interest rates by Enrico Orlandini (another gold guy)
Iraqi civilian death count passes 6,000 Reuters
From a different perspective by Hans Schicht (conservative, gold guy)
Baghdad back to stone age by Nidal al-Assadi
Little big horn by Eric Margolis
[Modern war -- like ancient war -- kills mostly civilians] by Ed Vulliamy
[Former special forces soldier responds to shrub] by Stan Goff
Beyond Bush -- Part I by Michael Ruppert
A love supreme by Susan Block
US suspends military aid to 50 countries Reuters
Iraqi attacks could signal wide revolt AP and LA Times
The occupation of Iraq by Col. Dan Smith
Occupation forces halt elections throughout Iraq by Willian Booth
Mass graves and burned meat by Chris Floyd
[Once more, America the invading 'victim'] by John Pilger
The invisible by Paul Vallely
Natural gas crisis by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Iraq 'Has three weeks to avoid falling into chaos' by Patrick Cockburn
The destruction is nearing its completion by Jennifer Loewenstein
67% of Israelis oppose strikes AP
Organized crime by Xymphora
Winning hearts and minds with rifle butts by Tohomas W. Chittum
Peak oil and natural gas depletion Matthew Simmons speech transcription
War may have killed 10,000 civilians by Simon Jeffery
Report from occupied territory Goodman Fisk interview
The empire expands wider and still wider by Eric Hobsbawm
AP tallies 3,240 civilian deaths in Iraq by Niko Price
WeaponsGate by Wayne Madsen
How to make the world aware that the party is over Kjell Aleklett
Get a lobotomy by Paul Dean
'Would You Have Left Saddam in Power'? by The Whiskey Bar
Blackmail as policy by John Chuckman
Demand for proof of Saddam Hussein's WMD's growing the Economist
The day of the jackals by Arundhati Roy
Empire of nothing by Tom Engelhardt
US hands out $1 million a day in Iraq by Pauline Jelinek
The Yanks Scott Taylor interview with Chris Deliso
Why Japan's nightmare is worrying the world by Bill Jamieson
War talk by Arundhati Roy
Congo death toll -- 2500 per day by Finbarr O'Reilly
Journal Dear Raed
[Special forces and special bribes] by Andrew Buncombe
Gun gangs rule as US loses control by Ed Vulliamy
Concealing catastrophe by David Edwards
Empire and the capitalists by Immanuel Wallerstein
[Astonishing uranium levels -- 400 times those of Gulf war veterans -- found in Afghan civilians] by Alex Kirby
What rates a headline in the mideast? by Ben Granby
[conservative republicans say it's a catastrophe, loser democrats hide under the table] by Roland Watson
Rescuing Private Lynch, forgetting Rachel Corrie by Naomi Klein
The occupier by Stan Goff
The real quagmire is the aftermath by Patrick Cockburn
Surveys point to high civilian death toll in Iraq by Christian Science Monitor
The apartheid wall by Ran HaCohen
Saving Private Lynch: Take 2 by Robert Scheer
Joystick mayhem by Matt Barganier
Iraq's children by Anna Badkhen
The GKI genocide by Mark Ames
Saudi Arabia: the Sarajevo of the 21st century by Michael Ruppert
Calculated act with a political message by William Beeman
Doctored photo from London Evening Standard the Memory Hole
[Albania and Kosovo agree with us] Gallup poll
90% of large fish in world's oceans gone (from Nature)
Learning curve by Merle Borg
[The saving private Lynch 'unplugged incubator babies' story] BBC
The Hydra's new head Paul de Rooij
Pax Romana vs. Pax Americana by Walden Bello
The perfect enemy by John Kaminski
Al-Qa'ida strikes back by Rupert Corwell, Andrew Gumbel and Khaled Al Maeena
["At least you have the knowledge that she died painfully"] by Antonia Zerbisias
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel and Baghdad by Chris Floyd
American plans for Iraq by Xymphora
Because they can by Merle Borg
[*Not* a nice place to visit, and you wouldn't want to live there, but send them $3 billion/year in tax receipts anyway] by Cris McGreal
[Only democracy in the mideast, blah, blah] by Muthanna Al Qadi
May Day, May Day by Matt Taibbi
Whose gonna take away Washington's license to kill? by Stan Cox
1948 war by Ammar Munir Nayfeh, Stanford Daily Online
[Republican] Ritter calls for regime change by Jan Barry
Israelis fire on parents of injured [brain dead] British peace activist by Cahal Milmo
A civilization wrecked by M.N. Dean
Israeli troops kill British cameraman in Gaza by Justin Huggler
Bush's military defeat by Harvey Wasserman
Massacre at Falluja by Xymphora
Do unto others by Matt Taibbi
The end of Iraq's history by Francis Fukuyama
How to give up hope by John Dolan
The Bushites telegraph their punches by Chris Floyd
[I'd take a number on my hand any day to being routinely shot...] AP
Art dealers may have 'ordered' looting Sydney Morning Herald
Putin opposes US, Britain on sanctions by Mike Peacock
Risks of cluster bombs itvs
Newest U.S. colony ruled by air power by Eric Margolis
Some are weeping; some are not by Robert Higgs
A short history of the Bush Mafia's war in Iraq by Stan Goff
Bush barbarians teach by example by Chris Floyd
[You left out the price list, guys...] the Oriental Institute
US plan to bomb North Korea by Greg Sheridan
Iraqi anger boils over by Robert Fisk
Iraq notebook by Paul Belden
Day of the jackals by Ron Liddle
[When we say get your cameras out of here, we mean it] AP
The arsonists have to be paid by Robert Fisk
So who really did save Private Jessica? Richard Lloyd Parry
Marines liberating Iraqi gold by InformationClearingHouse
How and why the How and why the US encouraged looting in Iraq by Patrick Martin
What America says does not go by Uzma Aslam Khan
The roots of war by Barbara Ehrenreich
The rape of Iraq by Susan Block
Books, priceless documents burn in sacking of Baghdad by Robert Fisk
Americans the new Mongols by Wayne Madsen
The destruction of Iraq is good for business by Kurt Nimmo
Hospital chaos, but UK docs are sent home by Stephen Martin in Baghdad and Lorraine Fisher
Some thoughts about the war by Rob
Americans defend two untouchable ministries from the hordes of looters by Robert Fisk
Coalition control all Iraqi oil fields by Nicole Winfield
Background: the Democratic Republic of Congo by Paul Harris
Popping balloons: staying a kid forever by John Brand
Iraq liberated of culture and universities by Firas Al-Atraqchi
Disappointed marines learn stay in Baghdad may be indefinite by Andrea Gerlin
A civilization torn to pieces by Robert Fisk
Lie of liberation by Mark Morford
Frenzy over Ali, but there are 1000's like him by Kim Sengupta
[Museum of earliest human civilizations and writing completely sacked] by Hassan Hafidh
The self-deception of civilized war by Matthew Reimer
A nation in chaos by Andrew Buncombe and John Lichfield
Many civilians, US tank crew killed when US soldiers detonate arms cache Al Jazeera
[Welcome home the Universal Soldiers and the new McVeigh's among them] by Ann Scott Tyson
The hell that was once a hospital by Suzanne Goldenberg
U.S. economy, oil contracts and war by C. Rammanohar Reddy
[IDF shoots American peace activist in the head as he escorts children across the street] the Guardian
Catastrophic situation at today Baghdad hospital: ICRC official AFP
Damascus road by Chris Floyd
April 11, 2003 Xymphora
Baghdad, the day after by Robert Fisk
Last tango in Baghdad by Jeffrey St. Clair
[Lives so low-value the dead are not worth counting] Tyler Hicks, NYT
April 10, 2003 Xymphora
Statue pulldown was staged indymedia
Final proof that war is about the failure of the human spirit by Robert Fisk
News of the dirty war by Cynthia Cotts
Foxa Americana by Rogel Alper
Questioning the very essence of humanity by Paul McGeough
We said it would be a nightmare, and yes, that's exactly what it is by Alexander Cockburn
A day that began with shellfire by Robert Fisk
A picture of killing by Suzanne Goldenberg
Bombs blast homes instead of Saddam by Peter Arnett
[All part of Operation Continuous War] BBC
Mishaps or murder? by Robert Fisk
The Iraqi killing fields by Pepe Escobar
US-backed militia terrorises town by Charles Clover in Najaf
'We shoot them down like the morons they are': US general by Lindsay Murdoch
Baghdad slips into lawlessness as defenses crumble by Andrew Buncombe
[Surgery under aspirin 'anesthesia'] by Cahal Milmo and Andrew Buncombe
"I did what I had to do. I don't have a big problem with it" [old argument heard at Nuremburg, guy] Reuters
The dogs always know by Robert Fisk
Ramzaj discontinues operation Iraqwar.ru
Al-Jazeera and the net by John Lettice
April 7, continued Iraqwar.ru
[US Bombs and tank shells hit Al Jazeera and US journalist's hotels] ITV news
It seemed as if Baghdad would fall within hours by Robert Fisk
Amid allied jubilation by Robert Fisk
A prayer for Iraq rant by John Kaminski (I need to read one sometimes!)
Wag the dog by Joe Vialls
April 7, 2003 by Iraqwar.ru
On the streets by Robert Fisk
Racist war and pirate plunder The Black Commentator
Afternoon, April 6, 2003 Iraqwar.ru
[Civilian killings evoke merriment] by Gideon Levy
[Surgeons forced to amputate children's limbs without anesthetic] by Charles Hanley
Falling off Hubbert's peak by Richard Sibson
Morning, April 6, 2003 Iraqwar.ru
Red Cross: Iraq casualties too high too count AP
Iraqi hospitals offer snapshot of war horrors Reuters
The battle of Baghdad by Robert Fisk
The minute it's made up, you'll hear about it by Mark Steel
[Cluster bombs, once again: reap what you sow] by Henry Michaels
[Member of Rachel Corrie's peace group shot in face with large caliber bullet by IDF] AP
April 5, 2003 by Iraqwar.ru
Disgustingly sanitized yisa Marshall
Commander leading invasion of Baghdad sacked Thomas E. Ricks
Where were the panicking crowds? by Robert Fisk
Ministry of mendacity by Robert Fisk
Baghdad hospitals stretched to their limits ICRC
America faces Israel scenario by Mark Ames
The republican guard eXile.ru
The war that may end the age of superpower by Henry C. K. Liu
April 4, 2003 by Iraqwar.ru
[A twinge or two before returning to the slaughter] by Oliver Poole
Truck delivered dismembered womena and children Red Cross
US still awaits uprisings after paying millions for them by Peter Cheney
April 3, 2003 by Iraqwar.ru
Iraqi troops massacred from the air by James Conachy
[Life under liberation in Nasiriyah] by Andrew Buncombe
Turkey and war by Noam Chomsky
[Slaughter-boy is worried about wifey] by Lyndsey Layton
Reports of assault premature by Robert Fisk
Ambivalence of war by Charley Reese (conservative, anti-war)
Presidential quarantine by Jeremy Mayer
Cluster bombs liberate Iraqi children (from their lives, limbs, and mothers) by Pepe Escobar
What you aren't being told about Iraq by Firas Al-Atraqchi
It was an obscenity by Robert Fisk
The perfect storm, part 2 by Michael Ruppert
Red cross pleads for the people of Basra AFP
[Iraqis bravely fight US tanks with SUV's and machine guns] by Luke Baker
Illustrated "War Prayer" whatreallyhappened
God damn you by Alan Bisbort
Battle for Basra by Keith B. Richburg
Something monstrous this way comes by John Chuckman
Massacre at Basra (w/o pics) by Reuters
Massacre at Basra (w/pics) by the PropagandaMatrix
The reality of war by Robert Fisk
Let me rock you by Steve Lutz
The First Casualty Of This War Is Common Sense by Mark Steel
The road to perdition by Derk al-Kattabi
Liberation by death by Judith Moriarty
Sparing the public the horrors of war by Firas Al-Atraqchi
Dead bodies everywhere (except on TV, of course) by Lindsay Murdoch
Computer-controlled shrieks overhead by Robert Fisk
A beautiful morning for a war by Sascha Matuszak
[Slaughterfest engineer caught pocketing 3/4 of a million] by Stephen Labaton
There's going to be by Barbara Slaughter
See Rome by Chris Floyd
Mothers, kids, crash kits by Cathy Breens
The exchange rate by Ben Tripp
Memory lane by Chris Floyd
War Shock: Iraqi troops now eating live babies by Makup Aniol Shyte
Predictions about the Iraq war by Chuck O'Connell
Double feature? by Douglas Herman
Military force won't restore lost US power by Mark Weisbrot
Let us hope by Charley Reese (conservative, antiwar)
China: stop the war immediately CNN
"Thank you for liberating me from my eyes" Indymedia
The perfect storm, part 1 by Michael Ruppert
Veterans against the war VAIW
Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over the Onion
You just can't believe it unless you see it LA Times
Tear gas and stun grenade memorial by Chris McGreal
Idiot prince will have his war by Stan Goff
Dear George by Michael Moore
Black comedy by Scott Peterson
The impending storm by John Brand
Rachel Corrie by Peter Bohmer and Rachel Corrie
Cockfight at Baghdad corral by Susan Block
Women vs. bulldozer (woman loses) by Nigel Parry and Arjan El Fassed
Life underneath by T.R.
Is Tony Blair crazy or just plain stupid? by Eric Margolis
["I have no answer to that question. I am an expert on wars.] Slipchenko
[American peace activist killed when Israeli bulldozer runs her over and then backs up] AP
The rot at the center of the empire by Jacob Hornberger
The war of misinformation has begun by Robert Fisk
Millions of protestors across the world again AP
Cage Match by Matt Taibbi
What drives the warmongers? by Gregory Clark
Bleak future by Mark Baker
[Soldiers not given bullets yet so they won't accidentally shoot themselves] by Wes Allison
The present moment by Ramzi Kysia
Powell blamed for 'mistake' in My Lai massacre by Joe Shea
Last orders by Chris Floyd
If we care about Elizabeth Smart by Kurt Nimmo
Don't support our troops: win or lose, war on Iraq is wrong by Ted Rall
Unprecedented globalization of public opinion by Seamus Milne
The spitting image by Jerry Lembcke
Bombs and blood by Bob Herbert
War and women by Patricia Hynes
Dying times International press center
Interview with Greg Palast by Linda L. Starr
The US and Eurasia endgame by Richard Heinberg
Bloodless trance by Ben Cohen
This is war the memory hole
The gangs of D.C. by Chris Floyd
Pentagon threatens to kill independent reporters by Fintan Dunne
Rebuttal to Perry Anderson by Michael Neumann
Whose deliberate disinformation? by Ray Close
Black flags by Uri Avnery
[Black helicopters from hell] by Kristen Ess
Will the real Daniel Ellsberg please stand up! by Douglas Valentine
The special treatment of Iraq by Perry Anderson
Sex, lies, and imperialism by J. Rex Bounds & Lisa Walsh Thomas
Pressed conference by Thomas Knapp
War and the economy by Lew Rockwell
Dark corners of the world by Fidel Castro
[cf. Alan Dershowitz] by Duncan Campbell
The damned by Adam Engel
The prerequisite to speaking by Steven Salaita
On the winning side by Mickey Z
The wall by Alfred Hambridge
War whores by Nicholas von Hoffman
Postcards from hell by George Smith
The empire does what it wants interview with William Blum
I'll believe the breakthrough when I see some evidence by Robert Fisk
Arab impotence and misguided anger by Pepe Escobar
Early thoughts xymphora
Enjoy your war by Charley Reese (conservative, anti-war)
Bu-shits xymphora
[9-month pregnant Gaza woman crushed to death when Israeli soldiers blow up her
house -- she wouldn't leave her terrorist house so it's her fault] AFP
[They're desperate] by Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy and Peter Beaumont
[US-picked 'democratic' successor to Saddam is 'smart' bomb defense contractor] by David Lazarus
Deceived by the warhawks by Gordon Prather
A plea for hysteria by Michael Neumann
Swing blades -- Rumsfeld's loot from N Korea by Chris Floyd
How to end the war of 1948 by Liat Weingart
In the way by Paul McGeough
The Hours by Bill Gross
The war scenario by Jude Wanniski
The blood of the advanced world by Eric Marquadt
Hypocrisies, Double Standards and Lies by John Sugg
[Americans worry about the wrong things] by Charley Reese
[US empire with no clothes: only attack those you know can't defend themselves] by Rowan Scarborough
Shock and awe democracy by Judith Moriarty
You're not crazy by Michael Ruppert
21st century Assyria with laptops by Mike Davis
Israel's nuclear weapons (1999) by Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army
The reign of terror has begun by Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
[Tucuman: IMF, reformation, starvation] by Perla Astudillo
Patriot II by Michael Ruppert
Lust for empire by Jill Nelson
Rummy and Saddam
An American emergency by Ronnie Dugger
Living against disaster by Ramzi Kysia
Now the news will be censored by Robert Fisk
Button-pressing warriors by AFP
Ring of steel by Eric Margolis
Pakistan, ISI, and Hersh by xymphora
Strange dream by John Chuckman
Noncooperation and resistance by Anis Shivani
Chief war aim is testing state-of-the-art weapons by Vladimir Slipchenko
Blair under investigation www.cloakanddagger.ca
The dead zone by John Kaminski
Resolved to ruin by Greg Palast
Blair in more mafia links by Ian Henshall
Protestors by Ash Pulcifer
Of oil, the euro, and Africa by Sonja Ebron
[Our tax dollars at work] by Anne Gwynne
[6 billion in cash is a hard bribe to turn down] by Keith B. Richburg and Peter Slevin
Using the "UN Process" to help organize a massacre by Ed Herman
[The death of three low-market-value humans] by Amira Haas
The Bush Cabal give the world the finger by Al Martin
[New York safe, London not, eh?] by Gethin Chamberlain
[Your polls are down, gotta start the war you scumbag] by Harris
A weekend full of shame by Boris Kagarlitsky
Hebron, city of terror by Ran HaCohen
Massive pro-war rallies go un-reported by borowitz
Out of the nuclear closet by John Simpson
The fig leaf comes off by FTW
58 years of shock and awe by Mickey Z
The new Leninism by Chad Nagle
30 million protest war worldwide -- largest demonstrations in human history the Guardian
The demise of the nuclear bomb hoax by Imad Khadduri
A war to save the dollar by Ira Chernus
Ten million demonstrate on feb15 -- biggest peace protest ever AFP
Tales to frighten children by Robert Fisk
An orange way of life by Alexander Cockburn
Why Bush is sunk without Europe by Will Hutton
[Helicopter gunships and tanks, 13; shops, cars, bridges, factories, people at street level, 0] by Peter Wilson
Does Tony have any idea? by Robert Fisk
Lessons of history by Taki
US buys Iraqi oil to stave off crisis by Faisal Islam and Nick Paton Walsh
[Our] nuclear option in Iraq by William Arkin
Daniel Ellsberg interview Metall
Do you remember the last war? by Thomas Mountain
The degeneration of the liberals by Anis Shivani
This is not a movie! by Anna Lappi
The nightmare asks by Gary C. Huested
Israel to destroy 53 more stores in West Bank market village by AFP
Scare him even more! (and then don't re-elect him anyway...) by Simon Tisdall
Whose left is it anyway? by Sam Smith
The shame of the politicians by Daniel Ellsberg
How to shut up your critics by Robert Fisk
Would you buy laundry soap from these guys? by Roger Peacock
Sniping for bushonomics by Al Martin
Work accident by Jamie Tarabay
If we didn't have Al-Qaeda, we would have to invent it by Matthew Parris
Go, Woody! by Woody Harrelson
This is what was does to the side that drops the bombs--imagine what it does to
the side that lost 3 million people under them by Margaret Krome
Blowback plastic by Michael Smith
The new wall by John Chuckman
Media gag order on assassination plot The Age, The Guardian
Peace is bullish, war is bearish by Jude Wanniski (conservative, anti-war)
Clean lies, dirty wars by Patricia Axelrod
Largest concentration camp in the world by Alan Philps
US demans total impunity on war crimes by Bill Vann
War is inevitable by Patrick Seale
Weapons bigger than razor blades by John Lewallen
Gulf war 1 by Francis Boyle, 1992
Beating Costco by Talli Nauman
Sucker punch by Chris Floyd
Ethnic cleansing by starvation by Rania Awwad
Getting used to transfer by Ali Abunimah
Globalization fails to deliver the goods by Mark Weisbrot
Osama is in Kunar but the US can't get him by Pepe Escobar
The Secret Sharers by Chris Floyd
Situation deteriorating rapidly in Afghanistan by stratfor.com
How to silence the war drums by Ron Holland (libertarian, anti-war)
Ecological warning signs by John Vidal
Thanks a lot, God by Mark Ames
Lethal (700 deaths) Madagascar flu outbreak by WHO
New York dissent by Michael Steinberg
From Vietnam to homeland security by Douglas Valentine
On Eric Alterman by Alexander Cockburn
It is not my job to provide the evidence for a war crimes trial by Robert Fisk
The nukes Iraq never had by Gordon Prather
Invasion politics by Dennis Jett
Wag the puppy by Norman Solomon
The chickenhawk database by Saigon Warrior
Pro-Palestinian activists and the Palestinians by Michael Neumann
[*our* mass graves] by Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman
The war is already on by Marc Erikson
Daddy, what's a war? by Charles Alverson
The Colin 'It's-really-not-a-number-I'm-terribly-interested-in Powell' doctrine by Heather Wokusch
[Low-value human shields] by Barbara Plett
Reasonable deaths in a nonsense war by Helen Highwater
Weapons of mass destruction by John Steinbach
Blood for blood by Jennifer Lowenstein
Summer in Iraq by Leah Wells
Saved [biggest bailout ever doesn't make the nightly news] the Economist
Targetting the innocent by Starhawk
Look now, not later by Brian Foley
Revolution and counter-revolution in Venezuela by Walden Bello
[High-value human shields] by Jill Drier
T minus 88 days by Tom Newton Dunn and Ben Taylor
Human shields by Jonathan Steele
Is the United States really after Afghanistan's resources? Not a chance by Ken Silverstein
War, the Military and the Hunt for the "Violence Gene" by Alexander Cockburn
Fending off the threat of peace by Norman Solomon
Counting the dead by Marc Herrold
Remember Hiroshima and Act Now by Bruce Gagnon
The Intifada is dead, long live the Intifada by Gabriel Ash
There will be no invasion of Iraq [hopefully] by John Chuckman
[Great... frying starving people with death rays fired from robots...] Aviation Week
Facts are the best cure by Simon Tisdall
[resistance to Iraq war leads to the brave strategy of bombing undefended cities] by Kim Sengupta
[per capita income of Argentina descends from $8,900 to $2,500] by Anthony Faiola
The logic of empire [a view from our friends] by George Monbiot
A political, not a military decision by Kevin Black
[Killing civilians as approved policy] by Fumiko Miura
[War on terror, yeah right] by Robert Fisk
Iraq and the new great game by Rahul Mahajan
[Global warming liability--when the UK freezes over] by Mike Romoth
Zap -- you're jewish by Hirsh Goodman
Who's menacing whom? by Robert Higgs
Why do you want to kill us? by Jonathan Glancey
The ethics of revenge by Yitzhak Frankenthal
[2 million people killed in 4 years] BBC
Hanging in the balance by Charmaine Seitz
War for terrorism by Ran HaCohen
Nablus defies curfew by Justin Huggler
The arab tragedy by Pepe Escobar
A glitch in the matrix by Gabriel Ash
Unacceptable target by Colonel James Robert Hildreth
Target Iraq: U.S. Plans for Major War by Larry Everest
[The perils of electing the 'wrong' guy] by Sean Federico-O'Murchu
Weeds and tomatoes by Cameron W. Barr
Total control by Stephen Gowans
[Intervening in other people's elections] by Duncan Campbell
52 die after violence breaks out in Colombia by Marko Alvarez
Why does John Malkovich want to kill me? (!) by Robert Fisk
Destroyed Afghan arms belonged to ally [the fog of war...] by AFP
EU envoy confronts Dostam over "Auschwitz" prison conditions by AFP
Opec chief warned Chavez about coup by Greg Palast
US hit squads by Eric Margolis
[The mind of a terrorist, or, Martial law: let's not go there] by Scott Anderson
Gaza assault will be bloodier than Jenin by Robert Fisk
50,000 rally in Tel Aviv against the occupation by AFP
US is top consumer of Iraqi oil by Middle East Economic Survey
Ugandan rebels kill 470 by AFP
Why I refuse to fight by David Zonsheine
There is a solution to this filthy war by Robert Fisk
Another suicide bomb kill 15 by AP
It's sooner than you think by Fran Schor
[Low market-value father handcuffed after tank mistakenly fires on his wife and children, them] by Mohammed Daraghmeh
Priests and Palestinians by Alexander Cockburn
Voices of sanity by Barbara Ferguson
Palestinians shun Arafat by Alan Philps
Armies prep for U.S. Iraq attack by worldnetdaily/debka.com
Democracy and religious fascism by Arundati Roy
The Palestinians must seize back their pride by Adrian Hamilton
Dick Armey calls for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Counterpunch
Gore Vidal interview by Gary Kamiya
PHRUSA report
What is a terrorist? by Jeff Cohen
Reading the tea leaves by Justin Raimondo (conservative, antiwar)
Bush promised to help Israel squelch UN mission to Jenin by Dina Shiloh
On the ground by Yosef Grodzinsky
Bleats of dissent by Michael Neumann
Sharon's plan by Martin van Creveld
The real aim by Uri Avnery
Talking about terrorism by Zaid Nabulsi
Air supremacy over Afghanistan by Marc Herold
Who's revolting now? by Mark Almond
Gaza prepares for invasion by Robert Fisk (in Gaza)
Unseen daily tragedies by Suzanne Goldenberg
The age of the human missile by Pepe Escobar
Aerial Jenin by David Chandler
Letter to a young muslim by Tariq Ali
[Children taking matters into their own hands] by Ewen McAskill
Just get out! by Gabriel Ash
Re: Did Saddam gas the Kurds at Halabja by Jude Wanniski (supply side guy)
[Life is hard when you're a low-market-value human] by
The engineer by Jonathan Cook
[Expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied territories continues this day] by Celean Jacobson
What happened by Justin Huggler and Phil Reeves
The case for nuclear winter by John Dolan [now *that's* pomo]
The scandal of the Church's support for war by John Dear
The broken home by Nir Rosen
I, George by John Chuckman
Operation destroy the data by Amira Hass
Venezuelan coup plotter in Miami by David Adams
Politics being made on the heads of people by Victoria Mares-Hershey
Using the oil weapon by Pepe Escobar
Oracle by Jennifer Loewenstein
You are not nazis, that's true by Santiago Alba Rico
Peace movement growing in Israel by Grahan Usher
Interview with brother of 9/11 victim by Aaron Hess
The Arab nations are lost in a pit of desperation by Robert Fisk
Resisting the Assassins by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
US targets Saddam by Julian Border and Ewen MacAskill
The real butcher of the Balkans by Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton
Men Hit in U.S. Missile Strike Were Scavengers by Doug Struck
Liberals back America's imperialist war by George Monbiot
Iraq Calls Bush's Bluff on Weapons Scrutiny by Scott Ritter
The anti-war movement grows in Israel by Neve Gordon
Der Neue Mcfaul by Mark Ames
Afghan Horror Unfolds by Suzanne Goldenberg
US commandos kill innocents, CIA pays off kin--a model program? by David Corn
[Bombing teenagers in caves and civilian homes in Tora Bora] by John Donnelly
A country of brave people by Marinella Correggia
Mightiest military leaves all in its wake by Rupert Cornwall
Who is Osama bin Laden? by Lev Navrozov (and so on)
On the Edge of the Non-Violent Demonstrations by Amira Hass
Russian Military Intelligence: The War on Iraq Will Be Launched in September by Vladimir Georgiyev
Refusing to fight in the wrong war by Graham Usher
Killing Innocents: Does Anyone Out There Care? by Ed McManus
America's Strange Political Culture of Grief and Dying by John Chuckman
The peace process by Raja Shehadeh
Hate of the Union by Julian Borger
The smile of policeman Agadi by Abdel Rahman al-Ahmed
Blowback and Daniel Pearl by Susan Block
Tell the truth, Shimon by Gideon Levy
Why This War Was, and Remains, Utterly Wrong by Gary Leupp
Both saviour and victim by George Monbiot
Let's Gloat! by exile.ru
US, allies storm hospital
[3,000 more 'un'-POW's] by Andrew Buncombe
Forgotten coverage by David N. Gibbs
Ghosts and secrets at mass killer's funeral by Robert Fisk
Next target by Eric Margolis
Compassion for victims by Howard Zinn
Volcanos are televisual: war is not by Vincent Brown
Good news by Saad Mehio
David Horowitz Rewrites the Past by Ran HaCohen
Justice or Revenge by Terry Waite
The USA is not an empire... by Manuel Miles
Congratulations, America by Robert Fisk
Stone him (but lightly) by Alexander Cockburn
Aid agencies step in to save 700,000 by John Fullerton
When the body count doesn't count by Scott Macleod
Mentally crippled by war by Andrew Morse
Bulldozing Rafah by Gideon Levy
[Remember Kosovo, anyone?] by Jared Israel and Rick Rozoff
Chomsky Salon interview by Suzy Hansen
[Press so 'sheep-y' it gets dissed by Stratfor!] by stratfor
Mongolia and Wyoming -- A comparison by Paul Treanor
You can't be a terrorist unless you are a Muslim or Arab by Hesham Hassaballa, Chicago physician (despite suspicious 'terrorist' name)
Mindless and mistaken UK Guardian
Why they believe the Big Lie by Ira Chernus
Oh, Omar by Nancy deWolf Smith
Day 100: another raid in the bombing war without end by Suzanne Goldenberg
US Jittery at symbolic meetings of grieving families by Kim Sengupta
'Leave the house now -- the bulldozers are outside' by Amira Haas
Rule of the gun ushered in by US by Eric Slater
The non-truth is out there by Alexander Cockburn
Civilian deaths no cause for concern by Guy Alcorn
American Cant by Peter Beaumont
For NPR, Violence Is Calm if It's Violence Against Palestinians FAIR
American's to Stay? Frontier Post
[not as nightly-newsy as women without burqas, eh?] Tim Reid
What has 'victory' achieved? by Harry Browne
From Greenpeace to Greenwash by Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn
A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan by Marc Herold
U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil by Julio Godoy
The French Connection by James Ridgeway
Dark tales from the ministry of truth by John Chuckman
Muhammad's killer by Neta Golan
Sure way to end terrorism by Mark Pickens
Hollywood Leaves Out Most of the Blood (theirs) by Larry Chin
Remote Afghans are slowly starving by Ravi Nessman
50 prisoners in each cell by Carlotta Gall and Mark Landler
Bloody Evidence of US Blunder by Rory Carroll
US Risks Backlash with 60,000 in Ring of Bases by William Arkin
Spare our blushes and put a sack on it by Terry Jones
The East Asian Front of WWIII by Joseph Gerson
[Not-too-brave things done by our 'boys'] by Stephen Farrell and Roland Watson
Do we have to wait for a war? by Tariq Ali
America's Empire Rules an Unbalanced World by Robert Hunter Wade
Future Airline Security News C J Parker
100 Refugees a Day (e.g., today) Dying of Cold and Starvation in Afghan Camp by Doug McKinlay
Is There an Islamic Problem? by Shahid Alam
Killing Off the Extras by Azmi Bishara
Argentina and the IMF by Mark Weisbrot
'Precision weapons' fail to prevent mass civilian casualties
by Michael Evans
[Who's Darth Vader?] by Walden Bello
I, sir, remain haggard of the Hindu Kush by Terry Jones
An Average Day by Marc Herold
[Other People in the World Like Us for Our Science!] R.C Longworth
India, Pakistan Rattle Their Nukes by Eric Margolis
Bushed by Barry Crimmins
Missile Defense: the Untold Story by Bill Keller
Kabul House by Richard Ehrlich
The Real Story by John Pilger
US Bombs Leave Wasteland by Paul Salopek
[Right-wing anti-Cheney tirade] by Debbie Schlussel
[Real-life 'hero' on which BlackHawk Down main character mainly based is
in jail for child molestation and rape]
by Megan Turner
This Story No Longer Exists (indeed!)
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ramzi Kysia
In Praise of Unspeakable Things by John Chuckman
Why Doves Must Fly by Andrew Hsiao
Catholic Groups Call Terrorism Battle Immoral by Jeffrey T. Kuhner
From Tora Bora to Bora Bora by Jack Duggan (anti-gun-control retired executive)
Cheney's Hiding in a Cave, Too by Dennis Roddy
The God That Sucked by Thomas Frank
Destroying Arafat by Graham Usher
Selective Indignation by Tim Wise
Power and Visibility by Dr. Tariq Rahman
The US air strikes have now killed more Afghan civilians than the
hijackers killed westerners and others by Robert Fisk
They Were Wrong Llewellyn H. Rockwell (anti-war libertarian)
Brain Drain by Mark Crispin Miller
Barak, Netanyahu and Mainstream Thinking in Israel by Gershon Baskin
[The downside of the Magic Lantern...] by Annalee Newitz
Killing Other People's Children by Lawrence McGuire (excellent article)
[New York Times Sentences Iraqi Civilians to Death] by Judith Miller
Government Must Deny USA Bases to Attack Somalia by Maximillia Muninzwa
Destroying Afghanistan to Save It
Israeli Security Brass: Assassinations Don't Work by Amos Harel
Technological supermen doing battle with dirty, barbaric savages by James Norton
Civilian Casualties--Theirs and Ours by William Blum
Where's Osama? by David Rossie
[Gotta Stop These Sicko's!] by H. Josef Hebert
[Jeeper Creepers!] by Emil Guillermo
Special Report with Brit Hume by Carl Cameron, Fox News
Are you watching a war on TV? by David McCandless & Rhodri Marsden
Tora Bora Falls but no bin Laden by Philip Smucker
Is the Gun Smoking? by Eric Margolis
Getting Some Hope Back by Robert Jensen
There is Another America by Bonnie Greer
Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks Washington Post
Christmas Fairy Tale by Madeleine Bunting
President Scrooge by John Isaacs
No clue to whereabouts of 300,000 persons displaced from Tora Bora UN
Death Squads by Phil Reeves
Americans cover up massacre of 280 in Kandahar by Justin Huggler
The Execution of Osama bin Laden by Dana Cook
Just War by David Portoti
Rumsfeld isn't telling the whole story by Dalton Camp
Is the Pentagon aiming for a victory -- or annihilation? by Thomas E. Ricks, MSNBC
The Nonsense Mantras of Our Times by Trojanow and Hoskote
Gainspotting by Chris Floyd
US Bars Surrender Deal with Bombs by Susan B. Glasser
A Comprehensive Accounting of 3,700 Civilian Deaths A by Marc W. Herold
Inside The Country We're Bombing by Christina Lamb
War on a Word by Terry Jones (Monty Python)
Anthrax Genetically Matches Strain Used by Army In 90's by Scott Shane
What's Really Going On in Somalia by Jim Davidson (anarchist/capitalist!)
Un-American, Fly-Shit Melody by Gilles d'Aymery (go Gilles!)
McCain Interview with Chris Matthews HardBall, Dec 6, 2001
The Wrong War (from a former war supporter!) by Jonathan Steele
[Scores of Taliban Prisoners Suffocated to Death in Closed Shipping Containers] by Carlotta Gall
Imperial Rome lives in the U.S. by Richard Gwyn
Old Story Irrelevant and Dangerous by Ira Chernus
America's New War: A Progress Report by Eric Margolis
By Any Standard, This is a War Against Afghans by Sonali Kolhatkar
My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war by Robert Fisk
Can Anything Stop the US Killing Spree? by Justin Podur
Wanted Dead or Alive by Ronald Herring
[Asymmetric Warfare] by Philip Sherwell
High-Tech Puritanism by John Chuckman (excellent article)
Let Them Eat Teddy Bears James Ridgeway
Robert Fisk Recovering After Narrowly Escaping Enraged Afghan Mob in Pakistan AFP
Mullah Omar by Robert Fisk
100 Nobel Laureates (majority of those living) Against the Polarization of Wealth Toronto Globe
[Our Caves and Their Caves] by Willian Arkin
[Behind the Propaganda Wall] by Andrei Sukhozhilov
[What's In Some Caves] by Richard Lloyd
Hampshire College Votes to Condemn War (hey hey!) Amherst, MA
Sharon Chose the Hamas by Amira Haas, Ha'aretz
Genocidal Thought in the Land by Scott McConnell
Finding Anti-Terror Ground to Stand On by Robin Miller
Suicide Bombers by Sam Bahour and Leila Bahour
How to Rewrite History by Danny Schecter
Bombed Kids by John Donnelly
Keep Your Eye On the Target by Ron Paul (excellent article by Libertarian/Republican/Texan)
The Last Colonial War by Robert Fisk
The Day Nothing Happened by Richard Lloyd Parry
River of Victims by Robert Fisk
The silver lining by Alexander Cockburn
'Frankensteinian' Policies by Salim Muwakkil
Fascism In Defense of Freedom is a Vice by James Heddle
Surrender Ended in Massacre by Damien McElroy
Warlords Bring Terrors by Paul Harris
Making Laws Worthy of a Dictatorship by Patricia Williams
[Even Stratfor Appalled!] stratfor
Home and Death Under a Blanket by Farnaz Fassihi
The Afghan King and the Nazis by Tariq Ali (key article)
Ancient Corn Stocks in Mexico Found Contaminated with GM Corn Genes by John Vidal
US 'hero' may have triggered Mazar revolt by Rashmee Z Ahmed
We Are the War Criminals Now by Robert Fisk
The Hierarchy of Death by Anne Karpf
Russia Checkmated Its New Best Friend by Eric Margolis
Playing the Great Game Jonathan Freedland
Blood, Tears, Terror and Tragedy Behind the Lines by Robert Fisk (only Western journalist behind lines)
Behind the jargon about failed states and humanitarian interventions lie thousands of dead by John Pilger
Suffer Palestine's Children by Sunil Sharma
The World's Love-Hate Relationship with the USA by Richard Reeves
The US Alliance with Militant Islam (Ch. 3) by Robin Blackburn
Slaughter of 500 People Triggered by Sight of Westerner Drudge (!)
Oil--Before and After the War on Afghanistan by Fran Shor
Faking Democracy and Progress in Kosovo BHHRG Report on the Provincial Elections
Chaos in Kunduz by Justin Huggler
Look Again: Islam and Economic Development Go Together Philip Bowring
World Opinion Opposes the Attack on Afghanistan by David Miller
House of Saud looks close to collapse David Leigh, Richard Norton-Taylor
Afghanistan Attractions Lonely Planet
Oil's Actual Role by Richard Tanter
Two Taliban Books by Mark Ames
Victorious Northern Alliance Castrates then Kills Taliban Prisoner Ananova
CIA in firm control of south Afghanistan Frontier Post, Pakistan
Bombings kill 1,000 around Kunduz Hindustan Times
Our friends in the North are just as treacherous and murderous by Robert Fisk
American Crusades by C.G. Estabrook
Carpet Bombing Kills 150 Civilians by Justin Huggler
Tortured Logic by Charles Levendosky
US confused where to go next by Nusrat Javeed
The Lives of Afghanis Don't Count by Ramzy Baroud
This Must Be the End by Andrew Murray
US Oil Companies and the Taliban by Julio Godoy
Neuroscientist Forced Off Plane by Julie Sullivan (hey, it's my tribe)
Northern Alliance Crushes 520 Taleban To Death With Tanks In School The Times
Northern Alliance Threatens to Massacre 6000 Trapped Fighters The Times
US News Control AP
Change in the Weather by Chris Floyd
Flight of the Taliban Rouses Warlords by Luke Harding
Getting to Know Our Foot Soldiers by Robert Fisk
Don't Hand My Country to Warlords by Jawed Ludin
Al-Jazeera Kabul Office Destroyed by US Missile by Adnan Malik
Losing the PR Battle by David Corn
Let's Not Go There Again by Robyn Blumner
Our Friends from the Northern Alliance by Bija Masafer (a woman who was there)
Seeking Opposition to the War Grover Furr
Interview With Tariq Ali La Jornada
What the media is churning out is trash By Masood Anwar
The Wide World of Torture by Alexander Cockburn
Homeland Insecurity Douglas Valentine
Al-Qaida's Endgame Decision Support Systems, Inc.
Next They'll Tell Us bin Laden's Learnt to Live Under Water by Mark Steel
Hypocrisy, Hatred and the War on Terror by Robert Fisk
Ayatollah Asscroft by Susan Block
Where Are You? Geov Parrish
Focus on the Real Terror -- Gun Violence Joan Ryan
Bombing With Blindfolds On by James Carroll
What's a few (hundred) thousand Afghans? Steve Perry
Children and Mines (hours on a dirt road with a blown-off hand) Patrick Cockburn
Stop the bombing, please by Farrukh Saleem
The Top Five Lies About This War Univ Pitt Anti-War Students
A Tough Tour of Duty in the Mideast by Simon Jenkins
[Using Our Terror Machines on Civilians] by Andrew Gumbel, Independent
US Bombs Are Boosting the Taliban by Abdul Haq (days before the Taliban killed him)
Watching the Warheads Seymour M. Hersh
FBI Eyes Torture by Alexander Cockburn
CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July by Anthony Sampson
Operation Enduring Avarice by Arianna Huffington
US Bombs Kajaki Hydroelectric Dam (shades of Viet Nam) Agence France Presse
Russia to commit quarter million combat troops Nusrat Javeed
Unleashing the CIA? by William Blum
Does this country have the moral authority to lead the world? by Stephen Gowans
A Need for Honest Answers Boris Kagarlitsky
Silent Genocide Steve Perry
No Negotiations? Justin Podur
Backyard Terrorism George Monbiot
Hidden Agenda Behind War on Terror by John Pilger
Left Tying Itself in Knots by Alexander Cockburn
Wounded forced to flee as Afghan hospital system collapses Rory Carroll
'The Taliban Are Not Worried About Being Bombed' by Robert Fisk
One of the Real Reasons They Hate Us by James Glaser (Vietnam vet)
Killing Our Own Kind by S. Leon Felkins (excellent article by retired officer)
We Are Losing the War Against Terrorism Martin Masse
Strategies of Annihilation: Total War in US History Joseph Stromberg
US bombs 4 out of 5 Red Cross Food Warehouses (food for the disabled) Reuters
Strikes Requiring Surgery by Phil Reeves
Raid on Bethlehem Ghassan Andoni
Hiroshima to New York N.D. Jayaprakash
Families Blown Apart Richard Lloyd Parry
Little comfort for tiny survivor of the bombing by Sandra Laville
[A Civilian for a Civilian] AFP
A Non-Western Voice Irina Malenko
Why America Must Stop the War Now by Arundhati Roy (excellent article)
The New War Against Terror Noam Chomsky
Life Under Occupation by Lori Allen
New Newspeak by Hamit Dardagan
Cleanse the World by John Dolan
What's So Complex About It? by Michael Albert
This War Will Not Work by Jason Burke
Halt Afghan Bombing by Paul Clark (Gulf War vet)
Common sense could keep us out of perpetual war by Charley Reese (conservative, antiwar)
This War is not a Moral Enterprise by Natasha Walter
Avoiding a New Cold War by Mahajan and Jensen
We Didn't Have to Do This by Stephanie Salter
Unleashing Hell by Ramzi Kysia
Week One: Operation Infinite Disaster by Chris Kromm
How vulnerable are the Saudi royals? by Seymour M. Hersh
I'm Against Terrorism. Now, If Only We Could Get Washington On Side by Stephen Gowans
War American Style by John Pilger
The Phoney War Will Get Real Very Soon by Patrick Cockburn
No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak by Barbara Kingsolver
The Most Potent Weapon in the West's Arsenal is Aid, Not Armaments by Mary Riddell (excellent article)
Will a Few Holes in the Runway of Kandahar Airport Make a Difference? by Robert Fisk
Stop the War, Plead Parents of NY Victim by Duncan Campbell
On 'Immoral Pacifism' by Carl Estabrook
Dithhhhhpatches Mark Ames
Missing the Oil Story Nina Burleigh
Yngwie Malmsteen, Brazil, & Osama (!) by Derek Sherinian
Reports from the Front Alex Spillius and Imtiaz Ali Khan
"Collateral damage" is a terroristic tool Charley Reese
Multi-Focus or Bust by Barbara Garson
What About the Children? by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Bombing Begins by Chalmers Johnson
West Is As West Does by Hani Shukrallah
The Dumbest Weapon of War by Simon Jenkins
West Risks Culpability for a Massive Tragedy by Dominic Nutt
America's New Whore by Mark Ames
Discreet Looks for Autumm by exile.ru
Debka.com by Debka.com
The Empire Strikes Back by Cockburn and St. Clair
Military Might Cannot Heal Our Psyche This Time Marie Cocco
Bombs Weaken Taliban Patrick Cockburn in Northern Afghanistan
Bombs, Blowback, the Future Tariq Ali
Afghanistan and China by Sascha Matuszak
Same Old by Phillip Knightley
Anderson Corrects Citation of Himself by UK Times by Ross Anderson
No Regrets About the Muj Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1998
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black Philip Agee
The Taliban and Oil Company Pipelines, 1996 by AFP
Which Side Are You On? Holger Jensen
Opposition, Not Taleban, Controls Most Opium Production AP
'Evidence' Unlikely to Cut Much Ice by Robert Fisk
Worthy and Unworthy Victims by John Pilger
A Century of US Military Interventions Zoltan Grossman
The Unknown Enemy by Joe Sobran (conservative, antiwar)
That Which Happened by Chris Floyd
Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. Helped Midwife a Terrorist by Ahmed Rashid (2000)
The End of the "End of History" by Jean Bricmont
Nato's mistakes by Eve-Ann Prentice (one of the very few Western reporters on the ground)
The Siege of Iraq by G. Simon Harak
Welcome to the Banana Republic by Boris Kagarlitsky
Washington Post a "Useful Tool" for NATO? by FAIR
Drug war politics demand the hard line and
spending a billion or so by Robin Kirk
The Putin Doctrine by stratfor.com
Intervention, Immigration, and Internment by George Szamuely
Schlock Therapy Revisited by Jude Wanniski (from a right wing, supply side guy!!)
Inside U.S. Counterinsurgency: A Soldier Speaks by Stan Goff
Putin Cleans House by stratfor.com (vs. not a peep from major US papers)
Presidents and the Price of Pardon by stratfor.com
How the West Killed Yeltsin by stratfor.com (vs. e.g., tripe on NPR)
Why not call it genocide? by Hassan Nafaa (in a Cairo weekly)
West's autistic view of Russia by Jacques Sapir
The Year 2000 by Ignacio Ramonet
The State of the World by Stephen Shalom
Weep for poor Orissa by Simon Jenkins
Collective Guilt and Collective Innocence by Diana Johnstone
The WTO and the De-synchronization of the Global Economy by stratfor.com
A Veteran Remembers by Howard Zinn
Ten Years after the Fall: After the Celebration by stratfor.com
The Red Tide Turning? by George Szamuely
Where's the Evidence of Genocide of Kosovar Albanians? Cockburn/LA Times
Where Are Kosovo's Killing Fields? by stratfor.com
Avoid the Lloyd by Matt Taibbi
A Visit to a Bombed Village by Zachary Fink
The Arab Holocaust by Raed Battah
East Timor by Shalom, Chomsky, and Albert
The Journal's Russia Scandal by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames
All the world's enemy interview: Jared Israel/Diana Johnstone
Checkmate Nears for Yeltsin by stratfor.com
Terror in Timor & the Interventionist Urge by Sddharth Varadarajan
Sanctions and suffering forever? Jordan Times opinion section
Making the news by John Pilger
Massacres, First Half of 1999 (Columbia) at Columbia Support Network
Britain's secret wars by Simon Jenkins
Kosovo: KLA Country--report from Kosovo by Dan North
US Intelligence in Columbia Stratfor
Whose Stupid War Was This? by Peter Gowan
A Just War? by Stephen R. Shalom
Gangrene--Kosovo and the Collapse... excellent right-wing bile by Edward Zehr
Moral Arrogance by Rick Salutin
After Toxic Nightmare, Physicians recommend abortions for Serb Women by Mark Fineman
Serb army 'unscathed by Nato' by Robert Fisk
The treason of the intellectuals by Edward Said
Cold War II by Barbara Erenreich
NATO's War Medals by eXile
Propaganda, Hypocrisy and the Torture Trade
by Antonia Feitz (in RightMagazine!)
When is slaughter of innocents not an outrage? by Vincent Browne
It's the Russians, Stupid by www.stratfor.com
Left Out in the Cold by Jeremy Hardy
Spanish Pilots Admit NATO Attacked Civilian Targets by Jose Luis Morales
The Twilight of the European Project (long) by Peter Gowan.
A System for Post-War South-East Europe Centre for European
Policy Studies, May 3.
The Denim-and-Suede Fascists by John Dolan
Recent (1999) humanitarian catastrophes that didn't register:
- 100,000 dead in last two years of the Ethiopian-Eritrean war; 1,000,000 refugees
- 780,000 Angolan refugees in recent months of fighting
- 30,000 Kurds killed in Turkey, 1,000,000 refugees (NATO member,US weapons)
- 25,000 killed, 1,000,000 refugees in Columbia, just given $1.3B US military aid
- 80,000 dead in Algeria
- 850,000 dead in Rwanda during the last five years
- 1,500,000 million dead in Sudan during the last 15 years
- 200,000 killed by Guatemala government while receiving US military aid
- 200,000 E. Timorese killed (1/3 of total) by Indonesia given $1billion US
What ostensibly precipitated the Kosovo war:
- 2,000 killed in Kosovo, in 1.5 years before NATO bombing
(about equivalent to the number of civilians killed by the US/NATO bombing)
Each day of the US/NATO Kosovo offensive cost nearly as much as total
US aid promised to fix Hurricane Mitch. Each day cost more than the
entire Starr investigation. The bombing did not prevent ethnic
cleansing and instead triggered it. It then lead to reverse ethnic
cleansing. The bombing turns out to have left the Yugoslavian military
almost untouched (perhaps 3% of its hardware destroyed). It's main
effect, was instead, to destroy the civilian infrastructure of the
former Yugoslavia. It did an estimated 100 billion dollars damage to
bridges, schools and institutes (190), factories, hospitals (22),
refineries, power stations, chemical plants, telephone lines, sewage
and water plants, civilian airports (5), TV stations, houses, and
apartment blocks in the past month. (list
here)
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