There is so much craziness going on inside the United States today it just boggles the mind. And you know, it is so very easy to get all caught up in it. I was amazed to watch an interview by JudgeNapolitano interviewing Scott Ritter about the Ukraine. And he (the Judge) was actually believing the bullshit lies of the mainstream “news” media. I was astounded. You need not be. Here’s a look at what is going on, with a equal dose of our shared pasts. I hope you all enjoy it all.
Make sure that you stick around to the end of the article. The latest in Chinese robotic AI technology is truly a “game changer”.
American “Democracy”…
Caitlin Johnstone, maestra of metaphor and allegory, on American democracy:
"An elephant and a donkey fight in a puppet show and the crowd cheers for one or the other while thieves pick their pockets..." (thieves being the shows sponsors.) "Democracy is when you get to vote on which oligarchic muppet will ceremonially pardon a turkey on Thanksgiving but not on whether your government should greatly escalate the risk of nuclear war."
France confiscated the money collected for the children of Donbass
In France, customs officers confiscated funds collected for the children of Donbass by the humanitarian association “Save the Children of Donbass”, which were intended for transportation to Russia. The funds were detained under the pretext of a directive banning the import of money into Russia from Europe. This was announced on May 14 by the president of the association, Emmanuel Leroy.
He said that in addition to him, two more representatives of the association were sent to Donbass. French customs detained them at Charles de Gaulle airport. The group was taken to a special unit, where they were held for about 10 hours. According to Leroy, French customs officials charged them with supporting terrorism, as well as financing criminal circles and the terrorist regime.
From HERE.
Kodachrome Stories
We love Kodachromes and we love found photos. Lee Shulman shares those loves, recognising what he calls “the emotional value of these slices of life”. Since 2017, Lee’s collected around 700,000 found photographs, and compiled them into his Anonymous Project.
These snapshots taken in the mid-20th Century show us people posing for the camera, smiling in readiness for whoever’s behind the thing to press the button and capture the moment. Others are relaxed, caught off guard, their eyes blinked closed or shut in asleep.
U.S. Seeks ASEAN Proxy Willing To Poke China
On Wednesday, May 11, the Associated Press published a piece of the election in Philippine which included some dubious editorial assertions:
Marcos presidency complicates US efforts to counter China
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s apparent landslide victory in the Philippine presidential election is raising immediate concerns about a further erosion of democracy in Asia and could complicate American efforts to blunt growing Chinese influence and power in the Pacific. Marcos, the namesake son of longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos, captured more than double the votes of his closest challenger in Monday’s election, according to the unofficial results. If the results stand, he will take office at the end of June for a six-year term with Sara Duterte, the daughter of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, as his vice president. Duterte — who leaves office with a 67% approval rating — nurtured closer ties with China and Russia, while at times railing against the United States.
The whole piece is much longer than the quote. But it nowhere explains why a free and fair election, like the one the Philippines just held, would lead to ‘a further erosion of democracy in Asia’. It also does not explain why anyone might doubt the results when indeed nobody really does.
What it does explain well is why Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will not become a U.S. puppet:
[A] 2011 U.S. District Court ruling in Hawaii finding him and his mother in contempt of an order to furnish information on assets in connection with a 1995 human rights class action suit against Marcos Sr. The court fined them $353.6 million, which has never been paid and could complicate any potential travel to the U.S.
Marcos has said that he will keep the Philippines on the same neutral foreign policy line as Duterte did. Developing better relations with China is part of that.
That does not fit U.S. plans to use the Philippines as a proxy to poke the Chinese tiger.
Currently Biden is holding a summit with the leaders of countries that belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Myanmar was not invited to the summit and Duterte did not take part.
The agenda of the summit is astonishingly thin:
The summit, which concludes on Friday, is intended to cover an array of topics, including trade, human rights and climate change. But it is also part of an effort by Mr. Biden’s foreign policy team to highlight one of the president’s primary goals: assembling a united front against China as it increasingly demonstrates its economic and military might around the world. ... On Thursday evening, the White House announced new investments of about $150 million in the region as part of a series of agreements between the United States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. The investments by the United States include $40 million for clean energy projects in Southeast Asia. ... The United States also pledged to invest $60 million to deploy additional maritime assets — led by the Coast Guard — to the region, and to perform training and other activities in coordination with other countries aimed at enforcing maritime laws. And the administration said it would spend $15 million to expand health surveillance programs in Southeast Asia and better detect Covid-19 and other airborne diseases in the region.
These numbers are stingy and will not move anyone to support the U.S. against China which spends billions on infrastructure in those countries.
They also include a Trojan hoarse program none of those countries is really interested in. More on that later.
The program for the summit looks a bit like a snub:
On Thursday, the leaders from the ASEAN countries met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers before gathering at a Washington hotel to discuss business opportunities with Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, and executives from American industries.Mr. Biden welcomed the leaders to the White House on Thursday evening in a brief ceremony on the South Lawn. The group posed for a picture before walking into the White House for dinner.
On Friday, the Asian leaders will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in the morning, and then with Mr. Biden at the White House later in the day. According to the administration official, the group will discuss trading opportunities; transit through disputed waterways, including the South China Sea; and other topics.
These are presidents and prime ministers who are not really interested in talking with underlings like Raimondo and Blinken. They want to talk with the boss. But Biden seems to have little interest in making friends with them.
Was this summit intentionally designed to fail?
Anyway. Back to the Trojan horse for which the U.S. will spend $60 million in an attempt to poke the tiger.
A year ago Peter Lee wrote an excellent piece on the Philippine election that took place this week. It explains what the ‘additional maritime assets’ are supposed to do.
For those of you who plan ahead, May 9, 2022 is the big one. Mark your calendars. That’s the date of the Philippine presidential elections.Recapturing the Malacañang Palace for a pro-American president is an obsession of U.S. strategists. And if I’m thinking about it now, they’ve been thinking about it ever since Rodrigo Duterte won the last election in 2016. ... I expect that the old guard in Manila, in coordination with the United States, will do whatever is necessary to make sure that, no matter who makes it to the Palace, the embarrassment of a Duterte-style balancer presidency is not repeated. A pro-US presidency means turning away from the PRC to deepen the security relationship with the United States and Japan and perfect the “First Island Chain” anti-China picket line. And the Philippines will reassume its place at the center of US plans to confront the PRC in the South China Sea.
As we now know that plan did not work out. But it is interesting how it was supposed to be followed by tackling the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea:
Post-Duterte I expect there will be continual poking at PRC vulnerabilities in the SCS as they relate to Philippine claims and can be construed to demand US support.These include Reed Bank, an energy play within the Philippines EEZ that the PRC tries to claim as inside its nine-dash line. Then there’s the Scarborough Shoal, a fishing spot now controlled by the PRC but a flashpoint for Philippine nationalism. And there is the aptly-named Mischief Reef.
China has made Mischief Reef into an artificial Chinese island within the Philippine’s economic zone. If the Philippine would reclaim the reef by force the ‘additional maritime assets’ the U.S. sends could come to its help:
If the Mischief Reef op goes down, that backing will probably come from, of all things, the US Coast Guard.The US Coast Guard’s scope of operations, despite its name, is not America’s coasts. It’s a global power projection arm in the realm of law enforcement, not warfare. Or as the head of the Coast Guard himself puts it, the Coast Guard is “a maritime bridge between the Department of Defense’s lethality and the State Department’s diplomacy.” ... The Coast Guard is in the process of basing three so-called Fast Response Cutters at Guam. They are armed with 4 machine guns and a cannon and are designed for extended duration patrols of 2500 nautical miles. The stated Pacific mission for the Coast Guard is to offer logistics and escort i.e. armed US backup for the coast guards of friendly states in their enforcement activities in the Pacific in the realms of illegal fishing, drug trafficking, and “the threats these activities bring” mostly, I would think, from China. Stage one is implementing this US-backed enforcement regime on behalf of Palau and the other Polynesian satrapies whose defense and foreign relations are managed by the US government. Then, if conditions permit, you got the South China Sea. Guam is too far from the South China Sea, so to operate in the SCS the US Coast Guard will have to rely on tenders—unless the cutters are permitted to operate out of the Philippines, That’s something I think the US military would dearly love, and is undoubtedly on its wish list for any post-Duterte Philippine administration.
I am pretty sure that Peter Lee had that right. But with Marcos junior at the helm of Philippine that country will not agree to those plans:
Allowing the U.S. to play a role in trying to settle territorial spats with China will be a “recipe for disaster,” Marcos said in an interview with DZRH radio in January. He said Duterte’s policy of diplomatic engagement with China is “really our only option.”
The coast guard cutters to be stationed in Guam are the ‘$60 million additional maritime assets’ Biden promised to the ASEAN leaders.
Maybe some other country can be convinced to proxy-poke China to then ask for armed U.S. coast guard backup.
I doubt though that it is truly in anyone’s interest as China is certain to poke back – harshly.
Wanted:
Asian country to fight a United States proxy war aginst China.
We will make your oligarchs enormously rich and help you fight till your last citizen has been killed.
YouTube
This informed fellow did a youtube video about 9 days ago which explains it very well for anyone more interested…
US Can’t Find Indo-Pacific Nations to Host Anti-China Missiles
Ah. The youtube channel – the new atlas… check it out if you want to understand this dynamic the usa is working on more fully..
Marcello Mastroianni sips coffee in an undated image.
Kodachrome Stories
We love Kodachromes and we love found photos.
United States Marine Corp
Yes, the USMC is in turmoil right now, with the current commandant catching static because he got rid of tanks etc, whereas the old-timers would prefer that the USMC continue to be a mini-army and they are not quiet about it. . . .The Corps has no decent amphibious tanks.
They recently formed a “littoral regiment,” littoral meaning “shore,” and they worked out at 29 Palms, Southern California high desert!!
Their new policy is that Marine units will be secretly deploy to some island (somewhere in the western Pacific), nobody will notice, and then when discovered they will secretly transfer to another island…
. . .I’m serious! This is not a joke.
– Don Bacon
The Princely County of Tyrol in 1890
Nations come and nations go. And then, forgotten by all.
Jungbauernkalender 2020
The new Jungbauernkalender 2020 is out and can be ordered now. This time 12 young men and 12 women come from Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, Upper Franconia, Swabia and Upper Palatinate. Six girls come from Austria. The calendar is a joint project of the Bavarian Young Farmers Association and the Austrian Young Farmers Association.
The calendar pictures the different side of farmer’s life: dressing for the wedding, feeding a newborn calf, working in the fields or swimming in the nearby lake. The pictures were taken by the photographer duo “Die Abbilderei” on the farm of the Wunderl family.
Accelerated acquisition of Russian citizenship
Compatriots wishing to move to Russia will now be able to do so as quickly as possible. Alexander Gorovoy, First Deputy Minister of the Interior, informed me about this. Starting next week, a round-the-clock center for receiving documents for participation in the state program for the voluntary resettlement of compatriots will begin operating at the Main Directorate for Migration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (GUVM). Here they will accept and process applications from people from the CIS, the Baltic states and neighboring countries, for whom Russia is their historical homeland. It is important that applications can be sent not only by e-mail, but also by fax, since in a number of “friendly” countries access to Russian Internet resources, including the State Service portal, is blocked. Applications will be reviewed within 15 days. With a positive decision, compatriots will be able to immediately enter the territory of Russia, to the region of their choice, after which they will be able to apply for citizenship in an expedited manner. Police Colonel-General Gorov has already sent letters to the governors of the regions and the heads of the territorial bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the priority reception of such compatriots.
Kodachrome Stories
We love Kodachromes and we love found photos.
China’s 075
China’s 075 amphibious assault vessel, helo/VSTOL aircraft-carrier and hovercraft troop launcher, is indeed formidable. It’s fast, heavily armed, technologically advanced, and at 40,000 tons, has more than 3x the displacement of Russia’s lost Moskva. China has been rapidly modernizing it’s military at a pace similar to Russia’s — not coincidentally.
From Radio Free Asia 5/4/22:
"The Chinese Navy only officially started development work on the Type 075 in 2011 but has already launched three ships, two of which are fully operational and the third is on sea trials. A total of eight vessels are said to be on order for the PLAN, reported the Naval News portal." "Chinese state media said the Type 075 'will play vital roles in possible operations on the island of Taiwan, as well as islands and reefs in the South China Sea.'” "Experts said that the commissioning of the three ships will place China in the second rank in terms of global amphibious capabilities, second only to the United States. "A U.S. Defense Department report released last November said China has the biggest maritime force on the globe with 355 vessels. The number is projected to increase to 420 ships within the next four years and 460 by 2030." "A future Type 076 vessel could be equipped with electromagnetic catapults, which would enhance its ability to support fixed-wing aircraft, making it more like an aircraft carrier, according to CRS."
Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
I like it.
Is “Meltdown” The Correct Term To Describe The Current State Of The U.S. Economy?
I have really been struggling to come up with an accurate way of describing the current state of the U.S. economy, because none of the traditional labels seem to apply. Inflation is out of control, and that normally happens when an economy is overheating. But of course the U.S. economy is not overheating. In fact, if U.S. GDP falls once again during the second quarter, that will officially confirm that we are actually in a recession right now. There are some that have suggested that “stagflation” is a good description of current economic conditions, but the truth is that what we are facing is so much worse than anything that we dealt with during the 1970s.
Let me give you an example. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just informed us that the consumer price index is 8.3 percent higher than it was a year ago…
Inflation rose again in April, continuing a climb that has pushed consumers to the brink and is threatening the economic expansion, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of prices for goods and services, increased 8.3% from a year ago, higher than the Dow Jones estimate for an 8.1% gain.
That is a really bad number, but it doesn’t accurately reflect reality.
If inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation would be well over 15 percent right now, and that is far worse than at any point during the Jimmy Carter era.
And if you can believe it, the real rate of inflation is now the highest that it has ever been in the entire modern history of the United States.
The term “meltdown” comes to mind, but I don’t think that completely captures what we are facing either.
Of course Joe Biden says he has a plan, and he insists that reducing inflation is his “top economic priority”…
President Biden, reacting to April’s consumer price index Wednesday, acknowledged that inflation is “unacceptably high,” and maintained that lowering prices for American families is his “top economic priority,” while again blaming the surging numbers on COVID-19 and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of ordinary Americans continue to deeply suffer as prices spiral out of control.
Earlier today, I was stunned to see that even CNN is admitting that some Americans are “skipping meals” these days in order to make ends meet…
The price of groceries, gas, rent and utilities has marched higher over the past year; but wages have not kept up — and more than half of single parents make less than $15 an hour, according to recent research from Oxfam. That has left many single parents skipping meals so their children have plenty of food, providing less healthy meals for their families, and culling expenses to the point where any unforeseen cost could mean more debt — or worse.
If people are skipping meals already, what will things be like a year from now when economic conditions are even worse?
Most people don’t realize this, but we are extremely vulnerable. When the next major downturn strikes, millions upon millions of Americans will be instantly wiped out.
According to a report that was just released, almost two-thirds of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck…
As of March, close to two-thirds, or 64%, of the U.S. population was living paycheck to paycheck, just shy of the high of 65% in 2020, according to a LendingClub report. “The number of people living paycheck to paycheck today is reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic and it has become the dominant lifestyle across income brackets,” said Anuj Nayar, LendingClub’s financial health officer.
Living on the edge is fine as long as a paycheck keeps coming in like clockwork.
But if things suddenly shift, millions upon millions of Americans could suddenly find themselves plunged into poverty.
Before I end this article, I would be remiss if I did not mention the fact that financial markets were way down yet again today.
In fact, the Nasdaq dropped another 3 percent.
But the big news is what is happening to the cryptocurrency industry. Cryptos are crashing harder than Hunter Biden after a drug-fueled night with a Chinese hooker, and Coinbase is coming apart like a 20 dollar suit…
The cryptocurrency brokerage reported a first-quarter loss late Tuesday and revenue that fell 27% from a year ago, missing Wall Street’s forecasts. Coinbase shares plummeted nearly 25% in early trading Wednesday morning and hit their lowest level ever. Coinbase stock is now down more than 75% this year and is trading nearly 85% below its all-time high price from November. Shares have lost more than half their value in just the past week alone.
If you have money with Coinbase, you may want to consider your options, because it is being reported that “users might lose all the cryptocurrency stored in their accounts” if Coinbase actually goes bankrupt…
Hidden away in Coinbase Global’s disappointing first-quarter earnings report—in which the U.S.’s largest cryptocurrency exchange reported a quarterly loss of $430 million and a 19% drop in monthly users—is an update on the risks of using Coinbase’s service that may come as a surprise to its millions of users. In the event the crypto exchange goes bankrupt, Coinbase says, its users might lose all the cryptocurrency stored in their accounts too.
I was absolutely floored when I first read that.
Right now, Coinbase is holding more than 250 billion dollars worth of assets for its customers, and there is a danger that all of it could become “inaccessible”…
Coinbase said in its earnings report Tuesday that it holds $256 billion in both fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies on behalf of its customers. Yet the exchange noted that in the event it ever declared bankruptcy, “the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings.” Coinbase users would become “general unsecured creditors,” meaning they have no right to claim any specific property from the exchange in proceedings. Their funds would become inaccessible.
So there are some people out there that currently believe that they are crypto millionaires that could literally end up with nothing.
At this point, the crypto industry is in the process of melting down.
But so are the financial markets.
And so is the overall economy.
The great unraveling that we have been warned about is here, and we are still only in the early chapters.
I would greatly encourage you to protect your assets while you still can.
A rush for the exits has now begun, and you don’t want to be caught holding the bag.
Chinese smart satellite tracks US aircraft carrier in real time, researchers say | South China Morning Post
Chinese girl
Most certainly looks like she’s ready for a nice evening, some talk, some great food, and a nice evening walk in the city. video 2MB
Kodachrome Stories
We love Kodachromes and we love found photos.
These snapshots taken in the mid-20th Century show us people posing for the camera, smiling in readiness for whoever’s behind the thing to press the button and capture the moment. Others are relaxed, caught off guard, their eyes blinked closed or shut in asleep.
Google begins, 1999
I feel old.
Jungbauernkalender 2020
The new Jungbauernkalender 2020 is out and can be ordered now. This time 12 young men and 12 women come from Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, Upper Franconia, Swabia and Upper Palatinate. Six girls come from Austria. The calendar is a joint project of the Bavarian Young Farmers Association and the Austrian Young Farmers Association.
The calendar pictures the different side of farmer’s life: dressing for the wedding, feeding a newborn calf, working in the fields or swimming in the nearby lake. The pictures were taken by the photographer duo “Die Abbilderei” on the farm of the Wunderl family.
Chinese girl in a nice white top
I like her. Video 4MB
How to Cook Brazilian Feijoada: Traditional Black Bean and Pork Stew [ Legendas PT]
Now this is one great meal. Please check it out.
”]Kodachrome Stories
We love Kodachromes and we love found photos.
These snapshots taken in the mid-20th Century show us people posing for the camera, smiling in readiness for whoever’s behind the thing to press the button and capture the moment. Others are relaxed, caught off guard, their eyes blinked closed or shut in asleep.
Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
I like it.
Chinese girl in two-tone jeans
I like this look. Video 2MB
Jungbauernkalender 2020
The new Jungbauernkalender 2020 is out and can be ordered now. This time 12 young men and 12 women come from Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, Upper Franconia, Swabia and Upper Palatinate. Six girls come from Austria. The calendar is a joint project of the Bavarian Young Farmers Association and the Austrian Young Farmers Association.
The calendar pictures the different side of farmer’s life: dressing for the wedding, feeding a newborn calf, working in the fields or swimming in the nearby lake. The pictures were taken by the photographer duo “Die Abbilderei” on the farm of the Wunderl family.
The Princely County of Tyrol in 1890
Nations come and nations go. And then, forgotten by all.
United States to setup more bioweapons labs in the pacific
“And the administration said it would spend $15 million to expand health surveillance programs in Southeast Asia and better detect Covid-19 and other airborne diseases in the region.”
According to Russian MoD, they have evidence US used bio warfare against what are now the republics in Ukraine in the form of fake money contaminate with a antibiotic resistant tuberculosis. Russia has another UN meeting scheduled – it may have already occurred – to present more evidence and have it recorded at the UN.
For the US to crap on now about health surveillance programs when the whole world knows that it develops and uses bio weapons…
-Peter AU1
Chinese Girl “Brickhouse” version
Yup. We’ve got ’em. video 3MB
George S. Patton’s dog mourning his master on the day of his death
Mischief Reef; some general observations
In 1995 China seized from the Philippines the atoll Mischief Reef in the Spratlys. Mischief Reef was submerged at high tide and lies just 125 nautical miles from Palawan. Today, after massive dredging, Mischief Reef is a 558-hectare artificial island, hosting China’s largest air and naval base in the Spratlys. The Chinese call Mischief Reef their Pearl Harbor in the South China Sea. The arbitral Award ruled that Mischief Reef is part of the EEZ of the Philippines. Mischief Reef image here
PRC vs. Vietnam & ROC
within the Spratly Islands:
- Vietnam occupies and/or controls six islands, seventeen reefs and three banks,
- ROC occupies and/or controls one island and one reef,
- Malaysia occupies and/or controls one artificial island and five reefs, and
- PRC occupies and/or controls eight reefs
The anti-China blather about the nine-dash line “that China uses to depict its claims in the SCS” is pure fabricated propaganda.
Here’s a live view of Marine traffic in the area . Most of it is to/from China and the South China Sea bases are needed to safeguard that traffic, especially with US warships’ frequent visits while claiming that they are there to protect a “free and open” western Pacific.
-Don Bacon
Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
Shipping: A Real-World Asset-Class… But Complex!
Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,
“I am leaving the sea. I shall walk inland with an oar on my shoulder. When someone asks what it is – there I shall bide.”
The ongoing pain in crashing financial asset markets demonstrates the need to diversify portfolios and decorrelated returns. Shipping is one such asset; returns have been boosted by scarcity as a result of the pandemic – the question is: can these returns be maintained?
Yesterday I promised I would look more closely at diversified non-financial assets. This morning I’ve going to start with Shipping… but let me caveat it’s a complex and expert-led market. While Shipping has massive investment potential – recent results from shipping funds have been stellar – I am not a shipping expert. Talk to shipping professionals before you risk anything in the sector.
Writing about subjects I don’t fully comprehend raises a credibility risk – but it’s worth highlighting Shipping and some other areas for the opportunities they present in terms of uncorrelated returns. One way to skip the looming crisis in financial assets will be to differentiate portfolios away from listed stocks and shares – and look to buy the real world; what we call alternative assets.
And, after yesterday’s miserable day in markets, these uncertain times means it’s absolutely necessary for investors to look outside their conventional comfort zones to generate returns. Wearing my day-job hat, I am Head of Alternative Assets at Shard Capital, so feel free to contact me on email (bill.blain@shardcapital.com) to ask questions – and who knows, I may have just the deal for you! (Sorry – qualified professional investors only!)
I remain convinced global stocks and shares are massively overpriced relative to the prospects for the global economy. That’s not just because of the deepening new Covid lockdown crisis in China (which threatens a catastrophic repeat of 2020-21 supply chain breakdowns), energy & food inflation, the Ukraine war, but also unravelling the consequences of 12 years of Monetary experimentation and cheap liquidity distorting markets.
Judging from the talk of capitulation trades I’m hearing, or more miserable tech results to come (Peloton this week), I’m not the only person thinking the crash, bang, wallop “moment” approaches.
For instance, there was a fantastic quote in Grants Interest Rate Observer last night about how DoorDash posted a 35% jump in revenues to $1.46 bln, but still didn’t make a profit – it now carries a $1.7 bln cumulative net loss. Grants’ quoted the former head of Dominos pizza: “In 60 years, we’ve never made a dollar delivering a pizza. We make money on the product, but we don’t make any money on the delivery. So, we’re just not sure how others do it.”
Which is why you should stay away from modern companies who don’t understand why successful companies never did it that way… DoorDash, and many others, will be remembered for inventing the Square Wheel…
Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
Another typical Chinese girl
Nice. Thin. No tattoos. Not on drugs. No purple hair. video 37MB
Some thoughts on the Chinese Navy (PLAN)
here’s an update on the PLA’s Navy as its “second Type 075 amphibious assault ship” begins its first FTX. Here’s some commentary:
“Z-8 helicopters, Type 05 amphibious armored vehicles and Type 726 air-cushioned landing craft have started training together with the Guangxi, which is also dubbed a helicopter carrier, according to the CCTV.
“As a new-type combat force in the transformation and development of the Navy, the Guangxi is tasked with exploring tactics for maritime multidimensional landing combat and enhancing core amphibious combat capabilities, the report quoted Captain Xu Ce, skipper of the Guangxi, as saying.
“China has started to build and commission the Type 075 amphibious assault ships in numbers, as the ship is technically sophisticated and proven reliable, Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military expert, told the Global Times on Thursday.
“The second Type 075 will gain combat capability very fast, as the first ship has gathered many successful experiences, Wei said….
“With more main battle vessels entering service, the PLA Navy’s capabilities to safeguard national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and development interests are growing as well, experts said, noting that China is aiming to build a blue-water navy capable of not only coastal defense but also far sea escort.” [My Emphasis]
Target: Taiwan and Convoy Protection from USN. All that was from the April 12th article. That was updated yesterday with this item:
“Two Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Type 075 amphibious assault ships recently sailed together in a dual ship exercise for the first time, a move analysts said not only showed that the recently commissioned second ship has achieved a high level of combat capability, but also provided the PLA with a powerful new instrument in amphibious landing operations, with the island of Taiwan being a key potential target.”
The article says a video was also released with the Wednesday announcement, but I wasn’t able to find it.
China’s shipyards are also building numerous commercial vessels too at a rate the Outlaw US Empire can’t even come close to matching, nor does it have the ability to rapidly ramp up production for a variety of reasons, most importantly being the lack of a properly trained workforce at all logistical levels.
– karlof1
Back to Shipping…
Shipping is an enormously complex sector. You need to understand what all the different classes of boats do, how their demand patterns work, to understand how the supply of new and old ships will affect prices, while overlaying everything with an understanding of global trade to work out likely returns. And even then, you will be swimming in an investment pool of players who will know far more than you…
Yet, the numbers are enticing. The returns from owning ships have gone skywards – charter rates have risen dramatically, ship values have trebled in some cases, and even the older ships are commanding high resale values. Funds set up to manage vessels have done exceptionally well.
Be warned: shipping can get very messy. In the past it’s been an easy way to lose money quickly – and always there will be some very clever Greeks just waiting to scoop up the bargains. Typically, it’s a boom/bust industry – every time the global economy booms there is a shipping shortage, new vessels are ordered leading a glut of capacity just as the next downturn starts.
But, shipping is absolutely critical to making the global economy function. Take a look at the crisis in supply chains…
Two of most interesting leading indicators of how the global economy is really performing are the Shanghai Export Container Freight Index and the Baltic Dry Index. The first measures the all-important freight rate and volume of Containers being sent from China around the globe, while the Baltic Dry measures the flow and price of transporting raw materials. I’ve been watching the Baltic since I was a tiny wee banker back in the 1980s.
Since May 2000 – when global trade began to anticipate Covid recovery – the Shanghai leapt from a low of 836 to peak in January this year at 5094. Now the container index has fallen to 4163 – suggesting, perhaps, that global container costs are beginning to moderate. The Baltic Dry spiked from a May 2020 Covid low of 350 to over 5500 in Oct 2021 as the global economy re-opened – it fell below 1500 earlier this year but has recovered to 2831 reflecting slowdown in China.
Both indexes correlate to inflation – which is hardly surprising as they are leading indicators of global trade. The fact both are weaker than their peaks might suggest moderating inflation and increasing recessionary conditions. Both are probably better indications of the real economy than stocks. I find it fascinating how the Baltic Dry basically flatlined through the last decade of excessively low interest rates and a raging bull equity market, reflecting the utter detachment of the financial asset universe from the reality of a very slow stuttering real economy.
When I try to understand why shipping values have risen so much since 2020… it’s complex. It’s all been about blockages as the economy reopened. The price of shipping basically depends on the availability of ships. I am told the global fleet of handy-size freighters is over 5000 vessels, but there only 5-6 actually available for charter at present!
I came across an interesting example of cost “friction” while looking at shipping. When freight costs are so high, it infers demand must be high, therefore it’s an inflationary signal – people willing to pay more to get goods.
However, the current energy/oil shock means the price of bunker fuel is pretty much at an all time high. As a result, ships are slowing down. Slow steaming requires considerably less fuel – it’s called the “cube-rule”: slow a boat by half, and it will use 1/8th the fuel it would at full speed. In the past there has been a pretty close correlation between the speed of boats and the cost of freight. When its high, ships slow.
But… things are never that simple. Slowing a boat down means it takes longer to sail from A-B. That means it costs more to hire a ship as the rental is a daily charge – and charter rates have risen between 20-35%. This is where friction comes in; shipping costs have become a compromise between rising demand, the higher cost of fuel and crew, plus the rising costs of hiring ships.
That is great news for ship owners. First it means they get paid more because their boats earn a higher rental on longer voyages. Second, its reckoned for every 1 knot (a knot is the speed of boats, its not quite the same as miles per hour) global shipping slows, about 6% of the global fleet is taken out as not available – meaning slower ships mean fewer ships for hire, further pushing up charter rates. Shipping earns more, but goods reach markets slower, thus generating inflation!
The next problem is global ports. From Shanghai, Long Beach and Harwich global ports were swamped by the post-Covid reopening. This was exacerbated by shortage of lorry drivers, stevedores, and now renewed lockdowns in China. While Western Ports are full of empty containers, there are practically no empty TEUs (Twenty Foot Equivalent Units) anywhere in Asia. The result is massive delays unloading vessels. About 20% of the Global Shipping container fleet is currently queued waiting for entry to the big ports – again creating scarcity and pushing up charter prices.
All of which is great news for the owners of smaller Handysize vessels – we’re even seeing smaller bulk carriers carrying containers to smaller ports (many have their own cranes on board). It’s not particularly efficient, but it solves the immediate transport crisis.
There are other problems – about 3% of the global merchant marine is Russian flagged, but Russian sailors make up 10% of the 2 million odd global merchant sailors. Following the pandemic its clear many sailors have retired or have given up – many were effectively trapped on board for the duration of the crisis. There is a massive shortage of crew and officers building – by 2025 we could be short over 90,000 officers, particularly in engineering – a long term problem for the whole global economy.
The question for investors is this: will the current global supply chain problems which have driven up shipping prices ease, and mean prices, and therefore returns, continue to drive results? Perhaps, but the problems will be solved in the medium term. Its not necessarily bad for shipping – in many shipping classes the ships are getting older and less efficient, and new fuel and environmental regulations mean they need replaced.
The numbers are all out there.. but this is where you need the expert advice on which shipping types are likely to prove most valuable. I’ll be very happy to assist. For instance, I am reliably informed not to buy container ships, but handysize bulkers… and maybe some tankers…
Bouncy Chinese Girl
I’m a big fan of “the bounce”. video 11MB
Kodachrome Stories
We love Kodachromes and we love found photos. Lee Shulman shares those loves, recognising what he calls “the emotional value of these slices of life”. Since 2017, Lee’s collected around 700,000 found photographs, and compiled them into his Anonymous Project.
These snapshots taken in the mid-20th Century show us people posing for the camera, smiling in readiness for whoever’s behind the thing to press the button and capture the moment. Others are relaxed, caught off guard, their eyes blinked closed or shut in asleep.
The Race To Break The Russia-China Alliance & The “Ukraine Of The Asia Pacific”
There is a window of opportunity open for the west to recognize the total failure of the unipolar model before the point of no return has passed.
It has become commonplace western media and armadas of geopolitical think tankers to paint today’s Russia-China alliance as a matter of either “momentary convenience”, or as a strained partnership between two competing authoritarian regimes with global imperial aspirations.
However, if one simply looks at the facts as they are without the filter of “experts” telling you how to interpret reality, it becomes extremely clear that those cynical geopolitical assessments painted by geopolitical opinionators are doing little more than trying to analyze life through lenses that only see dead corpses. It isn’t that such analysts aren’t necessarily concerned with the truth (although more than a few aren’t), but due to their fundamental axioms, their limited minds cannot contemplate a system organized by a non-Hobbesian parameters either past, present or future. It is for this reason that such opinionators cannot understand the nature of the Russian-China alliance nor can they see or understand the stark parallels in the asymmetrical war efforts to destroy either Eurasian power.
Due to this intellectual blindness, even among many intelligent experts within the alternative media community, I will take this opportunity to briefly assess some of the key elements of the parallel features of both operations that have been deployed to destroy both Russia and China. We will begin by looking at the color revolutionary tactics, followed by ‘Gladio stay behinds’, military encirclement, biowarfare and finally the use of ‘fifth columns’.
Color Revolutionary Tactics
Over the past decades, both Russia and China have contended with obsessive efforts to carve up and destabilize their governments utilizing “democracy promoting/anti corruption” organizations tied to western intel have fortunately failed to Balkanize them as seen in the tragic case of Yugoslavia.
The late geopolitical guru Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote passionately of his vision of a carved-up Russia in his 1997 Grand Chessboard saying: “A loosely confederated Russia- composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic- would find it easier to cultivate closer economic regulations with Europe, with the new states of Central Asia and with East Asia, which would thereby accelerate Russia’s own development.”
Over the years, western funded movements in China have arisen calling openly for breaking up China into no less than five ethno-nationalist micro-states called ‘East Turkestan, The Free State of Tibet, Canton and Manchuria.’
Purged multibillionaire deep state operative Guo Wengui (aka: Miles Guo), now operating from New York, has gone so far as to establish an international insurrectionary organization called ‘The New Federal State of China’ with a shiny new flag, constitution and cheesy anthem for the post-CCP China which will undoubtedly happen any day within Guo’s wildest imagination.
The leaders of both nations have clearly identified “color revolutionary” tactics as an active form of asymmetrical warfare leading both states to ban a wide spectrum of western-funded NGOs (or if permitted to exist within their territories to be forced to register as ‘foreign agents’). While the color revolution financing king George Soros was banned from China back in 1989, Russia took longer to gain the power and confidence to ban the economic hitman’s Open Society operations which finally occurred in 2015.
Gladio-type “stay-behinds” on their borders.
The asymmetrical warfare tool basket doesn’t stop at color revolutionary tactics, but relies upon networks of provocateurs and extremists who often find their roots in the non-punishment of virulent war criminals in the wake of WW2.
Those second and third generation fascist stay-behinds who were incorporated into western intelligence under the helm of NATO after WW2 remains one of the most uncomfortable and dangerous secrets of the modern age.
Weaponized ideological groups carefully groomed by Anglo-American intelligence since WWII and who continued to glorify Nazi-collaborators as “great heroes” played a major role both during the Cold War, and also today’s Banderite-filled age with neo-Nazi battalions driven obsessively to carry out jihad against Russia as their spiritual forefathers had done during WW2.
This problem is not isolated to Eastern Europe, but persists in China’s own back yard where the American military colony of Japan still maintains a strong tradition of treating WWII fascist war criminals as heroes (much to China’s chagrin).
One of the largest parties occupying 30% of the Japanese parliamentary seats (and headed by former PM Shinzo Abe) is the Nippon Kaigi party which claims openly that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia” during WW2.
Despite many anti-fascist impulses in Japan seeking to maintain peaceful coexistence with their Eurasian neighbors, the Nippon Kaigi goes so far as to deny that Japan committed any atrocities to the Chinese during WW2 while trying to maintain the thesis that Japan was on the side of justice by working with Hitler. Keep in mind that this is also the same colony (now hosting over 50,000 US troops) which saw former PM Shinzo Abe call publicly for acquiring US-owned nuclear weapons to defend against China one week after Zelensky made that same call on behalf of Ukraine in Munich on February 19th.
Chinese girl showing her side profile.
I like her. But the background is bland. video 1MB
Full Spectrum Dominance: Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific
Like Russia, who has watched “full spectrum dominance” wrap around her perimeter over the course of 20+ years, China has also been looking at ongoing efforts to create a “NATO of the Pacific” termed “the Quad” in her backyard.
This toxic idea has been championed by NATO-connected think tanks like the Atlantic Council and CFR for years and grows directly out of Obama’s 2012 ‘Asia Pivot’ strategy which saw a broad extension of missile systems, trident-bearing submarines, provocative “freedom of navigation” exercises, military bases and efforts to impose US-controlled governments hostile to China in the Pacific region.
The ABM-aspect of this program (which experts agree can be easily converted from “defensive” into “offensive”) is reflected in the THAAD missile system already stationed in South Korea which currently hosts over 28,000 US troops. Nominally justifying its existence to stop the “North Korean threat”, the reality is that this system has always been aimed at China.
Describing the $762 billion National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 which received nearly total bipartisan support, analyst Michael Klare observed:
“The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis. For China’s leaders, who surely can’t tolerate being encircled in such a fashion, it’s an open invitation to… well, there’s no point in not being blunt… fight their way out of confinement.”
Taiwan as Ukraine of the Pacific
Obviously within this entire mess, Taiwan (which has been an Anglo-American plaything since 1949) is currently acting like the “Ukraine of the Pacific” with many leading agents operating throughout the government calling openly for US military defense of China’s autonomous province from the “evil commie” mainlanders.
Biden himself has pledged that Taiwan can “count on America’s support” were an invasion to break out at any time. These supportive words were backed up with a $750 million deal to provide a Howitzer military system to Taiwan in August 2021, a $100 million deal to supply and upgrade Taiwan’s patriot missile systems on February 8, 2022 and another $95 million missile deal on April 6, 2022. After the second of these three deals, the Taiwanese foreign ministry sounded like it was trying to out-Zelensky Zelensky saying:
“In the face of China’s continued military expansion and provocative actions, our country will maintain its national security with a solid defence, and continue to deepen the close security partnership between Taiwan and the United States.”
China’s concerns over the vast expansion of US efforts to turn Taiwan into a Pacific Ukraine (including a doubling of military officials in the US embassy compound in the past year) are very real.
Biowarfare in the 21st Century
Then there is the serious issue of the Pentagon’s bioweapons infrastructure that has demonstrated an ethnic-targeting feature as outlined in the September 2000 PNAC manifesto “Rebuilding Americas Defenses”. In this bone-chilling neocon manifesto, its authors stated that in the 21st century “combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.
Today over 320 Pentagon-run biolabs are scattered strategically around the world with a very active program titled “Jupitr” and “Centaur” located in in South Korea. This later program has caused grave concern to both the Chinese and many Koreans since Obama launched inaugurated the program in 2010 with an executive order that stated “a robust and productive scientific enterprise that utilizes biological select agents and toxins is essential to national security.”
This was the same team that brought us the Obama-Lugar partnership that established a vast bio-laboratory infrastructure in Georgia while Obama was still just another Soros-controlled Senator with Presidential ambitions.
Work on some of the deadliest toxins in the world has been conducted within the US run biolabs which include work on botulinum, ricin, staphylococcal, anthrax, plague and more. In 2015 the US military was caught illegally shipping samples of live anthrax via FedEx to the US laboratory at the Oran Air base 70 km south of Seoul resulting in civilian protests across the nation although no evidence of any change in policy by the Americans.
Japan’s sordid past is again brought back into the story, as Finian Cunningham’s recent Strategic Culture Foundation study on the origins of US bioweapons complex zeroed in on the Military Industrial Complex’s absorption of the genocidal “Unit 731” under the control of Shiro Ishii. Cunningham wrote:
“Ishii’s Unit 731 is estimated to have caused up to 500,000 deaths during the war from the use of biological warfare by dropping pathogens from airplanes on Chinese cities in Hunan and Zhejiang provinces. The unit also carried out diabolic forced experiments on Chinese and Russian prisoners of war to study the epidemiology of diseases and vaccines. Inmates were infected with pathogens and subjected to horrible agonizing deaths… Shiro Ishii and his criminal network were never brought to trial following the war despite earnest Soviet requests. Instead, the Americans who occupied mainland Japan granted him and his team of doctors immunity from prosecution in exchange for exclusive access to the biological and chemical warfare experiments. The Pentagon assigned its experts from Fort Detrick, Maryland, to tap the Japanese trove of data.”
This list would not be complete without the last consideration…
Fifth Columnists in Russia and China
Leaders within both nations have been contending for years with World Economic Forum fifth columnists like Anatoly Chubais in Russia and WEF Trustee Jack Ma (and more than a few other Shanghai Clique connected technocrats and billionaires) both inside and outside of China. Some observations on those foreign influences still exerting relevant influence within China via Shanghai as a hotbed for international finance was Emanuel Pastreich who wrote:
“Shanghai is riddled with global financial interests, with the head offices (or certainly the major branch) for all major multinational investment banks and multinational corporations located there. Their impact on the Chinese economy remains immense. Shanghai has a history of over a hundred years as a center for global capital with a parasitic relationship to the rest of the nation. It was Shanghai, after all, that offered extraterritoriality to citizens from imperial powers until the 1940s.”
Luckily, since the ousting of Soros, many of the worst elements of China’s deep state have been incrementally de-weeded in bursts starting in 1989, then 1997, and the largest robust purge begun in 2012 and continuing to this day.
Some of the biggest operatives purged by Xi’s crackdown on corruption include Ma Jian (former Deputy Director of China’s National Security Bureau), Zhang Yue (former legal affairs secretary of Hebei), Bo Zilai (former Communist Party Secretary of Chonqing), Xu Caihou (Vice Chair of China’s Military Commission), and billionaire Pony Ma (to name but a few).
There has been an obvious clash between these traitorous forces and genuine patriots in both nations committed to their peoples’ survival in opposition to the religious like commitment to depopulation, cultural mediocrity and global enslavement.
Beyond Simply Survival
Russia and China’s commitment to survival and cooperation goes far beyond utilitarian concerns as outlined by their February 4th joint statement for Cooperation Entering a New Era which called for the further integration of the EAEU and BRI, military intelligence harmonization under the growing SCO and broader international integration of the multipolar system.
Among its many important points, the statement read:
“The sides are seeking to advance their work to link the development plans for the Eurasian Economic Union [EAEU] and the Belt and Road Initiative with a view to intensifying practical cooperation between the EAEU and China in various areas and promoting greater interconnectedness between the Asia Pacific and Eurasian regions. The sides reaffirm their focus on building the Greater Eurasian Partnership in parallel and in coordination with the Belt and Road construction to foster the development of regional associations as well as bilateral and multilateral integration processes for the benefit of the peoples on the Eurasian continent.”
There is still a window of opportunity open for the west to wake up and recognize the total failure of the unipolar model of imperial governance before the point of no return has passed. Whether or not the moral fitness to conduct this exercise in humility still exists remains to be seen.
Chinese Girl with a tattoo!
It is a truly rare thing. Video 4MB
Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
Australian thoughts
ASEAN is run by oligarchs, but of late they seem more inclined to not choose sides. China of course is just as able to line their pockets as the US. More likely they’ll take kick backs from both sides and stay uncommitted.
The US now has Australia as its prime puppet, the current fool of a PM gave up decades of avoiding a choice, he dumped the profitable China trade in exchange for spending billions instead on useless US weapons. Reading online comments seems Australians have convinced themselves they are a military power and China and Russia need to be regime changed. Odd,never used to be like that, seems the corrupt media has shaped opinion.
This won’t end well for Australia, glad I left, not the great country it used to be. All its income derives from commodities, the WEF globalists have infected it with the climate change economic suicide as well. 100% locked into the two globalist cons of climate chane and the rules based order. Idiots.
-Organic
How to make Jamaican RICE and PEAS!
This is a MUST TRY!
Lighting The Gas Under European Feet: How Politicians & Journalists Get Energy So Wrong
Authored by Joakim Book via The Mises Institute,
“We live in a time where few understand how things get made. It is fine to not know where stuff comes from, but it isn’t fine to not know where stuff comes from while dictating to the rest of us how the economy should be run." - Doomberg
Eighty-five percent of human energy usage comes from burning things. Either plants or trees grown in a geologically recent past or plants or trees (and decomposed animals) from ancient times. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.—all the things that occupy a climate-conscious citizen, activist, or politician’s dreams—are frizzles around the edges.
Human civilization is powered by combustion; human beings are a fossil fuel–burning civilization. You can take away the civilization part, which seems to be the end goal for some environmentalists, but bar that, you can’t take away the fossil fuel part.
If we listened only to our energy overlords’ preaching, we would get a very different impression of what the world is like. Wind turbines powering all those electrified vehicles on our roads, solar panels and batteries of immense capacities light and heat our homes. Dirty oil and polluting coal are out; green, clean, and smart machines on the way in.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Renewables don’t power our societies, they’re not about to any time soon, and the fact that they’re not isn’t a policy choice—or “greedy capitalism” preventing this utopian (dystopian) vision.
First, some housekeeping: Energy is not the same as electricity. Electricity is a secondary energy source, derived from primary energy sources through a conversion process—combustion or turbines spinning. The 85 percent figure above is for energy use. The bombastic figures in the press about the massive growth and expanse of renewables are for electricity, which is only a subset of all the world’s energy use (some 20 percent). Oil, coal, and gas for transport, heating, fertilizers, and construction dwarf the symbolic solar panels governments paid people to place on their roof.
Solar panels and wind turbines produce a minor part of the electricity needs, but do nothing to address the larger energy needs. In contrast, fossil fuels are energy-dense, reliable, on-demand sources of either energy or electricity, and we have excelled both at storing and transporting them.
Dreams of a green revolution, per the energy theorist Vaclav Smil, were always mirages:
We are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.
Instead, suddenly facing an adversary rich in raw materials and fossil fuels, the West’s talking heads doubled down on their green dreams. From behind comfortable newspaper desks, heated and electrified by natural gas, it’s remarkably easy to say things like: “The new reality is that we have to go all the way to universal electrification even faster, powered by 100% renewable energy with green hydrogen filling the gaps” (Andreas Kluth, at Bloomberg).
For the New Yorker, John Cassidy recently told us that we must “prevent future Putins from trying to hold the world to energy ransom—at least one worthy outcome of the tragedy that is Ukraine.”
In a powerful speech in the middle of the Russia flurry in March, Isabel Schnabel of the Executive Board at the European Central Bank rallied for renewable power:
Every solar panel installed, every hydropower plant built and every wind turbine added to the grid are taking us a step closer to energy independence and a greener economy…. Our dependence on fossil energy sources is not only considered a peril to our planet, it is also increasingly seen as a threat to national security and our values of liberty, freedom and democracy.
Luckily, Schnabel is in control of nothing less than the Eurozone’s printing press. One-upped by a fellow German, the reality-challenged finance minister Christian Lindner taught us that renewable electricity is “the energy of freedom.”
What he failed to understand is that renewable electricity generation in Germany requires boatloads and pipe loads of Russian gas, Russian oil, and Russian commodities: the steel and cement to construct their precious wind towers are made from coal, not even counting the extreme heat needed to shape the steel and iron that makes up its body.
A single wind turbine uses thousands of kilograms of nickel in its shaft and gear, plus some rare earth minerals from some pretty unclean sources. The gigantic structures, hundreds of meters tall and much too clunky to easily transport, are erected and moved there by machines that swallow diesel by the gallon.
Fossil fuels are machine food, as Alex Epstein is fond of saying, and nothing drinks petrol like the machines that power a thirsty wind energy industry. When renewable sources are added to the electricity grid in large quantities, the cost of electricity goes up, not down, because their fickle reliance on weather requires them to be backstopped by thermal plants that run on coal or natural gas. The more renewables you add, the more natural gas you need.
Styles of Teenagers in the 1950s
Chinese girl fresh and clean
I just love the look. video 3MB
Actually, Fossil Fuels Aren’t Optional
The conclusion from much political and media messaging on climate is the same: burning fossil fuels for energy is a choice, a bad one, and we must choose differently. The moral case against Russia is just a cherry on top.
“Would you rather rely on Mr. Putin’s Russia?” The Economist asked in a recent cover story on energy security. The very same Russia that Bloomberg News described as: “a commodities powerhouse, producing and exporting huge amounts of materials the world uses to build cars, transport people and goods, make bread and keep the lights on.” But the writers at The Economist insist: “As the world weans itself off dirty fuels, it must switch to cleaner energy sources.”
When we listen to the political overlords in Brussels or Berlin, or the intellectual ones in think tanks, political parties, or at influential media outlets, we get the impression that relying on “Mr. Putin’s Russia” can be done away with—as optional and care-free as picking a different ice cream flavor.
To hammer home the “renewable revolutions are impossible” point, let’s use the poster child for renewables, Germany. Here is its energy use over the last half century:
Let me know if you can spot Germany’s revolutionary Energiewende in the early 2010s. With a microscope, I can detect a little bit of wind crowding out some nuclear—while gas keeps growing and coal continues its fifty-five-year decline. What sort of fairytale must one believe to think that the purple and yellow shares—almost invisible at the top—could in any way supplant the others, preferably before next winter when Putin’s withholding of gas would once again be disastrous for Europeans.
A prominent German think tank, Agora Energiewende, also thinks it’s perfectly possible. Its projections depend, not just on building and installing more wind energy plants than ever before, but raising that rate of construction by about one-third every year for years on end. To describe those plans as “optimistic” somehow doesn’t cut it:
The International Energy Agency (IEA), staffed with the same sort of reality-resistant dreamers, produced this wonderful graph that plans for the energy production in a net-zero future (NZE):
At great expense and inconvenience, the world can indeed increase its use of solar and wind—but remember: they destabilize grids and constitute a vanishingly small portion of world energy needs. To replace what we need, and accommodate growth for the billions globally who scrape by on a minimum of energy, the IEA says we must add solar and wind capacity at a vertiginous rate, never before achieved, at way faster than their own forecasts.
As Alex Epstein writes in the preface to his future book Fossil Future: a net-zero policy, actually implemented “would certainly be the most significant act of mass murder since the killings of one hundred million people by communist regimes in the twentieth century—and it would likely be far greater.”
If you believe, as so many politicians, activists, and deluded journalists do, that this is a mere policy decision, you are sadly mistaken. The impossibility of renewables is a technical and physical problem—not an economic, financial, moral, or political problem.
Jungbauernkalender 2020
The new Jungbauernkalender 2020 is out and can be ordered now. This time 12 young men and 12 women come from Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, Upper Franconia, Swabia and Upper Palatinate. Six girls come from Austria. The calendar is a joint project of the Bavarian Young Farmers Association and the Austrian Young Farmers Association.
The calendar pictures the different side of farmer’s life: dressing for the wedding, feeding a newborn calf, working in the fields or swimming in the nearby lake. The pictures were taken by the photographer duo “Die Abbilderei” on the farm of the Wunderl family.
Gaslighting Europeans
According to mental health site VeryWellMind, gaslighting is “a form of manipulation that often occurs in abusive relationships. It is a covert type of emotional abuse where the bully or abuser misleads the target, creating a false narrative and making them question their judgments and reality. Ultimately, the victim of gaslighting starts to feel unsure about their perceptions of the world and even wonder if they are losing their sanity.”
Consider the following combination of expert-led gaslighting:
- The entire 2010s and beyond, politicians pooh-poohed nuclear: in words (rallying cries and moral suasion) and actions (strict regulations), they prevented any expansion and shut down capacity.
- European environmental regulation and climate activists have stopped as much oil and gas extraction as they could. Most countries have banned or otherwise prevented “fracking,” the natural gas extraction method that turned America into an energy exporter.
- For the last decade and more, climate warriors inside and outside governments have hauled boatloads of cash onto “green” energies—everything from wind and solar to experimental forms of tidal energy.
- Green electricity sources, because of the unpredictable load that makes them unsuitable for modern civilization, have expanded in consort with natural gas because the dirty secret of the former is that they require rapidly available backup power—for which the latter is the convenient choice.
- Because all things “carbon” are considered bad, politicians, journalists, and the Greta Thunbergs of the world have done everything in their power to sway more people into putting solar panels on their roofs and electric vehicles in their garages. That strains an already fragile grid by adding more demand and another variable supply: crucially, it requires lots more nickel, palladium, and silver—with Russia among the world’s largest supplier for those key commodities.
One would suppose that, on the back of the war in Ukraine, the strict Western sanctions on Russia, and energy prices going through the roof, the green-washed politicians and policymakers who rule our lives would offer excuses. Now that the Russian invasion had those very same policymakers cutting commercial ties to that despicable empire-building strongman, and energy prices and access suddenly rose to the forefront of everyone’s mind, we’d expect a bit of humility. Apologies are in order:
Fellow Europeans, against market prices, physics, and sanity, we pushed you into worse forms of electricity generation and endangered our energy security. Instead of doing what we should have done, we relied more and more on the commodities exported from countries like Russia. For making Europeans more beholden to Putin, we apologize.
Instead, we got gaslighting on a remarkable scale.
“Weaning off” Silly
The world isn’t weaning itself off fossil fuels—it can’t, and it shouldn’t. More importantly, “cleaner energy” aren’t options on a shopping menu, available as inconsequential choices the way consumers may choose Doritos over Pringles or a new toothpaste.
It’s becoming increasingly clear, to more and more people, that withdrawing from fossil fuels “for environmental reasons” is not a choice. A society and a world of 8 billion people more advanced than that powered by a horse and buggy, cannot do without the explosive power of fossil fuels.
Watch: US Intel Chief Acts Dumbfounded When Senator Warns Of “Poking The Bear” In Ukraine
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) warned Tuesday that the US is risking war with Russia by “poking the bear” in Ukraine. Tuberville made the comments during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier.
Tuberville told Haines and Berrier the US is risking escalating the war by bragging about intelligence sharing with Ukraine. In recent weeks, US officials claimed to the media that US intelligence has helped Ukrainian forces shoot down a plane carrying Russian troops, kill Russian generals, and sink a Russian warship.
“You know, we’re kind of poking the bear here… We’re bragging about it. Even President Biden said today, ‘Wait a minute. We got to cut back on this,’” Tuberville said. Biden reportedly told senior US officials that the leaks to the media on intelligence-sharing must stop.
Tuberville warned the US is also risking provoking Moscow by sending high-level officials to Kyiv. “We do not want to take that step forward to where we get a lot of our men and women involved in this. It looks like to me that we’re taking way too many chances of sending people over there for a photo op,” he said.
The senator said he favored supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia but warned there was no turning back if things escalated into a direct conflict between Washington and Moscow. “There’s a point of no return here if we cross that line,” he said.
While the US has sent billions in arms to Ukraine, restarted training Ukrainian troops, and expanded intelligence sharing, US officials still deny the idea that Washington is engaged in a proxy war against Moscow. When pressed by Tuberville, Haines said that Russia believes it’s fighting a war against both Ukraine and the West.
“Russia has historically believed that they are in a conflict, in effect, with NATO and the United States on a variety of issues,” Haines said. When asked directly if Russia believes it’s fighting the US, Haines said, “In a sense, their perception.”
During the hearing, Berrier and Haines described the war in Ukraine as a “stalemate” and said Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing for a long-term conflict. Haines said over the next few months, the war could “see us moving along a more unpredictable and potentially escalatory trajectory.”
Ropa Vieja (Cuban Braised Beef) – Food Wishes
Now, don’t you all want to try making this? If you are the kind of person who just ignores the videos, please don’t for this one. Check it out. I hope that you are inspired to go forth and start cooking. OMG! what a darn meal!
The Princely County of Tyrol in 1890
Nations come and nations go. And then, forgotten by all.
Is this the fate of the United States? I wonder…
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The Highlight of this article
This is BY FAR the most important point being made in today’s installment.
The Chinese have been developing many, many technologies, as after all, they lead in AI, and numerous other technologies. All of which have military applications. And while China is a very peaceful nation, they realize that there are very evil, psychopathic, ignorant, dug-addled, “leaders” in the West that desire their destruction, and they have been developing technologies to counter them, and their nefarious activities.
This is one (of many) such technologies.
It’s in mass, mass production. Right now. No shit.
It’s a swarm of small drones that work together and locate, track, surround and (if desired) kill a person. Of course, the Chinese are being very coy about how this technology will be used, saying that it has many civilian applications, but (you know) the United States Military is in hysterics over this.
Imagine each tiny drone held a grenade or a “matchbox” capable of firing bullets…
You just cannot run away from these swarms. If China wants to fuck with China, I can well imagine swarms of these little micro-Terminator- T1000’s swarming up and down Washington DC, on hunt and destroy missions against neocons, American “leadership”, and other targets, all worthy of China’s wrath…
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