Saturday, April 15, 2023

Siding With Truth

 Looking Closer,


​  ​Surplus Energy Economics, Economic Reality, Up Close and Nasty
  Where I take issue with the IMF is over the title of the latest WEO, A Rocky Recovery. For all of its undoubted expertise, the organisation sticks rigidly to an orthodoxy which insists that the economy can be explained and managed by reference to money alone. On this line of thinking, a “recovery” simply has to happen, the only matters at issue being how long it will take, and which fiscal and monetary policies are required to bring it about.
  Needless to say, the Surplus Energy Economics view is that, far from being inevitable, a meaningful (as opposed to a purely cosmetic) “recovery” cannot happen, because the economy has reached the point at which it inflects from expansion into contraction...
..Basically, we’re on the horns of a dilemma. If we tighten monetary policy to tame inflation, we price capital at levels which household and business borrowers can’t afford. If, on the other hand, we keep rates below inflation, two things can happen – inflation might accelerate, and the “everything bubble” in asset prices might become even more dangerous than it already is.
  With the SEEDS model now into its latest iteration, it’s tempting to go into technicalities, but this is something that the urgency of the current situation does not allow. What SEEDS is saying is that global aggregate material prosperity is going into decline, having already turned down at the per capita level back in 2019.
  Here’s how this works – it is, of course, a function of the supply and cost of energy, because literally nothing that has any economic value at all can be made available without the use of energy.
  Whilst global supplies of primary energy might not decline quite yet, they are most unlikely to increase, even at a rate equivalent to the continuing (though decelerating) rate of growth in population numbers. The probability is that the world’s average person is going to have to get by with less energy than the amounts to which he or she has become accustomed in the past...
..If energy supply contracts, or even ceases to grow, so does material economic output.
  The really big problem, though, isn’t the volumetric supply of energy, but its cost. The Energy Cost of Energy – that proportion of accessed energy which is consumed in the access process – has been rising relentlessly, climbing from 2% in 1980, and 6% in 2010, to over 10% now. This, of course, has largely reflected depletion effects in the supply of oil, natural gas and coal...
..If economic output stagnates or declines, whilst ECoEs continue to rise, prosperity decreases...
..There are two huge complicating factors.
  The first of these is that necessities, being energy-intensive, are set to carry on increasing in price, just as top-line prosperity declines. This is the process of affordability compression so often highlighted here.
  The second complicating factor is that we’ve constructed a financial system absolutely predicated on the assumption that the underlying economy will never stop expanding...
..Discretionary (non-essential) consumption will contract, squeezed between declining prosperity and the rising cost of necessities...
..Societies are going to have to make a choice – an unpopular one, even at the best of times – between redistributing incomes, or tolerating ever-worsening economic hardship and social discontent.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/04/12/253-how-has-it-come-to-this/

​  In 1996 Vladimiir Putin wrote a dissertation on the subject of “Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region under Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations” using his own St. Petersburg and Leningrad region as a case study. This earned him the equivalent of a PhD in Economics.

  Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai (just back from Russia) delve into Vladimir Putin's economic plans for Russia, which began by Putin getting burned on a deal to feed Russians through one of the winters of the early 1990s. The privatized businesses stiffed the Russian people by not delivering the food, after taking the natural gas. After this, he studied economics, so as to avoid being robbed again while serving Russia. Audio and transcript.
Desai: "President Xi went to Russia, and President Macron went to China, and so many things are going on. So we’ll weave all of that into a broader discussion about my impressions from Russia.
  So what Michael and I thought we’d do is focus on two particular points that we thought were interesting that I picked up when I was in Russia is that during the whirlwind of conferences that I was at, at which some very prominent Russians spoke, the one thing that I heard that was really interesting is a decisive statement coming from some of the most influential speakers, that essentially Russia is moving away from the West and will never return.
  And the second idea, which is also very fascinating, is that increasingly the Russians are now thinking of themselves as part of a world majority."

​  Gilbert Doctorow (thanks Christine) is fluent in Russian, and watches Russian TV news for societal context. He points out that the  military alliance between Russia and China is being forged by the threat of US/NATO/​AUKUS/Japan/S.Korea. The new Chinese Defense Minister will be visiting Russia Sunday for a few days to review Russian insights from 14 months of war against NATO trained and equipped forces. They will presumably plan future coordination in the Pacific.

  The US plans for a war against China in the Taiwan Straits have been fairly open since 2013, and have been projected for 2025 snce then, which will be "China's fault". The scuttlebut since last summer has been that the US military has its strategic chip-fabrication assembly lines out of Taiwan already, and has made complete preparations for rapid on-site demolition of Taiwanese semiconductor factories on-command. That action is fully staged in case Chinese forces invade.
  About 80% of the new semiconductor-chip design in the world reportedly happens in the Austin area these days. Samsung is constructing a $25 billion chip fabrication factory in Taylor, close to Austin, which will be 5 large factories in one area, to fabricate the most advanced and difficult chips, for all purposes.

  Taiwanese chip-manufacturing is the most advanced in the world. All countries depend on it. The common wisdom is that it is not readily transferable, nor could it be quickly reproduced anywhere else, because so many supporting businesses and so much expertise have settled there over time, with well established cooperative networks and personal working relationships. This is the goose that lays the golden eggs. It can be left alone or killed. Can Austin replicate it?

  There is a deep-state schism between power elite factions in Washington:
​  ​The intelligence official speaking to Hersh criticized President Biden’s two main foreign policy advisors, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
​  ​“They have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” the official said. The official said there was a “total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community.”
​  ​The report said the rift started in the fall when the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines were blown up. According to Hersh’s earlier reporting, President Biden ordered the operation that took out the pipelines. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official said.
​  ​The official said there is “no strategy for ending the war” within the Biden administration and offered more scathing criticism of Blinken and Sullivan.
​  ​“Burns is not the problem,” the official said. “The problem is Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden who is telling America that we’re going to fight as long as it takes.”
​  ​Hersh’s story comes after a series of leaked top-secret documents from the Pentagon and other government agencies surfaced online. Some of the documents show US war planning for Ukraine and reveal the US doubts Kyiv’s ability to launch a successful counter-offensive, offering a starkly different view of Ukraine’s abilities than what Biden officials have been saying publicly.

  Denninger: All the denials, all the arm-waving, that’s all over now. This is now our war, and we, the people are the ones who decide. Whatever you think about Putin or Russia generally, or for that matter Ukraine, we are now in that war, the opponent has nuclear weapons, and we, right here in America, are now subject to whatever Russia decides to do with regards to a combating nation in said war, including to us as the civilian population. Do not kid yourself as to what this means. Choosing to do nothing is consent.

  Moon of Alabama (German)
​  My hunch:​ ​The 'leaks' come from some high position in the 'intelligence community', likely the CIA or DNI. 
The young airman who was arrested yesterday was somehow used to publish them. 
The original leak source then contacted the British partner services to launch the 'hunt'. 
Their subsidiary Bellingcat was used to publish the results.
​  ​The purpose of the leaks was two fold:
​  ​With the Ukraine slides published the Biden administration, which has no idea how to continue or shut down the war in Ukraine it had initiated, would have to admit that the war there is lost and that Ukraine must surrender.
The second aim is to push for more surveillance, i.e. more jobs for the 'intelligence community'.​  
[RESTRICT Act, for instance.]
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/04/-leaks-pinned-on-russia-and-other-issues-with-them.html#more

Poll: Almost Two Thirds Of Democrats Want To See Challengers Run Against Biden​  ​Less than half of all voters want to see a second Biden term

​COVID infection manipulates human genetic expression​, which a few viruses do. This is not rewriting the genome, but adjusting what is read and transcribed.
SARS-CoV-2 restructures host chromatin architecture

​Sasha Latypova on lot-to-lot toxicity differences in mRNA "vaccine" batches. The 3 batch groupings are clearly and consistently different.
Danish lot-to-lot variability data published as a letter in European Journal of Clinical Investigations

​  ​IgG4 Antibodies Induced by mRNA Vaccines Generate Immune Tolerance to SARS-CoV-2’spike Protein by Suppressing the Immune System
​  ​Altogether, evidence suggests that the reported increase in the IgG4 levels detected after repeated vaccination with the mRNA vaccines is not a protective mechanism; rather, it may be a part of the immune tolerance mechanism to the spike protein that could promote unopposed SARS-CoV2 infection and replication by suppressing natural antiviral responses. IgG4-induced suppression of the immune system due to repeated vaccination can also cause autoimmune diseases, promotes cancer growth, and autoimmune myocarditis in susceptible individuals.

  ​German law is different from US law, which has been circumvented by special military contracts for "bioweapon countermeasure prototypes". Thanks Christine
​​German Vaccine Maker BioNtech Faces Series of Lawsuits for Alleged COVID-19 Vaccine Harms

​  ​The Navajo Nation’s rights to enough water for a healthy permanent homeland, rights that might include water from the Colorado River that borders the northwest corner of its reservation in Arizona, are the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case being heard and decided this year. To the federal government, state governments, irrigation districts and water districts involved with the river, the reservation is a 27,325-square-mile elephant that they aren’t inviting in for a drink. The federal government, with authority over both the tribe and the river, has never permitted the Navajo Nation to engage in negotiations for water from the river. After 23 years of drought, the Navajo water situation is grim. Thirty to 40 percent of homes on the reservation lack running water and many drive for hours every week to far off uncontaminated wells for water for themselves and their livestock...
..​The elephant on the banks of the Colorado River isn’t Indian-reservation rights to water per se. Ten other tribes on or near the river have had their rights assessed by the federal government for a total amount of more than 20% of the estimated river flow. And Navajos on the eastern side of the reservation have reached an agreement with Gallup NM on the use of San Juan River water.  But the Navajos’ petition for a government assessment of its water needs for the western half of the reservation has been working its way through federal courts to the Supreme Court for 20 years...
​..​When we look at the arguments of the federal government and the state of Arizona, the theme that stands out is the government’s bad faith, more politely known as “lack of political will.”  Bad faith is as pervasive in the government’s treatment of the Navajo Nation as the uranium from abandoned mines has become for the reservation’s groundwater. This bad faith has sought justification in a plethora of irrelevant issues, each argued to death, all to conceal the injustice being done...
​  ​The government claims the Navajo Nation has no standing to sue the federal government because the government’s trust relationship with the Nation doesn’t extend to water rights or – perish the thought! – funds for water development.  In other words, the treaty promising the Navajo a permanent home on their reservation in 1868 doesn’t include water rights because a trustee can promise Indians a permanent home without promising enough water to survive on it. Therefore, there really is no elephant.​  
Thanks Christine.

​This 7 minutes is not a "topic" within the "Overton Window" of approved public discourse.​ It explains a 12,000 year space-weather cycle of terrestrial polar shifts.
Earth Turns Over When The Crust Unlocks

​Enjoying Life's Necessities (took this picture of Jenny with our first green bean harvest)​  

3 comments:

  1. How do you get this many green beans so early, John?? I planted my first bunch about 4 weeks ago. They are only 3 inches high.

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    1. I took a chance and planted beans in February, second half of the month, and it has been warm and rainy since then. I've left the drip system off much of that time.
      Thanks for the compliment. I do work to keep the garden in production.

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  2. P.S. I live in southern South Carolina, by the way. You guys are looking good. Love your farmstead.

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