Thursday, November 7, 2019

Life Support Systems

Exotherms,

Economy must be fueled by energy sources. Natural gas runs manufacturing, electrical generation and some synthetic chemistry. It is critical. Europe goes nowhere without natural gas. Liquified gas from the US costs way too much.
​ ​Simply put, Europe’s addiction to Russian gas remains a fact of life and with the continent’s own gas production on the decline, Europe needs to import much bigger volumes of gas and lots of it is going to come from Russia.
​ ​The amazing part has been the dogged resistance by Germany to the US pressure tactic to abandon Nord Stream 2. The US even threatened to sanction German companies; US Congress passed resolutions calling for an end to construction of the pipeline. Germany’s manufacturing economy is dependent on imports for 98% of its oil and 92% of its gas supply, and cheap gas is the lifeblood of its export-based economy.


​Eurasian integration threatens American power dominance. 
We don't really need to fight and destroy everything, do we?
  Russia’s comparative advantage derives from its geographical expanse by developing an East-West corridor connecting Northeast Asia with Europe, and a North-South Corridor that links India, Iran and Russia. Moscow sees itself as a stabilising factor in Eurasia by bringing together the entire continent with economic connectivity to ensure that it becomes multipolar and no one state or region can dominate....
 Halford Mackinder[1] said we don’t think of Asia and Europe as a single continent because sailors couldn’t voyage around it. Today the Northeast Passage, NEP, along Russia’s northern coast, links the Pacific and Atlantic coasts while a network of pipelines and air, rail, road and fiber routes are knitting Mackinder’s World Island into ‘Eurasia’ despite Kissinger’s warning, “Domination by a single power of either of Eurasia’s two principal spheres–Europe or Asia–remains a good definition of strategic danger for America. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily.”


​The Argument for a Neo-Nixonian Foreign Policy, to limit China's rise to global dominance, is presented here. 
This article presumes that the nature of "national interests" will not be redefined in a more cooperative way. 
I believe it must be, for life on Earth to persist recognizably.​
​ ​Japan is a critical element of the “Iron Quadrilateral.” Under no circumstances can it be hung out to dry. Nor can it be merely assumed that the Japanese can then take care of themselves if the U.S. pulls out of its long-term relations. This is an area where Trump, or his successor, needs to consider our alliance structure in East Asia with greater care.
​ ​Japan, along with India and Russia, will form part of a critical potential counterbalance to China over the next few decades. The U.S. should consummate the “Asian Pivot,” started under Obama but under-resourced. It should also shift the lion’s share of our defense investment in Europe towards East Asia. In a nutshell, if Trump wants savings from reducing our overseas posture, it should come from NATO and Europe, not East Asia.
​ ​President Trump, or his successor, should not view the U.S.-Indian relationship primarily through the lens of trade. While India will certainly seek to retain its options and geopolitical independence, the U.S. should do nothing to undermine what should be a budding friendship. Even at the risk of allowing India greater latitude on trade than most other nations, America should continue to try to develop economic relations while also seeking to facilitate India’s military cooperation with other Asian-based powers. This would include not just Japan, but Australia as well. In essence, the U.S. should cultivate the so-called “Quad.”
​ ​Without a dramatic change from the status quo of foreign policymaking in Washington, America’s strategic position will further decay and facilitate the rise of a Sino-centric world order inimical to U.S. interests and values. But by referring back to one of our greatest strategists, America can create a long-term policy that effectively confronts what is likely to be the greatest geopolitical challenge this country has ever faced.


​This article looks at the vulnerability to "Omniviolence" in the modern world, as technology is able to leapfrog the monopoly-on-violence, which characterizes the State, as we know it. The State decides who will be imprisoned and executed, or roughed up by the police force. The State defends peasants from gangs and foreign powers​.
The internet opens people up to blackmail, asset theft and coercion. 
This essay looks at the possibility of wiping out all the people in a city like New York, using a few shipping containers full of tiny drones with thimble-sized shaped explosive charges to target things that look like heads.
How would the State protect from this attack (or use it)?
What is presumed here is the continued spread of mass produced industrial technology for cheap, and the concentration of humans in vast mega-cities. 
I personally think we need to spread out to where we can grow vegetables and ride bikes places, to decentralize.

How Private Equity Vampires Are Killing Everything
Hostile takeovers by vulture capitalists use leveraged loans to buy companies like Sears, sell off long-accumulated assets, borrow massively, buy back stock to raise the price of the stock the vultures hold, so they can sell it, let the company die, and find another to bleed to death. 
This is killing the host. The parasites are running the business. This can be prevented with different financial laws.

Auto Industry Recession is Tanking Global Economy
This may not be a "problem".  7 year payments on a $65,000 pick up truck are "normal" around here. 

Democratic politicians have a blind-spot for cars and excessive driving.
​ ​Sanders’ plan aims to speed up this process by offering a “cash for clunkers”-style grant program that would purchase electric vehicles for low- and medium-income drivers. Over 10 years, the plan would cost $2.1 trillion, enough for roughly 54 million EVs at today’s average price of $36,600 each. It is the largest single expenditure in Sanders’ $16.3 billion climate plan.
​ ​Matthew Lewis, a climate and urban policy consultant in Berkeley, said Sanders’ plan is an inefficient way to spend such a large outlay. “Even as a symbolic victory, it’s not much of a victory,” Lewis said. “It’s like, ‘Congratulations, you just threw away enough money to build a great public transit system in every city in the country.’”...
​ ​“Depending on how much you drive, a car that’s 10 to 12 years old might actually be better for the environment than replacing it with an electric vehicle,” Lewis said.


​America's food-chain map. 
Truck everything thousands of miles in multiple steps, irrespective of distance, invisibly to the grocery shopper. "Sustainable"?

US Embassy pressures Thailand not to outlaw Round-Up. Thailand seeks to limit medical risks.

Traditional Chinese Agriculture, 9000 years of empirical wisdom is not destroyed yet. 
Deeply informative, though dryly written. 

Cat sends this good analysis of identity-politics-warfare from Taki. (Look at Taki's picture for perspective.)
"Transmenstrual cyclists" are genetic males, who identify as dominant-female-bicycle-racers. The size and musculature are winning advantages in bicycle racing. 
This effectively crushes feminism, and gags feminist voices who object. Extremely clever, sort of...
Transgendered people are grossly misused in politics. The vast majority of my transgender patients have sought to lead normal lives without publicity.
​  Conservatives sometimes speak of trannyism as a cult, but they get it backwards. They write as if it’s the trannies who are in the cult. 
No, the trannies are a tool to put us in a cult, a process that starts by changing our names. As cult guru Tim Conway (not the Dorf guy) writes in his manual for successful culting, name changes “help effect a psychological ‘death’ to the old ego-persona.”
​ ​A good cult leader always begins by assigning initiates a new name.
​ ​So, now we’re all named “cis.” We’re no longer “normal,” we’re “cis.” We’ve been renamed. Why? Because to the left it’s all about seeing how much we’re willing to take. If they can make us accept a new name, they can pretty much make us do anything.

​Redefining Victory​

No comments:

Post a Comment