Constructively Pensive,
The Honest Sorcerer, about controlling the vital necessities of life. War. War Never Changes., The importance of resources in maintaining global hegemony
"Energy is the economy - finance, GDP and the stock market is not." .....We are marching towards a full scale world war. In fact it has already begun in one battlefront and in the field of economic relations. On the face of it, it’s about fighting against autocracy and ‘unprovoked’ invasions in the name of protecting freedom and democracy. Dig one level deeper and you find rather different motives like fear of losing global military hegemony, influence and power...
..For those who paid attention so far, this was entirely foreseeable. Despite all the claims to the contrary the world economy still runs on oil. It is the ‘master resource’: fueling all the heavy machinery, doing all the hard labor our ancestors ended up breaking their backs doing. Agriculture, mining, transportation.With it’s peak production most probably in the rear-view mirror (November, 2018) and without reasonable hope for a stable recovery we are entering a dangerous period in history. Just like a hundred and ten years ago, the peak of a master resource — then coal — has coincided with the dusk of a global empire — Britain — leading to a very similar situation preceding World War I and the Great Depression afterwards.
Oil has saved us once from a long decline which started in 1929 and was ominously called the Great Depression. Behind the news of economic hardship, overproduction and stock market crash, there was a silent killer: peak coal produced by coal. Steam engines has reached their practical limits of efficiency and could not enable the mining and hauling of coal from further away as all the close-to-surface, easy-to-reach deposits were depleted...
..It increasingly looks like that we’ve just hit a limit to world oil extraction. Yes, that oil, the master resource and the source of military hegemony. Sure, there are plenty of petroleum reserves remaining around the globe, but accessing them will take more and more energy, and will require more and more oil to be reinvested into drilling, extraction and transportation. Just like with the case of coal above. Behind the scenes, silently—even before hitting an absolute limit to oil extraction—we have already hit peak net energy from oil. Is it any wonder then, that when we’ve hit a peak of conventional (i.e. easy and cheap to access) oil production in 2005, its price skyrocketed, and finally burst the housing bubble in 2008? Remember, no energy — no economy — just stock market speculation...
..The Great Depression Vol. II was only barely avoided in 2009. By pouring an unprecedented amount of money on the problem, in the form of QE and zero interest rates, a number of bankruptcies were circumvented. More importantly, but wholly unintentionally, this flood of money has also saved the energy business, by accidentally lighting the last flash in the pan: the shale oil revolution. Fracked oil and gas was the prime reason behind not having to shut down the economy in the 2010’s — but even this miracle could not last for long. Shale deposits deplete much faster than conventional ones.....Absent of any viable replacement: i.e. some form of energy wholly independent from oil — but at least as dense, scalable, transportable, easy to store — there is physically no chance to grow the economy, increase mining production, replace the ageing grid and other infrastructure (bridges, dams) and maintain a global military hegemony — all at the same time. Forced to select from the few options listed above, 10 out of 10 empires chose to maintain military hegemony. Or at least make an attempt at it—and fail...
..This is not to say we could not live a modest, but happy life after world dominance by superpowers is over. The world has still ample resources to provide Earth’s nations with a modest living (for a few more decades), but no longer enough to maintain a world spanning empire for any of them. https://thehonestsorcerer. A Midwestern Doctor looks at the rise of empires with novel forms of wealth/value creation, and the decline of empires with the formation of monopolies which extract wealth from production centers through coerced participation in the extractive system. Changing the format is possible.
The Space to Create Wealth, Exploring the fascinating future that lies before us https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/the-space-to-create-wealth
Well tabulated and potentially-useful: Trump Vs Kamala: The Complete Election Day Guide https://www.zerohedge.com/political/complete-election-day-guide-trump-vs-kamala
Meryl Nass MD, Possibilities for hacking the Vote have been baked into the election apparatus in so many ways one can hardly count them
And this collection of evidence only scratches the surface https://merylnass.substack.com/p/possibilities-for-hacking-the-vote There has been yearlong speculation about riots and civil-war in the US if Trump loses or if Trump wins. It is always "Trump" that seems to be named, as the other candidate remains "Not Trump". This keeps street-riot options, and military suppression options open for ruling elites, but this does imply unlawful orders being carried out by military units, and I suspect that some would refuse.
Meryl Nass MD on Tucker Carlson interview with Mike Benz, "Military Coup To Stop Trump" -
Mike Benz Exposes Elite's SHOCKING Wargame Plan For 2024 Election/Patrick Bet-David interview 2 days ago
Mike Benz provides the evidence for a pre-2020 election plan to effect a coup if Trump had been reelected. https://merylnass.substack.com/p/military-coup-to-stop-trump-mike
Meryl Nass MD, Israel's oldest and most influential newspaper calls for an end to ethnic cleansing and asks other nations to sanction Israel to end hostilities https://merylnass.substack.com/p/israels-oldest-and-most-influential
Vague, but clear... Iran will not leave any violation unanswered: Pezeshkian https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/505835/Iran-will-not-leave-any-violation-unanswered-Pezeshkian
North Koreans are sitting there in Russia! Zelensky Wants NATO To Support Long-Range Strikes on North Korean Troops Inside Russia
The Ukrainian leader says his Western backers have done 'nothing' in response to the North Korean troop presence in Russia https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/03/zelensky-wants-nato-to-support-long-range-strikes-on-north-korean-troops-inside-russia/ “The Train Has Left the Station and No One Can Stop It”. Europe Will be at War with Russia. Serbia’s President A. Vucic
..Our hosts explained to us, and one can sense it in the very air, that this 10.5 year life and death struggle, still underway, has profoundly affected the mentality of the people, and this is relevant to what is likely to transpire once peace returns, and why I believe this region will greatly attract migrants from the West.
To understand this, one needs to understand who the people of Novorossiya were before the 2014 conflict, and where they came from. Novorossiya, much like the American West, was frontier country. Centuries of spoilage and pillage at the hands of the Turks had left this region depopulated, its hapless Slav villagers regularly raided and kidnapped – sold into the Ottoman slave markets. The edges of the Ottoman empire were basically controlled by marauding local warlords whose main economic model was piracy, pillage, plunder, and extortion. These bandits were an ethnic mix of mostly Turks and Mongols – the Crimean Tatars one of the better known subgroups...
..Now add the psychological conditioning of the last 10 years. One veteran put it like this: “All the bad people left.” “What do you mean by ‘bad’?, and what percentage of the population left?” He guessed roughly 40% of the pre-2014 population. Perhaps 30% of that to ‘Ukraine’ for various reasons, the rest to Russia. Then he enumerated: the cowards, the money-grubbers, the physically weak, the liars, the unpatriotic, the careerists, the criminals, the lovers of softness and luxury, the materialists. The ones who stayed then went through a kind of crucible, whether on the front or at home, for a society at war shares in the burden, the grief, and the emotions of those who suffer most. He went on to say that everyone knows who left, their personal circumstances, and why, and that this will be remembered long after the war ends. https://www.unz.com/article/russian-liberated-ukraine-offers-migrants-from-west-rich-opportunities/
Extraordinary technology demands extraordinary infrastructure. To frame this as a simple device is, in itself, an extraordinary claim cloaked in the guise of simplicity. https://theethicalskeptic.com/2024/10/31/technology-is-not-a-device-but-a-stack/#respond
Reject Real ID, Don’t Use QR Codes Ever
Nurse and author Twila Brase joined CHD.TV and “The Solari Report” to discuss the dangers of Real ID and QR Codes and how people can resist them. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/reject-real-id-qr-codes-twila-brase/
RFK Jr Says Trump Plans To Remove Fluoride From American Drinking Water https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rfk-jr-says-trump-plans-remove-fluoride-american-drinking-water
These are the words of Serbia’s President Aleksander Vucic. He ought to know. He is in the middle of it. He thinks Europe will be at war with Russia in “not more than three or four months,” if that long. President Vucic says “no one is attempting to stop the war. Nobody is speaking about peace. Peace is almost a forbidden word.” https://www.globalresearch.ca/train-left-station-no-one-stop/5859967
Despite current artillery-shell shortages... NATO Kicks Off Largest Artillery Drills In Finland, On Russia's Northern Doorstep https://www.zerohedge.com/military/nato-kicks-largest-artillery-drills-finland-russias-northern-doorstep
Life During Wartime, The Novorussian Decade (ignore sales pitch) ... Thanks Colleen. Russian Liberated 'Ukraine' Offers Migrants from West Rich Opportunities
I didn’t realize until after long rambling conversations with our hosts, sometimes bouncing over bombed out country landscapes, the degree to which the Donbass, a small region in between two big powers, Russia and NATO, ended up in a strategic position where their best option of many bad ones, was to simply endure years of war and abuse, toughing it out despite the grimness and grisly sacrifice, an eery foreshadowing of what The Resistance is enduring today in Gaza and Lebanon.....Our hosts explained to us, and one can sense it in the very air, that this 10.5 year life and death struggle, still underway, has profoundly affected the mentality of the people, and this is relevant to what is likely to transpire once peace returns, and why I believe this region will greatly attract migrants from the West.
To understand this, one needs to understand who the people of Novorossiya were before the 2014 conflict, and where they came from. Novorossiya, much like the American West, was frontier country. Centuries of spoilage and pillage at the hands of the Turks had left this region depopulated, its hapless Slav villagers regularly raided and kidnapped – sold into the Ottoman slave markets. The edges of the Ottoman empire were basically controlled by marauding local warlords whose main economic model was piracy, pillage, plunder, and extortion. These bandits were an ethnic mix of mostly Turks and Mongols – the Crimean Tatars one of the better known subgroups...
..Now add the psychological conditioning of the last 10 years. One veteran put it like this: “All the bad people left.” “What do you mean by ‘bad’?, and what percentage of the population left?” He guessed roughly 40% of the pre-2014 population. Perhaps 30% of that to ‘Ukraine’ for various reasons, the rest to Russia. Then he enumerated: the cowards, the money-grubbers, the physically weak, the liars, the unpatriotic, the careerists, the criminals, the lovers of softness and luxury, the materialists. The ones who stayed then went through a kind of crucible, whether on the front or at home, for a society at war shares in the burden, the grief, and the emotions of those who suffer most. He went on to say that everyone knows who left, their personal circumstances, and why, and that this will be remembered long after the war ends. https://www.unz.com/article/russian-liberated-ukraine-offers-migrants-from-west-rich-opportunities/
Thanks Charles, for this updated 1987 edition of: Nuclear War Survival Skills (317 p) https://ia902306.us.archive.org/19/items/NuclearWarSurvivalSkills_201405/nwss.pdf
The Ethical Skeptic, Technology is not a Device, but a Stack
When we use sophisticated systems to observe an extraordinary technology in the sky, we must recognize that this is not merely a device; but rather a broad, structured domain, involving the work of tens of thousands of individuals—best understood as a stack. Extraordinary technology demands extraordinary infrastructure. To frame this as a simple device is, in itself, an extraordinary claim cloaked in the guise of simplicity. https://theethicalskeptic.com/2024/10/31/technology-is-not-a-device-but-a-stack/#respond
Nurse and author Twila Brase joined CHD.TV and “The Solari Report” to discuss the dangers of Real ID and QR Codes and how people can resist them. https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/reject-real-id-qr-codes-twila-brase/
Charles Hugh Smith, Central Planning: China's Miracle--and Malaise
The inherent weaknesses of central planning are on display in every economy. It's tempting to use central planning to kickstart a sector or industrialize / re-industrialize, but there are no mechanisms in central planning to recognize or respond to the fact that you can only funnel private capital into a blind machine of entrenched interests for so long before the machine consumes not only all the gains of central planning but the entire economy, as the distortions become so profound that there are no fixes other than the extreme pain of absorbing catastrophic losses.
The illusion created by the initial success of central planning is that it can continue indefinitely, when the reality is it's unavoidably self-liquidating as the distortions unravel the entire economy. As I explained in my weekend post for subscribers, TINS and the Global Economy's Cliff Dive: There Is No Substitute, once the central planning model reaches its inevitable point of failure, there is no substitute available, as the economy has been optimized to reward the "winners", effectively hollowing out other sectors of the economy. https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/central-planning-chinas-miracle-andAAPS Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Economic Health Watch: Regulatory Costs https://aapsonline.org/economic-health-watch-regulatory-costs/
Pierre Kory MD makes the case that metabolism is more important in cancer than gene-mutations. The Evolution And Validation Of The Metabolic Theory Of Cancer
For the past 70 years the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT) guided all research and treatment in cancer. Why are so few aware that it was overturned 15 years ago by the Metabolic Theory of Cancer (MTOC)? https://pierrekorymedicalmusings.com/p/the-evolution-and-validation-of-the Steve Kirsch, Santa Clara County's wastewater shows the COVID vaccine increased infections
In highly vaccinated Santa Clara County, SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater is higher than the national average. That means the vaccine made the risk of infection worse. https://kirschsubstack.com/p/santa-clara-countys-wastewater-showsPeter McCullough MD, US Childhood Routine Vaccination Rates Plummeting, CDC/HHS Report: Parents Declining Shots for Children Born in 2020 and 2021 https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/us-childhood-routine-vaccination
Meryl Nass MD, "The Pandemic Agreement Fractures in the Latest Negotiations"/ CFR/ Oct. 29, 2024
As I have said, and now the CFR confirms toward the end of this article, our efforts to torpedo the Pandemic Treaty at the state and federal level were crucial, and are the reason there has been a concerted push to conclude the treaty while the Biden administration remains in office. But only a watered down agreement, if that, is likely to emerge—Nass https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-pandemic-agreement-fractures
James Roguski, The U.S. has pledged $667 million to the Pandemic Fund
As a proud co-founder and supporter of the Pandemic Fund, the United States has pledged up to $667 million towards the Fund’s current replenishment. https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/the-us-has-pledged-667-million-to
We really don't know what the world will be any more than those middle ages people could have imagined us. But we should nurse resources so that those 2424 people can have some too.
ReplyDeleteAttributed quotes abound and this is an unsourced Buddha quote, when asked "what is sin?", he responded, "anything that is unnecessary". Sounds more real than some of the sourced sources.
This comment is unnecessary, I suppo...
That's bound to shift meaning somewhat in translation, is it not?
DeleteI think they made it up. It's a grand quote though.
ReplyDeleteThere is no energy problem. There's a consumption problem. Like water. Too much unnecessary stuff going on. That Buddha fella was on to something.
Trump is going to play the oil-card hard, it seems, and it is going to be oil-exports and oil/gas industrial use to create exports that support the $US, instead of interest payments in $US. This is going to be a sharp transition, and economy cars will be the thing to drive, I think.
DeleteThe USA imported Datsun's two door, four on the floor, diesel for one year. It was 83 give or take a year. 59 mpg. Seen a Ford Fiesta diesel in 11 that got the same mpg. Simple cars r more eco than glorified cars, no rare earths needed. Eminently recyclable. Wasn't it about 83 we were gonna go to the metric system?
ReplyDeleteThat tech has not been lost, but Diesel will be needed for heavy machinery.
DeleteGasoline is the leftover to use for cars. It is a less dense fuel, but it's a leftover.