State power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its physical form brute force. The state can train subjects, but it can never develop free people who take their affairs into their own hands, for independent thought is the greatest danger that it has to fear.
--Rudolf Rocker
Russiagate,
that fraudulent fable wherein Russian President Vladimir Putin
personally subverted American democracy, Russian intelligence pilfered
the Democratic Party’s email, and Donald Trump acted at the Kremlin’s
behest, is at last dead.
No,
nothing sudden. It has been a slow, painful death of the sort this
destructive beast richly deserved. But its demise is now definitive — in
the courts and on paper. We await the better historians to see this
properly into the record.
Three key operatives in the construction of the Russiagate edifice are indicted for lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about aspects of the Russiagate tale. The Steele dossier, the document on which much of the case against former President Trump rested, is now exposed as a Nixonesque “dirty trick” authorized and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Some mainstream newspapers — certainly not all — are busy in their archives, editing out the worst of the falsehoods they reported in 2016 and 2017 as unassailable fact.
This is a wholesale collapse now.
There
are, as one would expect, those who seem determined to hold out no
matter what the factual evidence. These go well beyond MSNBC’s Rachel
Maddow, whose record I will let speak for itself.
I am thinking of people such as David Corn, the Mother Jones correspondent in Washington, and David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Both invested big time into the Russiagate junk, and both published
books filled with the ridiculous, evidence-free piffle of which it was
made.
Corn, Frum and numerous others like them are now industriously throwing good money after bad to go by recent publications. Here is Corn’s latest, and here
Frum’s. One finds the same tired combination of presumption, useless
innuendo, and spoon-fed, evidence-deficient falsities derived from the
intelligence agencies that were key to fomenting the Russiagate hoax.
Yes, Messrs. Corn and Frum, it was a hoax.
To
these diehards, people such as your columnist, given to rational,
disinterested consideration of what is known and what is conjured from
thin air, are “denialists.” Strange it is that those denying established
facts and truths call those who accept these facts and truths by this
name.
But
this is a measure of the extent Russiagate has plunged us into
Alice–in–Wonderland depths where what is up is down, what is dark is
light, what is true is to be buried, what is false is to be held high —
where blindness is preferred to sight.
This
leads us to the essential question we now face, or one of them. What
are the consequences of the Russiagate scam? If it rested on lies
start-to-finish, this is not to say it did not exact its price. It did.
The price is high, and we are fated to pay it for some time to come.
The Damage Done
Nov. 11, 2017, protest outside the White House, dubbed the “Kremlin Annex.” (Wikimedia Commons/Ted Eytan)
An
inquiry of this kind must begin with the damage Russiagate has done to
the prevalent American consciousness. The last five years have delivered
Americans into a culture of unreason of the kind they have been prone
to indulging periodically throughout their history. It is made in equal
parts of a native insecurity and anxiety, of paranoia and of
irrationality.
This
is at once a pitiable and dangerous state. All is reduced to the
Manichean distinctions characteristic of the old Westerns (not to
mention most of the good guys vs. bad guys Dreck that comes out of Hollywood these days).
No
subtlety of thought survives in the culture of unreason. Public space
is populated with poseurs, cutouts, and imposters. Public discourse,
with some exceptions, is much of the time not worth bothering with.
To
understand this condition, we must recognize it as the work of a
diabolic alliance comprised of the Democratic Party’s corrupt
leadership, the F.B.I. and other law-enforcement agencies, the national
security apparatus and its many appendages, and the media. It is no
longer in the slightest objectionable to speak or write of a Deep State
that controls this country.
The
elite minority this alliance represents derives its power from its
claim to speak for the majority — an absolutely classic case of the
“soft despotism” Alexis de Tocqueville warned Americans of 190 years
ago. Liberal authoritarianism is another name for what has consolidated
itself in the years since Democrats, in mid–2016, first raised the phony
specter of Russia “hacking” into its mail systems.
In
effect, Russiagate has tipped the American polity upside down. It is
the illiberal liberals among us, righteous as the old Puritan ministers
of New England, who now prosecute a regime of censorship and suppression
of dissent that is at least as severe and anti-democratic as what
conservatives had going during the Cold War (and in my view worse).
It
is they who seek to cow ordinary Americans into the new, weird idolatry
of authority, no matter that those to whom the nation is urged to bow
are proven liars, law-breakers and propagandists.
Culture of Unreason
In
this dimension, Russiagate has destroyed the Democrats as a party
willing to stand against the imperial project in its late phase.
A
war with China over the Taiwan question is now spoken of as a logical
possibility. Washington is now raising the temperature on the
Ukraine–Russia border, just as it did when it cultivated the 2014 coup
in Kiev, and this is put across as a Democratic administration’s sound
policy. Rampant Russophobia is a direct consequence of the Russiagate
ruse, Sinophobia its uglier sibling — uglier for its racist subtext.
We
have active subversion operations in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba and
Peru, all progressive states in the true meaning of this term, and
Democrats of all stripes — including “progressives” with the necessary
quotation marks — cheer on every one of them.
We
cannot view this as distinct from the elevation of institutions
dedicated to campaigns of covert subterfuge — chiefly but not only the
C.I.A. — to wholly inappropriate positions of respect.
The
damage Russiagate has done to the press … let me rephrase this. The
damage the press has inflicted upon itself in the cause of Russiagate is
so extensive it is hard to calculate with any precision. We watch now
as their credibility collapses in real time.
Those
running the mainstream newspapers and networks seem to understand this,
as they rush to protect what remains of their reputations with
rearguard actions to obscure their grossly irresponsible conduct.
The
long list of those who caved to the Russiagate orthodoxy includes some
stunning names. Among publications that should have known better we find
Mother Jones,The Nation, The Intercept, and Democracy Now! Was
it conformity, pressure from donors or Democratic Party ventriloquists,
or some combination of ideology, ignorance and inexperience that caused
them to flip?
The Atlantic,The New Yorker,
the major dailies, the networks — they have all sustained one or
another degree of discredit, left either to craven rewrites in their
archives, denial in the Corn–Frum mode, or silence. None will do: They
will never regain lost ground without first acknowledging what they have
done, and this appears out of the question.
Resort of Omission
“The Usual Suspects,” urban art, Norway, 2015. (Anne Worner, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The
feature of the corporate-owned press — and the “progressive,” press, as
just suggested — that strikes me most now is its resort of omission.
Think
about it: Lengthy hearings on Capitol Hill, in which leading Democratic
Party Russiagaters admit under oath they never had any of the evidence
they long claimed, go unreported. The collapse of the Steele dossier
goes unreported in The New York Times and other major dailies.
It
is but a short step to all else that is newsworthy but left out — the
collapse of the case against Julian Assange (against whom the Russiagate
frenzy was wielded), the collapse of the chemical weapons case in
Syria, all the above-noted covert subversions.
It is wholesale dereliction of duty now, and it was Russiagate that licensed this betrayal.
Mainstream
media are now approaching that point when they leave out more of the
world we live in than they report. This is a losing proposition in the
medium term — a desperate, last-ditch strategy to defend a “narrative”
that simply no longer holds. I put the acceleration of this trend down
to the poisoned information environment Russiagate did so much to
engender.
There
is a positive dimension to the media’s fate since Russiagate, and
regular readers of this column may already guess where I am headed. The
disaster Russiagate has proven for the corporate-owned press, the
networks, and the “left” — with-quotation-marks — press has landed
independent media such as Consortium News with
large, new responsibilities, and they have by-and-large risen to the
occasion. Their role in keeping the truth of the Russiagate fraud on the
table cannot be overstated.
We
witness, in effect, an historically significant transformation in how
Americans get their news and analysis. This, a gradual process, is an
excellent thing. In time, independent media stand to play as important a
role in repairing the across-the-board damage of Russiagate as legacy
media played in hatching and deepening it.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for theInternational Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. Follow him on Twitter @thefloutist. His web site is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.
If you want the audio version of this article, go the source, OffGuardian.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Post Pandemic Stress Disorder”…seriously?
There’s
a reason heart attacks and blood clots are about to become a LOT more
common…but the vaccine has nothing to do with it. Apparently.
Kit Knightly
Doctors are warning that hundreds of thousands of
people in the UK could be at increased risk of heart disease or cardiac
events.
Speaking to the Evening Standard, psychological therapist Mark Rayner and vascular surgeon Tahir Hussein said that the UK could see “300,000 new patients with heart issues” in the near future.
What’s to blame? Well, that would be “Post Pandemic Stress Disorder”. A new condition “yet to be recognised”, even though “many experts believe it should be”.
It’s a totally real thing. They didn’t just completely make it up. Don’t be cynical.
You see, all the “pandemic” related anxiety and stress has taken such
a toll on the public that doctors are predicting a 5% increase in heart
disease, nationwide, and not just in the elderly or infirm.
According to Dr Hussein, he is already seeing…
a big increase in thrombotic-related vascular conditions
in my practice. Far younger patients are being admitted and requiring
surgical and medical intervention than prior to the pandemic.
Now, some of you demented anti-vaxxers out there might be asking crazy questions like “could this increase in blood clots and heart disease be linked to injecting millions of people with an untested vaccine?”
But that’s absurd. And I told you to stop being cynical.
It turns out all the people saying that back in March weren’t just
conspiracy theorists spreading misinformation after all. They were
totally right. But the clots are only rare, so don’t worry. And they
sort of know what causes it now, so future batches might be fine.
And yes, also in the interests of fairness, it’s true that both the Pfizer and Moderna shots can cause heart issues too. Both, according to the CDC, can cause pericarditis and myocarditis, the complications of which include heart attacks, heart failure and strokes.
The UK government has even produced special guidelines for dealing with myocardits, “following Covid19 vaccination”.
But, just like the blood clots, this is very rare. Obviously not so rare you don’t need a special guiding document on how to deal with it, but still very very rare.
…the point is, yes, all the major Covid vaccines are known to have cardiac-related side effects, and yes, some doctors are now predicting a major spike in heart-related health problems, but these are totally unrelated.
Frankly, the very idea this could be a media psy-op designed to do pre-emptive damage control is ridiculous.
Stop. Being. Cynical.
Any connection between heart problems and vaccines is just bad luck or a coincidence. It’s really just the stress.
Don’t ask questions about the vaccine. Don’t decide to not get the vaccine. And certainly don’t worry about what’s in the vaccine. Worrying causes stress which, unlike vaccines, causes heart problems.
Just get the shot. And the second dose. And the booster, every three months. And the updated doses, for the variants.
Just to be safe, get four shots a year, every year, for the rest of
your natural life, and/or until you drop dead of a heart attack.
I frequently write that the world economy is, in physics terms, a
dissipative structure that is powered by energy. It can grow for a time,
but eventually it reaches limits of many kinds. Ultimately, it can be
expected to stop growing and collapse.
It seems to me that the world economy is showing signs that it has
reached a turning point. Economic growth stopped in 2020 and is having
trouble restarting in 2021. Fossil fuel energy of all types (oil, coal
and natural gas) is in short supply,
relative to the world’s huge population. Ultimately, this inadequate
energy supply can be expected to pull the world economy toward collapse.
The world economy doesn’t behave the way most people would expect.
Standard modeling approaches miss the point that economies require
adequate supplies of energy products of the right kinds, provided at the
right times of day and year, if they are to keep from collapsing.
Shortages are not necessarily marked by high prices; prices that are too
low for producers will bring down the energy supply quickly. A collapse
may occur due to inadequate demand; in fact, such a scenario is
described in Revelation 18.
As strange as it may seem, we may be approaching what some of us
would think of as end times, if our economy collapses for lack of
cheap-to-produce energy supplies. In this post, I will try to explain
what is happening.
[1] In some ways, the self-organizing economy is like a
child’s building toy that, with the use of human energy, can be built up
to higher and higher levels.
The economy is gradually built up by the addition of new customers,
new businesses and new products. Governments play a role as well, adding
new infrastructure, laws and taxes. Adequate wages for employees are
important because, to a significant extent, employees are also consumers
of goods and services made by the economy.
Adequate energy supplies of the right types are terribly important
because every process used by the economy requires energy, even if the
only energy used is electricity to light a light bulb or operate a
computer. Heating and cooling require energy, as does transpiration.
Human energy is an important part of the economy, as well. Humans eat
food to provide them with energy. An individual human’s own energy
output is relatively tiny; it is about equal to the output of a 100-watt
light bulb. With the use of supplemental energy of various kinds,
humans can do many tasks that would not be possible otherwise, such as
cooking food, creating metals from ores, heating homes, and building
cars and trucks.
The economy cannot “go backwards” because, if a product is no longer
needed, it will no longer be produced. The economy represented by Figure
1 is in some sense hollow inside. For example, once people started
using automobiles, buggy whips were no longer made. If cities went back
to using horses as their main means of transport, we would need manure
removal services. These, too, would be missing.
[2] Another way of thinking about the world economy is that
it is somewhat like a rocket that needs fuel. It also has waste outputs.
Both of these limit the growth of the world economy.
Figure 2. Chart by Gail Tverberg.
The economy uses a wide array of inputs. At the same time, it
produces a whole host of undesirable outputs. Inputs need to be
inexpensive to produce, or citizens will not be able to afford the goods
and services made by the system. The waste outputs cannot become too
significant, or they can lead the economy to fail. In fact, with the
world’s growing population, we seem to be reaching many limits with
respect to both inputs and undesirable outputs, simultaneously.
[3] Strangely enough, the major energy limit that the world economy is hitting seems to be “energy prices that do not rise high enough for producers.”
This energy limit is exactly the opposite of what most people are
looking for. They assume that “demand” will always rise. In fact, the cost of production of energy products keeps rising because the easy to produce energy products are produced first. It is the market prices that energy products can be sold for that do not rise adequately.
When we trace the problem back, we discover that the problem with prices arises from the equivalence between producers of goods and services and consumers of goods and services
indicated on Figure 1. In order to have enough “demand” to keep energy
prices high enough for providers, it turns out that even the very low
wage people in the world economy need to be able to afford necessities
such as food, water, clothing, basic housing and transportation. In
fact, if the cost of extracting fossil fuels rises too quickly because
of depletion, or if the cost of getting renewable electricity into a
form in which it is useful for society rises too much, there may be a
situation when even a price based on full demand from all consumers is
too low for energy producers.
Let’s define “return on human labor” as what a person without
advanced training can earn by selling his physical labor as unskilled
labor. Rather than dollar or euro terms, wages need to be thought of in
terms of the physical goods and services that these wages can purchase.
If supplemental energy per capita is rising rapidly, the return on human
labor tends to rise. This happens because with higher energy
consumption, humans can have more tools and technology requiring energy
at their command. For example, the period between 1950 and 1970 was a
time when energy consumption was rising rapidly. It was also a time of
rising standards of living, even for workers without advanced training.
Figure
3. World per capita energy consumption, with the 1950-1980 period of
rapid growth highlighted. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on
Vaclav Smil’s estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent years, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
The world economy can be expected to run into a major problem once
supplemental energy consumption per capita starts falling because then
human labor is necessarily less leveraged by fewer machines, such as
trucks and airplanes. In total, fewer goods and services can be
produced.
If energy supply is inadequate, businesses often find it advantageous
to substitute computers or other machines for some work previously done
by low paid workers. While these machines use a little energy in their
operation, they do not need food, housing or transportation the way
human workers do. With fewer actual workers, demand for finished goods
and services tends to fall, pushing commodity prices, including those
for fossil fuels, down. This further adds to the low-price problem.
Itis the lack of jobs that pay well that tends to
hold down commodity prices below the prices producers require.
Ultimately, it is the lack of sufficient jobs that pay well that tends
to bring the whole economy down. Most researchers have missed this important point.
[4] In the period leading up to collapse, wages fail to rise
with the cost of required services. This leads to increasingly unhappy
workers. Healthcare costs and college costs are especially problematic,
because their costs have been rising faster than costs in general.
Figure 4. Illustrates the issue that seems to be occurring:
When energy consumption per capita is growing rapidly, the economy
adds items that were not previously considered necessary. Instead of a
basic education for all being sufficient, advanced education (often paid
for by the student) becomes necessary for many jobs. Healthcare costs
keep rising rapidly, making it more difficult to make wages cover all
necessary expenses (Figure 4).
We can see additional evidence that workers have been tending to get
poorer in recent years by looking at the trend in the number of light
vehicles purchased. With rising population, a person would expect the
number of automobiles sold to increase, year after year, if citizens
found their incomes as adequate as in the past. Instead, we see a
pattern of falling automobile sales, practically everywhere, starting
well before 2020. For example, peak light vehicle sales in China
occurred in 2017.
Figure 5. Auto sales by country based on data of VDA.de.
[5] An increase in debt can temporarily be used to hide both
inadequate inexpensive-to-produce energy supply and inadequate wages of
workers, but we seem to be reaching limits using this approach to hide
energy problems.
The last time the world had relatively stable low oil prices was in
the years prior to 1973. As noted previously, low energy prices tend to
make finished goods, such as homes and cars, inexpensive to buy and
operate. Thus, they tend to be affordable.
Figure 6. Inflation-adjusted oil prices based on data of BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy.
The big issue if oil and other prices rise very high is that the
selling prices of goods and services tend to rise too high to be
affordable to consumers. The workaround that was developed to fix this
unaffordability problem was to change the economy to use more debt. To
be affordable, interest rates had to fall lower and lower. Peak interest
rates occurred in 1981; they have been trending downward since then.
Figure 7. 10-Year US Treasury and 3-Month Treasury yields, through November 2021. Chart by St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED).
If debt at ever-lower interest rates is available, assets such as
homes, farmland, factories and shares of stock become more affordable,
allowing prices of these assets to rise. Owners of these assets feel
wealthier. In fact, they may borrow more money against the inflated
price of these assets and use this money to buy more goods and services
made with commodities, thus helping to raise commodity prices. The lower
interest rates make the purchase of automobiles more affordable as
well, helping to raise the price of commodities used to make and operate
automobiles.
There is a limit on how low these interest rates can go, however,
especially if inflation is a problem. Current interest rates seem to be
down near where they were during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This
suggests that the economy is truly doing very poorly.
Today, Brent oil prices are about $69 per barrel. This price is not
high enough for producers to want to prepare more fields for drilling.
As far as I can see, the price needs to be up in the range of $120 per
barrel, and stay there for many years, for oil producers to consider
putting major effort into developing more fields. Natural gas and coal
have similar low-price problems.
While governments cannot seem to be able to fix the low-price problem
for fossil fuels, they can find ways to pay their citizens money for
doing nothing, or next to nothing. These payments will add to a
government’s debt, but they don’t really produce more goods and
services. What these payments tend to produce is inflation in the prices of goods and services that are available.
Over time, we can expect the lack of growth in energy supply to lead
to an increasing number of broken supply lines. Without long-term
high-price guarantees, producers will not be willing to increase
production. Without adequate fuel supply, an increasing number of
products will disappear from the shelves of stores. A smaller number of
people will have jobs, especially jobs that pay well. The economy can be
expected to head in the direction of collapse.
We can think of debt as a promise of future goods and services, made
with future energy production. If energy supplies are rising rapidly and
can be expected to continue to rise rapidly in the future, this promise
can be expected to hold. Of course, if energy supplies start falling,
all bets are off. Supply lines are likely to break. We consider money
and other securities issued by governments to be a “store of value,”
but, if there is little to buy (for example, all international flights
are cancelled and automobiles of the desired type are permanently out of
stock), its ability to act as a store of value will start to disappear.
If the economy collapses completely, neither stocks nor bonds will have
value.
[6] Nothing happens for a single reason in a self-organizing
economy. Lack of energy affects every part of the economy, from jobs to
finished output, almost simultaneously.
In a self-organizing economy, everything is interconnected.
Inadequate energy per capita leads to low selling prices for commodities
of all kinds. Inadequate energy per capita also leads to low wages for
workers, low benefits provided by governments, and uprisings to protest
these low wages and benefits. These uprisings began in 2019 or even earlier.
The unhappiness of workers leads to the election of increasingly
radical politicians, in the hope that something can be done to fix the
problems. There are basically not enough goods and services to go
around, but no one wants to admit that this could be a problem.
[7] Citizens cannot imagine a declining and eventually
collapsing economy. Businesses, governments and individual citizens all
demand “happily ever after futures.”
Figure
8. Chart by Gail Tverberg. Amounts through 2020 based on an analysis of
historical energy consumption using the same sources as those used in
Figure 3.
If there is a history of growth, nearly everyone is happier if
forecasts pretend that economic growth can continue forever. Newspapers
want such stories, because this is what their advertisers, such as
automakers, want. Automobiles need to be usable for a long period in the
future. Universities want favorable forecasts because they want their
students to believe that their degrees will have great future value.
Politicians want a story of growth forever, because this is what voters
want and expect. They have come to believe that governments can save
them from all problems; there is no longer any need for religion.
As energy supplies get scarce, the rich tend to become richer and the poor tend to become poorer. François Roddier explains
that this is because of the physics of the situation. Wealthy
individuals and corporations discover that they have a rapidly growing
ability to influence the narrative provided by Mainstream Media. If
influential citizens and groups want citizens to hear a “happily ever
after ending” to our current problems, they can make certain that this
is the predominant narrative of Mainstream Media. It is only people who
are willing to hear sources outside of the mainstream who can learn what
is really happening.
The fact that the world economy would run into energy limits about
now has been known for a very long time. For example, US Navy Rear
Admiral Hyman Rickover talks about the close connection between energy
and the economy in this 1957 speech. He points out that the world is likely to run short of fossil fuel by 2050. Later modeling documented in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth
indicated that the world economy was likely to collapse in a similar
timeframe. The modeling done in that analysis considered rising
population relative to total resources, without looking at energy
resources separately.
[8] It is easy to create models that predict growth will
continue forever, even if the physics of the situation says this is not
possible.
Economists provide their work to politicians. They certainly cannot
provide forecasts of a coming calamity such as economic collapse. They
also are unaware of the physics of the situation, even though many
researchers have been writing about the issue from a physics point of
view since at least the mid-1980s.
Economists have chosen instead to make models that assume no limits
are ahead. They seem to assume that all problems will be fixed by
innovation, substitution and the pricing mechanism. They produce
forecasts suggesting that the economy can grow endlessly in the future.
Based on these forecasts, they provide input to models that reach the
conclusion that amazingly large amounts of fossil fuels will be
extracted in the future. Based on these nonsensical models, our problem
is not the near-term limits that we are reaching; instead, our chief
problem is climate change. Its impacts occur mostly in the future.
A corollary to this belief system is that it is we humans who are in charge and not the laws of physics.
We can expect governments to protect us. We don’t need any outside help
from a literal Higher Power who created the laws of physics. We need to
listen to what the authorities on earth tell us. In fact, in troubled
times, governments need more authority over their citizens. The many
concerns regarding COVID-19 make it easy for governments to increase
their control over citizens. We are told that it is only by following
the mandates of governments that we will get through this strange time.
With nearly everyone on board with the idea that somehow the story of
near-term collapse must be avoided at all costs, every part of the
economy bases its actions on the narrative that the world economy is
voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels. In this narrative, renewables
will save us; electric vehicles are the way of the future; the world
economy can continue to grow, but in a new way.
In fact, we are colliding with resource limits, right now. This seems
to be what produced the bizarre situation experienced in 2020.
[9] As 2020 began, many sectors of the world economy were
squeezed simultaneously. With limited energy resources, large parts of
the economy needed to be cut back. The self-organizing economy acted in a
very strange way. Shutdowns supposedly aimed at stopping COVID-19 from
spreading acted very much like energy rationing, without mentioning the
world’s energy problem.
Figure 9. World per capita energy supply by type of fuel, based on BP 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy data.
Several years before 2020, it should have been clear that the world
economy was doing very poorly based on the continued need for very low
interest rates (Figure 7) and Quantitative Easing. China, in particular,
was doing poorly, as indicated by its low sales of automobiles (Figure
5). Of course, China doesn’t broadcast its problems to the rest of the
world, so few people were aware of this issue.
China had been able to boost the world’s per capita supply of
inexpensive-to-produce energy by ramping up its coal production after it
joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. (Note the world ramp up in
coal, starting after 2001, on Figure 9). Unfortunately, because of
depletion, China’s coal production since 2013 has been close to flat.
Furthermore, China had had a big recycling business, but discontinued it
effective January 1, 2018. Discontinuation of this program was
necessary because oil prices had fallen in 2014 and had never recovered
to their former level. With low oil prices, most recycling in China made
no sense economically. The loss of jobs from recycling and cutbacks in
coal operations no doubt contributed to the declining sale of vehicles
in China.
In the years before 2020, another big issue was that the wages of
many workers were not keeping up with the rising cost of living. Figure 4
illustrates this issue for the US. The problem was especially acute for
lower wage workers. During this period, the prices of many commodities
were too low for producers. This led to layoffs and low wages for
workers.
In early 2020, the world became aware of a new coronavirus that had
been identified in China. The response to this new illness was very
strange, compared to how previous pandemics had been handled. The
response looked a great deal like intentionally scaring people
(especially older people) into staying at home. If this were done, much
less oil could be used. Natural gas and coal consumption could be
reduced, as well.
This story is perhaps not so strange if we look at it in context. On January 8, 2020, I wrote that we should be expecting recession and low oil prices in 2020. I included this oil price chart.
Figure 10. Inflation adjusted weekly average Brent Oil price, based on EIA oil spot prices and US CPI-urban inflation.
On January 29, I wrote, It is easy to overreact to a coronavirus.
In this article, I pointed out that the economy already seemed to be
headed in the direction of recession. Shutdowns would only make the
problem worse.
Politicians choosing to shut down their economies in early 2020 were
likely not aware that the real underlying problem within their economy
was inadequate availability of inexpensive-to-produce energy. They were
aware that China had decided to shut down part of its economy, so
perhaps there might be some usefulness to such an action. Local leaders
outside of China knew that their own factories were underutilized. If
their own factories could be shut down temporarily, perhaps they could
operate at closer to capacity, once they reopened.
Furthermore, a shutdown would give an excuse to keep workers
protesting low wages inside. After the shutdown, there would be an
excuse to raise the debt level, perhaps keeping the financial part of
the economy going for a while longer. So, a shutdown would have many
benefits, apart from any potential benefit from (sort of) containing the
virus.
It became apparent as time went on that the vaccine story for
COVID-19 was playing multiple roles, as well. The healthcare industry
was becoming very large in the US. In fact, the size of the healthcare
industry was beginning to interfere with the economy as a whole (Figure
4). Furthermore, manufacturers of medicines and vaccines were having
problems with diminishing returns because the big, important drug finds
had been discovered years ago. It was becoming difficult to profitably
fund all of the research needed for new drugs.
Behind the scenes, the vaccine industry had been working for years on creating new viruses and preparing vaccines for these same viruses.
The theory was that the same approaches that delivered vaccines might
be helpful in treating diseases of various kinds. Vaccines might also be
helpful in responding to bioweapon attacks. If drug manufacturers could
market a blockbuster vaccine, the manufacturers, as well as the
individuals holding the vaccine patents, could become rich.
The US was not alone in the research with respect to viruses and
vaccines for these viruses. Many major countries, including Canada,
France, Italy, Australia and China had funded this research, partly
through their budgets for health research and partly through military
budgets. There was virtually no chance that anyone would figure out the
source of any problematic virus because so many major countries had had a
part in funding this research. If citizens could be convinced that the
virus was extremely dangerous and mandate the use of vaccines, the
vaccine industry could greatly profit from vaccine sales. The vaccine
could be created and marketed quickly because all of the research (but
not enough testing) had been performed earlier.
A great deal of planning had been done before the pandemic appeared,
based to a significant extent upon what outcome vaccine makers would
prefer. Johns Hopkins University completed a SPARS Pandemic Scenario in October 2017, rehearsing responses to a pandemic. A training exercise called Event 201
was held on October 18, 2019, for the purpose of training high level
government officials and news writers what their responses should be.
The sponsors of Event 201 were “The Johns Hopkins Center for Health
Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation.” The latter two organizations are
representatives of the very wealthy individuals and very large
corporations. The primary interest of these organizations is enriching
those who are already wealthy. The World Economic Forum is known for proclaiming, “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.”
As time went on, it became very clear that the true nature of the
COVID-19 epidemic was being hidden from citizens. It was, and is, not a
terribly dangerous illness if it is treated properly with any number of
inexpensive medications including aspirin, ivermectin, antihistamine and
steroids. In fact, the severity of the disease could also be lessened
by taking vitamin D in advance. There really was not a great deal of
point to the vaccines, except to enrich the vaccine manufacturers and
those who would benefit from the sale of the vaccines, including Anthony
Fauci and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
It also became clear that the vaccines don’t really do what a person
might expect a vaccine to do. They do tend to stop severe illness, but
taking vitamin D in advance would provide pretty much the same benefit.
They don’t stop COVID-19
from circulating because vaccinated people can still catch COVID-19.
The vaccines seem to have any number of side effects, including raising the risk of heart attacks.
The historical period most similar to the current period, in terms of
shortage of energy supply, is that between World War I and World War
II. At that time, the Jews were persecuted. Now, there is an attempt to
divide the world into Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, with the Unvaccinated
persecuted. When the economy cannot produce enough goods and services
for all members of the economy, the economy seems to divide into almost
warring parts.
We are basically trying to deal with an energy scenario that looks a
lot like Figure 8, and the self-organizing economy comes up with very
strange solutions. If people can convince themselves that it is OK to
ostracize the unvaccinated, then maybe the move down the collapse will
go more smoothly. For example, the military can be cut back in size by
dismissing the unvaccinated, without admitting that with current
resources, there is a need to reduce the size of the military.
Europe is the part of the world where the push for vaccinations is
now highest. It is also in terrible shape with respect to energy supply.
By ostracizing the unvaccinated, European countries can attempt to cut
back their economies to the size that their energy supply will support,
without admitting the real problem.
[10] The world economy is increasingly acting like economies
that have collapsed in the past. In fact, there seems to be a
connection with some of the strange statements from the book of
Revelation.
We are living in a world now in which even if there are temporary
price spikes, there is little chance that fossil fuel providers will
ramp up their production. In order to ramp up supplies, they would need
to start several years in advance, preparing new fields. Oil, coal and
gas prices have stayed so low, for so long, that there is no belief that
prices can rise to a high enough level and stay there, as the fuels are
extracted. Thus, the fossil fuel will stay in the ground.
At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that renewables
cannot be depended upon. In fact, low generation of electricity by wind
turbines is part of the reason Europe is having to import the large
quantity of natural gas and coal supplies it now requires. There is
concern that rolling blackouts may be necessary during the winter in Europe, if not this year, sometime in the next few years.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the future energy scenario
will look something like Figure 8, causing world population to fall
dramatically within the next thirty years. This is the kind of situation
most of us would associate with collapse. I think of it as being
equivalent to end times, since our modern civilization will be
disappearing. It is possible that there will be a remnant of people
left, but they will be living a much simpler life, without fossil fuels
or modern renewables.
There are several parts to what is happening that remind me of Old
Testament writings in general, and of the book of Revelation (from the
New Testament), in particular.
First, the willingness of the ultra-rich to look out for themselves
and keep what look like perfectly good, cheap cures for COVID-19 from
the world population seems to be precisely the kind of despicable
behavior that Old Testament prophets despised. For example, in Amos
5:21-24, Amos tells the Jews that God despises their prior behavior. In
verse 24 (NIV), he says, “But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
As I noted in the introduction, Revelation 18 talks about lack of
demand being an issue in the collapse of Babylon, and presumably in any
future collapse that occurs. Revelation 18:11-13 reads:
11 The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes
of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk
and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind
made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble;13 cargoes
of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and
olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and
carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.
The need for vaccine passports in some countries reminds a person of
Revelation 13:17, “they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark,
which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.” In fact,
people in Sweden are getting microchip implants after its latest COVID passport mandate.
Some people believe that Revelation 12 describes the Antichrist; that
is, the polar opposite of Christ. Before the world comes to an end,
Revelation 12 seems to predict a great fight against this Antichrist,
which Christ wins. I could imagine Anthony Fauci being the Antichrist.
We are not used to living in a world where very little that is
published by the Mainstream Media makes sense. But when we live in a
time where no one wants to hear what is true, the system changes in a
bizarre way, so that a great deal that is published is false.
It is disturbing to think that we may be living near the end of the
world economy, but there is an upside to this situation. We have had the
opportunity to live at a time with more conveniences than any other
civilization. We can appreciate the many conveniences we have.
We also have the opportunity to decide how we want to live the rest
of our lives. We have been led for many years down the path of believing
that economic growth will last forever; all we need to do is have faith
in the government and our educational institutions. If we figure out
that this really isn’t the path to follow, we can change course now. If
we want to choose a more spiritual approach, this is a choice we can
still make.
If anything, political pressures may prevent the White
House from going far enough, Binghamton University political science
professor Olga Shvetsova argued.
In order to halt the virus, she said vaccines must not only be
mandated but that fully vaccinated people need to be tested regularly to
stop the emergence of new variants.
“We cannot allow people to be sick but not too sick,” Shvetsova said.
“That’s what created delta, and that’s what created omicron. It’s not
only about preventing people from being terribly sick. It’s about
preventing them from being sick in invisible ways.”
— As reported in the Washington Examiner
Of course, Ms. Shvetsova is not a medical doctor, and it’s reasonable to doubt that politics represents any kind of science
at all, but just a pretense of it in order to affect some academic
respectability. Which prompts one to wonder: what shreds of
respectability remain in the universities run by Jacobin maniacs?
(Answer: almost none, and zero cred, too, lately, and note that having
surrendered entirely to this kind of intellectual racketeering, higher
ed is just another major institution whirling around the drain.)
There’s a lot to marvel at, though, in the manifold insanity of Ms.
Shvetsova’s quoted views, starting with its overall totalitarian gusto.
No ambiguity there about the need for coercion, for pushing people
around, with no reference to legal niceties. (Note, political science is a field apart from the study of law, which doesn’t pretend to be science.) The bit I love most is: “It’s about preventing [citizens] from being sick in invisible ways.”
Huh…? You know what else is invisible? Your thoughts. You could be
harboring hostile thoughts about the folks who seek to push you around,
which could lead to the accusation that you are an enemy of the state!
Prof. Shvetsova was not the only one out of her lane in the Covid
thunderdome this week. Wall Street shill Jim Cramer took a few minutes
off of pimping stocks on his CNBC-TV show to declare that the US army
should be used to force vaccinations on the vax-resistant. “Acting
President” Anthony Fauci and his political advisor, “Joe Biden,” used
the hatching of Omicron to beseech the multiply-vaxxed to booster-up —
overlooking the perhaps embarrassing reality that the mRNA vaccines do
nothing to stop the spread of Covid, though they do have quite a
downside in relative harm from adverse reactions.
For instance, a new study and warning from the American Heart
Association concluded that mRNA vaccines dramatically increase risk of
developing heart disease between 11 and 25 percent. Twitter slapped an
“unsafe” warning on anyone attempting to transmit this news on its
sacred app. Unsafe to whom, or what? Why, to the sacred narrative,
of course, which is that the USA must be kept in a never-ending
paranoid uproar over Covid — certainly until at least past the 2022
elections, in order to maintain all the emergency main-in ballot
provisions that enable voting fraud.
Meanwhile, the emerging reality of Omicron is that it has a much
lower transmission coefficient than its predecessor, the Delta variant,
and produces only mild symptoms of illness. Someone should tell Acting
President Fauci that Halloween is over and he can stop trying to scare
everybody. Anyway, two federal judges rendered decisions striking down
Acting President Fauci’s vaccine mandates. The second ruling, penned by
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of Louisiana’s Western District,
featured a particularly lusty and detailed diagnosis of the mandate’s
constitutional impropriety, and extended the injunction against vax
mandates to all fifty states.
This leaves the USA in a distinctly exceptional position
among the other nations within the loose confederation of Western Civ.
Thanks to manifestations of sanity on the federal bench, the vax
mandates appear DOA here now, while Austria and Germany have rushed into
full-blown psychotic fugues over Omicron, announcing harsh punishments
for their unvaxxed and, coincidentally, wrecking another Christmas
season among people whose Teutonic devotion to the ancient pagan
solstice rites runs hot and deep. There is obvious awareness among
German vax protesters, as seen on their T-shirts and placards, that 2021
is looking like a nauseating rerun of 1933. Is it not amazing that the
German politicians don’t see that in their diktats?
The Covid psychosis is just a reassignment of the Trump derangement,
which was provoked by the generalized anxiety about collapsing
industrial societies. The reasons for the collapse are not hard to grok:
a declining resource base, especially affordable, economically
plausible oil, a financial system purposefully detached from
on-the-ground material reality, and sets of grossly foolish
over-investments in complexity in the techno-narcissistic effort to
work-around all that.
The epic Trump and Covid hysterias (with a side-dish of climate
neurosis) managed to distract the masses from those essential economic
quandaries. But now the breakdown in all the channels of production,
trade, and money is roaring in our faces, and just at Christmas time,
too, when the sore-beset people seek just a few weeks’ respite from
their travail and despair. Don’t be surprised by their rising fury over
this in the days ahead.
The case for compulsory vaccinations is dead…Omicron just killed it.
Kit Knightly
Yesterday, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, held a press conference where she talked at length about her “concerns” over the EU’s low vaccination rate, and how best to “fix” it.
When asked about making vaccines mandatory, she said:
It is understandable and appropriate to lead this
discussion now – how we can encourage and potentially think about
mandatory vaccination within the European Union. This needs discussion,
this needs a common approach, but I think it’s a discussion that has to
be led.”
Adding:
Two or three years ago, I would have never thought to
witness what we see right now, that we have this horrible pandemic, we
have the life-saving vaccines but they are not being used adequately
everywhere. And thus this is an enormous health cost,”
Of course, the idea that the EU nations are going to “debate”
mandatory vaccinations is a joke, they are more likely to enforce them
no matter what.
But any real, rational debate was over as soon as the EU and the vaccine manufacturers both admitted that the vaccines do not work.
The EU has already hinted that their vaccination passes (which, ironically enough, they appear to have been planning for “two or three years” despite von der Leyen claiming they never saw the pandemic coming), will expire in nine months.
Why will they expire?
Because the “protection” allegedly conferred by the vaccine wears off.
The alleged emergence of the Omicron variant makes the situation even
worse, from the establishment point of view. Indeed, it could be argued
the first real casualty of the Omicron outbreak was narrative cohesion.
Experts are already warning that the Omicron variant may be resistant to the vaccines, and the CEO of Moderna added his voice to this chorus yesterday, saying:
I think it’s going to be a material drop [in vaccine
effectiveness]. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for
the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to…are like ‘this is not
going to be good’.”
Even if these warnings prove incorrect, and the mainstream suddenly
backtracks and starts reporting that the vaccines work “better than
expected” to combat Omicron, that’s irrelevant.
They have just admitted that the “vaccines” could stop working the moment there is a new mutation. And viruses mutate a lot.
So, they know the vaccine’s don’t work very well, they know they will
wear off, and they know any new mutations could stop them working
completely.
The only thing they don’t know is what the long term side effects of the vaccines are, a fact admitted by Pfizer themselves in their supply contracts:
the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not
currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine
that are not currently known
Now, here’s the all-purpose disclaimer: This is not admitting that
Covid19 is dangerous, the pandemic real or in any other way endorsing
the narrative. Rather, and this is important, it’s pointing out that even on their own terms the establishment’s plan for compulsory vaccination does not make any sense at all.
The current narrative is that:
The vaccines do not confer immunity or prevent transmission.
What beneficial effect they do have wears off, they don’t know when.
They probably don’t protect against new variants or mutations.
The vaccines have unknown longterm side effects.
These are not fringe ideas or baseless theories, they are the
self-contradictory supposed “facts” of the schizophrenic covid story.
Going entirely by the mainstream’s own words, and completely on their
own terms, any possible case for mandatory vaccinations is dead.
The “Omicron variant” killed it, even if it never killed anything else.
the
problem with cancel culture and the aggrievement industrial complex
whose denizens deliberately cultivate an explosive attitude touchier
than a shaved honeybadger is this:
it makes it impossible to speak about the things that matter.
everything is a third rail or a sacred cow. touch them and die, profane them and be declared apostate.
this
is the societal equivalent of plowing salt into the fields of
discourse. it renders genuine intellectual pursuit and progress
impossible allowing only the weeds of tactical talking points to
flourish. such practice occludes truth rather than reveals it.
this
inevitably leads to all manner of hilarious and absurd inconsistencies
where 80% of the people in the world wind up on both sides of the same
issue because they cannot rotate the piece in their heads and realize
that it’s the same shape in both cases (a generally true fact about
humanity. you guys are awful at analogy and abstract-concrete-abstract
transformations.)
the cure for this is generally that some people CAN process information in this fashion, do so, and then speak about it.
debate occurs, analogies and comparisons sharpen, and the world starts to move toward general principles more broadly applied.
but,
if such debate is disallowed and/or people simply tune it out because
they have been taught to call doing exactly what they do on issue A for
issue B “racism” and thus not only persist in inconsistency but feel
validated and virtuous for so doing, everyone is isolated on their own
little solipsistic islands of call and repeat dogmatic tribalism.
there can be no dialogue nor consistency, only dog-whistling past the graveyard of the enlightenment.
this
is how you wind up with 6 foot tall high school biological males being
called “brave” for running in girl’s track meets, but a white woman
being pilloried as a cultural appropriator if she starts a taco truck.
gender is a social construct, but race and culture as manifested by
cooking with cilantro and onions are sacred properties of the universe.
this is how you wind up alone and bereft in clown world.
so let’s stop, shall we? let’s lose the fear and regain our speech.
words have power and being denied them inflicts a form of powerlessness.
it’s
not a coincidence that so many of the world’s religions start with “the
word” or place such gravitas in names and true names. this is because
the true name of a thing carries very real power both internally and
externally. properly naming yourself and your needs and foibles is the
cornerstone of personal health. i want X. i fear Z. i am insecure
about N. i AM me.
this is true outside as well. if you cannot
call hypocrisy hypocrisy or lies lies, you lose your power to define and
shape the world.
you have to live benighted by oppressive discourse that you may not challenge.
you have to live in fear.
this
is how performative “support for victims” and “anti-whateverism” have
become the bastions of bullies and bigots. it’s just the most socially
acceptable manner in which to engage in the nasty behaviors they were
going to engage in anyway. it’s an attractor for jerks.
this
weaves any issue with more complexity than fried dough into impossible,
unparseable gordian knots of special pleading and histrionic hectoring.
but once you lose the fear, most are not that hard to get to the bottom
of IF and ONLY IF you are permitted to speak freely and accurately
without fear or cancellation.
thus enabled, most wind up being
pretty simple. you just have to frame the issues correctly. this is
PRECISELY why those who seek to keep these issues alive as a source of
endless agitation and division are so determined to prevent you from
speaking these true names. it undoes their illusions and leaves them
standing naked and foolish. and wow do they know it.
“ideas so good you must not be allowed to criticize them” is not much of a mantra for seizing the moral and ethical high ground…
a lot of this comes down to making speech verboten. it has resulted in an endless tug of war over the social discourse overton window
(generally defined as the range of socially acceptable speech). this
partisan pulling as not expanded the window. it has fragmented it in
what a number of philosophers have described as an “epistemic divorce.”
(this is why no one invites modern philosophers to parties)
but
the point is no less valid for being made in terms of art. once you
become conscious of this structure, that one tribe can say X and the
other Y and that X and Y may no longer overlap, you’ll see it everywhere
both between groups and between spheres.
in many places, calling abortion murder will get you instantly attacked.
in others, failing to do so will get you similarly set upon.
these
two groups have lost the ability to even speak about an issue that is,
once more, or great currency and import. we see it in free speech, in
vaccine mandates, in rights to own guns, to pronouns, and to all manner
of stricture and preferencing on race and gender and creed.
we’ve
come apart because the words and the concepts needed to even discuss
these issues in meaningful terms have been stripped from us. it ripped
out the middle leaving only the extremes, yet the middle is where most
live. is it any wonder so few feel like things are going well?
more of it that one might suspect is just acculturation.
it
works like a speed trap. you see someone pulled over and everyone
slows down. you see someone get canceled or pigpiled by howling
concept-karens and you self-censor. soon, it seems normal to censor
yourself. everyone around you is doing it. it becomes accepted
practice despite the fact that most hate it.
more
sinister, it becomes difficult to realize that most people hate it
because saying so in public gets you attacked. so you rarely hear it.
we get relegated to complaining bitterly in small groups of trusted
friends. this engenders precisely the frustration and agitation that
divides a society where no real division need exist.
this
is how, just like a few police can slow a whole road, a few
hyper-aggressive hysterics can make themselves look like a dominant
majority.
and the answer to both is the same: if we all speed, they cannot stop us.
unlike officer friendly with his badge and gun, these winged monkeys of wokedom lack any moral or civil authority whatsoever.
you can simply laugh at them and if we all do it, they have no ability to stop us.
the
goal is to take back real, reasoned, nuanced discourse without taboo
topics, third rails, sacred cows, and all the nonsensically explosive
performative name calling of the crybully aggrievement armies on both
political extremes.
it just takes a little practice to get used to speaking one’s mind again and damn the torpedoes. but it’s worth it.
to this end, i’m going to start a new series within bad cattitude called “gato’s third rail diner” to start serving up some of these sacred cows on the very tracks we’re not supposed to touch.
perhaps we’ll get some guest authors.
i’m
not looking to offend anyone per se, but i suspect i will. the point
is to push the bounds of allowable speech and topics and retake the
ground we’ve lost.
some feathers may get ruffled. perhaps they will be yours.
but that’s no reason we can’t be friends.
we need to be people who HAVE ideas, not people who ARE their ideas.
the former can change their minds and/or be pals with those who hold differing views.
the latter take all disagreement as a personal attack. that is no basis for a civil society, much less a sane life.
so, in advance to those who get triggered: “eggs. omelets. sorry, not sorry.”
we need to stop playing with their stacked semantic deck and get back to the pursuit of truth.
Russiagate,
that fraudulent fable wherein Russian President Vladimir Putin
personally subverted American democracy, Russian intelligence pilfered
the Democratic Party’s email, and Donald Trump acted at the Kremlin’s
behest, is at last dead. 
Nov. 11, 2017, protest outside the White House, dubbed the “Kremlin Annex.” (Wikimedia Commons/Ted Eytan)
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