Global Collapse

"The end of growth" ?
Not so fast.
Once again, Bloomberg; vanguard of impartial quality content providers, show us the way forward, and dedicate an entire show to it :

https://youtu.be/145Cretviws

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/whole-planet-pot-and-were-all-frogs

I even saw a few months ago a cross-post from Tim Watkins' Consciouness of Sheep ...
Not typically popular with their standard audience if the commentariat is any indication, just as in any of Gail Tveberg's cross-posted articles there.
But despite the squirming from the cognitive dissonance such articles must provoke in these thoroughly indoctrinated crowds, the Tyler's keep on trying ... !

LOL

What year is this again ?

https://youtu.be/3yKJFysG2i0

Art Berman is staying on the list of people in the "no rainbow pukin' unicorn's coming" camp ...

March 7th Houston Geological Society video conference. 1:16:30 - 1:26:42


https://youtu.be/0GB08e7JoUU?t=4590

Angry Bear

The American Petroleum Institute, considering the Ukraine situation, advocates opening federal lands for oil production. Issue drilling permits, and anything resembling a regulation be round filed. Drill offshore and build pipelines like there is no tomorrow.

Who could have known the Hunter Biden laptop and the 2014 color revolution would lead to all this? The good thing is the American embarrassments mute saber-rattling against Putin's occupation of Ukraine. Putin acts to keep nuclear missiles out of the former breadbasket of the Soviet Union, and the breadbasket with its rich soils returns to Russia. It all makes sense to Russia, and I hope death stops soon.

* Good to see you Lucid!

Yesterday I had the misfortune to listen to a radio broadcast of NPR and American anti-Russian propaganda. I was driving. I managed to push the 'seek' button on my radio fast enough to find music and avoid throwing up. The thought came to me that a person would have to be stupid and totally out to lunch to take anything National Petroleum Radio was saying seriously, but it does not matter. I doubt most Americans take NPR propaganda seriously anyway. Most Americans who have any mental horsepower know that NPR went over to the dark side decades ago.

Not that it matters if anybody knows how NPR became the mouthpiece for American propaganda, or if the propaganda is true or false. The point of NPR is to cultivated compliance, and belief does not matter. What matters is people are passive, taking no action to prevent lies from being taken as truth. NPR cultivates a passive ideology of apathy, and apathy is compliance.

The pandemic brought uncomfortable truths to light. Common misunderstandings about freedom showed most people 'concerned' about global heating actually are not concerned. Disaffected people who don't understand issues in depth affect faux outrage. I make the mistake of thinking other people think as I do. Now more uncomfortable truths come to light, revealed by the Ukraine occupation. The number of people revealing themselves to possess shallow understandings grows.

Call it whatever 'ism' you will. Money rules the planet, and rich people have money. Most people are poor. Police and military keep the rich rich and the poor poor. That is the existing arrangement. Force keeps existing arrangements the way they are. Whatever they are. Division between rich and poor is maintained. That is the status quo which power maintains. Bullets are an effective and overt expression of power. Bullets or police with crowd control zip-tie handcuffs and tear gas. These are examples of overt control, and overt control maintains existing arrangements.

But the existing arrangement needs more control to be free of revolution. Overt control is not enough. Overt control can be challenged, so money controls what people see, read, and hear. Money controls public perception. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and Jeff is only one example of wealth owning power. Money owns mass media, defining perception of the present moment. Schools, religion, and other institutions provide ideology, a lazy and canned perception ready for all moments. Money controls what is taught, and to whom it is taught. Money brainwashes everyone. And most Americans can't find Ukraine on a map.

Nowhere in America is there any mention of Ukrainian self-determination or what is good for the Ukrainian people. Money does not want you to know anything about Ukrainians.

Armed conflict in the baby twins of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, started in 2014. The Donbass conflict has since killed over 14,000 people. If Putin puts an end to the Donbass conflict, Russia is not an invader. Russia becomes a peacemaker.

Putin's demands were to have The Crimea recognized as Russian, which it is. Demilitarize the Ukraine, declare it neutral, becoming a Black Sea Switzerland. Abandon plans to join NATO. Russia wants security. Who does not?

Americans don't consider the Russian perspective. There is no mention in America of the Ukrainian Civil War. In America, the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are unknown.

Instead, Putin is a demon and condemned in any way possible. Hating on Russia is a popular and socially acceptable American pastime. Internet psychologists and others accuse Putin of being mentally ill. I find it all disgusting. Vague claims of Putin being a bad person pass as facts. Actual facts go missing.

I am not an apologist for Putin. I don't know much more about Putin than most Americans do, which is nothing. But unlike everyone else, I admit my ignorance. I know a little more than nothing, and that is all.

According to Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Putin stole his Super Bowl ring. I don't care. If death in the Donbass ends and the Ukrainian, Russian, Donetsk, and Lugansk peoples can live in peace, I won't be hating on Putin no matter how popular hating on Putin becomes. Peace is worth a $20,000 Superbowl ring.

Hating on Putin is disgustingly popular. Facts about the Ukraine situation are not optional, in America facts about the Ukraine situation are unknown and eschewed. In America, actual knowledge of Russia and its relationship to the Ukraine is next to zero. Actual facts don't support the American narrative. In America, every means is employed to preserve ignorance.

* Good to see you too K-Dog
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Unfortunately, I have to completely disagree with you on this one...

Russia, nowadays, strong from their fossil fuel production, from the temporary benefits of "green revolution" type agriculture that relegates soil to mere nutrient sponge, and finally, strong from the cheap goods and cheap tech that China provided since its economic explosion; filling the gap in purchasing power and in the technology tree needed to achieve relative prosperity and relative self sufficiency; doesn't need Ukraine as bread basket per se, as Russia itself is now the top wheat producer, but it certainly remains a very nice and very substantial addition of better quality soil in more a permissive climate I'd imagine.

The problem is probably that the utterly Russian energy dependent Ukraine, getting rid of its necessarily corrupt Russian cleptocrat's henchman of a leader, made the move, probably a little too forcefully, to pivot commercially to sell it's output to western interests (and I supose in time, to turn to there corporate juggernauts for imports).
Of course, feeling the lingering Orwellian vibe still present in Russia, despite the country's accession to modernity and the internet ...asoasf  ... Ukraine's choice marked a strong preference for removable leadership but did not appreciate well enough how displeased the stunted former empire would be at losing cheap ag output, cheap minerals in somewhat less hostile climate than the tundra and siberia (!), economic rents and cheap labor 'synergy' from a cultural sibling.

NATO was never going to be a threat because of MAD.

I think it's a classic vulgar display of power brought about by strategic stupidity (on both sides), itself, brought about by ignorant leaders democracy tends to bring forth most of the time.
Probably compounded European blunders.
CERTAINLY compounded by the reckless invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and US posturing ...
CERTAINLY compounded by the surreal election of a retard followed by the incomprehensible selection of a senile train wreck as party candidate to "repair the damage".
CERTAINLY compounded by peak everything ...and democracies' studious ignorance of it, to borough RE's phrasing ...

Nevertheless, there is no way to rationally downplay Putin's and his inner circle's true leanings.
The poisonings, the Chechen war, the **** Riot music\activist band jailing, ... and just right now  (!)... the overtly Orwellian arrest of anti war protesters ...
It ain't exactly subtle.
 PUTIN IS A F***ING THUG.
This level of obtuse backwardness and uncalled for, incommensurate violence is just reckless.

The waste this is going to generate by means of destruction, armament production, supply chain dislocations ...etc, is just plain f***ng counterproductive at this point.

The Russian galley slaves should hold their oars still and get rid of unenlightened leadership once and for all.

Jesus **** christ ...

https://youtu.be/BvWAQqfi0gg?t=143

Quote from: UnhingedBecauseLucid on February 25, 2022, 09:41:33 am

... and again ...

https://youtu.be/1Ns52hzn2uU?t=86

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The incomprehension this must elicit in Ukrainians' ...

Along the lines 'we had you a colour revolution and put hunter on the board of burisma, used your training and weaponry to settle the score for the holodomer under Stalin. Now why aren't you declaring war on Russia and turning Moscow and DC radioactive?' 

Notice the script for the questions and answers on swift system do not include the obvious about alternative system they have set up and bilateral trade agreements bypassing the petrodollar. The upside is we have something/someone else to blame for the pain at the pump and the checkout now, nothing to do with the fukton of debt run up over the last two years

Quite so.
The SWIFT system even if circumventable still amount to a quasi war declaration ... and the debilitating effect on Europe is something they obviously don't seem able to withstand at the moment.

It's a clusterfuck allright ...