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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/05/31/us-troops-die-for-world-domination-not-freedom/

US Troops Die For World Domination, Not Freedom

Vice President Kamala Harris spent the weekend under fire from Republicans, which of course means that Kamala Harris spent the weekend being criticized for the most silly, vapid reason you could possibly criticize Kamala Harris for.

Apparently the likely future president tweeted “Enjoy the long weekend,” a reference to the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, instead of gushing about fallen troops and sacrifice.

That’s it, that’s the whole entire story. That silly, irrelevant offense by one of the sleaziest people in the single most corrupt and murderous government on earth is the whole entire basis for histrionic headlines from conservative media outlets like this:

Harris, the born politician, was quick to course correct.

“Throughout our history our service men and women have risked everything to defend our freedoms and our country,” the veep tweeted. “As we prepare to honor them on Memorial Day, we remember their service and their sacrifice.”

Which is of course complete bullshit. It has been generations since any member of the US military could be said to have served or sacrificed defending America or its freedoms, and that has been the case throughout almost the entirety of its history. If you are reading this it is statistically unlikely that you are of an age where any US military personnel died for any other reason than corporate profit and global domination, and if you are it’s almost certain you weren’t old enough to have had mature thoughts about it at the time.

Whenever you criticize the US war machine online within earshot of anyone who’s sufficiently propagandized, you will invariably be lectured about the second World War and how we’d all be speaking German or Japanese without the brave men who died for our freedom. This makes my point for me: the fact that apologists for US imperialism always need to reach all the way back through history to the cusp of living memory to find even one single example of the American military being used for purposes that weren’t evil proves that it most certainly is evil.

But this is one of the main reasons there are so very many movies and history documentaries made about World War Two: it’s an opportunity to portray US servicemen bravely fighting and dying for a noble cause without having to bend the truth beyond recognition. The other major reason is that focusing on the second World War allows members of the US empire to escape into a time when the Big Bad Guy on the world stage was someone else.

https://twitter.com/BanishedBernie/status/1399109694334046211?s=20

From the end of World War Two to the fall of the USSR, the US military was used to smash the spread of communism and secure geostrategic interests toward the ultimate end of engineering the collapse of the Soviet Union. After this was accomplished in 1991, US foreign policy officially shifted to preserving a unipolar world order by preventing the rise of any other superpower which could rival its might.

A 1992 article by The New York Times titled  “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls For Insuring No Rivals Develop“, reporting on a leaked document which describes a policy known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine after then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, reads as follows:

In a broad new policy statement that is in its final drafting stage, the Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to insure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territory of the former Soviet Union.

A 46-page document that has been circulating at the highest levels of the Pentagon for weeks, and which Defense Secretary Dick Cheney expects to release later this month, states that part of the American mission will be “convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”

The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.

This is all US troops have been fighting and dying for since the Berlin Wall came down. Not “freedom”, not “democracy”, and certainly not the American people. Just continual uncontested domination of this planet at all cost: domination of its resources, its trade routes, its seas, its air, and its humans, no matter how many lives need to risked and snuffed out in order to achieve it. The US has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century in the reckless pursuit of that goal.

And, as Smedley Butler spelled out 86 years ago in his still-relevant book War is a Racket, US military personnel have been dying for profit. Nothing gets the gears of industry turning like war, and nothing better creates chaotic wild west environments of shock and confusion during which more wealth and power can be grabbed. War profiteers pour immense resources into lobbying, think tanks and campaign donations to manipulate and bribe policy makers into making decisions which promote war and military expansionism, with astounding success. This is all entirely legal.

It’s important to spread awareness that this is all US troops have been dying for, because the fairy tale that they fight for freedom and for their countrymen is a major propaganda narrative used in military recruitment. While poverty plays a significant role in driving up enlistments as predatory recruiters target poor and middle class youth promising them a future in the nation with the worst income inequality in the industrialized world, the fact that the aggressively propagandized glorification of military “service” makes it a more esteemed career path than working at a restaurant or a grocery store means people are more likely to enlist.

Without all that propaganda deceiving people into believing that military work is something virtuous, military service would be the most shameful job anyone could possibly have; other stigmatized jobs like sex work would be regarded as far more noble. You’d be less reluctant to tell your extended family over Christmas that you’re a janitor at a seedy massage parlor than that you’ve enlisted in the US military, because instead of congratulating and praising you, your Uncle Murray would look at you and say, “So you’re gonna be killing kids for crude oil?”

And that’s exactly how it should be. Continuing to uphold the lie that US troops fight and die for a good cause is helping to ensure a steady supply of teenagers to feed into the gears of the imperial war machine. Stop feeding into the lie that the war machine is worth killing and being killed for. Not out of disrespect for the dead, but out of reverence for the living.

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https://stephenlendman.org/2021/05/biden-regime-hardliners-threaten-world-peace/

Biden Regime Hardliners Threaten World Peace

In London for a May 3 – 5 G7 Foreign and Development Ministers Meeting — ahead of a G7 Leaders’ Summit in June — interventionist Blinken bashed Russia and China while pretending to seek multilateralism the US abhors and doesn’t tolerate.

Saying “(i)t is not our purpose to try to contain China or to hold China down,” he falsely accused Beijing of acting “more aggressively abroad (sic)” and behaving “increasingly in adversarial ways (sic).”

The above is how the US operates on the world stage, not China, Russia, Iran, or other nations free from the scourge of its imperial grip.

The US-dominated West long ago abandoned what Blinken called “the international rules based order” — operating by its own rules exclusively.

China, Russia, and other independent nations on the US target list for regime change prioritize peace, stability, cooperative relations with other countries, and compliance with the rule of law — polar opposite how hegemon US and its partners operate.

Virtually all accusations made by the US about other nations apply to itself, not them.

Especially since Biden replaced Trump by brazen election fraud, the US represents too great a threat to humanity at home abroad to ignore.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the US of replacing diplomacy with illegal sanctions — what I call waging war by other means.

Dominant US hardliners reject normalized relations with nations free from their control.

Perpetual war by hot and/or other means is longstanding US policy — pursued by both right wings of its war party.

Peace and stability are considered threats to its aim for unchallenged global dominance.

At a Monday press conference with his UK counterpart, Blinken falsely accused nonbelligerent Russia of “reckless and aggressive actions” while pledging “unwavering support” for Nazi-infested, fascist Ukraine.

For his part, UK foreign minister Dominic Raab said the Boris Johnson regime stands “shoulder to shoulder” with hegemon USA.

He defied reality by falsely claiming that the US and UK support “open societies, democracy…human rights, and protecting fundamental freedoms” — polar opposite how their ruling regimes operate.

Blinken never misses an opportunity to publicly bash China and Russia.

He falsely accused Beijing of committing “atrocities in Jinjiang (sic), crack(ing) down on pro-democracy activists and politicians in Hong Kong (sic), and repress(ing) media freedom across China and in other parts of the world (sic).”

The above remarks and similar ones against invented US enemies aim to divert attention from its high crimes of war, against humanity, and other human rights abuses worldwide, including at home against ordinary Americans.

Continuing his war of words, Blinken falsely accused Russia of “reckless and aggressive actions” — again, what applies to hegemon USA and its partners, not Moscow.

Saying the Biden regime seeks a “stable…predictable relationship” with Russia and China is polar opposite its diabolical aim that’s all about wanting both countries and other independent ones transformed into US vassal states.

On North Korea, Blinken said the Biden regime’s policy is 

“complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

As long as Washington, NATO and Israel are nuclear armed and dangerous, the DPRK maintains its own stockpile to defend nation against the threat of US aggression that once before raped the nation and massacred millions of its people.

Separately in late April, Ukrainian puppet president Zelensky said he’s “ready” for war with Russia, his regime’s conscripts prepared to “stand to the last man.”

Washington uses colonized Ukraine as a dagger targeting Russia’s heartland.

A state of undeclared US war on humanity persists.

Since usurping power in January, Biden regime hardliners have been pushing the envelope recklessly toward possible direct confrontation with Russia and China.

If global war 3.0 erupts on their watch, it’ll be made-in-the-USA.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56554.htm

Syria’s Victory Stuns NATO Enemies

Syria’s presidential elections this week were a resounding success against a backdrop of 10 years of brutal, relentless war imposed on the Arab country by the United States and its NATO partners.
After a decade-long torment from terrorist mercenaries deployed covertly by the Western powers, as well as overt aggression from NATO military forces illegally attacking the country and from cruel economic sanctions warfare, the people of Syria remain defiant and independent.

President Bashar al-Assad was re-elected for a fourth seven-year term after winning 95 percent of votes cast. The achievement is stunning. It completely refutes – indeed makes a mockery of – the Western narrative depicting Assad as a “tyrant”.

Despite all the grueling hardships, the Syrian people turned out in droves to vote on Thursday. The turnout was over 78 percent with more than 14 million votes cast out of an eligible 18 million electorate.
There is no way the Western governments and their servile corporate media can spin this epic demonstration of popular defiance to their nefarious intrigues for regime change in Syria. Hence, the total silence among Western media about the election result. That silence is at once hilarious and damning of Western guilt over the real nature of the war in Syria.

It was always a foreign war of criminal aggression. If there was any justice prevailing in this world, Western politicians by the dozens should be tried for war crimes.

Before the election this week, the United States, Britain, France, and other NATO powers tried to smear the Syrian democratic will, labeling the ballot as neither fair nor free.

Well, the sheer numbers of people turning out to vote and the subsequent scenes of jubilation across Syria tell another story, one that confounds the Western propaganda and exposes the criminality of the NATO powers and their toxic media.

The Syrian nation has refused to bow after years of NATO-backed terrorism in their country. They have chosen their president – again.

The same kind of shameful silence in Western media has been seen numerous times before when the Syrian army liberated towns and villages from Western-backed terrorists. When people came out to greet their Syrian army liberators, the Western media simply ignored the reality despite having told their consumers beforehand that the Syrian army and their Russian allies were committing slaughter against “rebels” and civilian populations.

Not one Western mainstream media outlet has followed up to report on how Syrians feel about being liberated and of having their peaceful lives restored. That’s because Syrians would praise the leadership of Assad, the courage of the army, and the crucial help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. In other words, the West’s lies would be demolished by the truth, and so their media are compelled to ignore and keep silent.
For everyone around the world who desires justice and peace and the defeat of imperialism, the victory from Syria’s election is a glorious day to celebrate. Congratulations are due to President Assad. But more so to the people of Syria who showed that it is possible to stand up to the real tyranny, that of the United States and its lawless NATO rogue allies who wanted to destroy Syria in order to install their own puppet regime. Despite unspeakable barbarities inflicted on the peace-loving people of Syria, they have remained steadfast in their unity and determination for independence, regardless of their different religions.  The NATO ploy of trying to incite a sectarian war among Syrians failed because they knew all along who their real enemy was.

For those willing to see reality, Syria exposes the forces of evil in this world. The Western lying media tell us that Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and so on, are “bad” and are threatening global peace. The Americans and their NATO partners lecture and pontificate about “rules and order”. When it is they who are caught in the headlights of truth: they tried to destroy a country just like they have countless others. But that country – Syria – just showed its spectacular strength to overcome the evil designs of the United States and its minions in NATO.

Lamentably, Syria faces more trials and challenges from the continuing economic warfare being waged by US and European sanctions. Reconstruction from a decade of NATO aggression will not be easy. But with the help of Russia, China, Iran, and others, the Syrian people will win finally. They have just shown their invincible resilience beyond any doubt.  

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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay21/return-to-normal5-21.html

Do We Really Want to Return to "Normal" If "Normal" Is Destroying the Planet?

Change the incentives, and the outcomes change.

Ecologist Howard Odum provided a profound insight into human expansion, stagnation and collapse. He argued that humans are wired to maximize power output (i.e., consumption) rather than maximize efficiency.

In other words, humans are wired to strip the tree of every ripe fruit and throw a party, have more children and use the surplus food to feed an army of conquest. Efficient use of resources is simply not part of what I term Wetware 1.0, the set of tools that was selected and optimized over the past 200,000 years for small hunter-gatherer tribes roaming an apparently near-infinite world.

We've squandered the surpluses enabled by hydrocarbons to maximize energy output (consumption) rather than achieve efficiency. That is finally coming around to haunt the entire "infinite growth on a finite planet" status quo.

Here's the happy story being promoted by the status quo: we can keep overconsuming / wasting resources on a vast scale by electrifying everything that is currently powered by hydrocarbons: The Electrification of Everything: What You Need to Know.

There are a great many problems with this fantasy. One is that per Odum, humanity doesn't replace hydrocarbons with wind-solar, it consumes all the alt-energy being added, too. Adding energy just increases consumption.

Another is that the quantity of scarce minerals and resources needed to replace hydrocarbons with so-called renewable energy is so vast that it's unrealistic.

As I've noted many times, per analyst/educator Nate Hagens, "renewables" are actually 'replaceables', as solar panels and wind turbines wear out and need to be replaced every 20-25 years, if not sooner.

The scale of energy consumption is so vast and the percentage supplied by solar and wind is so insignificant. Most charts lump solar and wind with hydropower and biofuels (wood), but wind and solar provide at best 3% of global energy, after all the tens of billions of dollars that have been invested.

To provide the majority of global energy consumption, we'd need to increase solar-wind 20-fold, from 3% to 60%. The problem, as Tim Watkins explains, is the Earth doesn't have enough scarce minerals to build this monstrous global system, and then replace it every 20-25 years: Are you still buying this?

"Net-zero carbon dioxide by 2050 would require the deployment of ~1500 wind turbines (2.5 MW) over ~300 square miles, every day starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050."

"Challenges of using 'green energy' to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years' worth of total global copper supply and 10 years' worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms."

"To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles, assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world's lithium production and at least half of the world's copper production during 2018."

Every kilogram of these scarce minerals must be mined, transported and processed with hydrocarbons.

The problem with wind and solar is intermittency: modern industrial economies require steady electrical power 24/7 or they fail. Wind and solar generate power intermittently, meaning they can't generate a steady supply 24/7 nor can they generate electricity when consumers want to use it.

So the intermittency problem becomes a storage problem: how can we store surplus electricity in quantities large enough to power our vast consumption when the wind dies and the sun goes down?

There are no cheap, easy answers to storage, and ideas such as converting it all to hydrogen are not realistic due to cost and safety issues. There isn't enough lithium and other scarce minerals to build batteries for 2 billion vehicles and storage for every electrical grid on Earth. (And note that lithium batteries have very limited lifespans and need to be replaced every decade, if not sooner. Very few batteries are recycled, so recycling billions of batteries is also a fantasy.)

As Gail Tverberg observes in her recent post, How the World's Energy Problem Has Been Hidden:

"So-called renewable fuels tend to be very damaging to the environment in ways other than CO2 emissions. This point is made very well in the new book Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert. It makes the point that renewable fuels are not an attempt to save the environment. Instead, they are trying to save our current industrial civilization using approaches that tend to destroy the environment. Cutting down forests, even if new trees are planted in their place, is especially detrimental. Alice Friedemann, in her new book, Life after Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Fuels, points out the high cost of these alternatives and their dependence on fossil fuel energy."

Many people I respect see thorium nuclear reactors as the answer, but like all the other proposals to replace the staggeringly large consumption fueled by hydrocarbons with some other source, it's not as easy in the real world as it is conceptually.

India has reserves of thorium and has an ambitious plan to build thorium reactors. But the thorium nuclear fuel cycle is extremely non-trivial, and despite billions of rupees invested, India has yet to complete a single large-scale thorium reactor--and neither has any other nation. There are seven research reactors scattered around the world, but no actual power plants. India's Ambitious Nuclear Power Plan--And What's Getting in Its Way:

"With the commercialization and enhanced use of renewable energy technologies, the per unit cost of electricity produced from renewables has gone down significantly. The cost of solar power in India right now is Rs 2.62 per unit, almost half of the per unit cost of electricity being produced by the recently operational Kudankulam nuclear power plant (Rs 4.10 per unit)."

The problem is we've based our entire global economy on maximizing consumption, not efficiency, so that waste = growth = maximizing profits.

Consider this chart of energy consumption, and the chart of energy efficiency, which reflects the appalling inefficiency of our consumption.





Given that we incentivize profits earned from increasing waste (i.e. "growth"), this shouldn't surprise us.

As Tim Morgan has explained, our entire financial system presumes that money-finance is the master system that controls everything in the real world, when in fact the financial system is an overlay on the energy system. In essence, the entire financial system is nothing but abstract claims on energy that unlike energy can be endlessly multiplied.

Claims (currency and debt) can be created out of thin air, but energy systems cannot be created out of thin air.

The answer isn't to attempt to replace a disastrously inefficient and wasteful system with replaceable energy sources--a delusional fantasy. The answer is to set aside our Wetware 1.0 programming to maximize energy output and consumption in favor of maximizing energy efficiency and conservation.

There are a number of ways this transition could be made. For example, rather than tax human labor, we could tax the consumption of non-renewable resources.

UnTax--Taxing Away Climate Change:

"Yet the reason for this inertia is simple: the price we pay for fossil fuels, and most other non-renewable resources, is far too low, because we don’t pay for their creation which took hundreds of millions of years, but only for their extraction. To make matters worse, more than 90% of all taxes are paid on labor in most countries, which discourages employment and forces automation into every part of the economy.

This mix-up, a by-product of the industrial revolution, leads to pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, waste production and the unnecessary use of automation, which damages our ecosystems and at the same time deprives future generations of their right to access those scarce resources."

Do we really want to return to the "normal" of waste = growth = maximizing profit if this "normal" is destroying the planet?

Cutting consumption is anathema in the current mindset of waste = growth = maximizing profit, but the Pareto Distribution suggests we could cut consumption by 80% and still retain 80% of the essentials for a good life such as clean water, healthy food, basic shelter, etc.

As I posted in Musings #9, consider this short film of Market Street in downtown San Francisco shot a few days before the catastrophic earthquake and fire of 1906. A trip down Market Street before the fire (Library of Congress).

Life was pretty good in 1906 San Francisco and many other cities. Now look at the energy consumption around 1900: it was around 15 TWh compared to today's 160 TWh, roughly 10% of current consumption. And the engines and machines of 1906 were by today's standards extremely inefficient. Adjust for increases in population and efficiency and it's clear lower-consumption life is not necessarily a return to living in caves.





Do we really want to return to "normal" if "normal" is destroying the planet?

Waste is everywhere in our way of life because waste is profitable in the current arrangement. What would happen if waste was taxed at very high rates and efficiency was the sole means of maximizing profits?

Charlie Munger (head of Berkshire Hathaway) famously said: "Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome." That's how humans operate: we respond to the incentives presented, even if they destroy the planet.

Change the incentives, and the outcomes change. What if efficiencies and conservation earned the biggest rewards and human labor was freed from taxation? The outcomes would improve very dramatically--and that's just the start.

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https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/05/27/dont-expect-the-world-economy-to-resume-its-prior-growth-pattern-after-covid-19/

Don’t expect the world economy to resume its prior growth pattern after COVID-19

Most people seem to think that the world economy is going through a temporary disruption, caused by a novel coronavirus. As soon as COVID-19 goes away, they expect the economy will be back to normal. I think that this assessment is overly optimistic. The way I see the situation, the world economy was already having severe growth problems, caused indirectly by resource problems, even before COVID-19 hit.

In a growing world economy, a person might expect that workers would be getting richer, so that they could afford an increasing quantity of goods and services. What we really see is something very different. The number of new automobiles sold was falling in many major countries long before COVID-19 hit, even as population was generally rising. Clearly, something was seriously wrong.

Figure 1. Auto sales for selected countries, based on data of CarSalesBase.com.

As I see the situation, the world has a resource problem. Resources of many kinds, including fresh water, energy products, and minerals of many kinds were becoming more difficult (and expensive) to extract, even before 2020. Substitution might have worked if the problem were only one or two resources, but not with several major resources. Cutting back was the only answer.

Thus, the shutdowns for COVID-19 came at a convenient time, allowing economies that were already doing poorly to shut down. Needless to say, there was no world leader who was willing to explain this hidden issue to the world population. Instead, world leaders used standardized code words such as “we need to move to renewables” or “we need to reduce carbon use by 2050 to prevent climate change.” Unfortunately, the ability to move to alternatives in this time frame is simply an illusion, allowing world leaders to avoid mentioning the serious resource issues that the world economy is really facing.

I expect that within a few months, a new crisis of some sort (perhaps financial) will come along, further reducing resource use. This will happen, whether or not the problem of the novel coronavirus is solved. In this post, I will try to explain the situation.

[1] The world’s economy is a self-organizing system, powered by the laws of physics. It requires a mix of resources, including energy resources, to operate.

The laws of physics require that energy be “dissipated” whenever activities we associate with generating GDP take place. For example, if a person is to drive a truck, he/she will need to eat food for his/her own personal energy. This food is “dissipated” by digestion. If the truck is to transport goods, it will need to burn some type of fuel, such as diesel. This fuel is dissipated by burning. If a computer is to operate, it will need to dissipate electricity. If a room (or a liquid) is to be heated or cooled, some sort of energy dissipation will be required.

The world economy grows in a very orderly manner. It gradually adds population, as more babies are born than people die. All of these people need food and fresh water; they also need some type of housing and clothing to protect them from the elements. Ideally, they need some type of transportation in addition to walking. Businesses are formed to enable access to goods and services that fill these needs. Governments are also formed to provide services used by all and to regulate the system. A financial system is formed to facilitate transactions, among other things.

The world economy cannot slow down and quickly restart. This is especially the case for an economy that had already started slowing, even before the 2020 pandemic. If not enough resources of the right kinds were available to enable true economic growth before the pandemic, it is hard to see how the situation would be very much improved a year later.

One key to understanding how a self-organizing economy works is to understand that the economy is multi-sided. Businesses need to make an adequate profit, to continue in operation. Workers need to earn an adequate wage to raise a family. Customers need affordable prices. Shortages of inexpensive-to-extract resources can lead to many different problems: lack of profitability for producers, or too much wage disparity among workers, or too high prices for customers. Resource shortages can also lead to people with inadequate wages wanting to migrate. They can also lead to empty shelves in stores.

[2] Depleted coal mines near population centers in China have adversely affected the Chinese economy more than it tells the outside world.

China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001. The Kyoto Protocol mandated that 37 industrialized nations cut their greenhouse gas emissions. More than 100 developing countries, including China and India, were exempt from the treaty. This combination of events allowed China to greatly ramp up its economy, building many new roads, factories and housing units from concrete, with little competition from the 37 industrialized economies.

China had very large coal resources, which it ramped up (Figure 2). Of course, this greatly increased world coal consumption, an effect precisely the opposite of the stated purpose of the Kyoto Protocol–to reduce world CO2 emissions.

Figure 2. World and China coal consumption, based on data of BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020. China imported 7.4% of its coal supply in 2019, so China’s coal production would be similar, but it would hit limits a bit sooner and harder.

The problem that China ran into about 2013 was that its coal mines, especially those near population centers, began depleting. The cost of extraction started rising because the thickest coal seams, closest to the surface, were badly depleted. In theory, there was still a great deal more coal available from those mines if the price would rise sufficiently high. Coal from new mines that were more distant from population centers might also be used if the price would rise high enough to include overland transport costs.

Coal prices didn’t rise to match the higher cost of production. If they had risen, they would have raised the cost of many goods manufactured for export, making these industries less profitable. Because coal prices stayed too low for coal producers, over 70% of China’s coal companies were reported to be unprofitable by the first half of 2014.

China closed unprofitable mines and added new mines at more distant locations. China’s coal production has struggled in recent years. A constant problem has been keeping coal prices high enough to cover the rising cost of extraction and delivery to population centers. There are recent indications that coal supply is inadequate: Parts of China experienced rolling blackouts in the winter of 2020-2021, and warnings have been given to expect possible electricity shortages this summer. China has been accepting few coal imports, largely because it wants to keep its local prices sufficiently high that its own coal producers can be profitable.

China uses coal in many ways, including generating electricity, making steel, and manufacturing cement, which is the most important ingredient in concrete. Concrete is used in producing roads, bridges and buildings of all types, including high rise buildings used in many places in China.

Figure 3 shows that China’s cement production fell at a time similar to that at which coal production “flattened out.” This would not be surprising if a shortage of coal led China to cut back on its use of cement in order to save coal for electricity production.

Figure 3. Cement production for the World and China based on USGS data.

China, like other countries, has been seeing its population rise. Figure 4 shows coal and cement amounts for China on a per capita basis. This approach shows that, viewed on a per person basis, both coal consumption and concrete production have been falling since about 2013-2014. In fact, coal consumption began to fall slightly before cement production, suggesting that the fall in coal consumption is the cause of the fall in cement production.

Figure 4. Cement production from the USGS and coal consumption from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, divided by population from the World Population Prospects 2019 by the United Nations.

[3] A decrease in new home building in the United States after 2008, as well as the recent difficulty in ramping construction back up again, are further evidence that the world is reaching resource limits of some kind.

Figure 5. New US privately owned single-family housing units divided by US population, multiplied by a constant. This gives a measure of per capita growth in new single-family housing units. Chart prepared by the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Figure 5, above, shows that the number of new single-family housing units, relative to population, dropped dramatically after late 2005, early 2006. (This was when US Federal Reserve target interest rates rose, leading to higher borrowing costs for both builders and purchasers.) New home building plunged before and during the Great Recession. Building of new units has not ramped up very much, since then.

Even in 2020 and early 2021, the number of new units being started is very low by historical standards. It certainly wouldn’t be surprising if a lack of resources is part of what is depressing new home production. It may also be causing the spurt in resource prices (for example, lumber and copper) when new-home production does try to ramp up.

[4] World oil production seems to be falling for the same reason that China’s coal production stopped growing: Prices are too low for producers because of depletion issues. Oil producers cannot make an adequate profit, so they are reducing production.

Figure 6. World oil production through 2020 based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.

World crude oil production was at its highest level ever in 2018. It has fallen ever since.

Figure 7 shows that oil production has been falling in many parts of the world in recent years.

Figure 7. Crude and condensate oil production for selected areas of the world, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.

The shining star of crude oil production, at least until recently, has been the United States with its shale oil production.

Figure 8. US crude and condensate oil production for the 48 states, Alaska, and for shale basins, based on data of the US Energy Information Administration.

Unfortunately, with low prices, US shale oil is unprofitable. Shale production fell in 2020, and indications for the year 2021 are down as well.

Worldwide, the oil industry seems to require a price of $120 per barrel or more to make investment in new production profitable, and current prices are far below this. Part of this high price is required to provide adequate tax revenue for oil exporting countries that are dependent on this revenue.

[5] Relative to population, worldwide oil and coal consumption reached its highest level in 2007. It has fallen recently.

Figure 9. World per capita energy consumption, separated between “oil + coal” and all other. Data for 2019 and prior based on BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020. Figures for 2020 reflect percentage changes anticipated by the International Energy Agency in its Global Energy Review 2021.

Figure 9 shows that on a per capita basis, combined oil and coal consumption reached its highest level in 2007 and dipped during the Great Recession. It reached somewhat of a plateau in the 2011 to 2013 period, but started slipping in 2014 and had fallen ever since. Those who follow oil prices closely will notice that combined oil and coal consumption per capita tends to be high when oil prices are high relative to other goods; consumption tends to be low when oil prices are low. The lower per capita oil and coal consumption since 2007 would be expected to hold back the production of “goods” of many kinds, including houses, automobiles, roads and electrical transmission lines.

The “All Other” category is really not a stand-alone category. It depends on oil and coal for its pipelines and electrical transmission, among other things. Without concrete bases, it would be difficult to have wind turbines. Solar panels without steel supports wouldn’t work well either. In theory, if a huge amount of transition were done, perhaps steel and concrete could be produced in reasonable quantities with only the “All Other” types of energy, but someone would need to figure out precisely how this could be accomplished, including the timeframe required.

[6] Inadequate fresh water supplies are a problem in many parts of the world.

The standard approach to getting fresh water has been to tap underground aquifers and tap them at rates far greater than they are refreshed. In some places, this leads to saltwater intrusion; in others, it leads to a falling water table. Some examples of areas with water problems include California, Saudi Arabia, India, China, and Cuba.

There are ways to work around these problems:

• Digging deeper wells
• Piping fresh water from a distance, nearly always uphill
• Desalination

Implementing any of these workarounds for water shortages takes energy of different kinds, mostly coal (to make steel) and oil (for transporting goods and extracting metal ores). These workarounds make the cost of fresh water higher. Higher water costs are especially a problem for agriculture and for poor families, struggling with budgets that cover little more than the price of food and water.

If fixes for the fresh water supply problem cannot be found, irrigation will need to be cut back. Such a change would likely lead to a fall in world food supply.

[7] We are probably kidding ourselves if we think that production of semiconductor chips can be ramped up significantly in the future.

China is now a major producer for rare earth minerals, and it is practically the only processor of rare earth minerals. Semiconductor chips are created using rare earth minerals, water and huge amounts of heat in an exceptionally clean environment. The leading producer of chips is Taiwan, using raw materials from China. There is a long lead time required for building new factories. My concern arises because of the resource issues China and the rest of the world is facing.

We use semiconductor chips in many things, including computers, cell phones, automobiles and “smart” appliances. Without a ramp up in semiconductor chip production, many high-tech dreams for the future will likely remain only dreams.

[8] With a falling supply of coal and oil per capita and inadequate fresh water in many parts of the world, we have already reached the point where some types of “optional” activities need to be cut back.

An early optional activity that was cut back on was recycling. Oil prices fell in 2014, making the recycling of many types of goods, especially plastics, non-economic because the resale value of recycled products dropped with oil prices. China cut back greatly on its recycling efforts, effective January 1, 2018. Other countries have followed suit. China’s cutbacks on recycling allowed it to save its coal supplies (which were no longer growing, see Figures 2 and 4) for other activities that had the possibility of being more profitable.

In early 2020, cutbacks associated with the pandemic gave the world economy some “breathing room” with respect to resource shortages. Cutbacks in travel left more oil for other uses. Oil prices could drop back. This was especially helpful to countries that are big importers of oil, such as those in Figure 10, below. It is not surprising that some of the countries with the biggest oil import problems have been the most enthusiastic about travel cutbacks related to COVID-19.

Figure 10. Quantity of oil imported for selected countries, calculated in barrels of oil per person per year. Oil imports determined based on data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2020; population is from World Population Prospects 2019 by the United Nations.

[9] The world economy has a very serious resource problem. There seem to be three different approaches to hiding the problem, none of which will really solve the problem.

The serious problem that the world economy is encountering is the fact that the supply of both coal and oil are running short, especially when viewed on a per capita basis. The world is also very short of fresh water. China is affected as much, or more than, other countries by these problems. As a result, China’s future growth prospects are likely quite low, even though few are expecting this change. Without a continued strong forward “pull” from China, the world economy may be headed for “collapse,” a condition which has affected many civilizations in the past.

There seem to be three different approaches to doing something about the world’s resource limits problem, without mentioning the nature of the real underlying problem:

[a] Develop a “fear of future climate change” story by creating models that assume we have huge amounts of fossil fuels that can be burned in the future, even though the evidence is very much the opposite: We are “running out” of coal and oil right now, but in a different way than economists have theorized (low price, rather than high price). At the same time, argue that a transition to renewables (particularly intermittent wind and solar) is possible in the next 30 years. The fact that essential minerals for such a change, including copper and lithium, are themselves in short supply relative to the incredibly large quantities required, is overlooked. No one stops to calculate the true cost, measured in energy products and other materials, required by such a transition, either.

[b] Create a “fear of the coronavirus” story, and use it to keep people inside and away from traveling as much as possible. Emphasize the possibility of mutations. If people cut back on traveling, it saves oil. If they cut back on eating out and large celebrations such as weddings, it reduces food wastage. If a pandemic takes place, politicians can use it as an excuse to mitigate problems of many kinds:

• Reduce the need for imported oil, by keeping citizens at home
• Keep factories closed, without disclosing that the factories could not really operate at full capacity because of inadequate orders or missing raw materials
• Use shutdowns to keep order in areas disrupted by uprisings related to low wages
• Hide the problem of many failing stores and businesses behind a new “temporary” problem
• Give the politician a new sense of control with new rules related to the epidemic

It is disturbing that back in 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation was looking at using pandemics to control people when the foundation was examining possible workarounds for too large a population relative to resources.

[c] Hide the existing resource problem with more debt, to the extent possible. In fact, having a circulating coronavirus has assisted in this effort because everyone can see the need for more debt on a temporary basis, “until this problem goes away.” Of course, the resource problem is not going away, which means the world is likely headed for serious financial problems when the economy tries to ramp up again. See my post, Headed for a Collapsing Debt Bubble.

[10] My expectation is that the world economy will try to bounce back from this pandemic, but it won’t really be able to bounce back.

There really aren’t enough resources of any kind to pull the world economy much farther forward. A day of reckoning seems to be coming, probably in the next few months. The financial system looks like it is the weakest link. If the world economy dramatically slows, borrowers will not be able to repay debt with interest. There may be rapid shifts in currency relativities, disrupting derivatives markets. International trade will become less and less possible, perhaps taking place only among a few trusted partners.

We seem to be headed for a rapidly changing world economy, and unfortunately not for the better.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56546.htm

Israel’s real character as a xenophobic, apartheid horror of a state

Because Palestinians resisted having their lands and homes stolen by Israelis, its Zionist government inflicted yet another in their series of murderous assaults on that captive, victim people. This barbarity it pretends to justify on grounds of “self defense”.

Though a child can see through the blatant dishonesty of that absurd claim, American media can’t. The PR arm of our corrupt, deceiving Deep State frames—as it always has—the latest Israeli massacre as a contest of equals, matched opponents, not a clear case of the sadist Zionist army shooting fish in a barrel.

Israel attempts to deflect criticism of the sickening brutality of its Einsatzgruppen military style on grounds that criticism of that sick, evil, murderous state is reprehensible “Anti-Semitism”. This trope, invented by the Holocaust Industry .  it has assiduously cultivated ever since that grim Nazi horror, is run up the flagpole whenever Zionist governments need cover for the criminal, racist violence they perpetrate at will on demonized Palestinians.

It is so ethically corrupt, so logically null and rationally false, that it would be laughable if it were not weaponized to attack, malign, and silence courageous, honest, honorable critics, and stop valid criticism of that profoundly cruel, rabid, racist state and society.

Consider: I’m an American sickened by my own government’s murderous, imperialist/militarist violence which I vigorously condemn. Does that mean I hate fellow Americans? That I’m “anti-American”..? Does hatred of the regimes of Bolsonaro, Modi, and bin Salman make me anti-Brazilian, anti-Indian, anti-Saudi? Clearly, to say so would be a malicious, dishonest slur, exactly what Israel’s bogus accusations of “anti-Semitism” are.

This cynical con—not believed even by Zionist snake-oil hustlers who peddle it—exposes Israel’s real character as a xenophobic, apartheid horror of a state. It is not only possible to be violently anti-Israel but not anti-Semitic—q.e.d.—it is ethically mandatory for a person of conscience to be so, given the unending brutality and shameless, inhuman savagery of Israel toward Palestinians.

Tragically, for Palestinians, western governments are themselves enmeshed in the anti-Semitism nonsense, out of serious guilt about the Nazi Holocaust atrocity since not a single powerful nation lifted a hand to prevent it. Zionists parlayed this guilt into illegal de facto title to a land stolen from an innocent resident people entirely blameless in the European Jews’ decimation.

Now, after years of complicity with Israeli crimes and locked into lucrative military/financial ties, governments of the U.S and U.K. are awash in effusions of mock concern at the rape they enabled and funded, as this powerful fascist monster, their protege and partner, wreaks its unbridled animosity on its all but impotent prisoner people. And America is the cynosure of this hypocrisy.

It could not be otherwise. After lift-off of the Zionist Project with the British Balfour Declaration, bloody combat exploded between Brit military and Jewish terrorist guerrillas of Haganah, Irgun, and the Stern Gang when the British mandate ended and the killers assaulted Palestine. As Brits fled, the United States took over as champion of those murdering, raping invaders, tacitly backing every horror of Zionist violence, and turning a blind eye to the bloody ravaging of Palestinians in the nightmare of the Nakba.

In that massacre, Zionists drove 700,000 innocent Palestinians at gunpoint from their homeland, obliterated 500 of their villages, and robbed, violated, and murdered hundreds of helpless people.

Zionist Israel has since used the Holocaust as justification for surprise attacks on neighboring Arab states to expand its lebensraum and establish a “"Greater Israel - ”, in the process occupying by armed force lands of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.
All their piratical, so-called “wars” were sold to the world as desperate responses and heroic defenses of poor, victimized Israel, and the American government and press affirmed it, even when America’s own troops were victims of Israeli violence.

Israeli fighter planes attacked and shot up the USS Liberty, which it knew was an American spy ship, in the Six Day War, killing 34 seamen and wounding 171. That Zionist high-command called it a mistake was no shock; that the U.S. government—knowing it was a lie—ate it, buried it, and lied about it to Americans was.

Kowtowing to that rogue state—which has denied having nuclear weapons all the world knows they have, and has refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty—is baked into American policy. The reason, once simple if dishonest, is now complex and dishonest.

Since Israel’s rape of Palestine, the U.S. gifted billions of dollars in commercial, industrial, and military charity to build a hired ally to buttress American hegemony in the Middle East. While this once seemed feasible, events in recent decades have proven decisively that Israel, with its now suspect military chops, is far more a liability to the U.S. than an asset, and that it may be so loose a cannon as to suck America into a catastrophe that will blow what little remains of our gut-shot dominance there to bits.

So, if Israel’s role as U.S. Marshall in Levantine Dodge is dubious, what does keep the murderous Zionist regime on the U.S. take? Well, what is it that keeps our corrupt, imbecile Congress oiled, kneeling, and subservient to Israel? Is that even in question? Have you seen AIPAC’s political donations lately, or the trainloads of money doled out by PACs, individuals, and corporations allied with it? All that loot is from super-wealthy, right-wing, Zionist American Jews for defense of their beloved criminal Israel. In bankrolling it they are subverting and betraying us and our future.

Oh, I can’t say that? It’s anti-Semitic? Bullshit!

....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56550.htm

Selling Death: America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales)

And Again… and Again… and Again

In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37 percent of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington’s threat du jour, China.

Sadly, this was no surprise to arms-trade analysts.  The U.S. has held that top spot for 28 of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers regardless of which party held power in the White House or Congress.

This is, of course, the definition of good news for weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, even if it’s bad news for so many of the rest of us, especially those who suffer from the use of those arms by militaries in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates.  The recent bombing and leveling of Gaza by the U.S.-financed and supplied Israeli military is just the latest example of the devastating toll exacted by American weapons transfers in these years.

While it is well known that the United States provides substantial aid to Israel, the degree to which the Israeli military relies on U.S. planes, bombs, and missiles is not fully appreciated. According to statistics compiled by the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, the United States has provided Israel with $63 billion in security assistance over the past two decades, more than 90 percent of it through the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing, which provides funds to buy U.S. weaponry.  But Washington’s support for the Israeli state goes back much further. Total U.S. military and economic aid to Israel exceeds $236 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars) since its founding — nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.

King of the Arms Dealers

Donald Trump, sometimes referred to by President Joe Biden as “the other guy,” warmly embraced the role of arms-dealer-in-chief and not just by sustaining massive U.S. arms aid for Israel, but throughout the Middle East and beyond.  In a May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia — his first foreign trip — Trump would tout a mammoth (if, as it turned out, highly exaggerated) $110-billion arms deal with that kingdom.

On one level, the Saudi deal was a publicity stunt meant to show that President Trump could, in his own words, negotiate agreements that would benefit the U.S. economy. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a pal of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the architect of Saudi Arabia’s devastating intervention in Yemen, even put in a call to then-Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson. His desire: to get a better deal for the Saudi regime on a multibillion-dollar missile defense system that Lockheed was planning to sell it.  The point of the call was to put together the biggest arms package imaginable in advance of his father-in-law’s trip to Riyadh.

When Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia to immense local fanfare, he milked the deal for all it was worth. Calling the future Saudi sales “tremendous,” he assured the world that they would create “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States.

That arms package, however, did far more than burnish Trump’s reputation as a deal maker and jobs creator.  It represented an endorsement of the Saudi-led coalition’s brutal war in Yemen, which has now resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter of a million people and put millions of others on the brink of famine.

And don’t for a second think that Trump was alone in enabling that intervention. The kingdom had received a record $115 billion in arms offers — notifications to Congress that don’t always result in final sales — over the eight years of the Obama administration, including for combat aircraft, bombs, missiles, tanks, and attack helicopters, many of which have since been used in Yemen.

After repeated Saudi air strikes on civilian targets, the Obama foreign-policy team finally decided to slow Washington’s support for that war effort, moving in December 2016 to stop a multibillion-dollar bomb sale. Upon taking office, however, Trump reversed course and pushed that deal forward, despite Saudi actions that Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) said “look like war crimes to me.”

Trump made it abundantly clear, in fact, that his reasons for arming Saudi Arabia were anything but strategic.  In an infamous March 2018 White House meeting with Mohammed bin Salman, he even brandished a map of the United States to show which places were likely to benefit most from those Saudi arms deals, including election swing states Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

He doubled down on that economic argument after the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at that country’s consulate in Istanbul, even as calls to cut off sales to the regime mounted in Congress.  The president made it clear then that jobs and profits, not human rights, were paramount to him, stating:

    “$110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!”

And so it went.  In the summer of 2019 Trump vetoed an effort by Congress to block an $8.1-billion arms package that included bombs and support for the Royal Saudi Air Force and he continued to back the kingdom even in his final weeks in office. In December 2020, he offered more than $500 million worth of bombs to that regime on the heels of a $23-billion package to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its partner-in-crime in the Yemen war.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE weren’t the only beneficiaries of Trump’s penchant for selling weapons.  According to a report by the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, his administration made arms sales offers of more than $110 billion to customers all over the world in 2020, a 75 percent increase over the yearly averages reached during the Obama administration, as well as in the first three years of his tenure.

Will Biden Be Different?

Advocates of reining in U.S. weapons trafficking took note of Joe Biden’s campaign-trail pledge that, if elected, he would not “check our values at the door” in deciding whether to continue arming the Saudi regime.  Hopes were further raised when, in his first foreign policy speech as president, he announced that his administration would end “support for offensive operations in Yemen” along with “relevant arms sales.”

That statement, of course, left a potentially giant loophole on the question of which weapons would be considered in support of “offensive operations,” but it did at least appear to mark a sharp departure from the Trump era.  In the wake of Biden’s statement, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE were indeed put on hold, pending a review of their potential consequences.

Three months into Biden’s term, however, the president’s early pledge to rein in damaging arms deals are already eroding. The first blow was the news that the administration would indeed move forward with a $23-billion arms package to the UAE, including F-35 combat aircraft, armed drones and a staggering $10 billion worth of bombs and missiles.

The decision was ill-advised on several fronts, most notably because of that country’s role in Yemen’s brutal civil war. There, despite scaling back its troops on the ground, it continues to arm, train and finance 90,000 militia members, including extremist groups with links to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The UAE has also backed armed opposition forces in Libya in violation of a United Nations embargo, launched drone strikes there that killed scores of civilians and cracked down on dissidents at home and abroad. It regularly makes arbitrary arrests and uses torture.  If arming the UAE isn’t a case of “checking our values at the door,” it’s not clear what is.

To its credit, the Biden administration committed to suspending two Trump bomb deals with Saudi Arabia.  Otherwise, it’s not clear what (if any) other pending Saudi sales will be deemed “offensive” and blocked. Certainly, the new administration has allowed U.S. government personnel and contractors to help maintain the effectiveness of the Saudi Air Force and so has continued to enable ongoing air strikes in Yemen that are notorious for killing civilians.

The Biden team has also failed to forcefully pressure the Saudis to end their blockade of that country, which United Nations agencies have determined could put 400,000 Yemeni children at risk of death by starvation in the next year.

In addition, the Biden administration has cleared a sale of anti-ship missiles to the Egyptian regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the most repressive government in that nation’s history, helmed by the man Donald Trump referred to as “my favorite dictator.”  The missiles themselves are in no way useful for either internal repression or that country’s scorched-earth anti-terror campaign against rebels in its part of the Sinai peninsula — where civilians have been tortured and killed, and tens of thousands displaced from their homes — but the sale does represent a tacit endorsement of the regime’s repressive activities.

Guns, Anyone?

While Biden’s early actions have undermined promises to take a different approach to arms sales, the story isn’t over.  Key members of Congress are planning to closely monitor the UAE sale and perhaps intervene to prevent the delivery of the weapons.  Questions have been raised about what arms should go to Saudi Arabia and reforms that would strengthen Congress’s role in blocking objectionable arms transfers are being pressed by at least some members of the House and the Senate. 

One area where Biden could readily begin to fulfill his campaign pledge to reduce the harm to civilians from U.S. arms sales would be firearms exports.  The Trump administration significantly loosened restrictions and regulations on the export of a wide range of guns, including semi-automatic firearms and sniper rifles. As a result, such exports surged in 2020, with record sales of more than 175,000 military rifles and shotguns.

In a distinctly deregulatory mood, Trump’s team moved sales of deadly firearms from the jurisdiction of the State Department, which had a mandate to vet any such deals for possible human-rights abuses, to the Commerce Department, whose main mission was simply to promote the export of just about anything.  Trump’s “reforms” also eliminated the need to pre-notify Congress on any major firearms sales, making it far harder to stop deals with repressive regimes.

As he pledged to do during his presidential campaign, Biden could reverse Trump’s approach without even seeking congressional approval. The time to do so is now, given the damage such gun exports cause in places like the Philippines and Mexico, where U.S.-supplied firearms have been used to kill thousands of civilians, while repressing democratic movements and human-rights defenders.

Who Benefits?

Beyond the slightest doubt, a major — or perhaps even the major — obstacle to reforming arms sales policies and practices is the weapons industry itself. That includes major contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and General Dynamics that produce fighter planes, bombs, armored vehicles, and other major weapons systems, as well as firearms makers like Sig Sauer.

Raytheon stands out in this crowd because of its determined efforts to push through bomb sales to Saudi Arabia and the deep involvement of its former (or future) employees with the U.S. government.  A former Raytheon lobbyist, Charles Faulkner, worked in the Trump State Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and was involved in deciding that Saudi Arabia was not — it was! — intentionally bombing civilians in Yemen. He then supported declaring a bogus “emergency” to ram through the sale of bombs and of aircraft support to Saudi Arabia.

Raytheon has indeed insinuated itself in the halls of government in a fashion that should be deeply troubling even by the minimalist standards of the twenty-first-century military-industrial complex. Former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper was Raytheon’s chief in-house lobbyist before joining the administration, while current Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin served on Raytheon’s board of directors.  While Austin has pledged to recuse himself from decisions involving the company, it’s a pledge that will prove difficult to verify.

Arms sales are Big Business — the caps are a must! — for the top weapons makers.  Lockheed Martin gets roughly one-quarter of its sales from foreign governments and Raytheon five percent of its revenue from Saudi sales.  American jobs allegedly tied to weapons exports are always the selling point for such dealings, but in reality, they’ve been greatly exaggerated.

At most, arms sales account for just more than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. Many such sales, in fact, involve outsourcing production, in whole or in part, to recipient nations, reducing the jobs impact here significantly. Though it’s seldom noted, virtually any other form of spending creates more jobs than weapons production. In addition, exporting green-technology products would create far larger global markets for U.S. goods, should the government ever decide to support them in anything like the way it supports the arms industry.

Given what’s at stake for them economically, Raytheon and its cohorts spend vast sums attempting to influence both parties in Congress and any administration.  In the past two decades, defense companies, led by the major arms exporting firms, spent $285 million in campaign contributions alone and $2.5 billion on lobbying, according to statistics gathered by the Center for Responsive Politics.  Any changes in arms export policy will mean forcefully taking on the arms lobby and generating enough citizen pressure to overcome its considerable influence in Washington.

Given the political will to do so, there are many steps the Biden administration and Congress could take to rein in runaway arms exports, especially since such deals are uniquely unpopular with the public.  A September 2019 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, for example, found that 70 percent of Americans think arms sales make the country less safe.

The question is: Can such public sentiment be mobilized in favor of actions to stop at least the most egregious cases of U.S. weapons trafficking, even as the global arms trade rolls on?  Selling death should be no joy for any country, so halting it is a goal well worth fighting for. Still, it remains to be seen whether the Biden administration will ever limit weapons sales or if it will simply continue to promote this country as the world’s top arms exporter of all time.

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https://www.minds.com/CorbettReport/blog/mit-covid-skeptics-champion-science-1243196579867037696

MIT: Covid Skeptics Champion Science

So you know how anyone who points out any problems with the rush to inject everyone on the planet with an experimental form of gene therapy is portrayed as a stupid, scientifically illiterate, COVID denying, grandma killing anti-vaxxer by the dinosaur media?

And you know how any of your attempts to articulate these problems to your (former) friends will get you labeled as an anti-science loony and castigated from society?

Well, imagine if a team of researchers from a prestigious scientific institution infiltrated the COVID skeptic community to expose their scientific ignorance . . . and instead ended up discovering that the skeptics by and large care more about science—and are more knowledgeable about the scientific process—than their critics?

Guess what? You can stop imagining, because that's exactly what just happened. 

In this case, the researchers are from MIT, and their paper, "Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online," was published with little fanfare this past January.

It's not hard to see why this paper was overlooked. If one merely skims through the paper's abstract, it seems relatively innocuous. The researchers aim, we are informed, is to better understand how COVID skeptics use data visualizations to spread "[c]ontroversial understandings of the coronavirus pandemic" on social media. To do this, they used "a quantitative analysis of how visualizations spread on Twitter and an ethnographic approach to analyzing conversations about COVID data on Facebook."

So far, so uninteresting. It's the researchers conclusions about these visualizations where the real fireworks go off.

The first clue comes in the abstract, where the paper's authors note "an epistemological gap
that leads pro- and anti-mask groups to draw drastically different inferences from similar data." (Bonus points if you recognize this point as the central conceit of my Same Facts, Opposite Conclusions episode of #PropagandaWatch from last November.) But buried further down in the article are a raft of observations that cause problems for those trying to assert that "anti-maskers" and "anti-vaxxers" are scientifically illiterate.

For example, we are told that "anti-maskers often reveal themselves to be more sophisticated in their understanding of how scientific knowledge is socially constructed than their ideological adversaries," that "their approach to the pandemic is grounded in a [sic] more scientific rigor, not less," and that "anti-mask users in particular were predisposed to digging through the scientific literature and highlighting the uncertainty in academic publications that media organizations elide."

The study even admits that, "calling for increased media literacy can often backfire: the instruction to 'question more' can lead to a weaponization of critical thinking and increased distrust of media and government institutions." (Yet more bonus points for those who recall Forbes' infamous Don't Do Your Own Research! pronouncement from last year.)

And, in one particularly remarkable passage, the researchers outright admit that the COVID skeptics are not only scientifically literate, but in fact pioneering new ways of incorporating data visualizations into their critiques of the scientific establishment:

"Arguing that anti-maskers simply need more scientific literacy is to characterize their approach as uninformed and inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: users in these communities are deeply invested in forms of critique and knowledge production that they recognize as markers of scientific expertise. If anything, anti-mask science has extended the traditional tools of data analysis by taking up the theoretical mantle of recent critical studies of visualization."

None of this is at all surprising to anyone who has spent the last year in the reality-based community, where the tricks and sleights-of-hand of the PCR test-driven casedemic have been exposed on a regular basis. But to find MIT researchers writing this up in a mainstream academic paper is rather remarkable. Reading these excerpts, you would be forgiven for thinking that establishment science had finally gained some self-awareness and realized how laughable it has become.

. . . But you would be wrong. No, somehow the paper manages to take these remarkable findings and shoehorn them back into a pat establishment-friendly narrative: These COVID skeptics' critiques of the mainstream consensus are completely wrong and we need to figure out how to get them to accept our pronouncements with less resistance in the future.

Even so, the paper is worth reading (especially the passage toward the end of the introduction where they echo my Science Says podcast with an acknowledgement that "there is no such thing as dispassionate or objective data analysis," but rather "stories shaped by cultural logics, animated by personal experience, and entrenched by collective action"). Also worth reading is the accompanying article from MIT News, which gives more insights into how the research team used "Deep Lurking" to infiltrate COVID skeptic communities and how they were amazed to find that skeptics' arguments are not only scientifically literate but "really quite nuanced."

So is it possible we're going to see a more open and constructive debate between the establishment consensus crowd and the skeptics as a result of these realizations? Of course not.

In case there was any question as to whether COVID skeptics will be treated fairly in mainstream debates going forward, we could look to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO)'s statement of April 30 for an answer. The CPSO, Ontario’s physician licensing body, are evidently so concerned about doctors daring to speak out on social media about the shoddy science underpinning the scamdemic narrative that they decided to put their foot down:

"The College is aware and concerned about the increase of misinformation circulating on social media and other platforms regarding physicians who are publicly contradicting public health orders and recommendations. Physicians hold a unique position of trust with the public and have a professional responsibility to not communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown statements and/or promoting unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19. Physicians must not make comments or provide advice that encourages the public to act contrary to public health orders and recommendations. Physicians who put the public at risk may face an investigation by the CPSO and disciplinary action, when warranted. When offering opinions, physicians must be guided by the law, regulatory standards, and the code of ethics and professional conduct. The information shared must not be misleading or deceptive and must be supported by available evidence and science."

In response, a group of physicians from across Canada signed a declaration of their own denouncing the CPSO and their inherently anti-scientific statement. In a section of their declaration specifically accusing the CPSO of denying the scientific method itself, they write:

"The CPSO is ordering physicians to put aside the scientific method and to not debate the processes and conclusions of science.

"We physicians know and continue to believe that throughout history, opposing views, vigorous debate and openness to new ideas have been the bedrock of scientific progress. Any major advance in science has been arrived at by practitioners vigorously questioning “official” narratives and following a different path in the pursuit of truth."

They then go on to decry the censorship of scientific debate, noting that it constitutes a violation of doctors' pledge to provide evidence-based medicine for their patients and that it violates the principle of informed consent, which, they note, is not just a "sacred duty" of physicians but also a legal obligation under the Nuremberg Code.

The declaration has so far been signed by 448 physicians and co-signed by over 11,000 concerned citizens from across Canada, but CPSO has yet to retract their order.

This is the state we have arrived at in the ongoing Orwellian nightmare of the COVID scam. Even mainstream researchers can no longer pretend that the skeptics are scientifically illiterate dunces, but it doesn't matter. Any and all dissenting voices are being squelched out at the organizational level. The establishment is closing ranks to defend its narrative.

This is not surprising to those of us who have followed the unfolding of COVID-911 and who know that—far from a seat-of-the-pants response to an out-of-the-blue and ultra-deadly pandemic—the events of the past year have been a long-planned series of actions designed to lead us through a biosecurity state into a Great Reset, and, ultimately, the end of humanity. Unfortunately, there are still relatively few of us who understand what is happening and many, many people whose ignorance about science, medicine, politics and economics has been effectively weaponized against us. These zombies will be the ones to lead us into the coming nightmare by clamouring for vaccine passports and forced "vaccinations" and all the other pre-planned "solutions" to this pre-planned crisis.

Case in point: this reddit thread where a vaccinated hospital worker casually admits that many doctors and nurses at his hospital refused to take the "vaccines" because they "didn't trust them." The response of the mindless lemmings to this deeply unsettling news? "That sucks to hear :( But I'm glad you got the shot!!"

So, if you are reading these words, congratulations: You are not a zombie. You are—as MIT admits—scientifically literate enough to have seen through the smokescreen of lies and manipulations that have bamboozled the masses. Of course, the bad news is that means you are now firmly in the crosshairs of both the establishment and their zombie hordes.

....

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay21/systemic-risks5-21.html

Systemic Risks Abound

For the past 22 years, every time the stock market whimpered, wheezed or whined, the Federal Reserve rushed to soothe the spoiled crybaby. There are two consequential results of the Fed as savior:

1. The Fed has perfected moral hazard: everyone from the money manager betting billions to the punters gambling their stimmy money is absolutely confident I can't lose because the Fed will always push the market higher.

What happens when participants are confident they can't possibly lose? They make ever-riskier and ever-larger bets. The entire nation is in the grip of a moral hazard mania, all based on the confidence that the Fed will always push every market higher--always, without fail.

2. Organic (i.e. non-manipulated) market forces have been extinguished. There is now only one consequential force, the Fed. All markets are now 100% dependent on the Fed responding to every bleat from every punter who's recklessly risky bet is about to go bad.

The Fed is now the perfect union of quasi-religious savior and Helicopter Parent: oh dear, our little darling got high and crashed the Porsche? Quick, let's save our precious market from any consequences!

Every day, Fed speakers take to the pulpit to spew another sermon about the Fed's god-like power and wisdom. The true believers soak up every word: golly-gee, the Fed is better than any god--it's guaranteeing I can get rich if I just leverage up any bet in any market!

The financial media obediently bows and scrapes to their savior, the Fed. With a savior like the Fed, you don't need a real economy or a real market--all you need is the assurance that the Fed will save every market from every consequence.

All this hubris is jolly while it lasts, but since risk cannot be dissipated, it can only be transferred, the Fed has transferred decades of fast-rising risk to the entire system. The entire system now rests on the Fed, a dependency that raises its own risks. By imposing moral hazard and crushing consequences, the Fed has stripped the entire financial system of self-correcting mechanisms. This is a surefire recipe for systemic failure and collapse.

There is no way to wean the system off its dependence on the Fed, and no way to restore organic market functions. The slightest reduction in the Fed's spew of trillions will crash the market, because there is literally nothing holding it aloft but Fed spew--monetary and verbal.

The problem with becoming 100% dependent on the Fed is any wobble will crash the system-- and diminishing returns guarantee a wobble. Consider this analogy: as the human body loses sensitivity to insulin, this triggers increasing overproduction of insulin, a feedback loop which eventually breaks down.

The system's sensitivity to the Fed's spew of trillions of dollars and claptrap preaching is diminishing, which is why the Fed has moved from spewing hundreds of billions to trillions, and why Fed speakers who we once heard from once a month are now out in force every single day.

Remarkably, few anticipate any consequence from the Fed's perfection of moral hazard and the system's 100% dependence on the Fed's spew even as diminishing returns gnaw away at the efficacy of the Fed's ever more grandiose policies and pronouncements.

If you wanted to design a system guaranteed to collapse in a putrid heap, you'd make moral hazard ubiquitous and you'd make the system 100% dependent on a hubris-soaked faux savior. Hey, that describes America's economy and financial system perfectly.