The truth is obvious, at least here in the U$A. This virus, and it’s offspring, will be among us for quite a while. All because moron Americans can’t bring themselves to accept common sense safety protocols adopted by other nations.
But then hey, we’re too exceptional to do that. 800,000,000 deaths ARE exceptional.

Posted by: vetinLA | Dec 29 2021 18:55 utc | 3

After months of providing valuable Covid-19 information that runs counter to the official narrative, Twitter has finally banned Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology.
Only certain scientists have the right think
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twitter-suspends-mrna-inventor-dr-robert-malone

Posted by: ld | Dec 29 2021 19:05 utc | 5

Patrick Lawrence on Putin:
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/28/patrick-lawrence-putin-speaks/
It is becoming, thanks to bloggers like b and Gordon Doctorow, Patrick Armstrong and a growing number of others, easier and easier for ordinary citizens to understand that the media is entirely in the hands of the oligarchy, which owns it. When msm tongues are not voicing lies they are licking boots.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 29 2021 19:18 utc | 7

Public Shaming in China for Lockdown Rule Breakers

Posted by: ahji | Dec 29 2021 19:21 utc | 9

Adam Tooze on the energy crisis.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-64-energy-crisis-2021-the
Lots of good data, though Tooze tells the story entirely in terms of rising demand in China. He completely avoids discussion of EU refusing NS2 and generally doing their best to sabotage their most cost-efficient energy supplier. Perhaps his audience is not ready for that.
Still, it’s an important step that the severity of the situation is acknowledged — when the dust settles from the current Covid/Omicron episode, the next thing on the horizon is an energy-inflationary economic crisis from fuel, fertilizer, food, and whatever other basic industries get their input costs multiplied by 3x or more. Since many industrial customers locked in their prices well ahead of time, that impact arrives with a delay.
The recent rerouting of some LNG tankers from Asian destinations to EU is the mechanism by which, finally, EU and East Asian LNG prices should now permanently converge — until such a time as import capacity is maxed out, which may not actually happen. The charts also show what price levels to expect next year — $25/MMBtu give or take, everywhere except North America (which is again effectively an isolated price zone due to the limited LNG export capacity being maxed out). Compare that $25/MMBtu price level to the $6-$9 level of EU import prices in the several years before Covid. That should be the big take-away.

Posted by: ptb | Dec 29 2021 19:41 utc | 11

>>>those were cia trolls spreading bs about china
shame
Do you have a link to that? Looked like a lot of trolls, but I’ve only seen the vid, I can’t vouch for it.

Posted by: ahji | Dec 29 2021 20:09 utc | 13

Posted by: ptb | Dec 29 2021 19:41 utc | 11
Adam Tooze does what you would expect from someone who writes for the Financial Times. 2 weeks ago he was forwarding an article about a supposedly missing Chinese business woman (who wasn’t even missing at all) on Twitter, right at the same time that Peng Shuai non-story went viral.
Posted by: ahji | Dec 29 2021 19:21 utc | 9
Those weren’t covid rule breakers but human traffickers

Posted by: vato | Dec 29 2021 20:25 utc | 15

Relaxed Rules..
In a turbulent period in which the protection of people’s lives is a priority for everyone, with so many administrative burdens on everyday life, it is fortunate that a country, always ahead of a medical decision, has finally decided to free up initiatives and lift the constraints on its young people.

The Israeli army relaxes its rules of fire against Palestinian civilians.
Soldiers will be able to open fire on stone throwers and Molotov cocktails, even after the fact. By allowing its soldiers to fire with live ammunition at stone throwers or Molotov cocktails, even if they no longer pose an immediate threat, the Israeli army has considerably relaxed its firing rules in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank. The news, which was revealed by the state-owned TV channel Kan on 19 December, was confirmed by several military spokespersons on the pretext of anonymity. In its public statements, the military maintains a kind of blur: “Operational procedures are regularly updated as necessary. Since they are classified as a security secret, they cannot be published. »
Translated from
French Mainstream Newspapers

L’armée israélienne assouplit ses règles de tir contre les civils palestiniens
Les soldats pourront ouvrir le feu sur des lanceurs de pierres et de cocktails Molotov, même après les faits.
En autorisant ses soldats à tirer à balles réelles sur des lanceurs de pierres ou de cocktails Molotov, même s’ils ne constituent plus une menace immédiate, l’armée israélienne a considérablement assoupli ses règles de tir dans les territoires palestiniens de Cisjordanie. L’information, révélée par la chaîne de télévision publique Kan le 19 décembre, a été confirmée par plusieurs porte-paroles des forces militaires sous couvert d’anonymat. Dans ses déclarations publiques, l’armée maintient une forme de flou : « Les procédures opérationnelles sont régulièrement mises à jour si nécessaire. Etant classées secret-défense, elles ne peuvent pas être publiées. »

blockquote
https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/12/28/l-armee-israelienne-assouplit-ses-regles-de-tir-contre-les-civils-palestiniens_6107504_3210.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1640688738-1

Posted by: MineHop | Dec 29 2021 20:49 utc | 17

I thought Bernhard b, ran the best blog. I had just bought a real Christmas Tree, and was feeling happy. I sent Bernhard 10 Euros, via Paypal, and if I go through the logs, I will be able to find the transaction, and his surname, now seemingly deleted from the internet…
But I am almost completely deleted from the internet. I don’t blame anyone running their own blog, for deleting me. If I ran a blog, I would probably delete me too.
Even so I wish Bernhard a Happy New Year, and hope he is O.K. as a result of his Booster today. (My Ex isn’t – last I heard in A&E on Christmas Eve, 3 days after her booster)
I think Bernhard is an honest man, and he is more or less everything he says.
But now, I get the distinct impression, that blogs such as MOA, The Saker, Dmitry Orlov, and even Craig Murray, have been “compromised”, by Intelligence Agencies, including Off_Guardian. The people in Control, of Russia too.
I have no plans to send any of these people / blogs any more money.
I have no idea how to send money to Russia.
Riley Waggerman, recently featured on Off-Guardian, (he is an American living in Moscow), has got even better. So far as I know, he hasn’t had a go at Bernhard of Moon of Alabama, yet, but probably will if b survives his booster shot today.
You have got to be really good to take on both The Saker, and Dmitry Orlov, more or less at the same time (I have been a big fan of both for over 10 years). I am somewhat older than all of these people. 5 years older than Craig Murray, and aout 5 Years Younger Than Bernhard Hofftsman.
But Riley Waggerman is the new kid on the block. He also makes me laugh, which is quite a talent in times like these.
https://www.sott.net/article/462514-Is-the-Saker-is-a-Covid-propagandist
Tony

Posted by: Tony_0pmoc | Dec 29 2021 20:53 utc | 19

For those interested in what is happening in Mali and neighbouring countries, here is an (automatic) translation of an article by Bernard Lugan, a French historian who nobody listens to in his country because he is right-wing, which is being doubly white.
His excuse is that he has lived in Africa, knows it, is attached to it and has opinions that do not shock the Africans themselves.

In the Sahel, ten years after the triumphant welcome given to French forces, and after 52 of France’s best children fell in defence of Malians who preferred to emigrate to France rather than fight for their country, anti-French demonstrations follow one another. Military convoys now travel under insults, spitting and stone-throwing. On the road from Côte d’Ivoire, the situation is becoming so difficult that the question of supplying Barkhane is beginning to arise. At the end of November 2021, in Niger, after the death of several demonstrators who had blocked a French military convoy, the Nigerien government accused Barkhane… The French strategy of redeploying forces previously stationed in Mali to Niger will therefore be a balancing act…
The regional situation has deteriorated to such an extent that, for fear of demonstrations, President Macron has just decided not to go to Niger to meet regional leaders. Perhaps he will only go to a military base to celebrate Christmas with a French unit.
Why such a political disaster? After having driven ourselves out of the Central African Republic by the accumulation of our mistakes, are we going to experience a new and humiliating failure, but this time in the BSS [Sahel-Saharan Strip]?
As I have been saying and writing for years, and as I demonstrate in my book Les Guerres du Sahel des origines à nos jours [The Sahel Wars from their origins to the present day], French decision-makers have made a false analysis from the outset by seeing the regional conflict through the prism of Islamism. However, the reality is different, because Islamism is first and foremost the superinfection of age-old ethno-racial wounds that no military intervention is able to close.
In the North, it is the resurgence of a fracture that has existed since time immemorial, an ethno-historical-economic-political war waged by the Tuareg since 1963. Here, the solution to the problem is held by Iyad Ag Ghali, the historic leader of the previous Tuareg rebellions. Since 2012, I have constantly said that we should get along with this Ifora leader, with whom we have contacts and common interests, and whose fight is primarily about identity. However, through ideology, through a refusal to take into account the age-old ethnic constants, those who define French African policy have considered him to be the man to be killed… President Macron has even ordered Barkhane forces to eliminate him several times, until recently, when the authorities in Bamako were negotiating a regional peace directly with him… On 10 November 2020, Bag Ag Moussa, his lieutenant, had already been killed by an air strike.
The conflict in the south (Macina, Liptako, the so-called “three borders” region in the north and east of Burkina Faso) also has ethno-historical roots resulting from the age-old confrontation between Fulani and various sedentary populations. Unlike in the north, two very different wars are taking place there. One is the emanation of large Fulani fractions grouped under the flag of AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The other is indeed primarily religious and is led by the Islamic State, the EIGS (Islamic State in the Greater Sahara). The EIGS aims to create a vast trans-ethnic caliphate throughout the BSS (Sahel-Saharan Strip), replacing and encompassing the current states. On the contrary, the regional leaders of AQIM, who are ethno-Islamists, have primarily local objectives and do not advocate the destruction of Sahelian states.
With a minimum of tactical intelligence, by playing on the regional and ethnic balance of power, the question of northern Mali could have been quickly settled, which would have allowed a rapid disengagement enabling us to concentrate our resources on the “three borders” region, and thus against the EIGS [1]. However, contrary to what the military leaders of Barkhane were advocating, Paris persisted in an “American-style” strategy, indiscriminately “hitting” the GATs (Armed Terrorist Groups) and refusing any “fine-tuned” approach… “à la Française”… as our elders had succeeded so well in Indochina and in Algeria. The root of the problem is that, for French leaders, the ethnic question is secondary or even artificial, when it is not, according to them, a matter of colonial romanticism…
The most recent and caricatural example of ideological blindness was the reaction of Paris to the coup d’état of Colonel Assimi Goïta in Mali in August 2020. In the name of democracy, good governance and the rule of law, notions that are in the realm of political surrealism, France cut ties with the former commander of the Malian Special Forces, whose seizure of power was nonetheless an opportunity for peace. This Minianka, a minority branch of the large Senufo group, had no historical or ethnic disputes with either the Tuareg or the Peul, the two peoples at the origin of Mali’s two conflicts. He therefore opened negotiations with Iyad Ag Ghali, which upset the Parisian decision-makers. Mired in their ideological preconceptions, they did not take the measure of the change of context that had just taken place, and they continued to speak of refusing to “negotiate with terrorism”. Using this coup as a pretext, Emmanuel Macron decided to withdraw Barkhane, which was understood as an abandonment. To top it all off, Bamako asked Russia for help, and France threatened, which was denounced as neo-colonialism….
Based on a stubborn refusal to take into account the realities on the ground, this accumulation of errors has thus led to a dead end. The question now is how to get out of it without endangering our forces. And without our departure opening the door to a genocide for which we would be blamed. For the record, in Rwanda, it was because the French army withdrew that the genocide took place, because if General Kagame’s forces had not demanded their departure, the genocide would not have taken place.
Four major lessons must be drawn from this new and bitter African political failure:
1) The urgent priority is to know what we are doing in the BSS, so we must finally and very quickly define our current and long-term strategic interests in order to know whether or not we should disengage, and if so, at what level, and without losing face.
2) In the future, we should no longer intervene systematically and directly for the benefit of local armies that we have been training tirelessly and in vain since the 1960s and which, with the exception of the Senegalese army and the Chadian presidential guard, are incompetent. And if they are, it is for a simple reason, which is that the states are artificial and no real patriotic feeling exists.
3) Indirect interventions or rapid and punctual actions from ships should be favoured, which would eliminate the inconvenience of land-based holdings perceived locally as an intolerable neo-colonial presence. A redefinition and an increase in power of our projectable maritime means would then be necessary.
4) Finally and first, we will have to let the African natural order unfold. This implies that our intellectuals must finally understand that the former dominators will never accept that, through the game of electoral ethno-mathematics, and only because they outnumber them, their former subjects or tributaries are now their masters. This shocks the ethereal conceptions of Western political philosophy, but such is the African reality.
For more than half a century in Africa, the Western obsession with human rights has led to massacres, the democratic imperative has led to war and elections have led to chaos.
More than ever, it is therefore important to meditate on the profound reflection made by the Governor General of the French West Indies in 1953: ‘Fewer elections and more ethnography, and everyone will find something to like’… In a word, a return to reality and the renunciation of clouds.

Posted by: Leuk | Dec 29 2021 20:54 utc | 21

Uncle tungstene # 23
http://bernardlugan.blogspot.com/2021/12/les-causes-de-lechec-politique-de-la.html?m=1

Posted by: Leuk | Dec 29 2021 21:40 utc | 23

“ In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed strands of messenger RNA with droplets of fat, to create a kind of molecular stew. Human cells bathed in this genetic gumbo absorbed the mRNA, and began producing proteins from it1.
Realizing that this discovery might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to “treat RNA as a drug”. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA2. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism.
Those experiments were a stepping stone towards two of the most important and profitable vaccines in history: the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines given to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Global sales of these are expected to top US$50 billion in 2021 alone.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
Today he was suspended on Twitter because the science …

Posted by: DG | Dec 29 2021 21:46 utc | 25

@ Posted by: ld | Dec 29 2021 19:05 utc | 5
Sorry, I didn’t notice that you have already touched the Malone Twitter ban

Posted by: DG | Dec 29 2021 21:53 utc | 27

Leuk and Roger
Algeria is looking grim according to Bernard Lugan but then it has for some time. Bernard Lugan reveals that Bouteflika yet again runs for president.

The candidacy for a fifth term of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, mute and paralyzed undead who exists, strapped to a wheelchair, are pathetic, goes very badly in Algeria.
The scale of the demonstrations of rejection of this candidacy and, with it, of all the profiteers of the regime, FLN in the lead, is such that unless there is a turnaround, the survival time of the Bouteflika clan seems to be running out. Especially since the security forces appear to be won over by doubt and the army is no longer a monolithic bloc.
Be that as it may, it is from a ruined and divided Algeria which will inherit those who will have the very heavy task of trying to avoid the sinking of a country fractured between Arabism and Berberism with, in the background, the Islamists in ambush. How will they be able to turn around a country struck at the heart by the exhaustion of its oil reserves when 60% of budget revenues and 95% of foreign exchange revenues depend on hydrocarbons? According to the National Statistics Office dated January 12, 2019, during the 3rd quarter of 2018, the hydrocarbons branch as a whole fell by 7.8%, the production of crude oil and natural gas declined by 3% and the refining of crude oil by 12%.
The fall in the production of hydrocarbons and the variations in prices mean that revenues fall and that the State must therefore draw on its foreign exchange reserves to finance its imports. As Algeria does not produce anything, or else in insufficient quantities, it must indeed buy everything on foreign markets, both to feed, to dress, to equip or to care for its population.
Algerian foreign exchange reserves, which were 170 billion euros in 2014, before the collapse in oil prices, are only 62 billion at the start of 2019 and, according to projections, they will reach 34 billion in 2021.

Methinks there is far more to it than this conservative writer reveals but it is good to be inspired to enquire further.
I did a search on lazyweb.ai using search term “algerian FLN leads in elections” and found a few enticing reads. Most results are english language but translate is simple enough.
This one shows the FLN having won the local and regional polls with phenomenal majority support. “ALGIERS- The National Liberation Front (FLN) came first in local elections with 5,978 seats in 124 APCs across 42 provinces and 471 seats in APWs across 25 provinces, president of the National Independent Authority for Elections(ANIE), Mohamed Charfi, announced on Tuesday at a press conference devoted to the presentation of the provisional results of the November 27 local elections.”
It would be so good to see the end of the Bouteflika puppet genocidist.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 29 2021 22:11 utc | 29

“In recent weeks, Arab countries, Iran and Turkey have all been working out how they can move forward and get along with each other, all due to “sleepy Joe” Biden being asleep at the wheel. Where’s all this heading?”
Martin Jay explores the impact of Biden being stupid and Blinken being ignorant whilst Harris is too busy failing asap.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 29 2021 22:26 utc | 31

@Posted by: Passer by | Dec 29 2021 21:48 utc | 26
The Russians could troll this so easily – newsreel of the Nazi flag being raised atop Paris and Warsaw, then the Soviet flag above Berlin – with the comment “seems we were the winners!”. As Borell is Spanish-Argentine, perhaps also newsreel of the Argentinians surrendering in the Malvinas and the sinking of the Belgrano.

Posted by: Roger | Dec 29 2021 22:33 utc | 33

@32 – daffyDuct – It must have been pretty interesting working the US Embassy during the Cuban Missile Crisis! I am trying to learn Russian.
I found this Crimean timeline. It is interesting that in 1991 they held a referendum there regarding autonomy, and it was pretty popular. Crimea is a part of Russia once again, and I doubt anything will change that.
Crimea
I look forward to reading the piece you refenced by Jack F. Matlock, Jr.
Спасибо!

Posted by: lex talionis | Dec 29 2021 22:41 utc | 35

Posted by: ahji | Dec 29 2021 19:21 utc | 9
Those weren’t covid rule breakers but human traffickers
Posted by: vato | Dec 29 2021 20:25 utc | 15
—
In other words, the video shows “coyotes in a perp walk with Chinese characteristics”. Why hazmat suits? The coyotes were caught transporting an illegal alien infected with Covid.
Watching video and view pics, the shaming does not seem to be working as the crowd is pretty thick and not practicing the required social distance.
Did a google search on “China covid shaming”. Dang page after page of pretty much the same headline. Imagined that.
BTW. The America practice of perp walk has been affirmed by the US courts.

Posted by: Erelis | Dec 29 2021 22:52 utc | 37

This charming caper in the UK reeks of an Integrity Initiative model spin off:

Leaked files obtained by The Grayzone indicate that the Royal Institution has enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a “social change” communications firm founded by a public relations operative previously involved in the UK Foreign Office’s campaign for violent regime change in Syria. Valent has also been sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US intelligence cut-out, for a project aimed at “investigating disinformation.”
Valent’s central role in the operation highlights the trend of information warfare specialists bringing the techniques they honed against targets like the Syrian government back home to the West, where increasingly unpopular governments confront masses of citizens ever-bristling at coronavirus restrictions.

Mint Press News reports:

Its top patron is Charles, the Prince of Wales, next in line to the British throne, who recently hit out at supposed “conspiracy theories” surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. The organization received a substantial cash injection in 2020 from the UK government’s Culture Recovery Fund earmarked for video production.

Ah yes. That Prince Charles, once the good mate of child rapist Jimmy Saville.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 29 2021 22:54 utc | 39

@Posted by: ptb | Dec 29 2021 22:25 utc | 30
A very good description of Tooze, an independent thinker that stays within the political lines required of any politically-related academic in the US who wants to keep getting published in, and invited to, the mainstream media and journals.

Posted by: Roger | Dec 29 2021 23:02 utc | 41

This is regarding the Chinese Walk of Shame. It was indeed illegal human traffickers bring punished in a small Chinese city.
Looks like the authorities there will end up being punished themselves.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202112/1243776.shtml

Posted by: Surferket | Dec 29 2021 23:16 utc | 43

Max.D | Dec 29 2021 23:07 utc | 42 says:
‘ Two years ago, I still thought the window of opportunity for them is about a decade… Of course, I might have been brainwashed by the ravings of Stratfor (“Strategic forecast” & al) “predicting” or rather “predictively programming” people to believe that World War III will most probably happen in the 2030s… But now, it’s not far-fetched to say it’s in the order of 2-3 years, 5 years max.’
I think that the time-line is much shorter than that. Six months perhaps. Why?
1. The Pandemic has failed to deliver ‘The Great Reset’.
2. Economic collapse in the West is proceeding much more quickly than they (Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment) imagined.
3. Russia/China’s military/economic superiority will be impossible to overcome if they need to wait even a couple of years to try to take them down.
4. They will lose control of the U.S. in the upcoming (Nov. 2022) elections, and with it, the possibility of acting.
Ed in Kanata | Dec 29 2021 20:05 utc | 12 says:
‘There is something SERIOUSLY missing and that simply the end goal and what is the motive.’
My take:
The end-goal was to provide the conditions for the ‘Great-Reset’ which would lead to the establishment of the ‘Global Empire based on Global Institutions’.
The pandemic was intended to create a world-wide catastrophe that only the ‘Globalist’ rulers (Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment) could solve with their vaccines. By controlling access to the vaccines they thought they could black-mail all countries to submit to their ‘Global Empire’.
I think that they had originally planned to use this weapon as a last resort if they could not subdue the countries of the world through military, economic and propaganda warfare, for which they had an original time-line of a few decades. However, the rapid rise of Russia and China, combined with the rapid decline of economic conditions (and with it the rise of internal opposition) in the West (Europe, U.S.) dramatically shortened the time-line. Finally the prospect of another 4 years of Trump, if he won in 2020, forced them to act quickly, probably before they were ready.
The whole effort appears to have failed to achieve any of its goals, due to:
1. China’s rapid reaction to this bio-weapon limited the effect on China.
2. They did not achieve a monopoly on vaccines.
3. Cheap anti-viral remedies, such as ivermectin, limited the effect of the pandemic to essentially those countries that refuse to allow such remedies to be used.
In fact the only countries that seem to have been significantly harmed by the pandemic are those that launched it in the first place (i.e. NATO/Anglo countries).
As I said above, after the failure of the pandemic to deliver the ‘Great Reset’, with the rise of Russia and China, and with the prospect of ‘Anti-Globalists’ about to retake control in the U.S. in a few months, the ‘Globalists’, who are about to lose everything, are desperate to ‘over-throw the chess-board’ by triggering a global military conflict between Russia/China and the U.S. Foolishly, they think that they will be around to pick up the pieces so they can ‘Build Back Better’.

Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 30 2021 0:26 utc | 45

Since we made the CDC-COVID19 Foul-Up Thread into an OpenMic Thread, I’m reposting here where this belongs:
Wild and Crazy Woked World – Critical Race Theatrics/Black Lives’ Merry Crit-Race?
https://counter-currents.com/2021/12/the-worst-week-yet-62/
Black American Librarian/Teacher in WDC had her Students “Perform” Actual/Claimed Event Elements of the ‘Holocaust’, because ‘Jews Ruined Christmas’…
Horrible; but I also ROTFLMFAO. Sorry; but this Teacher was so Horrible, Stupid, and the Directed Re-Enactments were something we would see in an ‘Adams Family’ Movie…
Poor Kids are going to need a Year of Therapy – especially the Jewish Kid who was told to ‘Re-Enact’ Hitler – including his ‘Suicide’…
WTF happened to Quwanza(sp)? Did Tribals ruin that as well, is that a “White Man’s Burden”

Posted by: IronForge | Dec 30 2021 0:43 utc | 47

Posted by: ptb | Dec 29 2021 19:41 utc | 11
Re the equalization of LNG prices. While the US presently has a surplus of NG above its present capacity to ship as LNG, much of this NG surplus is a by product of unconventional resource plays notably shale oil extraction.
There is good reason to believe all the high quality sites have been drilled. It is known that shale plays show a very high decline rate, far higher than that associated with a conventional reservoir.
The other concern is that US shale plays have operated as a form of ponzi scheme, one highly dependent on inexpensive financing and a constant influx of capital.
The above implies the present US NG surplus may dissappear due to: 1) all existing shale plays have been subject to “high grading.” The optimum sites have been exploited and there exists minimal opportunity for expansion; 2) the lifeblood of the industry has been inexpensive financing. If interest rates rise this will impair balance sheets, scare off investors and result in firms exiting the industry; 3) rates of decline of 20% or more imply the current “high quality” sites will exhibit production declines which render the operation uneconomic. These issues may be compensated for by a high market price for US domestic NG. High energy costs tend to throttle economies.
Over the medium term the consequences may be EU LNG prices even higher than present with associated economic stagnation. The proposed power of Siberia pipeline should result in China being insulated from these effects. China will then offer both lower labour costs and lower energy costs and gain increased competitive advantage over both the EU and US.
In short, the leaders in the Eurozone would have more positive effect on their populations if they got togther for a long afternoon of Russian roulette.

Posted by: Sushi | Dec 30 2021 0:51 utc | 49

@50 Unfortunately cash is losing it’s purchasing power by the minute. That leaves gold, real estate and Bitcoin.

Posted by: dh | Dec 30 2021 1:12 utc | 51

Roger #40
Thank you, I stand corrected and very pleased to be told of that scumbags death. I missed the performance…. such is life in the forest.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 30 2021 1:21 utc | 53

IMHO the pace is quickening and the troublesome signs are multiplying for something in between Russia and US/NATO in the next few weeks…
RT has an interesting article about the “deployment” of the S-550, of which no confirmation in TASS for example. Martyanov mentions the report on his blog, so presumably will let us know whether the report is true or not.
RT on the S-550
The Drive poo-poos the suggestion, probably heavily subscribed to by car fans like me as well as MIL rank and file, ex-MIL and retirees, along with the usual armchair field marshalls for their Aviation-Week lite weapons porn articles (as in very, very lite), certainly CANNOT go against the narrative, talk about demoralizing the troops.
S-550 has not been fielded
My own 2cents take on this is that the report is worrysome. When gangs pass each other in cars they flash their pieces, UZIs, Mac-80, etc to let each other know they are not to be messed with. That this report shows up now, and is denied, to me speaks that it is likely already out, but perhaps only in a few locations, but the Russians want the Anglo-Zionists to sweat a bit as a real S-550 changes the dynamics substantially.
In my view, Putin can guarantee peace by visibly shooting down an Israeli F35 over Lebanese airspace with an S-300,400 or whatever. THAT will really deflate the US/NATO war fever in the Ukraine, in Taiwan and calm things down over Syria, and in Iran, all in one fell swoop. I saw an interesting article today but can’t remember where about Russian fighters “escorting” and F35 somewhere over the Baltic I think. If so, that begs the question of how they knew it was there?

Posted by: Simplicius | Dec 30 2021 1:40 utc | 55

@Posted by: dh-mtl | Dec 30 2021 0:26 utc |
Just heard a lecture by an historian who states that absent the middle class, as it is being erased through the pandemic/reset in the whole West, democracy is no more possible, this is why we walk to the clerical military sublime system, a tyranny similar to that of Esparta, when no more that war is left to do so that to counter the prosperity of the commercial powers, as a last resort to try to plunder them and enslave their peoples…

Posted by: Black bread | Dec 30 2021 1:56 utc | 57

Max.D #42
Thank you for your post I liked that. Your link to MM was a good one. He writes fresh prose and sharp analysis.
The analysis of China going dark was interesting. I suspect China could just embrace Taiwan into its totality with relative ease in a 24hr swoop as it holds a treaty with the USA recognising China’s sovereignty as of the end days of WWII. They could declare business as usual and change very little (apart from the capacity of certain strategic companies to flee offshore). I wont be surprised if that maneuver is completed within a week or two.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 30 2021 2:29 utc | 59

@Posted by: D.G. | Dec 30 2021 1:01 utc | 50
“I am going to cash by the end of Friday.”
You and a whole lot of other people. Maybe Thursday would
be better, to beat the crowd.
However, Goldman Sachs says January is going to be terrific.
Just another scam for public consumption while the insiders get
out early leaving the suckers holding the bag? Who trusts Goldman Sachs?
I know whichever way I play it I will play it wrong. Can feel it.
Maybe I’ll go half cash on Thursday…

Posted by: librul | Dec 30 2021 3:01 utc | 61

Posted by: DG | Dec 29 2021 21:46 utc | 25 Re Dr. Robert Malone
First, read the rest of the Nature paper and you’ll see no one thinks anyone deserves full credit for mRNA.
Second:
How Dr Robert Malone invented Antivaxxery
Third:
False: Dr. Robert Malone invented mRNA vaccines.
Fourth:
The spike proteins in vaccines are harmless, they are not “cytotoxic” – infodemic post by Robert Malone who claims to be “inventor of mRNA vaccines” – not even mentioned in histories – main inventor is Katalin Kariko
Fifth:

Liam @liamkwtf
Replying to @EricTopol @kkariko and @WeissmanLab
Thank you! I’ve been saying this for a while. You can also see on the internet archive he never claimed to be the inventor on his Twitter, website or google scholar page before 2020/2021.

I see the morons still rule MoA, unfortunately, despite b’s hard work removing the most egregious idiots.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Dec 30 2021 3:31 utc | 63

Simplicius, Russia/Putin won’t shoot down an Israeli aircraft. They seem to be best of friends

Posted by: bolangi | Dec 30 2021 3:59 utc | 65

@63 Richard Steven Hack
I used to enjoy your comments here regarding the virus. But this comment and the other one you posted in a recent thread are both made of links to hit pieces that are toxic and wrong.
I never understood why you took yourself away from here – I only caught the tail end where you were in the act of leaving – but I speculate that your absence from the to-and-fro of discussion here has blunted your understanding of what this virus is all about.
In brief, you’re way behind the curve of knowing what’s the truth and what’s propaganda.
~~
I always admired you for attempting to stake out a principled stand to make, even as the great wave of all this rudeness crashed over us in the last two years. And I always wished you well, and still do.
But it’s 2 out of 2 so far of really bad compilations of slander and bad knowledge that you’ve served up here.
Bad enough that Malone gets banned from Twitter, of course there’s now a concerted hit-job on Malone. He’s a knowledgeable and kind voice of reason in this madness, one of the few doctors that I count among the brave heroes who have risked their careers and their entire life’s accomplishments to stand up against the propaganda that you now seem to be aligning with.
The jackals are after Malone to take him down. It shows that he’s right – we live in the USSR now, where the validity of a thing is supported by the establishment attack against it. But it’s really sad that you’re aligning with that.
~~
I’ve ignored and skipped over many, many comments in the last few threads concerning the virus. But I paused to offer these thoughts to you. A residual respect, and gratitude. For whatever reasons, I find myself taking the time to write these things.
I completely trust you to do with them as you will 🙂

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 30 2021 4:45 utc | 67

Hawaiian people speak out for the protection of their land and waters. Yankee military go home.
“we are occupied in a sense”
Eleven minute utoob from Empire Files.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 30 2021 5:04 utc | 69

@66 Oriental Voice
I appreciate your view of this. I was always impressed with China’s willingness to let 2-3 generations of somewhat estranged colonial legacy pass before expecting either Hong Kong or Taiwan people to “give up the ghost” of that imposed colonial culture and simply be mainlanders.
And it seemed to me that China only acted to take Hong Kong into firmer hands because the destruction and damage to innocent people from the external imperialist influence was a cruelty not imagined by China’s own kindness in letting Hong Kong take its own course.
That too impressed me greatly.
~~
If your characterization of the Taiwan culture is correct, then it makes sense that greater China would prefer to wait a couple more generations for that culture to change – as all cultures do over 2-3 generations. And currently the Taiwan culture, as you describe it, cannot understand how the tension increased by the west is actually a headache in its mind that could simply disappear as it changes its own orientation, from west to east. Over time.
~~
I suspect that China would love to leave Taiwan alone, both from my own reasoning here about allowing generations to change the cultural mind, and from your description of how China has long regarded that region.
But China is heading somewhere, toward certain goals, among the most ambitious of any national culture today in the world. I would think that, as part of this, China would want to “give up the ghost” even of that old way of treating Taiwan, and actually embrace those people into the mainland nation over the course of time – create a new relationship, shedding both Taiwan’s old aloofness and its own.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 30 2021 5:16 utc | 71

@72 Oriental Voice
Our letters passed each other in the mail 😉
Thanks for articulating all that – obviously that all makes sense to me, and I take your view as a very reliable one.
I encourage readers to take the view from comments #66 and #72 from Oriental Voice as definitive appraisals of the Taiwan situation.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 30 2021 5:28 utc | 73

Oriental Voice #72

I believe lots of people around the world have the false impression that China has an urge to re-unite with Taiwan.

Thank you and Grieved for your discussion of this subject. IMO in a civil world China could maintain calm abiding with the Taiwan circumstance of somewhat separatism but united as Chinese. However, as experienced in Hong Kong and observed in the ex USSR states in Europe, the old time imperialist powers will simply not stand idly by.
The western imperial powers cannot resist poking the old wounds and using enclaves like Taiwan and Hong Kong as levers of destabilisation, places to insert terrorist division and undermining. There is no arresting the provocations and illegal sanctions and perpetual arrogance of the USA. Compliance with this nation’s belligerence is read as consent and weakness and so intensifies their game.
As I see it China has total legitimacy to end this provocative charade sooner rather than later. Certainly it could be a better world if these circumstances were not forced on China or the Taiwan residents, but that is not the way of the USA.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 30 2021 6:40 utc | 75

Leurk @21
#4: this seems true of Ethiopia right now where the Tigrayans won’t let the mere mathematics of electoral politics get in the way of their ancestral domination.
Bernard Lugan, that name rings a bell in my foggy memory. I haven’t heard about him for more than 2 decades. Funny to find it at MoA. It was in the late 90ies. I was still in Paris. I heard Lugan talk at Radio Courtoisie (a quaint far-right radio station back then). I think I still remember it although I only listened to the program once or twice because it was quite shocking. He was talking about the womb of Hutu women being more fertile than the womb of their Tutsi counterparts. About the American Civil War, he said the South was the only chance of the US developing a culture worthy of the name and that chance was killed by the war. Definitely not a PC guy!

Posted by: Robert Macaire | Dec 30 2021 7:01 utc | 77

@ Hack
Glad to see you!
@ Grieved
Well said.
…
To everyone: Happy holidays and happy new year!

Posted by: son of spam | Dec 30 2021 9:50 utc | 79

Below is an excellent long-form Joe Rogan interview i listened to this morning，where Rogan has a long talk with Dr. Peter McCullough, who is yet another highly respected, renowned researcher and practicing epidemiologist–he claims that he has had more papers published in the field than any other specialist ever.
Dr. McCullough lays bare the dire and already proven dangers that the vaccines pose ordinary, healthy folk who receive them, hammering home the fact that some 18,000 reported deaths (which translates to about 45,000 total, due to undereporting) have now been officially attributed to the vaccines by the CDC: these were people who were perfectly healthy, got the jab, and then died from it. Again: these are now officially endorsed facts from the CDC.
Equally concerning is his revelation that among healthy individuals who have been given the vaccine, some 13,000 patients have developed cases of myocarditis (massive swelling of the heart) certifiably attributable to the vaccine–with thousands of these cases occurring in young people and children. 86% (!) of the cases in children have required hospitalization and emergency measures–up to and including heart transplants, and fatalities. In fact, children who take the vaccine are hundreds of times more likely to contract myocarditis which results in life-threatening conditions and/or chronic, life-altering disabilities than they are to contract Covid-19–a disease all of us here know that almost no young people or children ever die from.
Dr. McCullough further explains that the long tail of myocarditis (again: created by a reaction to the vaccine) in men goes up to the age of 60.
However, the greatest part of the talk is Dr. McCullough railing about how the medical community has utterly failed in its duty to seek out early-stage outpatient treatments. He levels a devastating critique of the global medical community (but particularly those in the US and Europe), raging that it has never once even tried to work, support, and coordinate as it should have, as its ethics and responsibilities require. Not at any time during the SARS pandemic has there been any real effort to practice genuine medicine: doctors should have been investigating and discovering treatments for the early stages of the disease; the major research hospitals should have been convening seminars, symposia, and issuing reports and official statements of their findings; the CDC, NIH, and FDA should have been doing the same–as well as giving public guidance that explained their discoveries to the general public, and built their advice and management protocols around the new information and evidence as it was discovered.
None of that happened. Instead, we were all told that the disease was “untreatable,” that the only hope of surviving it was to return home, wait until it had advanced to such a serious stage that the patient(s) could no longer breathe, and then get the patient to a hospital where s/he would be put on a ventilator–a treatment which doctors, media, and health agencies failed to explain would almost certainly result in death, and if not that then permanently debilitating injuries to the lungs and other internal organs.
Dr. McCullough calls attention to the voluminous published evidence and practical experiences (some of it from his own research, much of it from other researchers) that amount to undeniable proof that Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are truly valuable in treating the early stages of the disease–the stage of the disease that was entirely neglected and ignored by the medical “authorities,” hospitals, government agencies, and nearly all other doctors out there. We’re talking global experiences from around the world, global evidence from countries across the planet–experiences and evidence that has been viciously suppressed here, at the cost of many hundreds of thousands of lives. Corporate media, FDA, NIH, WHO, and CDC have created an entirely false sense in the public that these medicines are laughably ineffective, and suitable only for mockery–while further pushing the idea that only a highly experimental vaccine that was rushed through clinical trials and which has now given clear, undeniable proof that it kills, maims with chronic illness, and otherwise permanently injures the healthy people it is supposed to protect.
Dr. McCullough has treated thousands of patients these last two years and published detailed analyses of his discoveries–and these discoveries have been verified by other research teams world wide. The conclusion Dr. McCullough comes to is that if the research hospitals and regulatory/oversight agencies had performed their duty to investigate possible early-stage outpatient treatments, deaths by Covid-19 could have been reduced by 85%–and we would have become aware of the health threat the vaccines pose healthy people–and more importantly young people and children–much, much earlier.
Dr. McCullough blames the same culprits we all rail against here, every day: corporate media, corrupt governments, corporate corruption, capitalist greed–in other words, regulatory capture, propaganda, corporate arrogance, crooked politicians, and crude greed. Moreover, he has gleaned ample evidence in support of these conclusions through his own personal experiences.
It’s a very long interview (nearly 3 hours), but it is well worth a listen. This is a highly respected (invited to Harvard to deliver an endowed lecture a couple of years back, over 600 citations in research papers, over 1000 published papers, etc). He touches on the psychology of why doctors have shrugged off these duties, how his own experiences with Silicon Valley and corporate media have convinced him that there is a concerted effort behind the scenes–a conspiracy, if you will–to deny early-stage outpatient treatments, as well as other effective drugs like monoclonal antibodies, a treatment that is delivering amazing patient recoveries even in advanced stages of the disease.
I can’t recommend the interview more highly.
Joe Rogan Interviews Dr. Peter McCullough
Dr. McCullough’s official testimony to Congress (2020?)
Dr. McCullough’s testimony to the Texas legislature
Respectfully –

Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Dec 30 2021 10:14 utc | 81

China, Russia to sign new 5-year space cooperation program, build international lunar station by 2035:

China and Russia will sign a new space Cooperation Program for 2023-2027 next year, which will include a plan to create an open and inclusive International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) by 2035, Russia’s national space agency Roscosmos told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.
The new program will also include plans to support the development of the ground segment of the two countries’ national satellite systems, Russia’s GLONASS and China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) to be installed next year, as well as a slate of exciting projects Roscosmos and the China National Space Agency (CNSA) will work on in the coming decades as the two countries join forces to achieve new heights in the sphere of space exploration.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Dec 30 2021 10:53 utc | 83

@Richard Steven Hack | 63
That’s some mighty cheap astroturf you’ve decided to lay out in front of your place. Perfect for a place that takes cheap putts with cheap (and oversized) clubs.
The three websites you link to have problems with basic grammar and syntax; don’t count a single doctor among them; and are so clearly engaging in straw-man anti-logic that i’m shocked you’d resort to citing them.
It seems your rhetorical skills have deteriorated significantly in the last few years. I forget: are you one of those who got the vaccine?
Just FYI: the news about the health risks that accompany the jab–even in healthy people–are now endorsed by the CDC, which admits that some 18,000 otherwise healthy Americans (there’s to telling how many, globally) have already died, from the vaccines, despite having no comorbidities and having gotten the jab in full-flushed health.
Dr. Malone is a doctor, and a fully-trained epidemiologists, while you just presented us with a bunch of Millenial and Gen-Z bloggers who play “Gotcha!” on the Internet for a living. Would you care to address Dr. Malone’s evidence, logic, and actual worries, or do you want to associate yourself with a bunch of unruly children who wouldn’t be able to think themselves out of an Intro to Logic course at a community college?

Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Dec 30 2021 11:32 utc | 85

@Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Dec 30 2021 10:14 utc | 81
Thanks PA, I have bookmarked your excellent post.
Surprised b has not deleted it (yet).

Posted by: librul | Dec 30 2021 14:15 utc | 87

Europe (…..) a continent who started with commerce of human beings and it seems will end the same way…
@Posted by: Black bread | Dec 30 2021 1:44 utc | 56
A commerce in which the Russian Empire always took part, an empire based on lords and serfs, hence the current monarchists are impossing the new slavery there too.
Even the systemic Patriarch had to speak against this unChristian outrage on getting rid of elder people through stravation by making for them impossible to access places where they need to go to get their basics…
Stalin and Lenin, whom these now at the helms despise and criticize so much would had never harmed elder people who fought the Great Patriotic War and rised the country through their whole life by their hard work.
This comes to confirm that all that theatrics about opposing nazism in the UN and the continuous theatrics about celebrating the victory over the nazi scourge is not but a performance.
It is heartbreaking watching the faces of all those adults in their fourties and fifties demonstrating, with their faces so somber…
To think that at first times of the introduction of “vaccines” I was thinking of migrating to Russia…
Time and people will sweep all tghese wanabe dictators from the fcae of Earth, such carnage, such indecency will not get without punishment…
Thanks to Tony Opmoc for the link to the SOTT aritcle on The Saker, with its links to written and graphic info on how the elders and veterans are being treated there. A shame, and a proof of the future that awaits us…..

Posted by: Black bread | Dec 30 2021 14:56 utc | 89

… an Intro to Logic course at a community college?
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Dec 30 2021 11:32 utc | 85
Genuinely, I am surprised that there are Intro to Logic courses in community colleges. My impression was engineering students in an American four year program are quite innocent of logical concepts before taking Discrete Mathematics or an equivalent course. Philosophy majors have logic courses, who else?

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 30 2021 16:06 utc | 91

Re my (92) comment, I should’ve added, now that Maxwell has been convicted, its more than likely that she too like Epstein will be suicided, for she surely knows, where all the bodies are buried so to speak.

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Dec 30 2021 16:12 utc | 93

A shame to destroy this (life in Ukraine):
https://youtu.be/zO8Ef2Bxuxc

Posted by: jared | Dec 30 2021 17:30 utc | 95

After an interview complacent to Maxwell they claim they are now checking about who had left the back door open
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59828961

Posted by: Julie | Dec 30 2021 18:01 utc | 97

They say pictures tell a thousand stories. Here are some that tell how and what China does these days on its own land:
http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/1230/c90000-9938976.html
The last pic, #13, shows the strip of desert, about 5,6 time the width of the roadway itself and straddling both sides of the roadway, being bounded and planted with some vegetation. I imagine in 5-10 years this strip will appear green, and look very happy :-). Just a guess.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Dec 30 2021 18:06 utc | 99