Tornado watch for Montreal – eep!
Update on the BC port strike. From the Toronto Star and La Presse, who looks at Olymel’s lost millions because of it.
https://www.thestar.com/business/2023/07/12/labour-minister-intervenes-in-bc-port-workers-strike-asks-mediator-for-terms-to-end-impasse.html
https://www.lapresse.ca/affaires/2023-07-13/le-port-de-vancouver-paralyse/une-greve-qui-coute-des-millions-a-olymel.php
Speaking of BC, the Beaverton (satire) offers a funny yet disturbing faux news story about the most Western province:
BC Parks to improve campsite reservation system by partnering with Ticketmaster
https://twitter.com/TheBeaverton/status/1678792512922857478

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Jul 13 2023 14:51 utc | 4

“In Putin’s words, China “managed in the best possible way, in my opinion, to use the levers of central administration (for) the development of a market economy … The Soviet Union did nothing like this, and the results of an ineffective economic policy impacted the political sphere”.
But that is precisely what Russia, under Putin, has corrected. Mixing Lenin’s ideology with List’s economic insights (a follower of List, Count Sergei Witte was Prime Minister in 19th Century Russia) has made Russia self-reliant.”
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/07/13/tale-of-two-cities/
Banger from Crooke today! Back to Lenin it seems. Oh, and Putin saying that China’s CCP moved to a market economy, aka Capitalism, but “in the best possible way”.
Read a reformist version where the state controls the FIRE sector. What say you, barflies?

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 15:04 utc | 6

david – that’s good! did you come up with that? lol..
Posted by: james | Jul 13 2023 15:05 utc | 7

james, I’d often seen her ramblings called “word salad,” so my contribution consists at most of adding “Queen” to the mix.

Posted by: David Levin | Jul 13 2023 15:13 utc | 8

@ David Levin | Jul 13 2023 15:13 utc | 8
good stuff david.. its a good slang name for her!

Posted by: james | Jul 13 2023 15:16 utc | 10

It’s times like this (that story about BC Parks and Ticketmaster) that I think to wonder where Canada’s military assets are along the West Coast. A bit of an initial search returned me a Tweet from Nov. 21, 2021 and a couple others that were interesting.
From 2021: https://twitter.com/theWesternPIE/status/1462504447322386433
More recent:
https://twitter.com/theWesternPIE/status/1678837569327595521
https://twitter.com/djrmp/status/1679087255476924416

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Jul 13 2023 15:19 utc | 12

@ Bruised Northerner | Jul 13 2023 15:19 utc | 12
maybe they are here to fight the forest fires… all help encouraged!

Posted by: james | Jul 13 2023 15:36 utc | 14

Maybe james @14. The Beaverton posted this memorable one-liner back in Jan. “Update: With most equipment donated to Ukraine, Canadian military down to a tarp and a plastic spork #cdnpoli” so maybe Canadian military personnel are out there, along the Pacific, without a lot of military equipment (thus no equipment/vehicle trail to follow like I was trying to).

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Jul 13 2023 15:45 utc | 16

Lavrov’s post ASEAN-Russian Meeting presser is available at my substack here along with the translated foundational document for the Greater Eurasian Partnership. As I note in my preamble, Lavrov’s answers to the probing questions he’s asked are very educational, more so than usual, IMO.
I also intend to provide coverage of the Future Technologies Forum being held in Russia this week, the following being the proclaimed synopsis:
“The Forum of Future Technologies will be held for the first time in Russia on July 9–14, 2023 at the WTC Congress Center. It will be devoted to quantum technologies as one of the most promising areas of scientific and technological progress and will open a series of annual events at which the advanced directions of the country’s technological development will be discussed. On July 9–12, the events of the closed scientific conference ICQT 2023 will be held, where scientists will analyze the current achievements of quantum physics and trends in the development of quantum technologies. July 13–14 will be open days of the Forum, which will include a plenary session, 18 sessions and special events.”
Yes, Putin is attending and is participating in today’s Plenary Forum.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 16:17 utc | 18

Posted by: james | Jul 13 2023 15:15 utc | 9
Awesome, James. Don’t forget to go to the source too. Lenin is actually a good writer.
“What is to be done” is timely again imo. As the Crooke article points out the ruling class can be unseated by a spontaneous disorganized group, but historically organization is the surer bet for a real change with real staying power.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 16:29 utc | 20

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 16:26 utc | 19
Re: garden vs jungle
A friend, whose girlfriend always listened to NPR and BBC complained about this to me a few times. He noted that any BBC story on other nations, always painted NATO / five eyes nations in positive lights technologically, while only running stories about the RoW that indicated the country was backwards, undeveloped, malnourished, conflict prone, crime ridden, etc etc.
This for one, makes it easier to bomb or even bomb these places, as Brits etc seem to believe their bombings and invasions help their targets. It also places in the minds of listeners that western governments are doing a great job, and to continue to uphold the status quo means to continue to uphold prosperity.

Posted by: UWDude | Jul 13 2023 16:45 utc | 22

Crooke gets this right
“….At the end of the two World Wars, west Europeans had sought a fairer society (the industrial society that had preceded the wars was frankly both feudal and brutal). Europeans wanted a new deal that cared for the less advantaged too. It was not socialism per se that was sought, though some plainly did want communism. Essentially, it was about re-inserting some ethical values into an amoral laissez-faire economic sphere.”
But this is wrong”
“It did not work out well. The system ballooned, ‘til western states could no longer afford themselves. Debt spiked. And then, in the 1980s, a seeming ‘remedy’ – imported from the Chicago School of neo-liberal zealots, preaching attrition of the social infrastructure and the financialisation of the economy – was widely adopted.”
It was not social expenditure which was the problem in the ’70s. Quite the opposite. It was a failure to follow the logic of equality and to control the capitalist class which still used its enormous socio-economic power for political purposes. So long as the capitalist system remained it was bound to use every reserve of strength it could summon to put an end to the era of social reform and to reverse it. Hence the Neo-liberal impulse which has seen the dismantling of all the reforms of the post war era- most recently exemplified in the “pension reforms ” in France and the accelerated dismantling of the public health services in, for example, the UK and Canada.
This reactionary movement was both cause and effect of the breaking up of the Soviet Union. Neo-liberalism appealed to a nomenklatura in which elements aspired to transforming their position into that of a ruling class, with ownership of the means of production, while the ending of the contradictory example of the soviet system, and the threat of its attracting working class support in the ‘west’, lessened the inhibitions of, particularly, the social democratic parties of Europe where aspirations similar to those which had inspired the soviet bureaucrats to become oligarchs and mafiosa became dominant.
Hence Blair, hence Hollande, hence Starmer. Hence Jack Layton, Jagmeet Singh and Charlie Angus.
The one factor that has remained constant through these gyrations has been the obsession with arms production, wars and the threat of nuclear war. These were the weaknesses in the economies the seventies- it was not school meals for malnourished kids but permanent war in Asia and Africa that undermined the ‘competitiveness’ of the British and Rust Belt economies. It was the diversion of massive resources into events like the current Ukraine war that taxed the capitalist system to the point that it had to take the risk of waking the sleeping giant of its own working class by picking its pockets to finance its adventures and mortgaging the future by building up unsustainable debt obligations.
NATO, the centre of the old imperial system, has become the last hold out against the global realization that the first step needed in the absolutely vital and urgent business of solving humanity’s problems, is to devote all our resources to the peaceful development needed to put an end to debilitating extreme poverty and to restore both social and natural environments into the balance required as a foundation to a future in which the happiness and health of all and each of our descendants will be central to our social and cultural development.

Posted by: bevin | Jul 13 2023 17:19 utc | 24

UWDude | Jul 13 2023 16:45 utc | 22–
The continually developing nation of China made an important announcement today, “Core module of world’s first commercial small modular reactor passes final acceptance”, implying that it’s growing its own Garden. Rosatom and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) are now the global leaders in developing and applying the peaceful use of nuclear power.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 17:48 utc | 26

Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 15:04 utc | 6–
I say Thanks very much!! for announcing the delayed posting of Crooke’s latest essay. So much happening today to try and keep up with.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 17:52 utc | 28

If you sense something ominous in Earth’s hot, angry ocean today, you’re not alone…
The Climate Dice are Loaded Now, a New Frontier?
13 July 2023
James Hansen, Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy

Suspicion that we are headed into new climate territory, not seen in the past million years*, is fueled by the present extraordinarily large Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI [currently 1.33 W/m2 and rising])… the proximate cause of global warming: as long as more energy is coming in than going out, we must expect global warming to continue.
* Global warming of 1.2°C since 1880-1920 has brought global temperature to at least the level of the prior interglacial period, the Eemian, about 120,000 years ago. The Eemian was one of the warmest interglacials in the last million years.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/ClimateDice.13July2023.pdf

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 18:39 utc | 30

@ Zet | Jul 13 2023 17:57 utc | 29
thanks zet!
do any of these germans working in the gov’t recognize where they are going and the parallels from the past?? i find it all very bizarre..

Posted by: james | Jul 13 2023 18:47 utc | 32

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 18:39 utc | 30
Caveman and their carbon emissions. I guess we are doomed to repeat history. 🙁

Posted by: UWDude | Jul 13 2023 19:03 utc | 34

David Levin @3. Using gravitas and Kameltits in the same sentence is a travesty. I’d say that she has the intellect of a first grader, but hesitate to denigrate our children. Word salad is being quite a compliment for that moron who is a step away from the presidency. Just another sign of the inevitable downfall of Empire.

Posted by: Immaculate deception | Jul 13 2023 19:12 utc | 36

That is ‘climate science’ equivalent to Zelensky.
@ Norwegian | Jul 13 2023 18:55 utc | 33
When scientific accomplishment such as Hansen’s instantly closes your mind, you’re firmly lined up with those see-no-evil and hear-no-evil monkeys — dense and deaf as a porcelain doll. Science itself has become a “woke” thing to closet fascists infesting MoA.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 19:21 utc | 38

Posted by: NemesisCalling I | Jul 13 2023
Isn’t the Chinese word for crisis and opportunity the same? Either way, that’s how to look at it.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 19:31 utc | 40

climate and covid science are the same type of smart sounding con
@ paddy | Jul 13 2023 19:25 utc | 39
That basic anti-science attitude would seem to be the majority opinion around here (as practically everywhere). It’s gotten to the point where intelligent discussion of anything is hopeless as when tripped into the 9/11 truther rabbithole. We enjoy links to militarily intelligent voices (such as Big Serge, Andrei Martynov, and Simplicius) — which is b’s expertise, after all. That much is refreshing, given the firehose of Russophobia and Sinophobia flooding the airwaves.
But when it comes to looking up at the sky, barflies mainly look down at their beers.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 19:37 utc | 42

Isn’t the Chinese word for crisis and opportunity the same? Either way, that’s how to look at it.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 19:31 utc | 40
No, they’re different words as they are in English. It has been a pervasive myth for some time though!

Posted by: Paul_Zed | Jul 13 2023 19:43 utc | 44

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 19:37 utc | 42
i don’t know about the majority. I ignore those kinds of posts more often than I respond to them–right now I’m more concerned about the US empire’s warmongering, a more immediate threat to life as we know it, though not in the long term. I don’t know how many barflies take a similar approach.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Jul 13 2023 19:50 utc | 46

climate science got it’s start iirc about 200 years ago
@ pretzelattack | Jul 13 2023 19:46 utc | 45
You mean Joseph Fourier? There’s another woke appeal to religion-like authority!

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 19:55 utc | 48

badjoke is either a fool or is lying about nuclear weapons. In either case do not take that troll’s post at face value. If the troll is just a mouth-breathing moron, then it is just wrong and should be disregarded. If badjoke is not a moron then it is trying to deceive.
Note: America’s B61 nuclear device has a “dial-a-yield” to select from 0.3 kiloton yield (300 tons of TNT equivalent) to 340 kilotons equivalent.
Why would trolls try to deceive on this issue? Perhaps they are just stupid (easy enough to believe the moron doesn’t even bother to do a cursory check of Wikipedia). Or perhaps a nuke was used and they are trying to blow smoke. That would be more believable from a SOCOM MISO troll.
badjoke could be a moron, or his post could be evidence that a nuke was actually used.

Posted by: William Gruff | Jul 13 2023 20:03 utc | 50

“But when it comes to looking up at the sky, barflies mainly look down at their beers.”
Posted by: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 19:37 utc | 42
Not me I don’t, Aleph, particularly these hot summer nights. Best relief I get is out under the stars, and the North star stays obligingly positioned over my front gate so the constellations do a slow progression around that. I can’t say I could point out most of them but I’m usually out when the Great Bear is dipping along the western segment, sometimes later to see stars I mostly don’t recognize, as last night I was.
Here’s my scrap of knowledge about clouds for this semi-mountainous area at least. Clouds at night are a bit of a no-no in summer because not only do they hide the stars, they also trap the heat. Today was predicted to be our hottest day but it isn’t, because last night the clouds parted around 2 am, and that’s all it took — heat escaped,yay, and then the clouds generously returned at sunrise and shut out the sun all the way till noon. Now we have sun again, so curtains closed you bet, most windows as well – but we need the sun for the swamp coolers to work properly; they only work in dry air.
So there you have it, make friends with the clouds, so they’ll behave thusly!

Posted by: juliania | Jul 13 2023 20:04 utc | 52

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 19:40 utc | 43
While I do not disagree with you, I think it cuts much deeper than just “socialistic reforms.” In fact pre-WWI capitalism is at its core incompatible with direct democracy, or even correctly functioning (as in non corrupted) representative democracy. So when socialistic reforms do sometimes make it from concept to policy and the forces of private finance/capital inevitably invest shitloads of money to reverse them, what they’re really most busy at all the time is subverting/corrupting any actual democratic systems and capabilities. I guess another way of putting that is democratic tendencies naturally lead to socialistic policies, and private capital/finance knows this, so they invest the real effort in curtailing democracy.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 20:12 utc | 54

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 20:14 utc | 55
Fracking is only profitable when the oil price is high enough. The USA encourages it because the expertise may be needed in case of oil embargo.
We are well, well beyond all doomsayer’s timetables when it came to when the earth would run out of oil. We are also well, well beyond doomsayers global warming predictions, and well well beyond Malthusian doomsayers peak population capacity of the Earth.
Thrilling as all the science fictions may be to our boring, struggle free modern lives, they are great for fantasy and entertainment, and little else.
The only real threat to humanity is nuclear weapons, or cataclysmic natural disaster, ie super volcano or meteor.

Posted by: UWDude | Jul 13 2023 20:25 utc | 56

UWDude,
I know little to nothing about the “doomsayers” from the 60s, 70s and 80s regarding peak oil. What I do know is that in places like West Texas, regular old oil deposits dried up and they had to resort to fracking – which, as you state – is only profitable when oil prices are high enough (and even then only because of massive government subsidies). But that isn’t really related to the point that no matter what any fossil fuel funded narrative might say, there isn’t an infinity pool of oil beneath the Earth’s surface. Now, there may in fact be a lot of oil left in places like the ME and Venezuela with varying degrees of ease to extract and use (including being extremely damaging to the surrounding environment, more expensive to refine, etc.), but the “zombie wells” in the Texas Permian Basin are there precisely because “peak oil” came and went in those places.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 20:35 utc | 58

The Rothschild Global Financial Advisory is located in downtown Moscow and their website brags of “high level political access” to the Russian government. And Rothschild run Glencore and the Putin Government joined forces to create the world’s largest aluminum company, RUSAL. Abramovich is Putin’s close confidant, and a joint shareholder along with the Russian government in assets such as Gazprom, Aeroflot, and RUSAL. Nat Rothschild is a fellow RUSAL investor, and best freind of Roman Abramovich. Nat is also close friends, and RUSAL business partners with with Oleg Deripaska. Putin selected close friend Oleg Deripaska to represent Russia in ABAC (APEC Business Advisory Council). Deripaska is also a close friends and RUSAL business partners with Roman Abramovich. The Rothschild family are majority shareholders of Rio Tinto. RUSAL and Rio Tinto are involved in joint mining operations despite so called “sanctions” imposed by the West.
Russian government owned Rosneft in business with Rockefeller run Exxon and BP despite “sanctions.” The Putin Government and Anatly Chubais are joint owners of RUSNANO. Chubais is on the CFR global board of advisers, the Chase Bank advisory board. and a member of Bilderberg. He also worked with the CIA to implement privatization of the Russian economy.
Since 1913 when the US Fed was hijacked by Zionist Bankers, our vote hasn’t mattered, not only in Western countries, but in most countries. And what they’re doing today with the constant political fighting is to condition the people into believing that the control of a country is just too complicated for one government, so there will need to be a “One World Government” controlling everything.

Posted by: Anri_Jonis | Jul 13 2023 20:48 utc | 60

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 20:38 utc | 59
We can talk about the environmental problems surrounding energy supply centers, sure. We can talk about atrazine too, and all the other water pollutants. Dam energy is best. Nothing comes close as of now.
Yes, wells tap out, and yes exploration goes further and further, and becomes more and more environmentally dangerous.
But… The doomsayers of past have been wrong for a litany of predictions, way, way off.
“Peak oil” became a popular apocalyptic fantasy after the opec embargo in 1979. A little discomfort, and Americans began to imagine the end of the world, as did their scientists… Well, the ones who made selling magazine subscriptions easier with their science fiction mad max dystopias.

Posted by: UWDude | Jul 13 2023 21:02 utc | 62

Posted by: Anri_Jonis | Jul 13 2023 20:48 utc | 60
One of the unexpected blessings of chronic Lyme Disease is that it has forever banished any pretensions I may have earlier entertained, from having been born with a high IQ, that I could both understand and even retain the dense fact patterns displayed in your post.
But even if only 50% of it is true – as I suspect is at least the case from pre-Lyme reading in an earlier lifetime – then most of the narratives we are presented with are at best misleading.
So am curious how you view the multipolarity initiative now inexorably underway. I confess to liking the general thrust, finding it as essentially good as it is seemingly inevitable. However, perhaps there is much behind the pleasing facade making that which we see on the surface also at best misleading.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this and thxs for yr post.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 13 2023 21:20 utc | 64

Russia conducted its first annual Future Technologies Forum where today’s plenary session included President Putin for a speech and very informative discussion which I’ve translated here. It’s quite long, the 80 minute video in Russian can be seen here. Those visiting the forum’s website I’ve linked to above will discover more of what it’s about. There’s an English section that has a few selections for those incapable of translating this being one, “Quantum Bridge between Russia and China”, many barflies will find fascinating.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 21:47 utc | 66

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 13 2023 21:31 utc | 65
Catastrophe theory was not en vogue until the late 90s. Until then, consensus in most geological science was that everything moved very slowly, dinosaurs died out due to gradual climate change, the moon was formed of particulate matter over eons. This kind of played into the “science is boring, therefore you must be smart to engage in it” tone of the decades past.
Then in the late 90s, more evidence emerged of a massive asteroid hitting Earth around the Yucatan peninsula, and imaginations began to run wild. My astronomy professor insisted that the moon was a chunk blasted off of the Earth, and went through two lectures laying out all the evidence. It was farcical.
However, it could be true, as could be the asteroid, but science seems to love change of theory, one of the reasons being to get a phd you have to present a new thesis. Just using old data to defend old theories is not good enough.
Add to that the intentions of scientists, who start school dreaming of one day making a big discovery, and you have scientists piling all over each other trying to proclaim their findings are huge. A good way to make a name for yourself in the field is to proclaim your findings predict doom for humanity. For a scientist to run models where everything turns out fine, is not newsworthy.
“Scientist proves sun will rise tomorrow” is nothing.
So, I predict, in 30 years or so, science will again become “anti-catastrophic”, because it will be new phds challenging the standing theses.

Posted by: UWDude | Jul 13 2023 21:56 utc | 68

To: Aleph_Null | Jul 13 2023 18:39 utc | 30
If you sense something ominous in Earth’s hot, angry ocean today, you’re not alone…
The Climate Dice are Loaded Now, a New Frontier?
—
As long as both poles are iced all year around, we are living in an ice age. Wake me up when we left
the ice age and we are back to normal.

Posted by: C | Jul 13 2023 21:59 utc | 70

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 22:33 utc | 71
————————————————————-
In the early 2000, I was a defender of the concept of Peak Oil and its consequence for the cost energy, and I still am. What I didn’t know was the during the first months of the Bush / Cheney administration a plan by the major oil companies to increase energy production by fracking was agreed to. Even though I work for several large and small Plant Design Engineering Firms (PDEF), I was unaware that secret competition was going on inside these PDEF’s for several years.
Some laws had to be changed and others enacted to bring fracking to reality, due to the possibility of underground water destruction and property right of ways, both private and municipal. The oil and gas companies were granted almost complete immunity and right away privileges.
The swindle worked, and energy became more abundant but at a higher cost and the expected destruction of underground water tables. My last project before I retired was on an LNG project in Louisiana.
But Peak Oil is still hanging over the head of the Energy Companies because fracking is in fact a product of desperation, and will in time become too expensive to supply the world’s energy needs from the US Energy companies. Many European and other countries have outlawed fracking, preferring to develop renewable energy sources and even Nuclear Power rather than to allow fracking.

Posted by: Ed | Jul 13 2023 23:06 utc | 72

@ Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 22:33 utc | 71
I think you do a disservice to your mind to assume – with a straight face – that the theory of abiotic oil origin is a “wild” theory.
It’s important to know that the fossil origin of oil has never been proved, or even seriously studied, because it was never seriously doubted, and seemed “obvious”. But in fact the “obvious” nature of fossil origin is a classic case of correlation being called causation. It’s never been studied, and never been proved. There is no science to it.
Now, I’m not going to take one side or the other of this see-saw of possibilities.
But I will suggest you read Engdahl’s article on the subject, to see the potential weight of the other end of that seesaw. In my view the balance is worth it:
Peak Oil & Russia – Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer
Have fun.

Posted by: Grieved | Jul 13 2023 23:26 utc | 74

Posted by: Ed | Jul 13 2023 23:06 utc | 72
I worked for an engineering consultancy in the early 2000s and we provided telecom (SCADA, other telemetry, IT and comms via point-to-point microwave and T1/3, SONET) design and installation services for the natural gas industry in Texas and New Mexico. Took me to some of the generation plants throughout the state and I actually remember hearing something about that at the time. I left that business before the end of Bush’s 1st term.
Oh, and don’t forget to add earthquakes!

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 23:43 utc | 76

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 23:33 utc | 74
Yes, that’s right. Abiotic was the term I couldn’t recall.
———————————————————-
As an unrelated/unaddressed aside re: my old engineering job in the natgas industry, we also became an all-around MIC contractor during Bush’s first term. So we had a business unit out in Arizona near the US Army’s Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca and a former Army drill sgt. in the SIGNINT/HUMINT world managing our business development for fed/DoD work. Dude managed to land a sole-source contract for something they called “Cultural Awareness” whereby a contractor for our firm would teach officers deploying to the ME (primarily Iraq as it was heating up at the time) all about the culture(s) they might encounter over there. It was a complete joke, and I was never surprised about the abject failure to “win hearts and minds” after sitting in on a class one day. The firm also taught a class – I totally forget what it was called – where we paid minimum wage to people who would go out in the desert, dress up like “Muslims” and participate in staged encounters with American troops. Never got to witness that first hand, but I imagine it was equally stupid. Made a lot of money though and a (literal) $1M Christmas bonus for both the President and the guy out in AZ one year. Man now I won’t be able to stop trying to remember what that one was called….had a rather catchy name.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 23:54 utc | 78

ed@76
main risk is that wind and solar availability is far overstated, and the recurring cost to yield shoddy availability is grossly understated.
while green fanatics with esg assure too little investment in gas/ oil production….
while the green waste spending and related subsidies of dead end project fuel deficits eroding the currencies of the g7
inflation huge deficits, and rolling blackouts!

Posted by: paddy | Jul 13 2023 23:58 utc | 80

Posted by: suzan | Jul 13 2023 15:27 utc | 13
Thxs for posting that. This is a VERY disturbing document.

The implementation of these decisions is now well advanced. Finland is a NATO member, and in Vilnius the last obstacles to Sweden’s accession were removed. As a result, the land border of NATO member states with Russia has more than doubled in size and has moved to within 150 kilometers of St. Petersburg. The Baltic Sea has become a NATO sea to which Russia has access only via a small corner in St. Petersburg and the besieged enclave of Kaliningrad.
The conflict with Russia is itself part of a blueprint for global domination.
A central focus of the communique is on China, which is accused of employing “a broad range of political, economic, and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power.” It is damaging the alliance’s security with “malicious hybrid and cyber operations” and “confrontational rhetoric and disinformation,” and is attempting “to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic materials and supply chains.”
The summit declaration declares that the “deepening strategic partnership between the PRC and Russia and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.”
As with every document produced by the imperialist powers, the NATO communique is rife with hypocrisy. The US and European powers talk about defending national “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” when they themselves have launched wars of aggression in every corner of the globe. They insist on the absolute right of Ukraine to choose its “strategic partners”—that is, to join NATO—but deny that right to China and Russia. They insist on the right of NATO to provide unlimited arms to Ukraine but treat any military assistance to Russia as a veritable act of war.
When the document speaks of upholding a “rules-based international order,” this means an “order” in which every country must do the bidding of the imperialist powers, above all, the United States.
To this end, the “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization has been transformed into a Frankenstein monster that asserts its interests and “values” in every part of the globe. “The Black Sea region is of strategic importance for the Alliance,” the communique states. “The Middle East and Africa are regions of strategic interests. … The Indo-Pacific is important for NATO.”
On what map, one might ask, does the Middle East, let alone the Indo-Pacific, touch the shorelines of the North Atlantic?

I wonder if the situation in the Baltic has changed all that much from the inclusion of Sweden and Finland? Hasn’t NATO always been able to come within spitting distance of St Petersburg given the three baby Baltics are already in NATO? (Which also makes what’s happening in Ukraine viz distance to Moscow somewhat moot, no?)
I remain perplexed, as always, between concern and doubt; concern that the West is consistently and without let up dragging the world into Hell; and doubt that this is all some sort of demonic kayfabe-kabuki in a globalist set up which will result in, once again, ‘we-the-sheeple’ getting sheared as happened to so many during the long, bloody twentieth century.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 14 2023 0:44 utc | 82

Isn’t the Chinese word for crisis and opportunity the same? Either way, that’s how to look at it.
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 19:31 utc | 40
No, they’re different words as they are in English. It has been a pervasive myth for some time though!
Posted by: Paul_Zed | Jul 13 2023 19:43 utc | 44
“There is great disorder under Heaven: the situation is excellent.” Mao
…[cited in Zizek, Living in the End Times] One doesn’t need to be an expert in the I Ching to figure it out.

Posted by: Don Firineach | Jul 14 2023 1:06 utc | 84

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 13 2023 23:33 utc | 74
Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 13 2023 22:33 utc | 71–
That would be the abiotic oil hypothesis, which is demonstrably false. However, on the geologic time scale, all hydrocarbons can be considered renewable.
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Haven’t read about this in a very long time, but last I checked the Russians were deep into abiotic oil theory (pun intended) and it’s partly why they zoomed up to World #1 exporter after tapping into a few deep fields, one of which is 12km down.
If you have a concise account of how abiotic has been debunked, would like to read.
Meanwhile, here is an old paper reviewing many different scientists’ views over about a century.
https://web.archive.org/web/20021015163818/www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/usgs.html
And a faster, less thorough summary (from a quick search):
https://atlasreport.substack.com/p/abiotic-oil
People get very excited, even over-heated by this issue. For some reason people are very attached to the fossil fuel theory even though – as the first paper linked explains – it is far more ‘debunked’ than the abiotic explanation, especially since in recent decades we have found hydrocarbons on many other planets which do not have vegetation, water etc. and we have also found bacteria much deeper within the Earth’s mantle than we thought possible decades ago. So if the fossil fuel theory from the 1750’s is wrong, and the abiotic is wrong, what theory is currently ruling the roost?
One little thought: energy industry benefits greatly from having whatever it is using be scarce. Put another way, they have no interest in sourcing energy that is cheap and abundant and indeed have interest in suppressing any such discoveries.
Which is why Japan’s new nuclear-to-hydrogen station, now up and running after years of testing, is so exciting a development. With a few more stations to scale up to meet national needs they can use nuclear power to generate both electricity and hydrogen fuel with which to power adjusted combustion engines which will be far cheaper and less polluting than battery tech, as exciting as that is getting too. The thing is: it gets rid of the scarcity paradigm. All you need to power 100 million people for a century is a reasonable amount of uranium and water and there you are – abundant power. Oh: the thing about the power station is that by using ceramics it is melt-down proof, i.e. catastrophe-proof (- that word again!). Japan has had some bad run-ins with nuclear toxicity and if there is one people in the world motivated to get it right, it is they. Apparently they have done so.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 14 2023 1:50 utc | 86

Ed | Jul 13 2023 23:55 utc | 78–
That’s quite okay Ed. Both were very good experiences and great education. The Oil Drum wasn’t just about hydrocarbons; it was about the entire energy sphere, urban planning, political-economy, and so much more.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 14 2023 2:13 utc | 88

@ Zet | Jul 13 2023 21:08 utc | 63
thanks zet.. i appreciate your perspective as a person living in germany… it is all very bizarre.. i hope the gov’t comes to its senses, but it doesn’t look like it will any time soon..

Posted by: james | Jul 14 2023 2:46 utc | 90

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 14 2023 1:50 utc | 85
Forgot to mention, the hydrocarbons found on other planets are nothing new. They were always hypothesized to be there, in some cases measured or detected ‘indirectly’ – They are less complex molecules. Prebiotic chemistry easily explains extraterrestrial ethane, methane, propane and butane (which are the only ones I can name off the top of my head). None are as complex/dense as oil found on Earth, though, that I know of.
P.S. I was incorrect to mention dinosaurs. That’s not where terrestrial/subsurface oil comes from. https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-where-fossil-fuels-come

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 14 2023 3:20 utc | 92

@ Aleph Null 42 Yes, that anti-science position is more popular … among a number of MoA barflies than one would hope for. Sad…
Posted by: Eddie S | Jul 14 2023 4:26 utc | 92
Sad indeed. But if you are one of the lucky ones who ‘having been born with a high IQ’ (| Jul 13 2023 21:20 utc |) all you need is the I Ching. /s
As primarily a reader here what I find sad is that there was not more discussion of the points made by bevin @ 17:19 utc,
Ahenobarbus @19:40 utc, and Tom_Q_Collins 20:12 utc. That’s where prescriptive solutions for the ‘big pic’ are to be found.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Jul 14 2023 6:08 utc | 94

@Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jul 13 2023 15:04 utc | 6
Kotkin’s take on the fall of the Soviet Union is so far off the mark to be risible. Gorbachev set about destroying the basis for the lovely lives that the nomenklatura had as he set about removing the primacy of the Communist Party bureaucracy, while at the same time unleashing the corrupt forces within the Party that had been brewing since the death of Stalin (when Khrushchev destroyed the CCP ideology with his outrageous lies). The nomenklatura then jumped on the capitalist bandwagon to monetize their advantages, and thus provide for themselves in a new world without CCP primacy. The lucky ones made out like bandits, many others didn’t. It was a classic passive revolution, nothing to do with street protests.
I have already answered Crooke’s “debt spiked” bullshit above in my reply to Bevin. He is right that China developed a market economy, not a capitalist one, overseen by the party-state. Putin was dealt a shitty hand, which he has played surprisingly well over the years. Russia is not an autarky, it has just made sure that its trading partners are also its friends and allies. Thats why the West couldn’t break it with the sanctions that only 1/8th of humanity implemented.

Posted by: Roger | Jul 14 2023 6:35 utc | 96

@Posted by: james | Jul 13 2023 17:21 utc | 25
This Canuck certainly sees that Canada has been going the wrong way for decades, as many, many of my friends do. The problem is that there is an absolute consensus supporting neoliberalism, mass immigration, and foreign policy adventurism between the dominant Liberals and Conservatives, with the NDP fully supportive of neoliberalism with crumbs and foreign policy adventurism. The Greens are just a bunch of upper middle class liberal progressives. We have become a sad reflection of that country to the south of us, as well as its obedient corgi. The only real argument is over “cultural” issues.
In Ontario, Doug Ford the Premier happily does crooked deals with his mates and doles yet more opportunities to the Canadian oligarch Weston while slashing social and healthcare spending in the most underhand ways possible. All happily unreported by the oligarchic media. We have reached “Inverted Totalitarianism” where the population is made politically inert while the corporations take over the state.

Posted by: Roger | Jul 14 2023 6:48 utc | 98

I have come to suspect that the decreasing ice in the arctic is one of the hidden motives behind the haste with which the oligarchy tries to make people fight GW. The decreasing ice opens up new trade routes and makes it even harder to contain Russia and the BRICS. While GW due to CO2 emissions is a reality the rate of change is too slow to explain the current panic.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Jul 14 2023 6:54 utc | 100