Scorpion
Since this thread has wandered all over will come back to a previous point. The problem with cooking varnish is all components are flammable. That amber looks like a rock, almost. It starts to melt and then flash. Turps fumes accumulate at distance and flash back. It is all relatively low BTU as fuel and still all tricky.
I got to know Tim Hill, mr. P&L #38 varnish, just a bit before he died. His big lesson in varnish was not at engine school, it was burning down his grandfather’s garage. I had done same. Both of us were just kids being assistant at the time. Is that all there is to a fire?
Your experiment should be instructive. I think you’ll want some japan drier. But who knows, some varnishes don’t use it. There is just a bit of #38 deadstock still extant. Tim made it all, hands on.

Posted by: oldhippie | Mar 14 2024 20:35 utc | 103

ld | Mar 14 2024 1:08 utc | 55–
Thanks for your questions. Like the IMF loans, all contracts entered into by the Nazi regime will be deemed odious and canceled. It’s also possible Ukraine as a state will vanish as it was artificial from the outset. But Putin won’t be the decider on those issues; the Duma will make the decisions and pass the proper legislation.
As for a Jewish homeland, one already exists in Russia’s Far East, so none need be created. And with the heavy development focus on that region for the rest of the century, that would be a good place to go to even if one isn’t Jewish.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 14 2024 21:41 utc | 105

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 14 2024 21:41 utc | 105
Thank you Karl for responding.
This brightened my day.
…considerably

Posted by: ld | Mar 14 2024 22:40 utc | 107

@ karlof 54
thanks for the link to the latest Putin interview. Very interesting, fascinating actually. I am not native English speaker and I perhaps do not understand the following passage, which I think alludes to General Surovikin. The question is about tactical nukes, but the answer I do not understand. Could you elucidate?
“Dmitry Kiselyov: Mr President, did you ever think about tactical nuclear weapons during the difficult times of last year, I do not know, at the front in connection with Kharkiv or Kherson?
Vladimir Putin: And why? It was also at the suggestion of the then command of the group that we decided to withdraw our troops from Kherson. But this did not mean that the front was falling apart there. Nothing like this has ever happened before. It was simply done in order not to incur unnecessary losses among the personnel.”
Thanks.

Posted by: fanto | Mar 15 2024 2:13 utc | 109

I dunno how many of you mob are aware of this story first published about 10 hours ago. It tells of a weird coincidence only known to have occurred approx 10 years ago. This one features a number of African nations whereas the first instance the ‘accidents’ only involved one country, Iran. Here is today’s article from RNZ site I have used this radio new zealand site because although they are dubious when reporting domestic stuff their foreign coverage is generally more objective than most state owned news media:

“Major internet disruptions in west and central Africa
A major internet outage affected West and Central Africa on Thursday, the internet observatory Netblocks said, as operators of multiple subsea cables reported failures.
The cause of the cable failures was not immediately clear.
African subsea cable operator SEACOM confirmed that services on its West African Cable System were down and that customers who relied on that cable were redirected to the Google Equiano cable, which SEACOM uses.
“The redirection happens automatically when a route is impacted,” it said via email.
Ivory Coast was experiencing a severe outage, while Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso were seeing a high impact, Netblocks’s data showed.
Internet firm Cloudflare said in a post on the X social media platform that major internet disruptions were ongoing in Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Niger.
“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” Cloudflare Radar said.
South African telecoms operator Vodacom also blamed connectivity issues on undersea cable failures that impacted the country’s network providers.”

Some of the articles on this sabotage talk about one single cable outage but this, was like when hil the shill clinton had sabotaged Iran’s communications when amerikan secretary of state in that it involved some type of disruption of several different submarine cables & communications media. I have little doubt that the purpose of this disruption is to install monitoring simultaneously across all data communications systems of these nations:
Gambia
Guinea
Liberia
Ivory Coast
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Benin
Niger
So what? Why them? Whattsa so important ’bout these shithole places?
Well firstly none of ’em are shitholes, though in most cases France has been actively trying to reduce them to shitholes as it stole an incredible range of resources from them. However in most if not quite all instances by late 2023 france had been thrown out of these nations which it had occupied militarily & economically since the 1800’s.
Since then it was no surprise to anyone especially not these nations’ citizens, when rabid terrorists began attacking isolated villages and small towns then slinking back to hide outs in the Sohel desert. Claiming to be an offshoot of the mostly defunct (apart from when actions align with some ‘western’ interest) Al Qaeda, diplomats from France plus its FukUS sidekicks pointed out that “things had only got ‘so bad” after new governments had instructed the french military to leave immediately.
However these newly liberated from the worst aspects of colonialism, nations eschewed the west’s offers & instead asked the Russian Federation’s PMF ‘The Wagner Group’ to assist in ridding their nation of these pests.
That went down like the proverbial lead balloon with FukUS, so I have no doubt that same as for Iran, this communications disruption is intentional & other than installing their own satellite communications systems, all net traffic in and out of these nations will be monitored by FukUS agencies.
This iniquity cannot continue for long. Western control of the ‘global South’ which these countries are an inherent part of, will teeter and fall as more and more of the west’s puppet governments inevitably fall.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 15 2024 3:41 utc | 111

Romania is now demanding Russia give Romania gold bullion to replace supposedly something that was ‘stolen’ after WW2 (probably war reparations if any).
You have to view it that as desperation, everyone understands the euro system is in very deep decline. The euro zone might not have long to live so of course everyone would like to have gold.

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 15 2024 7:25 utc | 113

fyi,
Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social AnalysisEmancipations:
Progressive Neoliberalism isn’t the solution. We need a radical, counter-hegemonic and anti-capitalist alliance. A conversationcounter-hegemonic and anti-capitalist alliance. A conversation with Nancy Fraser
Fraser: “….Second, there’s something hollow about the Trumps, Bolsonaros, Modis, Erdogans, Salvinis and so on. These guys remind me of “The Wizard of Oz.” They are like showmen who preen and strut in front of the curtain, while the real power hides behind it. The real power is, of course, capital: the mega-corporations, large investors, banks and financial institutions whose unquenchable thirst for profit condemns billions of people across the globe to stunted and shortened lives. What’s more, the showmen have no solutions to their supporters’ problems; they’re in bed with the very forces that created them. All they can do is distract with stunts and spectacles. As the impasses worsen and their “solutions” fail to materialize, these front men are driven to up the ante with ever more outlandish lies and vicious scapegoating. That dynamic is bound to escalate until someone pulls back the curtain and exposes the sham.
And that’s precisely what the mainstream progressive opposition has failed to do. Far from unmasking the powers behind the curtain, the dominant currents of “the new social movements” became entangled with them. I’m thinking of the liberal-meritocratic wings of feminism, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ rights, environmentalism, etc, which have operated for many years as junior partners in a “progressive neoliberal” bloc that also included “forward thinking” sectors of global capital (IT, finance, media, entertainment.
So, they, too, served as front men, albeit in a different way–by casting a veneer of emancipatory charisma over the predatory political economy of neoliberalism. I’m tempted to call this “rainbow-washing” because it combines pink-washing with green- washing and more…..”

Posted by: michaelj72 | Mar 15 2024 8:10 utc | 115

Alexander Mercouris just states it as if it is a fact – ” Oh yes Alex they will need to raise rates to fight inflation. ”
Alex is like yes sir, no sir, 3 bags full sir.
Without even questioning any of it. He’s like one of those dogs on a car dashboard that nods away at itself endlessly.
The chuckle brothers at the Duran play away at neoliberal Utd every week. Reinforcing neoliberal and neo Conservative framing and narratives when they talk about economies. Carve complete BS into the minds of Duran subscribers.
Spend the rest of their time projecting that they are fighting against neoliberalism and the neoconservatives.
A quite fascinating human study of ideological GROUPTHINK at work in real time. Cutting their own legs from under themselves.
Posted by: Echo Chamberpot | Mar 13 2024 18:56 utc | 19
We get it , Echo Chamberpot, everyone is a fool about economics except yourself, of course.

Posted by: canuck | Mar 15 2024 10:07 utc | 117

“You have to view it that as desperation, everyone understands the euro system is in very deep decline. The euro zone might not have long to live so of course everyone would like to have gold.”
Posted by: unimperator | Mar 15 2024 7:25 utc | 113
“Very typical American view, with the typical lack of understanding how the EU works.”
Posted by: laguerre | Mar 15 2024 7:51 utc | 114
I’m with unimperator on this one.

Posted by: canuck | Mar 15 2024 10:15 utc | 119

bevin | Mar 13 2024 16:23 utc | 2
Thanks for that synopsis. Have copy and pasted it. Now a document on my Desktop for future use with attribution of course.

Posted by: Lantern Dude | Mar 15 2024 11:23 utc | 121

I find it interesting with Ukie, Pali, and open threads it’s the same regular bar flies for the most part, a few stragglers, and some old time lurkers who pop by, but toss up a fender bender switch rear ender thread…..who knows who the cat will dragg in.
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Mar 15 2024 13:49 utc | 123

Elections in Russia – hard work for the Globohomo media in the West. How do we manage to explain to people that Putin can only achieve an election result through force, trickery and fraud that the Globohomo governments of the Globohomo democracies in the West do not even dare to dream of?

Posted by: Oliver Krug | Mar 15 2024 17:19 utc | 125

This week’s discussions the Moon gave rise to a bundle of fairly hard philosophical questions concerning the nature of freedom, and the might-makes-right notion that some like to affirm. I did my best to provide answer to them; not aiming for ultimate truth, but to make them accessible for meaningful discussions in which they might be tangentially important. The essay grew out of bounds, so it is now up in the philosophers’ corner for all barflies to read and comment if they wish.

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 15 2024 18:55 utc | 127

Posted by: Scorpio | March 15, 2024 17:20 UTC | 126
“By the way, the article goes over some pros and cons of the story that Jesus went to the Kashmir area after recovering from his 3-6 hour crucifixion. I don’t think this is mentioned in the article, which I only skimmed, “But yogis in India to this day can reduce their breathing to almost nothing and appear dead for hours or days.”
————————————————– ————————————————–
There are no historically legitimate and reliable testimonies of the physical existence, as a human, of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, Nazareth did not exist, as a town, in the time of Pilate, as governor of the province of Judea.
There are no primary sources of Jesus: the reliable historical sources are from the 5th to the 12th century: secondary historical sources that are the product of rewriting a narrative: the savior will come to make peace between the lion and the lamb. The messianic, soteriological element, saving the soul, the internal, when society is being destroyed, the external, is the counterpoint.
Jesus is a powerful myth: symbols reach the core of every human being: how can I be better in relationships with humans, who are, essentially, my brothers and sisters?
Jesus never went to the other part of the world, Asia, to learn the mysteries of life because he never existed. And, if the yogis had been capable of being truly capable, why were they preoccupied with ridiculously holding their breath, instead of helping all of us idiots, like the ideal that Christ taught?
Although, he did not exist, as a man, because the idea he tried to convey was that all of us are free, in essence, but to be free, we must find out the answers that elude us.
Sorry.

Posted by: Love | Mar 15 2024 20:22 utc | 129

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 15 2024 17:20 utc | 126
Sorry, Scorpion; none of that makes any sense. I’d suggest reading the first few chapters of “Master and Margarita” using the Pevear translation to get a sense of ‘existence of Jesus’ theories from the notes thereto, although those are of the ‘he didn’t actually exist’ category and not ‘he survived and went here or there’.
I suppose it is all related to the western Easter celebration, and will resurface when eastern Easter comes a month later. The problem is that one has either to accept tradition and the four Gospels or not. Those are a complete narrative because they include letters and an abbreviated history of travels that took place subsequent to his death and resurrection, on which both east and west are pretty much agreed.
One should be able to construct a similar tale to Bulgakov’s that also would have Annyushka buying the sunflower oil, or no, some linseed oil to make varnish perhaps, on the southside of Chicago near Lake Michigan, the train tracks there near Obama’s mausoleum … but no, it was done once; it can’t be done again.
I’m just funning you — no harm meant. It’s really existential though, isn’t it? Sort of like a sweater with a thread dangling. Either you pull and it all unravels, or you tuck it back and the sweater survives.

Posted by: juliania | Mar 15 2024 20:52 utc | 131

@Scorpion | Mar 15 2024 17:20 utc | 126

One of the great crimes in the world, IMO, is burning of civilizational libraries. The Vatican did it in Constantinople […]

What? The old library of Constantinople burned down with the great fire that destroyed much of the city at the time of emperor Basiliscus. The city was ravaged by many fires and riots afterwards, including at the time of iconoclasm. There is not a single source that reports the destruction of a library of some sort at the time of the Fourth Crusade. By the way, this is a list of authoritative surviving Greek manuscripts: the places where they are preserved are… peculiar, I think?
—
@Oliver Krug | Mar 15 2024 20:55 utc | 132

It must be said that the ancient texts have not been preserved to us in their original form either; what we have received from 1200 onwards has been edited by well-meaning Christians for 1000 years – similar idiots to the ones at work today.

History of editing and critical revisions is far older. As a matter of facts, the most authoritative versions of the Ilias and Odyssey are not those edited by Alexandrine grammarians in the 3rd-2nd century BC, but those edited by some Christian monks in the IX century AD, e.g. Veneticus A.

Posted by: SG | Mar 15 2024 22:22 utc | 133

Oh, an addendum: since we’re on a thread busy with architecture, let me remark that the new city archive has some uncanny resemblance to the BND building in Berlin. While the new chancellory that was built there when the german capital was moved there from Bonn, dubbed the “washing machine” by Der Spiegel, for some reasons has the same layout as does the planned-for palace of Adolf Hitler. And that layout is almost unique, apparently. Now that leaves a bad taste in my mouth!

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 16 2024 0:06 utc | 135

Larry Johnson:
– Russia has effectively destroyed NATO. For Russia the war in the Ukraine was an existencial threat. But as the war has progressed that war in the Ukraine has become an existencial threat for NATO.

Posted by: WMG | Mar 16 2024 0:35 utc | 137

@ persiflo 134
the destruction of museums goes very far back in history – the ancient Egyptians magnificent sculptures – have the faces destroyed by the victorious thugs, the intelligentsia is targeted by the thugs in many wars throughout the history. Museum in Baghdad was destroyed by the thugs from the air, poets get assassinated by the thugs from the air (the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer last December). Persiflo, you are a philosopher, so “they may come for you, whomever they may be” (frei nach US Satiriker Chapelle – in his skit on Saturday Night Life).
(btw. I owe you a reply to my medical take on afterlife – I am still struggling).

Posted by: fanto | Mar 16 2024 2:25 utc | 139

Posted by: persiflo | Mar 15 2024 23:47 utc | 134
One of the canocical prophets, the persian Mani (216-277), wrote seven books, of which one is dedicated to his contemporary Bardesanes, a scientist of Damascus. His teachings had disciples all over Eurasia, from Spain to Japan, for more than 1,000 years.

Now I REALLY want to read his books!!
@juliana: I only skimmed the article and don’t have any investment in the subject matter. That said, over so many centuries, it is possible that stories of great prophets overlap and cross fertilize. Someone special is buried there from around 100 AD. Whether it is Jesus is a moot question though I suppose since it is written that he ascended to Heaven after 40 days (?) that it is off the menu. No disrespect intended.
We have similar issues in Buddhism with quite a few people these days insisting he never existed, or never gave any teachings etc. etc. Lucky for us that it doesn’t really matter one way or another since the teachings and methods are the main thing and either people want to use them or they don’t – plus they keep getting re-invented and revised by successive generations of teachers and practitioners.
In that article, I found the part about the earth crust shifting of interest and spent the rest of the morning the book. He, like me, found Hapgood’s 1958 book fascinating and apparently several others as well so further research has been conducted determining where previous poles have been. If the theory is correct, as seems more likely, then our conception of ice ages is all wrong since the scientists assume the locations where they are examining proxy data were always in the same longitude and latitude. That very reasonable assumption is probably wrong. Darwin’s theory gets knocked out for related reasons, but that’s a whole other topic!

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 16 2024 3:44 utc | 141

persiflo | Mar 16 2024 4:39 utc | 142
Unless that sort of thing is applied to the current, it is a bit hard to comprehend for the uneducated uncouth like me. Now if was likened to the second coming – Carlson – that would take things from the abstract to the real world.
My thought is a good philosopher, would apply some of the older thoughts to the present or perhaps that is in the historians realm.
Philosophy on civilization – Must begin at the start and be able to apply it to current world.
For that we must go back to the basics and start from there. The start point is the hunter gatherer world where people lived in natuaral surounds.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 16 2024 5:56 utc | 143

Weekend greetings to the bar.
Alarming news concerning China. Sputnik says:
“Next proxy war: US positions special forces one mile from Chinese mainland”
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240316/the-next-ukraine-us-positions-special-forces-one-mile-from-chinese-mainland-1117358246.html
Canada’s investigative journalism program W5 says:
“In search for freedom, Chinese migrants increasingly risk it all by braving the Darien Gap”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/in-search-for-freedom-chinese-migrants-increasingly-risk-it-all-by-braving-the-darien-gap-1.6809429
(Incidentally, the Something on Non-domestic Interactions – CFR – posted on the same subject. From Feb 1 – “Crossing the Darién Gap: Migrants Risk Death on the Journey to the U.S.” )
La Presse says, reporting from AFP:
“Une Tesla écrasée par une sculpture préhispanique, l’idée provocatrice d’un artiste”
It’s Mexico, includes a video.
Daily Mail says:
“I’m an American living on a canal boat in London – there is an annoying downside you can’t escape”
“ ‘When we’re sitting in the mud, we’re on a little bit of a tilt. It’s only annoying sometimes.’
Maisy pans the camera to one length of the living room and kitchen on the boat, which shows the entire vessel leaning to one side as she stands straight.
The sofa, appliances, walls and ceiling appear to tilt to the right, as she shows the slating 75 degree angle the boat is positioned in. “
Hmmm…

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Mar 16 2024 12:23 utc | 145

@ Posted by: Roger | Mar 13 2024 16:15 utc | 1
Thank you Roger for Ruchir Sharmar’s insight on India!
What Sharmar shows is in accordance with the Hegelian (actually Marxian) Thesis of what the Club of Rome document labelled the “Human Malaise” (chapter 6) in which they intend to fabricate the idea of Humanity as our own enemy. Think a parasitic race that only wars, pollutes, suppresses women and cannot live in harmony…
The four upper Casts (i.e. all but the Castless) have not hid they are of extraterrestrial origin, and this is no controversy within the New Age movement which is the global elite’s new religion for the Age of Aquarius. Many within New Age call themselves “Starseeds” and claim genealogical origin to various planets, often Pleiades, which also the Brahmin cast claims it originates from.
The Brahmins was the clergy of the Hindu Feudal Trinity, the Ksatrya’s constitute their officer corps as well as higher administrators and rajas (kings), and who’s only great enemy was the Rakshasa reptilian hybrids. In Abrahamic scripitures we know of the Rakshasa as the Nephilim, the Greeks called them the Titans, the Nordics called them the giants, and is the species that came here in at least two waves.
The Rakshasa/Nephilim/Titans landed on Mount Ararat (Armenia but today’s eastern Turkey) 6724 years ago. I know so because of a lot of studies in this (and paleo-anthropologist Robert Sepehr on YouTube is an excellent source on things genealogy and history, as is spiritually Enlightened fractal scientist Dan Winter who also is on YouTube), but long story short. On the outside of a Freemasonic temple on Manhattan it states when it was built:
“1952 A.D.
6652 A.L.”
Anno Lucifer… who led the 200 Descended Angels (9-dimensional aetheric beings) who lead the Galactic Federation of Light, the organization of Milky Way and its Codex which NATO and its statues takes inspiration from, and that lays a siege around Earth.
In short, Mount Ararat is the origin of the leadership of the Aryan race which 6000 years ago invaded India, settled in Sri Lanka, and has infiltrated every corner and position in the world. The Rakshasa among New Agers are known as the Draco (AI technical Singularity hybrids) from Aldebaran in Constellation Taurus. It is the banking, merchant, and trades cast, and hence the Bull on Wall Street which through semiotics is signalling their E.T. affiliation.
Semiotics is the language that the global ancient elites are communicating on in between over our heads similar to how the clergy used to communicate in Latin over the heads of peasants.
The Rakshasa Aryans is of course who the Nazis referred their heritage to and who claimed their genealogical origin to be Aldebaran.
In the West we know of the Rakshasa bankster cast as the Mercantilists who from the printing press onwards seriously started challenging the Feudal Trinity and who in the early 1800’s changed name to the Liberals.
Through ideology and by controlling the private and subsequently the public, the Liberals swallowed the Feudal Trinity and who together constitute the two parts of the Hegemon/Cabal/Illuminati who internally compete but are united against Humanity. Their raison d’etre is the aetheric/Spiritual War against 99% of all other intelligent beings in the Universe, for sake of controlling Earth, a live being which functions as the ‘national assembly’ of the Universe and every Great Platonic Year gets to decide Cosmic Constitution and Law. I’ve written loads about it, and it’s all about control and moral nihilism – think Israel.
For the Aldebaran part of the Hegemon, it’s all about “smashing Brahminical patriarchal norms”. Hence why Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and all other Futurists (which also the Fascists and the Nazis were, but likewise Churchill and the Liberal elite all over the world) are pushing the AI technological Singularity agenda.
It’s about control by erasing all natural boundaries and with the explicit aim of creating a parallel holographic Metaverse within the Universe, a Shadow State so to speak. Hence why Facebook changed its name to Meta, and they communicate this everywhere, not the least through Hollywood, music videos, comic books and all the He-Man/Skeletor and Transformers cultural industry.
The ”unjust oppression” that Lady Gaga and her Aldebaran kin protest against is rooted in that the Dracos tampered with nano Singularity tech, turning themselves into hybrids, and which caused a loss of Soul. Hence the BS about the Creator ‘punishing’ them, tales about ‘Exodus from Israel’ (Heaven – higher soulful dimensions) and subsequently their misoandry (man hating). The AshkeNAZI are not Semites (of Shem, the son of Noah, i.e. Lucifer…), they are Caucasians from Aldebaran.
Geopolitics merely serve as a veil for universal exopolitics and aethereal politics, the primary gains. The material is given, you cannot deny it, but it’s merely the SECONDARY GAIN.

Posted by: rockwool | Mar 16 2024 13:40 utc | 147

Posted by: Roger | Mar 16 2024 14:17 utc | 148
Fascinating analysis. Re: “As it rejects historical materialism, “critical” theory has become more and more unbound from reality – i.e. materialism.”
An aside:
What you said about the woke ‘critical theory’ makes sense, but tangentially:
part of the problem is that materialist ‘reality’ is itself an abstraction (cognitive construct), so cleaving to it too rigidly (such as the early communists did for example) ends up promulgating extreme ideological, and thus inhuman, takes; whereas true ‘reality’, historically and socially speaking, is mainly about relations between human beings, which involve hierarchy, so also class systems, family structure, national narratives and so forth, all of which are qualitative elements generally discounted by an overly materialist / ‘realist’ approach.
Meanwhile, those who have mastered the art of setting the over-arching narratives run rings around hidebound realists for they understand the limitations of overly literal ‘reality-based’ approaches.

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 16 2024 14:51 utc | 149

Posted by: rockwool | Mar 16 2024 13:40 utc | 147
Holy shit bro – assuming you aren’t a script… YouTube is poisoning your mind. You have half a dozen things there that have starting points familiar to many here, but by the time you get to the end of a sentence it is dumb and silly. Read some books, talk to some old weirdos, read more books, stay off YouTube. Those videos you are watching share something in common with AI: they seem intelligent but are not.

Posted by: Rae | Mar 16 2024 19:41 utc | 151

@ Posted by: Rae | Mar 16 2024 19:41 utc | 151
I’ve been doing science since 2010 – full time.
Anybody who’ve read and lived what I have will come to the same conclusion.

Posted by: rockwool | Mar 16 2024 19:47 utc | 153

ZH has a posting up with the title
“Extreme Events”: US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In “Large Excess Over Trend”
the quote

The report, which relies on data from the CDC, paints a troubling picture.
“We show a rise in excess mortality from neoplasms reported as underlying cause of death, which started in 2020 (1.7%) and accelerated substantially in 2021 (5.6%) and 2022 (7.9%). The increase in excess mortality in both 2021 (Z-score of 11.8) and 2022 (Z-score of 16.5) are highly statistically significant (extreme events),” according to the authors.
That said, co-author, David Wiseman, PhD (who has 86 publications to his name), leaves the cause an open question – suggesting it could either be a “novel phenomenon,” Covid-19, or the Covid-19 vaccine.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 16 2024 23:26 utc | 155

Suresh | Mar 16 2024 20:11 utc | 154
Palace coup within the CIA? US nationalists taking control from the globalists?

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 17 2024 5:41 utc | 157

juliania | Mar 16 2024 16:04 utc | 150
Thanks juliania. A number of thoughts but a bit tired to write them all down so will try and write something on more recent thoughts that more or less centers on Borrell’s garden and the jungle.
The west, the Westphalian Holy ]Roman Empire – is described as being a Greeko-Roman culture. The Greek and Roman empires and their intellectuals. Much is quoted from those ancient intellectuals that is applicable to the modern day world. But still we are locked within the Greeko-Roman world. Everything outside is Borrell’s jungle inhabited by savages.
No offence to persiflo as I am quite interested in reading what he writes, but I feel it often moves into the abstract rather than things taken from the lessons of history, both within and without the garden – the Greeko-Roman culture and outside – and then presented in layman language as it applies to the current world.
What is occurring in the western world today, the various aspects of which is called woke or wokism, is without precedent in at least written history. The complete destruction of human society, total divorced from the natural world and natural human social structure. Russian federation has been able to retain or regain that through officially recognizing some some spiritual belief systems that were there prior to communist atheism. A very complex thing to try and write about even if I was not as tired as I am now.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 17 2024 7:15 utc | 159

Posted by: psychohistorian | Mar 17 2024 5:48 utc | 158
China will envelope Taiwan with the proliferation of carriers of advanced long range hypersonic missiles. This will enable China to project unstoppable power into vast distances into the deep Pacific, easily enveloping Taiwan and effectively rendering the US navy operation in SE Asia as a ‘risky proposition’, forget about Taiwan.
When this becomes clear, it will force political changes in Taiwan when they realize US is far away and unable to do anything.

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 17 2024 9:14 utc | 161

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 17 2024 9:12 utc | 160
Sweden is running a government budget surplus
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-budget
Thus, the private sector is in deficit – spending more than their income and now because money is scarce they are forced to rely on bank loans.
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/loans-to-private-sector
That has stopped as the bank lending is killing house holds and businesses.
Sweden’s private debt to GDP is 307%
https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/private-debt-to-gdp
Serving the loans means less and less is being spent on goods and services and now being used to pay back the bank loans.
That’s always the outcome when the money scarcity guys are in charge.
So are you actually surprised The number of bankruptcies in Sweden in February 2024 increased by 62% compared to the previous year, reaching a 30-year high ?
That’s what money scarcity does and the mess Bush had to clear up after Clinton’s budget surpluses.

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Mar 17 2024 13:58 utc | 163

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 17 2024 9:12 utc | 160
ONLY placard waving, slogan shouting ideologues can’t see it.
As they permanently live in a gold standard, fixed exchange rate world.
Meanwhile in America ….
https://stayathomemacro.substack.com/p/big-fiscal-is-a-big-win-for-americans
The money scarcity guys want to reverse it.
Exactly like the British did to the first who landed on American shores who were forbidden from issuing their own coins.
Money Scarcity forced the first American settlers to create their own currency. To get around the money scarcity problem or they would have ended up bankrupt too.
Here:
https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/debt-free-money-part-4-american-colonial-currency.html

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Mar 17 2024 14:14 utc | 165

Interesting!

Posted by: Alenna | Mar 18 2024 23:32 utc | 167