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Thursday, April 7, 2022

2022-04-07

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)

Economic and Market Fare:

Deepening Stagflation: Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire

..... But other economic trends will likely make things worse. First, some rich economies – particularly the UK and the US – are weaker now, having lost much of their manufacturing edge. Others have been experiencing declines in productivity growth since the mid-1970s.

Second, low wages – due to labour market deregulation and ‘off-shoring’, i.e., relocating production abroad – have meant less productive activities have survived. Very low interest rates – due to ‘unconventional’ monetary policies since the 2008-09 global financial crisis – have allowed unviable ‘zombie’ enterprises to stay alive.

Third, the declining labour income share has increased income inequalities, lowering aggregate demand. But demand has been sustained by rising household debt. Low, if not negative real interest rates have also encouraged more corporate debt, but with less used for productive new investments.

Fourth, the pandemic has raised all types of debt – household, corporate and government – to record levels. Fifth, countries, especially smaller ones, are now far more internationally integrated – via trade and finance – than in the 1970s.

Therefore, small interest rate increases can have devastatingly large impacts on household, corporate and government finances. Advanced countries are thus likely to see severe economic contractions and rising unemployment.

... But impacts on developing countries are likely to be far worse due to capital outflows, declining development finance and aid, as well as slowing world trade after decades of globalization. 



.... The problem I face is that at the time of writing, it is unclear whether a change in trend has occurred. Although I am writing a primer and not attempting to forecast future inflation, I have no doubt that my editorial slant reflects the condition of the 1990-2020 period, where inflation returned to a trend level. This aspect of the situation is arguably only of importance to my own writing, but the current situation highlights the most difficult part of inflation forecasting: predicting a change in trend. If one read market commentary throughout that period, we saw a lot of forecasts of ever-rising inflation fail. Even if the inflation worriers are vindicated in the 2020s, they will still face the reality that it is far more likely that the trend will turn lower instead of spiralling ever upwards

.... It is easy to draw trend lines on inflation graphs (like I did) and discuss historical inflation. The issue is trying to figure out which movements in inflation constitute a change in trend – we might need another five years’ data to make that call.



.... we all know I take a very dark view of humanity, however I do see a direct connection back to markets and the economy. Here is how:

The pandemic and associated lockdown drove a consumption preference from services to durable goods. A MASSIVE consumption binge that is only now starting to abate as evidenced by recent declines in trucker freight rates.

This consumption shift combined with the supply chain disruptions, caused inventories to become depleted. As a response retailers began double ordering and they abandoned just in time inventory techniques. This accelerated the "hyperinflationary" hysteria that fueled inordinate above-trend demand. 

You don't have to be a genius to see that durable goods consumption went above trend. However, in economics there is a concept known as reversion to the mean. Which holds that forays above the trend are followed by forays BELOW the trend. 

.......

In summary, what's coming is what I call B.S. Reduction. There is far too much hot air on this planet right now and most of it is emanating from proven psychopaths. 

What this all points to is hard landing at the zero bound. A non-existent monetary interest rate buffer to offset the fastest demand collapse in world history.

Japanification. 

Which means ZERO economic growth long term. 

And a stock market that can be RENTED, but never OWNED. Because one thing this society will learn the hard way is in the end we are all just renters anyways. 



Other Charts: (source links: one, two, three, )

1:
2:

3:



Big Picture Fare:


... Meanwhile blowback from those sanctions is becoming a massive economic fact worldwide, and it’s by no means certain that Russia has lost anything as a result. India, the fifth largest economy in the world, has just finished making arrangements to trade with Russia outside the SWIFT interbank system, settling deals in rupees and rubles rather than US dollars. China, the world’s second largest economy, already has such a system in place. Shortages of diesel fuel and half a dozen other Russian-sourced commodities are setting off economic crises in various corners of the world, while the specter of a global food shortage is becoming increasingly grave—Ukraine is the world’s #3 exporter of wheat, while Russia holds the top spot in that category and also supplies the world with much of its fertilizer. The US and Britain have both tapped their strategic petroleum reserves in an attempt to keep oil prices down, but it remains to be seen whether that will be more than a stopgap measure.

It’s common just now to see these events as a temporary roadbump on the route to a future of business as usual, or to blame them on the supposed personal villainy of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Such evasions are as easy as they are hopelessly mistaken. They betray, among other things, a stunning ignorance of history, since this is hardly the first time that an era of economic globalization has shattered under the pressure of geopolitics. ...

...... It took only four decades after 1914 for the rest of the British empire to come crashing down, reducing Britain from its previous status of global hyperpower to the ignominious role of US client state propped up mostly by money laundering operations in the City of London.  That’s what happens to nations that get too dependent on economic globalism.

Could something similar happen to the United States? Of course it could. ....

.......... This, finally, is the wider context in which the Russo-Ukrainian war and its attendant economic convulsions need to be understood. The great question of early twenty-first century geopolitics was whether Russia, with its immense fossil fuel, mineral, and agricultural resources, would align with Europe or with rising Asia. It would have been quite easy for Europe and the United States to have brought Russia into a pan-European structure of alliances and economic relationships.  All that would have been required is a reasonable attention to Russian concerns about national security and a willingness to put long-term goals over short-term profiteering. European and American leaders turned out to be too inept to manage those simple steps, and as a result, the question has been settled:  Russia is turning east, throwing its resource base and its political support to China, India, and Iran.  That didn’t have to happen, but it’s too late to change it now.

And the United States?  We did what peripheral powers often do in ages of decline, when the imperial center begins to fold.  We grabbed the reins of empire in 1945, when Britain was too weak to hold them any longer, and tried to make the same gimmick work for us.  It didn’t work very well, all things considered.  Now we’ve backed ourselves into the same trap that caught Britain in 1914: lethally overcommitted to an unaffordable global empire, hopelessly dependent on a global economy that’s cracking at the seams, and unable to realize that the world has changed. The next few decades will be a rough road for us.

... History is no respecter of persons, and it has a particularly harsh way of treating those who think their sense of entitlement matters in the great scheme of things. That’s worth keeping in mind, as we move deeper into an era of convulsive change whose consequences most people haven’t yet begun to gauge.


Bubble Fare:


The recent rally in stocks is, macro-wise, incoherent with what has been happening in financial conditions.

.... McElligott concludes with a critical point that the aforementioned (and largely mechanical) flows are masking a lot of broken-ness out there.



COVID-19 notes:

FDA Shuts Out Its Own Experts in Authorizing Another Vaccine Booster
Decisions like this only reinforce the perception that Covid policy is driven by groupthink and politics.




Shanghai completes city-wide COVID sampling for 25 million residents in toughest Omicron battle



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

The Working Group III report provides an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress and pledges, and examines the sources of global emissions. It explains developments in emission reduction and mitigation efforts, assessing the impact of national climate pledges in relation to long-term emissions goals.


[a lil' dated] QOTW:

Monika Freyman: “It takes a great deal of work to introduce new approaches and new ways of thinking in mainstream business and finance practices,” she says. “I would be grateful for more scientific voices weighing in on real world problems and helping solve practical problems. There are still too many career risks to doing this—that needs to change.”





... “Most executives have been working in offices for 20 to 30 years, so it’s comfortable for them. It’s the environment in which they know how to lead,” he told Fortune. “They want to go back to what is familiar, and they believe their experience trumps what Humu’s science shows: A hybrid model is better for productivity and happiness than being in the office five days a week.”



Pics of the Week:

Impossibly Tiny Doodles Fill Sketchbook Pages with Surreal Optical Illusions



Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Regular Fare:

Hartmann: 40 Years of the Reagan Revolution’s Libertarian Experiment Have Brought Us Crisis & Chaos



Unsustainability / Climate Chaos / Collapse Fare:

UN Warns Earth ‘Firmly on Track Toward an Unlivable World’

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed “a litany of broken climate promises” by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels.

“It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world,” he said.



..... The Summary for Policymakers is supposed to be the non-technical chapter for people like Joe Biden. It's almost as though they didn't want to be understood. (And they don't. Again, see this analysis.)

.... The rich who run the place, the very very wealthy, are subsidizing our (and their) certain end. How strange is that? How ironic this story will seem when it's all played out, after no one is left to read it.

One could argue that the world has already passed its “make-or-break” year — passed it many decades ago. It will take significant action to keep us from devolving to a place with “ruinous costs no matter which way we go.” Yet our rulers refuse to take any “significant action” at all.


In any rational world, this Report would have to have dashed any remaining dreams of climate campaigners that overall world CO2 emissions would see anything but large ongoing increases for the foreseeable future. The climate-obsessed jurisdictions in the U.S. and Europe already represent only a shrinking minority of world energy consumption, headed for insignificance as the large-population countries of the developing world join the fossil fuel age.

..... Let’s start with the press release. The headline is “The evidence is clear: the time for action is now. We can halve emissions by 2030.” A few pithy excerpts:...

.... OK guys, how exactly are you going to “halve emissions by 2030” with China going all-out to build new coal plants on a scale far beyond anything the world has ever seen, and India (with population almost as large as China) not far behind, and the rest of Asia and all of Africa waiting in the wings? You will not find the answer. Go through the press release and the SPM and all you find is studious avoidance of any mention of the development plans of places like China and India.


What physics can teach us about growth

Why, when armed with so much knowledge, are we failing to tackle the climate crisis? There must be some piece of the puzzle we haven’t grasped to continue overshooting the planetary boundaries at an alarming rate. Even this week’s IPCC report—the big piece of literature that’s meant to tell us what’s going on and what to do about it—came under fire from some climate scientists for continuing to propagate the endless growth maxim.

But even our valuing growth as either good or bad reveals how little we understand the complexity of natural systems—and that’s what this week’s guest joined me to discuss.



COVID Fare:

I've continued to come across too much excellent COVID-related content (with contrarian evidence-based points-of-view!!) to link to it all
Read everything by eugyppius; el gato malo; Mathew Crawford; Steve Kirsch; Jessica Rose!
Paul Alexander, Berenson, Chudov, Lyons-Weiler, Toby Rogers are also go-to mainstays; a list to which I have added Andreas Oehler, Joey Smalley (aka Metatron) and, Julius Ruechel; Denninger worth staying on top of too for his insights, and especially his colorful language; and Norman Fenton; new addition: Marc Girardot; plus Walter Chesnut on twitter; I will of course continue to post links to key Peter McCullough material, and Geert Vanden Bossche, and Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya, and Sucharit Bhakdi, and Pierre Kory, and Harvey Risch, and Michael Yeadon, and John Ioannidis, and Paul Marik, and Tess Lawrie, and Zelenko, and Dolores Cahill, and [local prof] Byram Bridle, and Ryan Cole, and…
but going forward, my linking to material by those mainstays mentioned above will be reduced to key excerpts and/or essential posts

Analysis:

Oehler: Ontario Booster Buster

.... 0-14 days post 3rd jab is the period of most fatal adverse events happening, and also the period where the immune system of the jab recipient is floored and the Covid virus gets a free pass to multiply unhindered, as Pfizer, Moderna, CDC/FDA undoubtedly know - hence the misclassification of 0-14 days as “unvaccinated”, to pull off the positive efficacy of the deadly jabs - therefore the positive Covid tests are most likely to emerge in this fraught-with-dangers vaccination period. Notice that these deaths in “not fully vaccinated” start happening almost right after the jab. Two weeks later, the 3x-jabbed start to qualify as “vaccinated with booster dose” and the residual damage from the jab now accrues to them, minus those unlucky ones that have just died as “not fully vaccinated“. Those that mustered to not test positive/with-symptoms in the first two weeks tend to be somewhat more resilient, hence only half the deaths in “vaccinated with booster dose".


Commentary:

*** Rigger: Back in the Day

...... Back in the day, when someone was overstating their case, when things seemed too good to be true, we became suspicious. These days suspicion is not allowed and now we need to be protected from anything that would make us suspicious - things like official health data on the covid Goo. And things like vaccine trial data would make us so suspicious we need to be protected from it for 75 years.

The more they try to tell me how wonderful and brilliant this covid Goo is, the more I distrust them and their message. And doubly so when they try to hide the data that would allow us to see this miraculous benefit for ourselves.


Thoughts about the significance and meaning of the Shanghai lockdown.

... Lockdowns and mass testing and contact tracing and masking are all Asian (primarily Chinese) policies, adopted en masse and with little forethought by western countries in Spring 2020. Our public health mandarins set aside their own planning and opted for Chinese mass containment instead, because they noticed the virus was not very deadly in Asia, and they assumed this was because whatever it was the Asians were doing was the thing to do. Mass containment is a worldwide delusional rain dance:...

... The next act of this play, is the return of SARS-2, the impending revelation that there was only ever the illusion of control, and a spiral of harsh suppression measures that everyone believes in because they seemed to work last time, even though they’re not working now.



.... So far from reflecting a failure of scientific education, it seems to me that the mass rejection of the baseless claims of the vaccinators reflects a remarkable success of scientific education.  Our leaders attempted to hoodwink us with garbage statistics and opaque data sources to get us to take a drug they had to already know would not provide any kind of long term benefit, but we caught them because we can think scientifically.  We obviously aren’t as stupid or as gullible as they thought, and we obviously learned a thing or two from our science teachers about scientific reasoning.

But perhaps that opening paragraph has a nugget of sensibility in it after all – consider this phrase (emphasis mine):
a shocking failure of science to produce citizens who understand and respect scientific evidence
It seems to me that science education can get people to either understand or respect scientific evidence, but not both.  What does it mean to “respect” scientific evidence?  Probably what the authors intend is the idea that one should be willing to change their view about something based on solid scientific evidence.  But based on what we know about the reality of the vaccine, one has to conclude that their idea of “respect” for science means “respect for scientists”, or better yet “submission to scientists’ opinions”.  Far from wanting the public to be more capable of scientific reasoning, they want them to be less capable, and more dependent on the received wisdom from the academic Cathedral rather than their own reasoned opinion.  Were it otherwise, our scientific vicars would have acknowledged our criticisms of their data and attempted in good faith to refute them, rather than doubling down with propaganda and government force and coercion. The fact that, at this late date, you can get an article like this published in Science without acknowledging that vaccine critics made at least a few concerning points, is prima facie evidence that capital-s Science has no concern whatsoever for the general public’s ability to think scientifically for itself.

Ironically, like many professional scientists, the authors of this article appear to live in an isolated world where they don’t have to actually think about much. 


And how those impacts are still ongoing

.......... Children were abysmally let down by cowardly bureaucrats who spent two years focussing on their own mortality rather than the well-being of the children they were meant to protect.



..... In the past, Earth-shaking events—the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam—had forced kids to grow up. Teenagers got jobs or were deployed overseas, and when they came back they settled down and had kids or left home and fled to the big city. The point is that they started their lives. 

Covid did the opposite. Instead of nudging young people out the door, it anchored them to their parents, to their bedrooms and to their screens. And now that the madness is finally ebbing, they’re unsure how to proceed. Galanti said, “it’s like a sci-fi show where people went to sleep and woke up two years later, and the world has moved on but they haven’t.”


Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

Schachtel: The CCP has taken the opportunity to showcase its technocratic authoritarian prowess, putting on a display that is proving to be the envy of the world’s tyrannical ruling class, which modeled their COVID responses from some form of the Wuhan lockdowns. Of course, none of this has anything to do with science, as none of these measures actually do anything to stop a virus from spreading among a population, as proven through two years of data showing the failures of lockdowns. 



Pushback Fare:


Roughly a month after a group of University of Toronto faculty submitted a formal human rights complaint seeking an end to the school’s vaccine mandate, the university announced it will be rescinding its COVID-related policies. 

... “U of T will be pausing the following measures effective May 1, 2022: The requirement to complete health screening via UCheck prior to attending University premises, The requirement to be fully vaccinated for in-person activities on University premises, [and] The requirement to be masked in indoor University spaces, unless otherwise required,” the university said in an official statement this week.  



COVID Idiocracy Fare:

All those who—like me—are making "false and morally repellent claims" should NOT be granted academic freedom

The New Republic (whose TV critic I once was) has published an attack on my “pseudoscholarship,” by Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth, he an English professor at Penn State, she a professor of film studies at Portland State. ...

... Thus they call my heretical positions “manifestly falsifiable,” which means they need not bother to explain exactly how they’re false; and I suspect the reason why they don’t is that they can’t, because they haven’t felt the need to study any of the issues that (along with many others) I have raised, and for which they seem to think I should be fired, and so should anybody else who dares contest what Bérubé and Ruth just know is true, because the Gray Lady told them so.



Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:

GeoPolitical Fare:

Robinson: Russia at a Turning Point?

... With that, the idea of Russia joining what is called the “West” has taken a near fatal blow. For 200 years, Russian intellectuals have been divided between those who believe that Russia is fated to converge with the West and those who argue that Russia must follow its own path. With the war in Ukraine, it may be that the case for convergence has been decisively lost, and that a new era of divergence has begun.

..... Thus the 2012 election manifesto of the liberal Yabloko party declared: “In light of its historical fate, cultural traditions, and geography, Russia is a European country. Its future is indivisibly connected with Europe. The Russian nation’s potential can be revealed only through a creative assimilation of the values of European civilization.”

The popular appeal of this point of view is very limited. In the eyes of much of the Russian population both liberalism and Westernism have been discredited due to their association with the collapse of the Russian economy in the 1990s. In addition, acts such as the bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, and support for the Maidan revolution in Ukraine, have thoroughly tainted the West’s moral authority among Russians. As journalist Dmitry Sokolov-Mitrich writes:

“The first serious blow to our pro-Western orientation in life was Kosovo. It was a shock; our rose-colored glasses were shattered into pieces. … Second Iraq, Afghanistan, the final separation of Kosovo, ‘Arab Spring,’ Libya, Syria—all of this was surprising, but no longer earth-shattering. Illusions were lost: it was more or less clear to us what the West was about. … EuroMaidan and the subsequent fierce civil war made it clear. … We see the blood and war crimes, the bodies of women and children, an entire country sliding back into the 1940s—and the Western world, which we loved so much, assures us that none of this is happening. … It was a shock stronger than Kosovo. For me and for many thousands of middle-aged Russians, who came into the world with the American dream in our heads, the myth of the “civilized world” collapsed completely.”

...... At the end of the Cold War there was much debate between proponents of two models of the world’s future development—Francis Fukuyama’s End of History and Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. For Russians this debate reflected their own long-lasting dispute between Westernizing liberal historical determinists on the one hand and conservative believers in distinct paths of civilizational development on the other. The latter have won the day, and there may be no turning back.

... The West’s narrative is that Russia’s military campaign continues to be stalled, that Russian forces are being pushed back by Ukrainian counterattacks, that Russian forces are carrying out gross violations of the law of armed conflict by shelling civilians and civilian infrastructure, and that Russia’s economy is on the point of collapse. The West claims that Russian dead number up to 17,000, with twice that number wounded. The West’s picture is illustrated by maps published by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington based think-tank headed by Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s brother-in-law Fred Kagan.

The East’s narrative is quite different. The siege of Mariupol is some 90% complete, that the Azov and Aidar brigades in Mariupol are responsible for preventing civilian evacuations (by shooting or shelling evacuees), that Russian forces are moving steadily north and south behind Ukraine’s Joint Forces Operation (the JFO with 65,000 men on the Donbas border) to trap the JFO and destroy it, that the JFO is unable to move for lack of diesel and gasoline, and is running out of ammunition, and that Russian dead numbered 1,300 at the start of this week. The East tables its own maps, which see little light of day in any European or US media channels.

..... Both narratives agree that Russian cruise missiles (mostly Kalibr) continue to bombard targets in western Ukraine. In the East’s narrative these are fuel, ammunition and concentrations of soldiers, while in Kyiv’s narrative they are civilians and homes. Both sides also agree that the battle for Mariupol has killed many thousands of civilians. How many is, at present, unknown

..... Moscow is now referring to the start of a “Phase 2” of the war, but it is not clear at all what Phase 2 means in practice, since the initial invasion was not referred to as Phase 1 but as a special military operation with two goals, which are being achieved in parallel. Those goals (denazification and de-militarisation) are sufficiently ambiguous to permit any number of phases, according to choice. So what is Phase 2?



“Moscow can no more lose the war with Ukraine than Washington could lose a war with Mexico.”



... It also suggests how the Mariupol story demonstrates the politically significant dynamics between the real war and the information war in and around Ukraine.

As a friend recently commented:
The success of “disinformation warfare” often stems from an initial, massively coordinated presentation to world media of a simple but false story, which no amount of scientific and rational argument can later dislodge. Such a story is framed to appeal to emotional triggers that enrage and incense people before they have the chance to see if the story is true….
We are now seeing this play out again, in respect of Bucha and other towns and villages to the north of Kiev, where a tactical or diplomatic withdrawal by previously occupying Russian forces has created opportunities for a skilful and profoundly evil Ukrainian government disinformation warfare blitz, involving carrying out disguised mass murders then wrongly blamed on Russia.



... Unlike their judicial systems, when it comes to war, Western nations dispense with the need for investigations and evidence and pronounce guilt based on political motives: Russia is guilty. Case closed.

Except the case hasn’t even been opened yet and the sentence is already being proposed. 



The situation in Bucha has become the main agenda for all the world’s media. Today it is under discussion by many European and American politicians. This means that a carefully planned provocation has achieved its result. And now we will prove that this is a provocation.



.... Yes, my commentary introduces a note of sarcasm in speaking about a propaganda operation that is obvious as day to anyone with half a wit and half a memory.  It all takes us back to 2014 and the MH17 catastrophe which was laid at the door of Russia within minutes of its occurrence, without any need for an investigation.

.... In summation, there are reasons why wars are fought to the death, why many crucial disputes between nations are not amenable to diplomacy until one of the sides has been utterly destroyed.   We are living through such a moment in history.  And it is most sad, here in Europe, to see elected leaders like Macron, like Scholz play along with the villains to gain favor with the overlord in Washington, D.C.  May their cowardice and betrayal of the interests of their own peoples be recorded here and now for posterity.



No civilian casualties were reported in the Ukrainian town of Bucha when it was controlled by the Russian Armed Forces, but the US media ignored the Ukrainian military’s shelling of the city, which followed the withdrawal of Russian troops, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said in response to a Newsweek question.

"The Russian Defense Ministry has fully rejected these false accusations," he noted, commenting on reports of Russian troops allegedly killing civilians in Bucha. "I would like to point out that Russian troops left Bucha on March 30. The Ukrainian authorities remained silent all these days, and now they have suddenly posted sensational footage in order to tarnish Russia’s image and make Russia defend itself," Antonov said.

"I would like to emphasize with full responsibility that not a single civilian suffered from violence when the town was controlled by the Russian Armed Forces. On the contrary, our troops delivered 452 tonnes of humanitarian aid for civilians,"





These are unprecedented times, as you know. What is also unprecedented is what happened yesterday and earlier today. It was unprecedented, unbelievable, and unthinkable. We were denied a Security Council meeting that we requested today from the British Presidency. During my time here, I had emergency meetings of the Security Council on many issues that happened on weekends, on US holidays, etc, and we never objected. What happened is something unbelievable and unprecedented in the history of the United Nations. That is a fact. ....

On April 4 the Kiev regime with an active support from its Western sponsors started to promote in Western mass media fake news about alleged “atrocities” of the Russian military forces in the town of Bucha (a suburb of Kiev) in Ukraine.

From the very beginning it has been clear that this is nothing else but yet another staged provocation aimed at discrediting and dehumanizing of the Russian military and levelling political pressure on Russia. ...

We have factual evidence that proves this point. We intended to present it to the Security Council as soon as possible so that the international community is not misled by the false narrative promoted by Kiev and its Western sponsors. ...


Related Quotes and Tweets:

Escobar: It's so pathetic, but let's just mention it - for the record. Russia asked the UNSC to seriously examine the Bucha/Butchery/Boucherie as fact or Hollywood script.  
The bloody Brits blocked the request.

..... As we’ve discussed previously, even if these increasingly loud calls for hot war between nuclear superpowers don’t immediately succeed, what they do is push the Overton window of mainstream discourse all the way over toward the most warmongering extreme possible so that calls for more escalation seem moderate and calls for de-escalation look like extremist apologia for Vladimir Putin. In the very best-case scenario they leave people far more open to consenting to far more nuclear brinkmanship than any thinking person should ever consent to.

This is not okay. It is not okay for them to do this to us. It is not okay for them to normalize the idea of escalations that could easily end humankind. That is the most insane position that any person could possibly take. More insane than Nazism, or any other extremist ideology you could think of. Supporting actions that may lead to human extinction makes these people enemies of our entire species.

Ukraine is still accepting foreign volunteers. If these omnicidal war sluts are so horny for “direct military involvement” against Russia, I do wish they would just get on a plane and go do it themselves without trying to drag all of humanity into it with them.

You want direct military involvement? Fine. Go do it yourself. Be the direct military involvement you want to see in the world.





It’s been universally understood since Stalin got the bomb that nuclear-armed powers must never go to war with each other, but everyone’s so insane now we’re seeing daily op-eds and news segments about how NATO could attack the Russian military in Ukraine without starting a nuclear war.

Nuclear superpowers must never go to war with each other. This is the single most existentially important thing for the human species to understand. It’s been understood for generations, and it didn’t magically stop being true because you saw a bunch of Ukrainian flags and some unconfirmed pictures of alleged war crimes.

People say things like, “Putin believes he can rely on the nuclear threat to keep us from confronting him!” Yeah that’s how military strategy works, dipshit. He has a military strength that his enemies need to respect. That means you shouldn’t attack Russia, not that you should.

❖

Still hilarious that the United States of America thinks it has the moral authority to tell other nations how they should respond to a military invasion.

❖

If you look at the behavior of the US empire underneath all the narratives, two things become clear:

It plans to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world by halting the rise of China.
It can only accomplish this via actions that will massively disrupt the entire world.
The strongest argument for a multipolar world is that maintaining a unipolar one necessarily requires endless violence and continually escalating nuclear brinkmanship. It is literally unsustainable.

❖

Few people sincerely want the truth about the world. Most just want politicians and pundits to whisper reassuringly in their ear, “Don’t worry. We’ve got this. Your schoolteachers told you the truth about everything, and so did the news man. You are on the side of righteousness.”


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