Alas, poor Europe. I knew it well, Horatio.
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 18, 2026 23:33
VIEWED: 7268
PAGE 1 of 2
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
Beginning 30:30
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Quote:
... That’s as stark as it gets: the leadership in Moscow is making it very clear, to internal and international audiences, the new deal consists in slow cooking the Kiev racket inside a massive cauldron while polishing its status of financial black hole for the collective West. Until we reach boiling point – which will be a revolution or a putsch.
In parallel, The Lords of (Proxy) War will continue with their own strategy, which is to pillage an enfeebled, fearful, Europe, then dressing it up as a perfumed colony to be ruthlessly exploited ad nauseam by the imperial oligarchy.
Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour.
As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet.
Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.
It may be eons away, but inevitably the average Italian, German or Frenchman will connect the dots and realize it is their own “leaders” – national nullities and mostly unelected Eurocrats – who are paving their road to poverty.
You will be poor. And you will like it. Because we are all supporting freedom for Ukrainian neo-nazis. That brings the concept of “multicultural Europe” to a whole new level.
MORE AT http://thesaker.is/all-the-way-to-odessa/
We should not be too smug. There's a lesson and a warning in it for us too.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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When trade endangers national security. Europe and the Economics of Blackmail
By Paul Krugman
During the Reagan administration I sat in on a few cabinet-level meetings, and I recall in particular one involving European plans to build a pipeline that would greatly increase gas imports from the Soviet Union. Some officials were searching for ways to deter the project, but nobody had any good ideas.
But those officials weren’t wrong to worry that dependence on Soviet — later Russian — gas would create strategic vulnerability. Indeed, Europe’s dependence on Russian gas has arguably become the biggest risk now facing the world economy.
Russia is a third-rate economic power, but it and Ukraine are, or were, major suppliers of some important commodities. When Vladimir Putin invaded his neighbor, prices of wheat — a lot of which is grown in the “Black Earth” belt that stretches across Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan — and oil, much of which is extracted in the Ural Mountains, soared.
More recently, however, much of the price shock from the war has receded. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, world food prices have given up most of their wartime surge. And oil prices have also come down substantially from their peak.
What’s happening in these cases is that both agricultural commodities and oil are essentially traded on world markets, which for better or worse allows a lot of flexibility. For example, Russia can sell its oil to India instead of Europe, and Europe can in turn buy Middle Eastern oil that would otherwise have gone to India. Add in a good U.S. wheat harvest and factors like weak oil demand from a troubled China, and the overall commodity price shock is turning out to be smaller than many feared.
There is, however, one exception, and it’s a doozy: European natural gas.
Unlike the markets for oil and wheat, the market for gas isn’t fully global. The cheapest way to ship gas is normally via pipelines, which breaks the world into separate regional markets defined by where the pipelines run. The main alternative is to ship gas in liquefied form, which is how it gets to markets not served by pipelines, but this requires specially designed shipping and terminals, which can’t be added rapidly in a crisis.
Which brings us to the current moment. Russian gas deliveries to Europe have plunged about 75 percent from a year ago. The Russians claim to be experiencing technical difficulties, but nobody believes that; this is clearly a de facto embargo intended to pressure the West into cutting off support for Ukraine. And the result has been an incredible surge in European gas prices.
If you want a historical comparison, the roughly tenfold recent surge in European gas prices dwarfs the oil price shocks of 1973-4 and 1979-80, which played a big role in the stagflation of the 1970s.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the latest price surge began in mid-June. That’s more or less when it became clear that Russia’s second offensive in Ukraine — the one that followed its disastrous initial attempt to seize Kyiv — wasn’t going to achieve decisive results, and that the military balance was likely to shift in Ukraine’s favor as Western weapons arrived. So Russia turned to economic warfare instead.
Europe is making up for the shortfall in part by importing liquefied natural gas, especially from the United States, which produces a lot of natural gas from shale. But the capacity for L.N.G. shipments is limited, which is why U.S. natural gas prices, while up, haven’t surged nearly as much as European prices.
How is this all going to play out? Sophisticated, advanced economies have enormous capacity for adaptation, and Europe has been building up its gas stocks to get through the winter; the continent will find ways to manage even if it’s receiving very little Russian gas. But a bout of high inflation is inevitable, and a European recession seems extremely likely.
That said, macroeconomic considerations are probably secondary to the question of how Europe will co
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Paul Krugman hasn't been right about anything in 10 years.
Why do you listen to that asshole whenever his lips move?
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Russia is making huge windfall profits in Europe by reducing the amount of natural gas sold to EU to 25% of the normal amount. By restricted the flow of gas, Russia is getting 10 times the normal price for gas. Here are the prices:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Paul Krugman hasn't been right about anything in 10 years.
Why do you listen to that asshole whenever his lips move?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=TbgV
Putin has learned the lesson about how Capitalism works. By restricting supply, prices and profits will increase!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I discovered that Signym is lying. Russia has been reducing the supply of natural gas to Europe since last year as a way to cheat the people of the EU out of money by raising prices, raising total profits, and restricting natural gas supply. The blame for this goes to Putin, not to the EU leaders. But because Signym is a liar, Signym blames the wrong people.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
After many months of warning signs, Russia’s latest moves to squeeze natural gas flows are a red alert for the EU
The gas crisis in Europe has been building for a while, and Russia’s role in it has been clear from the beginning. In September 2021 – five months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the IEA pointed out that Russia was preventing a significant amount of gas from reaching Europe. We raised the alarm further in January, highlighting how Russia’s large and unjustified reductions in supplies to Europe were creating “artificial tightness in markets” and driving up prices at exactly the same time as tensions were rising over Ukraine.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, nobody in Europe or elsewhere could be under any illusions about the risks around Russian energy supplies. Just a week after the invasion started, the IEA released our 10-Point Plan to Reduce the European Union’s Reliance on Russian Natural Gas, setting out the practical actions Europe could take. It stressed the need to maximise gas supplies from other sources; accelerate the deployment of solar and wind; make the most of existing low emissions energy sources, such as renewables and nuclear; ramp up energy efficiency measures in homes and businesses; and take steps to save energy by turning down the thermostat.
More from the International Energy Agency: IEA at https://www.iea.org/commentaries/coordinated-actions-across-europe-are
-essential-to-prevent-a-major-gas-crunch-here-are-5-immediate-measures
A graph of Russian natural gas flow to the European Union, January 2019-July 2022 is at
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/russian-natural-gas-flo
w-to-the-european-union-january-2019-july-2022
The graph makes it obvious that Putin had a plan to strangle Europe since last year. Signym blames EU leaders for Putin strangling Europe.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I discovered that Signym is lying. Russia has been reducing the supply of natural gas to Europe since last year as a way to cheat the people of the EU out of money by raising prices, raising total profits, and restricting natural gas supply. The blame for this goes to Putin, not to the EU leaders. But because Signym is a liar, Signym blames the wrong people.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
You're an idiot or a liar or both.
The European leaders sanctioned Russia, after they enacted "green" energy initiatives.
The blame does NOT go to Putin. The blame goes to the Leftist European leaders as well as our own, since the US Dollar still drives the world economy.
Go ask Greta Thunberg. If you can find her. She's going to be hiding for her life in her gated community.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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GERMANY decides to shut down their nuclear reactors (2011)
Quote:
How Fukushima (triggered Germany's nuclear phaseout
https://m.dw.com/en/how-fukushima-triggered-germanys-nuclear-phaseout/
a-56829217
EUROPEAN UNION pressures Bulgaria to reject South Stream, a supply of Russian gas to southern Europe through a Ukraine-independent southern route (2014)
Quote:
EU asks Bulgaria to stop work on Gazprom's South Stream pipeline
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-southstream-bulgaria-idUKKBN0EE0
SU20140603
UKRAINE refuses to pay Gazprom $2-3 billion for gas delivered. Gazprom shuts off gas to Ukraine (2014)
Quote:
Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine
https://borgenproject.org/russia-cuts-gas-ukraine/
UKRAINE engages in the fictitious "reverse flow" of gas, siphons gas from supplies headed to the EU through its territory (2014)
Quote:
Is it legal? Ukraine seeks to fill ‘gas gap’ with reverse flows
https://www.rt.com/business/166520-ukraine-reverse-gas-flows/
Seeing that Ukraine is an unreliable gas transit area, MERKEL (Germany) asks Putin for a NordstreamII to supply more gas than NordstreamI (2015)
Why Is Merkel Backing the Pipeline That Appeases Putin?
https://www.newsweek.com/why-merkel-backing-pipeline-appeases-putin-42
0252
EUROPEAN NATIONS end long-term contracts for gas delveries seeking lower spot prices, get hit with later prices increases instead (Oct 2021)
Quote:
Europe made mistake in ditching long-term gas deals — Putin
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/06/europe-made-mistake-in-ditching-long-t
erm-gas-deals-putin.html
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries? No.
EUROPEAN UNION, UK and USA ban the Russian central bank from SWIFT, making ruble-to-dollar conversion impossible and ultimately requiring payment in rubles for Russian gas (Feb 26, 2022)
Quote:
US, EU, UK to sanction Russian central bank, block SWIFT
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/us-eu-uk-agree-remove-select
ed-russian-banks-83134585
Has Russia shut off gas? No.
GERMANY decides to end certification of the fully-completed NordStream II after battling multiple delays introduced by the USA and EU nations, leaving Russia hlding the bag for construction costs (Feb 22, 2022)
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/germany-halts-certification-of-nord-st
ream-2-amid-russia-ukraine-crisis.html
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries to Europe? No.
GAZPROM offers ruble to dollar conversion for payment processing (April 2, 2022)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-01/gazprom-starts-tell
ing-clients-how-to-pay-for-gas-in-rubles
Has Russia ended gas delveries? No.
POLAND ends contracts with Russia for gas
Quote:
Poland ends deal to receive Russian gas after rouble dispute
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/poland-ends-deal-receive-r
ussian-gas-after-rouble-dispute-2022-05-23/
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries? No.
UKRAINE shuts off natural gas pipeline supplying Europe with natural gas (May 2022)
Quote:
Ukraine Cuts Off Russian Natural Gas Pipeline Supplying Europe
https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-cuts-off-russian-natural-gas-pipelin
e-supplying-europe-/6567439.html
Has Russia shut off gas deliveries to Europe? No.
Meanwhile, the main source of energy to Europe is not gas (altho Germany depends on it) but oil . The EUROPEAN UNION sanctions Russian oil deliveries
Quote:
EU sanctions against Russia explained
What goods cannot be imported from Russia to the EU?
... The list of sanctioned products includes among others:
crude oil and refined petroleum products, with limited exceptions (with phase out of 6 to 8 months)
coal and other solid fossil fuels (as there is a wind-down period for existing contracts, this sanction will apply as from August 2022)
gold, including jewellery
steel and iron
wood, cement and certain fertilisers
seafood and liquor (e.g. caviar, vodka)
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions/restrictive-meas
ures-against
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Quote:Be real about the human race. The majority are stupid, lazy, ignorant, dishonest, greedy and, to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of this sundae, motivated by crazy ideas and passions. It is no surprise that with all those negative attributes the majority of humans have been living in poverty for the last few hundred thousand years. There has never been a Garden of Eden, despite Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagining humanity has fallen into decay during modern times. Humans lived in decay since their beginning.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, it looks to any objective observer that EU and its various member states have shot themselves in the face, over and over and over, energy-wise.
In addition to their unrealistic immigration policies and cultural disintegration ("we are citizens of the world" ... without worldwide voting rights, of course) and dysfunctional Covid responses, the EU is rapidly committing suicide.
It is no surprise when a democracy makes stupid decisions because that is what stupid people do when they make their personal decisions. A democracy amplifies, not attenuates, the stupidity to fill nations and continents. But that doesn't mean every human is as incompetent as the majority. Some actually know what their goals are and how to get there expeditiously, which is the only reason humanity has made some recent progress. It is not surprising if the EU does not handle this crisis well. But maybe it won't end disastrously because there are smart people in the EU. With some luck and a great deal of hard work, they will counterbalance the stupidity of the rest of the EU citizens who will never understand what was done to save them from starving, freezing in winter, and burning up in the heat of summer.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:So basically this " crises" is of the EU's own making, and has nothing to do with Russia.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Be real about the human race. The majority are stupid, lazy, ignorant, dishonest, greedy and, to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of this sundae, motivated by crazy ideas and passions. It is no surprise that with all those negative attributes the majority of humans have been living in poverty for the last few hundred thousand years. There has never been a Garden of Eden, despite Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagining humanity has fallen into decay during modern times. Humans lived in decay since their beginning.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, it looks to any objective observer that EU and its various member states have shot themselves in the face, over and over and over, energy-wise.
In addition to their unrealistic immigration policies and cultural disintegration ("we are citizens of the world" ... without worldwide voting rights, of course) and dysfunctional Covid responses, the EU is rapidly committing suicide.
It is no surprise when a democracy makes stupid decisions because that is what stupid people do when they make their personal decisions. A democracy amplifies, not attenuates, the stupidity to fill nations and continents. But that doesn't mean every human is as incompetent as the majority. Some actually know what their goals are and how to get there expeditiously, which is the only reason humanity has made some recent progress. It is not surprising if the EU does not handle this crisis well. But maybe it won't end disastrously because there are smart people in the EU. With some luck and a great deal of hard work, they will counterbalance the stupidity of the rest of the EU citizens who will never understand what was done to save them from starving, freezing in winter, and burning up in the heat of summer.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
And if course you blame this all on "democracy". My god, you must really despise the average person!
So why do you keep dissing the average person anyway, when you have three fine examples of thoughtful hard-working average people right here in this board!
But the EU is NOT a democracy in any sense of the word, and neither is NATO, the ECB, or the WEF, and they seem to be making stupid decisions and forcing them on EU member states.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Be real about the human race. The majority are stupid, lazy, ignorant, dishonest, greedy and, to put whipped cream and a cherry on top of this sundae, motivated by crazy ideas and passions. It is no surprise that with all those negative attributes the majority of humans have been living in poverty for the last few hundred thousand years. There has never been a Garden of Eden, despite Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagining humanity has fallen into decay during modern times. Humans lived in decay since their beginning.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, it looks to any objective observer that EU and its various member states have shot themselves in the face, over and over and over, energy-wise.
In addition to their unrealistic immigration policies and cultural disintegration ("we are citizens of the world" ... without worldwide voting rights, of course) and dysfunctional Covid responses, the EU is rapidly committing suicide.
It is no surprise when a democracy makes stupid decisions because that is what stupid people do when they make their personal decisions. A democracy amplifies, not attenuates, the stupidity to fill nations and continents. But that doesn't mean every human is as incompetent as the majority. Some actually know what their goals are and how to get there expeditiously, which is the only reason humanity has made some recent progress. It is not surprising if the EU does not handle this crisis well. But maybe it won't end disastrously because there are smart people in the EU. With some luck and a great deal of hard work, they will counterbalance the stupidity of the rest of the EU citizens who will never understand what was done to save them from starving, freezing in winter, and burning up in the heat of summer.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
In other words.
I'm sorry Sigs and Jack. I'm wrong and you are right.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:It is pretty clear you have never been around people in a real life or death emergency. Lucky you! One kind of response is "When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." The other common response is to be paralyzed by fear. That is what most humans are like in extreme situations, but your idea of what "extreme" means is probably what I think of as a minor inconvenience so you might have a very different understanding of human nature.
Originally posted by SignyM:
So basically this " crises" is of the EU's own making, and has nothing to do with Russia.
And if course you blame this all on "democracy". My god, you must really despise the average person!
So why do you keep dissing the average person anyway, when you have three fine examples of thoughtful hard-working average people right here in this board!
But the EU is NOT a democracy in any sense of the word, and neither is NATO, the ECB, or the WEF, and they seem to be making stupid decisions and forcing them on EU member states.
Trump warned the Germans about becoming dependent on Russian energy. The Germans scoffed. See the video from Sep 25, 2018:
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1044740334306058241
Very clearly, the Germans at that particular UN meeting were not bright minds. It is now four years later. Probably none of those Germans who scoffed will be capable of devising a solution to a problem they didn't believe existed. Either running in circles while shouting nonsensical solutions or paralyzed while hiding in the cellar from danger.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I remember just a short while ago that Second was calling me a nihilist as an insult, yet every backpedal he's making in this thread seems pretty fucking blackpilled, don't it?
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Oh you're such a bullshit artist!
SignyM:
So basically this " crises" is of the EU's own making, and has nothing to do with Russia.
And if course you blame this all on "democracy". My god, you must really despise the average person!
So why do you keep dissing the average person anyway, when you have three fine examples of thoughtful hard-working average people right here in this board!
But the EU is NOT a democracy in any sense of the word, and neither is NATO, the ECB, or the WEF, and they seem to be making stupid decisions and forcing them on EU member states.
SECIND: It is pretty clear you have never been around people in a real life or death emergency.
HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?
I have, in fact, have been in life-and-death situations.
But what does this have to do with the topic? The EU's crisis is a slow-moving self-generated train wreck. The EU did it, the EU can undo it. The decision-makers don't want to. You'd have to ask them why not.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Hubby says I need to spell out my other reply for you, SECOND: Why are you blaming the average person? The average person isn't making these decisions. It's the people in charge. Blame them.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:I will spell it out for you. The people in charge, "leaders," come from the same sad genetic background as the "followers" do. Why would you expect leaders to make better decisions than followers? (Luckily, not all leaders share all genetic and the resulting behavioral weaknesses with their followers. That is why after 300,000 years of dull and endless poverty, humanity has recently made some progress. But it is sad to say that most humans are no different than they were in the hundreds of thousands of years before recorded history. And most humans will revert back to what they were from before recorded history when left to run their own lives as they please.)
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Hubby says I need to spell out my other reply for you, SECOND: Why are you blaming the average person? The average person isn't making these decisions. It's the people in charge. Blame them.
Where did these ideas come from? I was looking at a book this morning: The Science of Fate - Why Your Future is More Predictable Than You Think by Hannah Critchlow.
A two sentence quote. “I asked all of them not just about their own particular work but for their opinion on fate and free will. I knew the book would benefit from taking in the perspective of Christian theologians, social and evolutionary psychologists and Buddhist psychiatrists, as well as many of my fellow neuroscientists.” The point that book made is that most people have less free will than they think and their future is more controlled by fate than they want to believe.
What is my opinion on fate and free will? Depends on which human I am expressing an opinion on. 6ix and Signym and Germans are meat robots.
For Signym: Remember mentioning "The Century of the Self"? Proof that meat robots exist, don’t have free will and their fate is decided by others who use them as meat puppets. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+century+of+the+self
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism? A human who controls his own fate would have learned immediately to avoid all alcohol. A meat robot would not.
For Germans: Remember buying cheap natural gas from Russia, a country that invaded and occupied East Germany? Only a meat robot would have trusted Russia. Only meat robots would have believed Hitler speeches about lebensraum and antisemitism.
Download Hannah Critchlow’s books for free from the mirrors at
https://libgen.unblockit.bet/search.php?req=Hannah+Critchlow
Dr Hannah Critchlow is the Science Outreach Fellow at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, and has been named a Top 100 UK Scientist by the Science Council for her work in science communication. She is listed as one of the University of Cambridge’s ‘inspirational and successful women in science’ and appears regularly on TV, radio and at festivals to discuss and explore the brain.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.
Quote:
A human who controls his own fate would have learned immediately to avoid all alcohol. A meat robot would not.
Easy for you to say. Your poorly written Second character has never faced any adversity or ever suffered an addiction. Second makes all the right decisions. Second is perfect in every way. Second was always perfect. Second will always be perfect. Second is a boring character. Second is not a real human being at all.
In the end I was able to overcome my addiction. I did take control. We're just three months short of 6 years of sobriety now. No religion necessary. No rehab necessary. No 12 step plan necessary. No support group necessary.
Of the two of us, you are the completely Static character who is incapable of change or growth. There's nothing about you that is any different than 7 or 8 years ago or whenever we first interacted here.
I'm a completely different person than I was in that time frame. Am I perfect? Far from from it. But I am better. A lot better. And I continue to try to become even better all the time. And that takes work. A lot of work. And I am the first to admit that there are many wasted days in between the days of improvements. But they do come less frequently as I continue the push to improve.
I hope you find the help you need one day. Or even better, I hope you find the catalyst necessary for you to make the changes you need to make on your own. There's a reason that most people who go to support groups or into rehab relapse so frequently. It's because they didn't really want to change. They didn't want to get better.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:6ix, prove that you are not a meat robot by quitting smoking today. If you are still not smoking when the Russia/Ukraine War is over, that hints you aren't robotic, but "Trump will be fine" hints you are a robot.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.
The Germans are addicted to cheap fuel. (Germany also has a smoking problem. But Russia has it worse. Russia has the highest smoking rate among men - 60.2 percent. )
The Germans should never have bought natural gas from Russia and now the Germans, thanks to Putin, have lung cancer in their economy.
For Germans: Remember buying cheap natural gas from Russia, a country that invaded and occupied East Germany? Only a meat robot would have trusted Russia. Only meat robots would have believed Hitler speeches about lebensraum and antisemitism.
Smoking & Smoking laws in Germany
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/smoking-and-smoki
ng-laws-germany
World’s Largest Tobacco Use Study Shows Vast Scope of Tobacco Epidemic and Urgent Need for Countries to Act
https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press-releases/2012_08_16_lancet
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:6ix, prove that you are not a meat robot by quitting smoking today.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.
I enjoy smoking. Fuck off.
What I want to know is how many hundreds of pounds your fat ass is. Or how many dead hooker's bodies you could show to the cops. We know nothing about you, except for your lies about how you're perfect.
Prove you're not a fictional character by telling us your flaws.
Your "moral authority" that you love to lord over me in the RWED doesn't track with anyone because we all know you're full of shit and you hide completely behind your avatar. Your perceived advantage over me is worth nothing in reality because it has no basis in reality.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:You proved you are robot, 6ix. But then many Germans are meat robots controlled by urges, whether for tobacco or cheap Russian natural gas, that they can't comprehend:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I enjoy smoking. Fuck off.
Smoking is the main cause of lung cancer in Germany, with four out of five lung cancer deaths attributed to smoking. Overall, around 127,000 people die every year in Germany as a result of tobacco consumption. This amounts to around 15 percent of all deaths every year.
https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/smoking-and-smoki
ng-laws-germany
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.Quote:
A human who controls his own fate would have learned immediately to avoid all alcohol. A meat robot would not.
Easy for you to say. Your poorly written Second character has never faced any adversity or ever suffered an addiction. Second makes all the right decisions. Second is perfect in every way. Second was always perfect. Second will always be perfect. Second is a boring character. Second is not a real human being at all.
In the end I was able to overcome my addiction. I did take control. We're just three months short of 6 years of sobriety now. No religion necessary. No rehab necessary. No 12 step plan necessary. No support group necessary.
Of the two of us, you are the completely Static character who is incapable of change or growth. There's nothing about you that is any different than 7 or 8 years ago or whenever we first interacted here.
I'm a completely different person than I was in that time frame. Am I perfect? Far from from it. But I am better. A lot better. And I continue to try to become even better all the time. And that takes work. A lot of work. And I am the first to admit that there are many wasted days in between the days of improvements. But they do come less frequently as I continue the push to improve.
I hope you find the help you need one day. Or even better, I hope you find the catalyst necessary for you to make the changes you need to make on your own. There's a reason that most people who go to support groups or into rehab relapse so frequently. It's because they didn't really want to change. They didn't want to get better.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:6ix, prove that you are not a meat robot by quitting smoking today.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.
I enjoy smoking. Fuck off.
What I want to know is how many hundreds of pounds your fat ass is. Or how many dead hooker's bodies you could show to the cops. We know nothing about you, except for your lies about how you're perfect.
Prove you're not a fictional character by telling us your flaws.
Your "moral authority" that you love to lord over me in the RWED doesn't track with anyone because we all know you're full of shit and you hide completely behind your avatar. Your perceived advantage over me is worth nothing in reality because it has no basis in reality.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
You are a dildo.
Prove you're not a fictional character.
I don't need your dumb fuck studies to know that smoking is bad for you. I already knew it was going into the habit.
P.S. Thanks once again for making another random thread all about me. I know you love me dude, but no I will not go out on a date with you.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Yanno, I get about one sentence in to each of your replies and I stumble on something so self-contradictory I have to stop.
SIGNYM:
Hubby says I need to spell out my other reply for you, SECOND: Why are you blaming the average person? The average person isn't making these decisions. It's the people in charge. Blame them.
SECOND: I will spell it out for you. The people in charge, "leaders," come from the same sad genetic background as the "followers" do.
Let's parse this.
So, it's not RUSSIA!RUSIA! causing Europe's crisis. You agree with me on that.
And it's not "democracy" causing Europe's crisis. You agree with me on that, too!
Now it's the elite's genetics??!?
1) Yes, we all come from the same genetic stock. But, has Darwin not taught you about genetic variation and natural selection?
2) Before, you USED TO say that the wealthy, such as yourself, were morally and mentally superior to the "average person". Now you're saying you make the same kinds of stupid decisions.
I presume that means that YOU'RE just as stupid, lazy, and short-sighted; and are just as controlled by your desires and habits as the average guy/gal?
Unless you're going to tell us that you're more perfect than Warren Buffet, Chainsaw Al, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all rolled into one?
Why do you contradict yourself from post to post?
*****
Here's what I think SECOND: Power rewards sociopathy. If you sift through the population of average people" you will find some who are less moral, less empathetic, more single-purposed, perhaps even on "the spectrum", bright enough to springboard themselves into wealth with opportunity and a lot of luck. It's a proven fact that men are more likely to be sociopaths than women, and the wealthy vastly more likely to be sociopaths than that.
Why do you spend so much time justifying yourself? Nobody believes you anyway. You may not be anywhere near as rich as you say, and you're clearly not as smart or as perfect or as rational or as objective -or as honest! - as you claim.
Prove to us that you're better than we are. Start by posting more rationally, obiectively, and HONESTLY than we do.
And now, back on topic...
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:For hundreds of thousands of years Mankind has been in trouble, living in poverty, not living in the Garden of Eden, because most of humanity has all of 6ix's flaws and misconceptions and urges they can't comprehend. For some reason, be it fate/destiny/doom/lack of free will/Satan/the neurology of the brain, most of humanity can't get control of themselves, which makes meat robots of them. The tigers of the world tear meat robots apart.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
P.S. Thanks once again for making another random thread all about me. I know you love me dude, but no I will not go out on a date with you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.Quote:
A human who controls his own fate would have learned immediately to avoid all alcohol. A meat robot would not.
Easy for you to say. Your poorly written Second character has never faced any adversity or ever suffered an addiction. Second makes all the right decisions. Second is perfect in every way. Second was always perfect. Second will always be perfect. Second is a boring character. Second is not a real human being at all.
In the end I was able to overcome my addiction. I did take control. We're just three months short of 6 years of sobriety now. No religion necessary. No rehab necessary. No 12 step plan necessary. No support group necessary.
Of the two of us, you are the completely Static character who is incapable of change or growth. There's nothing about you that is any different than 7 or 8 years ago or whenever we first interacted here.
I'm a completely different person than I was in that time frame. Am I perfect? Far from from it. But I am better. A lot better. And I continue to try to become even better all the time. And that takes work. A lot of work. And I am the first to admit that there are many wasted days in between the days of improvements. But they do come less frequently as I continue the push to improve.
I hope you find the help you need one day. Or even better, I hope you find the catalyst necessary for you to make the changes you need to make on your own. There's a reason that most people who go to support groups or into rehab relapse so frequently. It's because they didn't really want to change. They didn't want to get better.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:6ix, prove that you are not a meat robot by quitting smoking today.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For 6ix: Remember your alcoholism?
Yeah. Yeah, I remember that.
I enjoy smoking. Fuck off.
What I want to know is how many hundreds of pounds your fat ass is. Or how many dead hooker's bodies you could show to the cops. We know nothing about you, except for your lies about how you're perfect.
Prove you're not a fictional character by telling us your flaws.
Your "moral authority" that you love to lord over me in the RWED doesn't track with anyone because we all know you're full of shit and you hide completely behind your avatar. Your perceived advantage over me is worth nothing in reality because it has no basis in reality.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
You are a dildo.
Prove you're not a fictional character.
I don't need your dumb fuck studies to know that smoking is bad for you. I already knew it was going into the habit.
P.S. Thanks once again for making another random thread all about me. I know you love me dude, but no I will not go out on a date with you.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Prove to us that you're not a fictional character, or this conversation is finished.
I've got shit to do today. I'll leave you with your day full of doing nothing important, for nobody important, from your mom's basement.
Try laying off the pud pounding today. Your 2" pecker needs a breather.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:And you just admitted to genetically sharing the same flaws?
Originally posted by second:Quote:For hundreds of thousands of years Mankind has been in trouble, living in poverty, not living in the Garden of Eden, because most of humanity has all of 6ix's flaws and misconceptions and urges they can't comprehend. For some reason, be it fate/destiny/doom/lack of free will/Satan/the neurology of the brain, most of humanity can't get control of themselves, which makes meat robots of them. The tigers of the world tear meat robots apart.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
P.S. Thanks once again for making another random thread all about me. I know you love me dude, but no I will not go out on a date with you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Apparently so.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Apparently, NOT. Putin and Trump are tigers. So was Hitler and Stalin and Chairman Mao. Their prey are the meat robots masquerading as humans. Real humans, not the robots who are Trumptards or Putin apologists or Stalinists or WWII Germans or Little Red Book wavers, are perfectly safe from the tigers' mind games and propaganda. But nobody, either full humans or meat robots, are safe from the tigers' bullets and bombs.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:And you just admitted to genetically sharing the same flaws?
Originally posted by second:Quote:For hundreds of thousands of years Mankind has been in trouble, living in poverty, not living in the Garden of Eden, because most of humanity has all of 6ix's flaws and misconceptions and urges they can't comprehend. For some reason, be it fate/destiny/doom/lack of free will/Satan/the neurology of the brain, most of humanity can't get control of themselves, which makes meat robots of them. The tigers of the world tear meat robots apart.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
P.S. Thanks once again for making another random thread all about me. I know you love me dude, but no I will not go out on a date with you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Apparently so.
Forgot to mention that Signym is both a Putin apologist and Trump apologist/Trumptard. 6ix is all Trumptard. Signym and 6ix are meat robots. Robots don't prosper in America because they become prey for the localized and lesser versions of Trump, call them mini-Trumps. Trump's lying, cheating and swindling is not unique to him.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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LOL...
Meanwhile, infallible and omniscient Second... who is certainly not a meat robot himself, supports this guy:
Talk about meat robots supporting meat robots.
Fuck off, worm. Every time you speak or write something you make yourself look dumber than you did the day before.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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SECOND, you keep contradicting yourself. Flagrantly. And like SIX, I have stuff to do.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
German Experts Warn Of Grid Instability..."Conventional Power Plants Needed For A Long Time To Come"
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/german-experts-warn-grid-instabilityc
onventional-power-plants-needed-long-time-come
Germany has been trying to "go green" since 2011, when they started to eliminate nuclear power. NOW they realize green energy isn't stable?
And they want to go to electric vehicles????
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Germany had warning before the Ukraine War that Natural Gas prices are Putin's tool to rob them of all their money, but Germany did not pay attention. Now Germany will pay Putin's price, whatever he wants to set it at.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Germany has been trying to "go green" since 2011, when they started to eliminate nuclear power. NOW they realize green energy isn't stable?
And they want to go to electric vehicles????
Global price of Natural gas, EU
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Tdgy
Raw data: The price of natural gas
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-the-price-of-natural-gas/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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SECOND: You already agreed that Russia is not responsible for gas shortage.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SECOND: You already agreed that Russia is not responsible for gas shortage.
And they sure as sht had nothing to do with invading Ukraine! I mean, none of this would have happened if Ukraine hadn't invaded Ukraine! A-holes! :lol:
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SECOND: You already agreed that Russia is not responsible for gas shortage.
And they sure as sht had nothing to do with invading Ukraine! I mean, none of this would have happened if Ukraine hadn't invaded Ukraine! A-holes! :lol:
Actually if you look at the timeline that I posted, Germany changed it's energy policy in 2011. Educate yourself.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:I will forever treasure Signym's one sentence: "You already agreed that Russia is not responsible for gas shortage." NO! I did NOT agree! That sentence from Signym is absolute proof that what I write does NOT get understood by Signym the Meat Robot.
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SECOND: You already agreed that Russia is not responsible for gas shortage.
And they sure as sht had nothing to do with invading Ukraine! I mean, none of this would have happened if Ukraine hadn't invaded Ukraine! A-holes! :lol:
There is a lovely article "About Ourselves: We Are Not Even Wrong". It explains how the Meat Robots such as 6ix and Signym that live among the Humans misunderstand the Humans.
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2022/08/about-ourselves-we-are-n
ot-even-wrong.html
It is not at all surprising that the Meat Robots don't prosper compared to their slightly more evolved neighbors, the Humans. For example, the Russians, a nation almost exclusively made of Meat Robots, has not prospered compared to the Finns, when measured by GDP per Capita. Meat Robots live stupid lives, then they die young, which is why Putin is offering medals to Hero Mothers who give birth to 10 or more live Meat Robots. If one of the ten Robot Babies dies, Mama gets no medal unless the Robot Baby died in War with Ukraine.
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/russia/finland
Putin revives Soviet ‘Mother Heroine’ award for women who have 10 children
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/17/russia-ukraine-putin-m
other-heroine-award-children/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
SECOND: I will forever treasure Signym's one sentence: "You already agreed that Russia is not responsible for gas shortage." NO! I did NOT agree! That sentence from Signym is absolute proof that what I write does NOT get understood by Signym the Meat Robot.
I can see not answering, even for quite a while ... busy (as I was), or disinterested in continuing. But when you post one wall of gibberish and then post a DIFFERENT wall of gibberish (and then another, and another) you've pretty much given up on your first point. And while you may not have the honesty to say it outright, you've agreed with the rebuttal.
So ...
Quote:
SECOND: "When trade endangers national security. Europe and the Economics of Blackmail" [RUSSIA!RUSSIA!]
SECOND: Russia has been reducing the supply of natural gas to Europe since last year
SIGNY: [detailed timeline of gas supply events in Europe demonstrating the Russia has NOT reduced gas supplies to Europe until just the past few weeks]
SECOND: "... the human race. The majority are stupid, lazy, ignorant, dishonest, greedy and ... It is no surprise when a democracy makes stupid decisions" [The fault is democracy]
SIGNY: So basically this " crises" is of the EU's own making, and has nothing to do with Russia? And of course you blame this all on "democracy" ...
SECOND: [No clarification or rebuttal] "It is pretty clear you have never been around people in a real life or death emergency ." [WTF does that have to do with anything?]
SIGNY: "The EU's crisis is a slow-moving self-generated train wreck. The EU did it, the EU can undo it. The decision-makers don't want to. You'd have to ask them why not."
SECOND: "I will spell it out for you. The people in charge, "leaders," come from the same sad genetic background as the "followers" do." [Now the fault is the genetics of the leaders?]
SIGNY: "Yanno, I get about one sentence in to each of your replies and I stumble on something so self-contradictory I have to stop.
Let's parse this.
So, it's not RUSSIA!RUSIA! causing Europe's crisis. You agree with me on that.
And it's not "democracy" causing Europe's crisis. You agree with me on that, too!
Now it's the elite's genetics??!?"
SECOND: "...meat robots ..."
It seems you're ready to toss any old crap at the board except what actually happened. Gazprom and Rosneft have done everything in their power to deliver cheap dependable oil and reliable gas to their customers, including proposing, starting, and even completing requested pipelines, only to have those prospects stalled or discontinued, gas not paid for, products sanctioned, payment processing sanctioned etc. They have apolitically fulfilled every contract that they signed. But at THIS point, years into this "not-agreement-capable" behavior from the west, I think Russia finally realized that the west was using energy as a weapon against THEM.
AFA Germany is concerned, I've been following their energy policy off and on since Fukushima. I recall the day when they celebrated 50% of their power coming from solar and wind. I also recall detailed calculations that they made on their electricity costs, and how they would need CHEAP gas to remain competitive in manufacturing. Their decision to seek pipeline gas from Russia was an economic one, not a political one. Now their decisions seem to be all ideological, no reality intrudes.
Yes, nations "should" be as independent as possible, producing what they can and trading what they must. But if you're committed to low-carbon en
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Back to topic: The EU is imploding economically, thanks to fantastical energy and de-industrialization policies. It imploded militarily a long time ago, depending on the USA to protect it so they could afford niceties like nationalized medical care and free education. Socially, they've discarded their national cultures. Financially, they've given control up to The Troika, many EU nations with extremely high debt burdens. And politically, the EU nations have (mostly) given up their independence to that great bloated bureaucratic borg that squats in Brussels.
Let's track what happens to the EU, shall we? And see what lessons we can derive from their experience.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Back to topic: The EU is imploding economically, thanks to fantastical energy and de-industrialization policies. It imploded militarily a long time ago, depending on the USA to protect it so they could afford niceties like nationalized medical care and free education. Socially, they've discarded their national cultures. Financially, they've given control up to The Troika, many EU nations with extremely high debt burdens. And politically, the EU nations have (mostly) given up their independence to that great bloated bureaucratic borg that squats in Brussels.
Let's track what happens to the EU, shall we? And see what lessons we can derive from their experience.
Yup. And let's stop making the printing press here go BRRRRRR and fund NATO too.
That bullshit ends soon.
Tick Tock.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Oh, and at the end of the day it's going to be China that owns Europe...
And Russia too.
Here's a reenactment of you dumb shits and your obsession with Russia and Putin.
Ted gets it, because his brain works in 2D.
But for the other two worms, the bat that gets squashed is Russia, and the big hand is the CCP.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:I think a comic is completely on topic because many people and their countries are directionless and drifting through life and time, with no particular plans other than the vague pursue of happiness, but also clearly pursuing the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Back to topic: The EU is imploding economically, thanks to fantastical energy and de-industrialization policies. It imploded militarily a long time ago, depending on the USA to protect it so they could afford niceties like nationalized medical care and free education. Socially, they've discarded their national cultures. Financially, they've given control up to The Troika, many EU nations with extremely high debt burdens. And politically, the EU nations have (mostly) given up their independence to that great bloated bureaucratic borg that squats in Brussels.
Let's track what happens to the EU, shall we? And see what lessons we can derive from their experience.
SMBC is a daily comic strip about life, philosophy, science, and mathematics. Recently, the comic had a point to make about meat robots muddling through life.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/muddle
Bob: Do you think it’s better to accept your place in a web of human relations or to pursue a transcendent authentic self-hood?
Alice: That’s a false choice.
Bob: You think you can do both?
Alice: I can do neither.
Alice: My life plan is to never make peace with society’s perception of me nor come to a contented state of personal understanding.
Alice: I’m just gonna muddle through, Baby! I’m gonna be awkward, never reflect, play video games nights and weekends, and run out the clock on this future corpse.
Bob: My God.
Bob: This is an entirely new way of being.
Alice: No no, everyone does it, they just don’t realize.
The Philosopher: The key is first to realize this and then decide it’s a belief system.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I think a comic is completely on topic because many people and their countries are directionless and drifting through life and time, with no particular plans other than the vague pursue of happiness, but also clearly pursuing the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Back to topic: The EU is imploding economically, thanks to fantastical energy and de-industrialization policies. It imploded militarily a long time ago, depending on the USA to protect it so they could afford niceties like nationalized medical care and free education. Socially, they've discarded their national cultures. Financially, they've given control up to The Troika, many EU nations with extremely high debt burdens. And politically, the EU nations have (mostly) given up their independence to that great bloated bureaucratic borg that squats in Brussels.
Let's track what happens to the EU, shall we? And see what lessons we can derive from their experience.
SMBC is a daily comic strip about life, philosophy, science, and mathematics. Recently, the comic had a point to make about meat robots muddling through life.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/muddle
Bob: Do you think it’s better to accept your place in a web of human relations or to pursue a transcendent authentic self-hood?
Alice: That’s a false choice.
Bob: You think you can do both?
Alice: I can do neither.
Alice: My life plan is to never make peace with society’s perception of me nor come to a contented state of personal understanding.
Alice: I’m just gonna muddle through, Baby! I’m gonna be awkward, never reflect, play video games nights and weekends, and run out the clock on this future corpse.
Bob: My God.
Bob: This is an entirely new way of being.
Alice: No no, everyone does it, they just don’t realize.
The Philosopher: The key is first to realize this and then decide it’s a belief system.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The above is what happens when you've lived a life with no adversity.
And I mean REAL adversity. Not the fabricated teen angst drama bullshit that is forced on kids in public schools.
This is why we know your fictional character Second is a poorly written character.
Because the person behind the avatar and the Second handle is the meat robot Alice in real life.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:6ix, you and many people and their countries are directionless and drifting through life and time, with no particular plans other than the vague pursue of happiness, but also clearly pursuing the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked. 6ix, you have lived a very crooked life, going from one addiction to the next (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, Trump ("he'll be fine") to who knows what next.) But don't worry, the EU has the same problem as you do. Just look at Hungary and Viktor Orbán, the crookedest PM in the EU.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I think a comic is completely on topic because many people and their countries are directionless and drifting through life and time, with no particular plans other than the vague pursue of happiness, but also clearly pursuing the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Back to topic: The EU is imploding economically, thanks to fantastical energy and de-industrialization policies. It imploded militarily a long time ago, depending on the USA to protect it so they could afford niceties like nationalized medical care and free education. Socially, they've discarded their national cultures. Financially, they've given control up to The Troika, many EU nations with extremely high debt burdens. And politically, the EU nations have (mostly) given up their independence to that great bloated bureaucratic borg that squats in Brussels.
Let's track what happens to the EU, shall we? And see what lessons we can derive from their experience.
SMBC is a daily comic strip about life, philosophy, science, and mathematics. Recently, the comic had a point to make about meat robots muddling through life.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/muddle
Bob: Do you think it’s better to accept your place in a web of human relations or to pursue a transcendent authentic self-hood?
Alice: That’s a false choice.
Bob: You think you can do both?
Alice: I can do neither.
Alice: My life plan is to never make peace with society’s perception of me nor come to a contented state of personal understanding.
Alice: I’m just gonna muddle through, Baby! I’m gonna be awkward, never reflect, play video games nights and weekends, and run out the clock on this future corpse.
Bob: My God.
Bob: This is an entirely new way of being.
Alice: No no, everyone does it, they just don’t realize.
The Philosopher: The key is first to realize this and then decide it’s a belief system.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The above is what happens when you've lived a life with no adversity.
And I mean REAL adversity. Not the fabricated teen angst drama bullshit that is forced on kids in public schools.
This is why we know your fictional character Second is a poorly written character.
Because the person behind the avatar and the Second handle is the meat robot Alice in real life.
Viktor Orbán laid out his dark worldview to the American right — and they loved it
https://www.vox.com/2022/8/5/23292448/orban-cpac-dallas-2022-speech-tr
ump
A little clarification: Viktor Orbán and Hungary do not have problems with Putin. Russia Boosts Supply of Natural Gas to Hungary because Hungary is following Putin's leadership. Viktor Orbán had taken the path of least resistance to Russia before the Ukraine War. If only more EU countries follow Putin, as Orbán does, life would be easier for them. Pleasure seeking citizens of the EU may force more EU countries to follow Putin and allow him to conquer Ukraine.
https://www.rferl.org/a/hungary-orban-putin-russia-gas/31681502.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you and many people and their countries are directionless and drifting through life and time, with no particular plans other than the vague pursue of happiness, but also clearly pursuing the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked. 6ix, you have lived a very crooked life, going from one addiction to the next (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, Trump ("he'll be fine") to who knows what next.) But don't worry, the EU has the same problem as you do. Just look at Hungary and Viktor Orbán, the crookedest PM in the EU.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I think a comic is completely on topic because many people and their countries are directionless and drifting through life and time, with no particular plans other than the vague pursue of happiness, but also clearly pursuing the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Back to topic: The EU is imploding economically, thanks to fantastical energy and de-industrialization policies. It imploded militarily a long time ago, depending on the USA to protect it so they could afford niceties like nationalized medical care and free education. Socially, they've discarded their national cultures. Financially, they've given control up to The Troika, many EU nations with extremely high debt burdens. And politically, the EU nations have (mostly) given up their independence to that great bloated bureaucratic borg that squats in Brussels.
Let's track what happens to the EU, shall we? And see what lessons we can derive from their experience.
SMBC is a daily comic strip about life, philosophy, science, and mathematics. Recently, the comic had a point to make about meat robots muddling through life.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/muddle
Bob: Do you think it’s better to accept your place in a web of human relations or to pursue a transcendent authentic self-hood?
Alice: That’s a false choice.
Bob: You think you can do both?
Alice: I can do neither.
Alice: My life plan is to never make peace with society’s perception of me nor come to a contented state of personal understanding.
Alice: I’m just gonna muddle through, Baby! I’m gonna be awkward, never reflect, play video games nights and weekends, and run out the clock on this future corpse.
Bob: My God.
Bob: This is an entirely new way of being.
Alice: No no, everyone does it, they just don’t realize.
The Philosopher: The key is first to realize this and then decide it’s a belief system.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The above is what happens when you've lived a life with no adversity.
And I mean REAL adversity. Not the fabricated teen angst drama bullshit that is forced on kids in public schools.
This is why we know your fictional character Second is a poorly written character.
Because the person behind the avatar and the Second handle is the meat robot Alice in real life.
Talking about me again, I see.
I'll be out doing more structural repair to my house today so it's ready for the shiny new overhead door that will bring the shed that's been missing in my life for 7 years back into play. And while he's here to help me hang the new door, I'll also be showing off all of the house upgrades I've done since my friend's dad was last here helping me install the new kitchen floor back in January and pumping him up by letting him know that most of what I did was stuff that he taught me over 20 years ago.
Your problem, and the problem of MOST of the fringe Leftists in your group is that you don't believe that people can change, that they can improve themselves, or that they're worthy of redemption. Th
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Quote:Wrong as usual. My theme has been very consistent over many years: Trump is a scumbag and so are his defenders and apologists. He cheats on his taxes and they cheat on their taxes. He brags about his minuscule accomplishments and so do his people. He lies and they lie. He is a coward and they are cowards. He blusters and so do they. Trump is a gaudier version of his Trumptards and as worthless. Angry poor white trash recognize Trump as one of them. (He's not but explaining what he truly is to the suckers would ruin his con artist games.)
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Talking about me again, I see.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Wrong as usual.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Talking about me again, I see.
LOL
Dude. I've got over a thousand posts of you talking about me. Things I've shared with people I like that you save to a file on your computer and whip out whenever your jerking off all over these boards. None of them as bad as you sharing Signy's personal medical information all over the place though.
You are a garbage human being.
Get fucked.
Your little dick needs a break, beta bitch.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Let me push your meat robot buttons. All Trumptards I know have got the same buttons, but I don't push them in Texas because it disrupts my work. Pushing the button: 6ix, did you know that four Presidents were assassinated? What are Trump's chances? Did you know that Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were almost killed? Teddy survived because his prolix speech on many sheets of paper stopped a bullet. FDR survived because the Mayor of Chicago got in the way of a bullet. Are you archiving this, 6ix? Meat Robots have got to be meat, so I expect you are. Later, you will have a cigarette because meat robots seek out pleasure, even if will kill them, same as they would abandon Ukraine because Putin would be mean to meat robots, raising gasoline and natural gas prices, if the meat robots don't bend to Putin's will.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
LOL
Dude. I've got over a thousand posts of you talking about me. Things I've shared with people I like that you save to a file on your computer and whip out whenever your jerking off all over these boards. None of them as bad as you sharing Signy's personal medical information all over the place though.
You are a garbage human being.
Get fucked.
Your little dick needs a break, beta bitch.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Speaking of false narratives and meat robots:
SECOND, you are a meatrobot compelled to push false narratives.
I know what you will post before you post it, bc you are compelled to post your self-justifications, no matter how nonsensical.
You will post about anything and everything except what actually happened. Bc if you accept what actually happened you might realize that your rationalizations are crap.
So, let's discuss what actually happened, and not your fantasies.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Europe’s Gonna Party Like It’s 1979
Aug. 30, 2022, 12:30 p.m. ET
By Paul Krugman
You probably have to be a senior citizen to remember the gasoline shortages of 1979. I am, and I do. I also remember how demoralizing they were. Then as now, outside a few big cities, America was a highly car-dependent nation, and waiting in long lines, not knowing whether you would be able to fill up, was deeply disconcerting.
What caused those shortages? The precipitating event was the Iranian revolution, which sent world oil prices soaring. But an oil price surge in itself needn’t mean gasoline shortages; it could — as we’ve seen recently — just mean higher prices at the pump.
The problem was that policymakers weren’t willing to see that global price hike fully passed on to U.S. consumers, given that only about 40 percent of the oil we consumed was imported. So they tried to limit the hit with various controls on prices and distribution; we needn’t go into the details. The point is that as every economics textbook will tell you, price controls often (not always) lead to an excess of demand over supply, and that was where the lines and shortages came from.
It’s a cautionary tale, but the moral of the story isn’t that governments should always let prices rise as high as needed to balance demand with supply. When politicians don’t do what Econ 101 says they should, it’s not necessarily because they’re stupid (although sometimes they are); it’s not even necessarily because they’re cynical (although that happens too). Sometimes there are good social reasons not to let markets rip, even if government intervention comes at a cost.
Which is why we’re probably about to see a number of countries intervening heavily in energy markets over the next few months.
America, where plunging gasoline prices have temporarily brought inflation down to zero, won’t be one of those countries. But Russia has drastically curtailed shipments of natural gas to Europe, and European households are facing a huge inflationary shock as a result.
You might wonder why Russia’s de facto embargo matters so much. After all, Russia isn’t the only provider of European natural gas, and gas is only one of Europe’s energy sources. Consider, for example, British electricity generation. Gas accounts for only roughly 35 percent of Britain’s electricity, and currently none of it comes from Russia.
Yet British home energy bills are skyrocketing. Why?
Part of the answer is that, as I wrote last Friday, markets in natural gas are basically defined as regions served by particular pipeline networks; and even though it doesn’t import gas directly from Russia, Britain is part of the European gas market. Russia’s stealth embargo has sent prices in that market soaring. https://web.archive.org/web/20220830013320/https://www.nytimes.com/202
2/08/26/opinion/russia-ukraine-oil-gas-prices.html
Even so, isn’t gas just part of the British picture? Yes, but as the textbooks tell us, a good’s price normally reflects not its average cost of production but its marginal cost — the cost of the last, most expensive unit. In Britain right now, the marginal kilowatt-hour is produced with gas. So it’s up, up and away — unless the government steps in.
Which it will.
Just letting things rip isn’t an option, not in a democracy anyway. Without government intervention, energy prices would rise so much that millions of families would be financially ruined. Something has to give.
In Britain specifically, the policy picture is especially murky because Liz Truss, the most likely successor to Boris Johnson, is refusing to announce her energy policy until she takes office. At this point it sounds as if the preferred policy is likely to involve financial aid to families rather than the price caps France and Spain, among others, have imposed. That is, keep consumers paying sky-high prices for each additional unit of energy they consume, but give them a check to help them afford what they were already consuming.
In practice, however, this probably won’t be e
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Let me push your meat robot buttons.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
LOL
Dude. I've got over a thousand posts of you talking about me. Things I've shared with people I like that you save to a file on your computer and whip out whenever your jerking off all over these boards. None of them as bad as you sharing Signy's personal medical information all over the place though.
You are a garbage human being.
Get fucked.
Your little dick needs a break, beta bitch.
Nah.
Didn't read past that first sentence.
Get fucked, little dick.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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70,000 protest in Prague against Czech government, EU, NATO 
https://nypost.com/2022/09/03/70000-protest-in-prague-against-czech-go
vernment-eu-nato/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Also, punishing the west with sanctions against Russia
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=65264
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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The price of natural gas in the US and Europe
Author Kevin Drum Published on September 6, 2022 – 7:30 pm
Until February, the US and European prices of natural gas were generally within a few dollars of each other. Today, the US price is $9 and the average price in Europe is about $70.
Much of this is because Europe is trying to replace Russian gas with LNG from other countries. However, Europe doesn't have enough capacity at its LNG ports to come even close to making up the loss from Russia. This supply constraint has produced bidding wars with Japan and South Korea that have caused natural gas prices to skyrocket around the world. In the US, by contrast, we have plenty of domestic supply and prices are low and fairly stable.
This is why Europe is way more panicked about energy prices this winter than we are.
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-the-price-of-natural-gas-in-the-us-
and-europe/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The price of natural gas in the US and Europe
Author Kevin Drum Published on September 6, 2022 – 7:30 pm
Until February, the US and European prices of natural gas were generally within a few dollars of each other. Today, the US price is $9 and the average price in Europe is about $70.
Much of this is because Europe is trying to replace Russian gas with LNG from other countries. However, Europe doesn't have enough capacity at its LNG ports to come even close to making up the loss from Russia. This supply constraint has produced bidding wars with Japan and South Korea that have caused natural gas prices to skyrocket around the world. In the US, by contrast, we have plenty of domestic supply and prices are low and fairly stable.
This is why Europe is way more panicked about energy prices this winter than we are.
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-the-price-of-natural-gas-in-the-us-
and-europe/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Uh huh.
We'll see what happens this winter, Kevin.
It's really nice for you that you get to work at an outfit that allows you to be wrong in every one of your predictions and opinions and still maintain employment.
You make the weathermen jealous.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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They wanted to punish Russia a lot, Russia got some economic punishments while European Hating and Gasoline prices now go through the roof.
USA, Europe, Japan, Aus, NZ are part of the blockade sanctions, not everyone has joined, the rest of the world trades.
I don't really listen to The Duran. Alex Christoforou, Mercouris that much anymore, maybe its something culturally off with them the culture of people, like they never recovered from that schism between Rome and the Eastern Byzantine Empire or Orthodox influence, a rift going back even thousands of years. Even if Russia does not totally win, it has left cities wrecked, shells and bombs on both sides will wreck regions, the house of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky destroyed and 2,000 art objects are estimated to have been looted, and special squads exist to track down and expropriate antiquities such as Scythian artifacts from archaeological digs, some to relocate back to a museum in Russia, lost in some box and museums closed with looming recessions. Some might make a few buck from gun running and Looting ancient treasure.
There will be no true winners in this invasion of Ukraine, only losers, people who lose a lot and people who loose a whole lot more and pay more blood and treasure.
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Quote:It is worth saying that natural gas production companies who were making a profit in Europe at $7 per million BTU will be making a huge killing at $70. Be happy for the gas production companies, 6ix. Celebrate their windfall profits, all thanks to Putin.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Uh huh.
We'll see what happens this winter, Kevin.
It's really nice for you that you get to work at an outfit that allows you to be wrong in every one of your predictions and opinions and still maintain employment.
You make the weathermen jealous.
The cost to the production companies to get the gas out of the ground does NOT increase just because Putin restricts sales of Russian gas, but the price the production companies can gouge their customers goes as high as the amount of money the customers have. That is the most beautiful part of Capitalism.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It is worth saying that natural gas production companies who were making a profit in Europe at $7 per million BTU will be making a huge killing at $70. Be happy for the gas production companies, 6ix. Celebrate their windfall profits, all thanks to Putin.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Uh huh.
We'll see what happens this winter, Kevin.
It's really nice for you that you get to work at an outfit that allows you to be wrong in every one of your predictions and opinions and still maintain employment.
You make the weathermen jealous.
At least we're not blaming Trump today.
Get fucked, idiot. You've got a five year old's grasp of the economy. You aren't worth the time.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Wartime Economics Comes to Europe
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
At least we're not blaming Trump today.
Get fucked, idiot. You've got a five year old's grasp of the economy. You aren't worth the time.
Sometimes rationing and price controls are unavoidable.
The West isn’t exactly at war with Russia. However, it isn’t exactly not at war, either. Western weapons have helped Ukraine to stall Russia’s invasion and even to counterattack, while Western economic sanctions have clearly created serious problems for Russian industry.
Russia has retaliated with a de facto embargo on exports of natural gas to Europe. This shows how Vladimir Putin actually thinks the war is going. After all, this will have huge long-run costs: Nobody will ever again consider Russia a reliable trading partner. But Putin appears willing to bear those costs in an attempt to bully the West into reducing its support for Ukraine — which he wouldn’t do if he were confident about the military situation.
In any case, the embargo has raised the economic stakes. Six months ago, there was a lot of discussion about whether Europe could or should stop importing energy from Russia. Well, Russia has in effect made that decision on Europe’s behalf.
. . . On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, issued a statement on energy calling for “a mandatory target for reducing electricity use” (i.e., rationing), a “cap on the revenues” of low-cost energy producers (i.e., price controls) and a “solidarity contribution” for fossil fuel producers (i.e., excess profits taxes). It’s important to note that von der Leyen isn’t a head of government and has very little direct power. But her proposed measures probably give a pretty good idea of where Europe is heading.
Will it work? The details will, of course, be crucial. One hopeful sign is that Europe clearly isn’t going to pull a Nixon and try to suppress inflation with controls even while juicing up the economy. On the contrary, these sorts of wartime controls will come at the same time the European Central Bank is sharply tightening monetary policy, at considerable risk of causing a recession.
We’ll see how it plays out. But we’re getting a real-time lesson in the realities of economic policy. You can’t — indeed, shouldn’t — always let markets rip. It would be a bad thing if the emergency controls Europe appears about to impose were to become permanent. But right now protecting families and preserving a sense of fairness have to take priority over textbook market efficiency.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20220909011733/https://www.nytimes.com/202
2/09/08/opinion/europe-russia-energy.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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No Choice But Intervention': Belgium PM Fears "Severe Risk Of Social Unrest"
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/no-choice-intervention-belgium-
pm-fears-severe-risk-social-unrest
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Germany’s energy suicide: an autopsy
29925 Views September 08, 2022 62 Comments
by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted
When Green fanatic Robert Habeck, posing as Germany’s Economy Minister, said earlier this week “we should expect the worst” in terms of energy security, he conveniently forgot to spell out how the whole farce is a Made in Germany cum Made in Brussels crisis.
Flickers of intelligence at least still glow in rare Western latitudes, as indispensable strategic analyst William Engdahl, author of A Century of Oil, released a sharp, concise summary revealing the skeletons in the glamour closet.
Everyone with a brain following the ghastly Eurocrat machinations in Brussels was aware of the main plot – yet hardly anyone among average EU citizens. Habeck, Chancellor “Liver Sausage” Scholz, the European Commission (EC) Green Energy VP Timmermans, EC dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen, they are all involved.
In a nutshell: as Engdahl describes it, this is about “the EU plan to de-industrialize one of the most energy-efficient industrial concentrations on the planet.”
That’s a practical translation of the UN Green Agenda 2030 – which happens to be metastasized into crypto Bond villain Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset – now renamed “Great Narrative”.
The whole scam started way back in the early 2000s: I remember it vividly, as Brussels used to be my European base in the early “war on terror” years.
At the time, the talk of the town was the “European energy policy”. The dirty secret of such policy is that the EC, “ advised” by JP MorganChase as well as the usual mega speculative hedge funds, went all out into what Engdahl describes as “a complete deregulation of the European market for natural gas.”
That was sold to the Lugenpresse (“lying media”) as “liberalization”. In practice, that’s savage, unregulated casino capitalism, with the “free” market fixing prices while dumping long-term contracts – such as the ones struck with Gazprom.
How to decarbonize and destabilize
The process was turbo-charged in 2016, when the last gasp of the Obama administration encouraged massive export of LNG out of the US’s huge shale gas production.
For that one needs to build LNG terminals. Each terminal takes as much as 5 years to build. Within the EU, Poland and Holland went for it from the start.
As much as Wall Street in the past invented a “ paper oil” speculative market, this time they went for a speculative “paper gas” market.
Engdahl details how “the EU Commission and their Green Deal agenda to ‘decarbonize’ the economy by 2050, eliminating oil, gas and coal fuels, provided the ideal trap that has led to the explosive spike in EU gas prices since 2021.”
The creation of this “single” market control implied forcing illegal rule changes on Gazprom. In practice, Big Finance and Big Energy – which totally control anything that passes for “EU policy” in Brussels – invented a new pricing system parallel to the long-term, stable prices of Russian pipeline gas.
By 2019, an avalanche of Eurocrat energy “ directives” by the EC – the only thing these people do – had established a totally deregulated gas market trading, setting the prices for natural gas in the EU even as Gazprom remained the largest supplier.
As lots of virtual trading hubs in gas futures contracts started popping up across the EU, enter the Dutch TTF (Title Transfer Facility). By 2020 the TTF was established as the real EU gas benchmark.
As Engdahl points out, “TTF is a virtual platform of trades in futures gas contracts between banks and other financial investors. Outside, of course, of any regulated exchange.
So LNG prices soon started to be set by futures trades in the TTF hub, which crucially happens to be owned by the Dutch government – “the same government destroying its farms for a fraudulent nitrogen pollution claim.”
By any means necessary Big Finance had to get rid of Gazprom as a reliable source to allow powerful financial interests behind the Green Deal racket to dominate the
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What a terribly written article - so trashy
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Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
What a terribly written article - so trashy
We know. You prefer fairy tales.
Where's Greta Thunberg hiding out? You're never going to see her face again.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:
Angry Customers Demand Explanation As German Energy Bills Soar
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Angry-Customers-Dem
and-Explanation-As-German-Energy-Bills-Soar.html
You mean they only want an explanation NOW??? Where have they been hiding for the last 6 months?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Really? I thought it was exceptionally well written, which is why I posted it.
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
What a terribly written article - so trashy
What do you find fault with?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:Let's not forget Hungary and Poland, both of which are following nationalist policies.
Meloni's Right-Wing Alliance Wins Clear Majority In Italian Elections
Monday, Sep 26, 2022 - 09:44 AM
First Sweden, now Italy.
Quote:This is very mu
Europe's unelected authoritarian ruler, Ursula von der Leyen, is not going to be happy: according to early exit polls out of Italy's national election, the right-wing bloc of Giorgia Meloni - which the ultra-left wing press just can't stop comparing to Mussolini - is set for a historic, if largely expected, victory and a clear majority (if, however, not a super-majority) which will propel Meloni to the top of the Italian government as the country's next prime minister, ushering in a historic right-wing shift for a country that - like Sweden until two weeks ago - has traditionally been very left-wing.
Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, which won just 4% of the vote during the last national election in 2018, won the biggest share of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary elections with around 22.5%-26.5% of the vote according to an exit poll released by Italian national broadcaster Rai. She is now set to become prime minister but would require approval from junior partners in her coalition to assume the role.
* Italy election exit poll: right-wing block (Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia + Lega + Forza Italia) on track for clear majority in both upper and lower houses of Italian parliament. https://t.co/3ha7oz6tgX
— Jeremy Cliffe (@JeremyCliffe) September 25, 2022
According to an exit poll from Rai, Meloni's alliance which includes Salvini's League and Berlusconi's Forza Italia will win around 43% of the vote. The Center-Left alliance will have just 25.5%-29.5% of the vote, while the 5 Star movement has 13.5%-17.5% of the final vote.
Italy’s electoral system, which strongly favors parties that run as part of a coalition, is expected to help the right to an ample majority in both houses of Parliament: with 228 votes in the Lower House and 115 seats in the Senate (according to SkyTG24), Meloni will have a majority as just 104 votes are required.
As the WSJ notes, the Italian election is "the first big test of the European Union’s political cohesion as it confronts Russia’s attempt to redraw the continent’s post-Cold War order. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s restriction of natural-gas deliveries has sparked an energy-price crunch that, combined with other inflationary pressures, is expected to push much of Europe into a recession this winter."
Meloni replaces former Goldman Sachs partner and ECB technocrat and globalist, Mario Draghi, and will be the country’s first female prime minister.
The likely right-wing government will face difficult decisions over how to protect Italian households and businesses from sky-high prices for natural gas and electricity. While Italy’s parlous public finances allow limited scope for fiscal largess, if the UK is any example - and it is - Italy will engage in a similar strategy of targeted and debt-funded fiscal stimulus which will lead to a blowout in Italian debt, a further plunge in the euro and much chaos everywhere.
Italy's massive debt of roughly 150% of GDP, combined with Italy’s weak long-term growth record, makes the country vulnerable to bond-market selloffs if investors lose confidence in the soundness of Rome’s fiscal policies, and dependent on the European Central Bank to keep its bond yields stable. ECB support has typically been conditional on Rome following cautious budget policies and enacting economic overhauls aimed at improving growth. In other words, the Berlusconi example of 2011 is still vivid - if Meloni's policies displease the ECB, Christine Lagarde will simply refuse (or forget) to buy Italian bonds, sparking Europe's next sovereign debt crisis at the worst possible moment.
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Looks like Greens may have committed an act of terror/ sabotage
Quote:
Blasts Detected Near Nord Stream As Images Reveal "Huge Leak"
Remember what President Biden said weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine:
*"If Russia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Europe can say goodbye to its gas supply this winter. (Of course, they'll blame Russia.)
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:The most complicated sabotage the Greens have ever achieved is driving steel spikes into trees in order to break band-saws at lumber mills. Those technological morons of the Green Party (a plan with more than 5 steps puts the dizzy Greens into a tizzy) could NOT place explosives on a pipeline that is 100 feet underwater. It was a nation, Russia, that blew up those pipelines.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like Greens may have committed an act of terror/ sabotageQuote:
Blasts Detected Near Nord Stream As Images Reveal "Huge Leak"
Remember what President Biden said weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine:
*"If Russia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Europe can say goodbye to its gas supply this winter. (Of course, they'll blame Russia.)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/27/nord-stream-1-2-pipel
ines-leak-baltic-sabotage-fears
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:How is the weather in Nilbog?
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
What a terribly written article - so trashy
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How Liz Truss (new UK Prime Minister) Did So Much Damage in So Few Days
Oct. 3, 2022
Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor of the Exchequer, justified their moves with the much discredited claim that reducing top tax rates would provide a huge boost to economic growth. This raised doubts about their competence and, indeed, their connection to reality; it’s never good when economists at major banks declare that a country’s ruling party has become a doomsday cult.
Questions about Truss’s judgment were reinforced by the cluelessness of her timing. Right now ordinary Europeans, including Britons, are facing hard times, largely as an indirect consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians, incredibly, seem to be winning the war; it doesn’t detract from their valor to say that Western weapons have played an important role in their success. So Vladimir Putin has tried to place pressure on the West by cutting off natural gas flows.
This is a huge adverse economic shock to Europe, probably bigger than the oil shocks of the 1970s. Governments are trying to limit the pain caused by soaring energy bills. But all of Europe — again, including Britain — is facing something like the economic equivalent of war. (America is much less affected, although natural gas prices have risen here too.) And as in wartime, government policies need to promote a sense that people are all in this together.
At such a time, slashing taxes for the rich, who are already less affected by higher energy prices than people with lower incomes are, instead sends the message that only the little people will face hardship. This message is especially toxic given that the British public is already in an uproar over cuts to public services, especially health care, and wants to see taxes go up, not down, to pay for more. And it’s hard to govern effectively when you’ve angered most of your nation.
There was one more factor in the market turmoil created by the Truss proposals, which amplified the effects of lost credibility. It turns out that British pension funds, which own a lot of British government bonds, have tried to reduce risks with complex financial strategies that require that they put up extra cash when interest rates rise and bond prices fall. When interest rates suddenly jumped, pension funds couldn’t raise enough cash on short notice — and this threatened to force fire sales of bonds that would have pushed rates even higher. Emergency intervention by the Bank of England limited the damage, but the episode added even more anxiety.
And yes, with interest rates rising almost everywhere, one has to wonder whether there are other financial crises waiting to happen. The British bond meltdown was probably exceptional, but nobody who remembers 2008 can avoid feeling some anxiety.
But back to the Truss debacle. As I said, the savage market reaction to the new prime minister’s plans was about more than money. In tough times, leaders need to be perceived as being both realistic and fair. What Britain got instead was a leader who seems to live in a fantasy world and is oblivious to concerns about social solidarity. And it’s going to be very hard to make up for the damage she did in just a few days.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221004000323/https://www.nytimes.com/202
2/10/03/opinion/truss-britain-bonds-taxes.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
How Liz Truss (new UK Prime Minister) Did So Much Damage in So Few Days
If Second agrees this statement is a fact, you can be assured that it is not a fact.
Thank you for being so constantly wrong about everything, buddy. You're a great barometer for all of us.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
It's the Russian people who have to suck it up comrade.
T
"The Pressure On Putin Grows," As Ukrainian Fighters Push Deeper Into Russian-Controlled Areas
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The end of the "age of abundance", where abundance means hot showers, street lights at night, eating meat, warmth in the winter...
Multiple EU "leaders" tell their people to suck it up.
It's the Russian people who have to suck it up comrade.
T
"The Pressure On Putin Grows," As Ukrainian Fighters Push Deeper Into Russian-Controlled Areas
Meanwhile... In Russia.
But! But! He isn't even cooking anything!!!
Yup. Keep telling us about how Russia is losing.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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The dread spreading across Germany over inflation — which hit a 71-year high of 10% this month — and energy shortages have not gone unnoticed in Washington, where there are concerns about whether Europe’s largest economy could become a weak link in the chain taking a firm line on sanctions against Russia.
The unmistakable German trepidation has also been followed closely in Moscow, where Putin — the erstwhile KGB agent in East Germany and still a fluent speaker of the language — is reported to be an avid consumer of German media.
Putin is likely aware of opinion polls showing Germans to be more wary than others about the war and haunted about inflation, energy scarcity and warfare spreading to their peace-obsessed land.
Exacerbating Germans' anxiety of a dark, cold and possibly even hunger-filled winter ahead have been the ominous saber-rattling from Russian President Vladimir Putin about possibly turning to nuclear weapons against Ukraine and the West. The mystery-shrouded explosions at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, damaging natural gas pipelines that had not long ago delivered nearly half of Germany’s supplies, have unsettled the country even more.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/i-ve-given-up-on-all-my-dreams-dr
ead-in-germany-deepens-over-war-in-ukraine/ar-AA12x1VX
I foresee $200 billion in windfall profits for the energy business: On Thursday, the German government announced a $200-billion relief package designed to help Germans pay heating and electricity bills that for many have already doubled or, in some cases, tripled.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In other words, fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Germany’s economy minister accused the U.S. and other “friendly” gas supplier states of astronomical prices for their supplies, suggesting they were profiting from the fallout of the war in Ukraine.
“Some countries, including friendly ones, sometimes achieve astronomical prices [for their gas]. Of course, that brings with it problems that we have to talk about,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told regional German paper NOZ in an interview published Wednesday which was translated by NBC News. He called for more solidarity from the U.S. when it comes to assisting its energy-pressed allies in Europe.
“The United States contacted us when oil prices shot up, and the national oil reserves in Europe were tapped as a result. I think such solidarity would also be good for curbing gas prices,” he said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/german-minister-criticizes-us-over-ast
ronomical-natural-gas-prices.html
When old-style Capitalists see weakness, they raise prices until buyers can pay no more. To make the process of taking all the buyer's money seem bloodless and merely a technicality, it is called maximizing profit.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Yup. It wasn't enough that Biden* made it a first day priority to shot down the Keystone XL pipeline, but now he blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Energy prices were just fine while Trump was in office.
Gas prices by me are up $0.50 a gallon in the last two weeks. Heating your house is going to cost even more than it did last year when it doubled from the previous year.
As an aside... Elon is buying Twitter by the end of the week. Just in time for midterms.
Democrats are toast.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Garry Kasparov, the former chess world champion and anti-Putin regime campaigner, has given an interview to the German news magazine Spiegel in which he says that “every Russian who is living in Russia now is part of the war machine” and demands that those who want to stand on the right side of history should leave.
Kasparov tells the magazine that he has spent 20 years fighting against Vladimir Putin. “I always said that his regime would unavoidably become a fascist threat – not only for Russia, not only for its neighbours, but for the entire world. It would have been nice if a few more people would have taken this warning to heart.”
Asked by Spiegel if being abroad – he has lived in political exile since 2013 – he wasn’t in too comfortable a position to be making such demands of those who have yet to leave Russia, he said: “This is war. Either you’re on one side of the front or the other. Every Russian citizen, including me, carries collective responsibility for this war, even if not a personal responsibility. Today Russia is a fascistic dictatorship, which, while we’re speaking here, is carrying out crimes against humanity. And everyone who is still living in Russia now, is a part of this war machinery, whether he wants to be or not.”
Kasparov said Russians who want to be given asylum elsewhere should first have to sign a three-point declaration in which they would “declare the war to be criminal, the Putin regime illegitimate and Ukraine indivisible”, Kasparov said. By signing it, the individual would be liable for prosecution in Russia on three counts according to laws Putin has put in place, he added.
The 59-year old chess grandmaster makes the interesting claim that Putin “never played chess, but poker, and he was good at geopolitical poker. He often played with bad cards and won, because his opponents fell for his bluff.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/oct/05/russia-ukraine-war-
live-dozens-of-towns-recaptured-in-east-and-south-says-zelenskiy?page=with:block-633d6eab8f08cd903079a659#block-633d6eab8f08cd903079a659
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. It wasn't enough that Biden* made it a first day priority to shot down the Keystone XL pipeline, but now he blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Energy prices were just fine while Trump was in office.
Gas prices by me are up $0.50 a gallon in the last two weeks. Heating your house is going to cost even more than it did last year when it doubled from the previous year.
As an aside... Elon is buying Twitter by the end of the week. Just in time for midterms.
Democrats are toast.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Gas prices just shot up another $0.35 by me in one day.
Now it's $0.85 more than it was a week ago.
Good. Election day is a month away.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Exxon depends on people believing the U.S. President sets gasoline prices because if the people knew it was Exxon the corporate headquarters would be burned down and the CEO hanged. For example, see:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Gas prices just shot up another $0.35 by me in one day.
Now it's $0.85 more than it was a week ago.
Good. Election day is a month away.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
ExxonMobil Makes Godlike Profits
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/exxonmobil-quarterly-profit
s-challenges/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Exxon depends on people believing the U.S. President sets gasoline prices because if the people knew it was Exxon the corporate headquarters would be burned down and the CEO hanged. For example, see:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Gas prices just shot up another $0.35 by me in one day.
Now it's $0.85 more than it was a week ago.
Good. Election day is a month away.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
How many times are you going to repeat this stupid line, dipshit?
Joe fucking Biden* didn't directly set the gas prices. NOBODY IS SAYING HE DID.
But two years of bad policy created the clusterfuck we're all living through now. Not just the gas prices. EVERYTHING.
DEMOCRATS ARE FUCKING DONE.
DONE.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:It is NOT two years. It is two centuries that companies like Exxon have been able to set prices as high as the buyers have money in their wallets and take the maximum profit. There are inflation adjustments going back 200 years and we are paying 200 times more today than way-back when. That isn't the way America would run, except if Exxon and like companies had complete control of America and were squeezing all the money they can from Americans.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
How many times are you going to repeat this stupid line, dipshit?
Joe fucking Biden* didn't directly set the gas prices. NOBODY IS SAYING HE DID.
But two years of bad policy created the clusterfuck we're all living through now. Not just the gas prices. EVERYTHING.
DEMOCRATS ARE FUCKING DONE.
DONE.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
CPI Inflation Calculator
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In Ukraine, Europeans will have to put their money where their mouth is | October 3, 2022
Jeremy Shapiro writes:
Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas enthusiastically joined the general outrage when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He took to Twitter immediately to condemn the attack as “the greatest breach of peace in Europe in nearly 80 years”. He went on a trip to Germany and the Polish-Ukrainian border in March to visit US troops and observe the humanitarian operations there. On his return, the Republican senator implored President Joe Biden to “get them the damn weapons”, while praising the contributions of Poland and Germany to the Ukrainian war effort as “heroic” and “ground-shaking”.
But just a few weeks later, his outrage had apparently faded. He was one of 11 senators to vote against the Biden administration’s proposed $40 billion aid package to Ukraine. In explaining his vote, Marshall noted that “our NATO allies’ contributions have dropped off significantly, turning this essentially into a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.” In the House, Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee wondered why the United States would send “$40 billion to Ukraine, and we can’t get baby formula? It’s time for Europe to step up.” A growing chorus of leading figures began to ask: if the rich Europeans are not going to adequately fund a war on the European continent, why should America do it?
The bill still passed and – for now – only a minority of Republicans are taking this view. But, in private, administration officials doubt they will be able to pass big aid packages for Ukraine after the midterm elections. In their view, Congress has grown wary of the enormous sums required to sustain the Ukraine war, particularly given the various domestic priorities and the looming threat of China. President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilisation of reservists means that the war will not end quickly. Administration officials expect budget-conscious Republicans to increasingly demand that Europe step up – and to point to Europeans’ inaction as a failure of Biden administration diplomacy. Even some anti-interventionist Democrats may join them.
One can see their point. The US has already pledged $44 billion in bilateral aid to Ukraine and the administration just asked Congress to approve another $13.7 billion. These are large figures even by Washington standards. Meanwhile, the combined contributions of the United Kingdom, the EU, and all 27 EU member states totals only $33 billion. In the key area of military aid, the gap is even wider: the US has pledged $24 billion, the Europeans only $12 billion. The actual difference may be greater, as key European donors have reportedly been slow to deliver on their pledges.
All this means that the current trickle of “blame Europe” arguments may turn into a torrent if the Republicans take control of Congress in November. The advantage of such claims is that they would allow newly empowered Congressional critics to oppose Biden’s policy without having to appear soft on Russia.
More at https://ecfr.eu/article/the-coming-transatlantic-rift-over-ukraine/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:Quote:It is NOT two years. It is two centuries that companies like Exxon have been able to set prices as high as the buyers have money in their wallets and take the maximum profit. There are inflation adjustments going back 200 years and we are paying 200 times more today than way-back when. That isn't the way America would run, except if Exxon and like companies had complete control of America and were squeezing all the money they can from Americans.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
How many times are you going to repeat this stupid line, dipshit?
Joe fucking Biden* didn't directly set the gas prices. NOBODY IS SAYING HE DID.
But two years of bad policy created the clusterfuck we're all living through now. Not just the gas prices. EVERYTHING.
DEMOCRATS ARE FUCKING DONE.
DONE.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
CPI Inflation Calculator
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Tell that to the poor people.
SPOILER ALERT 1: They don't care.
SPOILER ALERT 2: Most of them are former Democrats.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:I know plenty of poor people. But unlike Signym, who has declared poor people were made poor by rich people, I know for certain that poor people in America are self-taught ignoramuses about money, inflation, business, everything about American industry.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:Quote:It is NOT two years. It is two centuries that companies like Exxon have been able to set prices as high as the buyers have money in their wallets and take the maximum profit. There are inflation adjustments going back 200 years and we are paying 200 times more today than way-back when. That isn't the way America would run, except if Exxon and like companies had complete control of America and were squeezing all the money they can from Americans.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
How many times are you going to repeat this stupid line, dipshit?
Joe fucking Biden* didn't directly set the gas prices. NOBODY IS SAYING HE DID.
But two years of bad policy created the clusterfuck we're all living through now. Not just the gas prices. EVERYTHING.
DEMOCRATS ARE FUCKING DONE.
DONE.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
CPI Inflation Calculator
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Tell that to the poor people.
SPOILER ALERT 1: They don't care.
SPOILER ALERT 2: Most of them are former Democrats.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
Both sides of my family, father and mother, are from East Texas and they were poor before I was born. About 60 years ago, when I was 10 years old, a woman by the name of Mrs. Kesseler converted my parents to being Jehovah's Witnesses. My parents moved to Pasadena Texas to get away from their angry poor white trash relatives, who were not at all Christian, although my white trash relatives believe they are the true Christians. I am not sure how people who don't follow the Bible can convince themselves they are followers of Jesus, but my relatives have proved it is possible. Along with not being Christians, despite claiming they are, my relatives are all Trumptards and their actual religion is that their problems: financial/work/family/health insurance/Social Security/Medicare hardships are caused by Democrats.
This belief that you know something you do not also includes the knowledge of how money, finance, and investment work. My mother and father worked at Burger King, my father as a manager. When my mother died, she was a multi-millionaire. Actually following the Bible will make you rich. My poor white trash relatives? They are still poor and still in East Texas. All my East Texas relatives, who think they were so much smarter than my parents, have gone through mortgage foreclosures, auto repossessions, bankruptcies, convictions for embezzlement, divorces, health problems caused by their non-Christian and out-of-control lifestyles, etc.
My parents understood how money works, and my relatives have never understood, although they think they do and will loudly declare that the Republicans know how to run the country. How many times has Trump gone bankrupt? But he knows how to run a country. Just ask my Trumptard relatives.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
I know plenty of poor people.
You're one of them. Get fucked.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:The Russians are poor compared to Finns. How did that happen? Two countries, side by side, and yet one has a GDP per capita that four time larger than the other. How do things like that happen? On a more personal level, how did my parents leaving their relatives (all Trumptards) behind cause their East Texas relatives to have net-worth only 25% (or less) of my parents?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
I know plenty of poor people.
You're one of them. Get fucked.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
There are many comparisons between Finland and Russia. Russia looks inferior in all of them, except for quantities of nukes. In belligerency, Russia exceeds Finland. How much better does war make the typical Russian compared to a Finn? Trumptards, especially East Texas angry poor white trash, rank very high in belligerence but that has not worked any better for them than Russia's belligerency has worked for Russians.
Compare GDP Finland Russia
https://www.google.com/search?q=compare+gdp+finland+russia
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Russians are poor compared to Finns. How did that happen?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
I know plenty of poor people.
You're one of them. Get fucked.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
I don't see what your point is. A) There could be a million reasons why one country does better than another, even though your pea brain can only focus on two or three. B) You seem to think I give a shit about Russia.
I don't. Fuck Ukraine. Fuck Russia. Fuck Finland.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Russians have always bitched about Europe not treating Russia with the respect Russians demand. Meanwhile, Finns never had the over-inflated sense of self-worth that the Russians have, which is why Finns went about their daily jobs improving their lives while Russians have schemed to get respect from Europeans. All that scheming and H-bomb building and controlling the Warsaw Pact countries has done the Russians no good, whatsoever. Neither will controlling Ukraine do Russians any good. On the other side of the border, Finland never had Russian delusions of grandeur, and avoided all the emotional energy Russians have wasted on tomfoolery and nonsense. The results? Finns are richer and happier than Russians. To explain the difference in prosperity, Russians think the Finns cheated somehow. I guess Russians cannot understand what they have done wrong, no more than my East Texas relatives can understand what they are doing wrong and how their prosperity is harmed by how wastefully they spend their lives.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I don't see what your point is.
Warsaw Pact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Russians have always bitched about Europe not treating Russia with the respect Russians demand. Meanwhile, Finns never had the over-inflated sense of self-worth that the Russians have, which is why Finns went about their daily jobs improving their lives while Russians have schemed to get respect from Europeans. All that scheming and H-bomb building and controlling the Warsaw Pact countries has done the Russians no good, whatsoever. Neither will controlling Ukraine do Russians any good. On the other side of the border, Finland never had Russian delusions of grandeur, and avoided all the emotional energy Russians have wasted on tomfoolery and nonsense. The results? Finns are richer and happier than Russians. To explain the difference in prosperity, Russians think the Finns cheated somehow. I guess Russians cannot understand what they have done wrong, no more than my East Texas relatives can understand what they are doing wrong and how their prosperity is harmed by how wastefully they spend their lives.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I don't see what your point is.
And how the fuck do you know any of this?
Don't bother answering that question. It's rhetorical.
You don't know shit.
You want to see over-inflated self worth. You don't have to go far. Even poor people have mirrors in their bathroom.
Get fucked, worm.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Take two countries living side-by-side: North and South Korea. One spent all their time and money building H-bombs, rockets and threatening war. The other did not. Which one is richer? By the way, North Korea exists because Russia set that country up. Funny how both Russia and North Korea have to issue at least once per week a new threat to nuke the world. It is almost like successful people think alike - Putin and Kim are super successful people in charge of countries that are widely admired for being wealthy, healthy, peaceful, and wise.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And how the fuck do you know any of this?
Don't bother answering that question. It's rhetorical.
You don't know shit.
You want to see over-inflated self worth. You don't have to go far. Even poor people have mirrors in their bathroom.
Get fucked, worm.
--------------------------------------------------
Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Which part of the Bible is that? The part tht says
Originally posted by SECOND:
I know plenty of poor people. But unlike Signym, who has declared poor people were made poor by rich people, I know for certain that poor people in America are self-taught ignoramuses about money, inflation, business, everything about American industry.
Both sides of my family, father and mother, are from East Texas and they were poor before I was born. About 60 years ago, when I was 10 years old, a woman by the name of Mrs. Kesseler converted my parents to being Jehovah's Witnesses. My parents moved to Pasadena Texas to get away from their angry poor white trash relatives, who were not at all Christian, although my white trash relatives believe they are the true Christians. I am not sure how people who don't follow the Bible can convince themselves they are followers of Jesus, but my relatives have proved it is possible. Along with not being Christians, despite claiming they are, my relatives are all Trumptards and their actual religion is that their problems: financial/work/family/health insurance/Social Security/Medicare hardships are caused by Democrats.
This belief that you know something you do not also includes the knowledge of how money, finance, and investment work. My mother and father worked at Burger King, my father as a manager. When my mother died, she was a multi-millionaire. Actually following the Bible will make you rich.
Quote:
Indeed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
https://www.biblehub.com/matthew/19-24.htm
Or maybe the part that says
Quote:
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[a] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2021:12-13&ve
rsion=NIV
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:See the "Parable of the talents or minas"
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Or maybe the part that says . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_talents_or_minas#Interpre
tations
The angry poor white trash living in East Texas (Trumptards) have little understanding of the biblical laws forbidding adultery, stealing, giving false witness, coveting their neighbor's possessions, drunkenness, gluttony, etc. As Trumptards go through life, they think following rules is an abridgement of their Constitutional freedoms, but breaking those biblical laws, even one time, can throw a Trumptard into poverty. That never stopped the Trumptards I'm familiar with from breaking all the laws all the time. They handle the inconsistency between what the bible says and what the Trumptard does by lying about what the Trumptards have done. That strategy doesn't work well in real life for Trumptards or for Russians torturing prisoners.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Or what about "Behold the lillies of the field"?
Any quote you come up with, I can counter with another.
The problem with the bible is you can take just about ANYTHING you want from it.
Sacrifice your firstborn son? Check!
Stone prostitutes? Check!
The tribulations of Job? (ie faith doesn't necessarily make you rich) Check!
The world will end with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Check!
Even the tennet that there is only one god...
"I am the lord THY God, thou shall not have strange gods before me"
Notice that there's no statement saying "God" is the only god. This was just Yahweh being PO'd that some Jews were beginning to worship Ba'al.
Trying to justify anything by referring to the Bible is about as useful as trying to nail Jello to a wall.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:AKA libel. You wouldn't know about that either, would you?
Originally posted by second:Quote:See the "Parable of the talents or minas"
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Or maybe the part that says . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_talents_or_minas#Interpre
tations
The angry poor white trash living in East Texas (Trumptards) have little understanding of the biblical laws forbidding adultery, stealing, giving false witness,
Quote:
coveting their neighbor's possessions, drunkenness, gluttony, etc. As Trumptards go through life, they think following rules is an abridgement of their Constitutional freedoms, but breaking those biblical laws, even one time, can throw a Trumptard into poverty. That never stopped the Trumptards I'm familiar with from breaking all the laws all the time. They handle the inconsistency between what the bible says and what the Trumptard does by lying about what the Trumptards have done. That strategy doesn't work well in real life for Trumptards or for Russians torturing prisoners.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Also, you- in your righteousness- are ok with being cruel and vindictive to people who disagree with you. But, as the Bible says
" 'Vengeance is mine' says the Lord' ". It's not up to you to "punish" people for the "sin" of disagreeing with you.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize Winner: “What We Need Today Is Weapons”
The Intercept spoke with Oleksandra Matviichuk, who heads the Center for Civil Liberties. She talked about her group’s effort documenting human rights abuses that began long before Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, how the international community’s failure to hold Russia accountable for earlier crimes led to the invasion, and why countries that want to support Ukraine should provide military assistance. As she put it: “What we need today is weapons, and maybe it’s weird to hear that from a human rights lawyer, but I’ll be very honest with you: I have spent 20 years defending human rights, and now I have no legal instrument which has worked in this situation.”
https://theintercept.com/2022/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-ukraine-war-crim
es/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I thought you knew that I am not a Christian. I am Atheist, which horrifies the Jehovah's Witnesses in the family, so I don't mention that fact. By the way, my two sisters, who worked at Burger King along with me, same as my parents, are both members of https://www.jw.org/en/ . One is a nurse and a multi-millionaire. The other is a school teacher for the blind and she is also a multi-millionaire. Then there is me, the engineer and the merciless barbarian in the family.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Also, you- in your righteousness- are ok with being cruel and vindictive to people who disagree with you. But, as the Bible says
" 'Vengeance is mine' says the Lord' ". It's not up to you to "punish" people for the "sin" of disagreeing with you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Then WTF are you even referring to the Bible, and saying that following the Bible will make you rich? You may as well be quoting the Boy Scout motto.
Originally posted by second:Quote:I thought you knew that I am not a Christian. I am Atheist, which horrifies the Jehovah's Witnesses in the family, so I don't mention that fact. By the way, my two sisters, who worked at Burger King along with me, same as my parents, are both members of https://www.jw.org/en/ . One is a nurse and a multi-millionaire. The other is a school teacher for the blind and she is also a multi-millionaire. Then there is me, the engineer and the merciless barbarian in the family.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Also, you- in your righteousness- are ok with being cruel and vindictive to people who disagree with you. But, as the Bible says
" 'Vengeance is mine' says the Lord' ". It's not up to you to "punish" people for the "sin" of disagreeing with you.
The Joss
You're splattering the board with your usual self-contradictory BS. Time to put you on"ignore", again.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Then WTF are you even referring to the Bible, and saying that following the Bible will make you rich? You may as well be quoting the Boy Scout motto.
Originally posted by second:Quote:I thought you knew that I am not a Christian. I am Atheist, which horrifies the Jehovah's Witnesses in the family, so I don't mention that fact. By the way, my two sisters, who worked at Burger King along with me, same as my parents, are both members of https://www.jw.org/en/ . One is a nurse and a multi-millionaire. The other is a school teacher for the blind and she is also a multi-millionaire. Then there is me, the engineer and the merciless barbarian in the family.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Also, you- in your righteousness- are ok with being cruel and vindictive to people who disagree with you. But, as the Bible says
" 'Vengeance is mine' says the Lord' ". It's not up to you to "punish" people for the "sin" of disagreeing with you.
The Joss
You're splattering the board with your usual self-contradictory BS. Time to put you on"ignore", again.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
Yeah. Second is always quoting the bible. Incorrectly too.
Second is a fuckin' idiot and his opinion on any topic is isn't worth the bandwidth he used to dispense it.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:I'll quote the PM of Finland, although I am not Finnish: "The way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine. That's the way out of the conflict," Sanna Marin said.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Then WTF are you even referring to the Bible, and saying that following the Bible will make you rich? You may as well be quoting the Boy Scout motto.
You're splattering the board with your usual self-contradictory BS. Time to put you on"ignore", again.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/finland-sanna-marin-ukraine-russ
ia-war-us-joe-biden-2282410-2022-10-08
By the way, Signym, I'm not Indian but I got that quote from India Today. Are you completely confused about "self-contradictory BS" because I would quote people and sources that are not native to my home state of Texas?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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More wasted bandwidth...
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Europe should look at hard rationing and price controls for natural gas
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
More wasted bandwidth...
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
This is it boys, this is war
Matthew Yglesias
4 hr ago https://www.slowboring.com/p/europe-should-look-at-hard-rationing
Europe has a problem this fall and winter as the temperature drops — now that supplies from Russia have been largely cut off, there is a shortfall of natural gas.
This is really a threefold problem because gas is used in three major ways. On the one hand, it’s an important source of home heating fuel. On the other hand, it’s an important source of electricity generation. And on the third hand, it’s used for direct applications in industry, especially related to chemical manufacturing. The electricity itself is then split into household and industrial use, with something like the competitiveness of European metallurgical companies closely linked to the price of electricity.
Last but by no means least, it’s worth recalling that the growth of renewable electricity does not really offer an exit from gas’s relevance in this sphere. When people calculate the levelized cost of an offshore wind facility, what they are doing is taking what it costs to build the thing and then dividing that by the amount of electricity it generates over the cost of its useful life. But the way an electricity grid works is that you need to generate enough power to meet all the demand or else the grid breaks. So if wind is meeting 90 percent of your needs on average (more than that on the windiest days, less on the days when wind is light), gas is still the source of your marginal megawatt. The price of electricity in an unregulated spot market is going to be the price that matches the marginal supply of gas to the marginal demand for electricity. So a sudden shortage of gas is going to create very high prices as long as you are relying on gas to balance your grid. Switching at the margin to more renewables creates less pollution and sends less revenue to gas-producing countries among other benefits — but it doesn’t escape that bind.
In response to this crisis, lots of European governments are breaking out the subsidies. That’s been part of the fiscal crisis in the U.K., but we also see the German government moving to roll out extensive subsidies. Then there are concerns that German subsidization is only going to push prices even higher in other European countries that are less able to afford it. By the same token, much of the gas that’s no longer flowing to Europe via pipeline can’t get out of Russia through any other means of egress either. Europe is replacing as much of it as they can with imports of liquified natural gas (LNG) which is pushing up prices throughout the global LNG marketplace. In the case of New England, that’s a problem. But in the case of poorer countries, it’s going to be a disaster. As with the food crisis of the past spring, Russia is trying to hurt its antagonists with this commodity warfare but the sharpest pain is being felt in non-aligned states.
But this all points to the fact that in my view, Europe really needs a different approach to energy this coming winter — one that relies less on a mix of market mechanisms and subsidies, and more on explicit rationing and price controls.
A bad idea whose time has come
Back in May, when Elizabeth Warren and others were blaming inflation on “corporate greed” and pushing legislation that would empower the FTC to ban excessive price increases, I wrote a post arguing that “Greedflation is Fake.” I also made the case that Warren’s effort to back us into an economy driven by price controls would necessitate creating a big rationing system, and responding to a rise in grocery prices by creating a system of rationing and price controls would be destructive overkill:
Warren is correct that it’s not a law of physics that a surge in demand needs to lead to a surge in prices.
When Ben
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