What would you do?

The writer Endurance from the Weathering the Storm substack wrote an excellent essay today taking a deep dive into the history of Ukraine showing, as with covid, that nothing our western leaders are telling us about the Ukraine conflict is true.

I have not followed Endurance long enough to vouch for him, and fair warning, he appears to think climate change is a scam. I do not know if that means he thinks the policies we are implementing to address climate change are a scam, which I agree with, or if he thinks there is no threat to civilization from human caused climate change, which I of course disagree with.

In addition, Endurance does not seem to be overshoot aware, and therefore does not integrate overshoot into his analysis of motivations, which I speculate on at the end.

Regardless, Endurance’s knowledge of the Ukraine situation is impressive.

https://endurancea71.substack.com/p/inconvenient-truths

Endurance begins by reminding us that our leaders do not deserve our trust because they got every single thing about covid exactly wrong:

You may still think that Putin is the Devil incarnate and that Zelensky walks on water, despite knowing that life is messy and rarely quite so black and white. You may also be of the opinion that we are the victims of incompetence, rather than malevolence; that government’s are peopled by dolts who continually mess things up. That seems to be a popular view in conservative media – popular and convenient, as professing it enables them to avoid the conflict that would be inevitable if they spoke the truth.

Before embarking on this read, I’d urge you to put as many preconceptions aside as you possibly can. I will set out the back story to the war in Ukraine and I’ll warn you in advance that none of the participants (and there are more of them than you might think) come out of it smelling of roses. But, just as the establishment plandemic narrative is almost completely untrue, so it is with the conflict in the east. In truth, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as it’s the same people trying to sell us yet another bill of goods and, if they’ve lied to us about one subject, why would we automatically believe them about another? And, yes, I do mean lie. The odds of them simply being incompetent are statistically microscopic. Look at their track record on Covid:

“Transmission of the disease—wrong • Asymptomatic spread—wrong • PCR testing—wrong • Fatality rate—wrong • Lockdowns—wrong • Community triggers—wrong • Business closures—wrong • School closures—wrong • Quarantining healthy people—wrong • Impact on youth—wrong • Hospital overload—wrong • Plexiglass barriers—wrong • Social distancing—wrong • Outdoor spread—wrong • Masks—wrong • Variant impact—wrong • Natural immunity—wrong • Vaccine efficacy—wrong • Vaccine injury—wrong.”(1)

Rob here adding to the list:

  • biased, opaque, and incompetent data
  • no reporting of critical data like all-cause mortality vaxed vs. un-vaxed
  • no independent testing without conflicts of interest
  • denying and not investigating possible policy harms
  • no post mortem analysis & data collection
  • no adjusting policies to align with new evidence
  • forcing risk on children with no benefit
  • ignoring obesity and age risk
  • discounting natural immunity
  • ignoring risk of variant proliferation
  • discarding all lessons learned from historic pandemics
  • no purging of officials with conflicts of interest
  • aggressive censoring of dissenting experts
  • funding and then denying gain of function research
  • covering up and not investigating the lab leak
  • no steps taken to prevent another lab leak
  • vitamin D silence
  • ignoring and blocking early treatment successes
  • blocking safe, effective, and inexpensive Ivermectin
  • misrepresenting mRNA longevity
  • misrepresenting mRNA injection locality
  • poor mRNA manufacturing quality control
  • downplaying novelty and risk of mRNA technologies
  • providing financial incentives for bad behavior
  • indemnifying pharma
  • insufficient support and gaslighting of vaccine injured

If they’d flipped a coin on every decision, they’d have at least got some right. And remember, despite the effort to make you think otherwise, most of the science existed prior to the discovery of Covid – they just ignored it because it didn’t fit their narrative arc. It is, therefore, surely incumbent upon us to, at minimum, review other claims they’ve made and treat them with a heavy dollop of skepticism. Being victimized due to incompetence is one thing; being punished with malice aforethought is something else.

Endurance then goes on to provide much detail backed by references on the history leading up to Ukraine conflict. Here are a few excerpts that do not do justice to the full essay which you should read at the link above.

The Russian concerns over NATO expansion have merit. Despite what apologists may say, the organisation has always been a a military organisation whose explicit mission has been to oppose Soviet expansion westwards. It has failed to recalibrate itself in the past thirty years. For decades, the communist Soviet Union posed a genuine threat and NATO had a role to play. But Russia isn’t the Soviet Union. Nor is she any longer communist. But the Americans, in particular, cannot let it go; perhaps, because it gives them dispensation to rule the roost over Western Europe militarily. In any event, expansion eastward is what happened whether Russia liked it or not.

From a base of sixteen member states in 1990, NATO now totals thirty – 28 in Europe – and every single one of the new additions is more than an inch eastwards. In fact, four of them were members of the Warsaw Pact and all were members of the Soviet Bloc.

So, whatever one thinks of Putin in any other respect, one could be forgiven for having some level of understanding as to his skepticism of the West and the Americans, in particular. They have been the driving force behind catastrophic economic policies which impoverished Putin’s homeland and which took perhaps twenty years to fully recover from. These are also the same people who did not keep their word on NATO expansion, not just the once, but a dozen or more times, effectively taking advantage of Russia’s diminished state, a state they had been instrumental in creating. Not only that, but they have resisted his peaceful overtures, his desire to be a member of the club, and continued to treat his country as a pariah. This is a version of history that may be unpalatable to you. Nonetheless, every part of this narrative is verifiably true and it adds a little more color to the backdrop.

Endurance then discusses the triggers that started the conflict 1 year ago:

…at this point, two months into his term, Biden hadn’t even spoken to Zelensky. Perhaps the Americans weren’t overly keen on talking to a politician who had been elected on a platform which rejected militaristic nationalism and espoused a desire to negotiate with the Russians, a policy supported by 73% of the voting public, comprised of both Russian and non-Russian speakers – until the Azov and other assorted neo Nazis threatened to hang him from the nearest lamppost if he so much as spoke to the Russians.(59) It’s not unreasonable to assume that the United States was the instigator of that particular threat; they were training and equipping those very formations at the time.

In any event, shortly thereafter, Biden’s attention turned to Ukraine, his old stomping ground from when he was Obama’s point man. He’d made six official visits during that tenure.(60) Now he involved himself once more. In June 2021 the US set out a roadmap for Ukraine to join NATO and in November signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership with Zelensky, which included the following statement:

“Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.”(61) Putin had had fair warning as to Biden’s direction of travel, as Biden had reiterated his commitment to Ukraine in a telephone call in April of that year.(62) This after calling Putin “a killer” the previous month and threatening repercussions for the Russiagate hoax.(63) Nonetheless, it wasn’t until November that Russian troops began massing on Ukraine’s border, not before.

Even then, Putin gave it one last shot, asking for guarantees that, among other things, there would be no more NATO expansion to the east, that the US should remove missile systems that it had supplied to Romania and Poland and that Ukraine and several other countries should remain neutral buffer states.(64) He received no such assurances and it’s my judgement that he was never going to.(65) Despite the clear wishes of the public, Zelensky was effectively under the control of the neo Nazi elements in his own country, many of whom had been appointed to government positions.(66) And they, in turn, were working hand-in-glove with the Americans. Zelensky was (and is) trapped.

The die was almost cast. All it required was one further bad-faith move on behalf of Biden or Zelensky and it wasn’t long in coming. On February 16th 2022, the Ukrainian Army began a heavy artillery bombardment of civilian areas in eastern Ukraine. In all, over 4,000 shells were fired, with a peak of 2,026 on the 19th. These numbers are not supplied by the combatants; they were observed by a mission of the OSCE, there in their professional capacity.(67)

To be clear, once again the Ukrainians were shelling their own Russian speaking citizenry, as well as the ethnic Ukrainians who form a narrow majority of the population. Therefore, even if we ignore all the provocations that had come before, are we still able to say that this act – the indiscriminate killing of civilians – wasn’t in itself a provocation? I think not. A week later, Putin launched his special military operation.

Endurance concludes by discussing the motivations of the west. He thinks the primary objective of the west is to prevent a rival economic power from emerging, and in this service, wants to overthrow Putin.

Biden himself, as is his wont, had already let the cat out of the bag, even if his aides later tried to walk it back. But it’s difficult to walk back “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”.(85) Especially when it’s accompanied by “…and we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.”(86) Boris’ spokesperson was even more explicit; he said that the sanctions on Russia “…we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.”(87) I don’t really think further clarification was needed, but we got some anyway, from James Heappey, minister for the armed forces:

“His failure must be complete; Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored, and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”(88)

I disagree. I suspect control of exportable natural resources, especially energy, is central to the conflict. If blocking a rival economic power rather than resource control is the primary motivation of the west, then we would have started a war with China before Russia.

Now let’s return to the theme of this blog post, “What would you do?”.

Our western leaders have lied about every aspect of the two biggest global events that have occurred in my 65 year lifetime: covid and the Ukraine war.

These two events occurred back to back and were simultaneous with what some of us that are overshoot aware think was the imminent onset of an overshoot driven economic collapse.

That can’t be a coincidence.

Here is a thought exercise I have been mulling for years.

Let’s imagine our leaders are reasonably intelligent and desire to do what is best for themselves, their children, and the citizens they represent.

Let’s also assume that our leaders understand:

  1. Economic growth has stalled due to the rising cost of energy and other non-renewable resources.
  2. Our ability to use debt to compensate for rising resource costs is ending due to our total debt having accumulated to an unsustainable level, combined with inflation driven higher interest rates.
  3. Rising demand from the non-western world combined with depletion of low-cost non-renewable resources means economic growth cannot be restarted unless demand is destroyed elsewhere and control over remaining resources is secured.
  4. If demand is not destroyed, and resources are not secured, the western economies will soon enter a prolonged (permanent?) period of contraction with severe consequences for our debt-backed fractional reserve monetary system (which by design requires growth to function) including wealth destruction from falling asset prices and debt defaults, credit scarcity making it harder to conduct business and to consume, high unemployment, and unaffordability and/or shortages of food, energy, other necessities.
  5. Falling tax revenues combined with already high public debt will make it impossible for governments to provide a safety net to prevent severe hardship and social unrest.
  6. Our leaders cannot discuss publicly any of the above because doing so would likely accelerate the collapse via herd panic.

If you were a leader with this knowledge, and a decent person, what would you do?

Might this explain their actions with covid and Ukraine?

55 thoughts on “What would you do?”

  1. Hi Rob.

    I see you on this brave new page in this brave new world, if and when and how we get there. If there is anything left to hope, it is that at least some of humanity will have a chance at coming out the other side, unscathed enough physically, mentally, and spiritually to carry on the Homo Sapiens experiment for all of us, this time including our biosphere as ourselves, and kinder and wiser. You know my stance on this world leader pretend thought experiment more than anyone as I have had the opportunity to vent my musings here on this very topic on more than one occasion. Thank you and others for your tolerance and commentary; it has sustained me on many a dark and stormy night of the soul, which I am sure we are all weathering.

    If we want to see everything as just chaos and crazy with no-one sane captaining the ship, then there’s more flotsam and jetsam in the mess we’re in to paint that picture ten thousand-fold times over. However, if we take the complete opposite view and consider everything unfolding as part of a long calculated game with distinct objectives and drivers, then paradoxically, things also look pretty convincing for this perspective, almost presciently so. As one who seeks order out of chaos, the second option just makes more “sense” to me, although I can not give any concrete proof other than what is clear enough before me. Maybe I hang on this choice of delusion because it is one that actually gives a modicum of hope that we may find a passage through, however uncertain and difficult the journey will be.

    The original Greek definition of apocalypse is “unveiling of knowledge”, and interestingly this would be the diametric opposite concept to denial, which has been the state of humans since year dot. Maybe we should not be fearing this particular meaning of apocalypse so much as continuing to blindly careen in darkness of our true fate. In any case, what is at our door will be an apocalypse without doubt, but the scale of suffering can still be adjusted, even if infinitesimally, by each of our actions. Even one kind word or shared comfort can represent the highest and best of what humanity has achieved at this culmination of our dominance on this planet. We are not world leaders, but mastery and true knowledge of ourselves is unshakeable power, and universe willing, we shall have that until the end.

    Namaste.

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    1. Thanks Gaia, as you suggest, my post could have been titled:

      Is anyone driving the bus?

      Or is the bus simply following the contours of the road as governed by gravity?

      Put another way, are covid and Ukraine policies an evolved emotional response to biophysical forces like hints of scarcity?

      Minds greater than mine, like Nate Hagens, think no one is driving the bus.

      I’m not sure.

      If no one is driving the bus you would expect some random element to the ratio of correct to incorrect decisions, not 100% incorrect as we observe.

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      1. When you consider that someone like Alex the Great could run a huge chunk of the world as a 20-something, without the internet and phones, it is perfectly plausible to believe that today someone or someones could similarly have a high level of control.

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  2. Great post Rob!!
    I watch the Duran so the Ukraine stuff is no surprise.

    But on that last bit trying to fit the limits to growth in with recent events,
    Flip the script, and assume the Russia – China perspective is also LTG aware.
    And assume Tim Morgan is right that the financial consequences will be the cause the early crisis and actual resource constraints are a slower moving problem.

    Can Russia -China crush the resource consumption in the West by destroying the western financial system?

    The west is a disproportionate consumer of resources, cut them off and Russia – China and others can keep going for a while longer.

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    1. Thanks Jim. I’m sure you’re right that China, Russia, and the rest of the non-western world are thinking as you suggest.

      But they didn’t start this fight.

      On the resource issue, I disagree with Morgan. I expect resource availability will fall very quickly with economic contraction due to the complex network of dependencies all lubricated with plentiful credit and a functioning long-distance trading infrastructure.

      Check out the work of David Korowicz if you have not already done so.

      https://www.korowiczhumansystems.com/publications/

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      1. I am really not sure who is correct here, yes there are the complex linkages but this is also a life or death emergency, so people will get creative and throw out a lot of complications and screw over lots of expectations.

        An economic contraction is absolutely unavoidable but it might be a ragged stair step down. ( and that first step looks like a dozy) I guess only time will tell.

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  3. Great post Rob,
    Endurance gets much right in his long post. Kinda reminds me of Dave Collum or Karl Denninger, both of whom buy into the Trump was robbed of a re-election and that climate change is a hoax. I think both those memes go with the dominant right tribe’s narrative on Covid (which is the right narrative).
    That they are all overshoot unaware Or in denial is not surprising.
    All the outward evidence is that none of our leaders understand the financial pickle of unlimited money printing at a time of resource decline. Maybe some in China do, but we have selected leaders that are focused on short term goals.
    AJ

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    1. Thanks AJ.

      If I understand you correctly, you think someone is driving the bus but the driver can only see as far as the next curve.

      You might be right.

      That would at least explain the non-random nature of our leaders getting 100% of their decisions wrong.

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  4. Homo Sapiens is such as clever but unwise monkey.

    Look at this amazing engineering achievement designed to entertain other monkeys by wasting a precious, non-renewable, soon to be depleted, resource.

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  5. I’m now way beyond being a “never-vaxxer”.

    The next time I see an unethical moron doctor will be when I’m dragged into a hospital unconscious with no choice. The SOB doctors could have stopped this catastrophe if they had an ounce of ethics or brains. Even if we cut them some slack and forgive them for being swept up in the initial panic and swallowing pharma’s fraudulent propaganda, where are the doctors today standing as a group saying we must not mRNA a child?

    In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier last Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray said, “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.” Like so much else in America’s tortured, distractible life these days, the meaning larded into that utterance went clear over the collective heads of just about everybody.

    What was the key part of that statement? “For quite some time now….” Gee, really? Like, how long? One year? More than that? Maybe since March 2020? And you didn’t say anything, Mr. FBI Director? You didn’t do a thing to dispel the Covid-19 miasma that swaddled Washington DC like a smallpox blanket of yore? The question of where the novel coronavirus came from has been a ferocious national controversy since late 2019, you understand. Several government agencies, including the CIA and all the offices under the gigantic National Institutes of Health (NIH) – including the NIAID run for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci — plus the FDA and CDC, tucked into the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)… all of these outfits have pretended to not know the true origin of Covid-19 for over three years. And the FBI Director, who could have shed some authoritative light on the matter by stepping up to a podium and weighing in, just let all that chaos roll?

    And by-the-by, let’s not forget that the whole time Chris Wray knew with moderate certainty that Covid-19 came from the Wuhan virology lab, he was in charge of a battalion of FBI agents assigned to managing Twitter, Facebook, and Google — that is, the apps that comprise the digital Public Square — to make sure that anyone who opined about Covid coming from the Wuhan lab got censored, banished, cancelled, reputationally destroyed.

    So, why did Mr. Wray make this statement on Tuesday… “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed…” Probably we’re hearing the old Modified Limited Hangout strategy, a venerable ruse, which is when a criminally culpable government throws the public a bone of admission about something that is common knowledge anyway — the thing everybody knows — while pretending that they were in on the common knowledge all along — which just adds another layer of perfidy to the giant matrix of lies laid down by US agency officials in this disgraceful episode of US history.

    What Mr. Wray left out of his statement this week is any hint that a gang of US scientists and doctors under Dr. Fauci were directly and intimately involved in the activities at Wuhan that produced the virus that killed millions around the world, and led to the warp speed production of a “vaccine” mere weeks after the organism appeared — which will probably end up killing and maiming more people than the disease itself.

    It happened also this past week that a team of distinguished medical warriors including Drs. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford testified before the opening session of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Dr. Makary began his remarks stating boldly: “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government….”

    …. Misinformation that…

    – Covid was spread through surface transmission
    – That vaccinated immunity was far greater than natural immunity
    – That masks were effective. Now we have the definitive Cochrane review. What do you do with that review? Cochrane is the most authoritative evidence body in all of medicine and has been for decades. Do you just ignore it and not talk about it?
    – That myocarditis was more common after the infection than after the vaccine. Not true, it is 4-28 times more common after the vaccine.
    – That young people benefit from a booster, misinformation. Our two top experts on vaccines quit the FDA in protest over this particular issue, pushing boosters in young, healthy people. The data was never there. That’s why the CDC never disclosed hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under the age of 50.
    – That vaccine mandates would increase vaccination rates. A George Mason University study shows that it didn’t. It did one thing, it created “Never-Vaxxers” who are now not getting the childhood vaccines they need to get.

    “Over and over again, we’ve seen something that goes far beyond using your best judgment with the information at hand. We’ve seen something that is unforgivable, and that is the weaponization of medical research itself. The CDC putting out their own shoddy studies, like their own study on natural immunity looking at one state for two months, when they had data for years on all 50 states. Why did they only report that one sliver of data? Why did the salami slice the entire database? Because it gave them the result they wanted.

    The same with the masking studies. The data has now caught up in giant systematic reviews, and public health officials were intellectually dishonest. They lied to the American people.”

    This week, Edward Dowd, the former BlackRock trader-turned-Covid-statistician — and author of the new book Cause Unknown — released preliminary fourth quarter 2022 “excess deaths” numbers for group life insurance death claims compiled by the International Society of Actuaries (SOA).

    For the age group up to age 44 excess deaths rose above the baseline (normal): 13 percent in October, 21 percent in November, and 43 percent in December. For the age group 45 to 64, the death rate above baseline rose 4 percent in October, 16 percent in November, and 35 percent in December. Mr. Dowd says that he is told the rates moving into the first quarter of 2023 are higher still. This is what’s known as a trend, and a pretty ominous one.

    It boils down to an awful lot of people in the prime of life dying off, and more every month. Nobody in any of the US public health agencies is talking about this. One very prominent official, Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, is still busy arranging to dispense more Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines to America’s school-children — the “vaccines” being the prime suspects causing those stunning excess death rates among the young and employed demographic. Nice work, Rochelle!

    How do the approximately 70 percent of vaxxed-up Americans deal with this reality? Many, of course, are noticing vaxxed family members, friends, colleagues, sports figures, acquaintances getting sick and dying of sudden heart failure, strokes, aggressive cancers, strange neurological problems, and other mystifying syndromes. The aggregate reaction so far seems to be a numb despair. But then, the still-living vaxxed also have to contend with the anxiety over what is going on in their own bodies. Perhaps they’ve heard whispers from the more extreme voices on the margins of this discussion that every single person who got vaxxed might be subject to an early death one way or another. That’d be a reason to withdraw into the first stage of the Kübler-Ross Transect of Grief, which is denial… and just hunker down there… for now. It’s an awful lot to contend with.

    What’s next then? Consider that around 30 percent of Americans are not vaxxed, and are free of the anxiety that they are designated goners — notwithstanding the basic limits of the human condition. That 30 percent of Americans, and perhaps even some of the 70 percent vaxxed, will possibly be concerned with the other enormous threats to our national life: the insane Ukraine project, which looks like the overture to World War Three (no thank you); and the collapsing US economy, with features such as unaffordable food and fuel, scarcity of parts for fixing anything that’s broken, and a pretty good chance that retirement accounts will be wiped out in a coming equity-and-bond market “correction.”

    All of which is to ask: when will the people of this land finally get pissed-off at the managers who are running everything? And when will the people start to express their new-found rage? I’ll make a wild-hair guess. By May, when the weather really starts lightening up, the people will be out in the streets looking to smash anything that appears to represent authority. Welcome to the season of real chaos and crisis, possibly many seasons, maybe years. Take great care of yourselves and your situations. Prepare if you can. How does it feel…to be on your own? the bard sang sixty years ago. We’ll soon find out.

    https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/well-soon-find-out/

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        1. OK, Rob. I’m not sure of your angle on that because Bret Stephens wrote the piece about the Cochrane review that the article I linked to was criticising. It is by Tomas Pueyo who showed that the review was very poor, despite being a Cochrane review.

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          1. It looked to me like Stephens was the author and I did not read it. Before I read anything on covid I start by checking the source’s credibility and integrity. I ignore any journalist working for an organization that accepts pharma ads.

            Are you vouching for the integrity and credibility of Pueyo?

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            1. I can’t do that. Did you vouch for the integrity and credibility of the authors of the Cochrane review? The article dealt with many aspects of that review and used a lot of snippets of the review and of the papers that the review included to make his points. He later followed up with another post (sadly behind a paywall) analysing his possible biases in the critique. That seems like someone with integrity but I can’t vouch for it personally. Obviously, it’s up to you if you want to read it.

              For me, it seems highly unlikely that using a well fitted high quality mask would have no impact on the person wearing it, as regards breathing in or disseminating viral particles. Consequently, a paper which makes such a claim needs to be very very thorough and show its workings. The flag that was raised for me was that the review said mask compliance was low. So I couldn’t see how it could make that claim. It may be that masking policies didn’t work due to low compliance, and poor mask wearing, but that is a different matter. The article I linked to made a very good argument that the review was poorly done and used bizarre weightings for the papers it reviewed.

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              1. I try not to post anything that I do not have a good reason to trust. When I’m not sure, I’m explicit like with the OP by Endurance.

                I have seen people I trust, based on hundreds of hours of my time assessing their integrity, like Dr. John Campbell and Dr. Bret Weinstein, discuss the Cochrane review and confirm it was good science.

                A key sign of integrity is when someone changes their beliefs based on new evidence and acknowledges publicly that they made an error. For example, Dr. Bret Weinstein apologized for telling his followers in the early days of covid that vitamin D supplements were not advised.

                Here we have Dr. John Campbell 2 days ago apologizing to his 3 million followers for misleading them for 2 years that mask wearing was useful.

                I have not dug into the studies enough to comment on the points you make. You are making sense that if an N95 or better is worn correctly it probably helps, but the point is if no one wears them properly then there is no science to justify a mask mandate. If you want to buy a proper mask, and be trained on how to use it properly, then go for it, just don’t claim mandates are justified.

                For the record, I happily wore a mask all the time because I felt it disguised my anti-mRNA position in public, but I never assumed the mask was protecting me.

                Now lets assess the integrity our heath leaders by watching for them to apologize for misleading us on masks for 2 years.

                Then they can apologize for creating the virus in the first place, killing millions of people by blocking early treatments and pushing a ineffective and dangerous vaccine that also promoted variants that we’ll have to live with for a long time while praying that one does not mutate into a real killer.

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                1. Yes, I like John Campbell’s reporting of research but it usually is just reporting the research, as is. Even people with integrity can get it wrong. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and it looks like the proof here was poor. At least that’s my current estimation. It’ll be interesting to see how the comments on this pan out over the coming months.

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                2. I just want to add that the Puyeo piece, to me, tries to keep his personal opinion to a minimum with almost all focus on the data. This makes it a worthwhile piece to read.

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                    1. I said he focused on the data in this piece. I guess you missed that. It doesn’t read like an opinion piece.

                      Remember that John Campbell also got it wrong in the early days. Indeed, did anyone get it right in the early days? Chris Martenson was saying borders should be closed and everyone should wear a mask, properly, when out of their home. If you think you can dismiss every word in that piece, then that makes me sad.

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        1. You really need to check the integrity of your sources:
          Abrar Ahmad Chughtai: works for the WHO
          C Raina MacIntyre: was an advisor for Australia’s f**ked up covid policies
          David Fisman: is an advisor for Pfizer and AstraZeneca

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          1. Thanks, though your put-down of Pueyo wasn’t particularly convincing. The second article I mentioned was, again, not about opinions, as such, but fairly straight forward concerns about how the review was done and which studies it included. Are you still certain its conclusions are valid? And remember that Bret Stephens thought they were.

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  6. Thank you to the 1 out of every million doctors that have good ethics and are fighting to prevent further harms.

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  7. Joke posted by Hole in Head on POB.

    Germany in 2024

    A German walks into a bar and orders a fancy beer.
    The bartender tells him : “100 euros!”
    The German is shocked – “100 euros? yesterday it was only 10 euros !”
    “Well, today it is 100 euros.”
    – “But why 100, damn it?”
    Bar tender : “I’ll explain it,
    -10 euros is the beer,
    -10 to help Ukraine,
    -20 assistance to European countries who have imposed sanctions and are not members of the EU.
    -20 euros in aid to the UK, for successful implementation of sanctions against Russia.
    -Then 30 euros are sent to the Balkan countries as aid to buy furnace coal/keep their corrupt politicians.
    – and finally, 10 euros for a gas subsidy for the EU and fund to help maintain sanctions!”
    The German silently with internal anger took out the money and gave the bartender 100 euros.
    The bartender took them, entered in the cash register and gave him 10 euros back.
    German in disbelief : “Wait, you said 100 euros, right ? I gave you 100, why are you giving me back 10 euros?”
    “…..There is no beer.”

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-4-2023/#comment-753738

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  8. Its all about resources, it has always been about resources, it will always be about resources.

    Russia represents the #1 largest single source of a wide range of critical finite natural resources and TPTB has no control over them. Also thanks to Russia and to a certain degree China many other resource rich countries are saying no to Empire.

    This is why US/NATO is at war with Russia and soon China. The west, US Japan, Australia, and mostly the EU are toast if cut off from the cheap almost free finite natural resources of the global south and now Russia. It represents an “existential threat” to the wealthy west to lose and an “existential threat” to the RoW if the west wins and an “existential threat” to all life on the planet regardless of whoever wins.

    What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go right?

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    1. I agree.

      Two back-to-back global events in which our leaders lied about everything and implemented policies that made no sense can be understood when viewed through the lens of imminent overshoot collapse.

      Covid was an attempt to prepare for the possibility of not securing the resources needed to resume growth, and Ukraine is an attempt to get the resources.

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    2. The thing is, the world already has an existential threat. These temporary tussles for declining resources are really insignificant in the great scheme of things. The best that we could have forlornly hoped for is that countries leave each other in peace and politely trade what they have.

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  9. In the 60’s Jay Forester a research professor, electrical engineer, and one of the first and most well known computer scientist at MIT was credited with the development of Random-access computer memory or RAM which kicked the computer age into high gear. He also developed the concept of System Dynamics and wrote a book titled “World Dynamics” using all of his capabilities. This was before the World3 computer run and the book that followed called “Limites to Growth”. One of Prof Foresters famous quotes was “Anyone who thinks you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist”. He also said “ “Many industrialized nations are now growing rapidly and placing ever-greater demands on world resources. Many of those resources come from the presently underdeveloped countries. What will happen when the resource-supplying countries begin to withhold resources because they foresee the day when their own demand will require the available supplies? … Will the developed nations stand by and let their economies decline while resources still exist in other parts of the world? Will a new era of international conflict grow out of pressures from resource shortage?” This was in 1971.

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      1. David – It would seem that everyone and no one can claim absolute ownership of that quote but I am certain that Forester at least repeated it along with all of the other well educated remarks he made.

        “Anyone Who Believes Exponential Growth Can Go On Forever in a Finite World Is Either a Madman or an Economist”

        Kenneth Boulding? Paul Ehrlich? David Attenborough? Mancur Olson? Wayne H. Davis? Jay W. Forrester? John S. Steinhart? Anonymous?

        https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/07/11/exponential/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20have%20little%20doubt%20that,a%20madman%20or%20an%20economist.

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        1. No doubt he repeated it,as have many others. Search Kenneth Boulding or “Kenneth Boulding quotes. ” . I have Bouldings’ essay here in a book form where that statement was originally made.

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          1. David – I now have greater respect for Bouldings works. Do you have the publication date for the book you quote from?

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            1. I’ve just checked the “The economics of the coming spaceship earth” (copyright 1966 ) and
              “Spaceship Earth Revisited ” essays in Herman Daly’s (editor) “Economics , Ecology ,Ethics”,
              and that quote is not in them. I might have another look in a while, but it seems the earliest date
              at present is 1973, mentioned in the article you linked ,and in a wikiquote article.
              Do you have any reference of a Jay Forrester quote earlier than that ?

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              1. David – Appreciate you checking. Honestly it doesn’t really matter. The point I was trying to make is that it has been understood for a very long time that resources are what matters and we only have a finite amount of them.

                Once this is understood it becomes easy to see that nothing else matters, not money or power or anything without access and control over resources. Sure money and power can help with that but neither of them can make more of it.

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  10. The Weathering the Storm post on Substack seems pretty accurate. I think U.S. intelligence has been meddling in Ukraine long before 1991, at a low level, with the Ukrainian diaspora and the right-wing nationalist UPA/OUN underground in Ukraine, which I think existed all along during the Soviet period.

    As far as I know, it’s never been determined who the Maidan snipers were; if it’s true as the writer claims, that an American in uniform gave them their orders, that is truly damning. I wonder what the source for this claim is; I can’t determine from his / her footnotes.

    The account doesn’t mention the shootdown of MH17. That was another key turning point in the story, since the outrage over the alleged Russian involvement got the EU on board with sanctions. The MH17 disaster was basically swept under the rug; the official story has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

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    2. Just a promo for his book – it was a reading of some of the preface for the book. To dense to just be heard and understand all the nuances of his argument, must be read and thought over. Maybe if I had the time to read his book I would buy it. If someone on this blog reads it and recommends it????
      AJ

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  13. The War in Iraq and WOMD was another Western Leaders scamdemic wrought upon the people. That was just like covid with everyday citizens being suspicious while the media parroted the party line. I do think critical thinking was better back then, but I was only 11 so can’t be sure 🙂

    Like you Rob, I also believe this is about resources. Just like Iraq was about oil (Bush jr was very aware of peak oil). Let’s not forget when Bush’s subconscious accidentally admitted it was wrong to invade Iraq

    Here in this video, Chris Martenson clearly laid out USA’s path to war with Russia as a leadership decision. He called it 5 years ago, 4 years before the “special operation”!

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    1. Thanks. The Ukraine war worries me because of the nuclear risk but it does not upset me like covid. We have been fighting wars with false flags and hidden objectives forever.

      Covid was the first time that many institutions and professions chartered to protect and enlighten citizens all collaborated to spread lies that killed and harmed millions of their own citizens.

      That would include journalism, universities, regulatory agencies, world health organizations, government health care departments, hospitals, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.

      Three years later with a mountain of evidence they still have not admitted they were wrong and apologized.

      They’ve destroyed their reputations for a generation.

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      1. It has a been a shit show for the most part. I am happy NZ locked down at the beginning, we’ve had very few deaths and didn’t end up like Iran or Italy. But after that….
        I’m worried about getting a serious pandemic (bird flu or similar). The health authorities have trashed their reputations. Who will believe them when they to control an outbreak in the future?

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    3. exactly what proof do you have Rob that we have been there?

      I’m not saying that we have or haven’t but we have just lived through the biggest hoax regarding covid and vaccines. Do you really think it that this is the first major lie? Human’s refuse to think because it hurts. That is infinitely exploitable.

      Re tom bouncing lasers, how does that prove that a human has been to the moon?

      A remote landing of a craft could leave reflective material. There is always numerous possibilities. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t been there but I do think that it is interesting that we have never been anywhere near the moon for fifty years. In the end who cares it is not like any of us are going there soon, unless there is a undisclosed visitation guided personally by death on our journey to the next adventure.

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  15. Day 10 with no sugar and no cheating. I feel good.

    This is a very interesting podcast episode on the many different types of sugar that are put in processed food.

    Not much discussion on the health implications of sugar. For that topic I highly recommend the book Metabolical by Dr. Robert H. Lustig.

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  16. Here is a snarky presentation of the evidence for an attempt by the WEF to form a world government.

    I left the following comment on YouTube:

    All of this world government evidence can be viewed in a more benevolent light with awareness that the human species is in a severe state of overshoot due to over population, non-renewable resource depletion, ecosystem damage, biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change. If nothing is done to change our trajectory we can expect economies and modern lifestyles to collapse by 2030 with much suffering and loss of life due to starvation, social unrest, and war. The reality that WEF members face is that they cannot speak openly about our overshoot problems because doing so would initiate a herd panic thus accelerating the collapse. So they speak in code which people often interpret as evidence of an evil conspiracy.

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    1. Though I can’t see too much difference between collapse before 2030 and collapse by 2030. It seems more likely that if the elite truly understand our predicament, they will be hoping that somebody will think of something.

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  17. I’d like to introduce you to Gene Lonegran who I have been following for years on YouTube.

    He’s kind of like a prepper version of Mr. Rogers. His videos have a calming effect on me while often teaching something useful.

    He covers a wide range of topics from knot tying (my favorites), to small engine repair, to home DIY skills, to how to roast a chicken on a kerosene stove.

    https://www.youtube.com/@GeneLonergan/videos

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    1. Love it, Rob and thank you! You’re so right, the soothingness of his voice is just like Mr. Rogers and he kinda looks like our favourite neighbour, too! Only missing the cardigan… This is just the breath of fresh air we need to keep ourselves going through these easily depressing times. The practicality of his shared knowledge is a great way to counteract the doldrum feeling like one can’t do anything to make things better and it’s always good for the endorphins to learn something new. I think I will practice tying some knots myself, it’s therapeutic!

      Kudos to you for your efforts in kicking sugar, didn’t take long and you’ll never look back!

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