Politics

[Sabattiboy]

Totally agree. No intent to use it unless I am forced to.

The problem being when the time comes the one carrying has to be cool headed enough to not be pushed because it might get where the situation isn't yet.

 

[One Day...]

Something is not computing...

Sure, Putin may be the only person in Russia who does not know that frozen ground melts in the spring ?????

Sure, the Russian Army professional ineptitude may be an offense to Western professional soldiers ?????

Sure, the Russian air force strong of 1,500+ fighters and attack aircrafts supported by 500+ attack helicopters may have failed to achieve air superiority over the ~100 Ukrainian fighters and attack aircrafts and ~30 attack helicopters ?????

Sure, sustained combat devours spare parts and maintenance hours, and maybe the Russian military exhausted its supplies of spare parts in Syria or during its month-long maneuvers prior to the conflict, and moronically engaged in war operations in Ukraine with so little combat maintenance capability that it was exhausted in 2 or 3 days ?????

Sure, Russian officers may not be educated enough to have a graduate level understanding of the application of combat power, and the inexperience of the Russian army in projecting combat power may be so poor that the 40 mile convoy may have simply run out of gas, 150 miles from its starting point at the Belarus border ?????

Sure, the Russian army may have fought themselves to a standstill in 3 or 4 days against a Ukrainian army - pick a number: 3, 4, 5 times less numerous, less equipped, and less trained ?????

Etc. Etc.

I don't know folks, I don't know, something is not computing......

Do we REALLY think that they are THAT stupid?

Certainly, we are not alone in not understanding what is happening (see The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force paper by the Royal United Services Institute; or the Foreign Policy Research Institute: “There’s a lot of stuff they’re doing that’s perplexing”; etc.) but while most everyone agrees that we do not know what exactly Putin wants to accomplish, and why the Russian military conduct operations in Ukraine the way they do, few seem to dismiss the questions so easily, and be satisfied by answers as simplistic as something along the line of the ineptitude of Russian forces...

What is it in there that we are not understanding? And that we better start to understand quick before we get completely rolled in this maskirovka (Russian military deception doctrine), if it is one indeed.

I do not know folks, I do not know, but I do not think - in all respect to the Ukrainians resistance efforts and spirit - that 75 years old Babushkas brandishing AK 47; or civilians turned into resistance fighters overnight by being issued a uniform, a weapon and one magazine; or “The Ghost of Kyiv” MIG-29 ace combat sequences that a Reuters Fact Check debunked as being a clip from the videogame Digital Combat Simulator; or the few hundreds of Javelins and Stingers that may (?) have already reached Ukraine and may (?) have already been dispersed to ground units; etc. etc., I do not think that those explain, for example, why the Russian air force is using just over 75 aircrafts in its Ukraine invasion, per US intelligence reports; or why after having conducted extensive operations in geographically expansive areas such as Afghanistan, the Russian army would have all of a sudden forgotten that engines need fuel, and soldiers food; or why after being engaged daily for months in Syria, the Russian air force would have suddenly forgotten that Su-24 or 35 require spare parts...

Full-scale ethnic cleansing ?

I have no pretense of knowing, but watching the news tonight I was noticing that already close to 1 million Ukrainians have left the country, and that the UN were organizing for the arrival of as many as 5 million Ukrainians in bordering nations over the coming weeks.

Could it be that Putin is as crazy as a fox and is applying just enough deliberate or indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas, while progressing on the ground just slowly enough, to essentially herd out of Ukraine the population he does not want in it (assumedly Western leaning Ukrainophones), essentially performing full-scale ethnic cleansing in the face of the world, while laughing at the epithets, and stacking the deck for an upcoming popular referendum in some months?

I don't know folks, I do not know, but what I know is that it is not as simple as they are just bumbling idiots...

 

[VertigoBE]

Something is not computing...

Sure, Putin may be the only person in Russia who does not know that frozen ground melts in the spring ?????

Sure, the Russian Army professional ineptitude may be an offense to Western professional soldiers ?????

Sure, the Russian air force strong of 1,500+ fighters and attack aircrafts supported by 500+ attack helicopters may have failed to achieve air superiority over the ~100 Ukrainian fighters and attack aircrafts and ~30 attack helicopters ?????

Sure, sustained combat devours spare parts and maintenance hours, and maybe the Russian military exhausted its supplies of spare parts in Syria or during its month-long maneuvers prior to the conflict, and moronically engaged in war operations in Ukraine with so little combat maintenance capability that it was exhausted in 2 or 3 days ?????

Sure, Russian officers may not be educated enough to have a graduate level understanding of the application of combat power, and the inexperience of the Russian army in projecting combat power may be so poor that the 40 mile convoy may have simply run out of gas, 150 miles from its starting point at the Belarus border ?????

Sure, the Russian army may have fought themselves to a standstill in 3 or 4 days against a Ukrainian army - pick a number: 3, 4, 5 times less numerous and less equipped ?????

Etc. Etc.

I don't know folks, I don't know, something is not computing......

Do we REALLY think that they are THAT stupid?

Certainly, we are not alone in not understanding what is happening (see The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force paper by the Royal United Services Institute; or the Foreign Policy Research Institute: “There’s a lot of stuff they’re doing that’s perplexing”; etc.) but while most everyone agrees that we do not know what exactly Putin wants to accomplish, and why the Russian military conducts operations in Ukraine as they do, few seem to dismiss the questions and be satisfied by answers as simple as something along the line of the ineptitude of Russian forces...

What is it in there that we are not understanding? And that we better start to understand quick before we get completely rolled in this maskirovka (Russian military deception doctrine), if it is one.

I do not know folks, I do not know, but I do not think - in all respect to Ukrainians resistance efforts and spirit - that 75 years old Babushkas brandishing AK 47; or civilians turned into resistance fighters overnight by being issued a uniform, a weapon and one magazine; or “The Ghost of Kyiv” MIG-29 ace combat sequences that a Reuters Fact Check debunked as being a clip from the videogame Digital Combat Simulator; or the few hundreds of Javelins and Stingers that may (?) have already reached Ukraine and may (?) have already been dispersed to ground units; etc. etc.. I do not think that those explain, for example, why the Russian air force is using just over 75 aircrafts in its Ukraine invasion, per US intelligence reports; or why after having conducted extensive operations in geographically expansive areas such Afghanistan, the Russian army would have all of a sudden forgotten that engines need fuel, and soldiers food; or why after being engaged daily for months in Syria, the Russian air force would have suddenly forgotten that Su-24 or 35 require spare parts...

Full-scale ethnic cleansing ?

I have no pretense of knowing, but watching the news tonight I was noticing that already close to 1 million Ukrainians have left the country, and that the UN were organizing for the arrival of as many as 5 million Ukrainians in bordering nations over the coming weeks.

Could it be that Putin is as crazy as a fox and is applying just enough deliberate or indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas, while progressing on the ground just slowly enough to essentially herd out of Ukraine the population he does not want in it (assumedly Western leaning Ukrainophones), essentially performing full-scale ethnic cleansing in the face of the world, while laughing at the epithets and stacking the deck for an upcoming popular referendum in a few months?

I don't know folks, I do not know, but what I know is that it is not as simple as they are just bumbling idiots...

Agree. The thesis of “Russia suddenly does not know what they are doing” does not hold up to past history.

 

[spike.t]

I am not sure how much if that story is true if any. A Billion in a Costa Rican Bank? In Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Cyprus, sure. Maybe Luxembourg, Jersey, Cayman Island, Bahamas, Pamama and some others, but Costa Rica?

Mmm....Jersey is fully compliant with all usa and European financial legislation....Obama in his first election speeches when going on about offshore tax havens and threats he was making to them included Jersey in his spouting....the chief minister at the time sent him a letter explaining all this to him, and asking for a retraction and apology (never received) and also that maybe he should look closer to home , as back then the US Virgin islands weren't compliant with usa financial legislation , or any other I believe....but never were mentioned....I know this pissed off people I know in the finance industry in Jersey as they were compliant....

 

[spike.t]

View attachment 455347

Looks like she got something stuck up her 0 when she wasn't looking

 

[spike.t]

Here or lighter note thread..

 

[Sabattiboy]

isn't "green" energy heavily subsidized? if that doesn't factor into the calculus, we're just whistling past the graveyard.

I've see numbers as low as 3-5 cents/kWh for wind. That's harder to swallow than a vaseline sandwich.

And no one seems to mention the generating cost of Americans driving and charging all electric cars at 5 PM peak demand time.

 

[spike.t]

A brilliant piece
~~~~~~~
Will ‘woke’ survive the war?

James Macpherson

27 February 2022

Will the West’s obsession with Woke survive war in Europe? Or will Putin’s missiles finally explode the Never-Never Land of unreality in which we have been living?

It’s early days, of course, but so far, the West’s mythical land of prancing unicorns looks bulletproof.

Even as rockets rained down on Ukraine, Western elites worried about how the war would affect LGBTQ people, as if Putin might have developed queer-seeking missiles.

Others voiced concern that grandparents huddled in bomb shelters beneath the pockmarked streets of Kiev might not be social distancing.

The New York Times lamented that few of the Ukrainians fleeing for their lives were wearing masks. They probably weren’t triple-boosted either. And God forbid any of them were shot dead without first using a QR-code to check out.

Meanwhile, former US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed dismay at what he called the ‘emissions consequences’ of war in Europe. He would presumably be far more comfortable with the Russian invasion had their tanks first met strict European emission standards.

Kerry said he hoped Vladimir Putin would ‘stay on track’ with fighting climate change while fighting the Ukrainians. We can only hope the Russian army will sort the plastics from the metal bomb casings when they get around to removing corpses from the battlefield.

And here in Australia, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews lit up Melbourne in the Ukrainian colours as ‘a show of support’.

If that doesn’t work, he will likely deploy a hashtag.

And if China invades Taiwan, he will (of course) paint the town red.

Those who say cockroaches are the only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust are wrong. On the evidence available so far, Woke – that virus of the mind which has turned Westerners into mindless, unicorn-chasing simpletons – will probably survive as well.

The Russians may well destroy Europe, and China may well dominate the Pacific, but they will never kill our stupid!

Nothing better illustrates the disconnect between the imaginary world of the West and the cold, hard reality that is right now marching toward Kiev than the fact that, just three weeks before the invasion, British troops were spending a day ‘reflecting on inclusivity’.

At the very moment Putin was surrounding Ukraine with rocket launchers, British soldiers were taking a break from tiresome military exercises to discuss ‘unacceptable behaviours’ such as bullying, sexual harassment, and racism.

Doesn’t Putin know we have the most diverse, equitable, tolerant and trans-inclusive militaries in the history of the world?

And he’s still messing with us?

If all of Europe descends into war, the Brits might not win, but by God they will be the best-behaved losers in military history. If only Putin would challenge us to a ‘Celebrate Diversity Day’, we’d kick his ass.

Western armies may well comprise the nicest soldiers you could ever meet on a battlefield. Just ask the Taliban.

‘Oh, you’d like a Black Hawk helicopter, would you? Here, have 33! And would you like Humvees with that? Have 27.’

Little wonder that, after watching American soldiers run away from a bunch of Afghani goat herders, Vladimir Putin decided to try his luck.

It’s not by accident that the acronym for the West’s favourite things – diversity, inclusion, and equity – is DIE.

Putin wants to fight. So much toxic masculinity.

If our military leaders want to discuss ‘unacceptable behaviours’, they might like to talk about their total unpreparedness for conflict.

For decades now, we in the West have imagined we lived in a post-war world. Conflict was, like, so last century.

With the loss of Christianity, we lost the doctrine of original sin; the idea that human beings – while made in the image of God – are fallen and so have a propensity toward evil. Instead of preparing for the inevitability of conflict, we embraced the illusion of the brotherhood of man and the perfectibility of mankind.

Singing John Lennon’s Imagine – as only a decadent culture would – we slashed defence spending so that we could focus instead on welfare and aged pensions and pet projects like wind turbines that, incidentally, would be a great defence if only Putin would invade using pigeons.

What soldiers we did bother funding, we trained as peacekeepers to win hearts and minds rather than as warriors to kill the enemy. Violence is nasty, you see. And so unnecessary.

We are the ‘Defund the Police’ generation, remember. We cannot imagine a problem that can’t be solved by people holding hands in a circle and singing Kumbaya. Or by sitting down with a social worker who has a PhD in gender studies.

And so the German army has, in recent times, taken to conducting military exercises using broomsticks as guns. Why not? It’s not like we’d ever need guns in our mythical world of love and rainbows.

Germany’s chief of land forces, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais wrote this week on his Linkedin page, ‘I would not have thought I would have had to experience war.’

But while we have been busy beating our swords into broomsticks, Putin and Xi Jinping and the Mullahs and Kim Jong-un have rationed their population’s pruning hooks in order to afford more spears.

Western elites have allowed a situation in which wealthy countries rummage around in the broom cupboard for something with which to defend themselves while basket case nations have nuclear weapons. What did they think was going to happen?

The Ukraine today. Taiwan tomorrow. And God only knows what comes after that.

The West will impose sanctions (provided they don’t cost us too much), but Putin has a war chest of billions.

The West will light up monuments, but thanks to a scowling Swedish schoolgirl, Putin controls the West’s energy supplies.

The West will appeal to ‘international law’, but it can only be upheld by force. And we stopped believing in force years ago.

The West will try to galvanise the much talked about ‘international community’, but no such community exists. Pakistan president Imran Khan, a supposed Western ally, visited Putin last week declaring it ‘an exciting time’. And just watch the so-called international community rush to cut sweet deals with Xi Jinping if China succeeds in snatching Taiwan.

The West will look to the European Union, but the bureaucrats in Brussels are committed to the elimination of nation-states. Meanwhile, Europe is an idea of elites that the man on the street is not prepared to die for.

The West will appeal to the United Nations, but the UN Security Council was chaired by Russia at the very time Russia was invading Ukraine. The UN General Assembly’s most likely response to Russia invading Ukraine is to agree on harsh sanctions against Israel.

On and on it goes.

We have lived in a world of illusion. And now reality is hitting us like a rocket. But will it be enough to make us finally realise that the real world is where the monsters are?

 

[spike.t]

Got sent this....be interested to hear responses....plausible?....or...

Vladimir Putin didn’t just invade the Ukraine on 24/02/2022, he officially ended the petrodollar system. How? Remember, Russians don’t do anything without a plan. They & China have been prepping for this moment for years & are now ready:

Russia has stated NATO expansion into Ukraine was a red line.

-They knew their invasion of Ukraine would be inevitable and would have strategized that the US/West’s response would be SWIFT $ system exclusions/sanctions.

-Reasonable to expect that Russia’s next step would have been to shut off oil/gas pipelines to Europe, as Russia has built up huge Yuan, gold & commodity reserves.

-This will cause massive price and supply disruptions (war level) to the western markets & monetary system.

- For years Russia & China have looked for ways to re-monetize gold & exit abuses of SWIFT system as a geo-political tool against them, but how to do it, how to exit, without West declaring it an act of aggression or war against West?

- This Ukraine invasion just accomplished that end for them. And the West is doing it themselves.

-Now, freed to declare themselves SWIFT system outcasts by the western govt hands, Russia can now say “we will turn oil pipelines back on, but not for dollars.”

- Russia then declares that Europe or anyone that wants Russian oil (as 3rd largest global producer) or Russian/Ukrainian wheat (1/4 of worlds production) must pay in gold, or use the ruble-yuan gold backed payment system.

- Their leverage as an oil producer (who cuts off supply) will cause almost immediate price shocks to the western world. A good part of the population could immediately be unable to heat their homes.

- Almost equal to the oil shock they’d cause is their ability to cause food shortages and price spikes through the disruption of wheat production.

-Unmentioned in all this is China. Who has been silent & not condemned Russia.That means silent approval & cooperation.

- China will act to soak up Russian production of oil and wheat to soften the blow to their “strategic partner”.

- This will again be through the Yuan-Ruble facility and at some point overtly-stated gold backing of that system by Russia and China.

- The West will of course declare those last two bullets as acts of global aggression and direct threats to the “world monetary system”.

- At this point that there will be a clear fracture of the world’s monetary system into 2 competing East/West structures, circling back to the initial point that the 50 year global petrodollar system has just officially been ended by Putin.

If the above analysis is indeed correct,then the threat 2 the petro- $ is no different 2 the time of Charles De Gaulle or Gaddafi,but on larger scale.They can't remove Putin as easy as they did with previous leaders who challenged their fraudulent petrodollar monetary system.

 

[VertigoBE]

Got sent this....be interested to hear responses....plausible?....or...

Vladimir Putin didn’t just invade the Ukraine on 24/02/2022, he officially ended the petrodollar system. How? Remember, Russians don’t do anything without a plan. They & China have been prepping for this moment for years & are now ready:

Russia has stated NATO expansion into Ukraine was a red line.

-They knew their invasion of Ukraine would be inevitable and would have strategized that the US/West’s response would be SWIFT $ system exclusions/sanctions.

-Reasonable to expect that Russia’s next step would have been to shut off oil/gas pipelines to Europe, as Russia has built up huge Yuan, gold & commodity reserves.

-This will cause massive price and supply disruptions (war level) to the western markets & monetary system.

- For years Russia & China have looked for ways to re-monetize gold & exit abuses of SWIFT system as a geo-political tool against them, but how to do it, how to exit, without West declaring it an act of aggression or war against West?

- This Ukraine invasion just accomplished that end for them. And the West is doing it themselves.

-Now, freed to declare themselves SWIFT system outcasts by the western govt hands, Russia can now say “we will turn oil pipelines back on, but not for dollars.”

- Russia then declares that Europe or anyone that wants Russian oil (as 3rd largest global producer) or Russian/Ukrainian wheat (1/4 of worlds production) must pay in gold, or use the ruble-yuan gold backed payment system.

- Their leverage as an oil producer (who cuts off supply) will cause almost immediate price shocks to the western world. A good part of the population could immediately be unable to heat their homes.

- Almost equal to the oil shock they’d cause is their ability to cause food shortages and price spikes through the disruption of wheat production.

-Unmentioned in all this is China. Who has been silent & not condemned Russia.That means silent approval & cooperation.

- China will act to soak up Russian production of oil and wheat to soften the blow to their “strategic partner”.

- This will again be through the Yuan-Ruble facility and at some point overtly-stated gold backing of that system by Russia and China.

- The West will of course declare those last two bullets as acts of global aggression and direct threats to the “world monetary system”.

- At this point that there will be a clear fracture of the world’s monetary system into 2 competing East/West structures, circling back to the initial point that the 50 year global petrodollar system has just officially been ended by Putin.

If the above analysis is indeed correct,then the threat 2 the petro- $ is no different 2 the time of Charles De Gaulle or Gaddafi,but on larger scale.They can't remove Putin as easy as they did with previous leaders who challenged their fraudulent petrodollar monetary system.

To my understanding of markets and geopolitics, this is indeed very close to reality. The Russians and Chinese have been building their gold reserves for years. Both are sick and tired of the dollar hegemony, and want alternative systems. The repercussions for the EU and the US will be catastrophic if this current petrodollar system gets modified in a big way.

In fact here another article describing the same thing:

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

 

[Hogpatrol]

 

[Opposite Pole]

Something is not computing...

Sure, Putin may be the only person in Russia who does not know that frozen ground melts in the spring ?????

Sure, the Russian Army professional ineptitude may be an offense to Western professional soldiers ?????

Sure, the Russian air force strong of 1,500+ fighters and attack aircrafts supported by 500+ attack helicopters may have failed to achieve air superiority over the ~100 Ukrainian fighters and attack aircrafts and ~30 attack helicopters ?????

Sure, sustained combat devours spare parts and maintenance hours, and maybe the Russian military exhausted its supplies of spare parts in Syria or during its month-long maneuvers prior to the conflict, and moronically engaged in war operations in Ukraine with so little combat maintenance capability that it was exhausted in 2 or 3 days ?????

Sure, Russian officers may not be educated enough to have a graduate level understanding of the application of combat power, and the inexperience of the Russian army in projecting combat power may be so poor that the 40 mile convoy may have simply run out of gas, 150 miles from its starting point at the Belarus border ?????

Sure, the Russian army may have fought themselves to a standstill in 3 or 4 days against a Ukrainian army - pick a number: 3, 4, 5 times less numerous, less equipped, and less trained ?????

Etc. Etc.

I don't know folks, I don't know, something is not computing......

Do we REALLY think that they are THAT stupid?

Certainly, we are not alone in not understanding what is happening (see The Mysterious Case of the Missing Russian Air Force paper by the Royal United Services Institute; or the Foreign Policy Research Institute: “There’s a lot of stuff they’re doing that’s perplexing”; etc.) but while most everyone agrees that we do not know what exactly Putin wants to accomplish, and why the Russian military conduct operations in Ukraine the way they do, few seem to dismiss the questions so easily, and be satisfied by answers as simplistic as something along the line of the ineptitude of Russian forces...

What is it in there that we are not understanding? And that we better start to understand quick before we get completely rolled in this maskirovka (Russian military deception doctrine), if it is one indeed.

I do not know folks, I do not know, but I do not think - in all respect to the Ukrainians resistance efforts and spirit - that 75 years old Babushkas brandishing AK 47; or civilians turned into resistance fighters overnight by being issued a uniform, a weapon and one magazine; or “The Ghost of Kyiv” MIG-29 ace combat sequences that a Reuters Fact Check debunked as being a clip from the videogame Digital Combat Simulator; or the few hundreds of Javelins and Stingers that may (?) have already reached Ukraine and may (?) have already been dispersed to ground units; etc. etc., I do not think that those explain, for example, why the Russian air force is using just over 75 aircrafts in its Ukraine invasion, per US intelligence reports; or why after having conducted extensive operations in geographically expansive areas such as Afghanistan, the Russian army would have all of a sudden forgotten that engines need fuel, and soldiers food; or why after being engaged daily for months in Syria, the Russian air force would have suddenly forgotten that Su-24 or 35 require spare parts...

Full-scale ethnic cleansing ?

I have no pretense of knowing, but watching the news tonight I was noticing that already close to 1 million Ukrainians have left the country, and that the UN were organizing for the arrival of as many as 5 million Ukrainians in bordering nations over the coming weeks.

Could it be that Putin is as crazy as a fox and is applying just enough deliberate or indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas, while progressing on the ground just slowly enough, to essentially herd out of Ukraine the population he does not want in it (assumedly Western leaning Ukrainophones), essentially performing full-scale ethnic cleansing in the face of the world, while laughing at the epithets, and stacking the deck for an upcoming popular referendum in some months?

I don't know folks, I do not know, but what I know is that it is not as simple as they are just bumbling idiots...

I do not have knowledge of Russia’s war strategy or Russia’s thought process. However, something to consider regarding Russia’s military capability is the sheer size of the country, not all of Russia’s army is or can be concentrated in Ukraine.

At 170,098km2 Russia is nearly twice the size of USA. Its land boundaries are 22,407km long in comparison to 12,002km of USA. The marine boundaries are similarly huge at 37,653km vs USA 19,924km or the entire continent of Africa at 30,500km.

Some of Russia’s navy is separated from Ukraine by two oceans, some by one ocean, some by a few seas not to mention Bosphorus strait which is presently closed to the Russian navy. While invading Ukraine, Soviet fighter jets continue to fly across Baltic Sea harassing other countries. Just yesterday two SU-27 and two SU-24 jets breached Swedish airspace. Also, I would hazard a guess that some of the land force might be on standby in case of social unrest in Russia itself.

I am not a military analyst and do not have military education so these are just my thoughts/opinions and are worth precisely as much as any other lay persons’ guesses.

One more thing to add is despite the strong leadership in the top structures of Russia’s politics the entire country is extremely corrupted and much of its structures are unorganised and dysfunctional. This, to some extent, must extend to its army too. Combine all that with low morale of the mostly conscript army units and some impossible assumptions regarding the current Soviet offensive do make certain amount of sense.

 

[wesheltonj]

The Saudi’s still want Dollars, not a gold backed Russia/China currency.

 

[Red Leg]

It seems to be tempting to believe that apparent strategic and operational bungling is in reality a well-planned eco-military conspiracy for China and Russia to dominate the world while initiating a quagmire in Ukraine. Could be I suppose. Though I am struggling to piece that thread together - for instance, Russia desperately needs to sell natural gas and will gladly take payments from anyone. Hardly the basis for a leverage point.

It is always good to look at sources when posting articles - particularly the more dramatic or cataclysmic the claim. For instance "ZeroHedge" is to the markets what Alex Jones is to social/political commentary. I am no expert on economics, so picking sources is important.

This article by Forbes (well respected) is a couple of years old, but I don't see any fundamentals that have changed. Meanwhile China's erstwhile partner has become an economic liability.

China Is Nowhere Near Replacing The Dollar

If China wants to eat into the dollar's power globally with the internationalization of the yuan, it needs Europe to acquiesce.

www.forbes.com

 

[sgt_zim]

My favorite talkshow host, Jesse Kelly, on an epic 2 minute rant (yesterday afternoon's show)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1499222291888152581

You can listen to him daily from 5P-8P on AM950 KPRC in Houston, or on iheartradio if his show isn't in your market.

 

[sgt_zim]

All your figures and facts may indeed be true, but the economics are there. Companies wanting to build windfarms typically have to bid a cost per kwh, with the low figure winning. Some types of commercial risk are actually pretty low. There are no dryholes for windmills, assuming they did their homework on wind availability at the proposed location. The central US, from Texas up to Canada has the been said to be the potential Saudi Arabia of wind power.

To drill and frac some wells, over 500,000 gallons of fuel is consumed on location with the drilling rig and frac equipement. Does not include all the trucks delivering stuff (pipe, sand, cement, fuel, etc) to the location.

A deepwater drillship burns 10,000 gallons of fuel per day. Total spread cost (drillship, supply boats, helicopters, people) for a deepwater well operation in West Africa was around $1million per day. When oil prices are high, these are very profitable operations.

Let's look at this another way.

The largest 4 wind farms in Texas have a combined 1840 turbines.

So...
4.6 million tons of concrete
and 1.65 million tons of steel.

how much Diesel, NG, and coal were burned to create all that?

And that's just the 4 biggest farms, not all farms.

All together, wind farms in Texas provide us with about 19% of our electricity.

And in about 20 years, when they've reached the end of their useful lives, they're just more trash in the environment.

This doesn't scale, which makes it less green than O&G.

 

[spike.t]

It seems to be tempting to believe that apparent strategic and operational bungling is in reality a well-planned eco-military conspiracy for China and Russia to dominate the world while initiating a quagmire in Ukraine. Could be I suppose. Though I am struggling to piece that thread together - for instance, Russia desperately needs to sell natural gas and will gladly take payments from anyone. Hardly the basis for a leverage point.

It is always good to look at sources when posting articles - particularly the more dramatic or cataclysmic the claim. For instance "ZeroHedge" is to the markets what Alex Jones is to social/political commentary. I am no expert on economics, so picking sources is important.

This article by Forbes (well respected) is a couple of years old, but I don't see any fundamentals that have changed. Meanwhile China's erstwhile partner has become an economic liability.

China Is Nowhere Near Replacing The Dollar

If China wants to eat into the dollar's power globally with the internationalization of the yuan, it needs Europe to acquiesce.

www.forbes.com

I put on to see what you and others would reply with....as some jacked up people on here hiding behind strange names

 

[VertigoBE]

 

[Ray B]

Given that the Earth is still in operation in 8 years, when the calendar on the End of the Earth because of Global Warming gets to Dec 31 and the Earth is still operational, I wonder how the Greta T, AOC, and especially the John Kerry, Al Gore bunch be treated?

 

[sgt_zim]

Given that the Earth is still in operation in 8 years, when the calendar on the End of the Earth because of Global Warming gets to Dec 31 and the Earth is still operational, I wonder how the Greta T, AOC, and especially the John Kerry, Al Gore bunch be treated?

Is that a real question?

They will shamelessly claim they solved it, of course.

What's 1 more whopper on top of all the other whoppers that crowd routinely spews?