‘Rigged’ election claims then and now

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President Biden and other leading Democrats are aghast that so many Donald Trump supporters don’t accept the results of the 2020 election. But as these two videos by Matt Orfalea show, the shoe was on the other foot for the 2016 election.

First there was the campaign to persuade members of the Electoral College to vote for candidates other than the ones the voters chose.  

Then came the charges that the election result was somehow the result of a conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.  All the specific claims in the bogus Russiagate scandal were debunked.  

Nevertheless Democrats proceeded with an impeachment trial on the claim that Trump had tried to obstruct the investigation of the nonexistent crime, which failed.  

Then they tried again for impeachment on the claim that Trump urged the President of Ukraine to investigate a corrupt corporation in his county for the purpose of discrediting Joe Biden.  This, too, failed.

Now they are pursuing criminal investigations of Trump’s business dealings and of his failure to turn over classified information.  Of course Trump may well be guilty of something and, if tried and convicted, he should pay the usual fine.

I think the motive for these investigations is to find something – anything – that would discredit Trump or possibly prevent him from running again.  I recall Democrats took a different stance about Hillary Clinton’s problems with handling classified information.

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Here’s the thing.  It is not a crime to claim that an election is rigged.  It is not a crime to deny that an election result is legitimate.  If you believe that, and say so, this is an expression of your right to free speech. 

I myself think there is a strong possibility that the 2016 election result was swayed by hacking of voting machines.  Tests of certain voting machines showed that the results could be altered, both on-site and remotely, and that there was no way to detect the results.

I’m not claiming this is evidence that Russians could have hacked these voting machines.  I’m claiming it is proof that almost anybody could have hacked these voting machines.

There were also widespread attempts to illegitimately purge voter rolls of black people.  Investigative reporter Greg Palast has been on this topic like a bulldog.  

I am certain that the result of the 2000 election was determined by illegal purging of voter rolls in Florida and may also have been influenced by a miscount of ballots.

It also is very possible that there was ballot-tampering in the 2020 election, although, if it was, it is just as likely that it was done by Republicans as Democrats.  Yes, Republicans are the ones making the most noise about this.   Recall the strategy of Karl Rove was to accuse one’s opponents of the thing you are doing yourself.

Once the election is held, it is too late to change the result.  There is a fine line between protesting the results of an election, which citizens have every right to do, and making an insurrection or coup to overturn the results.

Pipeline sabotage kills last hope of Ukraine truce

I don’t know for a fact who is responsible for the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage.   But it is plain who benefits from the sabotage, who is hurt and what the results will be.

A winter truce or peace negotiations in the Ukraine war are now virtually impossible.

People in Germany and other European countries face a disastrous winter because of the cutoff of Russian oil and gas. The possibility of turning the gas back on gave Vladimir Putin great leverage in negotiating a possible truce.

The leaks in the gas pipelines take away that leverage.  Now Putin has little or nothing to offer Russia’s former European gas customers in return for peace.

The chief beneficiaries of the pipeline sabotage are Ukraine, the USA and maybe Poland.  The chief victims are Germany, other European gas importers and Russia itself.

On the day of the pipeline break, Poland announced a new pipeline that will transport gas from Norway’s North Sea gas fields to Poland via Denmark and the Baltic Sea.  It reportedly will supply 15 percent of Poland’s needs.

[Added Later]  Alex Christoforous of The Duran, in the video posted above, makes some good points.  He said Russia wouldn’t have sabotaged its own pipeline, for the same reasons I gave.  It would be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

If it had been a false flag operation of the United States, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wouldn’t have been caught by surprise.  He’d be saying there is no need for an investigation, Russia is to blame, let’s retaliate.

Also, he said, the great powers do not attack each others’ undersea pipelines and cables because they all are so vulnerable and it would be so easy to retaliate.

His speculative answer is that there is some sort of a cabal, including rogue elements of the U.S. and other governments, which is committed to bringing down Russia and deindustrializing Germany at all costs, but which hasn’t thought out the consequences.

Forget Trump! It’s the economy, stupid!

If the November election were held on the issues, there’s a good chance the Republicans would win.  But as it is, there’s a good chance the Democrats will win.

Click to enlarge

That’s what I conclude after reading a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll.

• 30 percent of polled voters think inflation is the most important issue.
• 40 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of independents agree, but only 13 percent of Democrats.
• 62 percent of polled voters think the United States is in a recession.
• 57 percent say President Biden’s decisions have hurt the economy, and 41 percent strongly disapprove of his job performance overall.
• 39 percent think Republicans would do a better job of managing the economy, while 26 percent think Democrats would do better.

Concern about inflation is slowly declining.  I think that is because President Biden is helping to drive down gasoline prices by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

I don’t think most Americans realize how much of the price increases are due to blowback from the economic sanctions war against Russia.  Supplies of Russian oil and gas are being cut off from Europe, and this drives up the market price not only in Europe, but worldwide.

I don’t think the Republicans have a good plan, or any plan at all, for dealing with inflation.  The Federal Reserve Board’s plan is to slow down the economy, but that only works to slow down an overheated economy, not to bring down price increases due to scarcity.

The Democrats are the incumbents and the Republicans are the opposition, so the issue favors the Republicans.  Also, the Republicans talk more about deindustrialization, tariffs and other key economic questions, so they at least indicate concern, while Democrats are inclined to downplay these issues.

Click to enlarge.

The next most important issue is abortion.

• 22 percent of the public think abortion is the most important issue.
• 35 percent of Democrats think so, too, and so do 22 percent of independents, but only 10 percent of Republicans.

The repeal of Roe v. Wade has energized abortion rights advocates, but most voters take a middle position.  Only a minority support the extreme restrictions on abortions proposed by Republican state legislatures, but a majority are opposed to allowing abortions without any restrictions at all.

The poll also indicates that a lot of Democrats choose the Jan. 6 hearings as their top issue, but few Republicans or independents do.  A lot of Republicans choose immigration as their top issue, but few Democrats or independents do.  The other important issue is health care, but it’s a lesser issue than inflation or abortion.

All that would lead me to think that Republicans have the advantage, but the poll results indicate that the Democrats have an edge of 4 percentage points.  I think the Republicans are hurt by their internal conflicts and by the focus of news coverage on Donald Trump and his many battles.

Forget the issues: It’s all about Trump!

Three to six months ago, the conventional wisdom was that the Democratic Party was headed for disaster in the coming elections. The reason given was President Biden’s failure to cope with inflation and other serious national problems.

Now the conventional wisdom is that the Democrats have an even chance or better of holding on to their majority. Why? The change is due to the focus on Donald Trump.

Overall, many political observers and Democratic leaders think Trump-backed candidates in the Republican primaries are wackos that will be easy to defeat.

Operating on this theory, Democrats reportedly donated $53 million to Trump-backed candidates.

Here is the Washington Post’s rundown how the Democrat-backed pro-Trump candidates fared and the amounts the Democrats contributed.

WON.  Illinois Governor.  $34.5 million spent.

LOST.  Colorado U.S. Senate. $4 million spent.

LOST.  Nevada Governor.  $3.9 million spent.

WON.  New Hampshire U.S. Senate.  $3.2 million spent.

LOST.  Michigan Governor. $2 million spent.

WON.  Maryland Governor. $1.7 million spent.

LOST.  Colorado Governor.  $1.5 million spent

WON.  Pennsylvania Governor $1.2 million spent.

WON. Michigan 3rd District, U.S. House. $425,000 spent.

LOST.  Virginia 2nd District, U.S. House.  $300,000 spent.

LOST.  California 22nd District, U.S. House.  $200,000 spent.

LOST.  Colorado 8th District, U.S. House.  $250,000 spent.

WON.  New Hampshire 2nd District, U.S. House.  $100,000 spent.

Total $53,275,000.

I don’t want to overstate the significance of this.  Democrat money wasn’t necessarily the deciding factor in any of these races.  

And Trump endorsed nearly 200 candidates in all.  BBC News reported 92 percent of them won.

What the contributions reflect is that Democrats think that focusing on Trump is a winning victory strategy.

Of course this strategy could backfire.  The Clinton campaign in 2016 tried to “elevate” Trump, figuring that he would be easiest to defeat in the general election.  It didn’t work out the way they thought it would.

Ukrainian general says: Take the war to Russia

RSZV M142 HIMARS and ATACMS missiles . Photo: Mariusz Burcz

The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces co-wrote an article saying the only way for Ukraine to win is to take the war to Russia itself.

Right now Russian missiles can hit any target in Ukraine with pinpoint accuracy, General Valery Zaluzhny wrote; Ukrainian drones can only reach 60 miles into Russian territory.  I’ve read elsewhere that these drone attacks are already taking place.

Zaluzhny is commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a member of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.  

General Zaluzhny

He said that, in order to win, Ukraine needs the USA and other allies to provide longer-range missiles that can penetrate deep into Russia.  

Only then will the people of Russia feel the consequences of their war of aggression and pressure their government to back off.

General Zaluzhny said his short-range goal is to reconquer Crimea, an important Russian military and population center from which attacks on Ukraine are launched.  But that in itself will not end the war, he said.  It is necessary to attack the Russian Federation itself.

He went on to say:

Ukraine’s repulsion of aggression by a superpower requires and will require significant material resources and financial costs for a long time to come.  In 2023, the material basis of the Ukrainian resistance should remain significant in terms of military and technical assistance from partner countries.

After all, despite its own losses from economic sanctions, dependence on Russian energy sources and individual attempts to “pacify” the Russian Federation, world history will not forgive any country in the world for conniving with a bloody predator that only gets drunk on new blood. 

In the long run. he wrote, Ukraine needs to create its own armaments industry, perhaps in partnership with foreign investors.

I think this is an accurate description of the situation.  Right now the balance of forces is against Ukraine, both in the shooting war and the sanctions war.  Ukraine needs a game-changer if it is to win.

But what exactly would Zaluzhny do with longer-range missiles?  Just bombard Russian forces massing along the border?   Or bomb Moscow and St. Petersburg?  

Either way, the Russians would retaliate immediately, not just against Ukraine, but its NATO allies.  Then what?

Does he think a widening of the war would work to Ukraine’s advantage?  Indeed, a general war in Europe would devastate Russia and the NATO allies, but might well leave Ukraine a fully-sovereign nation—and also a blood-soaked wasteland. 

I wonder what U.S. and other NATO commanders this of this.  Do they also want to take the war to a new level rather than admit defeat?  Have they thought about the consequences?  We live in “interesting” times.

A baby hummingbird sips from a raspberry

Source: Owl at the Library.

Escalation in Ukraine

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did two things today that escalate the war in Ukraine and make nuclear war a little more likely than it was before.

The first thing was to announce referenda in Russian-speaking, Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine on joining the Russian Federation.  It’s reasonable to think that the vote will be “yes.”

The second was to announce a partial mobilization, which will increase Russian troop strength by about 300,000.  This could double or triple the number of troops available to fight in Ukraine.

In other words, Russia has drawn a new red line and is increasing its war-fighting ability to maintain it.

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For years, Putin’s demand was only that Ukraine grant autonomy to the Luhansk and Donetzk regions and respect the civil rights of Russian-speakers.  But early this year, he persuaded the Duma to recognize Luhansk and Donetsk as independent republics.

This provided a theoretical legal justification for the “special military operation.”  Russia was defending two sovereign nations from attack.

Annexation of the Luhansk, Donetzk, Marupol and Kherson means that Russia would say that any invasion of these regions was an attack on Russia itself.  According to stated Russian policy, Russia would retaliate by any means deemed necessary, including use of nuclear weapons.

It also means that Russia’s occupation of these lands is non-negotiable.  Russia cannot afford to give them up.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, it had the advantage.  It had prepared arms production so that the Ukrainians were outgunned.  It also had bolstered its economy so as to be able to survive the sanctions war launched by the United States.

By supplying Ukraine with modern weapons, and by providing intelligence, training and possibly support by elite troops, the U.S. has changed the nature of the war.  Military analyst Scott Ritter says the war is no longer a Ukrainian war using NATO equipment; it has become a NATO war using Ukrainian troops.

Russia’s main weakness is that the Russian people themselves are not eager to go fight and die in Ukraine.  The bulk of the fighting has been done by militias of Russian-speakers in Luhansk and Donetzk, the Wagner Group (private mercenary soldiers), Chechens and fighters from the Syria and other foreign countries.

While Russia has a military draft, there is an understanding that draftees won’t be sent to fight in Ukraine.

Book note: Regeneration by Pat Barker

REGENERATION by Pat Barker (1991)

I picked up this novel by chance at a neighborhood free book exchange.  It is a fascinating story, mostly true.

It is about the real-life encounter during World War One between Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, an Army psychologist, and Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and war hero turned war protester.

Sassoon had written a protest letter against continuation of the war.  He was not a pacifist.  He believed that the war had become a war of aggression and conquest, and that its original aims could be achieved through negotiation.

The letter was published in the London Times and read in the House of Commons.  Sassoon faced court-martial, but his friend Robert Graves, a fellow officer and fellow poet, arranged for his commitment to Craiglockhart war hospital to save him.

At the hospital, Sassoon met and mentored the war poet Wilfred Owen, another real-life patient of Rivers.  

Craiglockhart was for the treatment of shell shock (now known at PTSD).  Dr. Rivers before the war had been an expert on psychosomatic illness.  

His method of treatment, innovative at the time, began with convincing the patient that every man, no matter how brave, has a breaking point and the PTSD was not evidence of cowardice.  Then he helped the patient understand the cause of the trauma and so break its hold.

This was similar to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis except that Rivers believed the fundamental repressed human drive was not sex, but self-preservation.  He perceived that the basic loyalty of most soldiers was not to king and country, but to their comrades on the battlefield. 

Rivers treated officers.  In the novel, he met the real-life character, Dr. Lewis Yealland, who treated enlisted men.  His method of treating PTSD was very different.  It consisted of subjecting the patient to a worse trauma than the trauma that caused the symptoms.  

Yealland put his patients into a locked room and subjected them to extremely powerful and painful electric shocks, which ceased only when, step by step, their symptoms went away.  He claimed to cure his patients with just one treatment and to have a 100 percent success rate.

Rivers was shaken by Yealland’s apparent effectiveness, but he couldn’t bring himself to torture his patients.

The main fictional characters are Billy Prior, an officer of working-class origins, and Sarah Lamb, a factory girl with whom he has a love affair.  Prior suffered from “mutism,” the inability to speak, which was commonly found among enlisted men but almost never among officers.

The moral problem for Rivers was that his mission as a healer was to restore men to mental health so they could return to the battlefield and get themselves killed.  The average life expectancy of a British officer on the front lines in France was three months.

Sassoon and Graves hated the war, but they deeply resented civilians, including pacifists.  All things considered, they preferred being at the front with their doomed comrades to being safe at home.

Chemicals may be making people obese

Roughly 40 percent of American high school students were overweight by the time they started high school.  An estimated one-third of American youth age 17-24 are ineligible for military service because of obesity.

Worldwide, the incidence of obesity has tripled since the 1970s.  Experts estimate that by 2030, one billion people worldwide will be obese.

This matters.  Obesity is related to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems.

Part of the reason for the obesity increase is that, compared to previous generations, people nowadays are more sedentary and eat more processed foods high in sugar, fat and salt.  But this can’t be the whole reason.

In the USA, the rise in obesity affects not only people, but their cats and dogs, and rats and mice in the wild.  It affects laboratory animals that are fed controlled diets.

Mark Buchanan of Bloomberg News reported that some scientists think obesity is caused by chemicals called “obesogens,” which, even in tiny amounts, boost the production of specific cell types and fatty tissue.

An example is a chemical called tributyltin, or TBT, which is found in wood preservatives.  In experiments exposing mice to low and supposedly safe levels of TBT, a scientist named Bruce Blumberg and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, found significantly increased fat accumulation not only in the exposed mice, but in the next three generations.

TBT and other obesogens trigger such effects by interfering directly with the normal biochemistry of the endocrine system, which regulates the storage and use of energy, as well as human eating behavior, Buchanan wrote.

Obesogen chemicals are found in plastic packaging, clothes and furniture, cosmetics, food additives, herbicides and pesticides.  Buchanan said nearly 1,000 obesogens have been identified in studies with animals or humans.  

That would explain why laboratory animals get fat.  There might be obesogens in their food or the structure of their cages.

If this is true, it is a big, big problem.  Fixing it would require a virtual revolution in testing and manufacturing.

LINKS

Plastic Might Be Making You Obese by Mark Buchanan for Bloomberg News.  Another version.

Plastic Might Be Making You Fat by Alex Tabbarok for Marginal Revolution.

The Animals Are Also Getting Fat by Alex Tabbarok for Marginal Revolution. (2013)

Why aren’t medical breakthroughs in obesity a bigger deal? by Matthew Yglesias for Grid.  [Added 09/17/2022]

Michael Hudson on the clash of capitalisms

THE DESTINY OF CIVILIZATION: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism by Michael Hudson (2022)

When I studied economics as a college undergraduate, I was taught there are three factors of production – land, labor and capital. And three sources of income – the rent of land, the wages of labor and the profit or interest from capital.

Land includes not just the soil itself, but all natural resources.  Labor includes all productive effort, whether of brain or brawn.

Capital, as I was taught, is the force multiplier. It includes everything that increases the productivity of land or labor – farm tractors, railroads, computers, steam engines, electric power plants, research laboratories, anything that increases or improves production.

So the landlord is a parasite, the worker is a contributor to society, but the capitalist supposedly is the driving force for progress.

Here’s the rub.  Financial capital is productive only when it is used to create physical or human capital.

But there’s no law that says financial capital has to be used productively.  In fact, most so-called “investment” consists of buying assets and collecting the income, with no value added. 

Michael Hudson, in his brilliant new book, The Destiny of Civilization, says that’s what’s happening in the U.S. specifically and also the broader world today.  Industrial capitalism, which, for all its faults, is productive, is being replaced by finance capitalism, which is parasitic.   

So much of the world’s resources go to paying off debts—government debt, business debt, mortgage debt, student debt—that too little is left over to provide for the wants and needs of ordinary people.  

So much of the world’s income goes to holders of debt that too little is left for those who do the actual work of society.

According to Hudson, the classical economists, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes and including Karl Marx, thought that the chief economic problem was the rentier – the person who draws income from ownership of assets, without producing anything of value themselves.

The French economist Thomas Piketty has written massive tomes that show how the income from ownership of assets – whether land, government bonds, corporate stocks or something else – over time exceeds the rate of economic growth.

This leads to an ever-growing concentration of wealth, which ends only when some event – usually revolution, war or an economic crash – wipes out the value of the assets. This is the process that the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.”

In the United States and countries that follow its lead, classical economics has been replaced by the so-called neoliberal economics.  Its guiding principle is that financial capital must be preserved at all costs.

This is why, just as one example, the Obama administration bailed out the banks following the 2008 financial crisis, but did not use authority granted by Congress to help the struggling mortgage-holders.

Karl Marx was fascinated by industrial capitalism’s power to increase productivity and increase wealth.  This form of capitalism, as he saw it, laid the foundation for a future utopian worker-ruled socialist state.  Finance capitalism, in Hudson’s view, leads nowhere.

Hudson says that today civilization is today at a fork in the road: 

• one path leading to a neoliberal neo-feudalism dominated by a rentier oligarchy ruling over the indebted many.
• the alternative path is broadly mixed-economy industrial capitalism leading to socialism.

The passing scene: Links & comments 9/13/2022

Asia’s Future takes shape in Vladivostok, the Russian Pacific by Pepe Escobar for The Cradle.  (Hat tip to Bill Harvey)

Putin in Vladivostok

Pepe Escobar, reporting last week on the Russia-hosted Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, says the world’s center of economic gravity is shifting to Asia, with China as leader and Russia and India as its main partners.

 I have my doubts that the Chinese-led new order will be as utopian as Escobar predicts, but the Chinese magnetic pole is a more powerful attractor than the U.S. pole.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, led by China, now includes China, Russia, the Central Asian republics, India, Pakistan and Iran, while 11 more nations, including Turkey, seeking to join.  

The reason is not hard to see.  China promises benefits to its economic partners; the NATO alliance demands sacrifices.  As the old saying goes, you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

The Specter of Germany Is Rising by Diana Johnstone for Consortium News.  (Hat tip to Bill Harvey)

Scholz meets Zelensky

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz advocates an expanded, militarized European Union with Germany as the dominant force.  

It would include all of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, plus Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.  It would have a common foreign policy, consisting of a permanent Cold War against Russia, and make decisions by majority vote, not by consensus as now.

Germany dominates the smaller Eastern European countries economically.  The further east the European Union goes, the greater the influence of Germany, the less the influence of France and the stronger the possibility of a war policy being adopted over French objections.

Watch out for the coming oil shock in the USA

This just in from Ian Welsh.

Recently read a smart lad who noted a few simple things:

1. Biden’s been releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

2. The SPR has basically two types of oil: sour and sweet.

3. Biden has been releasing almost all sour since that’s what most US refineries need.

4. At the current rate of release, the SPR runs out of sour crude to release around March.

[snip]

Of course, when Biden stops releasing oil, either because he’s out or because he chooses to stop after the election or the holidays are over, then prices are going to spike if sanctions are still in place against Russia and/or Russia is unwilling to sell to the West.  As a bonus, the government will need to buy oil itself to stock the reserve back up.

[snip]

What this means for Americans is that there’s a very good chance of a big inflation spike after the election.  It might hold off for as long as spring, it might start a few weeks after the election.  It won’t just hit gas prices, oil is important for much more than driving cars, so it’ll rip through the entire economy.  Stock up on what you need before the election if you can.

And let this be a lesson that GDP means very little when the chips are down.  Who cares if you have Hollywood and lots of fast food stores and Google and FaceBook?  What matters is what you grow, dig up, refine and make.

Javier Blas of Bloomberg News suggested President Biden could make up the different by getting Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, but Biden’s attempts to get Middle Eastern “allies” to help out by increasing oil production have ended in failure.

LINKS

When Is the Next Oil-Driven Inflation Spike in the US?  December to March by Ian Welsh.

“We’re going to have to talk about oil again” on Quiz Chad Had a Rack Twitter thread.

The US Is Depleting Its Strategic Petroleum Petroleum Reserve Faster Than It Looks by Javier Blas for Bloomberg News.

Viktor Orban’s message to Europe

Viktor Orban

Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, refuses to join in the proxy war and economic war against Russia.  He gave his reasons why in a speech last summer, which I’ve excerpted, because it sums up the situation so well.  

He is a contentious character, for reasons explained in the linked articles.  But I don’t see anything in this speech excerpt that isn’t true.

Western strategy in this war is based on four pillars.  It is a sensible strategy on paper, and perhaps even has numbers to back it up.  

The first was that Ukraine cannot win a war against Russia on its own, but it can do so with training from the Anglo-Saxons and with NATO weapons.  That was the first claim.

The second strategic claim was that sanctions would weaken Russia and destabilise the leadership in Moscow.

The third strategic element was that – although they would also affect us – we would be able to deal with the economic consequences of the sanctions, so that they would be hurt more and we would be hurt less.

And the fourth strategic consideration was that the world would line up behind us, because we were in the right.

As a result of this excellent strategy, however, today the situation is that we are sitting in a car with four flat tires.  

It is absolutely clear that the war cannot be won like this.  The Ukrainians will never win a war against Russia with American training and weapons.  This is simply because the Russian army has asymmetric superiority.

The second fact that we must face up to is that the sanctions are not destabilising Moscow.

The third is that Europe is in trouble: economic trouble, but also political trouble, with governments falling like dominoes.  Just since the outbreak of the war, the British, the Italian, the Bulgarian and the Estonian governments have fallen.  And autumn is still ahead of us.  The big price rise came in June, when energy prices doubled.  The effects of this on people’s lives, which are creating discontent, are only just beginning to arrive, and we have already lost four governments.

And finally, the world is not only not with us, it is demonstrably not with us.  Historically the Americans have had the ability to pick out what they identify as an evil empire and to call on the world to stand on the right side of history – a phrase which bothers us a little, as this is what the Communists always said.  This ability that the Americans used to have of getting everyone on the right side of the world and of history, and then the world obeying them, is something which has now disappeared.

Europe faces self-imposed economic crash

Thousands in Prague protest energy crisis and NATO alliance

I’ve written about why I think Russia is likely to win its ground war in Ukraine and its sanctions war worldwide, and what I think the results of Russian victory might be.  This post is about one aspect of that war—how the sanctions war has brought about an economic crisis in Europe.

Six months ago, Europe’s leaders boasted they’d bring Russia to its knees through economic sanctions. Today their countries fact economic disaster because of blowback from those sanctions.

Many Germans are hunting through forests for firewood for the winter, because of the looming scarcity of oil and natural gas.  One report says there is a one-year waiting list for purchasers of wood stoves. Coal also is in great demand and short supply.

In Spain, the government is imposed rules forbidding air conditioning to be set below 80 degrees Fahrenheit. In the Netherlands, a campaign called Flip the Switch asks Dutch people to limit showers to five minutes and do without air conditioning and clothes dryers.

One expert says six in 10 British factories are in danger of closing as a result of higher energy bills. The average British household is expected to see its annual average energy bill rise to $4,180, a rise of $1,765, according to CNN Business.

Forward contracts for electricity in France and Germany are 10 times what they were this time last year.

It’s hard to see how Europe can escape a energy crisis and an economic recession this winter.  The initial reaction of Europe’s leaders has been to double down.  Germany’s foreign minister said Germany will never desert Ukraine, no matter what.

The European Union is reportedly planning to seek sweeping powers over businesses in member states that would basically allow Brussels to tell these companies what to produce, how much of it, and whom to sell it to in times of a crisis.

A public opinion poll indicates a majority of Germans would like to negotiate a peace.  Unfortunately a compromise peace is no longer being offered.  The Russians now say their terms are unconditional surrender.

Tens of thousands joined to protest against the sanctions war in Prague.  I think it is the first of many such protests.  They may lead to sweeping changes across Europe; they may lead to existing governments and the. EU itself invoking emergency powers to stay in power.

I sympathize with the European peoples who’ve been caught up in the global struggle of the USA vs. the Russian-Chinese alliance.  Europeans have a lot to lose and little to gain by joining in.

The true, lethal story of leaded gasoline

Leaded gasoline may have killed more people than Hitler.   That’s not an exaggeration.

This video tells the true story of the man who created it, and the man who exposed the harm it did.

Book note: The Brothers Karamazov

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV: A novel in four parts with epilogue by Feodor Dostoyevsky (1880) translated and annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1990)

The Brothers Karamazov is one of the two or three greatest novels by a Russian, possibly one of the two or three greatest novels by anyone.  It will live as an example of the greatness of Russian culture long after current conflicts are forgotten.    

Dostoyevsky states in the first paragraph that the hero of the novel is Aloysha Karamazov, the youngest of the three legitimate sons of the depraved Feodor Karamazov.

He is a monk of the Russian Orthodox Church who tries to live by the literal teachings of Jesus—something that is unfamiliar to almost all respectable people, both now (myself included) and back then.

Aloysha forgives his enemies.  In fact, he doesn’t recognize the concept of enemy. He returns good for evil.  He thinks always of others and never of himself.  He cares nothing for success, possessions or personal gain.  He never argues and hardly ever criticizes, although he always states the truth as he sees it when asked.

He has been like this since his earliest youth.  No explanation is given of how he came to be this way.

He is very different not only from his elder brothers, the brilliant anti-religious intellectual Ivan and the passionate sensualist Dmitri, and from his depraved father, Feodor.

Feodor is as obnoxious as it is possible for a human being to be.  He is greedy, dishonest and malicious.  He openly embraces all the vices, and goes out of his way to be as offensive to others as possible, especially those with a claim to be virtuous.    

He despises his other two sons.  They in turn hate him and don’t like or trust each other.  Yet he trusts and confides in Aloysha.  Ivan and Dmitri, who despise their father and dislike each other, also trust Aloysha.

One day Ivan seeks out Aloysha, invites him to dinner and tries to probe the nature of his faith.

Ivan is an unbeliever, but not exactly an atheist.  “I long ago decided not to think about whether man created God or God created man,” he says.  “I declare that I accept God pure and simple.”  This is probably meant ironically or hypothetically.  But Ivan is full of rage at God, or at least the idea of God, whether or not God actually exists.  

He confronts Aloysha with horrifying accounts of savage cruelty to innocent children, in history and his present day, all based on fact.  He cannot worship the Creator of a world in which innocent children are tortured, and denounces Christian churches for justifying such a deity.  Nor can he apply the Christian idea of forgiveness to torturers of children.

He said he loves life, but he can’t endure the meaninglessness of life.  If he can’t find answers to his questions by the time he is 30 (he is 24 and Aloysha is 20), he will “return his ticket.”  

Why losing things isn’t a worry in Japan

An excavator is not a toy, but…

I wonder how long these guys (I’m assuming they’re all guys) had to practice to develop these fine motor skills.  I wonder what the practice consisted of and how much breakage there was in the process.

Also, the precision of the machinery itself is as impressive as the skill of the operator.