Steve Bull's Blog, page 105
August 21, 2023
U.K. Population Collapse “Good for the Planet”, WEF Adviser Prof Sarah Harper Explains
Remember how depopulation was called a right-wing conspiracy theory? Things have changed, and ‘population collapse’, which can no longer be denied, is now good for us!The Telegraph picked the perfect messenger to communicate the new way we should think about population declines. A high-level WEF adviser tells us:
Oxford Professor Sarah Harper is a very important person. The Telegraph article listing her credentials forgot to mention that she serves on the Global Agenda Council on Ageing Societies of the World Economic Forum.
Prof Harper is thrilled about recent declines in fertility:
Prof Harper told the Telegraph: “I think it’s a good thing that the high-income, high-consuming countries of the world are reducing the number of children that they’re having. I’m quite positive about that.”
The academic said declining fertility in rich countries would help to address the “general overconsumption that we have at the moment”, which has a negative impact on the planet.
Most importantly, declines in births will bring about reductions in CO2 emissions from wealthy nations, Prof Harper points out:
Research has found that wealthy nations tend to have much larger carbon footprints than poorer countries, as rich people can afford to buy more goods, travel more and do other activities that generate emissions.
Carbon emissions from high-income countries were 29 times larger than low-income countries on a per capita basis in 2020, World Bank figures show.
Population Declines or Population Replacement?
Here’s the strange part: If the leadership of the World Economic Forum wanted to reduce emissions from wealthy countries, I could understand how they would hope that population reductions would lead to a decline in economic output. Aside from moral implications, it is simple math that fewer people means fewer cars on the road, less food consumed and so on.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Central Asia is the prime battlefield in the New Great Game
So long as Russia and China remain the region’s dominant political and economic powers, the Central Asian heartland will remain a US and EU target for threats, bribes, and color revolutions.
Photo Credit: The CradleSamarkand, Uzbekistan – The historical Heartland – or Central Eurasia – already is, and will continue to be, the prime battlefield in the New Great Game, fought between the United States and the China-Russia strategic partnership.
The original Great Game pitted the British and Russian empires in the late 19th century, and in fact, never got away: it just metastasized into the US-UK entente versus the USSR, and, subsequently, the US-EU versus Russia.
According to the Mackinder-designed geopolitical game conceptualized by imperial Britain back in 1904, The Heartland is the proverbial “pivot of History,” and its re-energized 21st century historical role is as relevant as in centuries ago: a key driver of emerging multipolarity.
So it’s no wonder all major powers are at work in the Heartland/Central Eurasia: China, Russia, US, EU, India, Iran, Turkiye, and to a lesser extent, Japan. Four out of five Central Asian “stans” are full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. And some, like Kazakhstan, may soon become members of BRICS+.
Map of Central AsiaThe key direct geopolitical clash for influence across the Heartland pits the US against Russia and China on myriad political, economic, and financial fronts.
The imperial modus operandi privileges – what else – threats and ultimatums. Only four months ago, US emissaries from the State Department, Treasury, and Office of Foreign Affairs Control (OFAC) toured the Heartland bearing a whole package of “gifts,” as in blatant or thinly disguised threats. The key message: if you “help” or even trade with Russia in any way, you will be slapped with secondary sanctions.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
I Have a Very Bad Feeling About This
Unexpected things tend to happen when the real source of problems are papered over and then suddenly reality intrudes.
What an interesting juncture we’ve reached. We’re constantly assured all is well with what matters–the economy–as the all-powerful Federal Reserve has managed not just the hoped-for “soft landing” but a resurgence of growth: yowza, no recession.
The list of good things is striking: unemployment is low, wages are rising, the wealth effect from explosive increases in housing prices has fattened the home equity of households and the soaring stock market has pushed the economy to giddy heights of wealth and confidence.
The spot of bother with inflation has receded and everyone anticipates interest rates will soon follow inflation back towards zero. China has entered a rough patch but it won’t affect us. And so on.
Despite all this uniformly good news, something about the situation is setting off alarms: I have a very bad feeling about this.
Perhaps the root of the feeling that danger is far closer than we discern is the universal confidence that finance can always fix any and all real-world problems. Whatever the problem, central banks can solve it by lowering interest rates and flooding the financial / banking system with liquidity, i.e. monetary easing, making it easier and cheaper for enterprises and households to borrow more money.
On the government-spending side, the central state can fix any and all problems by borrowing and spending however many trillions are needed–fiscal stimulus.
In other words, we don’t need to suffer any inconvenient sacrifices or systemic changes, we simply need to borrow more and spend more. This is certainly a tidy solution to all problems: borrow more and spend more. Everything in the real world can be fixed with monetary and fiscal easing and stimulus.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 20, 2023
Dependency on the State Is the Core of the Takeover Plot of Humanity
“It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
P.J. O’Rourke
Most of you have entered the final stage of your voluntary acceptance of mass slavery, and that slavery is fully dependent on the concept of fear, compliance to a false ‘authority,’ and total dependence on the very tyrant called government, whose plan is to control the world by controlling the common, ignorant, and apathetic collective crowd called ‘the people.’ The most vital component of this ‘Great Reset’ agenda, is for the majority to be dependent on the State, and that phenomenon is now close at hand. The final foundation of all restriction, control of financial and monetary transactions, and control of movement, will hinge on the farcical fraud called manmade ‘climate change.’ No worries however, because many other excuses, and aspects of control and manipulation will be used as well, but at this point, the ‘climate change’ hoax is the lynchpin of the future takeover plot.
The speed of this agenda has accelerated far past earlier time projections, and I believe this to be due to more exposure by the few who understand what is actually happening, to explain all the contradiction, lies, and propaganda, that have inundated society for the past few decades. At this point, the somewhat panicked ruling class and its pawns in government, have vastly escalated their terror campaign worldwide, in order to shut down dissent before it can gain too much ground. This campaign of terror is meant to drive the tool of fear to a much higher degree, so as to be able to accomplish takeover goals with less resistance…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Summer of the Hawks
Wishful thinking is still the rule among Biden’s foreign policy team, as the slaughter in Ukraine continues
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Oval Office at the White House on June 22. / Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.It’s been weeks since we looked into the adventures of the Biden administration’s foreign policy cluster, led by Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland. How has the trio of war hawks spent the summer?
Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently brought an American delegation to the second international peace summit earlier this month at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The summit was led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, who in June announced a merger between his state-backed golf tour and the PGA. Four years earlier MBS was accused of ordering the assassination and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, for perceived disloyalty to the state.
As unlikely as it sounds, there was such a peace summit and its stars did include MBS, Sullivan, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. What was missing was a representative of Russia, which was not invited to the summit. It included just a handful of heads of state from the fewer than fifty nations that sent delegates. The conference lasted two days, and attracted what could only be described as little international attention.
Reuters reported that Zelensky’s goal was to get international support for “the principles” that that he will consider as a basis for the settlement of the war, including “the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the return of all Ukrainian territory.” Russia’s formal response to the non-event came not from President Vladimir Putin but from Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov. He called the summit “a reflection of the West’s attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts” to mobilize the Global South behind Zelensky.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Brace Yourselves, Because What They Have Planned Is Going To Absolutely Devastate The U.S. Economy
Do you remember what happened in 2008? Many people believe that another historic financial disaster is coming and that it will absolutely devastate the U.S. economy. Earlier this week, I wrote about an investor named Michael Burry that has actually bet 1.6 billion dollars that the stock market is going to crash. He made all the right moves in 2008, and he fully intends to be proven right once again in 2023. Of course current conditions definitely resemble 2008 in so many ways. The residential housing market is so dead right now, and commercial real estate prices are plummeting at a very frightening pace. Unfortunately, officials at the Federal Reserve are making it quite clear that they are not done strangling the economy.
This week, mortgage rates jumped above the 7 percent mark to the highest level that we have seen in more than 20 years…
Mortgage rates surpassed 7% this week, hitting the highest level in more than two decades.
The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 7.09% this week, up from 6.96% the week prior, according to Freddie Mac’s release on Thursday. That’s the highest point since the first week of April 2002 and marks just the third time rates have exceeded 7% since then. The last times were in October and November of last year, when the rate reached 7.08%.
Needless to say, high mortgage rates have been crippling the housing market in recent months.
At the midpoint of this year, existing home sales were down a whopping 18.9 percent from the same time in 2022…
Total existing-home sales1 – completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – receded 3.3% from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.16 million in June. Year-over-year, sales fell 18.9% (down from 5.13 million in June 2022).
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 17, 2023
Futurus Interruptus
Most of the time, in writing these essays, I try to treat the decline of industrial society with the seriousness that it deserves. Sometimes, though, the plain raw absurdity of our current situation rises to a point that only raucous laughter can address. I ran into another of those points a few days back, while reading an article on Yahoo News sent to me by a longtime reader and commenter—tip of the hat to David By The Lake. The article is by Hasan Chowdhury, and its title is “Humanity is on the brink of major scientific breakthroughs, but nobody seems to care.” You can read it here.
Chowdhury’s article points out that recent news stories about the latest heavily promoted claims of a breakthrough in nuclear fusion research, and the much-hyped announcement by two South Korean researchers that a room-temperature superconductor had been discovered, didn’t get the response the media expected. By and large, people yawned. To Chowdhury, this is appalling, and he argues that two factors are responsible. The first is that people in the hard sciences need to be better at publicity. The second is that too many people out there suffer from an irrational fear of progress, and simply need to be convinced that the latest gosh-wow technologies will surely benefit them sometime very soon.
Yeah, that was when I started laughing too.
Let’s start by talking about the two supposed breakthroughs Chowdhury talks about. The first is the claim that yet another team of fusion researchers has achieved net energy gain—the point at which the energy coming out of a fusion reaction is more than the energy put into it…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Doug Casey on How Economic Witch Doctors Convince Everyone They’re Neurosurgeons
International Man: The average person doesn’t care about economics. But to the extent that he does, he only reads mainstream publications like The Economist and editorials in The New York Times.
In these publications, the average person will find so-called economists advocating upside-down and destructive concepts like negative interest rates, banning cash, debt-fueled consumption, government spending, and rampant money printing as the cures to economic ailments.
And if those methods don’t work—or inflict damage—the establishment economists’ response is to simply call for more money printing, more debt, and even lower interest rates.
What’s your take on conventional economic thinking and methods?
Doug Casey: Frankly, most “economists” today are only political apologists masquerading as economists.
An economist is somebody that describes the way the world works—how people go about producing, consuming, buying, selling, and living their lives. That’s not, however, what most of today’s PhD economists do. Instead, they prescribe the way they would like the world to work and tailor theories to help politicians demonstrate the virtue and necessity of their quest for more power.
As a result, legitimate economics barely exists today. What passes for economics has a very bad reputation, and it’s well deserved. Economics has become degraded. It’s not quite a laughingstock like gender studies, but it’s on a level with political science—which isn’t a science at all.
Every individual has vastly differing likes and dislikes and wants and needs. But these so-called economists like to treat people as if they were standardized atoms. They think they can manipulate people as if they were chemicals and treat the economy as something they can heat up or cool down. And they’re the ones who decide what the masses need.
Economics has become an excuse for central planning, and economists have become social engineers.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The Performance is Over
Even if the artists don’t realise it.
Note: Last week’s comments got sidetracked into bad-tempered exchanges on climate change, which was not what the essay was about. I had several requests to delete comments that some people found offensive. I let them pass on that occasion, but as from now I will start deleting abusive comments. Discussion here has always been very civilised. Let’s keep it that way.
A reminder that Spanish versions of my essays are now available here. and some Italian versions of my essays are available here. Many thanks to the translators. Now on to the main feature.
Last week, I argued that the kind of crises that we can expect over the next few years will be beyond the ability of our enfeebled governments to tackle, and that in any case their room for manoeuvre to tackle them will be very limited. (If you think climate change is not a problem, fine, you can substitute any other of a long list of potentially ruinous events.) This week, I want to take the next logical step, of trying to begin to imagine what a society in which government could no longer deal with major problems would be like, and what the implications would be.
I want to discuss it via a consideration of the nature of Power. Now in English, “power” has generally-negative connotations, not helped by its incessant use by IdiotPol pundits, who are obsessed with it and see it everywhere. But “power” is derived from the medieval Anglo-French pouair , with its roots in the Vulgar Latin potere, meaning “to be able to do something.” This is essentially the principal meaning of pouvoir in modern French: a good translation would be ‘capability.” (Foucault, who wrote about pouvoir a lot, was essentially interested in how things got done.)…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 14, 2023
PsyOps, DeepFakes, and Character Assassinations 2
Global Intel Hub — 8.14.2023 – Knoxville, TN — Disclosure is pouring out like the three gorges dam burst, and it’s not only about UFOs it’s the whole enchilada. In this article we are going to discuss some of the technical details which will help users to determine a PsyOp from a real genuine account. Also, we are going to speak to the big question everyone has – if [person A] has real information, why aren’t they already hit by a bus? (See Clinton Body Count). The good news for whistleblowers, with the exception of government workers with Cosmic Top Secret clearance working on really deep dark secret stuff with NDAs that basically say if you violate it, you’re dead – mostly witnesses aren’t being killed. The tools of the trade have evolved, look at the false flags of Pearl Harbor compared to 911, when 911 happened a few people had low resolution cameras, but now the quality of an iPhone 15 is so high that you can see fibers on the nose hair in a face shot. But just as consumer technology evolves, so does CGI used to create deepfakes, holographic projection technology, and real-time AI that passes the Turing test easily. Bottom line, if the deep state doesn’t like you, they will assassinate your character, they will harass you, intimidate you, humiliate you, but unless you have something of theirs, or really did something horrendous.
The FBI and the CIA have offices that monitor topics on their list. They do listen to every single phone call, video conference, internet search, and it’s all saved in an NSA database, but no one has time to read it or listen. They do however focus on hot button issues, such as:
JFKUFOsPole ShiftZero Point Energy / Water powered carsETsCOVID Vaccines and alternative treatmentsETC ETC…click on the above link to read the rest…
