Steve Bull's Blog, page 1251
November 21, 2017
Pictorial: American Animosity Ambling Amuck
This Russia Collusion thing has been going on for one year now. I’m not interested in debating whether or not Trump colluded. I am interested in examining the massive hypocrisy emanating from our government, and on display daily in living color from MSM whores, prostitutes, traitors, teleprompter readers. Who among us Dirt People isn’t amazed that our politicians can feign their fake indignant shock that such a thing could happen …. for, surely, America would never do such a thing!
The fact is that we treat the world like a giant outhouse, a place where we shit upon any nation we choose, at the time of our choosing, and then pretend outrage when they return the favor. Not that there’s anything wrong with this. Because, there isn’t, right? It’s how the world works.
But, the Whores&Pols act as if foreign entanglements should be a pure and noble endeavor when, if fact, it’s a dirty rotten business, played as such by powerful nations. Criticism of Russia, China, etc. has risen to a fever pitch. Meanwhile, they paint America as a friendly bringer of democracy, whose motives are pure as the driven snow, building shining cities on the hill for other countries, and where unicorn farts smell like wildflowers.
Of course, this is all poppycock because making America great again comes at a price.
—– Henry Kissinger said, — “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” (Probably stolen from British PM Benjamin Disreali, who likely stole it from Lord Palmersto)
—– Czar Alexander III said; — “Russia only has two allies: the army and the navy.”
—– De Gaulle said — “a man can have a friend, a nation, never”
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The Approaching Famine
The most serious forecast that we see from our computer models has been a rise in agricultural prices caused by Global Cooling – not Global Warming. Crops cannot grow without the sun and water. Historically, when the weather turns cold, the crops fail.
There is no question that food prices will rise during periods of war when crops cannot be planted and armies require food on a priority allotment.
However, Mother Nature sticks her finger into the pot to stir things up. The famine cycle is also an 8.6-year frequency, but the volatility aspect comes in units of 12 rather than 6.
Our database on wheat from 1259 forward (excluding our data on the Roman Empire grain prices), reveals that there is a serious risk of famine from 2020 onward. It appears that we may very well enter a 12-year rally into the year 2032. Our Bifurcation Models are reflecting also a gap in time between 2020 and 2031 suggesting a trend appears to last for that period of time.
The downside of taxation, and particularly inheritance taxes, has driven farmers to sell their land to conglomerates just to pay the inheritance taxes. This has resulted in genetically altering crops to increase yield. While genetically altered crops do not really appear to present a major health concern as many seem to argue, the real danger is the fact that during the past 100 years, 94% of the world’s edible seed varieties have vanished.
The downside of socialism which has attacked the rich, we have sacrificed the historical model in our food supply for corporate decision making that bribes politicians handing them their needed money to remain in office with each election.
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Nebraska Approves Keystone XL Pipeline as Opponents Face Criminalization of Protests
Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images
NEBRASKA APPROVES KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE AS OPPONENTS FACE CRIMINALIZATION OF PROTESTS
NEBRASKA’S PUBLIC SERVICE Commission approved the Keystone XL pipeline Monday, eliminating a major regulatory hurdle to construction of a project that galvanized people across the U.S. into opposition. The decision comes days after the existing Keystone pipeline, to which the KXL will connect, spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in South Dakota. To many pipeline opponents motivated by the inevitability of a spill, the contaminated land proves their point.
Those who have been fighting the pipeline for more than five years, and many more drawn into opposition via last year’s dramatic confrontation at Standing Rock, say the approval of KXL marks the beginning of the next phase of the pipeline battles. Opponents in Nebraska will have 30 days to appeal the decision and have promised lawsuits. “We have to do everything we can in order to make sure that this pipeline never gets built,” said Bold Nebraska founder Jane Kleeb in a press conference after the decision.
Meanwhile, organizers are preparing to stand in the way of construction. A coalition including several tribes, native-led organizations, and environmental nonprofits released a call to action, asking people to sign up to “commit to creative peaceful resistance along the pipeline route when construction begins on KXL, likely next spring.” The statement asserts that anyone traveling to resist must undergo a training and remain peaceful.
Monday also marked the one-year anniversary of one of the most aggressive police actions against Dakota Access pipeline opponents, when police sprayed protesters with water cannons in freezing temperatures. Indeed, the new Keystone XL fight will take place in a climate where anti-pipeline organizing has become increasingly criminalized.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Our National Madness
Fakery and trickery are not solutions; they are a form of self-delusional madness that destroys the nation’s ability to face reality squarely and choose real solutions, no matter how painful the choice and path might be.
The nation has lost its common sense, its soul and its sanity.Can we summarize the source of this remarkably pervasive madness?
Our efforts are now focused not on solving core problems but on covering up core problems, as if covering up problems is a substitute for solving them. Down this path lies madness, for this substitution of false narratives for reality erodes our ability to distinguish not just between reality and fantasy but our ability to distinguish between moral rights and wrongs.
The efforts of those in positions of power are now focused on obscuring the truth, marginalizing critics, blaming malevolent external forces, cloaking self-interest with virtue signaling and staking claims to victimhood. These are the five dynamics that are powering the nation’s descent into madness and dysfunction.
Consider Harvey Weinstein. Evidence is now emerging that Mr. Weinstein and his army of toadies, bullies, thugs, et al. put enormous effort and resources into obscuring the truth, marginalizing critics, and cloaking self-interest with virtue signaling. Next up for Mr. Weinstein’s team of apologists: blame the Russians (or an equivalently malevolent Other), and claim to be a victim of all those testifying against him.
This is the model for everyone in positions of power. The only variation is which of the five will be spewed as a first line of defense, and which will be held in reserve for the last-ditch defense against the truth becoming public.
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Benn Steil: The Fed Could be Tightening More Than it Realizes
Ten years ago, before the collapse of Lehman Brothers rocked global financial markets, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $925 billion—mostly U.S. Treasuries. After fifty-nine months of asset purchases to push down longer-term interest rates, it had ballooned to a peak of $4.5 trillion, including nearly $1.8 trillion in mortgage securities, in October 2014.
In October of this year, the Fed at last began a slow slimming-down of the balance sheet, allowing $10 billion in maturing securities to roll off without reinvesting the proceeds. All else being equal, this represents a tightening of monetary policy, as it tends to push up longer-term (10-year) market interest rates.
In Fed chair Janet Yellen’s words, the central bank “does not have any experience in calibrating the pace and composition of asset redemptions and sales to actual prospective economic conditions.” She has therefore stressed that the Fed sees its balance-sheet reduction as a primarily technical exercise separate from the pursuit of its monetary policy goals—in particular, pushing inflation back up to 2%. The Fed’s main tool for tightening monetary policy in a recovering economy would, therefore, she explained, be raising short-term market interest rates by paying banks greater interest on reserves (IOR). Since December 2015, the Fed has raised the rate on IOR by 100 basis points (1%), which has pushed up its short-term benchmark rate—the effective federal funds rate—in tandem.
But is Yellen right that the Fed’s gradual approach to balance-sheet reduction makes it relatively unimportant in its impact on monetary conditions? Our analysis suggests that it will be, in fact, considerably more important than the market, or the Fed itself, realizes. Here is why.
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November 20, 2017
Big Brother Is Here: Twitter Will Monitor Users Behavior ‘Off Platform
In perhaps the most intrusive move of social media platforms’ efforts signal as much virtue as possible and appease their potentially-regulating government overlords, Twitter has announced that it is cracking down on what it defines at hate-speech and not just by looking at its own site.
In what amounts to a major shift in Twitter policy, Mashable’s Kerry Flynn reports that the company announced on Friday that it will be monitoring user’s behavior “on and off the platform” and will suspend a user’s account if they affiliate with violent organizations, according to an update to Twitter’s Help Center on Friday.
Abusive Behavior
We believe in freedom of expression and open dialogue, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we prohibit behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.
Context matters when evaluating for abusive behavior and determining appropriate enforcement actions. Factors we may take into consideration include, but are not limited to whether:
the behavior is targeted at an individual or group of people;
the report has been filed by the target of the abuse or a bystander;
the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.Violence: You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people. This includes, but is not limited to, threatening or promoting terrorism.
You also may not affiliate with organizations that – whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform – use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.
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The Soft Belly of The Oil Industry: an Upcoming Seneca Collapse?
Ugo Bardi explains his idea of an impending “Seneca Collapse” of the world’s oil industry at the session on climate change of the meeting of the Club of Rome in Vienna, on 10 Nov 2017. What follows are not the exact words said, but a text which maintains the gist of this brief comment. It was focused on the concept that the oil industry has a “soft belly” in the fact that it produces mainly fuel for engines used for transportation. If this market were reduced by the introduction of electric vehicles and other transportation innovations, the whole industry could collapse. That would be a good thing for the earth’s ecosystem and for humankind in general.
Dear colleagues, we are having an interesting discussion on how to stop climate change and I think I could add some thoughts of mine on the basis of my recent work that I published in the form of the book titled “The Seneca Effect“.
The problem we have been discussing is how to limit emissions and we saw that it needs to be done fast and even drastically if we want to avoid the worse effects of climate change. Obviously, it is not easy. (image from Skeptical Science)Most of what has been said today was based on a “top-down” approach, which I may also describe as supply-limiting. That is, we are speaking of a carbon tax, of emission limits, and the like; measures that governments should take in order to limit the production of fossil fuels. I don’t have to tell you that it is an effort that has been ongoing for several years and yet emissions keep growing. It doesn’t seem to work
So, can we take the opposite approach? That is, look at the demand side in a “bottom-up” approach?
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Propagation Techniques
PROPAGATION TECHNIQUES
Establishing a tree-based perennial agriculture system can cost a lot of money, especially if you´re planning on buying $30 dollar bagged fruit trees at your local orchard. Luckily, you can propagate many of the trees you are planning to plant by yourself. One of the easiest and best known ways to propagate many different trees, bushes, and other perennial plants is through planting seeds. Many nitrogen-fixing trees and bushes can easily be grown from seed, but other species are best propagated through other vegetative techniques that we will introduce below.
GRAFTING, LAYERING, AND AIR GRAFTING
Grafting is a horticultural technique whereby tissues of plants are joined so as to continue their growth together. The upper part of the combined plant is called the scion while the lower part is called the rootstock. Since most fruit and nut trees won´t grow true to seed (meaning that the seed from the Gala apple you grow will produce fruit that doesn´t resemble Gala apples at all), the way to reproduce a certain type of fruit or nut that you like is through grafting.
Let´s say that you have an old crab apple tree on your land that produces small, sour fruits that no one but the birds enjoys. You can graft a bud or a small branch from a delicious, heirloom apple tree on your grandma´s old farm onto that Crab Apple tree. If done correctly and the cambium layer (or green layer inside the bark) of the two species are touching, that bud or branch will grow into an heirloom apple bearing tree. There are several different types of grafting methods you can use including cleft grafts, bud grafts, whip and tongue, etc. While it does take practice for a graft to be successful, the good news is that once you master the art of grafting, you can reproduce all the fruit and nut trees you need for your land.
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ECB and the Coming Banking Crisis
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Your post of November 16th where you state that the ECB is looking to freeze accounts in a banking crisis, does that mean they will no longer honour the claimed insurance of €100,000 per account?
PH
ANSWER: No. They will not pretend to eliminate that insurance, they just will “suspend” it as a bank holiday. But you gloss over another problem. The insurance of €100,000 is NOT per account, but PER PERSON. So taking €1 million euro and spreading among 10 banks does not thereby provide insurance for the whole lot. The same is true in the USA. The ECB is proposing supplementing it with discretionary powers to suspend bank withdrawals. To say that the entire program will be terminated is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it reflects the realization that the European banking system is in serious trouble. I recommend that Europeans should have a stash of cash, and if you have a lot of cash in your account, put some into dollars in the States before it is too late.
