Steve Bull's Blog, page 85
December 12, 2023
Houthi Rebels Hit Norwegian-Flagged Tanker With Anti-Ship Cruise Missile At Key Maritime Chokepoint
An anti-ship cruise missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels struck a Norwegian-flagged tanker in the Red Sea near a key maritime chokepoint known as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where nearly 10% of all crude traded at sea passes through.
Reuters quoted Houthi military spokesperson Yehia Sarea, who said the tanker – named “Strinda” – was targeted because it was headed to an Israeli terminal, and the crew ignored all warnings.
However, Strinda’s owner, Norway’s Mowinckel Chemical Tankers, said the vessel was bound for the Suez Canal and then on to Italy with a cargo containing vegetable oil and biofuels.
A US official told Reuters that the attack occurred about 60 nautical miles north of Bab al-Mandab Strait, connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden around 2100 GMT. After the attack, another official said the tanker could move under its own power.
According to the US military’s Central Command, which supervises US forces in the Middle East, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Mason received a distress call from Strinda and was able to respond:
“There were no US ships in the vicinity at the time of the attack, but the (US Navy destroyer) USS MASON responded to the M/T STRINDA’s mayday call and is currently rendering assistance.”
The Iran-backed militant group has carried out a series of attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea (read: here & here). They are specifically targeting any vessel they believe is going to or coming from Israel.
Bloomberg cited sources who said the US and Gulf allies have been discussing potential military action against the militant group for the latest spate of attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
As for energy markets, Brent crude futures briefly traded above $76 a barrel after Central Command posted on X about the incident on Monday night. Yet Brent gave up all gains and slid back to the $75 handle early Tuesday. Global crude markets are gripped with oversupply fears.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
December 11, 2023
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXIX–Fiat Currency Devaluation: A Ruling Elite ‘Solution’ to Growth Limits
Teotihuacan, Mexico (1988). Photo by author.Fiat Currency Devaluation: A Ruling Elite ‘Solution’ to Growth Limits
Today’s post is my comment on the latest Honest Sorcerer’s piece regarding the misuse of the term ‘inflation’ and how currency devaluation and the coming energy squeeze overlap.
Another well-articulated summary of yet a further aspect of our species’ predicament brought about by a society’s attempts to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet and how our ruling class attempts to keep the party going for a tad longer (mostly for them and their ilk) as we bump up against and try to ignore the planet’s biogeophysical limits to growth.
Debauching a currency as a society continues to expand but encounters diminishing returns on its investments in complexity has a long and storied history. In fact, the ‘strategy’ of economic machinations of this type to kick-the-can-down-the-road as it were has been around for about as long as complex societies and their currencies have been. The most famous (at least for those schooled in Western cultures) is that of the multi-generational devaluation of the Roman denarius[1].
By Nicolas Perrault III — Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67224989I penned a rather lengthy Contemplation on the economic manipulation we will experience increasingly as part of a series on our energy future. In this fourth and final installment (that aligns with your piece) I begin with this:
“In Part 1, I argue that energy underpins everything, including human complex societies. In Part 2, I suggest that the increasing need for diminishing resources, especially finite or limited ‘renewable’ ones, invariably leads to geopolitical tension between competing polities. Part 3 further posits that this geopolitical competition creates internal societal stresses that are met with rising authoritarianism and attempts at sociobehavioural control of domestic populations by the ruling elite.
Economic manipulation — mostly through the financial/monetary systems of a society, that the ruling caste controls — is part and parcel of addressing the societal stresses that arise as things become more complex (as a result of the problem-solving aspects of a society), competition with other polities increases, resources become more dear, and control of the population takes on greater urgency.”
Pre/history has witnessed this story play out countless times in a rather predictable fashion. First, a society addresses its various problems using the least expensive and easiest-to-achieve ‘solutions’. The surpluses that result from this approach allow for a society to continue expanding (hydrocarbons having strapped powerful rockets to this recurrent tendency). Eventually, however, diminishing returns on these ‘solutions’ are encountered. More expensive and harder-to-achieve ‘solutions’ are then pursued.
Surpluses can stave off having to abandon growth for a while but eventually a point is reached where the masses begin to bear the brunt of the economic contraction that accompanies expansion or even just to maintain the status quo — the elite finding ways to insulate themselves for as long as possible. In a society with a complex economic/monetary system, manipulation via currency devaluation is one of the go-to ‘solutions’ since it can disguise responsibility for the inevitable decline in living standards that are experienced from it while benefitting a few at the top of the power and wealth structures that exist in large, complex societies.
On the surface this approach can appear to be effective, and certainly the narrative managers that work on behalf of the ruling class to steer beliefs amongst the masses stress this to be the case. In reality, however, this currency devaluation is like eating one’s seed corn: it always ends badly, for everyone since it is stealing from the future…
I provide some further thoughts on this phenomena in these posts: Collapse Cometh IV; Collapse Cometh XI; Collapse Cometh XXXII; Collapse Cometh CXII.
December 6, 2023
Bloodbaths change the world – part 1
The bloodbath in Israel will change the world. We wait for the facts before we write and take this incident as an opportunity to analyze bloodbaths of the past. Lies that changed the world – not for the better.
Introduction
The attack on Israel shocks anyone with a heart. The images defy description. Last weekend, Israelis were slaughtered, now it’s the Palestinians’ turn. Mindless revenge follows a seemingly mindless attack.
This is not the first time that images of a bloodbath have been burned into the consciousness of the world’s population, only to be exploited to stir up fear and justify wars that have claimed the lives of millions of civilians.
The situation is more than confusing. The parties: Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Palestinians, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and (as always) the United States. In addition to a Palestinian people who have been victimized for decades, there are countless candidates who offer themselves as backers.
The opinions now being passed around are based on emotions and not on facts. Nevertheless, within a very short time a big culprit must be found, who is suitable to be hated by the shocked public. The New York Times already found it last Sunday: Iran.
“If you don’t question everything, analysis leads to wrong results.”
Emotions are not suitable for analyzing geopolitics. We wait for facts, analyze, think and only then take up the pen.
In the meantime, we deal with events that were presented to the world population as facts, but were lies that changed our world forever for the worse.
We do this to cool and sharpen the reader’s eye. If you don’t question everything, analysis will lead to the wrong conclusion. However, questioning everything also means asking forbidden questions.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Bloodbaths Change the World – Part 2 – 9/11
Before writing about Israel, an analysis of facts about 9/11 – a web of lies changed the world, enabled by abuse of emotions.
Introduction
Israel dominates the global media to an almost unseen extent. Only almost, because one event 22 years ago surpassed everything else in terms of media hype: 9/11. What both events have in common is that politicians and the media ruthlessly exploit people’s shock to achieve their goals or to generate clicks and thus rake in money. Most articles have one thing in common: they are based on emotions. We write about geopolitics. Geopolitical analyses must be based on facts. If the basis is emotionally charged, the analysis is worthless, regularly leads to false results and gives culprits and masterminds tools to work with, which they should not have under any circumstances.
In this second part of our series, we discuss this and more based on the most publicized terrorist attack of the 21st century.
In Part 1, we established that President Truman lied through the teeth not only to his own people but to the entire world by dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not as claimed to save hundreds of thousands of American soldiers’ lives, but to show the world and Stalin who would be the master of the house after World War 2.
“Fundamental constitutional rights, have no more value than a membership in a tennis club”
For this marketing stunt, Truman cold-bloodedly sacrificed 200,000 Japanese, most of them civilians. His own people were emotionally well prepared for this atrocity. Since the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the American government and the media poisoned the soul of the Americans with the most vicious racist propaganda. This hate speech against everything Japanese allowed the American state, among other things, to put hundreds of thousands of American citizens with Japanese roots into concentration camps: American citizens, mind you.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
December 5, 2023
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXVI–On Narrative Control and ‘Fact Checking’
December 21, 2021
Tulum, Mexico (1986) Photo by authorOn Narrative Control and ‘Fact Checking’
One of the areas of interest for me as I weaved my way through my ten years of formal post-secondary education (yes, I spent the entire decade of the 1980s pursuing four degrees at several different universities; some of it part-time as I waffled between education and full-time work for relatively good pay in a grocery store) was that of epistemology (the nature and origins of ‘knowledge’). It was likely the result of some of my required readings: Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin, Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Clifford Gertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures. Regardless, I ended up exploring (outside of my regular classes) such topics as deconstructive criticism, hermeneutics, and philology; interesting topics for someone who ended up teaching elementary school students (10 years) and as a school administrator (15 years).
Upon reflection, this exploration of how humans come to ‘know’ what they know (or at least what they believe) has led me to be rather skeptical of dominant narratives, especially of ‘authority figures’. My challenging of ‘authority’, as it were, may have come somewhat ‘naturally’ given I grew up in the household of a police officer. Not that I consider my dad to have been ‘authoritarian’, not at all, but the somewhat ‘natural’ pushback children can give to parents was slightly coloured in our household by the simple fact that my dad was a sociocultural authority figure on top of his role as a father.
Anyways, I believe I have always questioned to a certain extent the ‘popular’ stories we are exposed to. And as I’ve read more widely over the years, I’ve come to hold that these stories tend to always play to the pursuits of the people that dominate society’s economic and power structures. Reading Edward Bernays’ Propaganda, Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State, and Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance has certainly solidified that feeling. In fact, I’ve come to believe that the primary motivation of our ruling elite is the control/expansion of the wealth-generating/extraction systems that provide their revenue streams. Everything they do serves this purpose in one way or another. Everything.
As Chomsky makes clear in Hegemony or Survival, one of the dominant concerns of the ruling elite is controlling the masses. Without such control, their power and privilege is at risk since the masses far, far outnumber the elite.
Rothbard argues in Anatomy of the State even just simple, passive resignation by the people that the status quo structures are inevitable is enough to sustain them. To ensure such acceptance, the State employs ‘opinion molders’ to justify/rationalise/persuade the population of the beneficence of the ruling elite and that some alternative is far worse.
In Propaganda, Bernays sets out arguing that democracies being so complex require an unseen group of people to guide their ideas and beliefs so as to ensure cooperation. It is this special cadre that directs what stories/narratives are to be believed that is the real ruling power in a society, not its politicians. And, of course, Bernays became an important part of the US Empire’s storytelling to market geopolitical ‘interventions’ as adventures in nation building and spreading democracy.
So, narrative control is essential to maintaining power and privilege. One of the growing ways of controlling the narrative in a world of social media and non-mainstream/corporate digital news is to ‘disprove’ alternative stories. One of the more recent forms of such control has been the phenomenon of ‘fact checking’. Fact checking has been marketed as a form of objective and investigative research into claims disseminated by others. If one can ‘check’ the ‘facts’ and show them to be biased, prejudiced, misinformed, misguided, purposely false, etc., then one’s own narrative can be shown to be ‘true’ and ‘factual’.
It would appear, however, that the ‘fact-checking’ narrative itself is beginning to fray quite openly, perhaps reinforcing the accusation by some that the process of ‘fact checking’ is far more about giving the appearance of objective support for dominant/mainstream storylines (virtually always in favour of the power and economic structures that favour the ruling elite) rather than actually providing ‘factual’ buttressing of well-documented and evidentiary arguments.
Although you will have some difficulty finding the following stories in most (all?) mainstream/corporate media outlets (this is one of the ways legacy media censures stories; they simply don’t report on them at all or very marginally— see the organisation Project Censored for ongoing examples), there is increasing exposure that ‘fact checking’ is nothing more than another tool in the toolbox of narrative control/propaganda used by the ruling elite.
In a lawsuit by journalist John Stossel, Facebook has defended its ‘fact checking’ by claiming that the third-party fact checkers it uses are merely the ‘opinion’ of the fact checkers it depends upon and thus protected under the U.S.’s First Amendment. It’s ‘opinion’ not actually ‘factual’ so the lawsuit is frivolous.
In another accusation of wrong-doing, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook/Meta calling the censorship and flagging of some of their work very problematic. In fact, the editors of the journal called Facebook’s fact checking: “inaccurate, incompetent, and irresponsible.” Facebook/Meta has yet to reply.
We have a long-time journalist standing up to the fact-checking process and Facebook defending itself by stating these ‘fact checks’ are really just the opinion of others. Followed by a well-respected medical journal challenging Facebook’s fact checking as completely off-base and unfounded. Two pretty strong strikes against a powerful media’s supposed objective ‘fact checking’ and increasing censorship of non-mainstream stories.
I could go one with example after example of such blatant manipulation of narratives by our ruling elite and their so-called ‘fact checkers’ but what else is there to say? Except, if the mainstream/corporate media and/or government/politicians are pushing repeatedly a narrative (or purposely censoring one), then it likely serves the purpose of manipulating what you believe so as to maintain/expand the status quo power and/or economic structures of our society. Their stories, no matter the rationalisation/justification for them, should always be viewed critically and questioned. Chances are they are serving their narrow purposes, not the wider society’s.
I see this all the time in many of the energy/resource stories I read and the domineering economic paradigm through which the ‘facts’ are viewed at the expense of an ecological lens. And while there has been a growing incorporation of environmental/ecological concerns in the energy/resource narratives, it seems to me it’s more about crafting storylines that serve to leverage concern about natural limits to further expand wealth and control, and certainly not to address the notion that we can’t continue to pursue growth in any form in perpetuity without doing irreparable damage to the natural systems we depend upon for our very survival.
No, we can chase growth, employ everyone, and forever raise our standards of living by constructing ‘Net Zero’ buildings and electric vehicles, all powered by ‘clean/green’ energy, and living happily ever after. Comforting stories to be sure, but also ones that feed the insatiable profit-seeking of the ruling elite at the expense of the natural systems that provide our ability to be alive.
Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong?
Facebook admits the truth: ‘Fact checks’ are really just (lefty) opinionFacebook finally admitted the truth: The “fact checks” that social media use to police what Americans read and watch…nypost.comOpen letter from The BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg
Dear Mark Zuckerberg, We are Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi, editors of The BMJ, one of the world’s oldest and most…www.bmj.com
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXV–Exponential Growth, Natural Carrying Capacity, and Ecological Overshoot
December 8, 2021
Pompeii, Italy (1984) Photo by authorExponential Growth, Natural Carrying Capacity, and Ecological Overshoot
The following very short contemplation was in response to some comments on an Andrew Nikiforuk article in The Tyee.
As an Apex predator, humans were on a path from the outset to likely overshoot the natural carrying capacity of their environment. As the late Dr. Albert Bartlett opines in a must-watch presentation on our inability to understand the exponential function: “…here we can see the human dilemma — everything we regard as good makes the population problem worse, everything we regard as bad helps solve the problem. There is a dilemma if ever there was one.”
https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8As William Catton argues in Overshoot, we humans have had two approaches to overcoming carrying capacity limits and continuing our exponential population explosion and global reach/impact: the takeover and drawdown methods.
For millennia we relied upon taking over unexploited regions by migrating. The biggest boost came about with the European ‘discovery’ of a second hemisphere.
Then, a couple of centuries ago, we began exploiting the drawdown method that relies upon extraction of fossil energy to inflate the human carrying capacity.
Given that the drawdown method relies upon a finite resource, that avenue of extending the limits to our expansion could only ever be temporary. And, it would appear, we encountered diminishing returns on the drawdown method some decades ago but are only now really beginning to experience the limits imposed upon us by a finite planet.
Population biology shows us what happens to a species that comes to rely upon finite resources (or renewables ones that are over-harvested faster than can be replenished): population collapse.
We have this knowledge and awareness but for many reasons we tend to refuse to accept it. Instead we craft comforting narratives in our denial or bargaining to avoid thinking too deeply about it.
There is no solving this via our technology or ‘ingenuity’ (in fact, there’s a good argument to be made that our attempts to do this are actually expediting and adding to our overshoot by increasing our drawdown of finite resources, further overloading our planetary sinks, and further reducing our carrying capacity). Our refusal (for whatever reason) to degrow/downsize/power-down/etc. ensures we lose our chance to mitigate the consequences of our overshoot.
After posting this comment, Alice Friedemann (see her Energy Skeptic website) posted the following on Facebook. I encourage everyone to read this and consider signing it.
Citizens’ Warning | The REAL Green New Deal ProjectIt’s time to tell it like it is. Sign our Citizens’ Warning on Overshoot & Collapse.www.realgnd.org
What the “Rules Based International Order” Really Means
This map, from Multipolarista, shows the US-centred Empire bloc of nations (in red) that subscribe to the US-invented Rules Based International Order. The countries in green do not recognize that order, and they continue to support de facto a UN-centred international system governed by international law.
There was a meeting a couple of years ago between the US and China where the two sides — pro-Empire and pro-Multipolarity — each used their own coded language to express what they had been conditioned, very differently, to believe to be in the best interests of world order and security. Clinton Fernandez, an Australian professor and former intelligence officer, recounts the event in his book Sub-Imperial Power:
AT A HIGH-LEVEL SUMMIT between the United States and China in March 2021, the US Secretary of State said he was ‘committed to leading with diplomacy to advance the interests of the United States and to strengthen the rules-based international order’. The director of China’s Foreign Affairs Commission countered by saying that China and the international community upheld ‘the United Nations–centred international system and the international order underpinned by international law, not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called rules-based international order’.
China was essentially saying that the ‘rules-based international order’ was simply a euphemism for the will of the (US) Empire, and that China would fiercely oppose that Empire in favour of an ‘international order’ underpinned by international law (ie governed, at least ostensibly, in the interests of the people, not that of corporate wealth and power, and based on bilateral negotiations between autonomous nations, not the edicts of Empire).
This is perhaps the ultimate expression of the 21st century’s greatest “clash of ideologies”, one that could quite conceivably end in nuclear annihilation…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Capitalism Cannot Turn Into Anything But Autocracy
…only to disintegrate altogether soon after
Photo by SpaceX on UnsplashThe history of capitalism has an arc of its own. It has a beginning, a high point, and yes, an end — with or without revolutions, climate change or ecological destruction. Capitalism follows a trajectory of natural evolution culminating in a Orwellian dystopia, right before its quick demise. Join me in this short review on the origins of capitalism to understand why every attempt made at dismantling it has failed — and will continue to do so — until the authoritarian technologies making it possible disappear in the not so distant future.
According to Investopedia “Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, with labor solely paid wages. Capitalism depends on the enforcement of private property rights, which provide incentives for investment in and productive use of capital.” What is sorely missing from this definition — as always when it comes to economics — is the role of technology and energy. Both factors have played a crucial role in the conception of this idea, let alone its growth into the hydra it has become. Contrary to common wisdom, I argue, neither of these critical inputs — energy and technology — were brought about by capitalism itself, it was completely the other way around. It was the use of technology and an ever growing availability of energy which has made capitalism possible, and thus the loss of these will be the cause which will eventually bring it to its knees.
Capitalism can never hoped to be dismantled without abandoning technology.
I know that is a harsh statement, perhaps prompting some of my readers to point out how anti-technology I am, and how a socialist revolution / green technologies / Bitcoin / gold / or fill in the blank could turn things around overnight. Well, all I ask is this: bear with me for a few more minutes.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Why Aren’t More People Collapse-Aware?
Becoming collapse-aware is a strange experience. You go from thinking civilization has a future—maybe even thinking its best days are still ahead—to realizing that civilization is already collapsing and has been for a while. It can be a bit disorienting.
In 2020, after several years of learning about things like climate change and sustainability, I came to the grim conclusion that the collapse will probably cut my life short, along with the lives of everyone I love and care about.
Naturally, I experienced a lot of negative emotions: fear, anger, grief, and many other feelings that are difficult to explain. One of the strangest feelings was the realization that not only is our civilization doomed, the fact that it’s doomed has been obvious for a long time, and somehow I never noticed.
Around that time, I read a wonderful book by William Kötke called The Final Empire, which explains in detail why civilization is inherently unsustainable and why it will collapse by the mid-21st century. Out of curiosity, I checked to see when the book was originally published, and it was 1993—almost 3 decades ago!
I was stunned. How was this guy able to figure out that civilization is going to collapse in a matter of decades while everybody else was still expecting a future like Star Trek? Of course, the answer was right there in the book:
“The consensus assumption of civilization is that an exponentially expanding human population with exponentially expanding consumption of material resources can continue, based on dwindling resources and a dying ecosystem. This is simply absurd.”
…click on the above link to read the rest…
I Asked Gardeners How Climate Change Hits Them
What does “climate change” actually mean at the grassroots level?
When most people hear the term they think of rising seas and hotter temperatures. Many are aware of potential collapse, but it all seems theoretical for now. The grocery stores remain stocked and we go about our daily lives.
While political leaders and scientists discuss broad mitigation strategies, the effects of climate change are already impacting those on the front lines of human survival.
Distant heat domes and flooding dominate the headlines, but food production is where it becomes real for all of us. Farmers and gardeners are the first to experience the early stages of the global crisis. We must pay attention to the signals food growers are sending.
I connected with gardeners from across North America and Europe to understand how climate change is affecting their ability to grow our most valuable resource: food.
The results were shocking.
Given the wide geographic scope of my audience I expected a range of feedback – some positive, some negative. What shocked me was the uniformity of responses around the world.
I expected some reporting bias in the responses because those experiencing negative changes would be more likely to respond. However, the survey was targeted at general gardeners (i.e. not at a collapse-aware or climate change population), so I anticipated a more even distribution of comments.I’ve included a selection of the best verbatim comments below, but if you’d prefer a summary I’ve listed the common themes here:
Extreme Weather Patterns: People are experiencing more extreme and unpredictable weather, with severe droughts, intense heat waves, early frosts, and heavy rains becoming more common……click on the above link to read the rest…
