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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on October 10, 2014

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Great Screen Saver!

Let’s Go Hiking!

It seemed like a good Parking Spot yesterday!

Onged Definition:

Having your society systematically destroyed by a combination of Natural and Man Made Disasters, Population Overshoot and Resource Depletion.

Snippet:

…All things considered, it’s a pretty quiet day today in the world of collapse, besides the fact the first Out of Africa case of Ebola transmitted in Spain to a local nurse, and the fact yet ANOTHER Super Typhoon is bearing down on the Nips, following just a week or so behind the path of PhanFone, this one called VongFong. The next one is sure to be HongKongLongDong. LOL.

This is another one of those Picture Perfect Cyclonic Storms that make great Screen Savers for the Doomophile ^TM, and it’s even bigger than Haiyan which devastated the Phillipines in 2013, which itself was a good deal larger than Katrina was.

So basically what you have here for the Nips is something an Order of Magnitude or so larger than the equivalent of NOLA being hit by Back-to-Back Katrinas. To be fair, the reason Katrina caused so much Havoc in NOLA is the city is at or below Sea Level in many places, so when the levees failed the water did not simply drain back out to sea, it had to be pumped back out, which took some time and plenty of fossil fuels to run the pumps.

The geography of Japan is a bit better for taking a Typhoon hit than New Orleans, it’s basically an archipelago of Volcanic Islands which rise fairly regularly from sea level up to the tops of Mt. Fuji and a few other choice Volcanoes currently getting more lively, including Mt. Ontake which blew off last week while numerous Hikers including Sum Dum Phuk and Wrong Dope Wrong Time are now missing, while the Nip rescue squads attempt to locate them before the next Typhoon rolls in…

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on October 7, 2014

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Snippet:

…Looks like the FOREX and Commodities markets are finally catching up to reality, and our friends in Eurotrashland and Japan are getting squeezed first and hardest. I”ve long held the position that these currencies would collapse before the Dollar does, which is one of the key reasons the Dollar doesn’t hyperinflate, despite QE and all the rest.

It’s amazing to me these currencies hold any value at all these days, the main reason for this is inertia, along with the inability of people in the investment biz to grasp that the whole model of industialization is failing.

There all all sorts of Hindenberg type signs going on here at the moment, besides the crashing Yen and Euro, Oil has been getting hammered for the last week, and now Gold & Silver have dropped to around 4 year lows, and likely have a good deal further to fall as well, though there are likely to be upward bounces as well due to short covering and numerous other games played in volatile makets by speculators…

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on October 3, 2014

Discuss this Rant at the Environment Table inside the Diner

Snippet:

…Shortly after the latest Ebola outbreak in Africa took off, I wrote an article called, “Ebola: I See Dead People”. Reason for this was because even though at the time Ebola had only infected and killed a few hundred people, it had all the attributes of the worst kind of Plague you can imagine.

First off, it doesn’t have a cure or treatment that has been widely disseminated, even if one does exist and there are rumours that such a thing does, at least some kind of vaccine anyhow. As of yet though, said treatments or vaccine have not been dispersed in Africa where the disease is spreading exponentially, so even if they do work it’s not stopping the problem from gettting worse over there.

Second, its Mortality Rate is high, but not too high. If everybody who contracted the disease died rapidly, it would be self-extinguishing. However, everybody who contracts it does not die, moreover they go through an Incubation Period of as yet indeterminate length without symptoms but able to spread the disease. It’s probably at least 4 days, maybe 2 weeks or more. During this time anyone carrying it can spread it to others, and obviously if you wander around any Big Shity the number of contacts you have each day are enormous. If the disease can be spread on viral particles that sit on Doorknobs or public toilet flush levers etc, it’s possible to be spreading the disease even if you do not have physical contact with the next infected person down the line.

Although the exact vectors for transmission have not yet been determined, whether it is transferred Airborne or in Water etc, it’s pretty clear it is highly infectious, since even with the Full 9 Yards of CDC Suits and Respiratorss, several hundred Health Care Workers themselves have contracted the disease. So it has both characteristics of the worst kind of Plague, both Infectious and Deadly…

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on October 1, 2014

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Tagged Beheadings, Bill Gross, Carmen Segurra, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Janus, Oil, PIMCO, Russia, Sanctions, Syria, Tapes, Whistleblower, WTI

Don’t miss the latest high grossing Rants!

Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Arctic Oil and Hong Kong Riots

Financial WWIII: Secessions, Sanctions & Anti-Dollars

Snippet:

…The fact those revelations have produced basically ZERO in the way of prosecutions and perp walks has led to an even greater sense of invulnerability, so what do they care if they are recorded? “ You suckas are fucked and we are Masters of the Universe! Muuuhhhaahaaa!”

Why is nobody getting prosecuted here? Because EVERYBODY, and I mean EVERYBODY in the top echelon levels of Goobermint and Banking is FUCKING GUILTY! Everybody in the Department of Justice supposed to control criminal behavior is a fucking criminal. Everybody in Congress is a flunky criminal marionette or ventriloquist dummy with a Bankster behind him telling him how to vote and what to say. The fucking POTUS Obama-sama is a Rubber Stamp who signs whatever executive order his Caddy hands to him while out on the Back Nine to make certain your Pension Fund belongs to Goldman, not you.

Besides the fact that everybody in charge of running this Racket is a Criminal, the other main reason that nobody gets prosecuted is that the whole monetary system is a Criminal Racket, and has been so since the founding of the FSoA, and going well back before that too. If anybody really started to enforce laws against the main Racketeers in charge of the TBTF Banks and major Energy and Defense Corporations, the entire monetary system would collapse in a heartbeat. The only thing that keeps it running is Theft and Military Enforcers running the Protection Racket through the CIA…

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on September 26, 2014

Discuss this Article & Rant at the Economics Table inside the Diner

Before getting into my rant on this timelessly popular topic in the Collapse-Econ Blogosphere, it’s worthwhile to review some of the Data and Tables tracking Inflation and the disappearing Middle Class in the FSoA for some background.

First, a month by month table for Annual Inflation Rates from 1913 to the Present.  If you look at this table in detail, you’ll probably be a bit surprised about how far the numbers deviate from the storyline that Da Federal Reserve has kept Inflation contained over the last Century.

If you don’t like to review tables, that is what the Rant is for that follows here. The Rant looks at the last 40 years from 1970 to present day from Important Parameters everybody is concerned with, Pizza, Gas, College Tuitions & Paychecks.  Scroll down to the bottom here and just listen if you don’t feel like reviewing tables.  I suggest strapping on some Boxing Gloves and listening while working out on the Speed Bag.  Downloads available on the Diner.

Next, here are some great tables presented by Ben Casselman on FiveThirtyEight Economics:

The American Middle Class Hasn’t Gotten A Raise In 15 Years

By Ben Casselman

In 1988, the typical American adult was 40 years old, white and married, with a high school diploma. If he was a man, he probably worked full time. If she was a woman, she probably didn’t.

Twenty-five years later, Americans are older, more diverse and more educated. We are less likely to be married and more likely to live alone. Work is divided more evenly between the sexes. One thing that hasn’t changed? The income of the median U.S. household is still just under $52,000.

The government’s release last week of income and poverty data for 2013 brought renewed attention to the apparent stagnation of the American middle class — not just since the financial crisis hit six years ago this month, but for much of the decade that preceded the crash. The report showed that the economic recovery has yet to translate into higher incomes for the typical American family. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. median household income is still 8 percent lower than it was before the recession, 9 percent lower than at its peak in 1999, and essentially unchanged since the end of the Reagan administration.

“As a country,” New York magazine’s Annie Lowrey wrote Friday, “we peaked in the late 1990s.”

There’s little doubt that the past 15 years have been hard ones for the middle class. But median income isn’t necessarily the best way to show that. The problem is that changes in median income reflect several trends all jumbled together: the aging of the population, changing patterns in work and schooling, and the evolving makeup of the American family, as well as long- and short-term trends in the economy itself. Understanding the state of the American middle class requires digging a bit deeper than median income alone.

Let’s start with what median income does measure: the amount of money earned by the household at the midpoint of the U.S. income distribution — half of households make more, and half make less. Journalists, including me, often refer to it as the amount earned¹ by the “typical household,” which is true as long as we’re talking about a moment in time. But as soon as we start talking about change over time, median income becomes trickier to interpret.

To understand why, imagine a simple model in which there are five people. The poorest makes $30,000 a year and the richest $70,000, with the other three evenly distributed in between. The group’s median income would be $50,000. The next year, everyone gets a $10,000 raise — except the richest person, who retires and starts drawing a $40,000-a-year pension. Most people see their income go up, but the median remains unchanged.²

This scenario is oversimplified, but it illustrates a trend. On average, people’s earnings rise in their 20s and 30s, peak sometime in their late 40s or early 50s, and then decline when they retire.³ All else equal, the retirement of the baby boom generation should push down the overall median income.

Aging, at least, is fairly easy to control for. We can look, for example, at how much money people earned at a given point in their lives. The charts below show median income over time for specific ages.⁴ The details differ, but the trend is similar: Incomes generally rose until 2000 and have generally fallen since then. The aging population certainly isn’t helping the overall decline in incomes, but it isn’t causing it either.⁵

But aging isn’t the only trend that could be skewing the median. Fewer Americans are getting married, and they’re having fewer children. That means the size of the typical U.S. household is shrinking — which is important, because it costs more to support more people. There’s a big difference between an individual living on $50,000 a year and a family of four doing the same. To account for this, economists often adjust incomes for household size, scaling up the income for the person living alone and adjusting it down for the family of four.⁶

As the chart below shows, adjusting for household size makes a significant difference before 2000. But since then, the trends line up closely.⁷ The shrinking U.S. household doesn’t explain the past 15 years of stagnation.

The U.S. is changing in other ways, too: by race, by education, and by the region where they live. But almost no matter how we break down the population, incomes are down since 1999. Moreover, most groups saw little if any improvement in income between 1999 and 2007, before the recession began.

Another problem with focusing on median income is that it only tells us about households in the middle — it doesn’t reveal anything about households elsewhere in the income distribution. And middle class incomes haven’t just been stagnant. The middle class itself has also been shrinking.

In 1970, 55 percent of U.S. income was earned by households in the middle 60 percent of the income distribution. More than half of households were in what Pew Research Center has labeled the “middle tier” of households (those earning between two-thirds and twice the median income). In 2013, both numbers had fallen to about 45 percent. In a 2012 report, Pew researchers called the 2000s “the lost decade of the middle class.”

One common definition of the American dream is the belief that each generation will do better than the one before. By that measure, the dream is fading. Take the generation born in 1970. In early adulthood, these Americans outearned their parents, those born in 1950. But their gains stalled in the 2000s, when they were in their 30s. Now in their 40s, their earnings have fallen behind those of their parents at the same stage in their lives.

The picture painted by all these figures is the same: The middle class was struggling in the 2000s despite an economy that was, by conventional measures, strong. The recession turned stagnation into an outright decline, and the recovery has thus far been too weak to claw back much of what was lost.

Now let’s FLASHBACK to 1970 to look at some of the Prices and Wages for that year, before I get Ranting on this one:

What you do need to realize is that Deflation is much more feared than Inflation by anyone in charge of credit creation.  In a deflationary scenario, you can’t issue credit and money essentially disappears from circulation.  Despite the fact the CBs are trying to reinflate through Central credit creation, the credit is not further made available to downstream Biznesses and at the consumer level is near strangulation now except for some specific Goobermint guaranteed Bubbles like Student Loans.  Further consumption cannot occur without further credit being made available at the bottom of the credit food chain, and that simply is not occuring.

With that in mind, and without further ado, today’s Rant tracking Inflation from the 1970s to today.

Snippet:

…What got me going on this today was I made a Stop at Fred Myer to pick up a fresh loaf of French Bread to go with my St. Andre Cheese I picked up last week and froze a few of them at $5 each. Very nice cheese this one. As I walked by the Deli Hot counter to the Artisan Bread section, I bypassed a NEW offering, they are now offering By-the-Slice Pizza, just like the old Pizzerias in New York Shity had out when I was a teenager on my way to or from Stuyvesant, or out for Lunch.

In those days, these Pizzas were Hand Tossed by real old Italian Immigrants, or their first generation sons taking over the Biz in many cases. The Tomato Sauce used was different from Pizzeria to Pizzeria, often made from scratch by Grandma from tomatoes grown in the backyard of their Queens tract house. The Slices were a foot long, coming from 24” diameter Hand Tossed Full Pizzas. A slice cost 15-25 cents over those years in the 1970s.

Fast forward to the Fred Myer Pizza Counter. Nobody is Hand Tossing the Pizza Wheel, they cook the pizzas up from the same ones they sell uncooked in boxes in the refrigerated counter. They have a fairly generous supply of cheese and other ingredients dropped on them, but they are 18” wheels, so smaller slices at around 9 inches, which is impressive for a Porn Star but small for a slice of Pizza. Price for one slice of this Pizza? $2….

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on September 23, 2014

Also don’t miss the recent Podcast with Ugo Bardi & Jim Laughter

Narratives of TEOTWAWKI

Discuss this Rant at the Podcast Table inside the Diner

Snippet:

…You can file this particular rant under the category of Cultural Stupidity.

I cruise around the Internet on a daily basis, occupying my waking hours far more than is healthy or reasonable for any Homo Sapiens. I read an incredible amount of COMPLETE GARBAGE in order to try to sift out a few Nuggets of TRUTH about WTF is going on here as Industrial Civilization spins down the Toilet. It’s a Thankless Task, and few people appreciate the amount of dedication it takes to subject yourself daily to Internet Garbage and Disinfomation in order to make some fucking SENSE out of this Clusterfuck.

What inspires this particular Rant is an Ad that popped up on I think it was Zero Fucking Hedge from Gillete, the Razor Blade people. Did you know it is now possible to buy a fucking SUBSCRIPTION for Gillete Razor Blades and have them delivered to your doorstep weekly? Why buy Razor Blades at Walmart when a Drone will drop them off at the fucking bathroom sink if you open the door to let the Drone in? Fuck the doorstep here, get the damn blades dropped down right next to the fucking Razor and can of Shaving Cream! Why expend all that effort carrying the Razor Blades from the Doorstep to the fucking Bathroom Sink if you don’t have to?…

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Published on the Doomstead Diner on September 21, 2014

Discuss this article at the Environment Table inside the Diner

Since I have been involved in Doom Prognostication and Analysis since 2008, floating around various websites from PeakOil.com to Market Ticker to The Automatic Earth to The Burning Platform, as well as my own Yahoo Group of Reverse Engineering and now the Doomstead Diner, I have of course been exposed to probably every possible Doom Scenario that you could conjure up as plausible.

Besides that, since I am a confirmed Full Doomer, I also periodically review the latest in Graphs and Charts that Financial Bloggers post up, or that Climate Bloggers post up.  Overall, just about all this graphology is uniformly depressing newz.  You have to be a believer in Fairy Dust and Skittle Shitting Unicorns to accept any of the MSM Charts which show “Economic Recovery” anywhere, as my friend Jim Quinn from TBP demonstrated once again recently tracking the Collapse of Retail Sales here in the FSoA.

Hard to imagine how folks will be doing too much Shopping as they drop out of the Labor Force by the Millions:

While both Economic and Geopolitical Doom are both present in Copious Quantities, the current scariest long term possibilities come from progressive deterioration of ecosystems and climate change, which by Guy McPherson of Nature Bats Last’s analysis are not too far off and lead to the Uber Doom scenario of Near Term Human Extinction.

Trying to make sense of the ongoing Collapse and where it might lead requires more than just Graphs & Charts, it requires a narrative which makes sense, is plausible based on current known parameters and trends, and it has to be “accessible” to most people in language and imagery they can understand and relate to their own lives.  Most folks are not Economists, Climatologists, CPAs, Petroleum Engineers or Nuclear Physicists, and any of those are virtually never expert in any other field than their own.  So even experts need a cross-disciplinary narrative to get a good global picture of what is going on here.

Ugo Bardi recently brought up in a few of his blogs on Resource Limits how Science Fiction informed the late 19th, 20th and 21st Century narrative that most people accept as true, that Technological Progress will continue in perpetuity and that the Industrial Culture we have lived under for the last 200 years will not just continue, but become ever more complex and pervasive across the globe.  This type of Sci-Fi permeated its way right down to the Cartoons many of us Science Buffs watched as children.

There are numerous other ancillary narratives that go along with this, for instance that Modern Medicine and Science can cure any disease, that Standards of Living will continue to improve for everyone as they join the Industrial Culture, and that Human beings are too small to affect the earth and its ecosystems.

Just about all those narratives are demonstrably false now.  Country after country falls off the Economic Cliff, basically on a daily basis, and the smaller ones with little access to central credit creation find it ever more difficult to access the energy necessary to keep running an Industrial society.  Standards of Living aren’t improving anywhere, even here at the center of Credit Creation of the World Reserve Currency of the Dollar they are falling as more people each year fall out of the tabulated “workforce”, fewer well paying jobs are available, more McMansions go into Foreclosure and fewer miles are driven in the Happy Motoring lifestyle.  Ecosystems are collapsing everywhere, phytoplankton are down 50% over the last 30 years in world Oceans and species are going Extinct at a rate unprecedented in the Geological Record, even faster than the mass extinction even of the PETM, or Pleiocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which took out the Dinosaurs.

EBOLA GOES EXPONENTIAL

Access to advanced Medical care isn’t improving, Obama-care is a joke, anti-biotics are failing as drug resistant “Super-bugs” evolve, higher percentages of people are born with Autism and other neurological and physiological problems and food becomes ever less nutritious and ever more dangerous as GMO foods are introduced into the food supply.  Besides that, you have the specter of the Ebola Virus spreading Exponentially in Africa, a disease for which there is no cure and a 40% mortality rate at least these days that is what the WHO is reporting.

Denial is rampant through the society of Homo Industrialis, in large part because there isn’t a good narrative to compete with the Sci-Fi Narrative of never-ending Progress and a better life in the future.

In this Podcast, Ugo Bardi, Jim Laughter (author of Polar City Red) and I chat up ideas around one type of New Narrative, “Cli-Fi” or Climate Fiction.  Through Fiction, you can explore ideas and make comprehensible what is not generally comprehensible just by reading charts and tables, which in fact most folks never look at at all, they just take the word of “experts”, and every possible side in every scenario has some expert they can enlist to justify their POV, so the hoi polloi tends to believe the side with the viewpoint and outcome they WANT to believe is true.

Cli-Fi is only one of the possible Fictional Variants that can be explored here, Econ-Fi is another one since it still looks like Economic Collapse will lead Climate Collapse by some margin.  Energy-Fi is another one, since how we might adapt to a lower per capita energy world of the future has many possible narratives attached.

This podcast looks mainly at Cli-Fi scenarios, both Medium and Long Term. Hopefully at a future date we will explore some of the other ones as well.

In any event, break out the Microwave Popcorn, sit back and contemplate TEOTWAWKI with me, Ugo Bardi and Jim Laughter.

RE

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on September 13, 2014

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Tagged BIS, Bretton Woods, Brussels, Dollars, NATO, Renminby, Roubles, Russia, Sanctions, Secession, SWIFT, WWIII, Yuan

Don’t miss the earlier Rants in this series:

Secession: Scotland to Texas to Alaska…and BEYOND!

It’s SHOWTIME!

ANTI-DOLLAR III: Fining Putin

ANTI-DOLLARS II

ANTI-DOLLARS!

Financial WWIII

Snippet:

…As interesting and topical as the last week before the Scottish Vote on Secession is, I don’t wanna bog down too much on this potential major Black Swan and rant on just this one all week, even though the ramifications are endless to this, no matter which way it goes though definitely greater if a YES Vote for secession prevails.

There are secessionary movements all over Europe these days, most well known are is the one in Catalonia trying to divorce from Spain, but really in many places in Europe you have Nation-States cobbled together with different tribal groups, like for instance the Flemish in the Netherlands and the Magyars in Hungary etc. If the Scots do manage to break away from the UK, this will breath new life into about all of these secessionary movements. Which of course goes a long way toward explaining WHY there is a snowball’s chance in hell the Scots will be able to pull off a secession merely by voting for it.

TPTB that run the monetary system through the BIS simply cannot ALLOW such secessions, they aren’t geared up for that. They are geared for ever further consolidation into a New World Order, not only do they view Europe as a “single state”, the objective would be there to eventually bring Russia and China in as well, eventually running the entire world with a monetary and taxation system all determined by a few Clowns in Brussels. They did pretty good with this in the years since WWII, cobbling together the Euro as a cross border currency in Eurotrashland and developing Financial Warfare methods to drop on any Nation-State that would DARE to try to break free of the Hegemony over financial transactions Wall Street and the City of London have held onto for 300 years, but cracks in this edifice are appearing all over the place now as the realities of Irredeemable Debt and Resource Depletion become more apparent everywhere…

For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!!!

Bonus from the Peak Oil years,  the Doomstead Diner Comic Strip #5…

Click the Pic for Full Size

Truth is Timeless…

Also: Don’t miss our upcoming Sunday Brunch Cli-Fi Vidcast with Ugo Bardi, James Howard Kunstler and Jim Laughter

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on September 11, 2014

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Don’t miss the recent Rants on the various factions all lining up now in the Battle for All the Marbles!

Friends & Enemies, Allies & Adversaries

It’s SHOWTIME!

Snippet:

…The UK as an entity basically tracks the course of the Industrial Revolution, and as Industry grew, you got consolidations on every level, corporate consolidations and large monopolies forming, and Nation-States consolidating their hold over various territorial possessions which were the source of raw materials and food for the growing entities. The British Empire of the period was the most successful of these, but all the Europeans were at the game, the French and Germans too. You can think of each of these Nation-States as a large corporation with a Military arm for acquiring more resources.

They all were (and still are) in competition with each other both for acquiring control over resources as well as control over the monetary system used to distribute those resources. Although in times of “peace” the Elite in control of each of these places seem to work as a single monolithic entity, the reality is that they all are struggling to be in control over the greatest swath of the earth they can at any given time. The battle is ongoing even in times of peace on the financial level, but through the whole period from 1700 onward has been punctuated by NUMEROUS wars.

A Short List here of the Wars the UK has been involved in one way or the other for the last 300 years:

War of the Spanish Succession , American Revolutionary War , Seven Years’ War, The United Kingdom in the Napoleonic Wars , War of 1812 , Crimean War , Franco-Prussian War , American Civil War , History of the United Kingdom during World War I , Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II , The Troubles , Falkland Islands War

Not gonna detail all the rationales behind these wars or their timelines, but I will drop links down for them when I air this rant…

For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!!!

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on September 8, 2014

Discuss this article at the Podcast Table inside the Diner

A Rant on Ukraine, NATO, Russia, Scotch Independence and the Petrodollar

Tagged Independence, NATO, petrodollar, Putin, referendum, Russia, Scotland, UK, Ukraine

Snippet:

…Back over to the Russia-NATO Battle for all the Marbles in Ukraine, where the Saker recently reported that the Separatists were on the verge of taking Mariopol, which would be a huge strategic victory since the city sits smack dab on the land route between Mother Russia and recently annexed Crimea. Apparently something like 40,000 Ukie troops went to the Great Beyond in this battle.

The Clowns & Jokers in Brussels are not taking this lying down, Nosirree Bob! After doing some ineffectual blustering around a Golf Course in the UK surrounded by wire fencing and 9000 Halliburton Mercs, they now have whipped out the Heavy Artillery of dropping down more financial sanctions, this time on the Ruskie Energy Big Boys of Gazprom, Rosneft and Transneft. Inother words, all the Ruskie companies that supply them with 30% of their energy are now not gonna get paid.

Just how long do you think Vlad the Impaler will keep the Gas flowing through Ukraine to Krautland if the Krauts aren’t gonna pay for it? If I was Vlad, I would shut the valves tomorrow…

For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!!!

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on September 3, 2014

Don’t miss also the recent related Podcasts with Dmitry Orlov

Analysing Ukraine and MENA

Supply Chains, Population & Community

Discuss this Rant at the Podcast Table inside the Diner

Snippet:
…However, for a while there the Ukies also had superior equipment, more artillery, tanks etc that were legacy gifts from Mother Russia from the Soviet era. So Novorossiyan  irregulars armed mainly with rifles and RPGs were on the retreat, consolidating inside their home region for a Final Battle for all the Marbles.

You all know the story of the 300 from the film by the same name, which was a fictionalized account of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. From Wiki:

“Both ancient and modern writers have used the Battle of Thermopylae as an example of the power of a patriotic army defending native soil. The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is also used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment, and good use of terrain as force multipliers and has become a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds. “

You also may have heard the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charge of the Light Brigade. I will read it in full.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred…

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Aired on the Doomstead Diner on August 28, 2014

Don’t miss the recent 2 part Interview with Dmitry Orlov

Analysing Ukraine and MENA

Supply Chains, Population & Community

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Tagged:Beheading, Crucifixion, Crusades, Drones, Hiroshima, Holy War, ISIS, Jerusalem, MENA, Nagasaki, NATO, Vlad the Impaler

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…Now that the local Doom Action has calmed down, we can go back and revisit some of the International Doom ongoing during the period, including the Beheading of a Journalist by the ISIS Propaganda team, complete with videos. Videos I didn’t watch though, partially because I don’t wanna use up my bandwidth and partially because the rumour is that it will soon be a Criminal Offense to WATCH any You Tube vids dropped on by ISIS propaganda experts. I got enough issues with Black SUVs tailing me these days, I don’t need to add grist to the mill here for watching illegal Decapitation Vids.

I have read in the Blogosphere though that the Decap Vid was actually fairly Tasteful, in that it did not show real gruesome Spurting Blood Monty Python style. Probably calculated on the part of the ISIS Propaganda team that if they made it too gruesome, they couldn’t get enough eyeballls to watch it and this would hurt their Alexa Ranking. LOL. Just gruesome enough to strike TERROR into the heart of the Western audience as they recycle good old fashioned Execution Methods down there from the Middle Ages and further back to the Roman Empire…

For the rest, LISTEN TO THE RANT!!!