On Jan 28, 6:59 am, "Troubadour" <gishz...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Fra H. I hope you are as wrong about this as you have been about many
> things...
I really hope to be wrong too. I'd much rather get my insulin the
normal way
and build electric streetcars with art-deco details. Much more
pleasant future
for all concerned.
W's deal seems to be helping his elite buddies ride out the
consequences
of the coming oil crash. From what I've learned the midwest and East
are going to be just fine, as long as the food grown here mostly stays
here.
The West(ern states)... is fu><><or3d. Anywhere without water
delivered by
gravity and adequate rainfall is going to really suffer. LA will
mostly empty
due to the cost of pumping water and the rising price of homes which
have
water, turning into mostly occupied mansions with servants and burnt
out
subdivisions and ghost towns for the rest. I think that's in the near
term,
right after the price superspike, which should immediately follow any
attack
on Ras Tanura, though the SS can still happen without any attacks.
The SuperSpike (SS) is the event wherein the pricing of oil ****fts
from supply-side
to Demand-side. This means that with decreasing supplies as wells go
empty, the price will rise until demand is removed. This generally
means that
the 3rd world will lose oil supplies first. This has already happened
in two
countries: Cuba and Zimbabwe. Cuba nearly starved to death before
clamping
down and ripping up parking lots in Havana for veggie gardens.
Zimbabwe is
starving to death and has 1200% inflation, and mass starvation with a
high
death toll is expected in the next couple months. Different approaches
to
collapse have different results. Here in the USA, the superspike
hasn't begun
yet because our currency hasn't fallen enough. When it does, you'll
see gasoline
pass $10/gal and keep rising in cost every day. Eventually, even
hybrids won't
make commuting worthwhile and pure electric vehicles, coal fired power
plants,
and new nuclear power plants will be constructed, in the East and
Midwest.
The future is dirty, and its made of coal.
Economics makes the SS possible. Desu and I may have to leave the West
if things get bad enough. We seem to be entering a period of serious
drought. The last 15 years have been very odd weather. Shorter
winters
with more intense rainfall, more flooding, less snow pack, warmer
spring
weather... it all combines to make water supplies more erratic and
harder to
control.
Did you know that filthy Bay Area Californians have already overpriced
the
remote and desolate North Coast? Homes which cost $45K and were worth
about $20K are now over $325K because of inflation driven by Bay Area
retirees, and they still don't have a hospital that can handle a
simple heart
attack without killing the patient. Logging is over. The fish are
dying too. So
there's really no jobs up there but sup****ting the emigrants until
their bank
accounts dry up. And how soon will that be with inflation around 10%
in
real terms?
Yeah, I'd much rather be wrong.
> As for the Israel nuking Iran... It is not as likely as a conventional
> air strike against an Iranian nuclear production target.
A conventional strike is a lot more risky and implies a lack of
conviction.
In this case, Iran needs to be shown that the Nuclear Option is not
just a far off thing, but something we'll actually do. I think that
Iran really
plans to make backpack nukes for EU theater use. When the first of
those goes off, things will really change for the 1st world. And not
for the
better. Imagine checkpoints along highways, subway entrances, travel
papers to go more than 10 miles from your home. Just like the USSR,
but all in the name of "freedom and security", right?
If nothing is done about Iran, backpack nukes become an
unstoppable fact of life in our world. Its just a matter of time
before they
start turning the EU into a cauldron of fear, rage, and genocide
which
will tear their society apart at the seams. You couldn't pay me enough
to live in the EU. I doubt the US has the nerve to nuke Iran for fear
of
the consequences by the rest of the world. Immediate embargo of the
USA would choke us off pretty harshly and make the Great Depression
look like a Girl Scout Outing. It would serve USA's purposes to
destroy
the EU by allowing Iran to ex****t backpack nukes. The hard part is to
keep them out of the USA, though if you're cynical enough, that also
works to the Republocrats' advantage.
> More likely is that the US will be played for "the death of a thousand
> cuts": terrorist bombs, oil shortages, and military "police actions"
> that do nothing more than sap our strength and our will.
That's already happening. Have you noticed inflation yet? We can't
afford to pay for the wars we've already got, and can't afford to
finish
them. We don't have the troops either, so expect the draft to return
later this year. Its unpopular, but so what? Also expect to see a
draftee get kidnapped and beheaded in Baghdad, then broadcast
on Al Jazeera. Causing a mass panic and draft resistance is a
means of instituting low-grade terrorism at home. Fear and revenge
killings of draft boards just keeps the war going and brings it all
back.
> China will slip into the driver's seat as the
> new Military-Economic "ruler of the world".
This has also already happened. The US public just don't know it yet.
It serves China's purposes to let us pretend we're still in charge.
> Frankly were the PRC a
> little more on par with the US militarily, they could ruin the US
> right now economically: The US is not only addicted to Middle East
> oil , it is also addicted to cheap Chinese goods.
The Chinese have a larger and better equipped though lower tech
military. They're building carrier battle groups, missile cruisers,
and
modern battle****ps. They have plans to "protect" the straits that run
between them and the Middle East. Most armchair admirals think
they plan to either deny or seize and redirect goods meant for US
allies to Chinese ****ts, and to seize the ****ps themselves. That's
an act of war, but its not like we can afford to stop them. The US
currency is failing and its being dumped by every nation on the
planet. Eventually the collapse will be felt at Wal Mart where
prices on Chinese goods start to rise. I wonder when the Walmarts
will start to close? If we can't buy the now-expensive plastic Chinese
housewares (made from oil) and we've got no industries of our
own, why have a Walmart in the first place, right?
> The real question becomes which side will the cor****ate states take in
> this "war"... They sided with the US in the 20th century Cold War
> because they had no real investment in the eastern bloc... It's
> different this time around.
I've never bought into the Cor****ate States theory that you're so
fond of. The Military Industrial complex is getting circles run
around
it by small, nimble, and creative companies. You can read about them
on Defense Review.com. Things like Dragonscale body armor, which
stops rifle bullets instead of just pistol rounds and shrapnel. Tiny
ROVs
designed to kill individual targets. Guns which shoot around corners
using hinges and cameras with a pistol mounted past the hinge. They're
cute but they actually work. And they're totally beyond the ability of
these
lumbering corps to produce. They're stuck in the mud and have lost
track of the need for small arms in the current war. All the good
stuff is
being created by teams of a dozen or less engineers in startup
companies composed of former military, reserves, or actual hobbyists.
The big companies... they're just struggling to meet their existing
contracts for the big stuff like the Joint Strike Fighter and missile
defense systems. Stuff that has little value in the current war. This
war
is about agility and appearances. Like Vietnam on speed.
The Eastern Bloc is interesting. After the USSR failed and the Berlin
Wall came down, the US and NATO won over all the former states
(pretty much) and Russia is more-and-more isolated from its neighbors
for defense purposes. However, Russia has oil and natural gas
which it sells to the EU. However, since the Brent North Sea has
collapsed, most of the EU is getting its energy from Russia now
and when Russia has a snit, the fuel turns off for a few days. This
has
happened several times in the last few months, for various reasons
but mainly due to greed in Russia and an exercise in power. The EU's
response has been to throw their hands in the air, gnash their teeth,
and pledge to get a 20% of their energy from renewables by 2020.
Uh, that's a drop in the bucket several years too late.
My studies on this subject say that the superspike, without military
influence (war with Iran), will happen between now and 2010, later
being best case. There's really nothing we can do to stop it. Its
more a matter of living somewhere that you have alternative transit
available for food, medicine, and other goods. Assuming you have
money to pay for it. As it stands, the Earth has a carrying capacity
of 2 billion people, and the population is 6.4 billion, so the extra
people have to die. That's not something I want, its just an ugly
fact of the food supply after oil goes away. If many people plant
victory gardens and go into the rural lands to begin farming by hand,
without tractors, we could see the population survive at 3 billion
instead of 2B. That would be great, however, that extra billion is
deeply susceptible to drought and disease, both of which are
happening now.
Nigeria, for instance, is harboring H5N1 Avian Flu in their northern
states which are mostly muslim and rely on chickens for half their
food. This is the most likely place for a mutation to occur, causing
that plague to become a human borne pathogen and could be
the spot which begins the Big Death, spreading around the world in
days thanks to the frequent air flights into Nigeria's air****ts. Its
really a race against time to see if oil runs out, saving humanity
from
the plague, or if the plague mutates first, killing us off before the
oil runs out. Survivalist groups mull both ends of the spectrum.
There's no happy medium.
> ... BTW... i was serious when i said congratualtions to you both...
> and I hope my predictions are just as wrong as yours.
Thanks. We appreciate the good wishes. And like a said at the start
of this: I'd much rather weld up pretty art deco trolleys.
The Heretic
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