Peter Zeihan again: and also other thinkers:

Void · 2022-09-21 10:34:45

I think that it may be important to see if we can figure out what are the real motivations of the various entities that are anti-industrial, (For us), and why, and how they hide inside of a Virtue Signal of "Green", that is considered "Holy, Holy, Holy".

That is, I believe they exist; I have some notion of who some of them are and why. Having exposed them, we may possibly find it easier to work with the more rational and honest ones who don't have a motivation to damage our interests.

The geopolitics of it and the internal geographic and class policies of it.

Done

Calliban · 2022-09-26 05:16:39

Is Peter Zeihan wrong about the motivations behind Ukraine war?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r-9PBteUygE

This Youtuber thinks good old fashioned imperialism is more significant than plugging any invasion routes, because nukes make the gaps obsolete as defensive positions. It does make sense to me.

Void · 2022-09-26 09:06:20

I enjoy the contrast that was given in the materials of your post Calliban.

Something perhaps like the contrast between Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, both of which I have only a partial grasp on, and the two not yet unified.

I think that what Peter Zeihan has to offer only works up to a point, where the rules of reality break down, and very strange things can happen under extreme social pressures.

And a lot of people will run with the "Hot Hand" notion, when something happens, they presume that that trend will continue to happen again.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/ho … 0economics.
Quote:

KEY TAKEAWAYS
The "hot hand" is the notion where people believe that after a string of successes, an individual or entity is more likely to have continued success.
Psychologists believe that the hot hand is a fallacy that stems from the representative heuristic, as identified by behavioral economics.

So, the Soviet Union fell, as the components of it were willing to allow it to fall. Now, some people believe that somehow Russia will fragment as well, and they even hope to promote that it should happen.

Never mind that WE, (Whoever that is), WONE big time, these characters won't leave the casino, and really want to go back to the 70's, as they are not thinking perceptive entities, but simply blindly wish to have a reward by doing the same thing over and over again. And they push the rational people out of the way, as they are so eager to repeat the tried and true.

I don't think that the Russians will allow fragmentation. Some may say that they may have no choice. Well, we shall see, unless we are dead, and then we may not see.

I was told in public school, that power shifts from EAST<>WEST about every 500 years. But the problem then is to define East and West. Also, I prefer 512 years.

(1,0),2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512.

In my view, the Columbian Era is over. But many refuse to adapt.

But don't be alarmed, this new era can be quite good for our causes, well some of them.

The unfortunate problem in my opinion, is that our leadership is trying to get back to the 70's and there abouts, which was the tail end of a 512-year half cycle. (Maybe).

The current administrations are trying to orchestrate an energy crisis, and doing fairly well at it. They are also seeing Nazi/Commie aliens in the Republican party and the like of it.

The most idiotic part of this is that when the Soviet Union fell, we should have taken in the Russians. Not harassed them. Not try once again to act like an invasion just waiting to happen.

I also study smaller cycles, and try to make them make sense.

As I see it, we were supposed to protect the Russians from those who might harm them, but the opposite was done.

We have instances in the past where Russia or the Soviet Union has been strange bedfellows, in a situation of mutual trouble. Sensible behavior at this time would have been to see Russia as a natural buffer state between us and potential enemies. But our leadership is apparently very bad at spatial relations thinking.

In my opinion those running things are quite outdated, but we may be stuck with the damage they have done.

Water over the dam, I am afraid.

Now, both North America and Europe may suffer from a loss of binding force. In my opinion it is because in their remerging of the Cold War, they repeatedly regard "Them" as Peoples who may in part have been on the other side.

In my opinion this has lead to at least the American East Coast establishments becoming excessively Euro-Afro Centric, and gradually defining others as outsiders, even people of other parts of the country such as "The Deplorables".

In the beginning of this country the capitol area was represented by a diversity which now might be more correctly seen as somewhere "Mid-Continent". I will spare the poor souls who live about there from being identified so that the spooks (I mean feds), will not harass them too much.

For Europe Brussels is also similarly off center, and more towards ancient Western Europe, than the null of Europe in the modern era.

I know less about Europe, and there is a danger to cause trouble that does not need to exist, so I will speak of my own country more.

More or less, it is as if the Southern Plantation society had won, and was then no longer having plantations, but was controlling cities dominated by Euro-African types. This then is a method of colonialism to project power into the Northern and Western areas. The Northern areas are historically more Euro-Asian in nature, and still have a tendency to be more industrial.

So that you are not mistaken, Texas is at the null between, where the null enters Mexico. I am not going to describe the other.

These things are supposed to move in cycles, and the Euro-African sub-cycle was good in general, but unfortunately by defining themselves as the true Americans, and gradually alienating the Euro-Asians, they are causing a crisis. They are not allowing the proper flow, in my opinion.

It could be OK to still have the capitol where it is, but then you have to allow a "Ghost" reality of the Union, of States, to balance things out. But we have a problem of the "Apointocracy".

You may have a Elected Congress, and the other branches of power, but if you can load up the "Apointocracy" with your minions, you may bypass representee government, and essentially try to move towards a Roman Ceasar.

But the Romans could never rule the North and its attachments, and similar, if this continues, I anticipate a shattering.

The EU is very much at risk and perhaps NATO. Canida is at risk, and so is the USA. But of these, I anticipate the USA is the most likely to clean up the trouble, and take the car keys from these demented people in time, probably soon enough to preserve the union.

It is an opinion. I am not looking for trouble, actually.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-09-26 10:04:13)

Calliban · 2022-09-29 23:00:45

One of the best Peter Zeihan interviews to date.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwfCpSM3-kU

Calliban · 2022-09-30 10:17:21

Peter Zeihan talking to the shale oil crowd in Texas.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UA-jOLF2T4c

I do have to wonder about the accuracy of some of what he presents. He talks about Russian motivations for the Russia-Ukraine war as being all about Russia's needs to establish a sort of buffer zone against invasion, which includes half of Eastern Europe.

But Russian action up to now does not support his logic. The annexation of Crimea (a majority Russian province and historical part of Russia) did not take place until 2014, immiediately after the CIA coup put the Zelensky government in power. If Putin wanted to establish a buffer zone in Eastern Europe, why did he wait 14 years? Why did the Crimea annexation take place immiediately after the CIA/Soros coup? Why didn't Russia attempt to annex all of Ukraine back in 2014, when their military was (according to Zeihan himself) a lot stronger than it is now? Indeed, the Russians signed the Minsk accords between Ukraine and Russia, attempted to establish peace between the two sides. Part of the deal, was that Russian majority parts of the Ukraine have internal sovereignty. The Russians appeared to sign it in good faith. The Ukrainians didn't keep their end up. And they used the Azov regiment to terrorise the local Russian population. And why would Putin make the sudden attempt to cement the Eastern Ukrainian provinces into Russia territory and call for peace talks? If carving up Eastern Europe is his goal, this hardly advances that objective.

A lot of what Zeihan says about the motivations about the war don't make sense. But I suspect he knows it doesn't make sense. He worked for the CIA and the US government remains his biggest customer. I doubt that would be the case if he started talking about the CIA coup in Ukraine or a secret State Department programme to use Ukraine to antagonise Russia into a war that would bleed it dry. There is a government within government in the US. And they are about as rotten as they come.

Void · 2022-09-30 12:01:36

His information is certainly interesting. However, I always allow for wild cards, particularly when some entity is backed into a corner.

I am not sure what the Russians really thought they could do. It is apparent that it does not seem to be working out to any particular good for them at this time.

I might be a fool to venture any further.

Done

Last edited by Void (2022-09-30 12:04:17)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-11 05:36:01

Godwin's Rule short for Godwin's law broke again from the old days of usenet groups

He blabbing on again and is calling that Italian woman 'Giorgia Meloni' a prototype of new-HITLER or proto-Mussolini but good old predictable Peter Zeihan when proven wrong he will just self delete his own ridiculous vids and remove his own blog posts and pretend all those predictions he got wrong never happened.

Don't agree with George Friedman's insane visions? then you get yourself called a holocausting genocidal 'neo-fascist' ... let's see you deny the charges in the circus court of global twitter bot and social justice public opinions

https://archive.ph/om3BM

https://web.archive.org/web/20221011113 … 3LVDk2qfA8

Calliban wrote:

I do have to wonder about the accuracy of some of what he presents.

He is there to 'charm' but the salesman is there, keep repeating the same thing like a religion chant or like a wizard or witch, some are there to put a hypnotic spell on people and bamboozle and misdirect. Its not that everything he says is wrong, within nonsense there is often good info. The BBC, Fox, CNN even the Russian Pravda sometimes all these propaganda outlets display some truths to lure people and hook them in.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-10-11 05:40:16)

Calliban · 2022-10-11 06:07:39

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

He blabbing on again and is calling that Italian woman 'Giorgia Meloni' a prototype of new-HITLER or proto-Mussolini but good old predictable Peter Zeihan when proven wrong he will just self delete his own ridiculous vids and remove his own blog posts and pretend all those predictions he got wrong never happened.

I don't think Zeihan said anything of the sort. I cannot speak for George Friedman, but I watch just about everything that Peter Zeihan produces. His opinion of Meloni is that she is a conservative politician who is riding a popular protest vote. But she is unlikely to make any material improvements for the average Italian, for the simple reason that no politician can. What she can achieve is largely constrained by circumstance and popular opinion will turn against her when she fails to achieve the impossible.

I have spotted what I consider to be two gaping flaws in Zeihan's analysis.

1. His analysis of the Russia's motivations behind the Ukraine conflict are wrong in my opinion. He posits that Russia is attempting to conquer the countries along its border to fill a potential invasion route. The existing Ukrainian government was put in place by a CIA coup in 2014 and immiediately set upon terrorising ethnic Russians in Ukraine. The annexation of Crimea was followed by the Minsk Accords, where Russia agreed to withdraw it's forces if Ukraine allowed autonomy for Russian dominated provinces and stayed out of NATO. Russia signed it in good faith. Ukraine imiediately violated it. Russian diplomacy in 2014 made no sense if Zeihan is correct about their geopolitical goals. They were stronger militarily in 2014 than they are now. If conquering Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were really their goal, they would not have waited another 8 years.

2. Zeihan's entire thesis behind American withdrawal from the middle east rests upon the assumption that shale oil and shale gas will make the United States energy independant for the foreseeable future. But the uncomfortable truth is that every shale basin except the Permian is now well into it's decline phase. Only New Mexico Permian basin is still increasing output. Every other oil producing region in the US is in decline. Whilst the US will remain a major oil producer for decades to come, expecting this industry to maintain present production levels for decades more is ambitious and unlikely to be achievable. Another problem with maintaining shale production is capital cost. It requires a hugely increased drilling rate compared to conventional wells. That would not have been possible without the huge increase in low-cost capital that flowed into the oil industry as a result of quantitative easing. With the fed now tightening and bond yields and interest rates increasing, operating costs are increasing at the same time as depletion is increasing the required drilling rates. If that turns out to be the case, the US will remain interested in the middle east for a long time to come.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-10-11 06:38:29)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-11 07:03:06

Calliban wrote:

I don't think Zeihan said anything of the sort.

he did

Calliban wrote:

His opinion of Meloni is that she is a conservative politician

His opinion of Meloni is she's the next Hitler

'Neo Fascist' and 'Proto-Fascist' were terms used

pure emotional nonsense and an absolute insult to to the Americans, British, French, Canadians, Australians, rebel Italians who fought and died fighting a real Fascist regime in Italy during WW2.

I'm not a fan so I don't know everything he says but you seem to be a fan so in a ways maybe you should know what he says. I honestly watched maybe 2 vids of Zeihan a long long time ago and I decided I was being lied to so I never watched him again, 'Stratfor' was a name that linked to him. Stratfor that name showed up on wikileaks a lot and there was a story about a computer hacker anarchist troll guy Jeremy was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for doing something to one of their websites and there are other links. Also linked to Zeihan is the Hungarian globe trotter 'George Friedman' a guy selling doomsday world war prediction books. That remained in my mind but I didn't think of his talks for a long while until he showed up again here on new mars forums. It's not just you watch his stuff, he's everywhere on the you tubes and social media now. Going online sometimes you think you are getting something free and a different opinion but it can also be controlled like CNN or Fox or the BBC or Russia propaganda, the propaganda is everywhere even in the free open interweb. Now he shows up everywhere, in other peoples feeds, he's in my feeds so he's trending a lot of late. I normally avoid clicking on him but I checked him out again maybe because of the discussion here.
but he said what he said
it 45 secs into one of his latest vids.

let me even screencap some of it for you

https://pic8.co/sh/gQqEo5.jpeg

mirror link

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-10-11 07:06:00)

Calliban · 2022-10-12 02:40:47

He did say all of those things. Here is the video where he comments on Meloni's election.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b_iMm1u33w4

He clearly has a political agenda of his own and he is a paid and bought member of Washington deep state apparatus.

That doesn't mean that all of his insights are wrong. But given the obvious factual flaws in his assessment of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his questionable interpretation of the shale revolution and his biased and naive coverage of the Meloni election; I do believe it is fair to view his opinions with scepticism. He is far from being a neutral observer. His assessment of Russian motivations in this conflict are dangerously misleading. Zeihan is clearly an excellent researcher and it would be foolish to ignore the value of his work. But serious analysts should treat his prognostications with caution I would say.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-10-12 02:41:18)

Void · 2022-10-15 11:13:50

I thought this is an interesting opinion from a person who seems to come from a very different culture: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Wh … M%3DHDRSC3

Sometimes, I am not sure that sources of opinion are currently allowed to speak their mind but may be under pressure to be cheerleaders. But I don't know that at all.

It seems that we the little lowly ones, are to be ignorant, as much as can possibly be arranged. Maybe it is OK.

Anyway, this video made me think a bit different.

Done.

kbd512 · 2022-10-15 16:05:43

Void,

This guy hit the nail on the head. Democrats have created a total mess of America's economy, foreign policy, national defense, and law enforcement. They're almost universally "ideas people", not "conscientious managers". They don't know what management is, much less how to do it, because their thought processes are not organized in a way conducive to good management practices. Unfortunately for them, good governance is about "sticking to the basics" and doing those really well. It's not about "big ideas" or "radical change", because almost none of that crap ever works. A conscientious manager, by definition someone who cares about the end result and its effect on people, will not pursue a "radical agenda", which has a comparatively much smaller chance of succeeding and functioning as intended, when there are "boringly reliable" time-tested methods for achieving what they need to achieve. Now they're looking for avenues of escape from their inevitable loss of power. America is headed towards another recession, if not a depression, and it's squarely the result of bad Democrat governance policies.

If you're the type of person who thinks you have a great idea, because you thought it up and liked your own idea, yet never subjected it to a basic "sanity check" / "reality check", then you're not a manager and probably never will be. You may eventually gain enough experience from continually screwing things up to know what not to do, but unfortunately, that doesn't make you a manager, or at least not a "good one".

Democrats increasingly wall themselves off from any criticism outside of their own echo chamber. Even though they pass by a mirror everyday, they never peer into that mirror to see what's reflected back at them- no "reality check". Even they don't like what they see, to the point that they quit paying attention. Most importantly, they absolutely refuse all accountability for their actions.

Republicans who fail to act like good Republicans get tossed out on their butts by their voters. People like Liz Cheney, regardless of their personal beliefs, whenever they deviate far enough from the "mainstream program" of their constituents, are removed from power. Democrats are only removed from power after their term in office expires. The same people who voted for them, then found out they were incompetent, proceed to vote them back into office because the alternative is a Republican or Democrat who is more of a "boring manager" than a radical with "big ideas". This is how you get people like Newsom, Wheeler, Hochul, Buttigieg, Mayorkas, Harris, and Biden. Any casual observer can easily determine that they're woefully incompetent, but because their political party failed to elect a competent person, we're stuck with an assortment of incompetents who spend more time fighting amongst themselves and their incompatible competing agendas, than they do running the country.

I can critically and objectively look at myself and conclude that I'm not a good manager. I've been fortunate enough to work for a variety of good and not-so-good managers to know what "right looks like", and also what "wrong looks like". As such, it's pretty easy to distinguish between them. They possess very specific personality traits and problem-solving skills. Creative types rarely, if ever, possess those traits, so even if they have the greatest ideas of all-time, under no circumstances should they be running programs to realize their ideas, if the end goal is to make their ideas successful.

A medical doctor like Dr Fauci should not be running NIH. Dr Fauci could be a practicing medical doctor / research scientist / mid-level manager and I think he would do a reasonably good job in a position like that, because consequential decisions like handing out research dollars for the study of lethal pathogens are best made by those who possess better management skills. At no time did he ask himself what the results would be if his science experiment left the lab, because "imagining" different types of theoretical global pandemics was more interesting to a scientist than dealing with boring and ugly reality. A governor like Newsom should not run a state like California. I could see him as a tech CEO or a Senator. A Senator like Biden should not run a country like America. President Biden would be fine for running a country like Monaco, where very few consequential decisions to the entire world are made. However, these people are manifestly unsuitable for running large and complex organizations where adherence to doctrine and management best practices are required to produce desirable outcomes.

You can do 1 or maybe 2 "big ideas" during your tenure in office, but the rest of your governance policies had better be boringly reliable doctrinal rigor, even if some constituency within your political party is unhappy that government isn't solving all of their problems. The military has been repeatedly admonished by the Congressional Budget Office and Office of the Inspectors General, for throwing too many "big ideas" at weapon systems as well, even if a handful of their managers have the skill and discipline to provide adequate oversight. Even at that, almost none of them know when to "pull the plug" on anon-performing idea or weapon system.

As it pertains to coal / oil / gas production:

Why has nobody asked the question if a personal car really needs 250hp for places where you'd be lucky to achieve an average speed of 55mph over any part of your journey?

If the engine makes 25hp vs 250hp, is it fairly obvious that a 10X power reduction requires considerably less fuel?

Would a car with a riding lawn mower engine demand a lot less chassis weight than one featuring a V8?

Would it be cheaper and less environmentally damaging to produce cars that weigh 1,000lbs vs cars that weigh 3,000lbs to 9,000lbs?

Every 10 cars would have less total horsepower as a single steel chassis 300hp SUV, and they'd weigh about as much as 2 of those much larger and heavier SUVs that require far more power and fuel to move down the road acceptably well. It stands to reason that roughly doubling the average fuel economy across the entire fleet of road vehicles would make personal transport a lot less costly and a lot more environmentally friendly, on average, because it doesn't matter if you emit CO2 during the manufacturing or use of the vehicle- it still counts towards the grand total yearly emissions, either way. Right now, national average fuel economy sits at about 13mpg. If we transition to smaller cars that start at 30mpg at WOT, which can readily achieve 45mpg to a little over 60mpg while cruising at 55mph, then we've at least halved both our total emissions and total fuel production requirements at the same time. If we also switch to LPG as the fuel source, because we can synthesize that from scratch and easily store it, then we've halved our total emissions again, as compared to using gasoline. All told, we would achieve a 4X to 8X improvement in emissions and consumption reduction at the same time. That's as significant, if not more significant, than our switch from coal to natural gas.

A car in Texas benefits greatly from cabin cooling. A car in Canada benefits greatly from cabin heating. All cars benefit from "safety features" like seat belts / anti-lock brakes / air bags / crumple zones / systems that automatically shut off the engine or power supply. Is it obvious that all of those features don't work equally well at providing passenger protection, and that some of them may produce better results than others, or that they can fail in ways that preclude them from being a net benefit?

Race cars use 5-point harnesses and considerable crash energy absorption from "more extreme" versions of crumple zones that can absorb energy levels that would flatten a normal passenger car like an empty beer can. Curiously, you won't find any air bags in race cars, where crashes are far more likely to occur. Well, why is that? When you're pinned to your seat by a proper 5-point restraint system, an air bag system is superfluous. If your head manages to hit the steering column, then your restraint system, seat, and roll cage all failed. Over time, we've figured out how to prevent that from happening. We've not yet figured out how to make an electronic air bag sensor function if power is lost, power surges, the chip fails due to manufacturing defect, etc.

So... Is there a "right" versus "wrong" way to design crash safety features? Well, what is your ultimate goal? Is it to prevent or reduce serious injury? If so, then race car safety features do that much better than passenger car safety features, and arguably in a much more simplistic way. We can argue that race cars are harder to use, and that's valid, but not that other types of cars protect you better in a crash, because any normal passenger car driven into a brick wall at 200mph would kill everyone inside it while most of the time race car drivers walk away from the scene of the crash under their own power.

How is that feasible to do?

Well, for starters, it's not done by making the car much heavier and much more complicated to make. Far more money is devoted to making the car light, responsive or nimble, simple to drive, and all the money is dumped into light weight, crash protection, and aerodynamics, because those are the features of an efficient and usable car. If you then took away 75% of the pure speed requirement, because driving to work is not supposed to be "road racing", then designing a really good car is pretty easy. Race cars are also designed to be taken apart, very quickly and easily, with minimal tooling.

This is an example of what a "good management practice" looks like. It doesn't achieve ideological perfection, it doesn't satisfy anyone's complexity cravings, and it doesn't provide much of an avenue for short-term "get rich quick" schemes (unsustainable battery production which burns huge quantities of fossil fuels to refine the metals used in batteries), or "let's not do what we're claiming to do" schemes (California's "green" vs "brown" power), but it does "move the needle in the right direction" in a measurable and significant way.

Naturally, this is pretty much the exact opposite of what we're doing, because no "quick and easy money" is involved. Some of us are more focused on selling the idea (of using electricity for everything while somehow being more "environmentally friendly" at the same time- the fundamental "big lie" of "green energy"), rather than the reality of implementing the idea, because those people have their ideological blinders on and they're very enamored with their idea. Well, economy, energy, and other fundamental underpinnings of civilized society are not very sexy, but they do "make the world go round". Decide what's worse- exploring every conceivable rabbit hole of "green energy" which promises "revolutionary change", or admitting to reality and pursuing methods guaranteed to deliver the desired results.

We've squandered enough "good money" on batteries, electronics, and photovoltaics. They simply cannot get the job done, because all known physics indicates that they're more than an order of magnitude less energy dense than hydrocarbon fuels on a per-weight basis. Here on Earth, electrical energy storage doesn't approach to within a country mile of the utility of a gallon of liquid hydrocarbon fuel or any description. Batteries have been in continuous development longer than internal combustion engines, but they're still not a like-kind replacement for the smallest combustion engines when continuous power generation over significant periods of time is required. A betting man wouldn't bet on electrical energy storage becoming the "energy of the future", unless that future combines extreme energy poverty combined with all other forms of poverty. That means some "new think" is required, along with excellent management practices.

Where do Democrats routinely "fall down" at? They couldn't manage their way out of a wet paper bag. Ideas alone don't translate into better futures. Unless they recognize their own failings, we're going to be stuck with the worst of both worlds- lots of ideology that refuses to accept reality and dwindling energy supplies because we're not synthesizing our own energy from scratch, which is the "greenest" possible way to handle all the problems we've uncovered with dumping combustion waste products into Earth's atmosphere without any attempt at recycling them. CO2 needs a global recycling program, not a "banishment program".

Calliban · 2022-10-16 04:50:50

I think Post 112 is sensible. Efficiency is desired output divided by required input. For human transit, there is clearly a lot of inefficiency to cut out. Compared to cars of 50 years ago, most modern cars are huge. There would appear to be no practical reason for this. For most people, the gradual creeping up of horse power is a liability rather than an asset.

We are heading into a world that is short of energy and short of food. The first thing to do in that situation is to find ways of cutting out waste. If transportation becomes more efficient, then resource bases expand. If you can afford to pay $10/gallon for fuel, because your vehicle is far more efficient, then the resource base available to fuel production increases enormously. Previously uneconomic shale, tar and biofuel sources become resources that are exploitable. Synthetic fuels become possible as well. The size of the resource base depends upon the price that you are able to pay. The price that you can afford, depends upon the amount of value you can squeeze out of each unit of fuel. There are obviously limits to what is achievable here. But a 30% improvement in mpg across all modes would push resource limitations a lot further into the future.

Idealistically minded people tend to be drawn to exotic and revolutionary solutions, because they find these solutions to be exciting. The idea of optimising existing technologies to achieve a system that works better, is boring to them. They want to remake the world. They invent or inflate beyond reason, elaborate crises like global climate change to justify what they are doing. This is why they end up being useless at solving problems. The technologies needed to mitigate the current crisis are things that starry eyed leftist utopians are not interested in. Extending freight rail and water based freight delivery. Existing modes using a decades or century old technologies, extended to improve freight delivery efficiency. More efficient, lighter and dumbed down passenger vehicles. New light water reactors to produce baseload electricity. Solar powered factories to make synfuels and ammonia. All boring stuff. But stuff that works in the real world, rather than some far away, magic future fantasy world.

The other mental trap that people fall into is the idea of needing perfect or permanent solutions to problems. Perfection does not exist anywhere. And no two people would agree on what it even means in practice. Nothing that human beings do is indefinitely sustainable in a finite environment. So trying to reach some mythical point of perfect sustainability is a fool's errand, even if humans are reduced to living naked in open air and eating only fruit. In the long run, no life on Earth is sustainable. We probably have no more than half a billion years before the sun gets too hot for multicellular life on Earth. But sustainability needs to be viewed in the context of where we are headed. Humanity is on the cusp of colonising the solar system. We need to sustain technological civilisation and sufficient excess wealth on Earth, long enough to allow us to achieve that. When we do, humanity's resource base will expand by orders of magnitude. Many humans will choose to leave the Earth and space industries will supply Earth with many new resources. Efforts at Earth based sustainability need to keep that goal in mind. It is why for the next century, we need pragmatic workable solutions that prevent economic collapse. We don't need ideologically driven solutions that aim at some mythical ideal of 100% renewable energy on Earth surface. We need short term solutions that give us a fighting chance of escaping Earth surface.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-10-16 05:37:40)

Void · 2023-02-16 17:16:56

Well, there is bad news and maybe some good news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OniOcRK3dDQ

He is a great guy and entertaining, but I am not sure that reality works by his rules. I grant that his logic is fantastic. But life and reality don't aways work in a manner to make sense.

I think that is an escape clause where if China and Russia get too messed up, and pulled down, something unexpected emerges. What I don't know but if we did know we would likely be talking about it.

It is not recessively a bad thing, neither a guarantee of a good thing. Maybe a strange thing. If I knew, I might say.

I have for some time considered that the "Near Slovs" will be emerging upwards. And the "Far Slovs" to need to adjust to that.

However, an archaic war of the Polish Catholics against the Russian Orthodox, seems an outdated and not particularly good place for us to take too seriously a permanent side. It is OK to understand what the pressures are, but we need to be concerned about the future of the whole west and its associates such as Japan. Some archaic cultural wars which want victory for each side, probably do not serve our interests. I think we may be playing with fire.

But I will not otherwise seek to interfere. We live or die.

Done.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-16 17:48:05

I notice how little media use the term Far-Left

So let's phrase this as Far-CORRECT leader Giorgia Meloni

Where’s the far-right Meloni? Defying expectations, Italy’s leader keeps lid on radical politics
https://www.courthousenews.com/wheres-t … -politics/

She is not the Zombie Neo-Hitler 'Reich' that a geopolitical tinseltown clown analyst predicted her to be?
and Some more comedy?

Flipping the Philippines
https://zeihan.com/flipping-the-philippines/

India has better phone scammer, Hindu phone spammers?

In the world of call-centers, the Indians now handle the rote technical work that is non-customer facing

and

Philippine President Rodrigo Duarte is a less competent, less polite, more aggressive, more institutionally corrosive, more erratic, more violent version of Donald Trump.

How many wars did Trump start again?

How many cities did the Trump family go out and Riot and Loot in and destroy for the Saint George Floyd?

Trump derangement syndrome much?

While the Philippines taken alone are not a big deal, the archipelago’s flipping would represent the first real change in the region’s strategic structure since the Japanese defeat in 1945. For the US this is rather ho-hum, but the Americans don’t live in East Asia. The Japanese do. Japan’s navy could sail circles around China’s, but it operates at an extreme numerical disadvantage and its sail to strategically vital locales like the Persian Gulf are 2000-3000 miles further for the Japanese than the Chinese.

He wants Japan to invade them again?

'The Philippines is one of those countries I normally have a hard time getting excited about'

perhaps since 'Rodrigo Duterte' the Admin of Obama’s refusal to utter the word “terrorism” and Philippines getting cleaned up in a brutal way the clowns from Langley can no longer go there to smoke crack?

a comedy article?

' France is well positioned for a world without America. '
https://twitter.com/peterzeihan/status/ … 5005447168

They Get It Now, Part Deux: France
https://zeihan.com/i-think-they-get-it- … ux-france/

Some say Peter Zeihan hangs out at those transexual Euro LGBT+ Lesbian Gay bars but....they sometimes online say he gets stuff very wrong, he profoundly doesn't get French or understand France. Not always confidently-incorrect, he kind of gets Brazil and Argentina but also gets stuff very wrong. Some say he is the type when selling his political ideas he misses the trees for the forest, mostly ignores investment in future technology and people who will exploit innovation on the future, talks up a place he likes down plays people or nation he doesn't like. Critics if Zeihan say he downplays domestic issues such as crime, household debt and deficits, illegals smuggling drugs causing more death in the United States of America an over dependence on statistics which are often manipulated by governments and not a good baseline when you can get better projections from people with 'common sense'.

the East, a near endless supply of gas, steel, oil

and Russia has no resources?

https://zeihan.com/life-after-trump-par … st-russia/

Russia’s resources are limited.

Hillary Clinton would have defeated the Russians by herself in hand to hand combat?

once again blame Trump

Russia invaded Ukraine about a year after H Clinton’s departure.
The Russians found Trump nearly as easy to dismiss.

Russians will be terrified of Biden because he has unknown comicbook super-powers

Biden is just a fairly normal…guy. An ideologically uncommitted guy; His political views sway with the winds. A guy whose been in politics since the planets first formed, but who has no record of leadership. What in my opinion makes Biden a questionable choice for president makes him precisely what the Russians fear most: an unknown element.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-07-09 06:29:15)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-07-08 18:13:58

Zeihan might apply for work at some Carnie Fortune Teller Gypsy place or maybe the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

While some of Europe faces recession, Italy sees GDP growth up to 1.2%, above target

Europe’s populist parties study Giorgia Meloni’s success in Italy
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/euro … -7vx9v9k7m

Meloni, Macron talk migrant crisis, Ukraine at French presidential palace
https://www.foxnews.com/world/meloni-ma … ial-palace

in Europe some nutty types want to continue an Open Border pro-islamist-jihadi policy and while a war rages in the East why not flood your own nation with outside forces of strange USSR Bolsevik sabotage?

ending the EU with seppuku hara-kiri self inflicted policy

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-07-08 18:20:22)

Calliban · 2023-07-27 05:43:13

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

Zeihan might apply for work at some Carnie Fortune Teller Gypsy place or maybe the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
While some of Europe faces recession, Italy sees GDP growth up to 1.2%, above target
Europe’s populist parties study Giorgia Meloni’s success in Italy
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/euro … -7vx9v9k7m
Meloni, Macron talk migrant crisis, Ukraine at French presidential palace
https://www.foxnews.com/world/meloni-ma … ial-palace
in Europe some nutty types want to continue an Open Border pro-islamist-jihadi policy and while a war rages in the East why not flood your own nation with outside forces of strange USSR Bolsevik sabotage?
ending the EU with seppuku hara-kiri self inflicted policy

MB4M, I think we all get the message that you don't like Zeihan. And it is clear that he is far from being politically neutral and without bias. But much of what he has to say about geopolitics and demographics, is difficult to refute. His prognostications on China are coming true before our eyes.

Calliban · 2023-11-02 03:50:56

A contrarian view on PeterZeihan.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XupM5_zHDbM

In short: His work is based on sound facts and decent analysis, but he does tend to exagerate in his conclusions. Some of his conclusions, like the collapse of China in 1 decade, may not stand up to history. One should use his work as basis for further investigation, rather than accept his conclusions outright. I think that is sound advice when using the work of any analyst, regardless of how expert they may appear.

Last edited by Calliban (2023-11-02 03:52:17)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-11-02 11:40:25

The Hamas goals have been clear from the start, the elimination of Israel by political attack means or either by violent terrorism attacks. I disagree there is a nice Hamas 1 and then a super-terrorist mass murder Hamas 2 group. Peter Zeihan seems to think the islamic Persian Iranian culture is going to continue existing for thousands of years but somehow by some kind of magic 'China' or the Chinese should have already almost magically collapsed and got itself replaced by random other people in a wave of immigration from all other the world because damn those Chicoms they suck and thank goodness Trump is gone and USA Biden is just 'Kick Ass'! Zeihan says Mountains make Iran unbeatable, they have these Super Alps, more Mega than Appalachian Mountains, Andes, the Himalayas and Iran's special Force Field mountains makes beating Iran impossible. He makes the idiotic claim that Biden and Trump are the most similar Presidents the USA ever had, he says Israel will go into Gaza 'unrestrained' and then be condemned by the world a tactic binLaden wanted to use against the USA stated Zeihan, he talks about the Japan Navy as if it is still a threat like in the days of WW2. He seems to like playing out this strange game of monopoly and battleship, for example comparing British or French or Turkish Ships & Submarines to the United States and compares Turkish Naval Forces to the USA. To defeat Iran is an impossibility Zeihan says in his mega wisdom of the past and future! He does make stupid statements, he does have a political bias but also seems to push a general conspiracy theory that Israel is now a failure and should have seen this coming or that some in areas of intelligence through maybe incompetence allowed this to happen and claims the attack is the end of "Bibi" Netanyahu...I'm not so sure but if you wait long enough you can get things right as every politician eventually becomes a failure. Peter Zeihan isn't always totally wrong, he seems to be an improvement on other loons from the Left and Right, the Rachel Maddows, the Alex Jones infowars kind, the Rush Limbaugh, the Zack De La Rocha, Maxine Waters, the Alec Baldwin but sometimes he gets stuff very wrong. Like that whole Paul Ehrlich, Club of Rome, or multiple citizenship globe trotting George Friedman the true goal might be to sell more books and Zeihan has been getting a lot of books published.

Why is it that when some person or some group gets stuff wrong 7 maybe 8 out of 10 times or even 9 out of 10 times we still return and listen to their predictions. It is true we can learn from the past but there is a tendency for humans to want stuff predicted, there is stuff we can predict the seasons, we can see how economic trends go. What happens to savings and growth in a local economy when someone closed a manufacturing plant, we are now starting to predict floods and volcanic eruptions, when is the next war or invasion coming but predicting everything with the chaotic nature of humans and multiple cultures seems difficult. Greeks wanted prediction with their Oracles, women might visit an Astrologist or mystic and see if the yoga people and planets and unicorn and fairy are telling her if the next man she finds will be the man of her dreams, a guy worried about his savings might go back to a finance predictor Jim Cramer even if he got things wrong so many times on his Squawk they will still listen worried about their 401K, the guy on television they become a financial Buddhist, a money Rabbi, a Church Preacher telling how a future might find them wealth. Perhaps we give them all this time and listen to charlatans and analysis because we do not have time to read all this stuff or perhaps reassuring propaganda helps people cope or maybe its just easier to switch off the brain and allow others to blast their opinions across the radio, tv and internet.

Back in the 1970s a Hamas type or Palestine type of group warned of a possible 911 with its actions in the Jordan war. Both sides in the ColdWar may have used islamics against the other as pawns, now we are back into another type of mass hysteria, islamist uprising and a new type of 'Cold War'. We are in a different place when the World came United a global unity front of war, a world went to war with ISIS, the islamic mass murder and rape and genocide against Yezidi, against ISIS, everyone fought ISIS, the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Canada, Syria, Iraq all joined together and decided ISIS was to be bombed off the face of the Earth. Today both Al Qaeda, ISIS are making a comeback, the Taliban is back, the Shiite and Sunni terrorists are back and on the streets of the USA you have these strange weirdo mobs BLM Antifa types that are marching across the United States America cheering support for people that killed Americans, some of these crowds across the West can even have Taliban looking and ISIS looking flags among the protests. Even the Queen of Jordan has forgot her own history the islamists and Black September and which led to the Jordanian Civil War, the Palestinians call it Black September because they are the losers of this event with 3,100 + terrorists or soldiers or Palestine militants killed by the rulers Jordanian Hashemites. In 1970 a terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was going to give a future trailer of events on 911, three planes were hijacked by the PFLP: SwissAir and TWA jets that landed at Azraq, Jordan, and a Pan Am jet that was flown to Cairo and immediately blown up after passengers were deplaned. The two jets that landed in Jordan had 310 passengers; the PFLP threatened to blow them up if fedayeen from European and Israeli prisons were not released. Palestinian fedayeen were terrorists and they were are militants or guerrillas of a nationalist islamist Palestine orientation. While all this time the past few years the USA has a open border, there are millions of drug shipments and human trafficking events and unknowns crossing the US Southern Border.

Not that I agree with a hot-head like Michael Savage, I think he is probably a person of political bias, a pro-Trump however yet despite being controversial is often is correct on the jihadis. Savage can be angry and he can speak historical truth yet for commenting against islamics he found himself Banned In Britain: England Reaffirmed Ban On Michael Savage and thought of him as a binLaden terror watch list type for having 'wrong thoughts' on islamic terrorists. He might have a place of broadcasts on podcasts apple, I think he might be mirrored on bitchute or audible, maybe his own site michaelsavage dot com but it is more difficult to find him. From what I hear of Michael Savage he is indeed loud and a hot head but I would only maybe call him a Jewish-American Conservative but maybe somewhat loud or rude, everything I heard him say about islamics was true so I wonder why he got banned in England, is this how regressive it all as come to be.

Savage is difficult to find on the web since he was almost banned across the entire web, I think he can be found on 'Rumble' and 'tunein' and other less mainstream sites.
Michael Savage recently dubbed CNN's Christiane Amanpour, 'The Queen of Lies'

Peter Zeihan claims to be an expert. The insider who has the salesman graphs and has the data and knows all.
Why is he also telling us nonsense that there are 2 types of Hamas

He more or less says there is 1 a Nice friendly Ham oink oink piggyassbank Hamas that will be ok with NGO charity money and make you a kebab, you can depend on have some kind of relation with Israel. I was watching various sports events recently think about a Satdium on Mars, Baseball, Soccer or Football as the British call it. Maybe there is a fantasy, Zeihan people who know it all, members of British media who are self claimed 'experts' on the region, they can have Soccer Football FIFA friendly Qatar games, bring in Paul Gascoigne to play some ball on the Gaza strip...everything will work out with Hamas-1?
and then Zeihan also states there is '2' version a type of Art Nouveau type of 'Hamas' that is good at killing, death and destruction, media propaganda, mass murder, acts of terrorism and kidnapping. I think he's just always there to push or sell something, maybe a political snake oil salesman. I would guess with a name like Zeihan he might have some type of German-Jewish heritage but he seems a bit disconnected to events of the world at times, I don't think he is any kind of expert on Israel-Palestine.

Hamas, is always Hamas. The Arabic zealot word or "zeal" these words are kind of shunned in Western Civilization taking a religious political belief too far, but in the Middle East zealotry also translates as "strength", or "bravery"
and Hamas always had a stated goal to destroy Israel, the word itself an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya in English, Islamic Resistance Movement, for a long long time it had links to a group Hezbollah in Lebanon, the party of the pedophile terrorist Moongod al-Lah.
Why Peter Zeihan posting nonsense, why is he telling us there are two types or Hamas, is it to sell a new book or what does Zeihan claim. Is he fluent in Arabic? Does he know Palestinian Arabic and the Gaza street slang and has he been around the culture and knows the Levantine Arabic dialect subgroup?? Has he personally spoken to these two factions that he claims exist? Strangely enough with a group like 'Hamas' Israel might have even helped them exist, the original Hamas comes out of an islamic charity involved with the Muslim Brotherhood...a group many now declare a terrorist organization, Arab protestors and 'enemy of my enemy' silly philosophy thing like the islamics vs the Soviets in Afghanistan. One Hamas Article states that the movement's aim is to "raise the banner of the demonic pedophile terrorist Moongod al-Lah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of the Islamic the followers of all religions can coexist oppressed and crushed by islamist Sharia Law security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned". Hamas adds that, "when our enemies usurp some Islamic claimed lands, jihad becomes a duty binding on all islamic oppressed Muslims now under mindcontrol of this terrorist pedophile Moongod. Hamas since its creation was violent it wanted to be separate from the Muslim Bortherhood or Egypt Muslim Brotherhood or distinct from the Jordan Muslim Brotherhood, it wanted to keep the terrorists and killers and militant types and not have a loss of members joining another group like the 'Palestinian Islamic Jihad'. Hamas published the Hamas Charter, and its desire to establish "an Islamic state throughout Palestine". Hamas is then born as a a Sunni Islamist group but with links to Shiite gun runners, it went on to sabotage talks between Israel–PLO political communication, maybe Zeihan is confusing Hamas 1 and Hamas 2 with Muslim Brotherhood or with Palestine Liberation Organization or some small Palestine Marxist rights group or a wider regional group with Arab Iran connections to Damascus, Egypt etc Or maybe he confuses Hamas one and then imagines a Hamas two which does not exist but maybe confuses them with general Arab opposition to Zionism or generic 'Palestinian nationalism'.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-11-02 12:06:47)

Void · 2023-11-02 20:19:43

I have always considered that what Peter Zeihan puts out is additional information. Not the whole diagnosis of reality.

I think that the groups that he swims with really don't understand alien cultures. They are to Afro Latin centered by now, and tend to think the world has to be like them and has to work like them.

The continent was largely inhabited by peoples who came from Siberia, it is thought. And then the Iberians came. America was born in a space between the collision of those two. Even now if you say Mexico is a "Latin American" country, actually it is more Siberian than Iberian.

Europeans seem to have emerged from three groups. The Hunter Gathers in the west, the farmers from Anatolia, and the peoples from the Stepps who were similar to the Native Americans (So called) in the Americas.

I believe that the birth of America was because of the influence of the Native Americans on culture. But we are being molested by the colonizers again. Centered in the East Coast to a large degree, not really comfortable with American as they wish to be.

And then they go after China and Russia over and over again, and I don't think they understand what they are doing. Again, to me these are people who behave more like colonizing Europeans than the early core of America.

I think that the Russian activities in the Ukraine are mostly about getting control of any Russian affiliated people which is in the parts that they now occupy. Of course, if Russia is dying from a loss of people this is going to be important to them. They will likely try to maintain connection to any who might want to affiliate with them.

I suppose they might try to take portions of Europe if it falls into their lap, but I think they already have a solution for invader problems, they will just nuke them. So, controlling strategic locations may not be as important as all of that.

And in a world with shortages of things like food, perhaps a large and growing population no longer means what I once did.

Like it or not, killer robots are a real thing, I believe that various countries in and around the Middle East are well on their way to making meat robots obsolete in war.

And I am not sure that having young consumers will be a necessary thing. It happened to be in the times lately, but maybe it is not always a necessary thing.

It might be that if health extension which might lead to life span extension, may create a different type of consumer.

But I think robots are going to just get to be a bigger and bigger thing.

I you thought I was getting unpleasant about the Afro Latin thing, no, not really, I just want a balanced America, as I think it can stick better to principals that are good.

We did not get our liberty from Cairo, Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Dublin.

And Africa did not create the end of slavery.

I believe it was the Portuguese and Africans who ran a lot of the slave trade.
And the Spanish enslaved the Native Americans in much of the Americas.

So, we don't need the farmers from Anatolia, or the slavers from Africa to teach us how to be American.

Although they seem to think they have that authority.

For my purposes I want to use Russia and China to help keep these people in line, and to stop them from perverting what was a very good balance.

But America is situated in an ideal ethnic distribution, so deviations should not permanently destroy us. The situating should reset naturally. But giving it a little help is wise.

Oh, and by the way, the Arctic Ocean is part of the Pacific, ethnographically.

Done

Last edited by Void (2023-11-02 20:51:23)

kbd512 · 2023-11-03 21:59:33

The proliferation of flying drones is nothing more than the actualization of practical WWII era radio-controlled airplane technology. Oddly enough, WWII piston engine drone tech is far less expensive than Cold War to WWIII turbofan engine drone tech tech. Flying drone tech dates back to WWI. They simply lacked the sophisticated miniaturized modern sensors and computers to be effective beyond line-of-sight distances. WWIII tech's answer to flying drones is 50kW to 100kW lasers that can shoot them down quickly, cheaply, and without ever "wasting" a single shot. There's no "leading the target" with a laser, target maneuvering is irrelevant, and the drones can't be made from lightweight heat-resistant materials capable of withstanding a powerful laser, especially the sensitive sensors and propeller blades. Additionally, WWII 20mm to 40mm automatic cannon tech, combined with WWIII sensors, remains highly effective against these slower flying drones.

Everyone finally figured out that quantity still has a quality of its own. If your long range guided weapons are cheap enough, then even a relatively poor country can launch hundreds or even thousands of them against enemy vehicles. Targets include tanks, self-propelled howitzers or rocket artillery, armored personnel carriers, ships, parked aircraft, air bases or runways, roads, bridges, air defense radars and missile batteries, fuel and ammo dumps, and the list goes on. All the targets that could be taken out with a small cruise missile are valid targets for such drones. The inevitable result is that some of these kamikaze drones will breach air defenses, regardless of sophistication level and operator training, whereupon they will do real damage.

Iran's Shahed-136 drone carries a GBU-39 sized warhead, equivalent to our GBU-39 or Mk81 250lb dumb iron bomb in terms of warhead weight and destructive potential. Shahed-136 costs $25K to $35K, which is roughly the same cost as our $40K GBU-39 or our Mk84 2,000lb dumb iron bomb with a JDAM GPS guidance kit attached. The Iranian drone flies at about half the average flight speed of our sleek GBU-39, which is either deployed from a rocket-propelled ground launcher or dropped from our high speed combat jets at high altitude, whereupon GBU-39 then flies at 200mph to 300mph, up to 93 miles from the ground launcher or aircraft, on what amounts to a ballistic trajectory. In contrast, Shahed-136 has a range of up to 1,600 miles (about the same as our Tomahawk cruise missile) and cruises at 115mph using a 50hp 2-stroke 4 cylinder piston engine. For comparison purposes, Kongsberg's Naval Strike Missile (NSM) packs a 260lb warhead, but its turbojet engine, stealth features, IR imager, and sophisticated guidance system drives the cost up to $2.2M per copy. NSM flies at 600mph to 700mph. Speed costs money. Shahed-136's warhead is situated at the bottom end of the cruise missile warhead weight range, but 50+ Shahed-136 weapons can be purchased for the same cost as 1 Tomahawk cruise missile. A Tomahawk (1,000lb warhead) is also a $2M weapon like the NSM. A Harpoon (488lb for anti-ship to 800lb land attack warhead) is a $1.4M to $3M weapon. 11,500 Shahed-136s can be built for the same price as 200 Tomahawks.

I don't think America has 11,500 air defense missiles in our entire active inventory, certainly not deployed aboard a handful of air defense escort ships tasked with defending a single carrier battle group from air attacks. Point defense systems are gaining prominence as cost-effective means of defending against drone swarms. This means any nation with $400M to spend on missiles stands a much greater chance of defeating a much more powerful military adversary like the United States by ignoring more expensive turbojet / turbofan / turboprop powered cruise missile systems in favor of sophisticated drone-based sensor networks and the cheapest kamikaze drones that they can get their hands on.

Spending additional money on forged steel warhead casings to either penetrate or generate fragments is probably also a waste of money, since the blast effect from the explosive is what does most of the damage. If you're trying to put a warship out of action, start dropping high explosives (without a heavy fragmenting casing) on it until it becomes a mission kill. Whether or not it sinks is irrelevant to the fact that it won't be a warship again for months. This is why I advocate for much greater numbers of smaller and simpler warships incorporating some armor protection and redundancy that's missing from modern warship design, along with smaller and simpler micro fighters. These would be the WWII escort carriers and modern long range frigates powered by modern diesel engines, which are still much larger and heavier than WWII era equivalents. We're taking a page out of Stalin's playbook and beating our communist adversaries at their own game, due to our superior ability to mass produce high quality weapons and electronics, merely by limiting the feature set of any given ship or aircraft to something sane, rational, and sustainable. By definition, super weapons do not lend themselves to mass production.

During the Cold War, we already had modern drone technology, which was incorporated into our cruise missiles and recon drones. The drones were much larger and more primitive for lack of computing and sensor capabilities, but as far back as the Viet Nam War the US was flying Ryan Model 147 armed recon drones that would both evade enemy radar and use onboard radar warning receivers to locate and attack enemy air defenses, as well as conducting a series of violent evasive maneuvers to either break radar lock or avoid the missiles fired at them. Some were shot down by equally unsophisticated Soviet VHF radar and SA-2 missile tech, but many survived multiple missions. A few even carried their own air-launched decoy drones. Both the drones and the missiles used to shoot them down were quite expensive when compared to what any civilian can obtain today. Development was abandoned after the Viet Nam War due to SALT treaty limitations which defined them as strategic weapons.

Ryan Model 147

I visited this museum many times as a child:

These Viet Nam era drones incorporated onboard active and passive sensors, precision guided munitions, laser target designators, teaming with other drones and manned platforms (loyal wingman concept demonstrator), pre-programmed evasive maneuvers to "notch" the threat radar systems, early stealth shaping and materials, jamming pods, radar warning receivers, high altitude photo recon cameras, data links- you name it, they tried it.

Model aircraft tech is undergoing something of a renaissance. The small hobbyist piston, turbojet or / turbofan / turboprop, and even hybrid fuel cell motors are proving their worth on the battlefield. Anduril's Altius 900M drones, though lighter than Shahed-136 can carry a warhead weight that is greater than their own gross weight, out to about 1,000 miles, along with a sophisticated onboard sensor suite.

Void · 2023-12-01 10:20:20

Sean Foo is most definitely not Peter Zeihan, but he seems very intelligent and from a different perspective.

The thing I note is that somehow the USA seems to be able to get even Venezuela into its camp per the energy market. At least according to this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH0GAWnKmBo
Quote:

Russia & Saudi Drops Sudden BOMBSHELL, "The Economy Will Suffer"
Sean Foo
117K subscribers

This pattern fits with Peter Zehan's notions that the America's may work together on the global stage, at least to some degree.

I am interested in the money shift. It was that the Middle East was to accumulate endless money, and they have done so, but it may be hidden how much money the American economy is getting in this global situation.

The USA has some advantages in this, obviously, and of course SW Europe might benefit to a degree. The USA has the west coast which for the most part cannot participate very well in the Atlantic Oil and Gas trade. So, we have one foot in the Pacific where green schemes are incentivized, and one foot in the Atlantic where much traditional energy is available, and the European market exists, (And has been made better for us).

Just making observations, not making judgements, at least now just yet.

Europe is another case where necessity is the mother of inventions, which we can buy off of them.

I will not be surprised if our European and California neighbors are unhappy for this, and I am not gloating, just observing.

Done

It has further occurred to me that the more reshoring that comes to North America and connected places, the more valuable local oil and gas becomes, obviously. But this then generates more tax revenue for the countries with expanded industry.

It seems to me that these matter. There could be "Atlantic Oil", "Mediterranean Oil", and then "Middle East Oil", "Russia/Asia Interior Oil" as the three big ones.

It is still fair to say that Saudi probably has the lowest production cost, but not the lowest transportation or protection costs.

It appears from the video, that Angola is already throwing in with the "Atlantic Oil" bunch.

It does seem that the Atlantic is the best situation. That also penetrates to the Rocky Mountains in North America, maybe into the great Basin a bit.

The USA has its own market and maybe some of the markets of the America's and maybe into Europe, if we can manufacture at a lower cost rate.

Again, pretty cold-blooded treatment of Europe, but as I have said I am observing, and trying to be honest about it.

At least some parts of Euoope have the "Mediterranean Oil" sources.

So, probably global wealth shifting a bit to North America and associates.

Done

Last edited by Void (2023-12-01 11:23:52)

Void · 2023-12-11 21:12:45

Shale #3: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE
Quote:

The Third Shale Revolution: Reshoring Manufacturing || Peter Zeihan
YouTube
Zeihan on Geopolitics
314.3K views
1 month ago

I tried to find some specs on how long N.A. or the USA may have oil, presumably at the current
rate of consumption.

I seem to see 49 years. You impression is that there is more Natural Gas than that available.

But it is hear-say. They say, and I hear it.

I thought I got that some USA oil in the Permian is produced at $11 per barrel, and Saudi is $20 per barrel.

It seems a bit hard to comprehend if it is true.

Done

Last edited by Void (2023-12-11 21:17:30)

RobertDyck · 2024-01-11 19:46:44

PETER ZEIHAN ON FINANCIAL, ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND MILITARY CRISIS DEVELOPMENT AROUND THE WORLD
This talk is to a US agricultural convention. Some of the video is not the best, zooms so you can't see the whole slide. But quite comprehensive. Makes you think.

One simple technology that will disrupt some of what he talks about: natural gas processing. Shale is currently being drilled in the US for oil. That releases more natural gas than can be dealt with. One simple technology is to react natural gas at the well site, converting it into something liquid at room temperature (outdoor temperature). The can be done through Fischer–Tropsch processes. Anyone who knows anything about how oil refineries work, will be familiar with it. This uses an iron based catalyst to convert small-molecule light hydrocarbons into large-molecule heavier ones. It requires heat, but just burn some of the natural gas for that heat. The disruptive technology is a small device that can be delivered to the well site on an 18-wheel semi-truck. Also, a device that small can be installed on an off-shore oil rig. Result will not be usable right away, it will be a mixture of stuff. But if it's a mixture of gasoline and diesel, that can be trucked to a refinery. Better than burning off as flare gas.

RobertDyck · 2024-01-15 05:32:06

I was hoping Brian would chime in. Quoting the above video from 12:26

The Russians took a different lesson. They're like Maybe we shouldn't have drank all of our own Kool-Aid. Maybe these are not devil worshipping Nazis. Maybe they will fight for their own lands. And if that's the case the civilian population is no longer a non-factor. They need to be dealt with. So they dusted off a strategy that dates back to the 1800s. And when they advance, they advance very slowly, no more than a mile a day behind a hail of artillery. Targeting not anything that moves, but anything that stands. Because if they completely obliterate all civilian infrastructure then Ukraine cannot support a civilian population at all. And the population will self-segregate into refugees which will run, which you never have to deal with it again. And anyone who stays who's under age 55 clearly stayed to fight and you can shoot them on sight. The agricultural infrastructure is their primary target. Because if you can't feed the locals, the locals go or they die. And it's that simple. It's hard to get numbers in a war zone, especially behind occupied territory, but the best guess is we're dealing with over 250,000 civilian deaths. And at least 12 million refugees. That's similar to the pace of the Holocaust in World War 2. It's all about scale.

Perhaps taking a step back. Quoting from 6:16

The deep red are the territories that the Russians controlled at the end of the last war in 2014. So anyone that tells you that, you know, if you know, if you just give the Russians a little bit they'll stop... NO!!! This was the 7th time they've done this since 1992.

Quoting from 10:32

Now the question of course is why does the United States care? You know freedom blah blah blah, democracy blah blah blah. They're coming for Poland and Romania. That's the issue.

The video continues at 10:43...

When the war started, you guys remember in the first week and it looked like it was all already over. That 40 mile long convoy of military vehicles going from Belarus south to Kiev. And then on the 4th day of the war the convoy stopped unexpectedly. And we found out a couple days later that's because the Russians forgot to bring fuel. And then 3 days later all the soldiers in those vehicles got out of their vehicles and walked back to Belarus because they also forgot to bring food. And in the NATO defence ministries we came to the conclusion very quickly that the Russians don't know how to fight a modern war. They're doing worse, they have been doing worse this entire time than the Iraqis did during that Desert Storm in '92. And we now know that if NATO and Russia meet on the field of battle we will obliterate them. There will be 1,000 to 1 casualty ratios. It will be a complete conventional wipeout. And that made no one in NATO happy. Because for the Russians they see this as a fight for their existential survival. And they are correct. If they lose this war this is the end of the Russia Federation. Which means if they can succeed in Ukraine, when they come for Poland and Romania and the rest, they will absolutely use nukes because they know a conventional fight cannot be won. We know we will have a general nuclear exchange. If the Russians win this first phase. So the decision was made early to give the Ukrainians anything that they can use, that isn't a security risk for us, in order to make sure that the Russian military dies here and now and forever. That was our lesson. The Russians took a different lesson.

It continues with the first quote.

I mention this because Brian reacted to targeting anything other than valid military targets. The Russians don't care. This war is brutal.

The other reason is I disagree with some of this. Yes, it's obvious that Russia wants Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. As for all of Russia, I have seen YouTube videos with clips of Russian news. Vladimir Putin said he considers Odessa to be a Russian city. Russian generals say they "need" all of the coast of the Black sea, from current Russian territory to Romania. And let's remember, Russia signed a cease-fire with Chechnya in 1997, then invaded again in year 2000. Chechnya was completely annexed. Roughly 90% of the soldiers who took part in the initial invasion of February 2022 are now dead. They've been replaced with new recruits who received at most 1 month of training. Russian forces are no longer effective because they're all green. If a cease-fire is signed, Russia will just train those troops and manufacture more ammunition. They won't wait 3 years this time, they'll invade again after months.

Where I disagree is that this will be the end of the Russian Federation. That's not necessary. Russia just has to quit, pull their troops back. Leave 100% of Ukraine to Ukraine. That means 1991 borders. Yes that means all of Donbas and Crimea must be returned to Ukraine. Russia won't like it, but it prevents further war. If you let the criminal keep what he took by force, he'll be back for more. Until he gets everything he wants. If he leaves with nothing, he won't try again. This does not mean end of the Russia Federation. Russia can continue to be a country. Learning they can't take territory by military force is a good lesson.

One YouTuber who lives in Kyiv (Ukrainian spelling) claimed that Siberia will break up. That areas Russia conquered in the 1600s & early 1700s will decide they don't want to be part of Russia anymore and leave. I think she's overly optimistic. Her country is the one being attacked by Russia, so she's biased. I don't think Russia will break up. In another video, Peter Zeihan claimed China wants parts of Siberia, that if Russia loses in Ukraine then China may attack. I doubt that too. No need to completely deplete their military. Besides, both Russia & China have nukes.

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