The Winter War

Over the last three months or so it has become quite clear that the Western alliance has decided to commit energy suicide in order to continue to wage its lunatic proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Russia and China are being strengthened by the West’s foolhardy sanctions against Russia, and Europe will be impoverished as it shivers in the dark this coming winter.

The following article explains in detail what is happening in the worldwide energy markets, and especially in Europe. Many thanks to LN for translating the German-language text from the Swedish site Poddtoppen:

For the West, the day of reckoning comes in winter

by Rainer Rupp
September 2, 2022

In my Daily Dose last week, I briefly discussed an article by the British professor Helen Thompson published in the Financial Times (FT) on August 19, 2022. Ms. Thompson teaches political economy at the University of Cambridge and is no stranger to the subject. The neoliberal-oriented Financial Times is an organ of the business world read around the globe. Politically, the FT usually follows the British government line and is behind the particularly close relations between London and Washington. This was also expressed in its previous coverage of Russia and Ukraine, in which it follows a strictly anti-Russian course, along the lines of Ukraine-must-win. And that is precisely why Prof. Thompson’s article in the FT has attracted so much attention everywhere.

The sober realism with which Prof. Thompson analyzes the Ukraine crisis, omitting the politically correct anti-Russian bias, is what makes her article so exciting. For it breaks not only with the Financial Times‘ previous line, but also with the mantra constantly repeated in Germany that Russia’s economy is down because of Western sanctions. As alleged proof of this, the public propaganda organs of the German government had recently once again calculated for us that the slump in Russia’s gross domestic product GDP in the first half of 2022 was many times greater than in Europe or Germany.

Of course, the sudden withdrawal of hundreds of Western companies from Russia and the disruption of supply chains had a shock effect on the Russian economy. In March 2022, initial projections expected GDP to slump by as much as -14% for the current year. In the meantime, this bad news has been corrected to -4% percent, because inflation in Russia has fallen rapidly just as the high key interest rates of the Russian Central Bank have, the currency is super-stable, the manufacturing economy has recovered and in many sectors is already back at the level it was before the Russian special operation in Ukraine began.

Optimism reigns in Russia’s economy; new sources of supply have been found; the stores, factories and service providers abandoned by Western companies have found successors to carry on the business of IKEA, McDonald’s hamburgers, Coca Cola and hundreds of other companies. These successors come either from Russia or from friendly foreign countries such as China, Turkey or India. Recently, for example, an Indian food company took over a supermarket chain “For a penny and a pound” in Russia from which a Western company had withdrawn at a loss due to Western sanctions.

The joy of the Western economic warmongers over the collapse of Russian car production in the first months of the sanctions was also short-lived. That’s because the Russians were able to replace the microchips that had previously been supplied by cooperating Western car companies with supplies from China. A few weeks ago, Russian car production returned to its “pre-economic war” level. At the same time, the withdrawal of Western car producers has helped the good and inexpensive small and medium-sized cars from China to break through into the Russian market.

The public propaganda organs of the German government do not report on all this, because that would only illuminate another side of the EU’s bottomlessly stupid suicide sanctions. For the Western sanctions are anything but sustainable. They have only caused a short-term shock. Everything Russia has obtained from the West it either doesn’t need or can get elsewhere. The Russian population can live quite well without French cheese or Parma ham from Italy or cosmetics and luxury items from Dior. And technical products, spare parts, etc. can be produced by the Russians themselves — albeit at higher cost — or they can have them produced cheaply in China. Western technology can also be ordered on short notice from friendly third countries such as India and in Central Asia. This transition takes time but, overall, Russia has managed it so far with flying colors.

In contrast, sanctioned Russian supplies of oil, gas, coal, fertilizer, and countless other minerals and semi-products cannot be made up by the West from other sources in either the short or medium term. And even if such sources were available, the logistics would not be sufficient to transport the required quantities to Europe. For the green-smeared German government and its media megaphones, in her FT article Prof. Thompson names these and other unpleasant truths, such as the admission that the West, especially Europe, is about to lose the economic war against Russia.

The article hints at the politically incorrect, heretical thoughts being discussed behind the scenes in the top echelons of the business world. It could hint at a change of heart about restoring normal relations with Russia. Because of its importance, I have translated the Thompson article entitled “A winter energy reckoning looms for the West” in its entirety, and have commented in various places.

Here follows the translation:

Around the world, politicians are becoming increasingly desperate to contain the explosive consequences of the energy crisis. In parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, already mired in numerous economic and political difficulties, the crisis is proving catastrophic.

Those importing liquefied natural gas must now compete with European laggards in the LNG market seeking an alternative to Russian pipeline gas. In early summer, Pakistan failed to close a single LNG tender. In poor countries, much of governmental resources go towards subsidizing energy consumption. At prevailing prices, some cannot: earlier this month, the ‘Sri Lankan Electricity Board’ imposed a 264% percent increase on the country’s poorest energy consumers.

In Europe, governments want to reduce pressure on households and energy-intensive and small businesses, while rising prices, the campaign to use less energy, and fears of the coming winter are expected to dampen demand. Fiscally, this means government funding to reduce rising energy costs by subsidizing energy distribution corporations — as in France — or transferring money to citizens — as in the U.K. — to pay those bills.

What is not available anywhere is a quick fix to increase the physical energy supply. This crisis is not an unintended consequence of the pandemic or Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. It has much deeper roots in two structural problems.

Comment:

A key sentence from Prof. Thompson article is in the last paragraph and reads:

“What is not available anywhere is a quick means to increase the physical energy supply.” This sentence is elementary for understanding the current energy crisis. In Germany, [Economics Minister Robert] Habeck and [Chancellor Olaf] Scholz in the federal government have either still not grasped this connection or they are ignoring it because they are pursuing a completely different agenda in this crisis. Their oath of office to “prevent harm to the German people” is obviously not part of it.

In the current crisis, the federal government is indeed trying to give the people and the distribution companies a helping hand with freshly printed money to cover the higher energy costs. But it is not increasing the supply of energy. The German government has made grandiose announcements about alternatives to energy from Russia and talked about them even more. But so far, everything has turned out to be all talk. Even Habeck’s deep kowtowing to the sheikh of Qatar has not helped. Specifically, the severely shrunken total energy supply has increased and will increase only marginally, if at all, in the foreseeable future.

The German government’s makeshift policy of using more and more money to compensate for higher energy costs is, of course, having a massive impact on government budgets, and not just in Germany. And this policy is causing a deepening crisis, especially in the global South, because developing countries such as Pakistan cannot compete in the bidding war for LNG with the Europeans who have recently appeared on the market. It is no surprise, then, that the Global South blames the policies of the Europeans and the entire West for the energy crisis. And, of course, the energy subsidy policy of the Europeans is leading to a further increase in inflation, which will probably soon settle at double-digit levels in Germany as well.

Now on to Prof. Thompson and the two structural problems she mentions as deeper roots for the current crisis:

First, as uncomfortable as this reality is for climatic and environmental considerations, the growth of the global economy still requires fossil fuel production.

Comment:

This is exactly what the West’s arch-villain, Vladimir Putin, had said at a conference in the Kremlin a few weeks ago.

(Continued by Thompson:)

Without more investment and exploration, there is unlikely to be sufficient supply in the medium term to meet likely (energy) demand. The current gas crisis has its origins in the Chinese-induced surge in gas consumption in 2021, with demand growing so fast that gas became available only at very high prices for European and Asian purchases. Meanwhile, the surge in oil prices this year only subsided when (short-term) economic data became unfavorable for China. But according to the International Energy Agency, it’s entirely possible that global oil production will be insufficient to meet demand as early as next year.

Comment:

However, the Chinese government is currently taking massive steps to revive the Chinese economy to boost economic growth, which will put upward pressure on oil prices again. China is buying oil from Russia, and President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia to finalize a mega-deal between China and Saudi Arabia, which will mainly involve supplying more oil to China. China can easily absorb all of Russia’s oil exports, and still needs oil from the Saudis as well.

(Continued Thompson:)

The global economy got by for much of the 2010s on the shale oil boom, which more than doubled U.S. production between 2010 and 2019. Without it, the world would have been trapped in a permanent oil crisis since 2005, as conventional crude oil production — oil extracted without hydraulic fracking or from tar sands — stagnated.

American shale oil cannot continue to expand at the same pace. Although the largest U.S. shale oil formation — the Permian basin in west Texas and southeast New Mexico — is expected to reach record production next month, total U.S. production is still more than 1 million barrels per day below 2019 levels. Even in the Permian basin, daily production per well is declining.

More offshore drilling, such as that opened up in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska by the new [U.S. law] Inflation Reduction Act, requires higher prices or investors willing to invest their capital — regardless of the profit outlook.” The best geological prospects for a game changer — similar to what happened in the U.S. in the 2010s — are in the vast West Siberian Bashenov formation with shale oil. But Western sanctions mean that the prospect of Western oil companies helping Russia technologically is a geopolitical dead end.

Comment:

What Prof. Thompson fails to mention here is the fact that the Russians are quite familiar with shale oil technology. The same is true of the Chinese. But both China and Russia do not yet have the experience and expertise in this technology that the U.S. does. But they know how it works. Most certainly, at some point, if it is necessary, the Bashenov shale oil formation in Siberia will be developed. But it can also be predicted as quite certain that this will happen not with U.S. participation or to Europe’s advantage, but jointly with China and possibly with India. The West has excluded itself. As we can see, Chinese demand for oil and gas is insatiable even with restrained economic growth. And once the Chinese economy picks up steam, and India’s does too, demand for energy sources will continue to grow and prices will rise even more.

(Continued Thompson:)

Second, there is little that can be done that would immediately accelerate the transition from fossil fuels (to renewable energy). Britain’s planned micro-nuclear reactors will not be completed until the 2030s. Operating power grids with solar and wind base loads requires technological breakthroughs in storage. It is impossible to plan with confidence what progress will be made in the next year, let alone ten years. But precisely because an energy transition is essential to reduce fossil fuel use, large-scale blue-sky investments are essential.

The only way forward is short-term realism that recognizes there is no way back to cheap energy, coupled with radical, long-term ambitions. An understanding of geopolitical realities is also essential. The U.S. remains by far the world’s dominant power. Its naval power guarantees open waters for international trade. Global credit markets depend on the dollar. But Washington does not have the power to direct China’s and India’s energy relations with Russia. The coming winter will bring a reckoning. Western governments must either conjure economic misery on a scale that would test the fabric of democratic politics in any country, or face the fact that energy supplies are limiting the means by which Ukraine can be defended.

The article ends with this remarkable last paragraph. In a convoluted yet clear manner, Prof. Thompson makes it clear that there is “no way back to cheap energy” if it is also “linked to radical, long-term ambitions” such as the Great Reset or other green brain farts. To get back to affordable and reliable energy, Prof. Thompson urges Western governments to make a deal with Russia now, without delay.

At the same time, Prof. Thompson underscores the futility of Western attempts to curtail Russia’s energy exports when they are desperately needed by the rest of the world. The West must accept the fact that it cannot dictate energy flows. Nor can the U.S. along with the EU and NATO and the rest of the G7 dictate to India and China and many other countries around the globe whom they can buy oil from and under what conditions they can do so. They can’t impose their will on the Russians, either. And to take the insanity to the extreme, the West is pursuing this policy while at the same time desperately needing more gas and oil itself and realizing that it cannot replace Russian oil and gas in either the short or medium term.

Interestingly, Sadad Al-Husseini, former vice president of the giant Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco also underlined in an interview with the U.S. news channel CNBC on Monday of this week that there is not enough capacity around the world to replace Russian gas supply to the European Union. In contrast, he said, Russia has many markets to which it can sell its energy. Literally, Al-Husseini said:

The U.S. does not have the LNG capacity to replace Russian exports to Europe… This situation is a new world and not a very good one for energy… It will take years for the EU to find resources to replace Russian supply.

This is another confirmation of Prof. Thompson’s analysis that the West can only solve its energy problem in the long term by working hard and developing new technologies, such as experimenting with sufficiently large intermediate energy storage for highly fluctuating wind and solar energy, or even hydrogen. The fact is: in the short and even medium term, there is no alternative for Western governments — especially in Europe — unless they want to subject their societies to unbearable pressures this coming winter, with significant potential for social unrest and far-reaching political consequences for the governments currently in power.

Prof. Thompson has made it implicitly clear with her FT article that if current Western sanctions policies are adhered to, governments in Europe will not only face domestic destabilization this winter, but will also further sour their relations with the Global South. If they want to avoid these domestic and international problems, Thompson says they must find some way to talk to the Russians again. But without a compromise solution on Ukraine and a Western acceptance of Russian demands for equal security, that is not possible. However, this demands of the ideologically stubborn elites currently ruling in the West that they would have to jump over their own shadows, which would mean their political end.

I do not trust any of the ruling Western elites, and certainly not the German Greens, to have the personal magnanimity to admit their own mistakes and to step back and clear the way for normalization of relations with Russia for the good of the population. For their goal of the “Green Reset” they are happy to sacrifice the modest prosperity of the population, to let people starve and freeze, which reduces CO2 emissions, and despite high inflation to demand an additional tax on meat to reduce the number of methane gas-producing cows; to name just a part of the Green insanity.

The totally-out-of-touch [Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock announced the day before yesterday, August 31, at Forum 2000[i] that for her Ukraine comes first, no matter what her German voters want and no matter how hard life will be for the population this winter. Literally she said (translation from English):

“When I make the promise to the people of Ukraine — ‘We will stand by your side as long as you need us’ — I want to keep it. No matter what my German voters want,” she said, adding, “We are now facing the winter that will challenge us as democratic politicians. People will take to the streets and complain that they can’t pay their energy bills. And I will say, yes I know, we will support you with social measures. But I definitely don’t want to say, ‘OK, then we’ll stop the sanctions against Russia.’ We stand behind Ukraine, and that means sanctions will stay, too, even in winter, even if that will be very hard for us politicians.”

This is an extraordinary admission that the traffic light* government in Berlin is determined to prolong the war in Ukraine, which is being abused by the West as a battering ram against Russia, come hell or high water, for as long as possible, no matter how much the German people suffer. Her promise to the Ukrainians is worth more to Baerbock than her solemn oath to prevent harm to the German people she claims to represent in the world. In fact, the welfare of the German people is worth a dog’s breakfast to her.

In the words of Professor Thompson, the Greens are ready to “put the fabric of democratic politics in our country to the test.” We all have to make sure they don’t succeed, that in the words of Baerbock, “it becomes very hard for the politicians.”

Sources

*   “Traffic light” coalition government:
    Red:   Social Democratic Party
    Yellow:   Free Democratic Party
    Green:   Alliance90 / The Greens
 

33 thoughts on “The Winter War

  1. As regards the intro to the article, there is no “Western alliance that is lunatic”, as the word alliance is mealy-mouthed, there is the USA and its bought and paid for EU politicians in underling or vassal states who do its bidding, cf the anecdote of Paul Craig Roberts.

    As George Friedman of Stratfor has written, the aim of the USA for over 100 years has always been to prevent German knowhow linking to Russian raw materials and forming a power bloc in Europe. Which is why the USA has been subverting Russian natgas deliveries to German via the Nordstream pipeline

    Now the author Rainer Rupp, code names Topaz and Mosel, turns 77 on Sept. 21,.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer_Rupp. He seems to have prevented WWIII at Operation Able Archer in 1983 but got 6 years jail 1994-2000 for his trouble

    So it is understandable that he does not join up Ukraine with Davos, the WEF, the Scamdemic, a UBI and digital ID in any way.

    Which is not to say that anyone can say whether Putin, chummy with Klaus Schwab for a long time, is playing the Globalist game, especially as Putin is moving on a Russian CBDC, central bank digital currency, it is just that Rupp is still stuck in the mode of thinking up to 1991 and does not even mention transhumanism and associated topics.

    But I am surprised that he does not even take up Friedman’s point about the USA needing to destroy Germany.

    • By Putin’s actions, he is doing everything he can to screw the WEF agenda. With the coming winter these politicians all over Europe are going to be fearing for their lives as the bodies stack up from starvation and freezing to death.

  2. Perhaps this flock of European dim bulbs is counting on the astronomically high price of fuel by wintertime to make Molotov cocktails unaffordable to irate rioters.

    Just as improbably they are assuming that the Russians would be interested or willing to sell its gas and oil ever again to such problematic customers. Every day hastens the creation of new economic arrangements with non-western customers along with alternative systems of payments outside the control of the US hegemon. More than a century of bullying and soft colonialism of the global south by the US and its western sidekicks has created a situation where many countries in the global south are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”. And this plays perfectly into the Russian and Chinese long game. Meanwhile, we here in the west have already been supplanted as a global hyperpower, previously able to smite those who oppose our will anywhere in the world, only we do not yet realize that our superpower status has already been revoked.

  3. Hey, wasn’t that photo from the Weimar Republic 100 years ago when you had to ride a bicycle to the store with a shopping bag full of Deutsche Marks to buy a head of cabbage and a package of pork sausage?

    • I have no idea about the bike, but it is amazing that for more than 100 years Germans have been consistently buggering up their economy and their country along with that of the rest of Europe. Perhaps they should just stick to designing and building unnecessarily complex cars and weapons and outsource their governing to Singapore.

      • It was Germans who discovered the Fischer-Tropsch process, essentially the same process whereby hydrocarbons are formed in the earth’s crust (has nothing to do with “fossils”), a continuous, “renewable” process. Guess they have forgotten.

    • Looks too new with the gears but the Weimar Republic inflation was that bad. My father who was in Poland told me they got paid in wheelbarrows. That’s what he said. He was a cleaner in the German occupation office.

    • Well look what came after the idiot socialist of Weimar, that’s right, the bloody naxi’s, well this will be no different, the military will take over at some point.

      • That stands to be corrected: social- democrats had 15 months of co- governing over all the WR period in various coalitions. I understand that socialists are fair game here on GoV, but reality should not be ignored. those in power did everything to keep them out of governing. And Hitler was manuvered into office by those same powers who thus wanted to prevent a military coup. The last chancelor before Hitler was General von Schleicher.

        • Well unfortunately this time around, the military will do their very own version of the Knight of the Long Knives and it will be epic, frankly speaking, I can’t wait.

  4. I just want to know what the leader’s will say when asked if citizens will be ahead of refugees when it comes to rationing or subsidizing in the various countries. Probably something like nobody is discussing that.

  5. Cars have become completely financially inaccessible. Even a poor modification.
    And so on the little things, yes, import substitution is happening.
    After the crisis, the cost of office paper increased 4-5 times due to the absence of some French bleaches. Now it’s back to the original price.
    Women very quickly reoriented. Many clothing stores closed after brands left and because of the ruin of sellers. But the number of ateliers engaged in individual tailoring has grown. Fabrics are imported from China. I have a woman friend – the owner of such an atelier. She is now going to open courses for those wishing to learn how to sew.

    There are fewer types of food in grocery stores. But after 2014, when the ruble fell by half against the dollar and the euro, this food became inaccessible to the majority of the population anyway (only for the “oligarchs”).
    It’s just not on the shelves right now.

  6. The fate of Ukraine is just another example of how deadly friendship with the West is for a country that does not belong to it.

    Compare Ukraine and Belarus.

    Belarus is a quiet modestly prosperous country, with a functioning economy, efficient public health and education, very low crime – a woman can stroll alone Minsk in the middle of the night without being harassed, peaceful relations between the main religious denominations, clean streets and not a single war since independence. All this is possible due to good relations with Russia from which Belarus gets as much fuel as it needs and to which it exports its agricultural produce, cosmetics, clothes and other products of its industry.

    Ukraine’s independence, on the contrary, is a story of uninterrupted degradation. At the start, it had much more resources than Belarus, but it has wasted them due to internal corruption and its ruinous friendship with the West. The Ukrainian ruling elite destroyed its internal peace by its ultranationalist ideology encouraged by the US and EU, let its health services and education go to the dogs. Corruption and crime flourished, the economy went from bad to worse. Finally it allowed the US and EU to use the nation as a tool of war against Russia which can only result in the country’s final destruction.

    Its position is as catastrophic now as that of Iraq, another friend of US. (Remember how the US used Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a battering ram against Iran? Now Iraq is a shambles and Iran is in a much better shape.)

    • Too true. With a friend like the US, why would one need an enemy?

      It is amazing how the fates of Belarus and Ukraine have diverged, and for that matter almost all of the former Soviet republics with those who made their peace with Moscow doing fairly well while those who have pursued hostile and antagonistic relations with Moscow are much worse off or have been captured by the West and now enslaved by a new master.

      One of the outcomes of this war which I’ll be one of the first to predict is that Ukrainian brides will once again be a relatively cheap commodity since there will be little future for them in their ruined rump country, and few Ukrainian men for them to marry anyway who are not dead or disfigured. Only this time it will not be to Western buyers, most of whom will be impoverished from the fallout of the end of US economic power. If it gets as bad in the West as I think it will, one will be able to have their pick of western women in exchange for a tin of Spam or a can of soup. The tatted, pierced, and morbidly obese ones will be available for even less. Ukrainian women, on the other hand who want a good life will be learning to speak Chinese due to them being the biggest winners of the war between the West and Russia, and the quite serious shortage of Chinese brides due to decades of their single child policy.

      • I don’t put much faith or value in democracy.

        A benevolent autocrat like the leader of China, Belarus or Russia is far superior in delivering stability, improved living standards, and quality of life to their citizens than the democratically elected morons, halfwits, and actors who are the recurring choice of the majority of fools in England, Europe, America, and Ukraine.

  7. @ The Moon is….

    Re: “Meanwhile, we here in the west have already been supplanted as a global hyperpower, previously able to smite those who oppose our will anywhere in the world, only we do not yet realize that our superpower status has already been revoked.”

    Author Robert Louis Stevenson once said that in life, all of us must sooner or later, “Sit down to a banquet of consequences.” I do not know in what context he uttered that phrase, but it seems appropriate to describe the late-stage American imperium which is by turns infuriating arrogant, colossally stupid, absurdly comical, and pathetic.

    Historian Niall Ferguson, who is now a naturalized American citizen if memory serves, has written and spoken a great deal about his study of the fate of empires and great nations. Naturally, being British by birth, he has devoted much study to the British Empire, but also to others, including that of the present-day U.S.

    More than a decade ago, Ferguson was warning investors, Wall St. high-rollers and other members of his seminar audiences that all great nations and empires sooner or later decline and are replaced by other powers until such time as they can rise again. The decline and landing can be hard or soft, depending on various externalities but also chiefly based upon choices made by the empire itself.

    It’s sort of analogous to a starlet facing middle- and old-age: She can accept the facts and choose to age gracefully and with dignity, or she can claw, scratch and scream, fighting every step of the way with plastic surgery, make-overs, tempestuous behavior, serial divorces or affairs, and so on all the way down to a wretched end.

    The moneyed classes and political elites who run things in the West have chosen the latter approach, which means things may have to get considerably worse before they have any chance of getting better.

    In many ways, these so-called “elites” are the problem all-the-way around. They are the ones who refuse to declare bankruptcy and start over based upon sound fiscal principles, and they are also the ones who refuse to share one iota of wealth or power with other nations and peoples. Perhaps most-tellingly, they refuse to share in any of the pain or hardship they are asking others to undertake so that their wealth and privilege may be preserved intact.

    Getting back to that “banquet of consequences” we discussed earlier, anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of geopolitics and the economics of strategic materials could have told you decades ago that Russia was ideally-positioned to exploit her mineral and other natural-resource wealth, coming out of the communist era in the early 1990s.

    But the rapacious western elites, rather than treating Russia as a friend and new ally and trading partner, could think of nothing save seizing control of Russia from her people and leaders. They decided that sharing the pie was beneath their dignity, so decided to try and take it all. That brings us down to the present, where Russia has been driven into the arms of the PRC – economically, militarily, etc. – leaving the western “elites” and countries out in the cold, literally.

    Turns out that if you treat other nations and peoples like crap, they resent it and turn the same treatment back upon you…. who’da thunk it?? Duh!!

    Could someone please remind me again what is so all-fired special and “elite” about these alleged geniuses leading us? Because I sure as heck can’t see it….

    • A banquet of consequences indeed…

      Everything the “elites” are doing makes sense when you look at it through the lens of them wanting to eliminate almost all of us.

      Of course they want to keep their wealth and toys and power; just they want to cull us to a more manageable number that will not threaten their rule. Russia is a huge obstacle to their plans, because the leader they once thought was an ally turned out to have his own ideas about the fate of his country and kin.

      • Re: “Everything the “elites” are doing makes sense when you look at it through the lens of them wanting to eliminate almost all of us.”

        Yes, quite so. It’s called “war” for a reason, and the truism goes something like “If you are close enough to fire upon the enemy, he is close-enough to return that fire…”

        The globalist elites are playing a very dangerous game in that they are waging what amounts to war upon the whole world, save themselves. What happens when the “world” wakes up to that state of affairs? Having sown the wind, the “elites” may end up reaping the whirlwind.

        None of it has to happen; no blood needs to be shed or suffering endured which is avoidable. In a very real sense it is their choice whether to go down that road or not.

        It is well for all in positions of power and influence over such things to remember that history is littered with the corpses of powerful people who thought they could control the dogs of war once they were set loose, only to be devoured by them instead.

  8. This article is consistent with the article by Gail Tverberg in oilprice.com.https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Worlds-Energy-Problem-Is-Far-Worse-Than-Were-Being-Told.html
    The energy gap has been coming for a few years and the fall off in production in the US has exposed it. Covid shutdowns have probably been hiding it. She also says that oil prices need to be much higher for supply to be corrected. The prices needed for extra production from Venezuela etc is far higher than any economy is prepared to pay. This means supply demand economics cannot fix the problem. Saudi Arabia needs an oil price higher than $100 to extract more oil.
    Governments will use smart meters to enforce social credit systems more and more.
    Governments can have Covid shutdowns to reduce demand.

    Her view is that it is capable of bringing down civilisation as we know it.

  9. “and far-reaching political consequences for the governments currently in power.”

    “currently”.

    I’m sure what will follow will be completely benign.

    Sans Madame louison, one might hope.

    No guarantees though.

  10. Germany’s last winterwar didn’t go all that well. One can only hope that the dimwits in Berlin regain some use of their senses before the coming winter…

    • That is wishful thinking on your part, they will double down on what they are doing, thus inviting their own doom in the process, and no one will be in forgiving mood when all hell breaks lose.

  11. Really excellent article, one that I will share far and wide, especially with my liberal, Demo-Marxist friends and relatives.

    Just the other day I was having a conversation with my son who, sad to say, is a liberal who enthusiastically supports the war in Ukraine. He is not a stupid man, he is an electrical engineer and knows a lot about technology.

    So I find it impossible to believe how stupid he is when it comes to politics! (I am an ultra MAGA conservative).

    How he and his people cannot understand that the Z- Man is nothing but a Ukrainian gangster in cahoots with the Biden Crime Family, is beyond my comprehension.

    There is only one reason the US and the other Euro nations got us into this mess and that is so that they can line their own pockets. And they are succeeding quite well.

    • With no intention to make fun of your misguided son, for whom we hope and wish to come to his senses before the consequences become too stark, I can’t help but mention that in Germany there is a somewhat famous series of short comedy sketches invented by the duo Badesalz, which builds on a consistent pattern like so: A son approaches his father with an off-the-wall question, and the response always starts with the same words: “My son, you are now 42 years old and electrical engineer, …” They were extremely funny before the PC plague. Even more so now, if at the expense of those who fall into the cliché. All the best.

    • @ Seneca the Elder

      Re: “Just the other day I was having a conversation with my son who, sad to say, is a liberal who enthusiastically supports the war in Ukraine. He is not a stupid man, he is an electrical engineer and knows a lot about technology.”

      Expertise in one field of endeavor is no guarantee of competency or even basic literacy in another. Moreover, not everyone is equally well-equipped to understand what is unfolding in front of us on a daily basis, or to recognize that we are swimming in a sea of propaganda. Sadly, many otherwise intelligent people have been badly brainwashed by the relentless psychological ops being waged against the people these many years.

      The conflict (war) may be mental and psychic, but the casualties are real.

  12. This IS the plan though. To collapse everything, so when HE shows up and fixes everything, everyone will fall at his feet and worship him for a bit. He’ll then show his true colours, and everyone will see him as he really is. Shortly after that, the TRUE ruler of the earth will return. And He will set everything right. Forever.

  13. I’ll make a rash observation. Since all of us seem to be inextricably connected, and some of us will probably have dire consequences rely from idiotic political maneuverings, I would say that it is in each individuals interest to take measures now to preclude suffering this winter. Severe want in a supposedly land of plenty has happened so many times in history as to be a virtual proverb. Stupid leftist nonsense nearly caused a catastrophe in oil rich Texas in 2021, and came within a whisker of people freezing to death in large numbers. We’re on our own, for the most part. I’ve made preparations to survive a long cold winter, without electric power if need be. An independent attitude will do more for your survival, than thinking some one else will take care of it. Alea iacta est.

  14. History rhyming: the Fourth Reich attacking Russia over territory it wants for itself. And also to protect the criminal Bidet regime from giving up its criminal activities in Ukraine.

  15. You forget the commies (Russia, China, TURD world countries) all live off the capitalist. So, when we go down so will they.

    • @ Ratty

      With due respects, sir, the developing world doesn’t need the “first world” as it once did in, say, 1960. Russia, China, India and the rest of the global south and BRICS nations are increasingly reaching similar conclusions, that whatever gains may be in the offing from the U.S.-NATO-EU bloc, they are increasingly outweighed by the detriments of the relationship.

      In short, they’re sick of the U.S. & Europe (NATO/EU) throwing their weight around, and they’re done listening to us. It turns out that if you treat other people like crap, they end up resenting or even hating you and want nothing to do with you. Gee, who’d have thought it?! (sarc/off)

      In fairness, it isn’t the common people of the West who are despised so much as it is their political and economic leadership, the so-called ruling class elites, but for better or worse in the minds of the other side, the two are indistinguishable. Common people are held to be culpable for allowing things to deteriorate to such a state and then doing nothing to change it. Fair or not, I’d say that’s where things stand today.

  16. Indian investors take over russian supermarkets?
    The russian consumers will be delighted to finally enjoy their „ Vindalowski Curry“ . And the car production caught up?
    I can‘t wait to have my own Putinski V6 limousine delivered and get rid of the obsolete Bimmer.

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