[FOX] The World Economic Forum is looking to reduce global reliance on critical metals as nations look to make the transition to renewable energy supplies, and one proposal is reducing ownership of private vehicles. Would that include private jets and yachts that carry the elites to Vail, Davos, Paris? I thought not. FOAD
"This transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few," the forum said in a report earlier this month. "Shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies."
The international lobbying organization based in Switzerland has proposed three solutions for lowering the costs of critical metals used in everything from cellphones and electric vehicles to wind turbines and efficient lighting.
#2
We are halfway there. Folks lease now so they can flip the car in 4-5 years and get a new one. Young generation that grew up on Lyft and uber don't even feel the need for a car, they don't see freedom they see costs.
The World Economic Forum is just stupid to call attention to things that are already heading their way, then again they would be commie sympathizers if they weren't stupid..
#5
And so we see that "climate Change" is just another made up crisis to be used as a pretext to turn us all into slaves. FOAD is indeed the appropriate response.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/29/2022 12:32 Comments ||
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#6
No private transportation means moving to an urban center. Hive cities are easy to rule and police selectively. Think of the Imperial Roman model, proles in the Subura, Patricians on the Palatine with their wealth coming from estates and country mansions to escape the ordeals of city life. WEF, what is old is new again, and behind it, the shadowy but real Middle Kingdom Imperium plan.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2022 15:41 Comments ||
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#10
Folks lease now so they can flip the car in 4-5 years and get a new one.
In the old days a union worker expected to own his own home and buy a new car no less than every thee years. While legally there is a difference, I’m not sure that functionally there is — given that for a price that lease can be turned into a purchase.
#11
I can't speak for Union workers but nearly everyone I know got a parents car as their first. If you keep getting new ones you never get it paid off entirely.
#12
That's right. I'll just call in a favor to the limo company I own and they will drive me to my private plane, where I'll fly to my private yacht, sail to Epstein Island redux, anchor on the leeward side, and get my Chuck Norris on.
[bitcoinmagazine] Online censorship is becoming increasingly normalized as growing restrictions, deplatforming and its other manifestations have become so pervasive that many have simply come to accept it. This "new normal" for free speech is as insidious as it has been gradual, as we are increasingly being trained to accept unconstitutional limitations on what we can express on the websites that dominate online socialization. Like so much of our lives, social interaction has moved online at a rapid pace in the last decade, meaning that restrictions imposed upon online speech have a disproportionate effect on speech in general.
The argument that is often deployed to dismiss concerns regarding online censorship is the claim that the dominant social media companies are private, not public, entities. However, in reality, the Big Tech firms that dominate our online lives, particularly Google and Facebook, were either created with some involvement of the U.S. national security state or have become major U.S. government and/or military contractors over the past two decades.(i,ii,iii,iv,v) When it comes to censoring and deplatforming individuals for claims that run counter to U.S. government narratives, it should be clear that Google-owned YouTube, and other tech platforms owned by contractors to the U.S. military and intelligence communities, have a major conflict of interest in their stifling of speech.
#2
If y'all didn't care about the Joetato giving 300+ billion to Putin I really doubt y'all care about this either, whoever you are. It's just the next stage in the propaganda to flood/distract against the fact that Joetato gave PUtin 300+ billion.
Mr. Menadue is a Australian Labourite of the Cold War era and beyond, which clearly colours his thinking and that of the websites writers. The opening proposition of this piece ignores the fact that Communist China has been planning on war with America for decades, assuming that China is fated to be the next world hegemon. It seems to me, however, that they were first premature in their assumptions and now have already reached the tipping point where it is too late for them to act successfully, a point they would not have reached for some years yet were it not for them having loosed Covid-19 on the world two years ago.
By Nury Vittachi and Phill Hynes
[JohnMenadue] US military experts say a war over Taiwan is desirable, because Asia’s growth to become world’s economic heartland has become unstoppable.
Yes, we want war. But just a small one, please, followed by a quick surrender. The United States is diligently working with Australia and the UK to goad China into what they hope will be a limited war over Taiwan, according to military strategists. By continually poking at the giant developing nation, the aim is to force it to fire the first bullet — and then use that to paint China as the protagonist, the bully that the rest of the world must unite against.
To prepare for this, the partners in the scheme are teaming up. Rather like the "coalition of the willing" in the Iraq War 2.0, the US is pushing for another misadventure, this time through a coalition of the coerced.
Media’s role
The Western media is playing a key role in this process.
The media is painting China’s knee-jerk and entirely predictable responses that it "will not stand for attempts to promote Taiwan independence" as evidence of shocking new acts of "increasing aggression", while the truth is that all China-watchers know they are the same statements they have issued for decades, often in virtually the same words.
The media is pushing exaggerations and misinformation about the "death of Hong Kong", the "genocide of Xinjiang", the "imminent invasion of Australia" and so on.
Asia as centre of the world
Why are the Western powers doing this? They certainly want to destabilise China and set the country’s development and positioning in the world back a few decades. But that’s just part of a larger goal. They feel the need to do this primarily because the Western powers have recognized that Asia will soon be the centre of global economic power.
Nothing will stop that happening.
This means that time is running out to ensure that Asia is dominated and controlled by America and its allies on the other side of the world, instead of by Asians themselves, working together as neighbours.
Furthermore, the outgoing world leaders need the incoming powers to know their place in the "International Rules-Based Order" under the stewardship of the drafters of these rules. Western liberal democracy must retain its primacy, and Asia’s consultative democracies dismissed as "autocracies", or "authoritarian"/"totalitarian" regimes.
Preparing the world
The media has been preparing the world for the conflict for years. America’s hawks put huge sums of time and money into financing dissent in Asia and partnering with the Western media to create the impression that the people of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan, want independence from mainland China — although surveys overwhelmingly show that this is the opposite of the truth.
But these imaginary "cries for independence" are necessary for the next stage in the process: the pushing of China into what can only be described as a deluded and limited war over Taiwan; one aim being to attain the larger objectives of undermining both China and ASEAN.
The war or "coming conflict" with China has been discussed in multiple forums and publications, not least of which is a new book by Elbridge Colby, one of the writers of the US National Defense Strategy. It argues that escalating Taiwan tensions into a conflict gives America a chance at winning, unlike a Cold War arms race.
Arms race won’t work
An arms race would eventually be won by China, which is on its way to being richer and stronger than America, Colby points out. And "the economic costs could be crippling, seriously stressing the US economy, the ultimate source of America’s military strength."
Instead, the US can push China into a limited conflict over Taiwan, with the media painting China as the bully and the US as the white knight. Done right, the skirmish would unite the rest of the world’s countries against China and on to the American side.
Partners in the media have already accomplished a lot of this work by painting Xinjiang and Hong Kong as places wrecked by China, and suggesting they are filled with Betsy-waving populations desperate for a United States model of governance.
This strategy is receiving significant interest and or support from other US hawks.
"China must be provoked into initiating any escalation of the conflict, so that it will always appear the aggressor," writes defence journalist Aris Roussinos, summarising the Colby strategy.
People will die
But won’t there be Taiwanese casualties? Yes. China "must be permitted to strike as indiscriminately as possible," in this scenario. "Colby further urges the US not to provide potential civilian targets with air defences, reasoning that collateral damage will whip up the public anger against China necessary to winning a war," Roussinos adds.
In other words, deaths of Taiwan citizens (the "collateral damage" he mentions) would be a public relations coup for the US side.
"Forcing China to escalate could be in our [US] interests," Roussinos points out. (One wonders if this scenario has received attention from the walking elements of "collateral damage" in Taiwan.)
Trump’s defence strategist
Although Colby’s book, The Strategy of Denial, has just been published, it’s clear that the thinking behind it has been circulating in US administration clusters for some years. Colby was a key writer of Donald Trump’s national defence strategy in 2018.
This approach, when originally written, recommended pulling American allies like Japan and India into the US team to contain China, and to sign up Australia too, as well as Vietnam and other neighbours.
Clearly we can see concerted action on all these fronts this year.
Salami slicing
While the Western media portrays China as the aggressor, people with a deeper understanding of international affairs can see what’s really happening over Taiwan.
"The US has placed tripwires in the form of deployment of special forces, obfuscating the ’red line’," said commentator M. K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat.
The long string of US provocations are a "salami slicing" strategy, some observers say. "Salami tactics are an appealing option for expansionist actors like NATO, which pursues limited and repetitive expansions to gradually create new realities on the ground," argues Glenn Diesen, professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway.
"Such tactics avoid rapid escalation and mute opposition from adversaries and allies alike, as complaints can be ridiculed and the response from opponents denounced as disproportionate."
Warmongering?
One could easily argue that this type of strategy could be construed as a right-wing, warmongering plan.
That’s certainly true, and there are many echoes of the self-righteous militaristic strutting that led to lengthy disasters of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the surviving victims of which are still suffering today.
The frightening thing is that the present attempt to goad China into war has bi-partisan support in the world’s wealthiest, most powerful country.
#2
I once attended a big conference at the Ex-Im Bank. The featured lunch speaker was from the PRC. He acknowledged that US concerns with Chinese intellectual piracy were partly valid.
Then he said,
"China will solve this problem but it will take time since we don't want to violate the privacy rights of our citizens."
I broke up laughing but was the only one who did (several hundred in the audience) and several people looked at me in disapproval. The Chinese speaker got a standing applause when he finished his remarks.
Anyway, it shows how naive people in the USA were (and probably still are) on China issues.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
07/29/2022 8:43 Comments ||
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#4
"China will solve this problem but it will take time since we don't want to violate the privacy rights of our citizens."
Texas Instruments had the patent on the integrate circuit. It took the Japanese several decades later to recognize it [long after Sony, Toshiba, et al made their money and place in the electronics market].
If there's a war, the US steps on China's oil supply from the Middle East. War over immediately. Ever seen "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome"? When Master Blaster turns the crank and cuts off the supply of meethane to Bartertown?
#10
War can be unwinnable and still be something one plans for.
To get around the oil issue for example: (a) China might dominate markets in things many US stores depend on so those stores would pressure the government not to get involved in a war (b) might encourage other nations to shift manufacturing into China where it is cheap and where a war would cause total destabilization of western economies (c) Might allow enough trade and promises of a massive market to get greedier companies to push for peace whatever the cost to preserve their profits (and future profits) (d) Buy a large number of US politicians.
All of these things could be seen as ways to make the USA less likely to stand by Taiwan. That's not even getting into their military expansions.
That and the fact that China has actively threatened both the US and Taiwan for decades using generals and others to preserve deniability.
#2
He is an establishment swamp monster. Always has been, always will be. He fought for the judges as he knew it would help the establishment in the long run.
Posted by: Bill Thrinetle8351 ||
07/29/2022 15:49 Comments ||
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#6
You go to war with the politicians you have. He is very, very good at what he does, and he’ll be reelected as long as he wants to be. So the only possibility is to work with him where possible, as President Trump did on getting federal judges approved, and around him where necessary — as President Trump did with his executive orders.
And get enough Trump Republicans into office that Senator McConnell has to compromise with them to get what he wants.
In addition to being Muslim, they mean? Isn’t being Pakistan enough of a reason?
[NEWAGEBD.NET] Since 1958, Pakistain’s political history has, time and again, been interrupted by her military generals, who exerted their might and discretely colluded with political parties. The first such intervention on part of its army was as early as 1958 when general Ayub Khan abolished the constitutional regime of 1956. Subsequently, the military staged three coups in October 1958, July 1977 and October 1999.
A most significant aspect of Pak politics is its total, unflinching commitment to the religion of Islam, which had served as the basis of seeking a nationhood in order to safeguard the interests of the Moslems in the Indian sub-continent. A recurrent theme in the military and civil life in Pakistain is that every citizen should be mindful of adhering to the principles and code of conduct prescribed in Islam. It is regarded as the way to safeguard and preserve one’s dignity and honour.
The former president, also former general, Zia ul Huq used to say that the gift of western education should not be considered an end in itself and that a Pak must not be merely ’a professional soldier, an engineer, or a doctor’, but must use this to become ’Moslem soldiers, Moslem generals, Moslem doctors, Moslem officers and Moslem men’. Thus, Islam became a core public policy in the state affairs, and Pakistain was officially declared an Islamic republic.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
07/29/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
And we shall keep it that way, inshallan. Until the time comes to kill kill kill it.
#2
The science isn’t settled, Dron. That’s where the claim that the really high percentage of everything a doctor knows is outdated/untrue comes from — and what everyone else knows, too.
#4
Cocao is pre-processed cocoa. It has more fiber and vitamins than cocoa/chocolate. Therefore it is even better for you than all the good stuff in chocolate and keeps your skin younger and hair darker.
#6
Actually I've been eating lots of candy myself. Wine Gums, After Eights, Toblerone, Haribo... Wife knows I'm a candy crusher so she brought me a half fridge full. Both my upper canines're being replaced just because of sweets.
#9
The ten-year old article is ... outdated. From the current posted article -
But increasingly studies show the dark variety has a myriad of health benefits.
New studies, new science. Interesting lesson in science that is not 'settled'.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2022 6:49 Comments ||
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#10
On the other hand, a lesson in 'new journalism': The first graphic has the same bullets for libido benefits and 'but the downsides'. Oops.
Preview should be their friend, too.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/29/2022 6:55 Comments ||
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#11
Notice to all gringos.
Chocolate and the skin of organic tangerine (rich on resveratrol and Pterostilbene) almost 80 years old and in better shape than a 35 years old gringo
Chocolate, mi chocolate,
en tableta, nueces o con fresas,
siempre me ayuda aumentar las defensas,
¡inspira al amor!
Si tienes chocolate nada puede ser mejor.
Posted by: ACA JOE ||
07/29/2022 13:51 Comments ||
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#12
^ I say, very good senhor!
But el chocolate con fresas es para maricas.
Just like Harleys, leather and sweet paprikas.
#15
Okay, after coffee and literal bowl of cherries (ain't that just like a gringo?), I'm baaack... [flexes maxim gun]
"Jose has superior feet!"
"Y so many!"
"He doesn't eat meat,
Except certain mariscos."
"I take them to discos
And treat them like this..."
[beat beat beat]
#21
At The Corrections of Madness
The Shadow Over Typing
- H.P. Lovecruise
KC is the other side of the world, and I am a heretic. KC Style is too sweet for me. Not saying I don't like it...saying of all the BBQ styles..except the burnt ends. Nobody does burnt ends like KC Style.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
