We're seeing something similar here in Sweden, both regarding Greta the Insufferable and our Green Party.
Thunberg has made a big deal of being "poor" and too preoccupied with her save-the-planet endeavours, only to have that image shattered by her as of yet two criminal convictions and the resulting scrutiny of her finances; your earnings and wealth is weighed in the balance by our courts when setting fines you see, and Thunberg claimed to lack funds which made it possible for alt-media to dig and discover that the rather large sums of money she's apparently earned via her activism has been placed in such ways as to minimise any taxes, and to make her seem without income or assets (a tactic common among members of organised crime, lawyers, and capitalist businessmen too).
Normally, a business-man legally minimising taxes isn't a big deal, but for someone with Thunberg's public persona it is clear proof of how hypocritical, egocentric and out-of-touch she is in reality.
Our Green Party normally has two spokespersons, but has been limping along with just one for an extended period after one of them quit in attempt to take the enormous amount of badwill directed at the party with him. Too bad then that Märta Stenevi is your typical AWFL, insufferable and hypocritical as are all Greens: she is publicly for banning private automobiles, banning petrol and diesel, for planned economy and the usual "green commie-fascist" garbage policies such as multikulti and anti-family. Meanwhile, she and her husband lives in one of the whitest and affluent neighbourhoods in Sweden. Her husband runs his own company and they own three fossile-fuel powered cars.
Still, she's not the worst of them. Her colleague Yvonne Ruvaida once held the swedish record for using taxicabs to and from work, since for PMs this is a tax-free perk, the cost paid by the people. This included letting the taxi-cab wait on her the entire workday, meter running. Ruvaida's exuces was: "Taxi-cabs are a form of public transport! Anyone can use them!"
The new spokesperson is infamous for such things as placing playgrounds adjacent to high-traffic throughfares in Stockholm City's business-areas, to get drivers to decrease speed. When asked about the empty playgrounds, which cost tens of millions (Edit: millions, which is bad enough - not billions!) to make since the roads had to be rebuilt too, he replied that they "hadn't managed to sell the idea correctly".
Here in the countryside, Greens aren't reviled - they are openly hated and are starting to become targets of open (so far) verbal confrontations. Not even the old communist party attracts so much hatred as does the Greens.
What is going through their minds? I accept some people are genuine green types so they don't own a car and ride a bike. But what about these people? Do they believe the things they say?
While reading the paper at a café in a nearby town, I came across an article about group protesting "Black Friday" (it's become a thing here too, shops selling off unsold crap from the rest of the year basically).
From the interview it was clear that these post-menopausal late-stage hippie-type looking women believed with ardent fervour that the five of them holding placards in a shopping-mall was absolutely vital and an important event, re: saving the world.
I have a relative who is abeliever. To her, the world is always ending and she lives in constant fear of "the climate disaster".
Doesn't affect her lifestyle or purchasing habits at all.
Normally, I'd make a comparison to religious cults being overly literal, but this goes far beyond that: psychosis is the only term that catches the climate-people's state of mind. An unending self-induced psychotic break which gives them an enhanced sense of elation and joy from revelling in fear.
"But I bought this second-hand, in a Fairtrade, eco-friendly, staffed by female migrants, thriftstore!" is the likely reply.
These kinds of women believe in magic: if you slap the label "ecological" on something, they think it is therefore good.
They will merrily buy "ecological" ginger grown in South America, or "ecological" lamb meat from New Zeeland.
Where Sweden is located relative these areas, or that the "ecological" products travel on the same diesel-powered ships as the "non-ecological" goods simply doesn't register with them.
[It bears the mark of goodness; therefore it is good.
It’s simply performative language, likely stemming from the belief that words are more important than actions. So as long as people publicly state that they are dead worried about the climate, the see no problem in taking multiple trips to Thailand, or whatever.
She is a propaganda tool for big interests. Just a few moments spent on researching how she came to fame clears up a lot. She is an actor. Whether she really believes everything she purports to believe is another question, but it doesn't really matter. She is not a person, she is a product
I note your stance that climate hysteria is at its zenith and has already started to decline. But much of the damage has been done - laws have been passed, money has been spent/squandered, and the social zeitgeist down to the kindergarten level accepts carbon as some sort of pollutant that we can all do without. The momentum on cars for example seems irreversible - the era of the hybrid nanny car has started. Germanys de-industriallization in particular is not reversible.
Right wing politicians have been winning but to what end? Trump was hamstrung by the deep state for his whole term. Meloni was totally toothless. Britain has no right wing, they are universally looney left. Even in Holland in all likelihood Wilders oppoments will form a coalition government rather than let him take power. My native Canada has turned into a disgrace beyond my imagination.
Perhaps it's just being black pulled, I just think much of the damage is too far gone
well, climate politics always required substantial economic damage to fail, and I agree things look grim. they will get grimmer still, which is why I think they're really done.
Will we get that freezing cold winter that knocks some sense into people as they try to pay their exorbitant heating costs and realize it isn’t sustainable?
Poverty swallows from the bottom up, and takes time. Look at San Francisco and how bad things got and still the voting public can't bring themselves to vote for change
It is SO strange! It's easy to draw conclusions about what's gone wrong, and why they've gone wrong, and as a citizen just start supporting something different with different people at the helm. I can't explain the masochism.
People live in their bubbles and tribes. There is 0 connection between people of differing backgrounds. The academics don't mingle with the blue collars, not even a little bit. And it takes some connection to the real and actual economy, to real and actual people working a job to produce or provide a service, to see the world for what it is. But the good part is, once you've seen, you cannot unsee. I've been on this path myself, and it has taken quite a lot for me to really connect and understand.
I cannot fathom how anyone could NOT have predicted the climate policies would destroy wealth, bankrupt nations and kill a whole lot of people. How could it be any different? Do any of them use a calculator?
I agree with much of this, and I am in Britain. So definitely no Right party here. Even moderate pushback on illegal immigration is universally described as far right, as we saw also in Ireland. Absolutely crazy.
Even new conservative upstarts view immigration as a necessity and everyone avoids the publics actual concern. We care much less about GDP than we do about alien peoples who have demonstrated they hate us. Endless discussions about needing immigrants to work in healthcare ignore the millions of our own people unemployed. Literally no one will discuss this. So it looks bleak here too.
I am an immigrant but totally assimilated into my host society. Back then it was just much less prevalent too. To use an off color analogy - immigration and toxicology have a lot in common. The dose makes the poison.
That is exactly my view. Some of the early Indians who came to the UK in the 1940s have long since been absorbed. Our issue now is enclaves of foreigners who reject British culture and they are supported in doing so.
Sikhs are a brilliant example of this; they integrate, the retain their own culture and happily adopt ours. Big on family, hard working and fun. Compare to our friends from Allah...
This is especially true in Britain. There were always pro-British Sikhs, plus we didn't discriminate against them in Northern India like the Hindus did.
Many here as you say have adopted British lifestyles and maintained Sikhism. They are subtle about it as few of the men wear the turban but still maintain the bits that work.
Importantly they come with fewer hangups than the muslims. A Sikh man can stand next to me in a pub and eat a double bacon cheeseburger and wash it down with whisky. The Hindus and Muslims can't do that.
I totally agree with what is summarized in the last sentence of your comment. To support hope: just don't overlook Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia - and if we broaden the topic to other current insane developments, I learned - to my total surprise - Estonia voted against /"said" they will not vote in favour of the WHO pandemic treaty (about to come in spring next year).
NZ has as well, to my astonishment, as I thought Son of Ardern took over from her. I have already written to our main Health minister to note that the WHO no longer has any legitimacy, and that I will ignore any commands to the UK from them.
Unfortunately I‘ve to correct me concerning Estonia: only today I must learn that it was not an official refusal of the WHO pandemic treaty by Estonia but a letter of just 11 MPs from the opposition, phrasing it somehow as a general rejection. Nevertheless, it’ll hopefully contribute positively to a later rejection by many more countries.
It took 70 years, give or take, for the USSR to collpase and they had far more challenges than Europe, so it may take much longer to change this disaster - or our better position may make it easier to affect change in the right direction.
The damage is always too far gone until you've managed to rebuid.
Russia has been, is, and always will be, beyond fucked.
Read John Gray's recently published "The New Leviathan" for the full skinny on this and the death of Western Liberalism. Russia has never known anything but tyranny, and the only Tsar who effected any liberalisation was assassinated.
This argument sounds almost like "it took 70 years for a person to die", that is you start dying from the moment you are born. I think it is more appropriate to think of time that takes for a clearly unwell person to die. For USSR that would be about 20 years, I would say.
It was fully understood and well-known within the Politbüro and the KGB in the 1960s, that the USSR had already lost against US capitalism.
Exactly why takes an essay, but the realisation was there and led to a lot of infighting between reformists and hard-liners, resulting in a hardliner victory with the choice of Leonid Brezjnev as premier.
This led to the KGB establishing front-companies and organisations, formal or informal, all throughout the WEst during the 1970s and 1980s, transferring wealth and resources out of the USSR with the intent of using those funds to subvert the West from within, using our own monetary and capitalist mechanisms - and setting up nice nest-eggs and fall-back positions for the KGB-staff.
But; the USSR was doomed from the start for a very simple reason. The near-total embargo from the West, which came into place long before the Cold War and which was basically american and british capitalists ensuring the USSR couldn't try and compete on any market, ensured that it wouldn't work.
Equally important was the internal corruption, political correctness, infighting, intrigue and so on - plus that total communism simply doesn't work, as Lenin himself had to concede in the inter-war period.
I respect your opinion, I do not agree with it. Much of what you wrote is based on selection bias (hindsight 20/20) plus "question/concept substitution". The latter is when you say "USSR had already lost against US capitalism". Lost in some respect does not mean dying. You would not argue that USSR lost in all respects in 60s, would you? If most of Politburo and KGB had consensus that USSR was dying (if just some had that idea, and noticeable portion not, then it is selection bias on your side), and not just lost from some perspective, then please share the source of it - I have not seen it.
"The near-total embargo from the West, which came into place long before the Cold War" - USSR was buying machinery from USA in the thirties, buying machinery from Germany well into 1941, it could be argued that the Cold War started already in 1945. "Long before the cold war"??? Throughout the cold war USSR was still getting machinery from Japan for example and other countries in the West "orbit". It was having significant volumes of trade with western and non-western countries in raw materials, machinery etc. I also assume that "USSR was doomed from the start for a very simple reason", meaning embargo from the West, would apply to Cuba and North Korea. Are they dying? In the literal sense, not like a child of 5 years who will most definitely die in less than 100 years?
When was the "total communism" or at least de facto pursuing of total communism in USSR? I would argue that even during Stalin years there was no de facto pursuit of total communism, much less after. You would not argue that Brezhnev was after total communism, right? If not, what does this argument have to do with "USSR was dying for 70 years"?
Finally, "doomed ... for a very simple reason ... embargo from the West". Do I perhaps smell a hint of the western exceptionalism in there? :)) Is everyone doomed if it is embargoed by West? Again, Cuba and North Korea come to mind.
Sorry, all your arguments sound like one huge selection bias to me. Similarly, if something truly catastrophic happens to Europe within next X years, I will be able to say that Europe has been dying for at least X + 105 years, having in mind Spengler's "Downfall of the West".
"Similarly, if something truly catastrophic happens to Europe within next X years, I will be able to say that Europe has been dying for at least X + 105 years, having in mind Spengler's "Downfall of the West"."
And you would be right. The Fall of Rome took from when until when? If you understand that question, then you also understand that my initial statement is correct.
I am loath to confirm your assessment, but watching from the USA, what Trudeau did to the truckers during their rally in Ottawa was the work of an unabashed tyrant. For me, democracy in Canada at that moment was patently finished.
Whatever you do, do NOT elect a leader who is a clinical Narcissist. As Trudeau clearly is. His ability to say something in public and then say the opposite a clear marker, as is his extraordinary grandiosity. Ardern the same in NZ. As a Brit, I'd always regarded our Anglo colonies to be bastions of a common sense we had long ago thrown away - but no. Not o mention that he is one of many WEF puppets running the West.
Fuck 'em all, as my wife and I say whenever we click a glass 😉😉
The climate is giving us so many problems ,it has become unbearable .Therefore climate free zones must be established ,to escape from the climate .Bill Gates bought up large tracts of farm land ,that will be made free of any climate or carbon ,or vegetation or life forms .That means building back better .The best part is that no one will be allowed to enter his new climate free world .Would anyone want to .??
At first I wondered whether she had Downs syndrome. My wife (a medic) thinks Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, which would explain a lot. Her parents must be vile, to have done this to her. Yet it is indeed time for her to STFU
I wanted to say that I listened to your interview on the James Howard Kunstler podcast, and I really enjoyed it. Please let us know if you do any more interviews in English anytime.
Marsali - thank you for the link to the Eugyppius interview on the Kunstler podcast. After checking, I found that Kunstler’s podcasts are also available on the Apple app and that he seems to have a history of interviews with interesting people - so I have now signed up to the series.
Excellent. Downloaded to listen to later. I also enjoy that Eugyppius writes such superb English prose - better than most of us! Always a pleasure to read.
Do migrants bring the African climate with them ,when they relocate to Europe ,Therefore climate change .in the direction of unbearable heat in Europe .
always cheering to be reminded that robespierre's head eventually landed in the basket, too. that's what comes of slandering a child bride.
we don't learn, do we? countries just lurch from one hysteria to the next and their peoples can only hope to enjoy a generation of moderate prosperity before the lunatics burst forth again. doesn't matter what you call the countries or their temporary political alliances.
and i understand your feelings about american atlanticism 'n all that, but you can blame all those sophisticated europeans who kept visiting us in our infancy and making us feel ruffianish and uncultured. we could never stop wanting to impress you guys with *something.*
"Finance Minister liberal FDP chair Christian Lindner announced his plans to recover the funds by declaring a new, retroactive state of emergency for all of 2023 on Thursday".
What did I say, just declare a new emergency; problem solved 🤣🤣
The court only becomes active if someone sues. For this a party needs >25 % in the Bundestag, so only possible by the CDU. I suspect that Friedrich Merz himself is surprised at what he has unleashed and might hesitate to sue again. Because - you know - he doesn't seem to have any balls (otherwise he would've started a vote of no confidence)
i have thought about this. i think actually CDU has every reason to sue if the Ampel declare emergency. either they get to break the government, or they can follow the strategy proposed by wegner, kretschmer and the like, of demanding substantial Ampel concessions in return for CDU support for changing constitution. If the Ampel try to avoid the legislative path by declaring an emergency, the CDU have no leverage at all.
There are so many legitimate environmental issues - like wrapping everything in plastic and the "throw-away" culture, and the plastic in the oceans (including masks!) ... but these morons have destroyed the environmental agenda by their ideological focus on nuclear power and windmills. Don Quixote personnified.
Even in the Shire (i.e. Ireland) the changes in Middle Earth are making themselves felt.
Riots rocked Dublin 3 nights ago, an explosion of anger caused by a toxic combination of income inequality and uncontrolled immigration.
Meanwhile, here in Belgium, the ascension to government of the once fringe Vlams Belang following bext year’s elections seems almost a given. South of the border, few believe Macron could hold up against Le Pen in a presidential election if it were held today.
Yes. Although my daughter who is an Irish lawyer explained this has to do with criminal legal procedures in Relation to the timing of the alleged culprit’s being formally charged. Police were keen to avoid any grounds for a mistrial.
I’m guessing the media mostly just reported based on thr police press releases.
Well, Ballot counting people are known as putting a pencil mark subreptitiously on Le Pen ballot to nullify them. Do you really think the French love macronette to the extent they really re-elected that diminutive non-entity? Nope!
Love it whe the left eat their own!! Now if only the morons in charge in my country that are trying to destroy our mining and agriculture and put wind and solar monstrosities with transmission towers across prime agricultural land will just go away!
For the first time in years, one can breathe a bit more freely. I don't think any political movement will be able escape the siren lure of social control systems (CBC + digital ID), so the right will have to be monitored as carefully as the left, BUT at least the catastrophic, self-defeating, suicidal Green Cult seems to be on the way out. That's a start. It's probably not going to get much better, but at least we're taking one step back from the brink of immediate collapse.
It was very nice to learn, BTW, that the Green Party Conference delegates were not as enamoured with celery Schnitzel with vegan ham as they might have believed before the conference...instead, they apparently ordered hundreds of pizzas to be delivered to the conference venue. These, mind you, are the people who want to ban unhealthy food anywhere and everywhere.
Really is a case of the old adage "what goes around comes around"....and the more the excesses, the faster the wheel turns....in a perverse way,the COVID insanity was a boot on the accelerator
The green grift is falling apart quicker than I expected. The demand for EV's in the US is cratering. All the rich people who bought an EV as their 3rd or 4th car have already got one and almost no one else is interested. Factories are being canceled and EV startups are going bankrupt. As the blogger Glenn Reynolds says, "the dogs don't like the food".
I have a friend who owns a Tesla Model S. She visited me yesterday. On her way from Snohomish to Fort Lauderdale.
So that's 3700 miles, or 5900 kilometers. Due to the rather lower duty cycle of an EV, where she basically gets to drive for two hours and sit for one, and also accounting for lower speeds due to snow (which is a whole other issue I'll get to in a minute) as of about 2 hours ago, she'd managed to travel as far in 24 hours as I could have in a petrol automobile in 11. If I add 50% to my time to account for snow, I still show up 8.5 hours earlier, which means I get to stop and actually sleep in a bed, instead of in the front seat of a charging Tesla.
And even if she wanted to stop and sleep in a hotel, she's limited by temperature in certain ways there as well. She did have to do that in Wyoming the other night, because the interstate was closed due to conditions, and when she woke up in the morning and took the car to be charged, it displayed a warning that since it was so cold, it was going to have to spend some time first simply warming up the battery, before it could even start to actually charge.
I've never had to warm up the car before I put gas in it. Yes, the EV people like to point out that most people aren't driving cross country all the time, but when you *want* to do so, you want to be *able* to do so.
Hybrids make some measure of sense. But EVs are fucking retarded.
If you scroll down a bit, you'll see a table for some of the more common EVs, and how much they lose in cold weather. Imagine if your diesel would use 25% more fuel because it's approaching freezing.
EVs were a pipe-dream in the 1920s and the 1970s and they remain a pipe-dream.
There is a Tesla charging station in my town. I swear those guys spend as much time charging as driving. Fun fact, it is in a really boring shopping center, the only thing worth looking at there is a Home Depot and good luck getting half that stuff into a Tesla. See's Candies must be doing a booming business though.
Yeah - it is a shitty product that is 2-3X more expensive than the functional "ICE" vehicles. And beyond that it has nothing to do with the "climate". Like the first green boondoggle, ethanol, it will soon prove to be worse than doing nothing in regards to the "climate"
Why not take a flight from Seattle to Miami and rent a car over there? I made a test drive with a Tesla once and the driving experience was awesome. The car isn't retarded but it's a machine designed for a specific purpose, which is trips < 200 miles. For this it works great. Planes are efficient for long-haul trips. A combination of planes and rentable / autonomous EVs seem to me like a workable solution for most use cases. That doesn't mean they should be subsidized but I can imagine such a model to work for most people most of the times
She had to take her dog with her, and it is of a size that is not conducive to flying with. She will probably also be there for several weeks, as she is visiting her recently widowed mother for the holidays. In general I agree, but not practical in this scenario.
The Beemer crowd will soon tire of the 1 hour charging nonsense (if there's no one in front of you in the queue that is). And not to forget the risk of thermal runaway if the delicate battery gets even just a scratch. Insurers will love that eh?
It would be really very helpful if the E.V. makers also installed solar panels on the roof and hood of the car .I mean panels that also absorb energy from moon shine ,for driving at night
All we are doing is proving the market reigns supreme. With zero subsidies none of it would have happened. We would just have had better ICE cars because they work.
That's one of the things that drives me *so crazy* about these mandates is we had just *finally* gotten *really good* at ICE vehicles. And admittedly, companies are still improving them, but there has been *so much* wasted R&D money on this stupid EV "solution" to a problem that *even if it does actually exist*, won't solve it.
This is the real price of these diktats. My fear is the next generation of engineers will design superb CO2 related devices, all of which will be useless. The opportunity cost of all the stuff they didn't design is not seen.
I get that. What is unknown is the stuff the engineers didn't design to improve life. That is a tragedy. But what do we expect when innumerate activists call the shots? How many failures of socialism do we need to see before we wake up?
I hadn't heard about this, to be honest I've not paid much attention to the AfD symposium in general.
reading this report, I wonder if the concern was about discussions of "genocide" or "never again." even (what could be interpreted as) implicit comparisons to the holocaust are legally actionable and already have been the occasion for various prosecutions/investigations of opponents of the pandemic regime.
Yeadon, though his anti fake pandemic activism has been admirable, really jumped the shark in his insistence that mRNA shots were meant for the purpose of genocide. Eugyppius you have always been a great counterweight to this sort of baseless shrieking. Greed, bureaucracy and idiocy are enough to explain it all.
I have to say I agree, and that's one of the main reasons I appreciate eugyppius. Claims of deliberate genocide just don't make a whole lot of sense to me.
I strongly suspect this is some wires crossed in exactly that vein. Genocide to an English speaker will not automatically invoke WW2. But for a hated party on the way up it makes sense to tread carefully. No point giving the authorities ammunition. They already smear them as far right presumably.
I don't know about Climate Change but I do know that Greta Thunberg is a spoilt-brat-child. Nothing wrong with that....millions of us were similar as teens. But a culture that elevates a brat-child to the status of a serious political player....that is a culture that has seriously lost its moorings
We're seeing something similar here in Sweden, both regarding Greta the Insufferable and our Green Party.
Thunberg has made a big deal of being "poor" and too preoccupied with her save-the-planet endeavours, only to have that image shattered by her as of yet two criminal convictions and the resulting scrutiny of her finances; your earnings and wealth is weighed in the balance by our courts when setting fines you see, and Thunberg claimed to lack funds which made it possible for alt-media to dig and discover that the rather large sums of money she's apparently earned via her activism has been placed in such ways as to minimise any taxes, and to make her seem without income or assets (a tactic common among members of organised crime, lawyers, and capitalist businessmen too).
Normally, a business-man legally minimising taxes isn't a big deal, but for someone with Thunberg's public persona it is clear proof of how hypocritical, egocentric and out-of-touch she is in reality.
Our Green Party normally has two spokespersons, but has been limping along with just one for an extended period after one of them quit in attempt to take the enormous amount of badwill directed at the party with him. Too bad then that Märta Stenevi is your typical AWFL, insufferable and hypocritical as are all Greens: she is publicly for banning private automobiles, banning petrol and diesel, for planned economy and the usual "green commie-fascist" garbage policies such as multikulti and anti-family. Meanwhile, she and her husband lives in one of the whitest and affluent neighbourhoods in Sweden. Her husband runs his own company and they own three fossile-fuel powered cars.
Still, she's not the worst of them. Her colleague Yvonne Ruvaida once held the swedish record for using taxicabs to and from work, since for PMs this is a tax-free perk, the cost paid by the people. This included letting the taxi-cab wait on her the entire workday, meter running. Ruvaida's exuces was: "Taxi-cabs are a form of public transport! Anyone can use them!"
The new spokesperson is infamous for such things as placing playgrounds adjacent to high-traffic throughfares in Stockholm City's business-areas, to get drivers to decrease speed. When asked about the empty playgrounds, which cost tens of millions (Edit: millions, which is bad enough - not billions!) to make since the roads had to be rebuilt too, he replied that they "hadn't managed to sell the idea correctly".
Here in the countryside, Greens aren't reviled - they are openly hated and are starting to become targets of open (so far) verbal confrontations. Not even the old communist party attracts so much hatred as does the Greens.
What is going through their minds? I accept some people are genuine green types so they don't own a car and ride a bike. But what about these people? Do they believe the things they say?
Most are True Believers. An example:
While reading the paper at a café in a nearby town, I came across an article about group protesting "Black Friday" (it's become a thing here too, shops selling off unsold crap from the rest of the year basically).
From the interview it was clear that these post-menopausal late-stage hippie-type looking women believed with ardent fervour that the five of them holding placards in a shopping-mall was absolutely vital and an important event, re: saving the world.
I have a relative who is abeliever. To her, the world is always ending and she lives in constant fear of "the climate disaster".
Doesn't affect her lifestyle or purchasing habits at all.
Normally, I'd make a comparison to religious cults being overly literal, but this goes far beyond that: psychosis is the only term that catches the climate-people's state of mind. An unending self-induced psychotic break which gives them an enhanced sense of elation and joy from revelling in fear.
I think this is true of the foot soldiers but not the politicians. I don't think they are believers. I agree for some it is borderline psychosis.
No arguement.
I take the approach that it isn't really important beyond pure curiosity or when trying to establish a pathology of the phenomenon.
If there's a fire, the important thing is putting it out. Who set it, if anyone, is secondary to that, is my thinking.
Yes true. but I am always curious if people actually believe crazy things.
They believe it as and when needed, and/or correctly prompted, mainly.
If the leader-figure they trust and idolise the most doesn't make too jarring deeds or say too outré things, it doesn't really matter what reality is.
I keep coming back to O'Brien's talks with Smith when Smith is being "healed".
I like to ask them to read the labels inside the synthetic athletic clothing: it's made from petroleum.
"But I bought this second-hand, in a Fairtrade, eco-friendly, staffed by female migrants, thriftstore!" is the likely reply.
These kinds of women believe in magic: if you slap the label "ecological" on something, they think it is therefore good.
They will merrily buy "ecological" ginger grown in South America, or "ecological" lamb meat from New Zeeland.
Where Sweden is located relative these areas, or that the "ecological" products travel on the same diesel-powered ships as the "non-ecological" goods simply doesn't register with them.
[It bears the mark of goodness; therefore it is good.
They are good; therefore what they do is good.]
It - and they - really is/are that simple.
It’s simply performative language, likely stemming from the belief that words are more important than actions. So as long as people publicly state that they are dead worried about the climate, the see no problem in taking multiple trips to Thailand, or whatever.
Yet they get to vote, just like you and I do.
Same as the Politburo with their dachas by the Black Sea.
It's just feudalism. They want to be lords and have peasants. Divine Right of Kings became Divine Right of Commies became Divine Right of Greens.
Yes. It is feudalism. I'm all for it. Especially the public hangings when we catch them.
I like it. If they want to bring back feudalism, we get to bring back torches and pitchforks. It's only fair.
"Greta the Insufferable"
By the way, what ever happened to that "Malala" kid from Afghanistan?
That was certainly a top down operation designed to push a certain propaganda angle, and in the meantime enrich certain individuals.
When you've wiped, you flush the paper.
That's how the rich and powerful see their underlings.
She married a cricketer I think. Royalty in Pakistan.
Sounds about right.
Her case was always clearly one of propaganda coordinated by "elites" to promote a specific agenda.
Meanwhile, look at the situation of the typical Afghan today.
She is a propaganda tool for big interests. Just a few moments spent on researching how she came to fame clears up a lot. She is an actor. Whether she really believes everything she purports to believe is another question, but it doesn't really matter. She is not a person, she is a product
I note your stance that climate hysteria is at its zenith and has already started to decline. But much of the damage has been done - laws have been passed, money has been spent/squandered, and the social zeitgeist down to the kindergarten level accepts carbon as some sort of pollutant that we can all do without. The momentum on cars for example seems irreversible - the era of the hybrid nanny car has started. Germanys de-industriallization in particular is not reversible.
Right wing politicians have been winning but to what end? Trump was hamstrung by the deep state for his whole term. Meloni was totally toothless. Britain has no right wing, they are universally looney left. Even in Holland in all likelihood Wilders oppoments will form a coalition government rather than let him take power. My native Canada has turned into a disgrace beyond my imagination.
Perhaps it's just being black pulled, I just think much of the damage is too far gone
well, climate politics always required substantial economic damage to fail, and I agree things look grim. they will get grimmer still, which is why I think they're really done.
Will we get that freezing cold winter that knocks some sense into people as they try to pay their exorbitant heating costs and realize it isn’t sustainable?
Poverty swallows from the bottom up, and takes time. Look at San Francisco and how bad things got and still the voting public can't bring themselves to vote for change
It is SO strange! It's easy to draw conclusions about what's gone wrong, and why they've gone wrong, and as a citizen just start supporting something different with different people at the helm. I can't explain the masochism.
People live in their bubbles and tribes. There is 0 connection between people of differing backgrounds. The academics don't mingle with the blue collars, not even a little bit. And it takes some connection to the real and actual economy, to real and actual people working a job to produce or provide a service, to see the world for what it is. But the good part is, once you've seen, you cannot unsee. I've been on this path myself, and it has taken quite a lot for me to really connect and understand.
I cannot fathom how anyone could NOT have predicted the climate policies would destroy wealth, bankrupt nations and kill a whole lot of people. How could it be any different? Do any of them use a calculator?
I think it is the other way around. They have been needed to create substantial economic damage. This is by design.
I agree with much of this, and I am in Britain. So definitely no Right party here. Even moderate pushback on illegal immigration is universally described as far right, as we saw also in Ireland. Absolutely crazy.
Even new conservative upstarts view immigration as a necessity and everyone avoids the publics actual concern. We care much less about GDP than we do about alien peoples who have demonstrated they hate us. Endless discussions about needing immigrants to work in healthcare ignore the millions of our own people unemployed. Literally no one will discuss this. So it looks bleak here too.
That said, things feel like they are changing.
I am an immigrant but totally assimilated into my host society. Back then it was just much less prevalent too. To use an off color analogy - immigration and toxicology have a lot in common. The dose makes the poison.
That is exactly my view. Some of the early Indians who came to the UK in the 1940s have long since been absorbed. Our issue now is enclaves of foreigners who reject British culture and they are supported in doing so.
Plus we are full. Millions unemployed.
Sikhs are a brilliant example of this; they integrate, the retain their own culture and happily adopt ours. Big on family, hard working and fun. Compare to our friends from Allah...
This is especially true in Britain. There were always pro-British Sikhs, plus we didn't discriminate against them in Northern India like the Hindus did.
Many here as you say have adopted British lifestyles and maintained Sikhism. They are subtle about it as few of the men wear the turban but still maintain the bits that work.
Importantly they come with fewer hangups than the muslims. A Sikh man can stand next to me in a pub and eat a double bacon cheeseburger and wash it down with whisky. The Hindus and Muslims can't do that.
I totally agree with what is summarized in the last sentence of your comment. To support hope: just don't overlook Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia - and if we broaden the topic to other current insane developments, I learned - to my total surprise - Estonia voted against /"said" they will not vote in favour of the WHO pandemic treaty (about to come in spring next year).
NZ has as well, to my astonishment, as I thought Son of Ardern took over from her. I have already written to our main Health minister to note that the WHO no longer has any legitimacy, and that I will ignore any commands to the UK from them.
Unfortunately I‘ve to correct me concerning Estonia: only today I must learn that it was not an official refusal of the WHO pandemic treaty by Estonia but a letter of just 11 MPs from the opposition, phrasing it somehow as a general rejection. Nevertheless, it’ll hopefully contribute positively to a later rejection by many more countries.
It took 70 years, give or take, for the USSR to collpase and they had far more challenges than Europe, so it may take much longer to change this disaster - or our better position may make it easier to affect change in the right direction.
The damage is always too far gone until you've managed to rebuid.
This. Russia tool 2 decades to recover and still has a ways to go. And if they had anyone but Putin they would be in worse shape
Russia has been, is, and always will be, beyond fucked.
Read John Gray's recently published "The New Leviathan" for the full skinny on this and the death of Western Liberalism. Russia has never known anything but tyranny, and the only Tsar who effected any liberalisation was assassinated.
I‘d suggest you‘d consider asking Russians if they‘d agree to your judgement. From the contacts I have I‘m really not so sure…
Russia at no point in its history has enjoyed mass prosperity. Europe and the Anglosphere don't even have that excuse for their current parlous state.
This argument sounds almost like "it took 70 years for a person to die", that is you start dying from the moment you are born. I think it is more appropriate to think of time that takes for a clearly unwell person to die. For USSR that would be about 20 years, I would say.
It was fully understood and well-known within the Politbüro and the KGB in the 1960s, that the USSR had already lost against US capitalism.
Exactly why takes an essay, but the realisation was there and led to a lot of infighting between reformists and hard-liners, resulting in a hardliner victory with the choice of Leonid Brezjnev as premier.
This led to the KGB establishing front-companies and organisations, formal or informal, all throughout the WEst during the 1970s and 1980s, transferring wealth and resources out of the USSR with the intent of using those funds to subvert the West from within, using our own monetary and capitalist mechanisms - and setting up nice nest-eggs and fall-back positions for the KGB-staff.
But; the USSR was doomed from the start for a very simple reason. The near-total embargo from the West, which came into place long before the Cold War and which was basically american and british capitalists ensuring the USSR couldn't try and compete on any market, ensured that it wouldn't work.
Equally important was the internal corruption, political correctness, infighting, intrigue and so on - plus that total communism simply doesn't work, as Lenin himself had to concede in the inter-war period.
Therefore the "it took it seventy years to die".
I respect your opinion, I do not agree with it. Much of what you wrote is based on selection bias (hindsight 20/20) plus "question/concept substitution". The latter is when you say "USSR had already lost against US capitalism". Lost in some respect does not mean dying. You would not argue that USSR lost in all respects in 60s, would you? If most of Politburo and KGB had consensus that USSR was dying (if just some had that idea, and noticeable portion not, then it is selection bias on your side), and not just lost from some perspective, then please share the source of it - I have not seen it.
"The near-total embargo from the West, which came into place long before the Cold War" - USSR was buying machinery from USA in the thirties, buying machinery from Germany well into 1941, it could be argued that the Cold War started already in 1945. "Long before the cold war"??? Throughout the cold war USSR was still getting machinery from Japan for example and other countries in the West "orbit". It was having significant volumes of trade with western and non-western countries in raw materials, machinery etc. I also assume that "USSR was doomed from the start for a very simple reason", meaning embargo from the West, would apply to Cuba and North Korea. Are they dying? In the literal sense, not like a child of 5 years who will most definitely die in less than 100 years?
When was the "total communism" or at least de facto pursuing of total communism in USSR? I would argue that even during Stalin years there was no de facto pursuit of total communism, much less after. You would not argue that Brezhnev was after total communism, right? If not, what does this argument have to do with "USSR was dying for 70 years"?
Finally, "doomed ... for a very simple reason ... embargo from the West". Do I perhaps smell a hint of the western exceptionalism in there? :)) Is everyone doomed if it is embargoed by West? Again, Cuba and North Korea come to mind.
Sorry, all your arguments sound like one huge selection bias to me. Similarly, if something truly catastrophic happens to Europe within next X years, I will be able to say that Europe has been dying for at least X + 105 years, having in mind Spengler's "Downfall of the West".
"Similarly, if something truly catastrophic happens to Europe within next X years, I will be able to say that Europe has been dying for at least X + 105 years, having in mind Spengler's "Downfall of the West"."
And you would be right. The Fall of Rome took from when until when? If you understand that question, then you also understand that my initial statement is correct.
"My native Canada has turned into a disgrace."
I am loath to confirm your assessment, but watching from the USA, what Trudeau did to the truckers during their rally in Ottawa was the work of an unabashed tyrant. For me, democracy in Canada at that moment was patently finished.
Whatever you do, do NOT elect a leader who is a clinical Narcissist. As Trudeau clearly is. His ability to say something in public and then say the opposite a clear marker, as is his extraordinary grandiosity. Ardern the same in NZ. As a Brit, I'd always regarded our Anglo colonies to be bastions of a common sense we had long ago thrown away - but no. Not o mention that he is one of many WEF puppets running the West.
Fuck 'em all, as my wife and I say whenever we click a glass 😉😉
"As a Brit, I'd always regarded our Anglo colonies to be bastions of a common sense."
Me, too.
And so as an American, it was a gut punch to watch Australia, New Zealand and Canada implode into authoritarianism during the virus hysteria crisis.
The world will never look the same to me.
"The momentum on cars for example seems irreversible."
Not here in the USA, I don't think.
Whatever the trend, I still love my F-150 :)
'they will soon “look for new challenges”'
That sounds vaguely alarming.
Difficult to know what might be beyond climate meltdowns. Climate explosions?
The climate is giving us so many problems ,it has become unbearable .Therefore climate free zones must be established ,to escape from the climate .Bill Gates bought up large tracts of farm land ,that will be made free of any climate or carbon ,or vegetation or life forms .That means building back better .The best part is that no one will be allowed to enter his new climate free world .Would anyone want to .??
Indeed. But what has happened to that grand old American tradition of assassination?
The left always eats its own. Gretas green guards are the new Mao’s red guards and brown shirt youth: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/sunrise-movement-maos-red-greta-green-guards
My first reaction when she appeared, screaming at all of us - "The Red Guard", especially the famous photo here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/mao-little-general-horror-cultural-revolution
At first I wondered whether she had Downs syndrome. My wife (a medic) thinks Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, which would explain a lot. Her parents must be vile, to have done this to her. Yet it is indeed time for her to STFU
How dare you kill the planet ,with Greta on it .
And should be responded to as such.
Nice similarities depicted in your article!
Good news on the shifting winds in politics.
I wanted to say that I listened to your interview on the James Howard Kunstler podcast, and I really enjoyed it. Please let us know if you do any more interviews in English anytime.
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-386-chatting-with-the-substack-blogger-eugyppius/
Eugyppius should do more interviews!!
Marsali - thank you for the link to the Eugyppius interview on the Kunstler podcast. After checking, I found that Kunstler’s podcasts are also available on the Apple app and that he seems to have a history of interviews with interesting people - so I have now signed up to the series.
Excellent. Downloaded to listen to later. I also enjoy that Eugyppius writes such superb English prose - better than most of us! Always a pleasure to read.
The cow fart brigade in disarray?
Pass the BBQ.
Do migrants bring the African climate with them ,when they relocate to Europe ,Therefore climate change .in the direction of unbearable heat in Europe .
If you enjoy the climate brought over by migrants from Africa, that would be "climate appropriation"! A big no-no :)
always cheering to be reminded that robespierre's head eventually landed in the basket, too. that's what comes of slandering a child bride.
we don't learn, do we? countries just lurch from one hysteria to the next and their peoples can only hope to enjoy a generation of moderate prosperity before the lunatics burst forth again. doesn't matter what you call the countries or their temporary political alliances.
and i understand your feelings about american atlanticism 'n all that, but you can blame all those sophisticated europeans who kept visiting us in our infancy and making us feel ruffianish and uncultured. we could never stop wanting to impress you guys with *something.*
"Finance Minister liberal FDP chair Christian Lindner announced his plans to recover the funds by declaring a new, retroactive state of emergency for all of 2023 on Thursday".
What did I say, just declare a new emergency; problem solved 🤣🤣
we'll see if the courts will allow it. their chances don't look great.
The court only becomes active if someone sues. For this a party needs >25 % in the Bundestag, so only possible by the CDU. I suspect that Friedrich Merz himself is surprised at what he has unleashed and might hesitate to sue again. Because - you know - he doesn't seem to have any balls (otherwise he would've started a vote of no confidence)
i have thought about this. i think actually CDU has every reason to sue if the Ampel declare emergency. either they get to break the government, or they can follow the strategy proposed by wegner, kretschmer and the like, of demanding substantial Ampel concessions in return for CDU support for changing constitution. If the Ampel try to avoid the legislative path by declaring an emergency, the CDU have no leverage at all.
but, you are right that Merz is unreliable.
'Declared emergencies' are the shiny new hammer governments have discovered to give them free rein.
Today's "Enabling Act" for autocratic maniacs
I had to read Neubauer's word salad "response" 3 times, thinking I could re-phrase it in a truthful manner...
And in the next paragraph, you did just that!
Thank you.
translating Neubauer is always a serious challenge because there's so little substance to everything she says.
It's the norm for technocrats now. They can speak no other way.
There are so many legitimate environmental issues - like wrapping everything in plastic and the "throw-away" culture, and the plastic in the oceans (including masks!) ... but these morons have destroyed the environmental agenda by their ideological focus on nuclear power and windmills. Don Quixote personnified.
I see this the same way.
Even in the Shire (i.e. Ireland) the changes in Middle Earth are making themselves felt.
Riots rocked Dublin 3 nights ago, an explosion of anger caused by a toxic combination of income inequality and uncontrolled immigration.
Meanwhile, here in Belgium, the ascension to government of the once fringe Vlams Belang following bext year’s elections seems almost a given. South of the border, few believe Macron could hold up against Le Pen in a presidential election if it were held today.
Over here in England it was 48 hours before any media outlets printed that the stabber was a Algerian immigrant.
Yes. Although my daughter who is an Irish lawyer explained this has to do with criminal legal procedures in Relation to the timing of the alleged culprit’s being formally charged. Police were keen to avoid any grounds for a mistrial.
I’m guessing the media mostly just reported based on thr police press releases.
Well, Ballot counting people are known as putting a pencil mark subreptitiously on Le Pen ballot to nullify them. Do you really think the French love macronette to the extent they really re-elected that diminutive non-entity? Nope!
Love it whe the left eat their own!! Now if only the morons in charge in my country that are trying to destroy our mining and agriculture and put wind and solar monstrosities with transmission towers across prime agricultural land will just go away!
For the first time in years, one can breathe a bit more freely. I don't think any political movement will be able escape the siren lure of social control systems (CBC + digital ID), so the right will have to be monitored as carefully as the left, BUT at least the catastrophic, self-defeating, suicidal Green Cult seems to be on the way out. That's a start. It's probably not going to get much better, but at least we're taking one step back from the brink of immediate collapse.
It was very nice to learn, BTW, that the Green Party Conference delegates were not as enamoured with celery Schnitzel with vegan ham as they might have believed before the conference...instead, they apparently ordered hundreds of pizzas to be delivered to the conference venue. These, mind you, are the people who want to ban unhealthy food anywhere and everywhere.
Yes, the champagne eco-radicals don't really care for their own medicine...
Really is a case of the old adage "what goes around comes around"....and the more the excesses, the faster the wheel turns....in a perverse way,the COVID insanity was a boot on the accelerator
The green grift is falling apart quicker than I expected. The demand for EV's in the US is cratering. All the rich people who bought an EV as their 3rd or 4th car have already got one and almost no one else is interested. Factories are being canceled and EV startups are going bankrupt. As the blogger Glenn Reynolds says, "the dogs don't like the food".
It's because they're not all that great.
I have a friend who owns a Tesla Model S. She visited me yesterday. On her way from Snohomish to Fort Lauderdale.
So that's 3700 miles, or 5900 kilometers. Due to the rather lower duty cycle of an EV, where she basically gets to drive for two hours and sit for one, and also accounting for lower speeds due to snow (which is a whole other issue I'll get to in a minute) as of about 2 hours ago, she'd managed to travel as far in 24 hours as I could have in a petrol automobile in 11. If I add 50% to my time to account for snow, I still show up 8.5 hours earlier, which means I get to stop and actually sleep in a bed, instead of in the front seat of a charging Tesla.
And even if she wanted to stop and sleep in a hotel, she's limited by temperature in certain ways there as well. She did have to do that in Wyoming the other night, because the interstate was closed due to conditions, and when she woke up in the morning and took the car to be charged, it displayed a warning that since it was so cold, it was going to have to spend some time first simply warming up the battery, before it could even start to actually charge.
I've never had to warm up the car before I put gas in it. Yes, the EV people like to point out that most people aren't driving cross country all the time, but when you *want* to do so, you want to be *able* to do so.
Hybrids make some measure of sense. But EVs are fucking retarded.
Have you seen this test?
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss
If you scroll down a bit, you'll see a table for some of the more common EVs, and how much they lose in cold weather. Imagine if your diesel would use 25% more fuel because it's approaching freezing.
EVs were a pipe-dream in the 1920s and the 1970s and they remain a pipe-dream.
And a toy for the "more money than wisdom"-crowd.
There is a Tesla charging station in my town. I swear those guys spend as much time charging as driving. Fun fact, it is in a really boring shopping center, the only thing worth looking at there is a Home Depot and good luck getting half that stuff into a Tesla. See's Candies must be doing a booming business though.
Yeah - it is a shitty product that is 2-3X more expensive than the functional "ICE" vehicles. And beyond that it has nothing to do with the "climate". Like the first green boondoggle, ethanol, it will soon prove to be worse than doing nothing in regards to the "climate"
I remember when public transport in the city I lived in here in Sweden in the early 1990s tried ethanol-powered buses.
They burned. They over-heated from normal use.
Then they tried gas-powered buses. They burn easily too.
Now the fad is for EV-buses...
After the second world war in Germany .all private motor vehicles ,cars and trucks where .run on wood gas .
The climate is our enemy ,even more so than the mighty Covid .
Why not take a flight from Seattle to Miami and rent a car over there? I made a test drive with a Tesla once and the driving experience was awesome. The car isn't retarded but it's a machine designed for a specific purpose, which is trips < 200 miles. For this it works great. Planes are efficient for long-haul trips. A combination of planes and rentable / autonomous EVs seem to me like a workable solution for most use cases. That doesn't mean they should be subsidized but I can imagine such a model to work for most people most of the times
She had to take her dog with her, and it is of a size that is not conducive to flying with. She will probably also be there for several weeks, as she is visiting her recently widowed mother for the holidays. In general I agree, but not practical in this scenario.
The Beemer crowd will soon tire of the 1 hour charging nonsense (if there's no one in front of you in the queue that is). And not to forget the risk of thermal runaway if the delicate battery gets even just a scratch. Insurers will love that eh?
It would be really very helpful if the E.V. makers also installed solar panels on the roof and hood of the car .I mean panels that also absorb energy from moon shine ,for driving at night
All we are doing is proving the market reigns supreme. With zero subsidies none of it would have happened. We would just have had better ICE cars because they work.
That's one of the things that drives me *so crazy* about these mandates is we had just *finally* gotten *really good* at ICE vehicles. And admittedly, companies are still improving them, but there has been *so much* wasted R&D money on this stupid EV "solution" to a problem that *even if it does actually exist*, won't solve it.
Aaaaaaargh.
This is the real price of these diktats. My fear is the next generation of engineers will design superb CO2 related devices, all of which will be useless. The opportunity cost of all the stuff they didn't design is not seen.
"The opportunity cost of all the stuff they didn't design is not seen."
But it's known. Colossal sums of scarce capital have been flushed down the "green" toilet.
I get that. What is unknown is the stuff the engineers didn't design to improve life. That is a tragedy. But what do we expect when innumerate activists call the shots? How many failures of socialism do we need to see before we wake up?
Eugy: do you have any thoughts on the scrubbing of Dr. Yeadon’s AfD speech? What’s going on there?
Here's a little information about that, including a response by Dr. Yeadon. It would be interesting to get eugy's take on it. https://neveragainisnowglobal.substack.com/p/why-does-german-opposition-censor
I hadn't heard about this, to be honest I've not paid much attention to the AfD symposium in general.
reading this report, I wonder if the concern was about discussions of "genocide" or "never again." even (what could be interpreted as) implicit comparisons to the holocaust are legally actionable and already have been the occasion for various prosecutions/investigations of opponents of the pandemic regime.
Yeadon, though his anti fake pandemic activism has been admirable, really jumped the shark in his insistence that mRNA shots were meant for the purpose of genocide. Eugyppius you have always been a great counterweight to this sort of baseless shrieking. Greed, bureaucracy and idiocy are enough to explain it all.
I have to say I agree, and that's one of the main reasons I appreciate eugyppius. Claims of deliberate genocide just don't make a whole lot of sense to me.
I strongly suspect this is some wires crossed in exactly that vein. Genocide to an English speaker will not automatically invoke WW2. But for a hated party on the way up it makes sense to tread carefully. No point giving the authorities ammunition. They already smear them as far right presumably.
I don't know about Climate Change but I do know that Greta Thunberg is a spoilt-brat-child. Nothing wrong with that....millions of us were similar as teens. But a culture that elevates a brat-child to the status of a serious political player....that is a culture that has seriously lost its moorings