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By AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION JUNE 19, 2024

Thousands of satellites have been deployed into “megaconstellations” to fulfill the growing need for worldwide internet services, with many more planned for launch soon. However, these compact satellites have a brief operational life and are known to emit pollutants that can harm the ozone layer when they disintegrate upon reentry. A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters has, for the first time, quantified the extent of this pollution. Credit: SpaceX/public domain

When internet-providing satellites — now being launched by the thousands — reach the end of their service life, the remnants from their incineration in Earth’s atmosphere will initiate chemical reactions that deplete stratospheric ozone.

When outdated satellites re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate, they release small aluminum oxide particles that erode the Earth’s ozone layer. A recent study reveals that the presence of these particles has surged eightfold from 2016 to 2022 and is expected to keep rising with the growing number of satellites in low-Earth orbit.

The 1987 Montreal Protocol successfully regulated ozone-damaging CFCs to protect the ozone layer, shrinking the ozone hole over Antarctica with recovery expected in the next fifty years. However, the unexpected increase in aluminum oxides could interrupt the progress made in ozone recovery in the coming decades.

Of the 8,100 objects in low Earth orbit, 6,000 are Starlink satellites launched in the last few years. Demand for global internet coverage is driving a rapid ramp-up of launches of small communication satellite swarms…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Most Dangerous Assumption: Mining the Future to Spend More Today

June 20, 2024

A Most Dangerous Assumption: Mining the Future to Spend More Today

What the cheerleaders are actually claiming is the process of adding zeroes to “money” is limitless, but there are limits on the utility of devaluing currency, too.

How prosperous would the world be if we hadn’t collectively borrowed and spent $315 trillion—-333% of global GDP? We all know the answer–not very prosperous at all, for production, consumption and profits would all be mere fractions of their current totals if we could not borrow money and could only spend cash on hand. Global Debt Hit $315 Trillion In Q1 2024.

All this money that’s been spent/invested has effectively been mined / extracted from future resources, labor and capital. The basic idea is that the interest that must be paid on this debt will be paid out of earnings generated by the productive use of resources, labor and capital in the future. Once the debt matures and the principle must be returned to the lender / bond purchaser, this principle must also be mined / extracted from assets available in the future.

Mining / extraction is the appropriate analogy because nothing is unlimited in the real world. Imagination–yes, it’s unlimited. Denial and delusion: yes, both are limitless. But tangible resources that can be recovered at costs the economy can bear, productive labor and capital are not limitless. If we mine the future too intensively, there won’t be enough left in the future to spend/invest at the level we enjoy today.

The fundamental assumption behind mining the future is that the pool of resources, labor and capital will continue expanding forever, effortlessly funding the interest and principle due on today’s borrowing and leaving more than enough to consume and invest in the future.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Far Will You Go to Survive?

June 19, 2024

How Far Will You Go to Survive?

Cannibalism, infanticide, pet slaughter

Before I begin, let me apologize. This article is morbid. But it covers something that will probably happen in the future. It’s best to consider the subject now while still of sound mind.

The climate crisis is ultimately a food crisis. Unpredictable and changing weather patterns – compounded by resource shortages – threaten our ability to grow enough food to feed 8+ billion people.

The food crisis has already started. A visit to the grocery store reveals the increasing threat to food security. On a hotter planet, droughts worsen and floods persist increasing the probability of a breadbasket failure.

What happens to humans when food availability declines by 20, 50, 80%? The answer varies, but inevitably it all comes down to desperation, cognitive breakdown and violence.

Today these are words on your computer – ambiguous, nebulous. But what they really mean is unimaginable.

Side Rant: No, we can’t simply move farms to more ‘favorable’ locations. The food system depends on complex infrastructure that converts fossil fuels into the calories on your plate. This system evolved over generations, and would require a similar amount of time to fundamentally shift. Moreover, farming today already exists on the most arable land. What’s left is sub-par. Feeding today’s population depends on the unlikely combination of predictable weather, prime land and petrochemicals. Our population would have never reached today’s level without this lucky combination.

Some also argue that food supply isn’t at risk because food production has grown remarkably over the past century, primarily because we’ve become better at converting fossil fuels into calories. This argument suffers from normalcy bias. In reality, the world only surpassed 1.5 degrees above benchmark in 2023. We are just beginning to see the effects of our changing climate. Disasters are anticipated in the future, not the past.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Economic Collapse is Stalking us Like Death

June 19, 2024

Economic Collapse is Stalking us Like Death

The exceptional degree to which the Fed has trapped itself (and all of us) in an economic death spiral is becoming evident everywhere now.

a black and white photo of a tree in a cemetery — Photo by Rob Martin on Unsplash

My longtime prediction that the Fed will not be able to kill inflation without destroying the economy is showing itself true in articles about hand-wringing from multiple directions today. The short of it is that the Fed either wins inflation but drives us deep into recession, or it rushes to bail out a collapsing economy but lights inflation fully back on fire again. Either route is bringing the collapse of the Everything Bubble that the Fed and multiple federal administrations created.

Let’s look at the concerns that are emerging from all over the financial realm in today’s news headlines to see what many are sensing and what the most reliable economic indicator is now screaming like a siren.

Most reliable recession timer redlines

Let’s begin with the “creator” of the very accurate “Sahm Rule, which says that, whenever the unemployment level rises 0.5% from its one-year low, we are plunging into recession, regardless of what low level of unemployment we start from. This indicator has never been wrong as a timer, and we are right there! However, we already also dealing with very broken labor indicators. So, maybe we are well past a 0.5% rise or maybe still a touch under. Who can know when even Jerome Powell has said the government’s labor numbers are clearly wrong and when CNBC took the rare step of saying they looked “cooked,” though it’s not clear that Powell knows by how much or in what direction? Just clearly they don’t add up, but that has been my major warning of peril for a couple of years now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is a New Cuban Missile Crisis Brewing Over Ukraine? Dangers of Nuclear War. John J. Mearsheimer

June 19, 2024

Is a New Cuban Missile Crisis Brewing Over Ukraine? Dangers of Nuclear War. John J. Mearsheimer

Will the U.S. be involved with negotiating with the Russians to bring peace to Ukraine, as did Kennedy in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis?

On June 12, three Russian ships and a nuclear-powered submarine arrived in Havana, Cuba. Having crossed the Atlantic, the ships performed maneuvers designed to enhance military capability, and have remained in Cuba through June 17.

Recently, President Vladimir Putin made a threat to supply unspecified countries with weapons capable of striking Kiev’s Western allies.

The Kazan nuclear-powered submarine is capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles, which have a range of up to 2,500 kilometers and can be equipped with nuclear warheads. Along for the ride are the Frigate Admiral Gorshkov, which is carrying new hypersonic Zircon missiles that are nuclear-capable, the Akademik Pashin refueling tanker, and Nikolay Chiker tugboat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has portrayed Zircon as a potent weapon capable of penetrating any existing antimissile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000km (more than 620 miles).
While the visit to Cuba is not seen as a military threat to the U.S., and none of the vessels carry a nuclear war-head, it has brought back memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis involving the U.S. and Russia in Cuba.

Cuba is Russia’s most important partner in the Western Hemisphere from a geopolitical point of view, and both are critical of the U.S. sanctions imposed on each other, and the enlargement of NATO. Havana also backed Russia’s right to “self-defense” against NATO following its 2022 military operation in Ukraine.

In 1959, an uprising called the “26th of July Movement” led to the communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Approach State Singularity

June 19, 2024

We Approach State Singularity

Many citizens of the West believe that they live in free societies, or something close. But as time goes on, public authorities increasingly insist on having a say in everything.

People cannot build things on their own land without permits. They cannot run businesses without approvals and inspections. They cannot give advice without professional designations. They cannot educate their children outside of state-mandated curricula. They cannot hire employees without triggering a myriad of workplace and tax requirements. They cannot produce and sell milk, cheese, or eggs without a license. They cannot earn money, spend money, or hold property without being taxed, and then taxed again.

Jeffrey Tucker recently described three layers of omnipotent managerial technocracy.

The deep state, he suggested, consists of powerful and secretive central government agencies in the security, intelligence, law enforcement, and financial sectors.

The middle state is a myriad of ubiquitous administrative bodies – agencies, regulators, commissions, departments, municipalities, and many more – run by a permanent bureaucracy.

The shallow state is a plethora of consumer-facing private or semi-private corporations, including banks, Big Media, and huge commercial retail companies, which governments support, protect, subsidize, and pervert. The three layers work together.

For instance, in the financial sector, as Tucker illustrates, the deep state’s Federal Reserve pulls the powerful strings, the middle state’s financial and monetary regulators enforce myriad rules and policies, and the shallow state’s “private” titans like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs dominate commercial activity. It’s a system, Tucker writes, “designed to be impenetrable, permanent, and ever more invasive.”

We are approaching state singularity: the moment when state and society become indistinguishable.

In physics, a “singularity” is a single point in space-time. Inside black holes, gravity crushes volume to zero and mass density is infinite. In computer science, “technological singularity” is unitary artificial superintelligence. At the singularity, everything becomes one thing. Data points converge. Normal laws do not apply.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Up to Half a Million NATO Soldiers Waiting to Enter Ukraine. “Offensive Oriented”, Preparing for “A Large Confrontation”.

June 19, 2024

Up to Half a Million NATO Soldiers Waiting to Enter Ukraine. “Offensive Oriented”, Preparing for “A Large Confrontation”.

When Russia launched its special military operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022, it became the active part of the Kremlin’s strategic counteroffensive against crawling NATO aggression.

At the time, President Vladimir Putin made it clear that anyone foolish enough to get directly involved would be met with consequences they’ve never experienced in their entire history. And indeed, nobody dared to get into a direct confrontation with Moscow. This forced the political West to find workarounds in order to provide indirect support for its favorite Neo-Nazi puppets. However, what started out with batches of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) ended up with heavy armor and even nuclear-capable fighter jets. In other words, NATO keeps probing Russia, testing its patience and willingness not to escalate the already highly volatile situation.

And yet, in recent months, the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel has become more brazen than ever before. Its advanced ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) systems are being actively used for target acquisition and guidance of Western weapons delivered to the Kiev regime forces.

Luckily, through the use of its advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems and world-class electronic warfare (EW), Russia is able to negate most of the advantages that the Neo-Nazi junta is getting in this way.

All this is making NATO leaders quite nervous, as they believe that Russia’s victory would have disastrous consequences for the collective West’s geopolitical standing. This is going so far that the mainstream propaganda machine is now openly advocating for NATO and Neo-Nazi junta-sponsored terrorist attacks across Russia (public schools included).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Music Just Stopped: Japan Banking Giant Norinchukin To Liquidate $63 Billion In Treasuries & European Bonds To Plug Massive Unrealized Losses

June 19, 2024

The Music Just Stopped: Japan Banking Giant Norinchukin To Liquidate $63 Billion In Treasuries & European Bonds To Plug Massive Unrealized Losses

Last October, when the wounds from the March 2023 bank failures – which surpassed the global financial crisis in total assets and which sparked the latest Fed intervention, setting the market’s nadir over the past 16 months – were still fresh, we made a non-consensus prediction: we said that since the Fed has once again backstopped the US financial system, “the next bank failure will be in Japan.”

This prediction only got warmer two months later when, inexplicably, Japan’s Norinchukin bank, best known as Japan’s CLO whale, was quietly added to the list of counterparties for the Fed’s Standing Repo Facility, a/k/a the Fed’s foreign bank bailout slush fund.

But if that was the first, and still distant, sign that something was very wrong at one of Japan’s biggest banks (Norinchukin is Japan’s 5th largest bank with $840 billion in assets) today the proverbial canary stepped on a neutron bomb inside the Japanese coalmine, because according to Nikkei, Norinchukin Bank “will sell more than 10 trillion yen ($63 billion) of its holdings of U.S. and European government bonds during the year ending March 2025 as it aims to stem its losses from bets on low-yield foreign bonds, a main cause of its deteriorating balance sheet, and lower the risks associated with holding foreign government bonds.”

See, what’s happened in Japan is not that different from what is happening in the US, where as the FDIC keeps reminding us quarter after quarter, US banks are still sitting on over half a trillion dollars in unrealized losses, as a result of the huge jump in interest rates which has blown up the banks’ long-duration fixed income holdings, sending them trading far below par and forcing banks (and the Fed, see BTFP) to come up with creative ways of shoving these massive losses under the rug.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

War On Nation’s Food Supply?: Idaho Restricts Water To 500,000 Acres Of Farmland

June 18, 2024

War On Nation’s Food Supply?: Idaho Restricts Water To 500,000 Acres Of Farmland

In late May, Idaho Department of Water Resources Director Mathew Weaver issued a curtailment order requiring 6,400 junior groundwater rights holders who pump off the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer to shut off their spigots.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little issued a statement following the order on May 30, “Water curtailment is never desired, but the director must follow Idaho law and the Constitution in issuing this order.”

Brian Murdock, an East Idaho farmer, said the water curtailment affects 500,000 acres, which equates to roughly 781 square miles of farmland.

“Well, as you said, the state of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Water Resources has issued this curtailment of 500,000 acres. And to help put that in perspective, that’s basically 781 square miles of farm ground that is being taken out of production,” Murdock told the hosts of Fox News.

The grain and potato farmer continued, “And, of course, the worst problem is this is happening during a very plentiful water year. We have the reservoirs [that] are completely full, and when I mean full, they’re dang near breaking. The rivers are running as high as they possibly can. Just trying to keep those dams from breaking.”

In eastern Idaho, groundwater users with junior water rights breached the 2016 agreement in 2021 and 2022. Currently, Gov. Little, the lieutenant governor, the Director of Water Resources, and representatives from groundwater and surface water user groups are discussing a new deal. The plan is to strike a new agreement before the curtailment dries up the farmland.

Murdock told co-hosts Dagen McDowell and Sean Duffy that his family’s century-old farm faces a $3 million loss due to the state-issued order.

“This is the largest curtailment in the history of the United States as far as farm ground,” Murdock said in a video posted on X.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Thing About AI

June 18, 2024

The Thing About AI

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with economic, political and ecological collapse, genocides, grotesquely incompetent ‘leaders’, and nuclear brinkmanship, now we also have to worry about AI.

To some extent, as Indrajit Samarajiva has repeatedly pointed out, we have had AI around for centuries, in the form of corporations — separate entities that make decisions, control politicians, overthrow governments, and even foment and manage wars, and which now even have ‘personhood’ rights without any of the commensurate responsibilities to rein in their inherently psychopathic behaviours.

It is they, not the humans whose job is now merely to do their bidding (or be fired), who have the real power in our civilization, and contrary to claims and assurances, they are now so complex and vast as to be completely beyond human control, and increasingly not even subject to human regulation. We have handed them the reins of managing our crumbling civilization with a shrug, as if some divine force of angels will somehow steer them in the ‘right’ direction. Even our government and military administrations, which work hand-in-hand with large corporations, are incorporated organizations, and, Trumpian fantasies notwithstanding, they are not controlled by any ‘one’. They are machines, operating according to their own immortal, self-perpetuating logic. They are AI. It is not just a metaphor.

But new technologies, and massively increased computing power, are now allowing us to create new forms of AI that can mimic other human behaviours besides the management of resources — such as creating art, literature and music, and acting as friends and even lovers.

I’ve seen this evolving for two decades now — we’ve created imaginary worlds like Second Life and the worlds of MMOs and MMORPGs, which have many seductive AI elements to them, and which are now developing “realistic” AI “characters”…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Military Draft Coming? House Passes Measure To Automatically Register Men For Selective Service

June 18, 2024

Military Draft Coming? House Passes Measure To Automatically Register Men For Selective Service

The House of Representatives on Friday approved its version of the annual defense policy bill, effectively clearing the $883.7 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to move forward in a 217-199 vote which largely fell along party lines. Only three Republicans opposed it.

A number of ‘controversial’ amendments are part of it, setting up a further fight with Democrats as it moves forward, including a measure empowering the National Guard to crack down on the southern border.

But among the most interesting aspects to the bill for Fiscal Year 2025 is an amendment to the NDAA which automatically registers all draft-age male U.S. residents with the Selective Service System.

This means that all able-bodied males in the country age 18-26 could potentially be drafted in the scenario of a future war declaration by Congress. The selection would be based on information from Federal databases.

While there has been a Selective Service program in effect for decades, it has long previously only been voluntary, but this new amendment will make registration automatic. The merely ‘voluntary’ system had been in effect since 1980 – but critics have said that leaving it up for young men to decide for themselves whether to register has resulted in a weak and ineffective system with not enough numbers.

According to more background for this new Congressional push:

The automatic draft registration proposal was instigated by the Selective Service System (SSS) as part of its annual budget request to Congress, introduced by Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), “wholeheartedly” endorsed by HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), and approved by voice vote of the full committee without audible opposition. The text of Rep. Houlahan’s proposal can be read here. Her office’s press release on the proposal can be read here.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

After months of masturbatory freaking out about “the right,” the German government inches towards collapse, as the social democrats realise they’re wildly unpopular and have neither money nor answers

June 18, 2024

After months of masturbatory freaking out about “the right,” the German government inches towards collapse, as the social democrats realise they’re wildly unpopular and have neither money nor answers

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on growing discontent with Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the ranks of his own party.

Since January, German political elites have waged an unceasing “fight against the right.” For weeks at a time, the establishment press would report on little else. We have had freakouts about secret right-wing immigrant deportation plans, we have had freakouts right-wing political violence, we have had freakouts about right-wing fifth-columnists, we have had freakouts about televised political debates and we have had freakouts about right-wing song lyrics. We have had every last kind of freakout you could imagine about the right, all of it promoted by an absolutely deranged media establishment eager to revive pandemic-era hysteria. Then, after all of that screeching and scratching and crying and caterwauling, we had the EU parliamentary elections, and just like that – as if someone had simply flipped a switch – we have stopped freaking out about the right.

As campaign tactics go, the “fight against the right” didn’t work as intended. The point of it, I guess, was to blackmail voters into supporting the social democrats, the Greens and the liberals, by warning them that the alternative was fascism. Nobody bought that, and all three government parties got hammered in the European elections. The latest poll pegs their combined support at 32%.

Now the politicians of these parties are awakening with a pounding post-election hangover, and realising they’ve made a huge mistake. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, “it is dawning on the SPD that they have underestimated the importance of migration and domestic security as political issues.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Video: Bill Gates Caught Telling Inner Circle ‘Global Famine’ Will Make Elites ‘God-Like’

June 18, 2024

Video: Bill Gates Caught Telling Inner Circle ‘Global Famine’ Will Make Elites ‘God-Like’

Globalist billionaire Bill Gates has been caught telling his inner circle that a devastating “global famine” is the next step in the elite’s indomitable march towards total global domination.

The 500 million souls left on Earth following the great depopulation will not only be easily controlled, according to Gates, they will also yearn for the level of control that the elites can currently only dream about.

With total control of the food supply, farm land, seed banks, and genetically modified soil microbes, Gates has positioned himself to carry out a false flag worse than 9/11.

Omega-3 as Psychiatric Elixir?

June 18, 2024

Omega-3 as Psychiatric Elixir?

We have an omega-6 problem.

I can’t even enjoy the complementary tortilla chips at a Mexican restaurant anymore — my favorite thing about the whole experience — without wondering what I’m doing to myself for the sake of mouth pleasure.

Via Missouri Medicine (emphasis added):

“Marine omega-3s have been consumed by our ancestors for millions of years. Estimates indicate that during the Paleolithic era, the intake of the marine omega-3s eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) was approximately 660–14,250 mg/day, compared to just 100–200 mg/day today. Furthermore, the omega-6/3 ratio has increased from around 4:1 during Paleolithic times to 20:1 today.

Over the last 100 years, the intake of the omega-6 fat linoleic acid in the United States has more than doubled. This is primarily due to the increased consumption of omega-6 rich seed oils, such as soybean, corn, and safflower oil, the latter two having an omega-6/3 ratio of approximately 60:1 and 77:1, respectively. Additionally, since the 1950s, there has been an approximate 2.5-fold increase in linoleic acid stored in adipose tissue in the United States. The increase in the omega-6/3 ratio has paralleled the rise in numerous autoimmune, inflammatory, and allergic diseases. Omega-3s are utilized by the body to resolve and lower inflammation, whereas omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids are primarily used for increasing inflammation.”

Everyone who cherishes the gifts of the internet likely remembers Trigglypuff, the college student, probably a Women’s and Gender Studies major, flapping her blubber with gusto and divine indignation at some long-forgotten crime against Social Justice™ committed by long-forgotten troll Milo Yiannopoulos.

“Easy, girl!” my midwestern Irish-Catholic grandmammy, who, despite her severe demeanor, had a way with animals, would have whispered in her ear. “You’ll blow out your udders carrying on like that, and then we’d be liable to put you out to pasture, because, after all, what good is a dairy cow without her udders?”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Kiev’s Plan to Store F-16s in NATO States Raises the Risk of World War III

June 18, 2024

Kiev’s Plan to Store F-16s in NATO States Raises the Risk of World War III

It can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.

Ukrainian Air Force head of aviation Sergey Golubtsov told US state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview over the weekend that Kiev plans to store some of its F-16s in NATO states for reserve and training purposes. While this might sound like a pragmatic policy, particularly since it would deter Russia from destroying its entire fleet since President Putin recently mocked speculation about him plotting to attack NATO as “bullshit”, it actually raises the risk of World War III.

To explain, although US Air Force chief Frank Kendell claimed last summer that the F-16s are “not going to be a game-changer” for Ukraine and Golubtsov himself confirmed in his latest interview that they’re “not a panacea and we do not wear rose-colored glasses”, both downplay the nuclear dimension. President Putin brought it up earlier this spring when he noted that “F-16 aircraft can also carry nuclear weapons, and we will also have to heed this while organising our combat operations.”

The Russian leader also warned that “we would see them as legitimate targets if they operate from the airfields of third countries, no matter where they are located.” Mutual mistrust between Russia and the US is at a record low and continues falling by the week, made all the worse by Ukraine’s recent attack(s) against Russia’s early nuclear warning systems that might have been tacitly approved by America. This comes as the US is playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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