Yeah, “2nd Front” is probably a bit click-baity. But it could evolve that way. At present more of a Preemptive Strike by NATO against a Russian Base Deal. But it is a war / military conflict and the goal is to reduce Russian presence in a country.
This video is a very good summary of the troubles being stirred up in Sudan. This is from The Duran. A couple of guys who have impressed me with their grasp of international affairs, and their contacts who keep them informed of the inside games being played.
For anyone not up to speed on Sudan: They have a national army, and a “militia”. These two are having a bit of a war with each other. This came after Russia and The Government reached an agreement to put a Russian Naval Base in Sudan. Then the USA sent over, IIRC, Nuland, and suddenly an old set of concerns between the National Militia and The Government erupts into a war. Yet Another Color Revolution? YACR?
The involvement of The House of Saud in Sudan is interesting. Yeah, their back yard, but still. Now that Saud is friendly with Russia, how will the Saudi interactions in the area change?
So the question now becomes how well can Russia play the reverse game back? Either via supporting the government side, or via stirring a pot in some USA backside?
We know that NATO / USA have been pushing to find a “2nd Front” with Russia over Ukraine. They have run off to various places trying to start another fuss. Georgia. Kazakhstan. Syria. Looks to me like they finally got a bite…
Now the ultimate Russian play would be to get China to move on Taiwan. At that point, the USA is all tied up and out of spare parts and spare artillery ammo, so it will be a bit of a pain. I don’t see that as likely, just due to China only moving on their own schedule and their own goals. But what about getting Saudi to fully integrate into BRICS++, or having Turkey invited in? (And out of NATO…)
I donno… but it just seems to me like things are going a bit pear shaped for The West. Having a civil war inside Sudan might delay a Russian Base; but, OTOH, having the Russians work up deals with several countries just to get the USA to shove a few $Billion at various corrupt dictators would be an easy win for Russia. A few months of bribes and negotiations is cheap compared with a Color Revolution and those bribes. And all Russia has to do is be all friendly like with the natives…
Other interesting bits here, including that Sudan is basically fed from Russia & Ukraine, so maybe some leverage being used there:
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/04/25/the-sudan-war-the-u-s-and-ukraine-look-deeper/
Civil wars and coups that erupt in countries like Sudan are rarely superficial or entirely locally-driven events. There are almost always geopolitical interests inserting themselves into internal conflicts because of strategic routes and valuable local resources. Sudan and other impoverished countries may be exploited by world powers because they do not have the means to build infrastructure, grow food or provide medical aid for their own people. In many cases, while mutually beneficial arrangements are brokered, advancing infrastructure and important resources, those arrangements can also usher in conflict and the death of innocents, as we are now watching unfold in Sudan.
Sudan gets much of its grain from Ukraine and Russia—more than 85 percent of its wheat comes from those two countries. Almost half the country (about 20 million people), according to the UN, is “food insecure.” Gold is a major resource in Sudan and is a “strategic route to the rest of Africa,” according to reporting from Al Jazeera.
Bear in mind that in many impoverished Muslim countries, wheat makes up the majority of their diet.
Now add in that Egypt is busy supporting the Government side, and Egypt has historically been friendly with Russia AND has their own food supply / Russian Wheat issue… There’s a chance here for Russia and Egypt to get all buddy buddy too. For context, the Arab Spring was set off when one guy set himself on fire over food prices and availability. IMHO there’s a real chance of an Arab / Russian alignment just over access to cheap wheat. It is likely that at least part of the reason NATO is busy fighting a Proxy War over Ukraine is the prospect of Russian control of Ukrainian wheat and the geopolitical clout that would come with it.
Then this bit:
Well, now there is word from WHO that there is a “high risk of biological hazard” in Sudan as Sudanese fighters occupy a bio lab there. It seems the U.S. may also have gain-of-function research operations in Sudan as well. Cofer Black also served on the Board of Burisma. Whatever one might think about this allegation, there is almost no doubt Nuland has an interest in destroying Russian operations wherever they might be. It also seems she is protecting Joe Biden.
So quite the rat’s nest of connections between Ukraine, Burisma, Biden Crime Family, and TLA Agency operations. I find the emphasis on bio-labs by them a bit disturbing. I mean, “what could possibly go wrong?”… /snark;
So, in summary, it looks like The Arab World and North Africa are going to be “in play” for a while. Russia leveraging their food supply. NATO / USA doing bribes and color revolutions and then blaming Russia for the resulting chaos. Sudden discoveries of “Bio Labs” and all…
I’m sure China will end up in the mix too, somehow. Scrounging for resources? Encouraging Debt Trap Diplomacy? Just blocking USA influence? But so far not heard much about China in Sudan. One thing is clear: They have enough trade and presence that they are sending Chinese Navy ships to evacuate Chinese Civilians:
Some employees of Chinese state-owned companies were expected to return to China within days. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, more than 130 Chinese companies were operating in Sudan as of 2020.
“Some of my former students were terrified when they escaped, and they were not in good shape,” a university professor in Beijing said, adding that they had been working in Sudan for Chinese state-owned enterprises, including arms manufacturer Norinco.
FWIW, I own a Norinco 9mm pistol. It works very reliably. It is a knock-off of a Browning design. Mediocre materials and workmanship, but it very reliably “goes bang” and has a very crisp trigger. Now why would China be manufacturing weapons in Sudan?… or maybe it was just a sales office…
Musings from the Chiefio 
The Sudan conflict doesn’t really make much sense to me. Thus could well be stirring from outside.
If Sudan is food insecure (they can’t farm well there?) and need to buy so much in, how do they earn the money to pay for that? About the only thing that would earn that foreign exchange would be minerals of some sort. Looking at https://oec.world/en/profile/country/sdn/ seems the main export is Gold (>50%), followed by peanuts (so they can grow stuff, after all), oily seeds, and crude oil. That covers around 76% of their exports in 2021.
I haven’t looked up the climate history there, but I’d expect some fairly long drought periods. They could probably grow Millet, though. Since they export sheep and goats, must be an excess production than they can eat, I’d think, so grazing land is more than sufficient, and if it can grow grass then Millet should work.
Maybe with cheaper energy they’d be able to farm more efficiently, and fix the food insecurity. Takes a while to make such things happen, since you also need enough people who are able to maintain the farm equipment. May take a few generations, but once the food insecurity is fixed then the politics should become more stable. Still, it takes education, and people realising what else is possible with the situation they have, as well as a while bootstrapping from where they are to where they want to be. Maybe some high-tech indoor farming with massive productivity, rather than open-air farming. Still, those sorts of things need to be started by the people of Sudan – probably won’t happen if some external NGO tries to make it happen.
For places like this, I look at them and wonder how people make a living there.
Thank you EM – yup, looks like yet another contrived mis-adventure here.
The previous Darfur conflict was all about oil and outside interests trying stir up a break-away state; as South Sudan (the well heads are still in place here from 1950s exploration). Not ‘Climate Change’ we were encouraged to believe.
https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/oil-in-darfur-waiting-to-be-explored-expert
SD – see this, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/18/how-water-is-helping-to-end-the-first-climate-change-war – excepting hyper arid deserts, most desert regions can quickly be made food productive with simple rain water harvesting structures, as practised in Darfur.
The ‘food scarcity paradigm’ is largely a myth promoted by those with something to sell …
(I advise on oil production projects in Sudan).
Julian – looks like those weren’t even complex water-saving measures, just weirs on the rivers that were already flowing but seasonal, much like a low-tech dam. Makes you wonder why it wasn’t done a long time back. People have been making earthworks since Stone-Age times.
Simon – thank you, it certainly has made me wonder …
There’s other RWH projects like this, achieving food production where aridification had prevented previously. eg the work of Rajendra Singh in Rajasthan, or the incredible Loess Plateau in China, a massive but rare project that has brought an arid area (I think) bigger than France back to farming.
It seems in part because the majority of people are powerless to do this on their own, it requires a collaborative effort that Governments rarely if ever support – certainly not in UK.
I spent this afternoon with possibly the leading UK Government Climate & Food advisor, for past decade or so.. his take on it all – mind numbing incompetence & self interest at highest level of our leadership.
It goes beyond that – small scale farming can be much more productive than large scale but more often isn’t. The reason is not hard to understand..
I once did a tour of Indian villages with a local religious leader – it was very obvious that the small farms of his devotees were much more productive than neighbouring farms that were not – this was held up as ‘magical evidence of the leader’s supernatural powers’ – which I had to maintain my scepticism about. All it demonstrated to me was that the devotees were more diligent and probably harder working than those who were not. Not that different to those who can get together and collaboratively arrange RWH – simple enough but requiring some ‘vision’, application and hard work to set up.
Government’s worldwide tend to control food production in ways that suit the interests of ‘elites’ generally .. and in the case of EU (and elsewhere) a lot of ridiculous subsidies..
A couple of words on farming:
1) Folks might raise sheep on scrub that is inedible to people, and might love to eat all their sheep, yet would sell most of them to get a LOT more wheat in exchange for the much more valuable lamb. Often poor people must make that kind of choice. It is about getting enough total calories, not getting the most desired food item.
2) Sudan is on the Nile. Near the river, farming will be good. Away from the river, not so much.
3) Muslim countries strongly encourage large families and usually do not encourage a lot of productive industry. The end result is very rapid population growth and not enough food. Age profile in Egypt, IIRC, is about an average 25 years old…
4) Sudan sells a lot of oil and gold for wheat. Maybe some ought to be used to buy tractors and water pumps / wells… but that’s not the choice they make right now.
5) A LOT can be done with various rain capture land sculpting things. It takes a lot of time to change traditional practices and the risk involved makes some folks skittish. If just barely getting enough food, any change that might even risk just 10% production could mean somebody dies. A demonstration of absolute improvement and gain is often needed.
6) Large commercial farms are NOT run for greatest production, but for greatest profit. Intensive agriculture with lots of labor cost is expensive and hurts profits even if it improves yield. Eliminating hired labor and using minimal bought “inputs” can often be more profitable even if yields are lower.
7) People in Government often know NOTHING about farming and agriculture. They are in charge of setting the rules. Good luck with that…
8) People with very large land holdings often are “friends” with the Government Officials in charge of rules; so request rules that increase their profits (and rarely that increase yields…)
9) In semi-arid subsistance agriculture, water is often everything. Even just making a crescent moon shaped 6 inch high dirt barrier to water run off and planting a tree in it (opening of crescent pointing up slope) can capture enough water to increase yields. Then a virtuous cycle starts as the tree shade reduces evaporation from the dirt and leaf transpiration increases rainfall. Some places have been transformed from bare semi-desert to green agro-forests. Rarely does anyone in government even understand this process even when explained.
10) Running cattle on range land improves it over time. Banning cattle leads to soil degradation and eventual desertification. Something about pee and poop ;-)
11) NONE of the Greens nor their NGOs nor the Vegetarian Movement nor the “Eat Ze Bugs” folks nor certainly the “ban the cows” folks understand #10.
12) IF you want to ruin farm land, get government help with farming advice and rules / laws.
Fertilizer at the core.
Was water one of the resources mentioned in Limits To Growth? That’s about the only resource we are short of currently, or in the near future, or maybe ever have been.
It’s funny, men writing a book about shortages of resources at peak prosperity. The sad part is that book and that way of thinking is the cause of real resource shortages, as all the essentials and their alternatives are being banned. Energy is one of those.
@Julian Jones
” or the incredible Loess Plateau in China, a massive but rare project that has brought an arid area ”
Can I get a reference to that please?
@Another Ian:
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2007/03/15/restoring-chinas-loess-plateau
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+loess+plataue+restoration&atb=v376-3__&ia=web
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+loess+plataue+restoration&atb=v376-3__&iax=videos&ia=videos
In most places, water can be condensed from the air to run agriculture. If you also have indoor farming, the water you’ve collected doesn’t get evaporated into the atmosphere and thus blow away, and you only need to extract enough from the atmosphere to replace the weight of water in the produce you export from that farm. The indoor farming doesn’t thus change the local climate like open farming would do, just delays the movements of water vapour for a period. Thus really depends on whether you just want food or want to change the local climate too as to whether you run indoor or outdoor farming. Indoor farming will of course require an energy input, and costs more to set up.
Problem of course is that to get the benefits of a high-tech farming process, you also need the high tech capability, and if you’re dirt poor and subsistence farming you can’t get there from here. Solar panels may help to provide (intermittent) electricity, but they’ll need to be imported and are probably not affordable for peasants in that situation. Still, there a whole lot of bootstrapping required to get up from the subsistence level to a Western level of food security and education.
I see cheap energy as a prerequisite to deliver everything else. Really helps if you don’t need to supply fuel (why solar panels should be useful here). OK, I’m also seeing some hope in other projects that also produce energy without needing fuel and run 24/7, exploiting some physics that isn’t widely known (or not yet accepted), but we’ll need to wait and see if those really work well.
Julian’s experience in Darfur implies that Sudan is also a powder-keg that didn’t need much of a trigger to explode in violence. Maybe applies to a lot of similar places, too. Hungry people fight, but in general well-fed people don’t. Strange to think we could probably stop a lot of fighting and wars by fixing the land and the farming practices.
E.M.
Thanks.
I was part of a team assessing an Australian aid project on the Loess Plateau in 1983
@Simon:
I’ve posted on this before, but worth repeating. Not only are you correct about the water conservation of “indoor” farming; but you can actually use solar input to evaporate sea water for the small amount of fresh water needed. They are called “Sea Water Greenhouses” and are being built and used.
Ultimately, it all comes down to energy. Energy to mine, refine, and fabricate the materials, make fertilizers, and construct the structure. Then energy to distill the sea water via solar powered distillation. In the end, there is no shortage of farming space… once you go industrial.
The major “problem” is the Gang Green attacking the best energy sources needed to do that cycle and raise folks out of poverty.
https://seawatergreenhouse.com/technology
https://seawatergreenhouse.com/australia-1
EM – looks like those projects intend to also change the local climate, enabling irrigation outside the tent and thus moisture in the air. Since RO seawater does have a residual salt level (the membranes are not perfect), there could be a long-term problem if that is over-used. Also, means you need to be close to the sea.
A while back I sent you the theory of how to get a temperature difference without putting in energy to produce that delta-T (all energy goes into air drag on the centrifuge). A bit sneaky on the physics, so hard to see why it works initially. That project is developing, and there may also be ways to do that without any energy input, but the proof of concept (centrifuge version) should be made and tested this year. In essence, though, it comes from realising that kinetic energy isn’t really a pure scalar, since it has to be carried by something that has a momentum vector, and it cannot otherwise exist. Thus the random directions involved in heat can be changed by using a field that acts on the particles carrying that heat, and once the kinetic energy is going in the same direction rather than randomly you can do work with it. Adjust what carries the heat energy, and what field you’re producing, and there are various ways of doing this. The big thing to solve is how to do that cheaply, and I think we have a valid solution. Later on, we’ll see if that’s correct and works.
Reason for that diversion is that if you condense water from the air, you can be far from the sea. It may suddenly become a lot cheaper to do that, though at the moment the condenser could run on solar panels anyway.
Probably remains, though, that without the Gold and Oil in Sudan, there’s no income there. Few foreigners are likely to invest the money to build these sorts of indoor farms because they are needed, and it really needs to be done by the locals because they want it and can afford it. Really means you need to start by educating the young there, so they are aware of other possibilities than subsistence farming punctuated by weather-related crop failures. Though Julian’s project was successful, it needs to be done in a lot more places.
Go to:
http://www.rexresearch.com/1index.htm#a
and do a “find” for the phrase “air well”.
More info on getting water from the air than you will probably want.
@Simon,
Yes. After all, wind is just such a biasing of “random” motion of gaseous constituents. Those constituents are moving at near a kilometer per second. Wind at just meters per second. We notice the biased net vector; but not the overall motion.
I had been feeling depressed. About a gathering darkness, and the general apathy of so many people I know well, who really don’t want to look or talk about the psychopaths we call “leaders”. Maybe they’re frightened by what they might see, or what happens when you mention the bogeymen. Like daring to say the name “Lord Voldemort”.
Instead, I was moved to tears of joy when I stumbled on an old poet.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg
TTN – a bit of modern technology could improve the air wells quite a bit. If you cover a surface with a layer of glass balls of around 8 microns diameter, they radiate very well at around 10 microns wavelength, which is the “sky window” wavelength that passes through the atmosphere with very little absorption and thus leaves the Earth pretty well. This gives around a 10°C drop in temperature of the surface, relative to a normal white-painted surface. Doesn’t work so well when there are clouds, which reflect those wavelengths, so it needs clear skies. Then again, if it’s often thick clouds, you probably don’t need to do anything special to get water out of the air.
People have been making such sky-window radiators, either as a paint or as a plastic film with the balls embedded. Doesn’t appear to be widely used or known about, though.
CDQ – since kinetic energy is always carried by something that has a momentum, and fields can change the momentum magnitude and direction without changing the total quantity of energy, we’re looking for either a differential response of the same field with different phases (vapour generally responds to gravity at around 0.1% of its response as a liquid), or passing that energy from something that doesn’t respond to the field to something that does (such as a photon, which ignores an electric field, to a photoelectron that does respond to an electric field, with the energy transfer happening in the presence of a strong-enough electric field). That second method is of course what happens in a solar cell (photovoltaic cell), so we know it actually works.
Still, the essential thing about heat is that it is carried by particles and is not a continuum, and if you get down to the scale where you’re dealing with individual particles then the statistical approach of thermodynamics is no longer valid. If each individual particle is biased in the same direction by the field, then the net average (that thermodynamics measures) is also thus biased. Instead of random directions, you have a wind, and a wind can be harvested. Interesting thing here is that air pressure can also be harvested as energy if you get the scale of the piezo-microphones to around the mean-free-path of air molecules (around 70nm), though there are some fudges on that to relax the size restriction (use lower pressure, or heavier gas). If I got the maths right, the energy available from normal air pressure is around 10kW per m², so we should be able to get 10% of that. It’s a huge resource, if we can harvest it (and yep, the air would be cooled by doing this).
Getting a bit far from the subject here, but the point is that with some modern technology we can get water and power anywhere, and thus also produce food anywhere, which would reduce the battles over resources. Julian’s post demonstrates that even with a fairly low-tech solution you get a major improvement and people working together rather than fighting over scarce resources.
Peace is far more productive – any person you assign to either warfare or to protection against warfare is one less person doing the work of production. Thus makes the community poorer. Poster child here probably North Korea – massive army, widespread poverty, a few rich people.
Many thanks for various comments: bit constrained presently in ability to respond, so briefly… Many important points raised, just picking a few to respond to :
As to ‘helping’ the impoverished – my experiences have shown me many times ‘the road to hell is paved with such good intentions. We should of course do what we can, but what exactly – the problems are so intractable. A bit of new technology, maybe.. perhaps a few more diesel powered diggers for Darfur but not much else, I suspect – Do they need anything more?
.. perhaps moving some to irrigate with Nile waters; probably fraught with local complications.
Anything beyond supporting a locally developed vision for viable development is fraught. The nature of the problem was partly illustrated me when on a voluntary project in Assam I objected to my indigenous host’s regular violence meted out to one or other of his 30 various servants, whenever they made the slightest mistake. He took me to one side and told me : “what you don’t understand is that my servants are all rather stupid – they have small brains from malnutrition as children and never went to school; I have to hit them so they learn.” I could not support him but he raised important criteria for trying to help a large mass of the world’s impoverished.
I was married (my 12 years of foolish self imposed hell) to an East African tribal woman; she was malnourished during childhood but provided with animal fats; some mild ricketts deformation her main physical problem – her brain sharper than mine but with no schooling and several mental disorders, by her own admission ‘a different person every day’, actually a multiple personality disorder arising from her truly horrendous childhood – in her culture, women sold like livestock and often treated worse. And so on …
In terms of ‘techno-fixes’ for developing countries or even our own, yes of course, solar greenhouses great, and many other innovations need exploring.
BUT some caution – in terms of such tech advances the past 70 years of these has in the West created an agriculture that has greatly enabled food security but (as my snr govt adviser mentioned above confirmed me on Friday) certainly in UK/EU context the whole undertaking in financial terms operates at a catastrophic loss (and that is without factoring in the growing summer extremes amplified by ChemAg, temps/water shortages).
This ‘financial loss’ land management is a metaphor for our wider economy which also operates at a nett total loss, only profiting a small elite, certainly not the vast majority of farmers.
@EM (and those in the USA)
Did you catch the podcast or article by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn? About the fragmentation and atomization of the news landscape, the proposed outlawing of Fox News, and Joe Rogan off Spotify. They mention capitulation, when the market collapses.
I’m wondering about the timing, with the collapse of Fox just after their settlement with Dominion. Was removing Tucker Carlson part of the out-of-court deal?
Where do you think people will go for their news instead? Or will they tune out completely?
Taibbi and Kirn’s conclusion –
@Julian Jones
I spent this afternoon with possibly the leading UK Government Climate & Food advisor, for past decade or so.. his take on it all – mind numbing incompetence & self interest at highest level of our leadership.
Was that (by chance) DEFRA? (For others, I should explain, in the UK that’s the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).
Back in 2001, a UK Civil Servant described it to me as “the civil servant’s graveyard”. They explained it to me, something like this:
If you are a really great Grade #1 scientist, doing serious and original/creative research, you would be somewhere like Oxford or Cambridge Universities.
If you a not quite a great Grade #1 scientist, but still good (say Grade #2) you would get a good job in industry somewhere, still doing useful work.
After that, Grade #3, getting closer to the bottom of the barrel, you would (or could only) get a job in a government department, like DEFRA, or its predecessor MAFF. Doing nothing creative or original but paid for “administration work”.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was formed by the forced merger of the infamous Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) with another department. Because of the way MAFF had screwed-up with a failed lockdown policy for an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease.
Oh yes, just remembered, “Professor Pantsdown” (Dr. Neil Ferguson) was involved with the scare-mongering and fear-porn for that lockdown as well. It was he who did the theoretical computer-modelling used by MAFF/DEFRA during Foot & Mouth to justify mass culling of animals regardless or whether they were infected or not.
As it was such a “useful policy”, he was still available 20+ years later to do the theoretical modelling used for the Covid Lockdown. Except now it involved two-legged animals instead of four-legged.
@Keith Macdonald
… yes (to all you say) !
There seems a fascinating feedback loop …
“If you are a really great Grade #1 scientist, doing serious and original/creative research, you would be somewhere like Oxford or Cambridge Universities.”
… then much of your research will be conducted according to Govt Policy Processes (that’s how you get funded) determined by :
“Grade #3, … Doing nothing creative or original …”.
I have seen this directly on several occasions recently; following my meetings with DEFRA Heads of Depts – proprietary work that myself and colleagues originated (even patented) 35+ years ago – just now being given out for research to academia & corporates, even though we went through correct Govt connections decades ago. The first outputs that I have seen, making totally incorrect conclusions.
@ another ian – I would really appreciate hearing of your direct experiences of Loess Plateau; I only know what I have read on-line and from films of John Liu. Were you with CSIRO ? (I have heard disturbing general insights from former CSIRO scientists).
@YMMV:
I don’t remember water being mentioned in “Limits”. That book was more focused on the pattern: State “Present known recoverable reserves” (NOT ultimate resource), state “present consumption” (ignore resource substitution and technical change), apply exponential growth curve to “present consumption”, show when this exceeds the fixed amount of “present known recoverable reserves” using a “computer program”: SHOUT “THE SKY IS FALLING!!!! TOO MANY PEOPLE!!!! WE’RE RUNNING OUT!!! and WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! (After we kill the planet)”
As water doesn’t have a known reserve and nature recycles it, doesn’t quite fit the pattern.. But it might have been in there and I just mentally flushed it due to the stupidity of the argument…
@Simon:
Yes, it needs desert near sea water. The good bit is that a lot of desert exists near some salt water source. It mostly uses evaporation to cool (the brine left over returned to the sea water source) and then some fresh made for the plants. Pretty easy really.
Then, once you have both the cool moist air and the fresh water, try to keep / recover / reuse as much as reasonably possible.
@TTN:
Will do… when I’m home again.
@Keith:
Don’t get too morose over it. Things get worse until they suddenly break. Then they get better. Society is subject to “Brittle Failure”. Folks just tolerate and “suck it up” for a long time as things get worse. Then comes the day they can take no more; and “things are suddenly different”.
I think we are at that moment. I know we are in Florida (thus the large support for Gov. DeSantis and Sheriff Grady telling potential Antifa / BLM Rioters that “Folks in my county have guns, they know how to use guns, IF you break into someone’s home they will blow you back out the door, don’t do it.” Or close to that. There wasn’t much “riots” nor even minor annoyances in His County ;-)
The Brittle Failure is most recently seen in Butt Lite and Fox. Their (prior?) customers have reached the Brittle Failure point. Each took just one more little step to the Left… and got whacked very hard. More will follow.
Once in brittle failure mode, you can’t really go back, as the “crack” has already formed ;-)
Didn’t see the “atomization” article. I’ll look for it later. Where will they go? The Left will go to whatever confirms their pre-conceived biases and emotional needs. The Rational Right will go wherever tells them the truth, and proven so. For me, now, it is some selected boggers, some selected video sites, and likely to be a session with NewsMax to check them out. Plus, for print, the list of links I’ve saved including Bongino Report, Whatfinger and some others.
@Julian Jones:
I learned that working on the Psych Ward. A nurse was quietly and professionally talking with a Doctor in the Doctors lounge (where I was working too). A patient came up to the door. The nurse “Angrily shouted” to “GET BACK TO YOUR ROOM”, then went back to polite quite professional conversation with the doctor. Later, I asked “WT? Was That?”. She explained: The patient was on Haldol and doesn’t have much cognition; it you talk nicely, all they here is “nice nice nice” and they will not leave. You must put emotional loading into the sounds as all they will here is the emotional tone.”
I learned. It was the start of my “Be The Mirror” philosophy. The part that says “Communicate with people in the language level they can understand”. Like “baby talk” with little children, or “leveling” to 8th grade level with an uneducated audience. Match their level and you can communicate.
@Per level of competence:
There’s also the fact that folks who lust for Academic Tenure are self-security focused and thus not so brave. Folks who “go it alone” in Business are much more willing to speak truth to power… And folks in higher ranks of Government are generally NOT technically competant but very much lust after power. This leads to Academics sucking at the Government Tit and doing whatever the Power Lust Money Handlers ask them to do, while business does a “WT?” … but MBA types just see “compliance” as a burden to pass on to the customer so always folds and “goes along”… while their staff complains.
This cycle continues until business collapses and taxes stop… (See San Francisco and the exit of stores… Entirely predictable and predicted. Won’t stop until AFTER the brittle failure collapse…)
Newsmax talks about stuff Fox News reporters aren’t allowed.
@EM
The patient was on Haldol and doesn’t have much cognition; it you talk nicely, all they here is “nice nice nice” and they will not leave. You must put emotional loading into the sounds as all they will here is the emotional tone.
That feels like a good analogy for a lot of people fully-tanked-up on MSM output. It’s hard to have a rational discussion with such people. Their wits are dulled and they often have a reactive irrational response to anything outside their comfort zone. Challenge them too much and get told “oh, you’re just a conspiracy theorist” or they go ape-shit.
An interesting little aside.
We live and (try) to play golf right next to an English (British) firing range here in Scotland.
For several years live firing went on every day – often during the night.
For several months now it has been blissful peace, no firing,
No more bullets as they are all sent to Bidens war.
Sadly it has not improved my golf.
We are about to live through “Reality doesn’t care about your feelings, so align your outlook to reality as much as possible. Plus, humans are evil at heart. Evil people have evil intentions and will do evil deeds”. Children are not civilized. They have to be civilized. That starts with parents and extended by other well grounded in reality adults. My liberty ends where yours begins, and vice-versa; so do unto others as you’d want them to do unto you. Liberty, is not license. Whatever can’t continue to go on, won’t. Life in the state of nature is nasty, brutal, and short. Culture matters, and some are more aligned with reality than others. Currently, the West’s culture is not aligned with reality.
Joss Whedon quotes:
There are two kinds of people…
Civilization is not black and white. It comes in many shades of gray (or colors), but definitely it is a learned thing, not inherent.
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
“One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
A few quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.
Thank you EM …
And yes Keith M … not only analagous to those “tanked-up on MSM” but also those heavily featuring in it :
Haldol might have been very helpful at the time with my ex; in her case she just self-medicated and has done very well, has a high public profile, now owns properties all around world, including a large country estate; I was just ‘collateral damage’ along the way. I won’t disclose her name – she has benefitted many through her subsequent work.
But I was able, on request, for another 12 years able to ‘help’ another similar ‘Force of Nature’. Her diagnosis was Bipolar but this seemed to barely cover it and she recieved many prescription meds. Tragically but ironically she drank weedkiller outside my cottage while I was out one day : https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-453956/Isabella-Blow-told-doctors-taken-weedkiller.html
Another lesson in “un-history”
“King Hochschild’s Hoax”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/king-hochschilds-hoax/
FWIW
“Zelensky doesn’t look real flash – on something?”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2023/05/zelensky-doesnt-look-real-flash-on-something.html
@another ian: Rumors have had Zelensky as a major cocaine user for some time. Is it true? Dunno — but he would not be the first national leader to do drugs. His quote that “our people will never be enslaved”, reminded me of the hubub a few years back over whether “Rule Britannia” should include the words “Britons never, never, never, will be slaves!”
https://www.thejournal.ie/rule-britannia-bbc-proms-5193470-Sep2020/