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Oct 20, 2022·edited Oct 20, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I know everything is interconnected, and the Great Game is being played by the same forces and people - note the distinction - however, I don't have the time to observe the Game in any detail. My main focus is on the scandemic measures, and the faccination in particular. Conflicts come and go; with mostly known external enemies. However, with the scandemic, our enemies are internal - our govts, "experts", and even neighbours.

And with the scandemic, we have information to inform ourselves with. Alas, it is not so with geopolitics.

In geopolitics, I expect the players to apply "by deception shall ye wage conflicts". Therefore, it is difficult to see through the fog of deception because "the revolution is not being televised."

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Excellent article - a good combination of many of your ideas already presented in articles here at substack.

Such sober, scholarly analysis is sadly sorely lacking in mainstream European media outlets (and, I suspsect, in European academia) at the moment (very curious that Wertheim obviously felt he should/could not credit of reference Chomsky when writing on such a topic). Anyway, it is immensely frustrating that one is made to feel a pariah for daring to broach such analysis and I am very grateful for your writings.

P.S. have you had any issues (colleagues/employers) since you have revealed your blog identity through a number of essays/interviews?

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Thanks for reading and your many kind words!

Regarding the 'P.S.': no, not so far, although I don't exactly tell my co-workers about the stack and I'm also quite 'selective' about what I think I can say and show over here. It's a bit different with the postings/stuff about Austria and Germany, because I don't live there and I think I can get away with (much) more. So far, I also doubt that my colleagues and employer would be able to do much about esp. this and the other Prop. in Focus essay, or about the podcasts, for the simple reason that I think I'm kinda covered by 'academic freedom'. We'll see, though, how that goes…

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Oct 20, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Well I read the article. No, I won't read the recommended book. I shouldn't even care and instead spend all of my time building up resources to survive the apparent coming intentioned collapse.

As a US resident with no power of influence, just filled with opinions, based on reading Stack articles, I would recommend Europe to break away from the USA. All the élite here want is to siphon European surpluses, which are becoming slim to none, and I suspect is why the fascists (all in the spirit of European inspired fascism) will use Europeans to prosecute a war with Russia, so these elite US domiciled fascists can go take Russia's stuff.

A stupid idea to those immersed in the details I'm sure. But I have no credentials, I'm just an unsophisticated no longer wanting to read any books rube.

Here's another potential; prosecute a war with the US against Russia, once you have blown the Russian hierarchy to smithereens, do the old switch-a-roo and tell us Americans to pound sand and take Russia's resources for yourselves! Would have been easier to just buy the resources. Hahahaha!

At any rate, since Europeans have largely denuded their lands of resources over the centuries, not much left for them to work with anyway, so the right choice is clear as you predict.

Why don't you take this evidence of treason to the law enforcement agency tasked with prosecuting such and sign a complaint to trigger an investigation?

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Oct 20, 2022Liked by epimetheus

Rick, I agree completely about Europe stop acting like the british regarding US relations. This however, is flat out wrong:

"At any rate, since Europeans have largely denuded their lands of resources over the centuries, not much left for them to work with anyway, so the right choice is clear as you predict."

We have not denuded or used up resources. Coal, uranium, hydro power, iron, copper and so on exists in abundance on European soil, in one nation or another - even Sweden has large deposits of brown coal, completely unused since they are buried underneath farmland (among the best soils in the world, capable of three harvests a year if pushed - which we don't).

The only resource actually being depleted is fish, due to overfishing and that EU and other treaties gives access to waters otherwise only accessible for domestic fishing (like the Baltic Herring being overfished). If all the states around the Baltic would agree to limit fishing for say ten years and simultaenously block access to the Baltic sea for other nations' fishing boats for the same time, that problem would solve itself.

The resources we lack are stuff like oil, gas, and such. If we could our production up and running again, we could trade for that - and people are sick to vomiting from using shoddy chink-shit products from the PRC.

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Oct 20, 2022Liked by epimetheus

At the rate Europeans are using those finite resources, at the rate of depletion, having chosen the easiest ore bodies to mine first, what's left, lower grades, requiring more fuel (which is in short supply) and work, yes, even the ores left in the ground aren't profitable, at the very best not profitable enough to send checks to all the retirees living in Europe.

I agree with the fishing and lets include the eroding and depletion of soil fertility at the fascist designed farms (now the fascists want to shut the farms they designed off as is what they view is their prerogative), and the machines that can outstrip the trees faster than they can regrow, and what is replanted are basically junk trees planted just for the wood - and that can regrow only so long as there is fertility in the soil as well.

Like I typed, I think Europe is shot, way too many people living on that land base that can't be supported as too many are habituated to using more resources than the land has available. In biological terms is carrying capacity. Just the first slide here is enough to get the idea: https://www.slideshare.net/KellaRandolph/carrying-capacity-and-overpopulation

People there, well, people here too, don't even know how to grow the food they eat anymore. Since I'm on the topic, I've learned to grow food while increasing soil fertility seemingly an anti-entropic endeavor, but makes the point we can all learn to become producers in some way instead of always being consumers of everything.

What I could chuckle about is a few years ago most people were agonizing as to where to go on vacation. The anxiety has been ratcheted up a notch methinks.

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Oct 20, 2022Liked by epimetheus

If profitability measured in money is the issue, the equation changes a little, but less than you think. I don't really know where you are getting all this about us being in such dire straits, resource wise.

Measured in resources actually in existence but at present less monetarily profitabe than say in Africa or Asia, it off course looks like we have a resource crisis.

If so, consider this: we pay using money (which lacks intrinsic value) for the natural resources of others. When their resources are depleted fo real, we will have both the goods, the tools and the tech and our own resources still unexploited.

It's an old game, and european capitalist families (really, lots of the economy is family/clan-based for historic reasons, and to a frightening degree - in Sweden some 12 families own about 90% of the economy) are very good at it, because they know from history (us having lots of it) that's how the long game is played.

The politicians, not so much.

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This is a complicating subject as people living from the fat of the land just don't recognize certain Earth natural influences no human, nor civilization has control over. Not even the WEF death cult.

Moreover, I think the climate was stabilized by the increasing amounts of life underpinned by climax forests, now that that lucky happenstance is over its back to even less stable climatic conditions than just fighting over resources as is occurring (not enough living resources to fight over). The greens can blame carbon all they want, it doesn't matter, I think it also a ruse coming from the fascists who profited from the dismantlement of life to have the blame shifted to us from them and their enterprises.

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Oct 20, 2022Liked by epimetheus

I found the piece enlightening especially on some of the past internal domestic politics in Germany. Thanks for taking time to write it.

One small note in the title “vanguished” is spelled with a q instead of a g

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Hi Faz, thanks for reading and the attention (I just wrote the editors).

Cheers!

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Somewhere in my office there is a copy of Lafontaine's early work "Keine Angst vor der Globalisierung" ("Don't fear the globalisation"; I grabbed it when my company's library discarded it after 20 years on the shelf). We have come a long way, haven't we?

And regarding Schäuble: indeed, the only purpose of having people with 50-year careers in politics is to provide material for psychological and sociological studies on the effect of 50-year careers in politics on those politicians and their countries.

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Haha, indeed--but perhaps Lafontaine kinda continued learning?

And, yes, I agree that he was initially with Schröder on the 'New Labour' trip…but at least he resigned in protest and was subsequently cast out of the SPD, so, there's that, too…

Re Schäuble: well, I just hope hat there's also some lawyers who 'study' him and his ilk…

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Maybe Lafontaine has continued learning, but the wives might also be confounders...

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Haha, true, but even then, also Mr. Schröder appears a much more capable politician (think: Nord Stream 1) than anyone currently in office.

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