In a little-noticed milestone, US crude oil production in March-April 2018 exceeded previous all-time monthly peak of 310 million barrels October 1970.
It is also extremely likely that production during 2018 will exceed the record year of 1970.
So much for #peakoil.
In all fairness, it’s not so much that their models were flawed – the actual mathematics of Hubbert’s Peak are solid – as that they didn’t account for technology. Even those models that did tended to have production stretching out into a plateau on the right, as opposed to crashing. But almost none of the peakists projected that the technology would be so powerful as to basically invert the graph.
Note that reserves in the US are fairly limited; it has almost an order of magnitude fewer reserves than Saudi Arabia. So if the US could engineer this turnaround – even accounting for its unique combination of loose regulatory environmental, technological finesse, and financial depth – much the same goes for the world at large, should higher future demand for oil necessitate major step ups in production.
Reminder that we are also waiting for the shale producers to all go bankrupt due to their inability to recoup costs on sunk wells, something that bears have been predicting since the early 2000s.
Results:
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Peak oil is dead. Speculations about future Peak Gas are even more dead.
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Strategic situation of the US, with its withdrawal from Iraq and much greater level of hydrocarbons self-sufficiency, is in many ways stronger than in 2008.
Pity, the demise of the USA would be good for whites in general. The people responsible for this (probably mostly whites) have ensured that the USA lives for a bit longer and thus ensure the extinction chances of whites everywhere has increased.
As prices go up, US production will go even higher. Slightly higher. There is a basic conflict between US energy producers and US geo-politicians on prices. One thing that is fizzling out are the alternative energy initiatives, incl. electric cars.
Most economic activity goes on and on with only minor fluctuations. The predicted ‘revolutions’ seldom materialize. It is kind of comforting. Except for the crazies on all sides who are yearning for the final avowal and truth, when the constraining roof of our miserable existence opens up and everything will change for the better. As with naming kids ‘Jesus’, that shirt number should be retired.
What about peak cheap oil?
American shale oil costs more than Saudi oil.
Anatoly,
You can’t be serious?
This secondary peak is proof that Peak oil is real!
The first fracked wells were in the 60s … this isn’t new technology. It’s just high oil prices and cheap debt. These fracked wells will peak in an even shorter time than conventional wells and then we’ll be back in the same situation.
This is how it works: Each well peaks, therefore each region peaks, therefore each nation peaks, therefore the world peaks.
The area under the curve doesn’t change if you change the shape of the logistic curve. You’re either short on experience in Calculus or just pulling our chains.
I do enjoy how this (should) reminds us all of the similarities between USA and USSR (both had two peaks of production)
You’ve really turned up the suck lately!
US has higher debt load and weaker economic growth, than it did a decade ago. Its share of the world’s economy has fallen. US life expectancy is currently in decline. US military is overextended in multiple deployments around the world, and is spending more money, than it did at the height of the Iraq war.
We should also consider the context: America’s adversaries arguably made more progress since 2008.
I was waiting for this good news for over 40 years. Since OPEC started.
Spasibo Tolya
Hydraulic fracturing dates to 1955, but the combination of hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling is new.
I agree that Peak Oil is not necessarily invalidated, but the predictions of The Oil Drum (and Matthew Simmons) have been shown to be completely wrong.
Harold Hamm and Aubrey McClendon are American heroes. They belong in the pantheon of legendary American oilmen of the past such as John D. Rockefeller, HL Hunt, and J Paul Getty. By 2025 America will be a net exporter of oil.
I will be visiting the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale later this summer to tour installations of my products and conduct photo shoots. I’ll give you guys a report afterwards.
Spending on the military is basically Republican welfare and at about 3-3.5% of GDP is easily manageable. China went on a huge debt binge after the 2008 crash which will be a drag on growth for years. It has a debt to GDP ratio of something like 250% compared to 105% for the US. 105% is high but not crippling given how low interest rates are globally. Other than China, the US has no serious challengers.
Electric vehicles aren’t fizzling out but slowly and steadily advancing.
Why shouldn’t people name a son Jesus – actually curious?
Someone might get a little too excited during a historical reenactment scene?
The dumb whites that still believe in their magic dirt theory will start dwindle in ever greater numbers, after they are gone the brown blob that the US will become cannot sustain itself, race always trumps GDP and other made up numbers.
Seriously? Those two debt figures are not comparable at all. China’s debt to GDP ratio is slightly below 50%, IIRC. And when is that “drag on growth” going to start exactly? I’m also still waiting for that “hard landing”… What happened? Where is it?
Thorfinnsson is totally correct, the progress China has made since 2008 is massive. Everything else is pretty much irrelevant.
Whether America’s military spending is sustainable or not is also not that relevant, the important thing is that the US military is in relative decline and it simply doesn’t and won’t have enough resources to meet its “commitments” (to basically dominate every part of the globe, more or less simultaneously).
That spending is “Republican welfare” indeed and the point of massive diminishing returns has been crossed a long time ago as well. It arguably matters little whether the US spends $600, $700 or 800 billion, especially when it’s extremely obvious that its biggest competitors (China and Russia) “measure” their budgets very differently (or rather, they don’t spend dollars and their costs, including maintenance, are in dollars terms much lower), so that the sums are really not comparable at all.
Obviously those “the US is going to collapse” scenarios were always silly, but so are all the “China is actually weak” and “it’s going to collapse tomorrow (since 1989)” fantasies, if anything, even more so.
I think it is the opposite.
We are just starting to see the first or earliest evidence of these projects.
It will slowly build from this very low level, becoming significant in the 2030s.
During the 2030s decade, will begin acting as a constraint on world oil demand (of which automobile transport is proportionally a significant component), and total demand will peak and eventually fall.
Let’s go back to Karlin’s original comment that USA finds itself in a stronger strategic position, compared to 2008. That’s unsupported by most evidence IMO.
America ability to shape the world’s events has obviously declined. America’s leverage has declined. Chinese economy today is less dependent on exports to USA, than it was 10 years ago. This gives them the ability to sustain a trade war against the US.
Russian economy is now less dependent on access to Western finance. This gives Russia freedom to pursue foreign policy in direct opposition to American interests. When Obama administration tried to cripple Russia by cutting off its access to international finance, it manifestly failed. Russian military has become a capable power projection tool. Putin has used it to disrupt American “democracy promotion” efforts in the Middle East. This would have been unimaginable 10 years ago.
Iran used to be completely encircled by American troops. Now they have a friendly regime in Iraq and growing regional influence. Iranian economy saw robust growth despite best US efforts to isolate and break the country.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?end=2017&locations=IR-SA&start=2008
None of this means that US is in any immediate danger of “collapse”, but its ability to drive the agenda and dominate world affairs is being increasingly challenged. This is more of a case of other powers rising, than America declining. But it translates into a relative decline US power, and (for a country that aspires for global hegemony) a weaker strategic position.
The 50% figure is China’s governmental debt to GDP. That’s not the scary figure, it is the rise in domestic credit to private and state-owned entities which is not counted as government debt. Morgan Stanley identified 30 credit booms since WW2 in which the debt-to-GDP ratio increased by more than 40% in five years. All of them ended with a significant growth slowdown or financial crisis over the next five years. China’s debt-to-GDP ratio has risen 54 percentage points in the last five years, which may be the fastest rate recorded since the war. And much of that increase in debt went to fuel stock market and real estate bubbles which did little to boost the productive capacity of the economy. It also resulted in real estate markets globally from rocketing upwards thanks to Chinese money flooding in.
I don’t believe China is going to collapse, but it’s not going to grow at the same rate it was previously certainly not to the extent it will be a serious challenger. It is going to be similar to Japan in the 90s although perhaps not as extreme. The Japanese economy now is 80% smaller than it was projected to be in the late 80s when it was widely predicted to replace the USSR as the next superpower.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-08/sizing-up-china-s-debt-bubble-bloomberg-economics
https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/energy_watch/china-exposes-rampant-data-fraud-in-provinces-07092018105131.html
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/domestic-credit-to-private-sector-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/government-debt-to-gdp
Because that’s something Mexicans do.
It’s true that rapidly increasing debt (this is what matters, not total debt) usually ends in a financial crisis. What matters then is the policy response of the crisis. Compare Japan’s response to Sweden’s at the same time for instance.
That said there’s a key difference here: Japan had already reached the production frontier in 1990.
A better comparison is South Korea in 1998. South Korea’s growth was indeed slower after 1998, but it continued to grow faster than the global economy for many years and has now converged with Japan.
There is no reason to suspect the same is not true of China. Perhaps they won’t completely converge with Japan and South Korea owing to excessive levels of state ownership, but China at three-quarters of Japanese per capita GDP still means a world-bestriding colossus of the likes not seen since the USA more than sixty years ago.
The US has a higher federal debt load, which as the highest quality creditor in the country is the institution best equipped to handle high levels of debt. Nobody even knows what the maximum “safe” level of public debt is for advanced countries with deep capital markets. Britain exceed 200% of GDP twice with no serious problems, and Japan exceeds that level now with no issues.
The US being a debtor nation makes its public debt somewhat concerning of course and suggests substantial Dollar devaluation at some point in the future.
Household debt is very similar to the level it was in 2018.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/debt%20composition%202.jpg
US population, GDP, and per capita GDP are all larger since then which means relative private indebtedness is lower. Household borrowers are also of higher quality, as subprime mortgages have largely disappeared and the average credit score in America is over 700 for the first time.
Corporate debt has grown substantially (largely owing to low rates), but a lot of this consists of long-dated bonds.
That said no one can deny that China has vastly improved its power relative to the US since 2008.
When a great player finally retires, his team often retires his jersey and number. That’s what I meant: the concept of Jesus, what he has come to stand for, the whole elaborate Jesus story…don’t you think the name deserves to be retired?
The unfortunate (mostly) Mexican custom of using Jesus as a first name cheapens large parts of the Western civilisation. Why do it?
According to your link, economic growth begins in Iran specifically after 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which is when P5+1 (China, France, Russia, UK, US, Germany) – led by Obama, who designed the deal – has intentionally ended economic restrictions on Iran.
The ‘projects’ will go on, but they don’t make any economic sense. You actually use up more energy with electric cars if you account for all related activities. They are done for political (jobs) and ideological (environment) reasons. You could keep mankind busy with criteria like that doing a lot of silly stuff.
Maybe in the future, it will act as a constraint on the world’s oil demand the way cheap chicken meat acts as a constraint on over-consumption of quality beef (so there is more for me). Good, but engaging in non-economic activities is worse than idleness. People just don’t get it, they have been conditioned to demand more and more activity, ‘jobs’, they like to spin in circles.
For example, if all the heavily subsidised ‘alternative energy’ work would disappear, then the amount of mindless driving ‘to work’, using energy resources for that ‘work’, endless conferences and wasted bandwidth – I can guarantee you that would save more hydro-carbons than any ‘savings’ derived from the alternative energy initiatives. But people are brainwashed to see work – any work – as something sacred. It is not, it is mostly just moving around, talking a lot, and wasting time. I think idleness is under-appreciated…
America ability to shape the world’s events has obviously declined.
Keep dreaming, you commie pervert.
“Joshua” is English for “Jesus” (“Yeshua” in the original Hebrew, “Iesus” in Latin).
Well, South Korea would not have done so without the reforms that Kim Dae-jung pushed through: closing weak banks, eliminating state subsidies to firms and taking an axe to crony chaebol capitalism. He had been a dissident for decades, vocally calling for reform and winning a mandate to do so when he won his presidential election in 1998 when the Asian crisis was in full swing.
China is not even at the stage where it admits it has a problem. The debt binge was sanctioned and encouraged to prevent a growth slowdown. Now it will be very difficult for the ruling party to admit they were at fault in letting a severe financial crisis develop. Doing so would do the one thing they are most terrified of, seeming to lose their grip on events. It is not for nothing they are all reading L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution. With a set-up like that they are more likely to follow Japan in allowing zombie banks and companies to continue operations forever, let the economy limp along while publishing fraudulent growth data and crack down hard at any challenges to their authority.
Joshua is different enough, but I am not a big fan of either one.
The original Hebrew Yeshua has never been explained etymologically. I think it might be from ‘Ye’= with, and ‘shua’=Shiva. That would be its etymology in the ancient Elamite language, related to Sumerian. It could mean something like ‘with God’ (Shiva was a semi-generic term for God, later adopted by Hindus).
Or not, it is just a theory, but I have not seen a better explanation. Names always have a meaning.
Jesus can you see by the dawn’s early light …
Did South Korea admit there was a problem BEFORE the crisis? I’m sure some people did, but in general–no.
Japan’s per capita GDP also expanded nearly continuously throughout its so-called Lost Decades, albeit at a much lower rate.
We’ll see what the CCP’s policy response is.
There’s a very bad tendency in the West to assume that China can’t surpass us because…reasons.
Quality of life matters, and GNP growth figures don’t capture it well. Quality of life for most people in China is low, even the children of the elite prefer to move elsewhere (West). This is an Achilles heel for China, India, and most of the so-called fast-growing economies in Asia (Japan, Singapore are exceptions).
If you think that China can match or surpass West in the quality of life, I would like to know how. It is more likely that large parts of the West will drop to Third World levels with their insane demographic suicide, than China rising up. Then we will all be screwed and homogeneous China might be better ruled.
(Except, of course, the Central-Eastern Europe that has so far avoided the demographic replacement. But it is a small place and people here are politically weak, so they might not hold the line for too much longer.)
On a somewhat related note: if the Igbo were really as smart as they say, they would have given up the oil claims in return for independence.
My conclusion is that the “Jews of Africa” might actually be like black Americans, since that is one of the regions, from whence they came. Maybe, American blacks should return and become the Jews of Africa.
Far from peak oil, the danger is that is will become unusable before the biggest reserves run out.
I think this is a real danger to Saudi (which it recognises so is happy to sell Aramco) because it has (or claims) 90 years worth of reserves. And more so to Venezuela which claims similar reserves but pumps almost none of it.
Nuclear power and electricity, Fusion power (this century surely) or just solar power will replace oil long before oil runs out. Solar prices continue to collapse, and it is after all just a silicon chip that follows a slower but equally steady version of Moore’s law.
Shanghai
Predictions about Japan in the late ’80s were irrational: some thought it would supplant the US, but it is too small a country. China is effectively a large Japan. It can supplant the US, and therefore it will. I expect this will mostly be beneficial to Americans, rather than the reverse.
I thought I was the only one in the world who understood this and could express it in such a matter-of-fact way. That’s an exaggeration (to say the least), but I wish more people would get it.
Yes! I wonder what percentage of the jobs in this country amount to nothing more than unproductive, wasteful make-work. And how much of the “productive” activity goes into supporting unproductive work?
It’s a hard name to live up to. I think there are a few axe-murderers with the name. Still, better than the name Muhammad? At least for Western Civ.
I think energy efficiencies will cause the change to electric vehicles, in some inevitable way. It will happen slowly, but then could accelerate in 2030s decade.
The reason I think is as I wrote below in an earlier comment:
Electric motor is (vastly) more efficient at converting electrical energy to mechanical energy, than internal combustion engine conversion of the chemical energy in hydrocarbon, into thermal energy, into mechanical energy .
Sure, electrical energy itself has to be produced (and transported and stored).
But natural gas, coal, fuel oil, and even petroleum methods of electricity generation (then being translated to mechanical energy by the electric motor) is still not only a much more efficient energy conversion (than the internal combustion engine conversion of petroleum), but there are far more various sources for these electricity generations– while sources of petroleum are limited, and in many places require long transportation to even get to the market.
Even petroleum electricity generation, being then stored and transported as electricity, and converted in the electric motor of a car, will still be more efficient use of petrol to mechanical energy conversion (even with some extra steps forward and backward,). The reason is that the initial power station conversion (in petrol-powered electricity generation plants) is much more efficient than the engine in the car.
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And I think we can already see (in 2018) this reflected in the market the end of the whole comparison – as there are lower costs per kilometer traveled in an electric vehicle than an internal combustion engine powered vehicle already today.
That’s very Gordan Chang – a shaky ruling party gripped by incompetence, about to be overthrown by a restive population – but that’s silly.
Its much more complicated than that, but for our purposes, the Party doesn’t need to admit to anything at all. They can, and have, give out their orders to banks as needed and then they only need to be concerned with the fallout such as company closures.
But China isn’t Japan, with its concerns of lifetime employment and complex socio-political organizations. China is much more ruthless if necessary. The Party has, and can, simply let companies collapse in practice if not in name and push the working population elsewhere with incentives or even force if necessary.
At any rate, the debt is mostly immaterial. What’s state-owned debt to state-owned companies? Nothing that can’t be cancelled at any time. The consequential part is letting unprofitable companies default(or forcing austerity measures on them), but the Party is very capable of it if needed.
As far as citizen confidence goes, with around 80% support, and a trade war to blame for ills, the Party has the carte blanche they need.
I’m planning a move to Hong Kong, so my conclusions are obviously positive. But more specifically, what is quality of life? I’ll say its things such as the environment, perception of safety, disposable income, sense of opportunity plus things such as social environment like cleanliness, excitement, and other things such as liberty.
The first tier cities really aren’t doing that badly and the urban areas are a majority of the population. I think that from a material perspective(besides housing), material goods will keep decreasing in price relative to income, so disposable income will keep increasing. Environment is getting better, and the sense of opportunity is really felt there. Social credit will probably increase a lot of metrics of cleanliness(already not that bad) and maybe even manage to build some trust. As for liberty, it’ll probably always be rather meh(that’ll annoy me, most likely). Housing is a slaughter, and that’s something which I think is a major challenge the government has to tackle.
But I do think things are going to get better, sufficient to be comparable to much of the West, at least the lower income West.
As for liberty, it’ll probably always be rather meh(that’ll annoy me, most likely).
Give me Liberty or give me … wait, what’s this? A better standard of living.
Good luck!
I knew (was slightly acquainted with) a Jesus in my uni’s snowsports club. He was Anglo. Long scraggly beard, hippy, tall and thin, “spiritual”, often provisioned the weed.
I don’t think anybody is disputing that China will not overtake US quality of life anytime soon, if ever. However, more and more Chinese are happy to stay at home. For instance, good majority of Chinese PhDs in America end up returning these days. Not the case even a decade ago.
I have been there, not even close…
That’s still leaves quite a few (out 1.2 billion) who would move at first opportunity. Most elite kids want to leave, of course not all.
You can’t run a strong country like that in the long run – the requirement #1 for a successful civilisation is to hold on to the children of its elite. If they want to bail, all else gets destabilised. In China this is a problem, maybe not as big as 10-15 years ago, but still an issue.
“Peak Oil” is very real. The peak of cheaply extracted oil happened between 1999 and 2001.
Hubbert’s “Curve” is simply the sum total of all the known curves of production resevoirs and the expected ones of fields in the future based on known recoverable reserves. For a long-time now no new large fields/reservoirs have been discovered to replace current declining production of pure conventional global crude oil.
The mistake Simmons and the Oil Drum nitwits made was that they had no understanding of basic supply and demand.
There is never any demand gap. You can never predict demand or price which are both reliant on each other. There is never a demand gap. Demand is recorded as product supplied. As the price goes up it both raises production (in the few countries that haven’t peaked) and kills demand globally.
But the peak is a done deal. We may not see any effects in our lifetimes. But it happened.
American production is up because of shale in North Dakota and Texas. 6 million barrels a day and increased Natural Gas Liquids Production (another 2 million barrels a day). Neither one is technically conventional crude oil and not part of Hubbert’s calculations.
Seems to be less of a problem than in Russia… Or France.
https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/millionaire-migration-2015.png
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/millionaires-flee/
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/comprador-elites/
My god, I have been trying to tell this to people for the last few years with no success. The essential futility of non-economic work, that is a large share of what we today call ‘work’. But people are brainwashed, it is like a religion (or a cult), ‘work, work,…‘ without ever considering what it is that they are actually doing all day, or whether anything useful comes out of it. I mean economically useful, meaning producing more than what people put into it.
We should form a club, my humble guess is that 10-15 hours of actual work per week, if that, would more than suffice in most of the developed world to have all we have today. The rest is make-work, busy-work, uneconomical work, or what some call today ‘entrepreneurship’ (or gambling with one’s effort and time with very small odds of ever breaking even).
These are strange times.
“Peak oil is dead. Speculations about future Peak Gas are even more dead.”
isn’t this backwards? don’t shale gas reservoirs deplete a lot faster than conventional gas fields? there’s a lot more shale gas available in the immediate time frame, but they’ll be expended faster, per my understanding. so it’s more like, there’s now several decades of cheap natural gas available, but nothing like size of the oil and coal reserves.
also, there’s oil, but now it’s more expensive. and the price per barrel will probably steadily go up over the years. so no more cheap, nearly free energy for economic activity creation. efficiency will have to go up in concert.
also nitpicking, but conventional well oil production definitely peaked around 2005 or so.
it will be possible to initiate a LNG infrastructure build out now though, which is something trump should champion. an obvious thing to coincide with his infrastruture expenditure plan. in addition to a mission to mars.
i’m not sure what the useful time horizon of combined cycle natural gas power plants is right now, but you can build aluminum smelters next to them, which are power hungry, so that coincides with trump’s agenda as well.
they will eliminate the incentive to build commercial fission reactors in the meantime, although they’re less of a permanent solution for baseload power generation looking ahead decades.
how much does changing the law to allow US operators to export crude oil change things? over time, lots of operators could begin to export instead of selling their crude to US refineries, because they’ll get more money from bidding. not a big factor now, but it could become one.
certainly a boom time for US refinery operations, and it might actually be time for an american company to build a new refinery in the US. there hasn’t been a new one in decades.
“The first fracked wells were in the 60s … this isn’t new technology. ”
accurate horizontal drilling and fracturing is, though. that was not developed until the late 80s and didn’t come into vogue until after 2000. george miller is the man most directly responsible. an former exxon guy who went out on his own time and money working on it.
good point about the US global hegemony situation actually being somewhat diminished in 2018 relative to the bush glory years of 2002, where the US ran the world relatively unopposed.
relevant related issue – in addition to the US being somewhat diminished globally now, mexico is slowly running out of oil – and that’s a real thing. not gloom and doom peak oil stuff. the cantarell field is depleting, the government derives a big part of it’s revenue from PEMEX, and as that production slowly goes down year by year, you’re looking at the pressure on the border to go up. not a venezuela style collapse, but some of the knock on effects will be similar. that oil money is one of the only things keeping stuff running in mexico, and it will be mostly gone in a decade or two. mexico will become a big net oil importer. the government’s budget will primarily run on remittances, and mexico’s main export will be mexicans.
so that oil related situation has changed from 15 years ago as well.
Reportedly, Chinese people are going a lot to Canada (Vancouver) on an immigrant’s investment program.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZs2i3Bpxx4
Video says that more 100,000 Chinese millionaires immigrated just to Vancouver (3:38 in video). So numbers are perhaps a lot larger than in the graph above.
And 11:40 in video, they say that the historic “Chinese town” in Vancouver is collapsing, ironically.
Most of the movers to UAE come from Turkey, which used to be the top destination in 2014. I wonder if they are all Arabs, moving back to the Middle East.
Elites and millionairies are not the same thing. There are also the children of political, cultural, academic elites.
I get your point – this is a problem in general, for some EU countries, Russia, Brazil, India, Arabs… Imagine if in the past this was possible, children of feudal lords cashing out and moving, bourgeoise, aristocrats…it is unsustainable. Why do elites exist in the first place? To make their societies better. When you cut that essential link, it leads to chaos. This will not last.
I still think it is more likely to happen because of gradual degradation in the West. Hong Kong has lousy infrastructure, as do most Asian cities. By that I mean basic things like quality plumbing, architecture, underground cabling for utilities, and good macchiato with a croissant. Other than that Hong Kong is a fun city, one of the best around.
European civilisation was built up differently over hundreds of years, with gradual small improvements that people in Europe take for granted, but that are simply unknown in the rest of the world. This meticulous attention to physical space details peaks in Germanic Central Europe and slowly dissipates as you move in any direction from there. E.g. there is a noticeable change for worse in scenery as one crosses from Germany to Holland. And by the time one is in England, the lack of due diligence, sloppiness, bad plumbing, creaky transport are almost America-like. I think Anglos (and Dutch) have been too much into plunder, boom-bust economy, so they never cared much for lasting physical quality of their environment. With the recent Third-Worldization of much of the West, things can only get worse. The oasis never spreads, the desert does.
I’m not sure who came up with the narrative that China is collapsing soon due to rich Chinese kids leaving China. This sounds like the same narrative from 1997 when Hong Kong switched over to China. All the rich HongKongers and their kids are leaving for Australia and Canada they said. Hong Kong is history they said. You can’t replace excellent laissez-faire British governance with a bunch of communists and get the same result they said. Maybe Hong Kong is collapsing any day now but from any perspective, none of those gloomy predictions came true.
Now, are we sure those rich Chinese are leaving China permanently or are they building a second home (an escape plan) for themselves? Even in America, if I’m rich enough I would want a second home elsewhere; maybe a house in Canada, in the Caribbean, in France, in Mexico, even in China. Why would anyone want to do that? Well, do you want all your wealth to be in one country? Do you want to be trapped like the Jews in Germany before WWII without an escape plan? The political wind can change at any moment and if you’re smart enough, you would think ahead and have a Plan B. I bet Harvey Weinstein and Bill Crosby would love to have one right now. It just shows that they’re not as smart as Roman Polanski.
Someday, soon in America, just when you log on to Amazon from the comfort of your home and suddenly its advanced AI technology already determines that you’re a racist Nazi, a murderer, and a pedophile based on your past buying/reading/viewing/upvoting history, you can either sit and wait for the witchhunt to pass like an idiot or just get out of town and go to a more sane country waiting for the idiocracy to die down.
Recently rich Chinese are more fearful of their status and they know that they can easily lose their wealth, their freedom, and even their lives when the political wind changes on a whim (like Xi’s anti-corruption crusade). In this respect, based on past history, America is a more mature country; there’s due process. But as they said, past history is no guarantee of future result.
I never said that China is ‘collapsing‘. I simply pointed out that China’s ability to surpass West in quality of life is undermined by the large numbers of elite Chinese (often next generation) who will do anything to move to the West. Some of it is what you say – hedging one’s bets – but since it is hard to be in two places simultaneously, physics still matters, this is a migration. It makes China questionable if its own elites don’t trust it.
Regarding US and its voluntary transformation over time into a Third World multi-cultural cesspool: unfortunately Trump’s election in a strange way accelerated the process. There is still hope, as there is in most of EU, that the polarisation will clarify what is going on. Maybe a sensible self-preservation will kick in, but the numbers have become really bad. And the ‘replace the damn natives’ fanatics have become more brazen. And by ‘natives’ they mean us, white Europeans. I think short of banning middle age women voting there doesn’t seem a democratic solution.
This has nothing to do with Chinese debt. China matures, becomes wealthier and as their GDP per capita becomes bigger and bigger the growth will gradually slow down. There is nothing new, Japan, Korea, Taiwan all went though this phase.
No country in the World could grow at 10-12% growth rate indefinitely. Eventually they will hit the ceiling where future growth will be possible with newer technological advances.
All countries go through crises, China will follow eventually. Ending where Japan is with even 75-80% of their (nominal) GDP per capita would make Chinese GDP 2 times bigger than American GDP. And PPP China will be 3 times bigger.
1. China is better positioned than Japan
2. China has more natural resources per person despite huge population (coal, oil, gas, water, arable land)
3. Chinese TFR is higher and population is younger
4. China will enjoy benefits of world dominance … or will split the benefits with the US as a global superpower.
It would have been a big problem in the 80s when oil contributed 40% of Mexican GDP. Thanks to the post NAFTA boom in manufacturing, it is down to 10%. The biggest shock Mexico could receive has already happened when the ending of tariffs for American agribusiness resulted in their rural peasantry no longer having farming jobs. Hence the resulting illegal entries to the U.S.
Re: Wasteful makework
This whole topic is explored in the recently published book, “Bullsh*t Jobs”
written by David Graeber, an American anthropologist (and anarchist!) now
at the London School of Economics. The book has been widely reviewed
in the U.S.
The way I see it private debt becomes a problem when it’s denominated in foreign currency, and national currency is undergoing devaluation. This is not the case for the US. So to me, it’s not important. There is evidence that American youth is under a lot of financial strain, but this doesn’t look like an immediate threat to the economy and US power.
Growing public debt burden on the other hand both limits US government’s ability to borrow in the future and “stimulate” the economy via more deficit spending. US government has been on a spending spree since 2008, and has little to show for it.
Britain lost its great power status and pound is no longer the world’s reserve currency, but otherwise no serious problems – US is headed the same way. 🙂
This is the same mantra West kept repeating since 90s “China won’t be able to do this, to do that, to match this etc”.
It is unlikely that China will suppress US wealth per capita. Because a large chunk of wealth is derived from world dominance of US corporations. As for the quality of life it is harder to measure it. China will suppress US in the near future (15-20 years):
– K-12 education. If I were Chinese I would prefer my kiddo to go to school full of Chinese than low-iq ‘diverse’ folks.
– healthcare. My prediction, China will suppress US life expectancy around 2036-2038. It is ‘so great’ to end up on a table of Affirmative action surgeon.
– infrastructure. I was SHOCKED to find out a lot of infrastructure in a decrepit state, especially in California. I get zero back for my taxes, huge chunk of it goes to military spending and welfare programs. And the speed of repairs/progress on new infrastructure is sooo slow and hindered by political activism.
– current crime and homicide rates, Chinese cities will be way safer then American ones for obvious reasons.
– future ‘wonders of diversity’. Chinese don’t need to worry about terrorism and constant threat ‘being part and parcel of living in a big city’. In the meantime, European countries bring in millions of low-iq people, who won’t integrate. Hello ‘acid attacks, honor killings, rapes, no-go zones, groping, child abuse, etc, etc’.
On the minor note, East Asian working culture is too harsh. Even US is bad “work, work, work, take few holidays and pay for someone else’s welfare when some idiot or political activist calls privileged and plans how to squeeze more taxes from you.”
This is extremely biased. By this measure, quality of life is horrible because you don’t have
Beshbarmak or Borsch for an average Kazakh or Russian person 🙂
Don’t know about England, never was there.
But as for US: If a large chunk of German infrastructure was build by ‘black and brown’ people with IQ ~85 would it better or worse?
Sorry, this is complete fabrication spread by US media trying to white-wash infiltration of millions of illegals. And blame this on American people to make it a moral obligation to take in ‘poor and disenfranchised’.
Modern agriculture doesn’t require more than 2-3% of labor participation. This is happening or happened all around the world: UK, Germany, Japan, South Korea. And even China recently saw hundreds of millions former peasants moving into the cities. But only for Mexicans and Central Americans media gives an excuse “Yeah, yeah, that’s all because of you, evil Whitey, poor Mexican people have to leave their homeland. Take the tired, take the poor unless you racist and blah-blah-blah”.
I would suggest to look at the top income decile or top two deciles in China. Convergence is happening, although with the American average, not high-income professionals…
Quality of life is certainly lower in many respects (pollution, urban density) for the wealthy Chinese, on the other hand living in a “poor” country always has advantages when you’re well-off. Namely, plentiful, cheap personal service that cost an arm and a leg in highly developed countries. I have come to believe it plays a large part in what it “feels” to be in higher classes, because if a gardener and a full-time nanny are a big drain on your MD income, in Europe, then you won’t completely feel you “made it”.
Mexico is acting very hypocritical: They want Mexicans to have free access to the US, but they don’t want Central Americans in Mexico.
Despite all the cant about anti-racism, one does have a suspicion that some people just can’t admit to themselves that the chinks might have some good qualities.
On what time-scale are we talking? Everything peaks eventually, so it seems the important question
is how much time we have to begin planning for the future. I’m quite ignorant here, and am interested in hearing what is the range of reasonable expectations (pessimistic and optimistic).
Rich people aren’t the elite. They’re thieves, which is why they’re desperate to flee to some modern-day Port Royal. (Somewhere in Londonistan, preferably.)
I am not endorsing or justifying illegal Mexican immigration. It is a simple observation that more idle workers means more trying their luck elsewhere. Mexico running out of oil won’t likely add much more to the stock of infiltrators trying to cross the border.
I don’t disagree with that. But who knows when they will get to genuine superpower status. I wouldn’t set a date on it.
Late 2020s/early 2030s
I think short of banning middle age women voting there doesn’t seem a democratic solution.
Trump demonstrated that the votes are there. All it would take would be a little political work to add a small % of black, Asian and brown votes.
Are you thinking of Russia’s recent experience?
Debt denominated in the national currency can be a problem as well if borrowers in large numbers can’t pay. The global financial crisis after all originated with the inability of American home owners to pay their complex mortgages.
Foreign-denominated debt simply increases the risk of this.
American youth is under strain owing to the criminal higher “education” racket, which imposes upon them crushing student debt burdens. Housing costs in coastal metropolises with many of the best jobs is also a problem for them, though some of them just don’t want to move to North Carolina or whatever out of snobbery.
In 1980 federal debt was at 30% of GDP and the 10 Yr yield was something like 18%. Today federal debt is at 100% of GDP and the 10 Yr yield is at 2.8%. The idea the US government’s ability to run deficits in the future is limited is b.s. People have been warning about the national debt my entire life and since long before that.
That said I agree that America’s fiscal policy is unwise. We don’t know what the limit for federal debt is and I say it’s best not to find out. You want surge capacity in the event of depression or war. During WW2 our deficit was 20% of GDP annually. In depression you want 10% deficits (spent wisely) initially.
Like you say we also don’t get anything for our deficits other than weak stimulus. Public debt, outside of emergencies, ought to be used for public capital expenditures. Why not fix the freight rail interchanges near Chicago for instance which cause the nation’s rail traffic to slow to 6mph?
Agreed. This will be a positive development for everyone other than the Empire and its hangers on. Our currency management will then revolve around economic and commercial concerns instead of imperial fantasies. And fortunately unlike post-Empire Britain we’re not saddled with socialism.
Hell if I know. Nobody has a clue.
I don’t think it’s a big deal. Markets work pretty well, and Scott Adams’ Law of Slow-Moving Problems applies.
Even if the original Peak Oil hypothesis were correct I’m sure we would’ve adapted and met the challenge. The Peak Oilers were doomerists, and doomerists are always wrong. Just look at the permabears who missed out on 400% stock market returns in the past decade.
US good enough to defend Germany from Russia , which is building supply infrastructure to Germany ( and China), but not to sell Germany energy. The polar star of Russian policy is to find new parts of the world it can pipe oil into.
Panic harder.
My parents missed out on the greatest bull run for the US stock market in history due to believing people like you.
Offer better prices.
Economically , USA is as bad as China, constantly bullying Germans.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-making-life-tough-for-german-companies-a-1212271.html
The CCP is a pretty good reason, at least as a theory. I can’t think of another one though. Not having blacks is an obvious and large advantage.
I don’t know what a good technical definition of superpower is but it seems to me that China’s easily already in the club.
Using the US as a benchmark, they seem to have a larger economy than the USSR ever did. Skylines comparable to NYC. They’ve got manned space-flight, which perhaps isn’t important in itself, but demonstrates the ability to carry out grand, technical plans.
They don’t have that many carriers, but carriers are white elephants, and neither did the USSR. They’ve got plenty of subs. Not a lot of nukes – they might not be able to wipe out every 50,000 pop city after experiencing a first strike, but that’s not how the psychology of MAD works. It’s enough that the big ones would be destroyed.
I’ve no doubt that if they wanted to, they could get involved in a quagmire in Afghanistan. What else is left?
Of course, being a superpower is quite distinct from being a first-world country. It may take them a 2-3 decades to reach that latter goal.
PRC is an emerging superpower, not a superpower.
They need to develop and produce
…a wide-body aircraft.
A country that is not capable of that is not a (modern) superpower.
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/fffd0efcb937943fe0fcf822185c7200e8fd96f3/c=0-0-709-533&r=x393&c=520×390/local/-/media/2016/01/28/USATODAY/USATODAY/635895664687358852-777-factory-3.jpg
True, there are no majority votes for multi-culti, open border global liberalism. But Trump-Brexit-Orban-Salvini… have also demonstrated that the globalist party fully controls the institutions, media, courts, culture, etc…and they are willing to go to extreme, undemocratic ends to keep power. And there has been no response from Trum&Co. so far. The crazy charity-obsessed women, minorities and global oligarchs have so far prevailed. Not much has changed. Maybe what Trump has demonstrated is that elections only have a symbolic meaning.
Up to a point, but what really matters is the culture of good design, due diligence and maintenance. That requires a very long-term thinking.
Regarding a croissant with Viennese coffee versus Borsch: ehm, Contra gusto, no est disputat, but just think about which one you can have every day, day after day, and which one is more of an exotic treat. Exotica is kind of the opposite of a real civilisation…
Thorfinnsson is correct. With one caveat. Doomers are right about the final outcome but they are always predicting doom tomorrow and they have a centuries-long failed track-record.
If you take out Canadian tar sands and American shale oil production, global production has basically not increased for over a decade.
The only countries who show they can actually raise production for any significant impact are Sandi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Iraq, and I think Kazahkstan.
The rest of the world shows stagnant production or is in terminal, irreversible decline – like Mexico, Norway, UK.
Some countries like Brazil have increased production in the last decade but it mostly goes to their own rising consumption.
Russia has shown that it can continue to boost production by 1% or 2% a year on average indefinitely – but, of course, it isn’t indefinitely – nobody can predict where the peak is for Russia.
American shale production may burn out in a decade or less. Nobody knows.
Good discrete definition relating to the ability to project power.
In my own mind, I downplay aircraft a little, since I view air as an obsolete attack vector between real powers, and also war between them as unlikely due to MAD. There have been many base closures in the US, and its air force is concentrated in a few easy targets for nukes.
That leaves targets in the third world. China has a certain purchased capacity, as well as some licensed craft. It may not be the equal of the US or Russia, but it could certainly trounce any African country. (maybe, that is not a good definition, since a band of mercenaries could no doubt do the same) It may be more efficient for China to simply buy its planes, and I don’t anticipate Russia would pull the plug on selling to them.
Meanwhile, the long-term usefulness of getting involved in third world countries seems rather limited, based on history. France has a lot of influence in Africa. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The costs are not worth the discount on fissionable materials. Besides, one can buy their natural resources with bribes.
My own definition is much vaguer and future-orientated. It is more about what the US, China, and Russia can do down the road. Potentially coming up with some very disruptive technology. Perhaps relating to space. For instance, a large earth-based infrastructure project that enables cheaper entry into space, or a better non-chemical motor. I don’t think any rational person considers Brazil, India, or Nigeria a serious contender in that field, even on a long-scale time frame.
Genetic engineering for IQ and genetic engineering in general. Even at its least potential where it can only spellcheck single errors, I think it will be a health revolution. China’s experience with widespread near-human analogues with monkeys and possibly the use of monkey clones is an advantage here, especially for cognition, as there is increasing evidence that mice aren’t the best analogues for human cognition.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/china-monkey-clones-zhongzhong-huahua/551318/
That “brown blob” is, by far, the most powerful country on earth to which most of the inhabitants of the “white blob” countries are desperate to immigrate.
On the subject of oil, let me give you an example of the moribund nature of the giant white blob known as Russia. With roughly half the population of the United States, Russia exports 70% of the 10 million barrels per day of oil it produces. The US, with twice the population of Russia, consumes 20 million barrels per day. Consequently, were Russia as dynamic and as successful as the United States, it wouldn’t be able to export any of its oil. All of it would be consumed internally.
Beckow your discussion is very interesting.
If you look at the situation of Russia, outside some several famous examples (like Peter) – the urbanism is almost more similar to China (I haven’t been in China – but I would guess), than like Switzerland or Austria.
So by your metric, you could describe it as an “uncivilized edge of Europe”.
But in the 19th century (while economic level was mostly quite undeveloped), this country produced the most important literature (perhaps alongside France, England, and Germany) in the history of modern literature.
Or look at Salzburg in Austria. I love this city and have only very positive impressions of it – today it is like a perfect chocolate box for tourists. From your metric, it is the top of civilization. Yet how much original (as opposed to reproductive) creative production is here now?
When Mozart arrives in Salzburg, 240 years ago – it was probably extremely dirty and disorganized compared to now. There was no Mozartkugel – but there was actual Mozart. Which of the two Salzburgs is the civilized city?
Just look at ‘quality of life’ in Singapore 40 years ago, and look at it now.
There’s no serious reason why China will not follow the same trajectory.
On the other hand, in the contemporary USA you have utter, utter shitholes like Baltimore, East St. Louis, Oakland, Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Camden New Orleans, Birmingham etc etc etc. Each one of those existential hells is surely infinitely more horrible than the worst China has got to offer.
In the remotest most backwards parts of China your life, person and property are safe.
I’m sure the Chinese would buy every last drop.
Drops which could have powered the EU.
Chinese will never be Germans, though, I agree. But I think by that same token, Russians will never be Germans and its not necessarily a bad thing.
That said, safety is just one metric among many. I worked in Cameroon even though it was unsafe but it paid well and I was bored. I wouldn’t want to live there, though.
The US handles its issues by suburbanization. However bad the inner cities can be, you can just work there and avoid it after dark(and cue attendant issues of white flight). If unchecked, I imagine it will eventually transform into a large version of Brazil, possibly still very functional.
It doesn’t matter. Saudi oil alone can’t satisfy global demand. Even if American oil were as easily extractable as Saudi’s, it would still cost significantly more to produce. This is because American workers are given living wages with benefits and retirement plans. And they’re protected with a suite of worker safety and wellness mandates. In the American oil industry workers can easily make six figures without ever stepping foot on a college campus. This is good for their families, good for the economy and ultimately redounds to the benefit of the country.
Costs are also exacerbated by the exacting regulatory environment in the United States. If an oil company spills just a few ounces of oil, that triggers a chain of events that will include extensive environmental assessments, excavations, soil sampling, a check of the water table and reams and reams of reports. EPA, OSHA and their sister state and local regulatory agencies are on hair trigger alert for any infractions. It’s very serious, people can go to prison. All in all this is good for the country lest we find ourselves with the environmentally degraded wastelands that exist in other oil producing countries. The oil producing areas of the United States, particularly those on federal lands, are some of the most pristine and beautiful lands on earth. Best to keep it that way.
Apparently, the cunts who run the EU think that importing as many blacks into Europe as possible is the way to go.
Don’t waste your breath – you just can’t reason with that shower of shit.
That would only happen if Americans are as hard and ruthless with blacks as Brazilians are.
That won’t happen.
The CCP has delivered, to the Chinese people, the biggest increase in material wealth ever created in history – and likely ever to be created – in surprisingly short time.
And fools call them an ‘impediment’.
Yeah, that’ll do it. LOL. I suppose with a similar maneuver, the Komi-izhemtsi can gain independence from Russia, eh?
Igbos aren’t concerned with the fake colonial construct known as Nigeria. They are a diaspora people.
There are a lot of ‘uncivilized edges of Europe’, incl. some right in the middle. And then there is Romania (just kidding, love the place, women w mustaches and stray dogs, who wouldn’t?).
The points I was making is that there is a certain mentality that has produced the most livable places. It takes a long time, probably 4-5 generations, hundreds of years. Russia is very spotty, and so is e.g. Spain or England. The obsessive detail-oriented attention to infrastructure peaks in Central Europe. It doesn’t mean it is not also elsewhere – even e.g. in Singapore – but it is not as pervasive.
Salzburg has been cultivated for a long time, I suspect even in the late 18th century it had pretty decent infrastructure, look at Schloss, it is already all there. It is possible that a similar ‘cultivation’ process spreads also in China, or in Russia, but it depends on a lot of variables: quality of people living there, their relative wealth. It takes time, father to son, son to his son, etc… and some of it might be deep in our DNA.
I am not optimistic about the fast homogenizing Western societies, like US or UK, they might be in a downward spiral. Even at their civilisational peak they were a bit sloppy, lazy to do things well, and plunder dominated. What you get in Central Europe is a willingness to cultivate public spaces, and anglo in-bred selfishness calls that ‘socialism’, so they live surrounded by shit..places. And now with the migrant invasion, they will become even more reclusive, hiding from what their societies are really like. That only works for a while, after that the oasis gets absorbed by the surroundings.
Both.
The Salzburg of the past was merely less civilized than present Salzburg because it was in a less civilized era.
have also demonstrated that the globalist party fully controls the institutions, media, courts, culture, etc…and they are willing to go to extreme, undemocratic ends to keep power.
I count this explosion of hate and nonsense in response to Trump as his most important contribution. I may be wrong, and I usually am, but I think observing the MSM in action will push many undecideds in Trump’s direction and cement the support that is already there. We will know a little bit this fall and much more in two years.
elections only have a symbolic meaning.
Symbols are good things.
Do you have a single piece of evidence for any of this?
That’s the recent timeline, after them mucking things up for a really long time. That it is a short time is meaningless in itself. The growth rate would have been quite fantastic without the CCP, and the economy would have likely took off much earlier. And there would have been greater transfer of technology besides.
What if they had never taken power? That there would be a bigger economy is not to be doubted. The real question is, what is the comparison in the way things will be handled going forward? Democratic (a fake word) China vs. CCP China. Would a Democratic China have been in a worse position now vs. globalism? Quite possibly, but that’s not definitely known.
CCP is cancer with purpose. But still cancer.
Brazil is my frightening answer to the the Fermi paradox.
Essentially: multiple diverse landmasses are necessary for industrial-level intelligence to develop. It requires a long process of natural selection, which needs some level of geographic isolation, as well as some level of mixing, through conquest, and for the exchange of useful variants.
Once a certain technological threshold is achieved that isolation has the potentiality to be destroyed. If it is destroyed, the IQ clines fall apart. We don’t necessarily enter back into the stone age, and rise out again, but rather get caught in a rut of total mediocrity, where our top-level accomplishments are to build intermediate distance jets. Perhaps, we will still even have satellites, but that will be for world-wide prolefeed. The few remaining intelligent people will be stuck in a welfare, affirmative action society that prevents any grand endeavors.
Prediction: if the US returns to the moon again, a black male will land on it, the very first time back.
China already has a higher standard of living, albeit in a limited way: not many PoC in its cities. That’s not a small attraction but a big one, if they can hold on to it, and, so I think Beckow’s analysis of the last elite turning the lights out is rather flawed.
Yes, frequent visits.
No question: they have a definite home-field advantage, and that would probably be the greatest disruptive factor possible.
Really interesting question is what would happen if the tech was actually developed. Would it be possible to contain it to only one country, or only to a few? Or would it spread wordwide? What would happen to the idea of superpowers then?
One could argue that Brazilification effectively eradicates the African community in its own way:
1) Create a Black Lives Matter organization, with an overwhelming leadership of “queer” sexuality.
2) Promote movies like Moonlight on gay and queer identity among blacks. Still can’t stop unwed motherhood(often voluntary) but continued efforts to encourage the reduction of the “knowledge gap” to increase birth control and access to abortions to decrease fertility.
3) Most importantly, import a new tan people of greater tractability and higher organizational ability who also compete with them on criminal activity(a major source of revenue). Eventually the Latinos will successfully dominate illegal activity, and force African Americans to be junior members of any coalition. Eventually, Africans cease to play a demographic role at all.
The new Conquidator-Americans now get to argue about gibs for the rest of time, with an oddly pale upper class that mouths all of the appropriate holies of diversity while practicing none of it. US soccer team might be pretty awesome then.
Jesus, Uncle Wong, how dumb and delusional can you be?
I’m coming to the conclusion that you’re the dumbest fuck on these boards.
I don’t think that technology can be controlled from spreading, but adoption might depend on the prior culture of the population. Some countries will be more resistant than others, and it will probably benefit already capable populations more than others, as having suitable doctors and implementators will still be a bottleneck.
So I imagine it’ll be most common among an elite, and there will be a significant argument for subsidies or government sponsorship of such treatments: is freedom from myopia a human right, for example? Should Doctors Without Borders free all people in the world from myopia?
Try writing a check for over $4 trillion in Africa and see what it cannot buy you.
Africa doesn’t have a lot of internal natural strategic interests, other than access to natural resources and access to the ocean. There aren’t really any great powers of Africa for other African countries to worry about. A buffer state is as good as an army.
They could still buy independence now, if they made the offer, after conducting a hearts and minds campaign.
You seem upset.
Hispanicization as the stealth key to Western Civ’s survival? Interesting, if true.
If the theory of the gay germ is true, the ultimate genocide would be to weaponize it against a specific ethnic group.
What kind of stupidity is this?
Well try setting up a colony in Africa and see how far you get. Strategic interests is just another way of saying personal interests. Countries fight and slaughter each other over barren tracts of useless land. It’s all ego-driven. No governing entity that is handed a fait accompli of a piece of territory is going to want to see it truncated. Humans are into expansion, not reduction.
No, they can’t. First of all, they don’t have $4 trillion dollars. Secondly, the Nigerians would reject even $100 trillion dollars. Nobody puts a monetary value on a piece of what they consider to be their national territory. If they did, Tibet, Taiwan and even Hong Kong would’ve been free of China’s clutches long ago.
Hearts and minds campaigns have a certain efficacy in certain jurisdictions. Nigeria isn’t one of them. The Biafrans have tried all that. It’s a complete waste of time, particularly as major bodies like the UN are particularly skittish about redrawing what they consider sacrosanct borders.
The Black/Latino conflict of white nationalist wet dreams will come as a great surprise to my Latino friends, associates, ex’s and employees.
The problem is that a lot of you are sequestered in your little communities that are separate and apart from reality. All the information you have about the outside world is gleaned from sites like this (big mistake!). Thus you are inculcated with a wholly disjointed and apocryphal version of the facts. So when you finally lay down your keyboards and take those halting, tentative steps into actual reality you are stunned to discover a seemingly parallel universe where your indoctrination is of little consequence. Where nothing you thought was real is real. Where everything you thought was unreal is real.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-gang-firebombing-20180405-story.html
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2008/latino-vs-black-violence-drives-hate-crimes
Unfortunately, I have nontrivial knowledge of cartels. Incidentally, they are one of the best arguments that interests do matter, especially fiduciary interests that are supported through violence. I don’t think they particularly dislike blacks to some special extent or anything; its just an excuse to deal with competition.
At any rate, I doubt the commentators here “dream of it.” Its really unwelcome dysfunction no matter who is being hurt.
Including nat gas, the dollar number might be double. Oh, there would be a lot to iron out: how to really guarantee it? And not merely make some empty treaty, where the Biafrans could consolidate their position and retake take the oil. But if there was a will, there’d be a way. The check is just an analogy. It’s in the ground, so it can’t disappear overnight into a Swiss bank account.
If the Kurds didn’t have oil, they’d probably be a separate country today and that is saying a lot.
Most other Nigerians simply don’t care, IMO. The civil war wasn’t even noticed in most of Nigeria. Independence could easily be sold to the Yoruba and Hausa. “Give it to them and get their share.” The trick is making it not seem like a resource-grab. That’s accomplished by giving them the oil.
Taiwan and Hong Kong are essentially the same people. I’ve known Taiwanese who aren’t especially fond of the CCP, but acknowledge that Taiwan is a part of China. Hence, they can’t be disentangled. Besides which Taiwan is a natural strategic interest for control of the sea lanes. Tibet is another natural strategic interest – it abuts an enormous and formidable natural geographic barrier, near another gigantic and sometimes hostile polity, India, As well as being the source of much water.
Oh, you might say that the Bantu are essentially the same people, but they are not quite like the Han.
Gang warfare? No different from Italian gangs fighting Irish or Jewish gangs back in the day. As we know, it didn’t lead to Armageddon.
In case you haven’t noticed, only a sliver of the populations of blacks and Latinos are in gangs. When was the last time a racially-motivated Latino on black murder occurred? Or vice versa.
Now, let’s talk about what’s really going on:
The kind of positive social innovation that’s happening in South L.A. as community organizations forge a Black-Latino unity could be instructive, with the lessons stretching beyond our majority-minority region and time, and touching on the future of the nation.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/calle-houston/article/Black-and-Latinos-A-place-where-a-new-identity-8377253.php
Oh, so sorry. I know that’s not what you wanted to see.
Oh, please. This isn’t China or Hong Kong with your Triads. Ever heard of the FBI? They shut down the Italian mob and they quickly and ruthlessly strangled the Russian mob in its crib. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian gangsters thought they had free reign here. They don’t think that anymore.
But you’re mum with respect to Asian gangs causing havoc.
How Asian cafes became deadly gang targets in San Gabriel, surrounding Valley
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2015/03/27/how-asian-cafes-became-deadly-gang-targets-in-san-gabriel-surrounding-valley/
Asian Gangs on The Move Along I-5 / New crimes, recruits from Seattle to Mexico
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Asian-Gangs-on-The-Move-Along-I-5-New-crimes-2793624.php
Cambodian Street Gangs – A Case Study of Six Crime Guns in Stockton
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/71705/file-2146076210-pdf/_DOCUMENTS/stockton-casestudy.pdf?t=1453912125942
Chinese Gang Leader Convicted Of Double Murder And Racketeering Charges In Manhattan Federal Court
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/chinese-gang-leader-convicted-double-murder-and-racketeering-charges-manhattan-federal
Vietnamese gangs in Houston
https://www.reddit.com/r/houston/comments/4wjfd9/vietnamese_gangs_in_houston/
The Asian Crime Gangs In California
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA2IVoFAqK8
England has some kind of polarization.
There are places in England, which you think the urban design must have been created by magical elves that were visiting from Atlantis (urban areas like Hampstead, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, etc)
And other places in England, where you feel they must have saved money in urban planning by outsourcing this work to some defected officials from the administration of the urban district of Tolyatti.
Go around (or on the boat) in the summer the centre of Cambridge, or of nice areas of London like Hampstead or northern part of South Kensington.
In some ways, the building styles and layouts are more cool, even than anywhere like Salzburg.
England – it’s a land of extremes in urbanism though.
In your haste to be angry, you did not even read the quoted portion of the article.
Although many of the suspects in both categories were gang members, few of the victims were associated with gangs, according to the report.
The point of such violence, at any rate, is not to lead to Armageddon – which is highly unprofitable. It is simply to gain control in a fashion enough to monopolize illegal profits in an area. As for the FBI and the mafia, well, it survives but has mutated enough that it is no longer as it is. However, the main weapon of enforcement is through monetary tracking and cartels have been exceptionally capable of evading that. In fact, more than violence and the “sexy stuff” of crime that people tend to be draw to, that is probably their greatest advantage: they are impeccably good at laundering, and have a “state within a state” of Mexico that allows them to do so. They are highly efficient and businesslike, and central positions are run by financial analysts rather than individuals traditionally associated with criminal life.
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/15/466491812/narconomics-how-the-drug-cartels-operate-like-wal-mart-and-mcdonalds
And for your ramble about Asians, which you always fall back upon in an effort to provoke a reaction, as well as an answer to racially motivated crime, this article from 2018 is relevant:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lapd-homicides-20180131-story.html
I think Communists might be constitutionally incapable of understanding the concept of opportunity cost.
I have last track of how many Bolshevik apologists have claimed (for all intents and purposes) that if not for Lenin all progress in Russia would have magically ground to a halt c.1917 for all eternity.
Refuted here: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/short-history-of-3rd-millennium/ 🙂
This is silly. The oil belongs to the Nigerian government regardless of who’s sitting on top of it. They’re not going to surrender something they already own in order to make it a subject of negotiations.
No they wouldn’t. Kurdistan in Northern Iraq is the only Kurdish territory with substantial oil deposits. There are other Kurdish regions without any oil in Syria, Turkey, Iran and even Armenia. None of them have been granted independence, nor would they be. So oil is not a factor. As a matter of fact, if oil were the driving issue Iraq could simply annex the relatively small Kirkuk area and let the remainder of Kurdistan go its separate way. In fact the Iraqi military took Kirkuk recently and drove the Peshmerga out of there, who in turn had captured it from ISIS. So Iraq has the Kirkuk oil fields in its possession yet independence for the rest of Kurdistan is something they will never countenance..
Please shut up if you don’t know what you’re talking about. The civil war was the defining moment in the lives of most Nigerians. It continues to reverberate to this day.
No it couldn’t. The Hausas are perfectly contented as rulers of the country. And there is Yoruba/Igbo enmity that goes back hundreds of years. Neither the Hausas nor the Yoruba would ever accede to Igbo independence. For one thing, they’re afraid of what the Igbos might accomplish as an independent country. Igboland might turn out to be another Singapore or South Korea.
Throughout history it’s usually “the same people” that fight and disentangle themselves from each other. That’s why it’s called civil war. The number of civil wars that have shaped independent nations are incalculable.
No, you might say that. I certainly wouldn’t. By the way, Bantu is a language group, not an ethnicity.
Pretty embarrassing to get schooled by some uppity shine.
Step up your game Songbird.
Technosingularity: I have a hard time taking Kurzweil seriously after he admitted to taking 100+ different pill supplements/day to extend his life.
Biosingularity: this one does appeal to me, even as a pessimist. Two constraints that make it seem possible: 1.) the near timeframe (perhaps 2040s), and 2.) how much ruin there is left in the Far East, even if the West is near immediately fracked
Malthusian Industrialization: I expect that Africa will become such a monstrously large cuckoo chick that even most of the left will turn away in horror and stop feeding it. Meanwhile, fertility rates in the rest of the world might not explode, but rather stabilize or have peaks and troughs. Though internal fertility rates differences should probably be studied more, I think a lot of it is determined by the environment and culture.
BTW, I hope you are still doing that article on the Fermi Paradox.
Very true. Most wars are within the same race, including the bloodiest war in American history: the Civil War. That should serve as a warning to the whack jobs of the far right who fantasize about race wars: be careful what you wish for.
The history of China is chock full of terrible civil wars with humongous casualties. The latest one being the battle for supremacy between the Communists and the Kuomintang in the 20th century. In the 19th century the Taiping Rebellion, the bloodiest Civil War in history, caused the deaths of tens of millions with estimates reaching as high as 100 million (at a time when China’s population was a fraction of what it is today):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
Devolving into total war—with any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets—the conflict was the largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and it also ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human history, the bloodiest civil war, and the largest conflict of the 19th century, with estimates of the war dead ranging from 20–70 million to as high as 100 million, with millions more displaced.
The battles in Europe during WWI & WWWII can also be seen as a Civil War within the Euro Caucasian race. The number of Europeans killed by fellow Europeans in that civil war is ~70 million. And the number of asians killed by other asians in WWII is ~30 million.
That is a dumb and heartless defense of your point. As if innocent victims of gangs do not count.
Btw, any list of the biggest organized crime syndicates in the world will have east asian and european gangs at the very top.
Lol. You paint a vivid picture.
You sure have a way with words. You are definitely the most articulate poster at Unz.com. And one of the most knowledgeable.
We’ve got a moon cricket thicket in progress boys.
Which of those regions contains 33 million Kurds? Armenians were genocided with help from Kurds, I don’t think they’d be amendable to giving the tiny number of Kurds who live in Armenia any part of their remaining, small country. Turkey’s Kurds control most of the water in the Middle East. Iraq’s most of Iraq’s oil. Kirkuk is only one field, long in production. The north contains a fortune in untapped reserves.
Borders are not fixed in Africa, which has seen many new countries form recently. South Sudan was formed in 2011. It may even break up into more countries.
Yes, some of those in South Africa have significant admixture with the Khoisan, but do Fst on the people in Nigeria, the heart of the Bantu explosion. Nigeria hasn’t been populated too long by modern humans, anyway. There were archaics living there like 30,000. yrs ago. That’s later than Europe. There’s probably less of a genetic cline in Nigeria than Italy. The guy who came up with “pots not people” tripped over a hundred skulls with axeheads buried in them, when he was jotting his theory of the peaceful spread of culture through trade down.
The much vaunted African genetic diversity is mostly a sham, due to large scale prehistoric ethnic cleansings. Yes, they haven’t had the same bottlenecks, but the diversity is practically all in the junk DNA, minus relatively small groups, or introgressions. The Bantu in Nigeria are highly similar.
Africans in general tend to be highly similar to each other genetically, but are simultaneously highly tribal and aggressive to other African tribes. Most tribes vanished from Europe like a thousand years ago, leaving aside Montenegro, which was beset by Turks and not able to progress.
*Among the Igbo. Actually, it was just a highly regional conflict. Outside the army, the politicians, and the press, nobody in Lagos cared. The man on the street did not care. Look at archival footage and tell me if it looks like Berlin in 1945. If anyone on the street looks worried, or even not happy-go-lucky.
Maybe, you should qualify that by adding “of Africa.” I’m a booster for Igboland because I’d like to see the idea that there are smart Nigerians put to the test, whether that is by IQ researchers or independent African polities. But let’s not get carried away. You think if you took 10 million North Koreans, added them to South Korea’s total pop, made them all younger, then set them down in a 30,000 sq mile, oil-rich clump in Nigeria, they’d all be mired in poverty? Don’t make me laugh!
Igbophilia is just an insidious form of negrophilia, Thorfinnsson.
We are led to believe the Igbo are the Jews of Africa, but were defeated by the British drawing up post-colonial borders. Didn’t happen in Israel.
But I guess if you gave the Jews the resource-curse by setting down 33 million of them down in the Iraq oil fields they would be mired in poverty and lorded over by illiterate Arab tribes. Before we make the experiment though, I guess we’d have to ask Utu to figure out a way to convince them all to have more children to get up to 33 million.
Well, the rabid immigrationists who run the EU (cunts) DO put a monetary value on national sovereignty.
How many times have you heard them preach that unlimited massive immigration is ‘necessary’ to ‘fund the welfare state’.
Fact is: America, China and Russia are in a league of their own. The rest are followers.
British cities underwent a period of “modernisation” in the 1950s and 60s which would have made the Luftwaffe blush. Below is a good book on the subject.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-Lost-Cities-Gavin-Stamp/dp/1845132645
i crunched the 2017 numbers and it does appear Pemex is now a smaller part of mexico’s revenue than i thought. depending on the tax rate Pemex pays, they are contributing about 12% to 18% of the government revenue these days. although i think part of that percentage decline is partly due to production decline. if they were producing more oil, the government would be getting more revenue from them. that decline is steady, so the government loses more income from Pemex every year. Pemex revenue was down -20% from 2016 to 2017. that’s big for one year. it looks like Pemex could have been over 20% of mexico government revenue even a few years ago.
mexico will become a net oil importer very soon. if not this year, then in only 1 or 2 years. it will get most of that from the US. it’s already a net natural gas importer.
“Brazil is my frightening answer to the the Fermi paradox.”
why brazil? nothing happened in africa for 100,000 years while africans were there. if africa was the only land on earth above sea level, and there was no other land mass near the poles where it was cold, to drive selection for bigger brains…well you get the idea.
and there could be other rocky planets in space with a similar set up. on planet reticulon 9, 100 million alienoids are running around right now, throwing spears at dinotaurs for the last 500,000 years, and they’ll never get to electromagnetism, so we’ll never detect radio waves from reticulon 9.
just one of the many possbilities of the fermi paradox.
“Prediction: if the US returns to the moon again, a black male will land on it, the very first time back.”
certainly possible with the first mars landing. the political pressure on that mission will be astronomical. pun intended.
how far will people go, how far will they intervene, to make sure the first human to ever set foot on another planet is (fill in the blank with anything, as long as it’s not a european man). they will be the most famous human who ever lived.
It is very simple. If goys stopped giving Jews blow jobs for free, Jews would return to natural ways of satisfying their sexual urges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_primary_energy_consumption_and_production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
Russia is #3 in the world by energy consumption, and slightly lower than the USA per capita. (But on par with Sweden, for example.)
USA consumes more fossil fuels because American energy consumption patterns are dysfunctional.
What are the options for making this happen? Could Igbos build charter cities with their own border security? How important to Igbos would it be for this to be done in traditional Igboland? Given that they are a diaspora people, as you say, would they be interesting in sea-steading?
If you organize music festivals or scientific conferences, I’d be glad to make a visit.
I guess if they were good at economic thinking, they wouldn’t be commies, would they? 😉
Things that I have heard from the maozuo remanant:
1) Mao did nothing wrong(of course..)
2)Prior to Deng, China was a perfect society of harmony, brotherhood and love. The first crime occurred on the very day that Deng relaxed state control of the economy. All starvations, etc. were part of 4221D plan.
3) Mao should have killed more people, this would have preserved the harmony for longer. If only the Communists had increased their massacres, then the perfect society of harmony would have lasted longer.
4) There is no contrast between 2 and 3.
5) The modern Communist Party was infiltrated by Nationalists(KMT) and overtaken from within. The KMT actually won in the end!!! Deng was a KMT plant!
I am of the opinion myself that if Mao Zedong suffered a sudden brain aneurysm after saying “China has stood up,” things might have been better. Anyway, the maozuo are usually old no-hopers. I can’t wait for them to hurry up and die of old age. Highly unpleasant people.
That said, the modern Communist party might actually be the final stage of “stationary bandit”: something highly resembling responsible stewardship. Pork barrel equivalents continue to exist(and are harmful), but I suppose they exist everywhere in some form.
They have a point.
https://www.quora.com/If-Chiang-Kai-Shek-蔣中正-were-alive-today-how-would-he-view-modern-day-China?share=1
One could speak of living standard and what not, but really its easier to just say that whatever the ills of post-Maoist China, it is infinitely preferable to infant cannibalism.
Is maozuo a term that’s used in China, something like the equivalent of sovok? if so is it spelt 毛左?
Based on the Nigerians I’ve known (mostly Igbo), an independent Igboland would at best be like a MENA country. That, of course, would be a vast improvement, and they’d have to set up machine gun nests and minefields to keep the other sub-Saharans out.
While I do enjoy the absurd humor of making comparisons between East Asia and sub-Sahara (how do blacks behave in China?), I’m afraid one day the joke will wear itself out. Better to keep modifying it. For instance, there would be another subtle layer of humor added, cutting both ways, if India was used to make the comparison.
Speaking of other forms of comparison, I have to wonder why it has never been compared to the US. (though sometimes parts of the US have been compared to Africa.) It is an interesting psychological question. Granted, it’s been a long time since the US has had skyrocketing growth, but was the comparison ever made? I think there is an exoticness inherent in the East which leads to these chutzpa analogies. You would have to go to China and Africa to put any silly economist’s comparison to the test . A lot harder than only going to Africa from the US. Also, it could be an interesting insight into the true leftist ideal of diversity.
Basically, but I think it has higher status and respectability. There are people(edgelords) who call themselves that to signal that they are the extreme left. It distinguishes them from baizuo, seen as the least respectable.
Thank you. That’s very kind, particularly coming from someone whose writing I admire.
Your first list is energy consumption and production. Russia is bound to be high on that list.
Your second list has Russia at about #19 in per capita usage of wattage for 2013. They are also in the top 20 in terms of tons of oil and joules per capita. But how much of Russia’s energy consumption goes to fuel the engines of industry vs. keeping the heat on 24/7, which they sometimes do? You’ll notice that the Gulf countries have very high usage rates from air conditioning.
Per your list, some wealthy countries that are either very hot or very cold are ahead of the USA. The extremely high energy consumption of Trinidad and Tobago is surprising, although it is a major producer of petrochemicals, which requires a great deal of energy.
Uncle Wong (Daniel Chieh) is a vicious Asian supremacist twerp who thinks if he licks enough white nationalist/alt-right assholes, he can finally get them to like him. If you’re going to be an Asian supremacist, just go all the way. But you’ll notice that Wong’s supremacism is directed only at black people. With whites he’s obsequiously deferential to the point that no self-respecting white person is going to welcome his clownish pandering.
As part of his mission, Wong has adopted and internalized all the delusional tropes and idioms of white nationalism/alt-right. Key among them is the notion that blacks and Mexicans are locked in this bitter existential struggle that will see one or both destroyed. Their evidence for this? Well, they have a sample size of one: Los Angeles. It’s always Los Angeles — as though the entire country is composed of that one city. But Los Angeles is far from an ideal sample. Despite its reputation as a bastion of Hollywood and liberalism, it is an intensely segregated city. It has a peculiar racial dynamic that you won’t find even in the southern states or even in Orange County or San Diego, or even in the outlying areas of Los Angeles itself. Despite all of that, and despite salivating for blood and gore on the streets, Wong is still hard pressed to cite the last time a racially-motivated murder occurred in LA. Some race war, eh?
Intelligent and thoughtful Asians recognize the huge debt of gratitude Asians owe black Americans. The black struggle was a tide that lifted all boats, making discrimination not only objectionable, but also illegal. Wong doesn’t understand that without black people he might be stuck as a dishwasher in some Chinatown restaurant. Or he might be working as a driver or house boy to his white masters. But, likely, he wouldn’t be in the United States at all. It was the civil rights struggle that paved the way for the Immigration Act of 1965. When that law passed America was more or less 90% white and 10% black.
China is strategically innocuous to Russia of cours, so who cares if they own the strategic infrastructure resources of Russia. They are going to buy up British nuclear power stations and build the new one at Hinkley Point. Britain is subsidizing the Chinese building of Hinkley Point C because it cannot build nuclear lower itself. Britain has gone the way of productive capacity loss, and Russia will follow.
China caused global warming so the northern passage to Europe for Chinese goods has become feasible, and the Russian energy resources are accessible too. Russia is having to sell off its family silver. Next the Chinese will have the Pechora, Tobol, Ishim, Irtysh, and Ob diverted toward them, every last drop.
Unlike you, my family actually did live in Jim Crow South.
This gives me quite a few amusing stories as well as an unique perspective of how full of shit you are.
China is creating Tropical Hyperborea. Checkmate 5D chess.
I guesz the next stage is having tens of milions of Chinese men settling the Siberian frontier and capturing Russian, Buryat, Tuvan and Yakut women as concubines, like their Mongol predecessors.
Mexico primarily produces the Maya grade, a heavy, sulfur-laden crude that is not an attractive feedstock for refining unless it’s diluted with condensate or lighter crudes. Hence they need to blend foreign material with their own stuff before processing. Venezuela faces the same dilemma.
By a quark of geography most of the light sweet crude is just out of Mexico’s reach in Texas. Although they do have their own section of Eagle Ford which they may exploit in the future. Shale oil is always light and usually sweet.
Mexico also lacks sufficient refining capacity. However, the world’s largest refining complex is just right up the Gulf. It makes infinite economic sense to import from the USA rather than spending decades and tens of billions of dollars to build up internal production capacity.
Information that will disabuse you of this ignorance is right at your fingertips here on the Internet.
How do you explain my big brain? It’s huge and I have equatorial origins. I’m not alone either. My people tend to have large heads and big brains.
Aren’t you just trying to latch onto the Hispanic triumphalism wagon?
It seems to me that Dominicans and Haitians absolutely hate each other, even though Dominicans are pretty much Spanish-speaking mulattoes, without more than a drop of Amerind in them. How much more likely are Amerinds to hate blacks, and also the reverse?
Some Latins get angry when we in the US call our country America, or ourselves Americans. It is truly bizarre behavior, since “America” is basically a European exonym and the natives likely did not even have the concept of the Americas. But it is about turf. Sometimes, they are taught it in school. Conquistador-Amerind mutts feel a sense of propriety, even if their folk might have walked through America 13,000 years ago, and spent less time in it than Gypsies have in Europe, only to arrive in Mezzo-America and then genocide the poor Psuedo-Andamanese natives that had arrived ahead of them.
They feel entitled because of distant prehistory, but there is nobody who acts more entitled than blacks. That is not a recipe for getting along. What you propose is almost like the idea of European nationalists embracing their surly Nigerian invaders because they are not Arabs.
Mexicans actually had a law preventing ethnic changes to their country. It wasn’t written for whites going south. I’m not sure it was written for Nigerians either, but, I’m pretty sure they would have used it against them, if given the opportunity. Latin American media doesn’t exactly embrace multiculturalism.
http://i.imgur.com/q898yOk.jpg
How come he is not wearing any glasses, was he born before myopia became ubiquitous?
Do Americans of East Asian descent have different rates of myopia compared to East Asians?
The mix of nationalities in the discussion is kind of funny: these are the three nationalities – Russian, Chinese and Nigerian – which are mostly studying together with each other in the West.
Russians, Chinese and Nigerians – the three largest foreign groups studying in private schools in UK and Switzerland, and taking over their schools.
And funny to defeat the English in their own game:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/11/five-star-schools/
In other words, there is a multiplicity of considerations besides oil, oil being the least important. Nationalism and a desire to maintain territorial integrity are the most important factors. You’re basically arguing against yourself.
Kirkuk is the only field of significance. It has huge proven reserves that are actually producing substantial quantities of oil daily. It was the fulcrum of the KRG independence drive. They wouldn’t have even held their independence referendum were they not in possession of Kirkuk. They literally have no industry other than oil.
Denied Again: Kirkuk and the Dream of an Independent Kurdistan
When ISIS partially destroyed the Iraqi state in 2014, Kurds hoped that through negotiations with Baghdad, the Peshmerga’s mettle and the goodwill they accrued in fighting ISIS, they would get to keep Kirkuk in an independent Kurdistan. The One-Day / Fifteen-Hour War in Kirkuk now makes that prospect nigh on impossible.
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/denied-again-kirkuk-the-dream-independent-kurdistan-22920
International borders are fixed technically even if they are irrelevant to people on the ground. You and your friends can go to some remote part of Africa and set up your own country. But who’s going to recognize you? Who going to trade with you? And if the established, UN recognized government moves to wipe you out, who’s going to stop them? Afterall, you had committed an illegal act and got what you deserved.
South Sudan was formed under UN and AU auspices with the support of major countries like the United States. Neither the UN or AU or US will support an independent Biafra. They didn’t support them then and they won’t support them now.
I don’t care one way or the other. But I have a sneaking suspicion that your’e not as credible as the scientists that say otherwise.
Similar how? The typical European or Asian country is composed of exact facsimiles in comparison to Nigeria. In Nigeria you will have people with typical europid features (button nose, thin lips, narrow face, etc.), or typical negroid features (broad nose, full lips, wide face, etc.). Igbos and other African ethnic groups can be pitch black or nearly white. And guess what, all of this variation can occur in the same nuclear family. So we have observable evidence of the phynotypical manifestation of this deep genetic diversity.
Bosnia? Georgia? Ukraine? WWI? WWII? Hundred years war? Napoleonic wars? Shit, I give up. There are too many European tribal conflicts to name.
Look, I wasn’t even close to being alive during the Nigerian civil war. I am not an eyewitness. But I do know people who were around back then. And I have looked into it on my own. While it wasn’t a WWII level event as you correctly point out, it did trigger concern and commentary similar to Syria today, maybe more so when you consider that photos of starving Igbo children were ubiquitous in the media. Subsequent African conflicts have not had the same impact.
You’re right in that Igbos were disproportionately affected. Well, that’s the main reason Igbos are reticent on the subject of independence. There are a few small groups agitating politically. But an armed struggle is out of the question.
If you have concreted evidence that there are things Koreans can do intellectually that Igbos cannot do, I suggest you get off this blog immediately and submit your research to the Nobel Committee for consideration. It would certainly be an earth-shattering revelation if true.
Given the same exact set of circumstances, nothing will change. Humans are creatures of culture, environment, history and influences. You don’t even have to test this hypothesis on such a grand scale. There are black kids in Korea today who speak fluent Korean and are otherwise Korean with the exception of race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgq5lsWi_WI
Raise Koreans with Africans and the same will happen in reverse.
Fred Reed is a prime example of that mentality. This treacherous racist strategy of importing Mexicans to overwhelm fellow americans who are black is backfiring big time.
These traitors are probably not aware that Mexicans are on average ~5% african. And considering that a good chunk of Mexicans are full blooded Amerindians or Euros, while very few (if any) Mexicans are full blooded Africans the percentage must be significantly higher among mestizos.
Exactly. Not all Asians are as ungrateful and shortsighted as Chieh and his ilk. That is why they are mostly Democrats. Ignoramuses like Chieh need to be reminded of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
And speaking of Los Angeles, these fools also need to be reminded that the worst mass lynching in American history was of the Chinese in Los Angeles. The better breed of Chinese do not forget.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mass-Lynching-Against-Chinese-Immigrants-145-Years-Ago-Observed-20161024-0027.html
The Chinese community in Los Angeles commemorated the 145th anniversary of a massacre by a white mob, dubbed as the U.S.’s worst mass lynching ever.
Monday marks 145 years since the largest mass lynching in the United States took place on the streets of Los Angeles. The targeted group was Chinese immigrants, who were set upon by a mob of about 500 white men who systematically tortured and then massacred almost 20 migrants. Their motivation was pure racism and xenophobia.
An independent Igboland would thrive. Understand that during the Biafran war the entire world was arrayed against the Igbos. The UN, AU, Britain, the US, Russia, France and Arab League all supported the Nigerians. Biafrans were landlocked and completely embargoed. Nevertheless, they held on and applied their ingenuity to the production of indigenous weapons. Under severe duress and with limited resources, the Biafrans produced weapons that Nigeria still can’t manufacture today. They didn’t need deliveries of foreign weapons to fight, they made their own. In the annals of modern warfare, the Igbos are the only non-industrialized people to do this.
The defence consultant displayed some home- made weapons including the multi-barrel ogbunigwe, anti-personnel land mines, improvised explosive devices, Ojukwu anti-mines (made like vehicle hydraulic jack), and anti-tank mines, for trucks, tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
Other weapons displayed at the event included long range rocket launcher, anti aircraft missile, bunker cracker launch system, short range round steel ogbunigwe, Ojukwu air launch weapon system (air drop bomb), Ojukwu mortar, Ojukwu bucket and others.
http://dailypost.ng/2017/04/05/biafra-army-displays-weapons-made-biafran-engineers-owerri-photos/
This is what Emeka Ojukwu, the Igbo leader, said after the war:
“In the three years of the war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built rockets, and we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets. We guided them far, we guided them accurately.
For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest airport in the continent of Africa.
We spoke to the world through telecommunication system engineered by local ingenuity; the world heard us and spoke back to us! We built armoured car tanks. We modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In the three years of freedom we had broken the technological barrier. In three years we became the most civilised, the most technologically advanced black people on earth.”
Gen. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu
http://www.nairaland.com/2535689/ojukwus-short-speech-end-biafran
Well, since Chinese are rounded up and deported from Africa daily for various nefarious activities, including butchering and eating endangered wildlife in addition to dogs and cats, I think we should should ask: How are Chinese behaving in Africa?
Four Chinese workers were fined $300 each and deported over the killing of endangered tortoises “for personal consumption.” In some parts of China, tortoises are used to make a very expensive soup.
Chinese engineers installing transmitters in Matabeleland South were accused of stealing local dogs to kill and eat. Several Chinese nationals were arrested after being found brutally slaughtering dogs at their camp.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-04-12/chinese-eat-zimbabwe-s-endangered-wildlife
Uncle Wong, thoughts?
Why would they be? Are you just trolling or are you just stupid? The US is obviously not an apt comparison. A proper comparison is to small undeveloped countries that experienced exponential growth and industrialization in a short period of time.
American consumption can certainly be viewed that way, however, a deeper look shows it is incredibly efficient. More so than any country of its relative size or close. Only the Japanese and Western Europeans are more efficient consumers and there are other factors and histories involved. Dysfunctional it is not.
Same with the supply side. Production and refining squeeze every drop and every Joule out of everything. Nobody is tapping pipelines like in Iraq, Nigeria, and Mexico.
American consumers overspend way more relatively speaking on sneakers, food, and gym memberships than they do on gasoline.
Thorfinnson:
Thanks. The other photos I’ve seen had more serious (i.e. less smiling) defenders. Maybe those were of former Korean Marines?
Most of those, Balkans aside, weren’t really tribal wars, but geopolitical wars that became tribal. Napoleon was a Corsican, more like an Italian than a Frenchman. The English in the 100 Years War saw themselves as French. My point is that many European nations came together. For instance, the diverse German tribes came together, even though they spoke dialects which to an American would seem like different languages.
Today, the Swabians do not corner the Saxons and dismember them with machetes, like the Hutu and Tutsi. From Wiki: “In general, the Hutu appear to share a close genetic kinship with neighboring Bantu populations, particularly the Tutsi.”
Nigeria doesn’t have a shortage of water – that was my point. There are no significant geopolitical considerations in Nigeria which are operant other than oil.
“Arrayed” is a strong word. You mostly have to fight your own battles in any war. I seem to vaguely recall that they had a few allies. Portugal and South Africa, for instance.
In the postwar environment, it was natural to compare Japan to West Germany. Comparing Africa, either in whole or in part to China, is pretty weird. Mostly, they use the word “China.” Other forms seem to be derivatives of that, and are not apt comparisons either.
I thought you were saying the Igbo had special blood. Are you saying they have a special culture? If so what makes it special? Why can’t they convince other Africans to adopt it? Why haven’t Africans adopted the West’s ideas like Japan did so easily? Not even in America.
Couldn’t tell you. That said Vietnam veterans I’m acquainted with speak very highly of Korean troops.
Here’s a serious photo for you:
http://blogs.pjstar.com/eye/files/2012/06/riots13.jpg
These we wuz kangz jigaboos are in cloud cuckoo land if they think Asians are their natural allies against us.
Thorfinnsson,
Thanks again. And cigarette smokers like in the other photos I’ve seen!
Twinkie posted stats here showing that Korean troops had higher combat efficiency than Americans in Nam.
They even managed to regularly ambush the Vietcong in their own territory, which was something the Americans never managed to do.
Also more ruthless, with more war crimes, due to the strong anti-commie brainwashing in South Korea at that time.
It is sad if this polarization can be significantly traced to the war.
Volgograd (well, formerly Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad) was supposedly a very elegant city, before the war. (Although some of the post-war Stalinist architecture there, is pretty nice visually).
The title of Anatoly Karlin’s article reads thus:
Then there’s this snippet, taken from the text of the same moronic article:
Perhaps you may want to rethink that one a little bit, Karlin. Especially, consider whether or not that parabolic uptrend at the right of the graph is remotely sustainable.
Mostly energy-intensive industry. (Aluminum, mining, that sort of thing.)
Russia has (comparatively) cheap and energy-efficient central heating as a Soviet legacy.
“To burn oil is like heating your furnace with paper money.”
He had a point.
Every war is fought for geopolitical reasons, from world wars to local gang wars.
Yes, even today Bavarian German and standard German aren’t always mutually intelligible. But all Germans recognize an overarching macro tribe which is the German state itself. The consolidation of European groups into supratribal entities doesn’t remove the tribal element from European warfare. During the world wars the British definitely saw the Germans as something other than themselves — an almost alien tribe of “Huns” who posed a grave threat to the British way of life. Similarly, Germans had the same perceptions of the British.
It might be better if they did. Nuclear weapons are a big step up from machetes and will, if used, vaporize entire European countries.
The Slavs fighting each other in Ukraine have a great deal more in common than the Hutus and Tutsis.
That’s an ignorant statement. From the point of view of Nigerians there are a plethora of geopolitical considerations. And again, Nigerian oil is not on the negotiating table. The Igbos cannot offer oil in exchange for freedom because they do not control the oil. What’s more, there are very strong inertial forces against regions breaking free, with or without oil. Since virtually all national borders are disputed, the international community enshrined something called the inviolability of borders as a means by which to stave off global anarchy. This is the main reason the global community was so exercised over the annexation of Crimea. What’s next, Germany demanding territory east of the Oder–Neisse line?
Yes, they had a few allies who supplied them clandestinely. The supplies were piecemeal, and in the case of the French, too late in the war to make a difference. Speaking of the French, Medecins Sans Frontieres was a direct offshoot of the Biafran war.
Japan and West Germany were both already developed and industrialized prior to WWII.
The African Lion economies are the African equivalent of the Asian Tigers. So the comparison is to small, developing Asian economies and not to China or the United States.
Africa’s ‘lion economies’ growth exceeds forecasts
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/africas-lion-economies-growth-exceeds-forecasts-180222112354500.html
I’m not saying that the Igbo have a special anything. They do have certain cultural practices (as do other groups) that are conducive to success but which often create ill-will among non-Igbos. Igbos are fanatically dedicated to education and self-improvement. They venerate success and achievement. Their competition with each other to see who rises above whom is cutthroat, even among family members.
They have, more so than Japan. What percentage of Japanese speak English or French? Many would say the Africans have gone too far and need to dial back in order to preserve their unique cultures and languages.
John D. Rockefeller, a true hero of social engineering and insane NWO liberalism.