Some of these (heavily edited) clips from karate and Kung Fu movies made me laugh out loud. I figured they'd be a good way to brighten up your Friday morning.
What's the Marine Corps motto again? "Be polite, be professional, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet." I think at least some of those cats were Marines!
Peter
Stephan Pastis provides an answer to the materialist world. Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.
Reminds me of a man who told me, once upon a time, "Nothing succeeds like lack of success". If you think about it, he's not wrong!
Peter
I'm obliged to Francis Turner for providing a link to an article titled "The Global System Rupture". It's a very long article, far too long to summarize here; to get the full impact, you'll have to click over to it and read it for yourself (which I do recommend). I don't necessarily agree with all the author's points, but I don't think her overall thesis is far wrong. Let me offer these paragraphs to whet your appetite.
We are not approaching a regional crisis that will be managed and absorbed. We are approaching a global system rupture, driven by cascading effects across every socio-economic network simultaneously: energy, food, water, finance, trade, governance, and security. And while the United States, China, and Russia each occupy a short-term winning position in this rupture, all three are generating the very conditions that could pull the entire system into an abyss from which none of them emerges structurally intact. The path away from that abyss requires something that none of them is currently willing to do alone. It requires coordination between the two rival blocs. And it requires it now.
. . .
The United States, China, and Russia are each winning in the short term. The US has demonstrably degraded Iran’s military infrastructure, eliminated its nuclear programme, and established a new precedent of deterrence in the region. Russia is extracting elevated energy revenues, geopolitical leverage on Ukraine, and a sanctions waiver. China is consolidating yuan settlement architecture, absorbing discounted Iranian crude, and widening its strategic position in the Pacific while the US is pinned in the Gulf. All three actors have short-term incentives that are being satisfied.
And all three are generating the conditions for a collapse that will devour those short-term gains.
Because what is accumulating in the background of each of those winning positions is the cascade: 8 mbpd of daily scarcity compounding into a fertiliser shock, a food security crisis across 15 to 20 vulnerable economies, a financial contagion running through sovereign debt and emerging market currencies, a desalination doctrine that threatens the civilisational baseline of the Arabian Peninsula, and a wave of political turmoil that will arrive on a 6 to 12-month lag and cannot be recalled once it begins. No actor wins in that world. Not even the actors who think they are winning now.
. . .
And [then] the question shifts from how to prevent the rupture to what can be reconstructed from the wreckage of a global system that three great powers allowed to break because none of them was willing to accept that their short-term winning position was being purchased at the cost of the system that makes winning meaningful.
There's much more at the link.
That's food for thought all right . . . possibly food for nightmares, if no progress is made. The problem is, it's almost impossible to find anyone in Iran with whom to negotiate meaningfully. Iran's fundamentalist Twelver leaders are more than willing to bring down the entire world with them, if they have to. Some of them even believe that if they do, the Twelfth Imam will return - literally, be forced to return - to rule the nations and impose Shi'ite Islam upon them. They are not acting logically or rationally, but theologically and ideologically. We cannot find common ground with such people for a solution. That's the fly in the above article's ointment. I can see the author's opinions, and even agree with many of them - but if there is no rational discussion possible, how can her gloomy predictions be avoided?
If you know the answer to that conundrum, you're probably a better person than I . . . not to mention all the politicians and leaders on all sides that kicked the Iran can down the road until there was nowhere left for it to go!
Peter
I'm not panic-mongering and declaring that we're facing TEOTWAWKI, but the impact of the Iranian war on the world economy is steadily getting worse, and it's going to affect us in the USA as well. We'll be far better off than most countries due to being a net energy exporter, but problems for our major trading partners inevitably end up being our problems as well.
Click on the following headlines to read more information about each point.
Economist who predicted 2008 crash warns something much worse could be coming
"We have returned to a period of risk, one rife with the sort of pressures that have led to major financial crises.
"This time, the risks are spread across industries, markets, and nations: artificial intelligence, the roughly $2 trillion private credit industry, stock markets, Taiwan, and now Iran."
While each of these issues are enough to cause chaos on their own, combined they suggest that another financial crash is inevitable and the ongoing war in Iran is seemingly at the heart of it all.
Russia Halts Ammonium Nitrate Exports As Global Fertilizer Crisis Set To Worsen
Export disruptions of the critical crop nutrient can hit import-dependent buyers hard, especially in markets such as Brazil, Canada, India, Peru, and Ukraine.
Russia's temporary export comes at the worst possible timing as the Northern Hemisphere planting season begins in some regions.
The risk now is that, as the Middle East conflict enters its fourth week, a global energy shock is also spreading to fertlizer markets and may only suggest a delayed food price shock later this year.
Hundreds Of Gas Stations Run Dry In Australia As Hormuz Shock Exposes Energy Security Failures
Australia's weird obsession with "green energy," compounded by a lack of urgency regarding proper energy security, has now collided with the worst energy crisis the world has ever seen.
A country heavily dependent on imported refined petroleum products, many of which transit the Strait of Hormuz, has reached the fourth week of the U.S.-Iran war, but with a full-blown fuel supply shock now underway, and hundreds of gas stations across the country running dry.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen ... warned that fuel supplies were at about 38 days for gasoline. He said only 30 days of diesel and jet fuel remained.
The Rapidly-Gathering Economic Storm
Karl Denninger looks at problems with AI, housing, energy, food, fraud and many other current issues. He concludes: "Is Iran the triggering event? I have no idea. It might be." Go read his whole article. It's food for thought.
Finally, a perspective from England that may be of interest to US preppers as well.
I laughed at bulk-buyers during Covid, but this time I think the preppers are right
I am not what you’d call a natural prepper. Even during the Covid lockdowns, when others piled supermarket trolleys high with giant packs of loo roll, I felt the UK’s shoppers were losing their collective grey matter. But as the war with Iran continues and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to the ships of the US, Israel and their Western allies, I find myself changing tack.
This time round, I’m with the doomsters. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to foresee that we will all feel the impact from the global supply chain of crude oil, liquefied natural gas, fertilisers, sulphur and helium being suddenly, severely restricted.
Today’s Bright Young Things may soon wake to their very own Great Slump. Before sitting down to write, I saw an American professor of medicine post the following message on X, highlighting just one little-discussed aspect of the problem: “I hope no one needs an MRI this year. The world’s largest producer of liquefied helium is in Qatar and is shut off.” He had just been told that his own institution’s yearly supply will be halved, at best.
That last paragraph is a wake-up call. How many MRI's are performed every day in the USA? What would those needing them (and the doctors who call for them) do if half of them could not be performed? Could this be a life-or-death situation for the patients needing them? I suspect it might.
As I said above, I'm not one to cry "Wolf!", and I don't want to spread alarm and despondency: but forewarned is forearmed. If we need something that may soon be in short supply, now might be a very good time to get it, and beat the rush.
Peter
I'm sure most of us know of the poem "Desiderata", published by Max Ehrmann in 1927. Its original text may be found here, if you're interested. It was originally little known, but became very popular during the 1960's and 1970's, probably spurred on by the "Hippie" era. A well-known musical audio recording of the poem was published by Les Crane in 1971. It became well-known for its chorus:
You are a child of the universe
No less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
What I didn't know until yesterday was that in 1972, a musical response to the poem was published, titled "Deteriorata". Wikipedia reports:
The parody was written by Tony Hendra for National Lampoon magazine, and was recorded for the album Radio Dinner. Narrator Norman Rose read the parody poem and Melissa Manchester was the background vocalist, both closely tracking the format of Crane's original. Christopher Guest wrote the music.
The original musical version may be found here, and an annotated text version here. The chorus shows, shall we say, a rather less reverent approach to life than the original!
You are a fluke of the universe
You have no right to be here
And whether you can hear it or not
The universe is laughing behind your back
As a man of faith, I naturally hew more to the original version than the follow-up. However, as a human being, I have to giggle at the snark factor of "Deteriorata". I suppose, in due time, we'll all find out which is the most accurate!
Peter
Gathered from around the Internet over the past week. Click any image for a larger view.
