HALF-FULL REPORT 10/11/19
The Public Relations Business Has its Hand in Everything.
Edward Bernays created the modern practice of public relations to mobilize support for WWI. The craft has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry with relatively few large players. Wherever we look these days, we find the invisible hand belongs to these masters of the universe. The game is called propaganda when the other guy does it, and it is the prime mover behind the news from Ukraine, Turkey, and the endless attempts to sack President Trump.
Study this industry. Learn their methods and teach them to your children. The mobile phone generation was born to be their victims.
Propaganda
Trust in institutions continues to plummet around the world. The anti-elite movement wearing yellow vests in Europe and on the streets of Hong Kong are now regular segments on the nightly news. Donald Trump is likely to win a second term while riding the sentiments of the ordinary citizen.
Iran is on the verge of revolution with women attending soccer matches this weekend for the first time in about four decades. North Korea remains unplugged from the rest of the world.
Handlers march children before the United Nations in support of some climate disaster that never seems to cooperate. We have about eleven years left before the entire planet becomes as inhospitable as the planet Venus. Some say as hot as Mercury. The use of fossil fuels within Western Democracies is the problem, while the same fuel utilized in autocratic states is just hunky-dory.
Our president makes abrupt moves creating panic among allies. Parts of California have gone dark as Atlas Shrugs under the weight of the moocher’s demands.
Venezuela is in collapse, and there is actual, real starvation in the streets. Brexit is inching ahead.
The #MeToo movement brought down many media titans. Epstein’s sex island might bring down a plane-load of political Olympians.
Small wars continue to dominate. The big enchilada is still on hold. Nevertheless, we lost 76 Americans in Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO3rrPHQwbs
The Europeans are shocked and demanding the United States protect the Kurds. Their reasons are valid, but so far, neither London nor Paris have announced plans to police their neighborhood.
The internet generation, with its wimpy man-bun wearing wussies passed out on heroin on the tattoo parlor’s floor, faces a severe challenge from Generation Z, the cell phone generation. Nearly every person on the planet now has a personal product-order taking capability in hand, all the time. They don’t talk with each other, they text. And they are addicted to their devices as their social skills evaporate. Suicide is exploding. These kids can be induced to shoot up public places by manipulating their Google feeds.
Sober workers are emerging from high schools, and the Obama race to the cultural bottom is over. Mexican workers can down four shots of tequila, a six-pack of beer, and still be laying a new roof at 7 am the following morning on a 100-degree day.
International growth is down, U.S. growth has slowed a bit. Debt is accumulating. Liquidity seems to be draining from the banks, this time towards Asia.
Democrats are the party of ODTAO. It is one darn thing after another in their bid to create a Pink Revolution modeled after the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. After losing the blue-collar voter, the Democrats are losing the black vote.
Some Republicans don’t want to associate with the average American. They want to stay in their clubs with their pals and feel all special. The masses, however, want into the tent. President Trump is on message, all the time. The average American is welcome. This political season promises to be spectacular.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7BI5HbkvY
The value of many university degrees is falling to the floor as employers increasingly value output over perceived input. Authenticity is more important than pedigree. Most of those university degrees now go to women; women shocked to discover that the race still goes to the most productive. Not the best papered.
Remember when the G-Man was cool? The FBI protected the Constitution with their lives if necessary. We might be as few as nine days away from indictments handed down to leaders of the FBI. They used to write great songs about G-Men. What happened? As a kid, I heard this song and thought the FBI had to be the coolest gig in America. Today, I am just sad that the FBI leaders were likely at the center of a coup. It pains my heart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0fcb5T1pcM
What do all these things have in common?
They are all manifestations of a propaganda-driven world where decision making is through subjective input rather than objective reality.
Real power goes to those that create clear visions and crystalize focus. Most people cannot do this for many reasons. Constant stimuli bombard leaders of countries and corporations so much that leaders are left with the options of imposing personal visions, buying a viewpoint, or trying to cobble one together with a group of influencers.
The strength of a representative government is the creation and management of vision. Generation Z does not value representation. They want to place their orders for government services directly. They don’t want to be alone within their minds. They need that clickbait fix nearly always.
The modern world is the propagandist’s dream. A single individual such as Paul Manafort, armed with a mobile phone and a vision to sell, can become a millionaire. Even a billionaire by developing and marketing a view to governments and corporations, and the individual.
They leave it to others to sustain to vision. Sometimes the concept is correct. Frequently it is not. Governments are advancing and falling based on this alone.
Some call it branding. Others call it marketing, promotion, or just selling. But these are the actions applied to the vision. They are the second-tier. The talking heads see the sales job. They miss the concept sold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsVhvP3WLpQ
The world has surprisingly few people creating and marketing new visions. The news this week has many examples of conflict and strife, scheming and trickery. Behind the scenes reside the business of vision. Imagination is the domain of the Public Relations business.
It is where they make the big bucks.
Big things are transpiring around the world, and they are all linked by the imposition of subjective vision on populations. They use the tools and techniques of Edward Bernays, Here the inventor of modern propaganda. Goebbels studied him.
This man invented the modern world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-avXsXE8U
We have moved from a world where PR firms produced universal messages and dispatched to advertisers and news agencies. Everyone had a simple script allowing tens of thousands of stories to be written in generally the same direction.
Journalists could write, studios could produce. But only a limited few could set a vision.
Today, things are changing. The ubiquity of the mobile phone and Generation Z have turned everyone into a producer of their take on centrally produced visions. This change is deeply problematic for free people because it makes the vision-maker the new aristocracy. They are above general laws.
Ukraine
Ukraine is similar to Syria because it is the natural gas portal feeding Europe. Environmental propaganda convinced Europeans to abandon oil and gas fracking on the Continent in favor of purchasing supplies from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
Look at the people behind Greta. Influence peddlers for hire:
Those paid to shape opinions such as George Soros have been very effective. Their ability is due, in large part, to the general public’s lack of understanding of the game. They make politicians wealthy by providing them with temptation and the pathways.
We should teach our children the PR game. Teach them to recognize it.
Ukraine and Syria are essential geopolitical players because of their ability to control the natural gas pipelines and charge tolls on gas transported.
Team Obama recognized this as did team Clinton. They sought to gain influence and fees on the gas in exchange for political stability. Obama/Biden offered foreign aid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nUZekJ3pfM
Paul Manafort played both sides of the government of Ukraine against each other. President Yanukovich paid him for consulting services and influence-peddling necessary to maintain gas logistics profits flowing. Independence from Russia was viewed as a destabilizer.
Tymoshenko did not hire Manafort according to the public domain. She was influenced by him and spoke of him as the betrayer of freedom.
The public relations business has something in common with the garden-variety real estate business. The agents are working for the seller, the side that pays them, but the buyer frequently fails to understand this.
Democrats have been losing their minds in anticipation of the final report on corruption and are throwing everything they have at Trump.
The Hunter has become the hunted as Biden’s son has fallen off the radar. The bottom line is people connected to Obama earned considerable sums by peddling influence within the United States government favorable to the profit motives of Gazprom, Putin, Yanukovich, and Burisma Holdings.
Turkey/Syria
Saudi natural gas will flow to Europe in competition to Russian gas, offering every politician along the pipeline an opportunity to tax and toll. Not just millions, but billions in fees are on the table.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan Here, president of Turkey, is an Islamist with his thumb on the gas valve. He led the change in the Turkish constitution so that the national leader is a political president and no longer a parliamentary prime minister.
He presented a plan to the UN about a month ago describing his intent to create a 20-mile deep buffer between Turkey and Syria, chopping through territory held by the Kurds.
He initiated his plan on 9-October after American forces in a region of Eastern Syria were ordered to pull back. Turkish troops are presently shelling the Kurds, and the Kurds are mobilizing to defend the territory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrxIvUTerXM
Erdogan’s political party lost control of Ankara and Istanbul in local elections last April. He came to power as an Islamist and was able to mobilize a coalition of hardliners. That was when he was a prime minister.
His hardline positions and bombastic rhetoric, as well as the use of Turkish troops in Syria, created a refugee crisis that pushed Syrians into Turkey. Turkish law allows refugees to apply for citizenship and vote after five years. Erdogan benefits from some of their votes.
Refugees that were not politically useful, meaning undesirable as citizens, were pushed on to Europe. Most of these refugees are Arab speaking.
Surprising things can happen when leaders attempt to redraw maps. Ethnic Turks in the western regions have no interest in massive Arab immigration. They have no interest in reverting their secular culture to fundamentalist Islam. They stopped bearing children.
The birthrate of ethnic Turks fell from 3 children per woman to 1.5 since Erdogan moved to the national stage. The birthrate of Arabs increased to 4+ children per woman among those resettled to Turkey. Kurds produce four children per woman.
Turks recognize this as a crisis created by Erdogan. He used military action to create migrants from Syria to Turkey to create a permanent voting block. California and the Dems anybody?
The last Kurdish census occurred in 1960. Nobody knows how many Kurds are in Turkey. That census only counted Kurds literate in Kurdish; they were countered as Turkish if they spoke Turkish or were bilingual.
The high Kurdish fertility guarantees that the Kurdish population has surged over the past fifty years. There were at least two million marriages between Turks and Kurds over the past twenty years. Kurdish women are becoming educated and are appealing wives to Turkish men outside the urban centers.
Erdogan has an Arab-Islamist problem. His popularity is insufficient to win reelection as a political president because of the nature of his previous coalitions. Turkish Kurds hate him. Mixed Turk/Kurd families hate him. Well educated and cultured Western Turks have no use for him.
The Turkish military launched a hot-coup against him in 2016.
Rather than maneuver the political scene with persuasion, Erdogan is attempting to eject refugees unwilling to become part of his coalition, and he is trying to push Kurds from Turkey.
His political methods rely on ethnic polarization in hopes of forming his permanent Arab voting block. Well, that and voter fraud. Joseph Stalin, Lyndon Johnson, and Barak Obama would be proud of this guy.
President Trump pulled Marines back from the Turkish border, creating the window for Erdogan to march on his proposed buffer.
Big problem. The Kurds don’t agree and may now so overmatch the population of Arabs in Turkey that Erdogan has destroyed his chance for legitimate reelection.
The Turkish economy is technically in a recession, and a hot war has limited use as a public relations diversion when the population sees it as a boondoggle of the leader and not as a patriotic mission.
Erdogan’s response to the sudden fertility drop? He ordered urban women to bear three children each. They now mock him.
Envy and power lust drove Erdogan to change his constitution. The man built his career in the parliamentary system. He is losing traction fast as a president.
If the Kurds keep having children while the Turks party on, the Kurds will eventually have their state. It will be called Turkey.
California Blackouts
PG&E preemptively cut power to about 2 million people ahead of a windstorm Wednesday to prevent fires caused by vegetation swaying into the distribution system. Enviros have petitioned the state to block tree trimming along the right of ways.
The video below is over an hour long. You can get the gist of it in the first few minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsOiHfCoIq4
Governor Newsom said preemptive outages were a great idea on Wednesday. Today it is all about greed and mismanagement. It seems that PG&E has a sharper PR team than Newsom.
Team Newsom can’t do much except roll out the old greed argument.
Enviros sing a different tune when they can’t charge their mobile phones. About half the power is restored, and the rest should come on-line soon.
Either they trim the trees, more blackouts will occur, or there will be more wildfires.
Lots of solar cell phone chargers will be sold, and automobile engines will be idled just to charge the phones. Sure, idling a car to charge a cell phone sounds crazy, but Generation Z has a phone addiction problem.
The enviros have an Achilles heel. They were promised windmills and solar farms to keep the screens lit. They forgot about the transmission lines.
Skye wrote an excellent tutorial on generators in the forum, repeated here:
The most fuel economical and longest-lasting type of generator is an inverter generator. These run at a slower speed at partial load and are far more efficient at partial load. Note, too, that wear increases with the cube of the RPM, so a generator that runs slower most of the time will last a lot longer. A regular home generator runs at 3600 RPM, even at no load. An inverter generator operates at an RPM proportional to the load, except at very low loads where it runs just fast enough not to die.
I recommend either a diesel inverter generator or a propane or natural gas or dual fuel (gasoline or natural gas/propane) inverter generator. Gasohol is very corrosive; even if you run your generator “dry.” there will still be some fuel left in the carburetor, which will damage it. Diesel can be stabilized to last for a decade or more in metal (not plastic) cans. Propane lasts forever and leaves no corrosive residue in your generator.
Caution: Some states are blocking natural gas pipeline construction (such as New York and California); don’t count on uninterrupted natural gas supply in progressive states, especially during the winter.
Hint: 75% of the fuel energy is converted into engine and exhaust heat. You can cut your winter emergency fuel costs greatly if you blow the engine heat and exhaust heat (via a heat exchanger, so you don’t carbon monoxide poison yourself) into your home during the winter and route that hot air outside during the summer.
Many states are passing “renewable energy portfolio” mandates. Warren Buffet and other progressive oligarchs are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pass such legislation and enrich themselves. How does this work? Monopoly state or regional public utilities are allowed an essentially guaranteed return on capital investment, so the more expensive their power generation facilities, the more they make, and the more you pay. Buffet’s Nevada Energy spent $80,000,000 in this small state to beat a state public initiative constitutional amendment that would have allowed competition with his Nevada Energy legal monopoly.
Anything above 15% intermittent renewable is a challenge to grid stability. 20% is hazardous. 25% and up is a potential disaster. Do it yourself power is, unfortunately, rapidly becoming a necessity in more and more regions.
You will also need a change-over switch. This disconnects your home from the grid and connects it to your generator when the grid goes down. Automatic ones are available that, when the grid fails, automatically switch your home over to your generator and start your electric battery start generator. Yes, this is an expensive pain. But it is all too rapidly becoming necessary, especially in California. Or you could get out of Dodge before it is too late.
Caution: Most homes have forced-air heating. Even if your furnace runs on natural gas, oil, or propane, if forces air through ducts, it will NOT operate without electricity.
While it is hard to believe that we are in the most advanced civilization in history and we lack the political will to deal with enviro fruitcakes, we are nonetheless here.
To add a bit to Skye’s comments:
My company uses quite a few generators to power the instruments and airconditioning within lab trailers. They are used to measure emissions from industrial smokestacks and optimize boilers and industrial furnaces.
We experimented with many types and the three fuels. We settled on 1800 rpm diesel units for the larger loads and the Honda EB3000C for smaller loads.
Here is a picture:
These little rascals are light enough to be carried by one adult and run for about nine hours on 2.5 gallons of gas. Our oldest unit has 8,000 hours without anything beyond routine maintenance. They produce up to 2,800 watts, and we run one per 20-amp load.
They will not run your house, but they will run the fridge and other 120 volt appliances. A cyclo converter, not an inverter, creates the power and cannot be paralleled like most inverters.
We have never achieved the same longevity with an inverter generator, although the inverter-based generators produce even cleaner power and are quieter.
The electricity from the cyclo converter is clean enough to power mass spectrometers. It is decent enough for your computer or anything else.
This is not a commercial for Honda. I am just sharing what we learned through over thirty years. This unit offers an excellent combination of reliability, economy, and ease of handling and the California Air Resource Board approves it.
It is a darn sad shame that the topic of generators and power outages is even a thing.
One More Thing
Just as the HFR was about to be uploaded last week, I clicked on an internet image of AOC. Bad news as my hard drive went into a nosedive before my antivirus responded. A quarantined computer is now used to produce the HFR, while different computers access the internet.
It is dangerous out there.
Mike Ryan is a consultant to the primary metals, minerals, fibers, and chemical industries.