As you may have read a couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post published an article entitled "Russian Propaganda Effort Helped Spread 'Fake News' During Election, Experts Say", in which it cited a report by a group calling itself PropOrNot. According to the Post,
Hey. Glad you are writing again.
I discovered the abiotic theory about a year ago, and wrote to Bart on Resilience about it, since the Resilience folks keep up with this sort of stuff. He confirmed it.
Now, of course it does not follow that the Earth has plenty of oil for the taking at present or in the near future. But jeering at the theory itself (which seems to be confirmed by data from other planets, or their satellites, I forget which) does not show you off in a good light.
As for Palloy’s claim, there is a simpler explanation. Maybe WaPo are the idiots and propagandists and purveyors of fake news, like the missing WMDs of yore?
I’m not sure what you mean by Bart “confirmed it” – that he confirmed the theory exists? – because I highly doubt Bart buys into the abiotic oil story. You can check out one Resilience article on it here:
And yeah, WaPo should be taken with a whole sack of salt. They just did an amendment of sorts to their original article, thoroughly explained by the folk on the other side of the fence, RT (link here):
Bart confirmed that some of what is called “fossil fuel” does appear to be abiotic. As indeed does the link you posted. It says, “Gold is right: there are hydrocarbons on other planets, even in deep space.”
Bart thought that this does not help us in our earthly predicament, and I am inclined to agree.
A whole sack of salt is right. I am following things closely, and as far as I can see, the “Russian propaganda” claim was manufactured out of whole cloth first in response to the massive Wikileaks during the election campaign, only to intensify in the wake of Trump win. Nobody presents evidence; just hysterical assaults on other than status quo info. Used to be, accusing them of conspiracy theory was enough. Apparently though, that stopped working. 
Btw, if I remember correctly, you were going to write about the refugee situation. Is that still in the works?
The absurd thing is, what if the Russian thing turns out to be true? Are the Democrats seriously getting upset because “you’re not supposed to expose our corruption!”? Forget the Dems and the GOP being good cop / bad cop, this is more like bad cop / badder cop.
And yeah, that/those piece(s) on refugees, which I said I should do at your suggestion, isn’t really in the queue right now. On top of having other things to get out of the way, and that get in the way, I’m also super slow at writing. And the refugee stuff will take some work. As well, I’d first like to submit that four-parter on multiculturalism to Resilience to kind of set the stage. And for that I might wait until I integrate a new commenting system into this blog, Discourse. Can’t say how soon that’ll all happen though. (But at least this updated version of Commentics is now letting your comments through pre-approved! Update: Discourse is now being used as the commenting script)
Well, ok, if we were to take the Russian claim seriously, there has to be evidence. After seeing their highjinks with the Malaysian flight 17, it would take more for me than just claiming it because it sounds better than “our ass wuz whipped by a collection of our own leakers/hackers who are sick of the lies and nonsense going on.”
Now, I think it’s pretty clear that the Russians are savoring their role of alternative news provider, after being vilified for so long (rightly) as propaganda spewers within the USSR. More power to them. I saw a news item go by yesterday that said the Eur. Parliament put forth some resolution about those horrible Russians who are waging propaganda war on the rest of Europe. I think it all boils down to the PTB losing control of the narrative to the plebs plus Russia.
They lost control just as they thought they had it all in their pocket. And instead of cleaning their own augean stable, they try to crack down. Only to out themselves as authoritarian idiots once more.
Will be looking forward to your take on the multicult when you get the chance. And thanks for remembering and fixing the comments!
Yeah, I think you nailed it on the head regarding the Dems having lost control of the narrative – and now they’re in panic mode. But from what I can tell, the true believers are lapping up everything they say, even non-American true-Dem-believers here in Australia. One lady I know, who’s been in total denial since Clinton lost, repeatedly calls Trump a “buffoon”. Not that I’m a fan of his in the slightest, but I’m astounded at how brilliant the guy is that he can get people to think he’s an idiot. So long as they continue thinking that they’ll never see what’s coming.
And no worries about the comment thing. I updated the script and thankfully it seems to have fixed itself.
Edit 5 minutes later: I just read that some are saying that the (alleged) Russian hacking can/should be weighed in the minds of those voting in the Electoral College. Wow. It would have been one thing if Trump lost the election, but if he has it taken away from him after winning… there’s gonna be some very unhappy campers in the U.S.
I have been attempting to hang out with assorted Dems and Progs online, only to discover they largely live in the echo chamber they accuse the other side of living in. When information coming from other sources show up, they get abusive. But there is good coming out of it – the argumentum ad Hitlerum has lost all its bite.
And yes, there are various efforts to delegitimize Trump. One of them pressuring the electors to switch. Given the fact they received quite a few death threats after the election, I am not too worried. But it shows you the moral caliber of those people applying pressure… they don’t wait to use the anti-Russian claims only if real evidence shows up.
Isn’t it amusing how people in other countries have gotten vehemently anti or pro Trump? I have never seen anything like it before…
I don’t know… From what I read even John McCain and Lindsey Graham are getting in on this Russia stuff now. In this zany election year who knows what might happen?
And almost as amusing as the overseas anti-and pro-Trumpers are the overseas bloggers blathering away about it all. I really gotta move on…
One of the things that mystifies me is the number of generally good collapse monitoring sites that think the election of Trump is somehow a really positive event. The Archdruid Report, Automatic Earth, Peak Prosperity, 22 Billion Energy Slaves and ClubOrlov, among others, all promulgate the view that Trump is a bracing antidote to a corrupt and militaristic US national government. I completely disagree, but my reasons are unimportant.
What is puzzling is the fact that they care at all. The forces in play now will lead to the collapse of industrial civilization and those forces are so enormous and implacable that the election of the US President is a meaningless non-event. The only significant thing a US President can do is launch a batch of nuclear weapons. Other than that, he/she is powerless to keep energy and other resource limits from causing the collapse of the global market economy and the population that depends on it.
Greer, Meier, Martenson et al surely know this. Why would they waste their reader’s time discussing something so trivial? Is it just the trashy spectacle of the thing?
Since even this fine site has succumbed to temptation, perhaps you can fill me in on why Trump v. Clinton was considered to be such a big deal in the collapse blogosphere.
Yeah, I’m with you 100% in regards to being stumped as to how any of those bloggers might see any kind of benefit to Trump. Sure, Trump may, say, pull out of the TPP (and so save some jobs from being lost), but, and supposing that he actually does so (of which I’d be stunned), what’s the catch? Because there’s no way there wouldn’t be a catch. Besides that, and as far as I can tell, the only “good” thing that could come out of a Trump presidency is that if you’ve got white skin you aren’t going to get the shaft quite as quickly as if you have non-white skin. Yay?
For those aware of the impending collapse of industrial civilization, has spending time writing (and reading) about these elections been a waste of time and breath? For the most part, yeah, I think you’re mostly right about that as well. I do think though that Greer gave some excellent explanations (which were mostly absent from the mainstream media) on why Trump was about to be elected. Unfortunately, I nonetheless think that such explanations fell, and still fall, mostly on deaf ears. Even here in Australia I hear anti-Trumpers still stating, while whole-heartedly laughing, that Trump supporters “really are a bunch of deplorables”. Even after losing to Trump they still have no clue as to how condescending they’ve been (and still are) and that that’s exactly what got Trump elected. I see no evidence that they’re going to clue in any time soon.
But even though I too “succumbed to temptation” (I had a good laugh at that one), I certainly can’t speak for the others, and not just because I’m the pip-squeak in the collapse bloggosphere. If I can excuse myself a tad, I wasn’t planning on writing on it at all until I got that WWE analogy in my head and so pointed out the uber-spectacle of it all (I’m talking about that three-parter on the WWE/WEE wrote). And what a dumb idea that was. As I stated to those on my email notification list upon writing part three, after the election:
Sick and tired of these U.S. elections as much as I am? I doubt it. Seeing how I said I was writing a trio of posts on the whole thing I kind of forced myself to have to write a part three.
Because boy was I not wanting to write on the whole thing anymore.
Regarding my writing about the PropOrNot list, I wouldn’t have done so were it not for having noticed William Engdahl’s site, for whatever worth that ended up being.
Otherwise, yeah, it kind of ticks me off that I’ve made such an utter waste of my time this past year or two paying any attention to this stuff and taking it seriously in the slightest. A mate of mine shut down his Facebook account, partly due to being fed up with the asinine spectacle. Good on him.
That all being said, there’s a big Trump protest coming up here in Melbourne on January 21st. I tend to get a kick out of protesting protesters, so perhaps I’ll go with a sign reading “Democrats are responsible for Trump’s election - SHAME!” Then when people approach me and I try and waywardly talk about peak oil and/or the collapse of industrial civilization they’ll be mostly be polite, walk away, and think that I’m a loony-tune.
I really gotta get out of this city.
/rant
p.s. To give one collapse blogger some credit, at least RE of the Doomstead Diner said yesterday that
As of now, 2017 looks like it will be a watershed year in the World of Collapse. The election of Trumpty-Dumpty and his installation of Billionaires, Corporatocracy CEOs and Military Generals as Cabinet members and his Advisory team speaks clearly to exactly what kind of “Populist” this jerk is. It boggles my mind that people are so foolish as to buy any of the nonsense he spouted out through the campaign. It’s a fucking GUARANTEE he will eviscerate civil liberties, curtail free speech & freedom of assembly and increase the power of the Police State, all the stuff Libertarians say they are against! He’s also obviously going to give away the store to fellow plutocrats and .01%ers, he’s already stacked the whole fucking cabinet with them! Jamie Dimon and Carl Icahn are his economic advisors here for crying out loud! He’s going to shrink the Military? Are you fucking NUTS? He’s already appointed 3 Generals to his cabinet, one of whom worked for General Dynamics after leaving the military! He’s up for a new Nuclear Arms Race! He’s got Jamie fucking Dimon & Carl leveraged buyout Icahn as his leading advisors on the Economy! Can you get more status quo BAU Military-Industrial-Banking complex than this? This is “draining the swamp”? More like “swimming in the swamp”.