Showing posts with label The Duran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Duran. Show all posts

Friday, March 27, 2026

No Energy, No Food: Global System Breakdown Begins | Stanislav Krapivnik

What is developing is not an "energy crisis" in the conventional sense. It is a loss of physical supply on a scale that the system is not built to absorb. A large share of global oil and LNG capacity is now either offline or severely impaired, and that supply cannot be replaced quickly because the infrastructure behind it is slow, complex, and highly specialized. We are not dealing with something that can be fixed by price signals or short-term policy adjustments. If the energy is not there, it is not there.
 
Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis, símbolos de conquista, guerra, hambre y muerte.—Gustave Doré, 1866.
» 
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, 
and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. « 

Infrastructure Cannot Be Rebuilt Quickly
Energy systems run on heavy, custom-built equipment—pressure vessels, pipelines, processing units—that take months to manufacture and even longer to install. If those systems are damaged, they cannot be repaired overnight. In many cases they need to be scrapped and rebuild. If upstream production is affected—wells, wellheads, reservoirs—the timeline stretches further. Redrilling alone can take months per site, and that assumes stable conditions, available crews, and functioning logistics. None of that is guaranteed in a disrupted environment. Even under ideal circumstances, restoring lost capacity is measured in years. 

»
You can tighten your own belt, but when you see your children wailing and crying from hunger and there’s nothing you can do, that’s different. People pick up pitchforks, light torches, go to the city halls, and start burning things. We are going to see a lot of that. « 
The System Is Trapped in a Feedback Loop
The bottleneck does not stop at the damaged infrastructure. The global ability to produce replacement equipment is limited and concentrated in a handful of countries, all of which have their own demand. Manufacturing itself depends on energy, especially natural gas. That creates a closed loop: you need energy to rebuild energy systems, but the energy is what you are short of. So the recovery process is constrained by the same shortage that caused the problem.

Europe Is Structurally Exposed
Europe is in the most exposed position because it depends on imported energy while maintaining a large industrial base that cannot function without it. When supply falls short, the system does not adjust smoothly. It is forced into rationing. Governments prioritize households and critical services, and industry is cut first. That leads to forced shutdowns—chemicals, steel, fertilizer, glass—sectors that do not operate intermittently. When they stop, they stop completely. Some will not restart, because the economics no longer work or the supply chains around them have already broken down. This is how industrial capacity is lost, not gradually but abruptly.
 
» The first major trend is deindustrialization, depopulation of cities, and return to farms. The second is remilitarization, and the third mercantilism. In the future there will be regional trade blocs that are controlled by a local hegemon. We are witnessing the shattering of the old global order, and the emergence of a much more splintered multipolar system. « — Jiang Xueqin, March 10, 2026.
Fertilizer Is the Critical Link
Fertilizer sits at the center of the next phase. It is produced from natural gas, and without sufficient gas, production drops. When fertilizer becomes scarce or too expensive, farmers reduce usage. That directly lowers yields. Modern agriculture is not resilient to this; it is built on chemical inputs. At the same time, fuel costs affect every stage of farming—planting, harvesting, transport. So both key inputs are constrained simultaneously. The result is straightforward: less food is produced.

Food Systems Tighten, Then Strain
Food systems do not break instantly, but they tighten. Prices rise first. Then availability becomes uneven. Some goods become scarce, others disappear temporarily. Europe can buffer this for a time through imports, but it is still drawing from a global pool that is under the same pressure. If multiple harvest cycles are affected, the shortages become more visible and harder to manage.
 
 "They've been beaten to shit!" Epstein's boyfriend keeps
babbling about Iran wanting a 'deal.' — March 26, 2026.
 
"All the goals of the war with Iran have been achieved." 
US VP tries his hand at market manipulation. — March 26, 2026.

» The Pentagon is developing bold military options that could deliver a so-called "final blow" to Iran—ranging from seizing strategic islands in the Strait of Hormuz to launching ground operations against nuclear facilities. With oil above $100 a barrel, thousands of additional US troops deploying to the region, and diplomatic talks hanging by a thread, the most dangerous escalation scenarios are now firmly on the table. « — David Oualaalou, March 27, 2026.
Economic Contraction Is Inevitable
As energy and food costs rise, the economy contracts. Industry shuts down, jobs are lost, and consumption falls because people can no longer afford what they used to. This is demand destruction in its simplest form. It is not a choice—it is forced by cost. That contraction feeds on itself: lower output, lower income, lower demand. Under sustained pressure, this moves beyond a standard recession into a deeper, longer-lasting downturn.

Social Stability Comes Under Pressure
The social effects follow directly. Energy and food are not optional. When access becomes strained, people react. Lower-income groups are hit first, but the pressure spreads. We begin to see unrest, political instability, and governments imposing stricter controls—rationing, restrictions, prioritization of supply. Those measures can manage the shortage, but they do not remove it.

This Is a Multi-Year Problem
The timeline is the critical constraint. Even if conditions stabilize, rebuilding lost energy capacity takes years. That means the sequence does not resolve quickly. Energy shortages persist, industrial capacity remains impaired, agricultural output declines, and economic pressure builds over multiple cycles.

The Sequence Is Direct
The progression is linear and difficult to avoid once the supply gap is large enough: insufficient energy leads to rationing; rationing leads to industrial shutdown; industrial shutdown removes fertilizer production; reduced fertilizer lowers food output; lower food output raises prices and creates shortages; rising costs force economic contraction; and sustained pressure produces social instability. This is not a theoretical chain of events. It is the direct consequence of a system losing access to the inputs it requires to function.
 
Stanislav Krapivnik is a Russian born former US army officer, energy and industrial supply chain specialist with direct experience in oil and gas infrastructure. He held senior supply chain positions at Cameron and Halliburton, managing sourcing and logistics for critical field equipment across Eurasia. He later worked in EPC project execution with Tecnimont, supporting large-scale refinery and LNG developments. His background centers on the manufacturing timelines, logistics, and operational realities behind global energy systems.

Saturday, February 1, 2025

Trump and Stockholm Syndrome: In a Captured State | Steve Brown

The current reverence for Donald Trump as potential savior of the Western world is like a twisted version of Stockholm Syndrome. The Biden regime was so vile and so corrupt, that the manifestation of Trump (since his election) seems like a life raft thrown to a drowning person. In other words, the US situation is so hopeless that any sort of hope from anywhere must look good to the average US American now.
 
Trump is, of course, beholden to his donor class. It is a donor class where unsavory ‘trillionaires’ like Zuckerberg, Bezos, and their Wall Street moguls (including the banks) have ‘switched sides’ to back the Trump regime. And well, that is the mantle of power. Trump’s backers preside over war, mayhem, and death all over the globe with glee – just as Biden’s did. The only question for elites now – whether Democrat or Republican – is  how affordable this ongoing destruction may be.
 
The great debacle for the former United States is that its political leadership has failed — meaning both parties — and the Wall Street model of leveraged graft, theft, corruption, and greed has eventually devolved into a Western financial system built on bullshit and fake industry — which Pepe Escobar calls ‘casino capitalism.’ That devolution has now become apparent to the entire world. Trump has drawn a veil over donor influence by promoting a populist message of ending the ‘forever wars’ that the US engages in. But ending forever wars is not a goal that the entrenched Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) can allow, even if that is the will of the American people.

 » MAGA in itself is an admission that the US has already failed. «

Thus, Trump has used the immigration issue as cover too, to obfuscate a deeper agenda. That agenda includes confrontation with China, assistance to the Greater Israel project, and accepting advice to leverage crypto as a means to support the lagging primacy of the US dollar. The foregoing agenda will be enforced later during his regime after the dust has settled.

The point is, Trump promised to “make America great again” — which in itself is an admission that the US has already failed and is playing catch-up. China’s success in AI with Deep Seek is just one example. Bottom line, where US America was once about its industry and the ingenuity of its people, due to the criminality of Wall Street and its banks, that dynamic is gone. Ironically, all that remains of US success (as a unipolar hegemon) is the primacy of the US dollar.
 
 And the swamp? Still thriving.

US financial markets, including debt instruments, are still the most secure and reliable stash for trillions of US-manufactured Federal Reserve Notes to go. Of course, when those dollar investment vehicles become ignored by the rest of the world, that becomes an issue, and that process is underway. Meanwhile, I stand by my article from 2019, "Trump’s Limited Hangout: Populism Derailed."

 

While the above may seem a bleak message for the West, the bottom line is that the United States has been on the wrong side of history since the end of the Second World War. Only the redeeming asset of the US dollar and Western financial markets have maintained US primacy over these decades.

The hopeful message is that, as the US dollar erodes and eventually US financial markets crash, the Neocons and satanic creatures who have led US foreign policy for eighty years now will finally erode away as well—or at least be marginalized—and that's via their own historic folly, personal excess, and greed.

 
 

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Scholz Will Go So Everything Remains The Same │ The Duran

Alex Christoforou & Alexander Mercouris:
Is Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany 
- the governor of the most important US-vassal state in Europe - on his way out? 
 
This is what Springer's Bild, Europe’s biggest daily paper and a major CIA media in Germany, is suddenly peddling with. Bild creates a narrative around Scholz 'retiring' soon. He would be replaced by Boris Pistorius, the current Federal Minister of Defence, another seasoned senior Atlanticist, Anti-German, Warmonger, Russophobe and Zionist apparatchik of the US-occupation regime. Pistorius 'may' ban the AfD, Germany's most popular opposition party, Bild informs. To 'save democracy'. No worries. No elections. Steinmeier, Habeck, Baerbock, Faeser will remain. No regime change. Germany remains course. End of announcement.

"Majority wants Pistorius instead of Scholz" claims Bild,
while farmers block roads and fuel deliveries in largest nationwide protests ever.
Weimar 2.0.
 
Reference:

Saturday, February 25, 2023

US Hegemony and Its Perils | MFA of PRC

 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China 
 
2023-02-20 16:28
 
US Hegemony and Its Perils

Introduction

Since becoming the world's most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage "color revolutions," instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a "rules-based international order."

This report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.

 


"It is a pivotal moment, it's one that's crystallizing the change that's happening, and it is accelerating.
If you are an American, and you want to understand why it's happening so fast, look no further than at the
White House and the person who is there in the Oval Office, and the team around him, this terrible gaggle
of ideologues and neocons who have captured control of the foreign policy of the US.
"
The Duran, Feb 25, 2023.