Heads up fellows things are getting nasty.

[bertsmobile1]

Fuel prices have almost nothing to do with governments apart from any taxes that are levied on fuels.
Petrol refineries & chemical plants buy oil futures just sufficient to cover their projected future output .
Speculators then move in a buy the excess futures in the hope that refineries will run short so the speculators can charge them a motza
However it is illegal for the oil producers to sell directly to the refineries , it all has to go through the futures exchanges so when there looks like being a problem with supply the speculators move in and push the price up in order to make massive short term profits .
So it is hedge funds, investment funds & pension funds that jack up the price .
The refineries are always trying to get crude for the lowest possible price so for them in times like this they drop futures & buy on the spot market on a daily basis.
During covid the speculators all got burned and had to pay for oil that they could not on sell and could not store either as all of the storeage space availible was full .
As with a lot of things it is all of the middle men and screen jockies that are setting the price .
The oil producers want to get the highest price they can for their oil because it is a finite resource so once it is all pumped, there is no more ,
A command driven economy will always exploit fear & panic .
If you owned 10 rental properties & the next town got flooded so hundreds of people were looking for accomodation while they rebuilt, do you offer them a discount because they are needy or jack the price up because 90 of them will miss out so will be willing to pay more ?

 

[bertsmobile1]

Who's to say who's right or wrong about all this, really? All we know is what we get online. The MSM lies about everything. Ukraine's ancient history, even back to the 1990's, means nothing to me. All I know for sure, is that it's about $4 per gallon at the pump now. And we still have the same oil companies with the same producing wells, the same pumping pipelines that we had 2 years ago. Even some new wells that were drilled and producing AFTER Biden took office. Biden can't get American oil companies to ramp up production, just like he can't get OPEC to.
And Biden stopping Russian oil is just BS.

My only beef with the oil companies is how much control they have over our livelihoods. They have the power to make or break almost everyone's economy. IMO, that's too much control for any industry to have.

You obviously have never worked with any Ukranian refugees , I have .
In fact I have gone with then to throw rotten eggs over the walls of the Russian embassy ( actually it was the USSR embassy back then ) and this was in the 70's .
Like Star , I do not watch nor listen to opinion pieces , which are usually about the opinions of some one elses opinions .
Al Jazeera have been giving excellent coverage including pulling apart the BS being posted on line .
Over 60% of the footage shown on mainstream TV was not from the conflict & most had been pulled off the wen and they showed where it came from .
Some scenes of devistation were from Syria , one of the bomber formations was actually a US air show & another was from a French air show & another from a May Day Parade.
Some of the tank footage came from Afghanistan
better than 90% of what had been posted from places other than the Ukrane were also faked

 

[bertsmobile1]

Bert I just don't how you guys make it because of how high the shipping charges are over there. But that is probably just a relative issue.

The problem is too many people trying to make too much money from too small a turnover
Lazy finance companies will invest in real estate happily but no chance to get money for manufacturing
Add to that a government that actually believes than manufacturing is a low end economy and a services based economy is the sign of a mature sofisticated economy
Highly racist to imply that the Chinese can not count, teach or argue a case in court .
it costs $ 5000 ( aus ) to get a container from China dock to dock
It costs $ 7,000 to get one from Longbeach
It cost $ 2000 to send one to China & $ 4,000 to send one to longbeach
The biggest manufactured export from Australia is empty containers going back to China

 

[deck~dragger]

We can be ready to go when that time comes. Put our trust in God and believe in him and he will save us. No matter the out come.

Yes, the Ezekiel prophesies and Revelation.

 

[MowManWV]

Putin orders deterrence forces — which includes nuclear arms — to be put on high alert.

If this is so our governments are inching ever closer to nuclear war with Russia. Damn fools on both sides. Looks like the Russian president is hell bent on destroying the world if he don't get his way. I say we're less than half a second before Midnight right now.

Um no. It's NATO that's been expanding, not the Warsaw Pact. In fact, NATO's stated mission ended when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Also, where was the world reaction and banning of us when we invaded a soverign nation and killed 1 million of its people? Remember the invasion of Iraq in 2003? We invaded a nation, on the (later proven) false pretext that "they helped on 911" and "had weapons of mass destruction" (that we never found). Literally 1 million civilians were killed and Iran gained a proxy state when "free elections" deposed the moderate Suni Muslims and replaced them with majority (Iranian) Shiites. Good going USA!

Here's my take. NATO should have been dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. It's nothing more than a cash cow that uses the USA as a strong man. USA supplies the bulk of "NATO forces" and has been for some time. When the last President tried to get Europe to pay their minimum NATO fees it was called "racist."

Europe buys most of its energy from Russia. THEY DO NOT "FEAR PUTIN." If they did Germany would not have shut down its nuke plants a few years ago. When a nation fears another neighbor, they don't remain dependent on them for energy and they expand their military. Europe did neither.

Mass media is straight up pushing for a war with Russia. One of my two idiot state senators straight up called for a "no fly zone" WITH A NUCLEAR ARMED POWER. You can bully little countries like Iraq with that but you can't do that with a country that can ERASE your nation. Just one US city nuked and our fake currency would collapse that day. How much food you got stored up? You have access to your own water and sewer?

I hate that Russia invaded Ukraine and if I was still a young man I'd have made my way there by now. Anyone that wants to fight can actually do just that. Go to Poland, walk across the border, swear your allegiance to Zelensky and stay until he says you can go home (and that's exactly how it works). A close friend of mine has former coworkers literally in Ukraine, fighting right now. Go join them.

 

[MowManWV]

A world war would do one BIG thing and that is cover up the absolute fail of the fiat currency America has had since the early 1970's. At least the Russia ruble has real value........it's literally worth what the dollar used to be worth, which is gold.

Also, notice how quickly "Covid" went away? And the ones that pushed the hardest for lockdowns and forced vaccinations are the same ones calling for a world war with Russia. It's almost like their minds are controlled by mass media or something. Huh.

 

[bertsmobile1]

NATO has been expanding because the countries around Russia do not trust the Russian government, for good reason.
Putin is trying to reinvent to grand old Soviet Union just like Hitler was trying to "return Germany to it's former glory"
The only difference is he invades to "protect the Russians " then after committing genoside on a massive scale installs a puppet government on the proviso they do what they are told or else.
Look at the situation in Belaruse , population hate the president yet he got voted in with a massive majority ,, smells funny ?
Then Georgia was just the same
Putin wants the Donbas because that is where the mineral wealth is
They exterminated just about all of the indigenous Tartars who were Jewish then replaced them Russian immigrants who of course need to be protected from nasty Nazi Ukranian government .
Same thing that China did toTibet .
And yes the Ukrane did side with Hitler as he was a lesser of two evils , murdered by a facist dictator or murdered by a communist dictator .

As for Iraq, that was all about protecting the US dollar
Saddam had already put some trial futures on the Munich oil futures exchange & threatened to move all of them over to Munich.
He released the second bunch which accounted for 75% of Iraq's output and the US invaded within a week.

If Iraq remained on the Munich exchange the US dollar could have dropped near 30% which would have sent the USA into recession because the main thing that holds the US dollar value is the oil that the whole world buys on the NY futures exchange.
However the big difference to the Ukrane is the population wanted Saddam gone so to a large extent the population was already behind the USA ( and Australia ) . However the arrogant attitude of the US to the population & the absence of any plan about what to do after Saddam was gone ( points towards the invasion not being a forward planned event ) quickly turned the hearts & minds of the population against the occupiers .
Driving around in armoured vehicles in a Islamic country flying christian cross flags was never going get the population on side and installing a puppet president who was kicked out because the population hated him was never going to work either .

The only reason the Ruble is worth anything right now is because China is buying them at a rate of knots and because from the day the USSR was dissolved Russia had been buying gold at breakneck speed along with China .

China has also set up an oil futures market . Part & parcel of accepting financial aid from China is to shift your oil purchases from the USA to China .

And Covid has not gone away
It has done what all successful viruses do .
The variants that killed the host died out because we isolated them to prevent this happening.
The more contageous variants with fewer deaths are now flourishing which is exactly the same as influenza has done
And like flue we have vaccines that counter the worst infections and lower the infection rate .
When Coid was killing hundreds of people down here it was the ONLY news story
Now the daily death rates are 10 to 30 and not considered to be newsworthy compared to thousands of deaths in the Ukrane & of course all the ghoulish photos of destruction with the stories of mass atrosities .

You need to remember that the prime objective of mass media is to sell advertising .
Advertising results get measured all day every day
Your mind is most receptive to information is an anxious or depressed state
So mass media deliberately reports on things that will make you angry or depressed over things that are likely to make you feel happy .
Or as Rupet was reported to have said when Fox predicted ( correctly ) a Biden victory
"I don't want you to broadcast the truth, I want you to broadcast what our subscribers pay to hear "
Apparently near 80% of the Fox subscribers are Republicans so they ran with the story that republicans wanted to hear, President Trump was re-elected and Bidon stole the election by fraudilent means .

Where the simple truth was that postal voting had allowed voters who would be intimidated by attending a polling booth could cast a free vote for the first time.
And this is not a shot at Repubicans , both parties actively rig the vote because the USA does not have an Electorial Commission to run elections that are in fact free & fair so booth are placed where the population is likely to vote the way the State governor want them to and those who are not likely to are discoursged by fewer polling places or placing obsticales to prevent voter registrations .

By and large , pre-polling down here heavily favours conservative parties , polling booths generally follow the predictions according to the demography of the voters in that area and postal votes heavily support the Labour party ( sort of close to your Democrats )
So from down here the results were almost text book about what would be expected .

But of course all this is uncharted waters to USA citizens and a conspiracy is always more acceptable to who ever lost than the fact they lost fair & square .
If you have postal votes in your next election you will see the results will be very similar to the last election .
If you think about it , it makes perfect sense
Those too busy making money to line up at a booth will vote early some where that has no que
Those who have things that make it difficult to attend a booth are very likely to be on some sort of benefit thus likely to vote Democrat
Individual booths will favour the demography of the booths site.
So if for instance the Democrats control the state there will be a lot of booths where they are likely to win and very few where they are likely to loose
Because the potential winning booths will have fewer votes to count per booth ( because there are more of them ) their count will be completed earlier than the booth where a lot more voters had to attend in the hope they would get bored & go away so the booths that take longer to count will tend to favour the Republicans . Thus when 75% or more of the booths have been counted and the Democrat candidate has a clear win with 65% of the vote then when the final few booths are finished counting suddenly the Republican candidate takes the seat with 55% of the vote the natural tendency is to call foul play because it is hard to comprehend how some one with a lead of 15% can end up being 5% behind .

 

[sgkent]

If someone believes genocide is acceptable then the war can be acceptable to them. But,for most people, they realize that genocide is unacceptable, and when a bully attacks someone it is just a matter of time before they are next, regardless how much of a friend they think they are with the bully. What puzzles me is that every photo of Putin sitting with his staff, there is a huge table with a quarter mile between him and his staff. I almost expect to see a bull horn next to him so he can talk to them. What is up with that?

 

[StarTech]

A world war would do one BIG thing and that is cover up the absolute fail of the fiat currency America has had since the early 1970's. At least the Russia ruble has real value........it's literally worth what the dollar used to be worth, which is gold.

Also, notice how quickly "Covid" went away? And the ones that pushed the hardest for lockdowns and forced vaccinations are the same ones calling for a world war with Russia. It's almost like their minds are controlled by mass media or something. Huh.

Must be one of those that don't Covid-19 is real. Well several my customers and at least two of my competitors has died from it. My machinist nearly died from it because some idiot at his work place had it and came to work to intentionally spread it. Over half of the shop came down with it. I was lucky as I am loner and even then I was cautious when customers came around as well as they were.

Oh Covid is still, just not much as we learn to take precautions. I actually been healthier because of the precautions that I take.

Personally there is a lot people that more afraid of the vaccine because of all the lies on the internet. I am for one that I think am better trying to protect myself against the virus by getting the vaccine. Everybody can make their own choice when it comes to this.

And do you really believe that China is calling for a war with Russia? They are one of the countries with the tightest Covid lock downs in the world yet it still spreads because the people are so resistance to getting the vaccine that can at least reduce the spread. But yes the internet (one of the mass media sources) is just full of lies from those that wants to do more harm than good. Most people will believe a lie before the truth. They get basically brainwashed by these sources because they are too lazy to think for themselves.

All of the world's currency is shrinking value. It is the people own fault in one sense as they want more and more for their product. This includes labor. This becomes a vicious cycle as if someone has pay more than they pass those costs along to next person. As currency valve it all depends on demand for it. Right now most of the world don't want the ruble which is why it has hit rock bottom value wise.

Right now I can see my costs going up daily with me having to pass it along to the next customer. Some my tools for example have nearly double in cost in the last three years. Just yesterday I was looking at two jaw pullers that can spread nearly 10 inches. Boy have they gotten expensive.

As voting as I know I am fighting a losing battle but I still go and vote hoping that by some miracle the person I vote for actually wins. I vote just to have the valid reason to complain as I see those that don't vote has not the right to complain as they did not do their part. It is still very big challenge to weed through all the lies to pick someone that I think that would actually do what they say will do. But if we don't have free and fair elections then there is no true election; just a fake election. Some of the governments out there is just like this by changing the election result to suit their setup.

 

[StarTech]

If someone believes genocide is acceptable then the war can be acceptable to them. But,for most people, they realize that genocide is unacceptable, and when a bully attacks someone it is just a matter of time before they are next, regardless how much of a friend they think they are with the bully. What puzzles me is that every photo of Putin sitting with his staff, there is a huge table with a quarter mile between him and his staff. I almost expect to see a bull horn next to him so he can talk to them. What is up with that?

Kinda reminds me of a person afraid of germs. It also appears he is afraid even of his own support staff. Either that or he farting all the time and his staff just can't stand the stink.