What have Egypt, Brexit, and Greta's Holocaust - the murder of 6m Africans over ten years - got in common?

Here's another  brill article from Tomas Pueyo - the guy who did the China article I posted a while ago ...

https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/egypt-part-1

Gotta Love his hard-nut no-nonsense analysis.  No reference to any political philosophy except dictatorship.

So, it's D&N quiz time! ...

(1) Can anyone spot the similarity between Egypt's situation as outlined by Tomas and Brexit?  Clue ...

Lots of poor people and a strong centralized government are two key ingredients for an authoritarian regime. The third one is no alternative its people could escape to.

(2) Can anyone develop Tomas's Egyptian observation below and link it to Brexit and the GH (Greta's Holocaust)? ...

"Have you noticed how the lights in Egypt stop abruptly in the south?"

After changing the water in Mr Fish's fish tank (our one and only pet) and walking around our local lake I shall return with the answers (and yes, there's another clue in this sentence) ...

Answer:

Tomas makes the point that Egypt was a poor country because it could not trade, trade being the bringer of prosperity.  Three quarters of its border were vast and endless sand.  One quarter of its border was sea but only via a delta too shallow for trading ships.  All Egypt could do was eat its own homegrown food, hand-to-mouth subsistence living.

Blighty on the other hand was setup for both trade and homegrown grub.  Trade because Blighty is surrounded on all four quarters by navigable seas; no endless sand or shallow deltas.  And in that sea are squillions of fish to munch on.

However, Brexit has conspired to clobber both of those advantages and so render us like Egypt but without even the grub.

We have fuel shortages in petrol stations, empty shelves in supermarkets, builders without materials, fruit rotting on the vine, pigs being possibly slaughtered and not eaten, all due to Brexit extenuating the post-Covid supply chain recovery.  No other countries have experienced the post-Covid supply chain recovery problems to the point where the actual goods and services are not available to the citizenry,  or left to rot, or destroyed.  We have deliberately diminished our trading potential in goods, services, labour movement and capital, and thereby moved our economy in the direction of Egypt, as if to intentionally silt up our borders.

And the one I haven't mentioned yet is fish.  While enjoying a meal at the super local fish restaurant with my folks in Dorset I remarked how massive the prawns were and how I had to sit the cod diagonally on the plate to get round it.  The chef owner explained, "It's due to Brexit.  We can't get the fish and seafood so they're staying where they are and growing much bigger."

The Gaffer, never one to miss an opportunity to land a blow retorted: "Ha, see, another benefit of Brexit!"  However, the wind was taken out of his sails somewhat when the bill arrived, bloody hellfire, prices are up, up  and away! ...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/seafood-prices-soar-amid-supply-chain-issues-and-worker-shortage-180978369/

When the fishing was done by Brit, French, Dutch and Norge fishermen competitively in the SMFFASAR (Single Market, Four Freedoms  and State Aid Rules) the market was cleared and the stocks levelled.  Now Blighty on her own can't even hook out the critters that surround our island, to add to the fruit, pigs, and fuel we can now add fishing as a failed industry.

And the people worst affected by these primary industries' outputs becoming scarcer and more expensive are low income working people who voted for Brexit that caused it!  The dumbest self-inflicted wound in the history of self-inflicted wounds.  It's like the Egytians pouring salt on their own fertile land!

And there's my first point: Brexit Blighty is like Egypt in that it has reduced its trading potential - through Brexit instead of sand and silt.  But worse, it's also damaged its own domestic productivity and thwarted the harnessing of its resources through Brexit.

My second point is Tomas's remarkable observation of Central and sub-Saharan Africa being dark south of the Aswan dam.  At last CSSA had the chance to develop after thousands of years of powerlessness: with coal powered electricity.  The chance to start manufacturing, and trade its factory and agricultural outputs with Egypt and the wider world, and thereby prosper as Tomas says becomes of trading places.  But no.  Instead, Greta and the Green Blob refused to allow it.  And so Africans continue to live in subsistence poverty, dying at the rate of 600,000 excess deaths a year from lung disease in their smoke filled homes.

Two of the "Four Riders of the Apocalypse": Brexit and Climate Alarmism, doing the do.

Just wish they'd both go walk like an Egyptian ...

SoD

Comments

[Whitewall]

Did you double link the same article maybe?

[Loz]

Good spot Whiters, duly updated.

Extra time added for the quiz,

SoD

[Bob]

I sincerely hope it's too presumptuous to anticipate a claim that Britain will be a modern version of Nubia; cut off from trade and anywhere for its wretched (non rich) citizens to escape, leaving them in the horrible clutches of an all-powerful, dystopian blue socialist government.

[Mark]

"Can anyone spot the similarity between Egypt's situation as outlined by Tomas and Brexit?"

Er, No.

"Can anyone develop Tomas's Egyptian observation below and link it to Brexit and the GH (Greta's Holocaust)?"

Screamingly obvious, and you are, of course, referring to the threats from the frogs to cut supplies of electricity to Jersey, and I suppose you imagine reference to a fish as being some sort of subtle, cryptic clue.

Oh dear.

[Loz]

By George and all the Saints, far more lateral thinking than I had! A* to Bob and Mark!

See, inside every Leninite lefty and rabid nationalist there's a Libertarian bursting to get out!

I feel embarrassed to give my much less expansive and literal answers, but will in due course.

SoD

[Bob]

So the corporatist pawn and programmer has set up an IF THEN test. If counterarguments X and Y are made, switch to argument Z. Well played, comrade!

[Whitewall]

The linked article is interesting and would have been more so if the conclusion hadn't disappeared behind a pay wall. I don't live in Britain so I'm disadvantaged in that part of the question. Surely Brits can leave the country if they want and return or not if they want.

The numbers of poor do factor in when asking how authoritarian the government might be. Not enough poor means more will be created simply by destabilizing the prosperity of the 'tyrannical middle class' and making them more dependent on government subsidies. A weaker middle class, be it economically or in loss of self reliance and self respect, accomplishes the same thing as far as authoritarians are concerned.

If that doesn't yield enough poor quickly enough, government can always throw open the southern border and flood the country with tens of thousands of minimally literate poor who want everything they can get paid for by someone else. Lower wages, more crime and more powerful government follows.

[Whitewall]

Oh, I forgot little goddess Greta and her phony religion of "global climate" cataclysm. Since Egypt is under the thumb of Islam and had been for many centuries, her chances for modernization are minimal, in addition to unfortunate geography. Now with 'Global Greta' and her role as figurehead for maybe the largest world wide grift and political power grab in human history, Britain's Christian tradition won't be a problem. Brexit or no. Governments can use 'climate' to regulate and control every phase of a nation's daily life.

[Glesga]

Whitewall, the Islamists would just chop aff her heid in the traditional fashion. Since when did that mob bother about an opinion from anyone!

[Bob]

Not enough poor ...

To the right wing mind, life is a zero sum game. There can't be success without poverty, and anything done to help the poor is an attack on the better off. This is an idea popular in fundamentalist Christianity.

Greta and her phony religion of "global climate" cataclysm.

Greta is only a spokesperson for the young. Using her as an icon of climate change awareness is a distraction from the fact that scientists all over the world have predicted and tracked climate change since the 1960's. Science is not religion. It operates on evidence, not on faith.

Governments can use 'climate' to regulate and control every phase of a nation's daily life.

Conspiracy theory drummed up by propagandists paid by the fossil fuel industry. What used to be the simple business of lying is now an actual science called agnotology ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology ). It uses cultural biases to generate ignorance.

Islamists would just chop aff her heid ...

Amen.

[Whitewall]

Well Bob, the questions put were about Egypt, past and present, Brexit and little Greta with a pull quote stating a fact "Lots of poor people and a strong centralized government are two key ingredients for an authoritarian regime. The third one is no alternative its people could escape to." Egypt, Brexit Britain, little Greta. No philosophy, just 'how to' dictatorship. SoD will need to return to close the loop. That's all. It's about Britain v Egypt.

SoD? Whereforth?

[Bob]

Whitewall, there are flaws in the way SoD has framed his apparently intended argument. We'll see if he tries to get around them.

[JK]

https://turcopolier.com/russian-federation-sitrep-28-october-2021-by-patrick-armstrong/

Just my way of saying 'Lo All!

[JK]

Appears Bob keeps going and going ...

https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0?mod=article_inline

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/10/01/south-pole-coldest-winter-record/

Aren't we there yet!!? (But we gotta credit him for consistency.)

[Glesga]

It is good Bob keeps going and says what he wants to say. The same for all of us.

[Loz]

Sorry, been waylaid, will try and get back on it like a car bonnet over the weekend ...

SoD

[JK]

Aye Glesga it is good.

[Bob]

Good you're back, JK. You're consistent too. Pointing out that a few people have wrong opinions doesn't mean the overall scientific method doesn't work. We've just heard it from the horse's mouth:

"The Committee heard testimony from Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil; Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron; David Lawler, CEO of BP America; Gretchen Watkins, President of Shell Oil; Mike Sommers, President of the API; and Suzanne Clark, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Fossil Fuel executives did not dispute that man-made climate change is a “code red for humanity,” but refused to take responsibility for decades of disinformation and would not pledge to end spending to block climate action."

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/at-historic-hearing-fossil-fuel-executives-admit-climate-crisis-is-an-urgent

How about that? The Fossil Fuel executives did not dispute that man-made climate change is a “code red for humanity”

Think they're just alarmists?

[Bob]

Crickets around here, huh? If you're interested, here's some of the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcX-usyQkks

This might be evidence the US hasn't yet become a corporate totalitarian state, but we'll see. It's interesting the CEOs still reserve the right to lie to the public and fund anti climate action measures, presumably under their right to "free speech" and "free trade", no matter how much mayhem they cause. Apparently, observant libertarians don't believe in fraud.

On the subject of free speech, Glesga, JK, David, SoD, and others who haven't mentioned it specifically deserve respect for engaging in generally honest debate. Thank you.

[Loz]

Great lyrics ...

"If you wanna find all the cops
They're hanging out in the donut shop
They sing and dance (oh whey oh)
They spin the clubs, cruise down the block"

Well ain't that true, y'all! Our lot won't even arrest those Isolate Britain and Stinking Rebellion riff-raff!

SoD

[Loz]

Bob,

Those CEO's are merely terrified of being cancelled by Stinking Rebellion, Isolate Britain and the rest of the collective climate hysteria mob. They'll say anything to get those see you next Tuesdays off their backs and keep the sales figures up.

For the record ...

The climate has changed for 3.4bn years.

Mankind is not causing climate change.

Climate change is a non-linear system in mathematical chaos. In fact, climate change is a coupled non-linear system in mathematical chaos - the ocean and the atmosphere each being non-linear systems in mathematical chaos and both of them feeding back into each other.

Such systems do not have a cause of the output that is proportionate to one of the inputs, like linear systems do. Once set in motion they are prime movers. You could say the system as a whole is the cause. But you cannot say that one input is the cause or proportionate to the output.

The maths is settled. And maths is upstream from science. So if you think the science is settled on carbon causing warming in the climate system as a whole, you're plain wrong.

I'm about to start a series of blog posts on this, explaining linear and non-linear maths, chaos and why therefore carbon causes warming in the holistic system is fake science. It's gonna have maths run-books and light coding, and will use a series of articles from WattsUpWithThat as the road map.

The title of one of the items in the series will likely be: Why Bob is isomorphic to a Nazi.

Stay tuned!

SoD

[Whitewall]

SoD, glad you got to see the Old Man and the Memsahib doing so well. I have never found a way to enjoy cod short of taking the cleaning board used to clean the fish, eat it and throw the cod in the trash.

Many of Brexit Britain's current troubles are repeated here in the US, as well as other Western countries. Our ports are jammed beyond capacity with container ships stacked up by the hundreds sitting idle in the Atlantic and Pacific. In some states, longshoremen overtime pay is hindering the shipping container owners-overwhelmingly foreign- from getting the contents off loaded. In California, state regs have put truck drivers---lorry drivers---on the sidelines because of new rules which sideline older trucks thus depriving the port operators of hauling frames needed to clear and remove docked ships.

Our supply chain has rapidly deteriorating choke points because of too tightly connected global infrastructure which is causing shortages of many items and long delays of already ordered items ( I have an item already ordered, and paid for but because of domestic workers shortage I can't get) See we have that too. Our gasoline, natural gas and home heating oil prices are skyrocketing as well because in January our new Junta stopped our own homegrown suppliers from doing what they had been doing under Trump. Consequently, we are asking the Saudis to pump more oil...back to the old days. We can produce the food we need as well as energy, but we may not have labor to harvest produce nor truckers with enough units to haul, especially with diesel prices so high.

But we are supposed to be happy about our Junta borrowing billions in our name to 'address our climate emergency'. Rapidly rising energy bills and even more to come this winter is going to bring our domestic pot to a boil. The jet set just finishing their virtue signaling 'leg humping' in Glasgow will soon feel the publics wrath, yours and ours.

[Glesga]

Getting off the subject. I had a pint in a Glasgow Wetherspoons Pub yesterday and read a special edition nmagazine published by the pub chain which employs over 43,000 people. Around ten national newspapers have apologised or corrected their publications regarding Wetherspoons and how they run their business during lockdown 2000/21. Two politicians one Labour and one SNP have yet to respond to comments they made about Wetherspoons. No mention of this in the major TV news channels. The owner of Wetherspoons supported Brexit. Seems fake news is now the norm.

[Loz]

"I have never found a way to enjoy cod short of taking the cleaning board used to clean the fish, eat it and throw the cod in the trash."

Eh? You eat the cleaning board? What's wrong with this ? ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips

That's England's greatest culinary contribution to the world, along with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

The thought that those critters are growing to full size, old age, and dying natural deaths all around this island right now is a deeply disturbing travesty.

It means something is very wrong.

SoD

[Bob]

SoD, you are isomorphic to a joker.