“Protein and Transpacific Power”

Yes, it’s an illegible graphic, and even if one could read it, would it even be comprehensible?

Still, I copied it to make a point.

THIS IS WHAT THE GLOBALIZED FLOW OF WORLD GRAINS AND OILSEEDS LOOKS LIKE.

And guess what?  China doesn’t have nearly enough of them.

As per Fortis Analysis via Human Terrain:

“China is desperately short of crucial grains and oilseeds needed for domestic human and animal consumption. Understand, food security is not an unknown issue in China. So too is it widely known that CCP media organs and official ministries routinely lie about a range of food-related issues, from grain and oilseed production to hog population and slaughter figures. The CCP even went so far as to engineer the collapse and takeover of Swiss agriculture and chemical conglomerate Syngenta several years ago to short-path China’s rise to being a tier one agriculture research powerhouse alongside the United States, Japan, and the European Union.

“The immediate causes of China’s food security woes are twofold:

  1. An ongoing, multi-year outbreak of African Swine Fever
  2. Two consecutive years of reduced grain and oilseed production due to widespread catastrophic flooding.”

TAKE HEART, INTREPID READERS. CHINA DOESN’T WALK ON WATER EITHER.

Ideology Purges Ideas

Peter Boghossian was a philosophy professor at Portland State University.  After years of harassment for not TOWING THE WOKE/SJW LINE — all of it demonstrably illiberal — he resigned.  The link below contains the full transcript of his resignation letter.  Read it and wonder what country you’re living in.

My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit.

A few excerpts:

1.

“I never once believed —  nor do I now —  that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

“But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.”

2.

“I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view.  Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male. ” 

3.

“Meanwhile, ideological intolerance continued to grow at Portland State. In March 2018, a tenured professor disrupted a public discussion I was holding with author Christina Hoff Sommers and evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. In June 2018, someone triggered the fire alarm during my conversation with popular cultural critic Carl Benjamin. In October 2018, an activist pulled out the speaker wires to interrupt a panel with former Google engineer James Damore. The university did nothing to stop or address this behavior. No one was punished or disciplined.” 

4.

“Portland State University has failed in fulfilling this duty. In doing so it has failed not only its students but the public that supports it. While I am grateful for the opportunity to have taught at Portland State for over a decade, it has become clear to me that this institution is no place for people who intend to think freely and explore ideas.” 

TRULY, HAS AMERICAN EDUCATION LOST ITS MIND?

McWhorter on Neo-Racism

McWhorter’s brilliance, logic and lucidity on eloquent full display.

John McWhorter: The Neoracists

This is as strong a case against BLM/CRT world as you’ll see from anyone in academe or the media.  Concise, precise and compelling.

Some notable passages:

“One can divide antiracism into three waves. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.” (my underscoring)

“Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me wanted to teach his son that America is set against him; I want to teach my kids the reality of their lives in the 21st rather than early-to-mid-20th century. Lord forbid my daughters internalize a pathetic—yes, absolutely pathetic in all of the resonances of that word—sense that what makes them interesting is what other people think of them, or don’t.” (my underscoring)

“In 1500, it was about not being Christian. In 2020, it’s about not being sufficiently antiracist, with adherents supposing that this is a more intellectually and morally advanced cause than antipathy to someone for being Jewish or Muslim. They do not see that they, too, are persecuting people for not adhering to their religion.” (my underscoring)

But these are just snippets.  READ THE WHOLE ESSAY.  It’s RIVETING.

CHS Collapse Watch

How insane can markets get?  Maybe they’ll be termed inoperative if financial Armageddon should come.  Everyone walks away with whatever they have — but GAME OVER.

Just kidding , of course, but is there a better idea?

I mean, there’s ALWAYS a regression to the MEAN.

Charles’s charts:

WHAT GOES UP MUST– AND HAS ALWAYS — COME DOWN.

10 X SALES? NUTSY.

THIRD TIME THE CHARM — OR A HOLOCAUST?

WHAT 200 DAY MOVING AVERAGE? WHO PAYS ATTENTION TO THAT?

BILLIONAIRE’S RULE. ISN’T IT GREAT THEY LET US LIVE HERE?

VOILA!