This post is literally back-to-back with my last one. I’ve never published two posts so close together, time-wise. Please don’t miss the last one.
“Housekeeping”
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Here’s the original article:
https://www.theinteldrop.org/2023/05/19/ukraines-depleted-uranium-blast-europe-on-brink-of-environmental-disaster/
Concerning the DU story, you might want to check out this Sputnik article. Not claiming its the truth but I’ve read Busby’s articles before about Fukushima and he is actually a scientist. What do you think. More disinformation?
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230328/chris-busby-europe-may-face-cancer-birth-defects-akin-to-fallujah-if-kiev-uses-depleted-uranium-1108785049.html
Could the uranium be self-shielding, in the sense that most of the radiation is blocked like it’s self-encased in something approximating a lead shield? Turning the U into a powder would free all the radiation to enter the atmosphere unhiindered. The hint of that would be that the radiation would spike after the initial disintegration, and then fall off to a background level once the dust disperses and settles.
I don’t really know; I’m not as smart as a high-school chemistry student.
There’s no measurable radiation from DU unless the stuff is located right on (or within a few centimeters of) the probe.
Don’t know about radiation ☢️ but the explosion was a sight to remember slava Russia
thank you for your ongoing efforts to help us sift fact from fantasy!
I have been otherwise engaged but wanted to comment on your inflation analysis – money supply v goods and services volume. I hope this is the right place.
There is a lot of talk about debt to GDP as predictor for inflation. the only trouble is that GDP is now virtually meaningless, it is has suffered so many adjustments. Famously hookers and the mafia are now included. But there is a very important inflation predictor that nobody talks about which is the ratio of the annual government budget deficit to annual expenditure which is, relatively, a crystal clear figure and very difficult for governments to fudge. Maybe that’s why nobody mentions it.
In 2003 the world expert on hyperinflation the Swiss Professor Peter Bernholz was finally persuaded to write a book – ‘Monetary Regimes and Inflation: History Economic and Political Relationships’. Despite its title it is quite readable. In short he says that hyperinflation is a monetary phenomenon triggered by political factors (weak governments). There are two canaries. A deficit of 30% of GDP and more definitely a budget deficit of 40% of expenditure. After that, hang on to your inflationary hat. But read the book for yourselves. It is full of interesting stuff like Germany in the 1920s was not the biggest inflationary bust but rather Hungary.
P.S Unlike a lot of economists he does not seek the limelight and interviews are hard to find, when I last looked. So, when it was pointed out to him a few years ago that the US had passed that point at least once he said, wisely perhaps, the US was a special case because most of its borrowing was internal….
Hello. Sorry, I don’t know what you mean by “a deficit of 30% of GDP.” I think you’ve mixed something up. It doesn’t make any sense. There are countries in which total government spending at all levels is about half of GDP. Today, not even those states run a total deficit of anywhere remotely near 3/5 of spending. (2020 was a nasty exception.)
In any case, such targets are completely arbitary and meaningless, especially with respect to nations who are managing reserve currencies (the USA and to a lesser extent, the Eurozone and Japan.)
Anyone pushing such targets, may be good for the YouTube circuit, but is no kind of forecaster.
Sorry I should have written ‘an annual budget deficit of 30% of GDP’. Professor Bernholz would be mortified at the accusation that he was on the YouTube Circuit.
These are not targets, it is an observed state of affairs.
What he points out is that these levels of deficit almost invariably occur when hyper inflation occurs. He considers the reverse possibility that it is the hyper inflation that causes the high budget deficits and rejects it on balance. He gives tables of all the hyper inflations with the accompanying levels of budget deficit.
You have to read the book – he is a lot smarter than me – but what he is really saying is that once a country breaches this level of budget deficit hyper inflation occurs because things are out of financial control and politically it is impossible to get back to a balanced budget.
Bill Bonner pointed out some years ago that in the end historicially all paper currencies become worthless.
I’m sorry, your first sentence still makes no sense at all. All you did was add “budget” to “budget deficit”, which was already obvious, anyway. See my initial response.
No important country today is anywhere even remotely close to running that kind of a deficit… if it’s even possible to run that kind of deficit.
The U.S federal budget deficit (FY2023) is now projected at “only” $1.4 trillion in a $5.4 trillion budget in a $25.5 trillion economy. (Throw in perhaps another couple of hundred billion dollars for all state and local government deficits.)
In short, you are confused.
Before falling back on “the guy is a lot smarter than me”, why don’t you try to grasp what he actually wrote???
Your the boss. Sure, the size of the economy is relevant.
Projected for 2023 $1.4trilion is roughly 26% of $5.4trilllion, which is much less bad than before. However In 2021, if my figures are right, the deficit was $3.1trillion and expenditure was $7.1trillion,which is around 43%. That is not good inflationary vibes according to my mate Bernholz… and according to me. We may of course be attaching too much importance to one statistic.
I do not get it … someone in Poland is trying to prove existence or non existence by measuring GAMA RADIATION levels of Uranium U-238 which is normally not radioactive????????
I have big problem with that logic!
U-238 is problematic for its chemical toxicity as far as I know and simple calculation says that 10.000 APFS shells with 9cm long 30mm sub caliber tip comes to approx.63 cubic cm of volume and U-238 has 19.1 g per cubic cm. Total 1,215 Kg of U-238 per tip ….Total per 10.000 shells something around 12Tons …. Ignites between 600 and 700 C and disperse as highly toxic dust.
Well, measuring Gamma or any other radiation will not detect U-238 – there are other methods nobody is talking about since they are not in focus – Radiation measurements is taken to alarm as on fission reaction problems, not to trace toxic materials in air.
Regards,
BnJ
High school chemistry? Well, that was a few years ago and several new discoveries past, but what is certain is a large explosion of weapon stores took place…East Palestine comes to mind. Well water, topsoil, and chickens should be affected stat. I doubt it was ammonia fertilizer. Not what Britain had hope for, I believe. Your rapid response is always appreciated, sir.
“Spike in bismuth” was the giveaway for me. But it is a sign of the times that we are so easily terrorized by stuff most of us don’t understand. We’ve been traumatized by the plandemic and betrayals and financial shocks and the corruption of biology itself! We’ve become sitting ducks for duping. Your frankness is a tonic, Jacob. Thanks.
Just shows everyone should honor the 72 hour rule on most things of importance you hear or read. Some crap will break but since no one vets sources anymore ya have to wait at least 72 hours if you are interested in any semblance of fact.
I am amazed that of all people, Alexander Mercouris mentioned these reports as being unverified. Good on him and man I NEVER say that
Any chance that the Russians honestly believed in that story? I wouldn’t be surprised…
The Russians have the same tech the US has. IF it were true they would know it and if it were not they would know that as well
A good psy-op is worth a thousand tanks. Indeed, the very notion of a sovereign Ukrainian state is itself nothing more than an artfully contrived psy-op perpetrated against the sheep-thinkers of the Nato bloc. If true, it’s heartening to see Russia beginning to counterpunch in the info-warfare space.
According to the Russians with Attitude podcast there was a joke running around Russian social media to the effect of “two Spetsnaz soldiers are walking through the ruins of Washington DC and one says to the other ‘it’s a shame we’re losing the information war.'”
Hahahahaaaaaaaa…..we can all dream. Mr. Dreizin might be out a paycheck in such a scenario however
So, the propaganda war is finally beginning!
Why do you think the brits hate ukranians? Is that because they are russians or russian like, or do you think is just the general hate for non-brits?( “whats wrong with hating foreigns” as Mrs Tatcher ffamously asked).
Brits don’t care either way about Ukrainians, the Western elites hate Russia as they know they are not part of their Satanic cabal. Ukraine are just the proxy to degrade Russia,
Jacob, the UMCS page is real, the uni does monitor Bismuth isotope(s), the screenshot that was went viral few days ago with huge spike on 15/05 is legit I guess it was raining that day in Poland and some airborne particles precipitated. Feel free to email me I’ll share a link to that page.
Very sorry, my mistake about the webpage spoofing. The truth is even more interesting.
Turns out, it’s a real webpage, it’s just not searchable, not even from the university’s main page, because not only the data, but also some or all of the headings, are in “image” form.
Turns out, the university monitors bismuth (which is NOT “radioactive”, in the sense of being harmful) that comes out of the ground together with periodic “burps” of radon gas.
There is a huge bismuth spike in the Lublin, Poland air, ABOUT ONCE PER MONTH, with smaller spikes in between larger ones.
The May 15th spike was **NOT** the largest this year. All you have to do is access the archives and move back your start date.
MORE IMPORTANTLY….
As I wrote, look on the periodic table. Uranium does not decay into bismuth in two days. These elements are many spaces apart.
The uranium-238 decay chain is available online. The natural decay to bismuth takes hundreds of millions of years, at least.
You can’t speed that up with a mere explosion and fire. We’re not talking about a nuclear fission event here.
Yes, there was likely a good deal of depleted uranium munitions that got blown up in Khmelnitsky…..
But, circulating unsourced rumors of high gamma radiation readings in that town, and then “fallout is so bad that it’s being detected even in Europe” nonsense…..
….. is a psy-op, intended to further panic the locals, create some “panic migration” and discredit the government(s).
Some of the very largest Russian telegram channels–such as Podoliak and Cassad–were circulating the “gamma” rumors simultaneously…..
…..and then, the “bismuth pike” screenshot (with their “fallout” explanation) **within 24 hours** of the spike data being posted.
As if, on cue, all following some kind of notes or “talking points.” (The Ukrainian side does the same.)
I mean, how did they all suddenly know about it?
Quite possibly, someone in Russia was monitoring that site for months (or longer), waiting for the right time to take a screenshot.
This kind of thing can actually “work”, because the two countries share substantially the same online space (or with major overlap, in any case.)
People who feel they are getting bullshit from their own side, or alternately, those who just want to troll, will often head over to see what’s on the other side.
The Ukraine’s psy-ops command has been taking advantage of this, almost since day one.
It seems to me, Russia has finally learned how to play the game.
That uni DOES monitor various isotopes in the air, they literally have a dedicated section on that page (see “monitor methodology -> measuring apparatus, description of the energy spectrum”) that literally describes what they do, how it works and such. I used google translate since the page is in polish. So it goes.
In my first reply I said nothing about DU or anything, I was commenting on that uni page and their abilities to monitor various isotopes.
I have no idea what was blown up, if it was some huge stash of DU projectiles then one may speculate that DU is not 100.0000000% pure and may contain some radioactive elements (like those that cause birth defects in Serbia/etc). It’s not my area of expertise.
I also checked the other web site eco-something or whatevers it’s called, I was wondering if there was a trace of that explosion or some other anomalies on the map. Found nothing. The site however cites that the source of the radiation data. All sources in Ukraine are affilated with their government. No idea if such source are trustworthy esp. during war time.
Anyways the explosions in Khmelnitsky were f*ing enormous. I hope it’s not DU and that the people there aren’t going to suffer due to precipitated radioactive shit. They had Chernobyl and that’s enough.
Do you for a moment believe that USA or UK have ever outplayed Russia in propaganda war? Never!
Thanks for doing your high school homework. Pretty stupid of them to spew disinformation that can be so readily discredited. Can’t blame them for trying. I think they’re genuinely concerned about U238 pollution.
And the funniest: the MSM probably won’t “fact-check” these spoofs because they don’t need additional attention on the UK’s delivery of depleted uranium indiscriminately harming the soil of all beloved Ukrainian civilians – as well the “unworthy” ones in the east as the canon-fodder-worthy ones in the west.